The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1930-09-19

(From Speech Delivered at the Seventh
Convention of the c. ?. L. S. A.
BY c. A. HATHAWAY.


An understanding of the Negro question
requires clarity on the national question,
Some of the Negro and white comrades are
very much confused on this. We have had
theories in the Party that it is not necessary
to approach the Negro workers in special
manner, but only as workers. In varying de-
grees such conceptions still held by some
comrades in the Party. These theories if
they are permitted TO develop will prevent
US from drawing the Negroes into the Party
for a struggle against American imperialism
The agrarian question lies at the base of
the national question. If you examine the
agrsrian question in the South; you find that
there many slave remnants still prevalent
throughout the agrarian South. There the
Negroes are still io. ced to put up with the
peonage system, the share-croppn system,
ETC., in every way preventing these Negro
tenants from getting their own land or from
controlling the production of their land So
the very struggle of the Negro poems against
the intolerable conditions that exist causes
them to fight not only against the landlords,
but against the whole relationship in the
South which permits the slavery remnants to
continue
At the same time you have a unit lg Of the
race as a result of persecution, the system of
whole extra. legal manner in which the Ne
groes are treated. This tends to unite them
in the struggle against the whites. You also
have to remember that these conditions have
not existed for only few years, but for cen
turtles, thus tending to draw these workers
together over long period. All this forms
basis for nationalism among the Negroes
in the United States.
The conditions of these Negro tenants in
the South lay at the root of the Negro ma
tional movement but in considering the devel-
opment of this movement further you have to
take into consideration both the Negro bour-
geoisie and the Negro Electromagnetic. The
Negro bourgeoisie in the United States plays
contradictory role. On the one hand it
strives more and more to unite socially with
the white bourgeoisie, but considering their
color, this is almost impossible. At the same
time their development a class makes it
necessary for them to unite the race, to give
them basis within the race for the develop
ment of their own industries, etc. So that
you see the Negro bourgeoisie, and the Negro
intellectuals in their writings, in all of their
various efforts, trying to unity the on
this basis, tending to give expression to this
Negro nationalist movement, tending to rally
the Negro agrarian masses for struggle
against the white bourgeoisie. That is, they
tend to unite them as a race. However, in
the course of the development of the struggle
of the Negro masses, the Negro bourgeoisie
will inevitably go to the white bourgeoisie
This has to be clearly understood.
Nationalism does not have its roots among
the Negro proletariat. That is why some OF
the comrades here who have lived in the
North and among the Negroes in the North
ern industrial sections, put forth the theory
that you have to approach the Negroes only
as class. Here the strong nationalist ten
denotes have not developed to the same ex-
tent and do not reflect the general conditions
Of the Negroes-the prosecutions that the Ne
groes in the South have had to undergo.
The Negro proletariat in the course of the
development of this movement must, however,
take the leadership of it as a revolutionary
force against the bourgeoisie. In regard to
Garveyism, which is proof of the acceptance
of nationalism among the Negroes and refutes
the theories of those comrades that say there
is no base for nationalism, the whole line of
Garveyism was to unite the Negroes as a
race, instilling the idea among them that they
could set up Negro State in Africa, where
they would have the full right of national self
determination. They carried their propaganda
to great extremes. They created a Negro
god in place of a white god, they gave Negro
dolls to their children to play with. They
carried on strong propaganda with their chill
dren, telling them not to play with white
dolls, but only with Negro dolls. The whole
line of this was to glorify everything Negro
TO bring the Negroes together.
The reactionary character of this petty
bourgeois movement showed itself by the fact
that instead of fighting against American
capitalism and against white prosecutions in
the United States, they wanted to set up a
Negro State in Africa. This shows on the
one hand the nationalistic tendencies among
the Negroes and the basis for natonalism
among the Negroes, and on the other hand
shows the inability of the Negro bourgeoise to
give leadership to such a movement. 1t is
also interesting to know that the Garvey
movement opposed by the big Negro
bourgeoisie. The big Negro bourgeoisie, while
they advocated the unity of the race knew
that it would not work and that it would
have to result in advocating a policy of CO.
operation with the whites.
The task that we are confronted with in
this national movement is to strengthen and
develop it. (The basis for it exists in the
agrarian conditions in the South, in the rela-
lions that exist between the Negroes and
the whites.) This has to be done by taking up
very concretely the struggle against all forms
Of discrimination, demanding the equality of
the Negro, demanding the liquidation of Jim
Crowism, fighting for full social, political and
economic equality as the central slogans, and
ooveloping the struggle of the Negro masses.
There has been a tendency in the Party, how
ever, to be satisfied with putting forth these