The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-09-18
By ]. w. FORD.
(From Speech at the Seventh Convention
of the c. P. L. S. Al

To approach the Negro question we must 40
so from three points of view. We must ap-
proach from the point of view of the Negro
workers as an exploited group of workers, as
a part of the working class Of the country
similarly as we treat the whole American
working class in its struggles here in Amer
lea. This approaches the question from the
class point of view, the Negro being regarded
as an exploited worker. Second, from the
point of view of the Negro being an oppressed
nationality, a suppressed minority, suppressed
by the capitalist class. And finally from the
international scope, a point OF view when
takes in several revolutionary movements IN
the colonies: the national colonial movements,
and independence movements carried on by the
Indian and the Chinese workers, particularly
as these relate to the struggle for self-deter-
mination and the struggle for independence
from mperialist oppression. In regard
to the second viewpoint, the Negro as a sup
pressed nationality group The question is
mainly a national question from the point of
view of racial oppression, discrimination and
abuse heaped upon him as an oppressed race.
Connected With this is the question of the
Negro peasantry. The Comintern has pointed
out the basis of the Negro question in this
country as national question outlining in
detail the struggles of the exploited peasants
in the South, who are the great majority OF
the Negro workers in this country, against
sem-save and serf conditions. These strug-
giles against the domination of the white rul-
ing class against these slave remnants makes
the peasant question the central question for
the struggle of the Negro workers in this
country At the same time it involves the
struggle of the peasants in the South for land
which has been denied them.
Connected with this is the question of self
question The logical conclusion of the strug-
gle against semi-slave conditions, against the
conditions of the peasantry must be the right
of self-determination. The struggle for self
determination must be put forward now as
the struggle for the rights of the Negro work
ers and as a part of the struggle of the peas
antry against the semi-slave conditions. The
struggle for self-determination is logically
connected up with the struggle of the Negro
for equal rights, against the dominant ruling
class that denies and takes away from the
Negro workers and peasants all rights, civil,
political, denying them any so-called demo-
cratic rights. Therefore our struggle for self
determination must be part of the national
struggle. The slogan for self-determination,
as pointed out by the Comintern letter is
propaganda slogan at the present moment
However, because this is not an action slogan
the Negro workers the right of self-determina-
ton, to struggle for the realization of this
slogan at the present time We must not
confuse the i0ea of determination and
the struggle of the Negro workers, with the
petty bourgeois idea of Garveyism but all the
more struggle against them. Comrades any
vacillation in putting forward the question of
self-determinaton of the Negro workers in
this country and the Negro peasants denies
the political line as laid down by the CT with
regard to the Negro question. If we have
any vacillation on this question it has in it
the basis of white chauvinism.
AS l said before, the struggle for self
determination, is one for the liquidation of
slave remnants and serfdom conditions i'm
posed on the Negroes. Any other idea leads
us astray. For example the idea of Lovestone
that the industrial revolution will take care
of the Negro question. If we vacillate we
will go over to the idea of the Industrial revo-
luton in the South being the means to lib
crate the Negro workers and peasants. In
other words we will make the question of self
determination question purely of proletarian
struggles, that is, that we cannot struggle for
the Negro peasants until after the realization
of the revolution, that we can develop a move
ment among them only through the proletar-
ianization of the peasant masses in the South,
that this must occur before they can become
factor in the struggles of Negro workers in
this country. Such vacillation denies the
struggle for the liquidation of the serf and
semi-slave conditions and at the same time
puts forward the reactionary theory of Love-
stone that the Negro peasants in the South
are reserve of capitalist reaction. We find
to the contrary that the movement in the
South is part of the revolutionary struggle
in this country. At the same time we may
also fall into wrong theory, advanced by
Pepper, for the struggle Immediately for a
Soviet Republic in this country. This policy
is absurd; because the whole of the Negro
question cannot be, solved until the realization
of the proletarian revolution and the victor
ious socialist struggle in this country, then
nothing can be done before. This is "leftist"
conception leading to no action at all.
Now, comrades, with regard to self deter
mination and question of the Negro and white
workers. the white workers as we'll as the
Negro industrial workers of the North must
be shown that the struggle for self-determina-
ton in the first place is part of the struggle
of the white workers against capitalism,
against imperialism in the U. S.
First, why does the bourgeoisie uphold the
idea of 100 per cent nationalism in this coun-
try? 1t uphods the idea of 100 per cent ma
tionalism in order to separate the Negro
workers from the white workers, in order to
exploit without hindrance both the Negro
workers and the white workers of the whole
working class. That is white nationalism, the
separation of the Negro workers on the basis
Of racial inferority and white superiority
This gives the A. F. T. moro hold ,,non the