Fighting racism (part 2): Class struggle against the common enemy

by Gus Hall

This article was reprinted from the February 24, 1996 issue of the People's Weekly World. For subscription information see below. All rights reserved - may be used with PWW credits.

The following is an updated version of writings dating between 1964 and 1984. Part 1 appeared last week.

The African-American people have been in struggle for their economic, political, social, civil and human rights for some 400 years. The history of the African American people is one of heroic struggle and bittersweet victories.

Slavery did not leave the stage of history voluntarily or passively. Abolition was won in a historic battle involving the entire nation. The right to vote, breakthroughs in employment in basic industries and in access to education and housing and the decrease in open racist brutality and slander are, like the abolition of slavery, results of struggle.

U.S. capitalism took over fostering the ideology of white supremacy from the slave masters and the ideological upholders of slavery. They refined and further developed it, and made it more subtle and penetrating.

Its purpose is to imbue masses of white Americans with race hatred by creating in them the illusion that they are superior. In this ideological stupor they become instruments of oppression of other people whom they consider inferior. Thus, masses of white Americans fall prey to pseudo- scientific, fascist-like theories of superiority and inferiority that are fed into the mainstream of our society.

One of the most recent is the retread of racist theories in The Bell Curve and the provisions of the Contract on America that gives corporate America's racism a genocidal feature. The Contract is inherently racist. It is a plan to undo and reverse all the gains of the civil rights movement for equality, for affirmative action and in the fight against racism.

Class, racial and national oppression and exploitation of the African American people continue to exist because they are integrated into the economic and political structure of U.S. state monopoly capitalism. The motive, as in the case of exploitation itself, is maximum corporate profits.

Racism rests on the hoax of white supremacy and racial superiority. Racism adds billions of dollars to corporate profits. It is precisely in the drive for maximum corporate profits, in the exploitation of the working class and super- exploitation sustained by racism, that the interests of the working class and African American people come together. It brings these two sectors of our people into focus on a single enemy; the capitalist class - the corporations, banks and landlords.

Thus, it is on the job, in the plants and factories, where the racist capitalist ideology is focused. It is in the workplace that the racist economic wage gap takes place. It is in the workplace that discrimination in hiring and promotion takes place. That is why victories in the struggle against racism in housing, education, and health care depend largely on victories in closing the job and wage gap.

Thus, our emphasis on working class unity, Black-Brown-white unity, on industrial concentration, is based on our understanding of the relationship between racism in the workplace, the economic gap and the role of class unity in the overall struggle against racism.

The total eradication of racism and its uprooting from all phases of life, like the elimination of exploitation, will require a revolutionary transformation of production relations on the basis of public ownership of production, plants, industries and all national wealth. Socialism eliminates the private profit motive and thereby does away with private ownership and private profits that enrich only the capitalists.

There have been gains and there can be more. But the struggle is far from won. Indeed, during the Reagan-Bush years there were defeats and setbacks. In housing, education, health care, child care, affirmative action and many other areas the gains of past years are still being eroded. African American unemployment remains at depression levels.

The triple tiers of racial oppression - race, class and national oppression - are all affected by the triple-layered crisis of U.S. capitalism - the recurring cyclical crisis, the structural crisis and the overall general crisis of capitalism.

Because most African Americans are workers, they are affected by the cyclical crisis. The layoffs have a racist impact because Black workers are laid off in disproportionate numbers. And the discrimination in hiring and promotion is reflected in lower unemployment benefits.

The structural crisis, with its plant closings and abandonment of entire industries or sections of industries, like basic steel production, devastates working class lives and communities. Following the maximum profits road, corporations lay off, close down, move to a lower wage, non- union area or country, leaving lives and whole communities devastated.

The structural crisis also has a racist cutting edge. It is in the industries where Black workers have won some breakthroughs in hiring. Because of racism, Black workers - last to be hired, first fired - who become unemployed remain unemployed longer or become permanently unemployed.

The third layer of crisis - the overall crisis of capitalism - affects most workers. But downsizing, privatizing and cutbacks in industrial and trade expansion decrease job opportunities.

These developments are forcing the victims of capitalist exploitation to think more in terms of unity in struggle against a common enemy. As contradictions continue to sharpen it becomes easier to see that monopoly capital, the monopoly corporations, are the source of all the problems.

As the class struggle sharpens it becomes easier for white workers to understand that not only is unity a necessity for struggle, but that the ideology of racism, the poison of white superiority, is based on a lie.

Not all are affected to the same degree by the poison of racism. The spectrum runs all the way from the rabid racists to those who are for civil rights and equality but do nothing about it.

Can big sections of Americans be won to take an active part against racism and the struggle for equality even before they are freed from the poison of white chauvinism? The answer is definitely yes.

Most white Americans will be motivated to participate in the civil rights struggle for equality because they see their own interests riding on victories, even while they continue to be influenced to one degree or another by racist ideology. This is why serious leaders of movements must seek out and explain the areas of common self-interests.

It is because white workers see their own interests involved that these workers, in the process of fighting for equality and against racism, will develop a new and higher sense of class unity and class consciousness, new moral and ethical standards and a new sense of ideals that will replace the old influences of racism and chauvinism.

It was Marx who said, "Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded." Thus, there is a growing awareness of common interests. As class consciousness deepens among the workers, they become more aware of the multiracial, multinational, male-female, young- old composition of their class and of the necessity to reject racism and inequality in all its forms.

There is a growing class consciousness, and with it a growing sense of class unity. From this follows recognition of the need for alliances among all victims of monopoly capital. And the most logical allies of the working class are the racially and nationally oppressed, youth, women, small farmers, professionals and small-business people.

There is a growing awareness that while each group has some special interests, there are also widening areas, issues and needs - like economic well-being - where their interests overlap and are joined.

There is a growing realization that it is necessary to boldly promote the truth that all struggles and movements have built-in limitations if they do not include the struggle against racism. The struggles of the working class and trade unions are limited if they do not take up the struggle for equality.

There cannot be equality without the fight for jobs paying union or prevailing wages, with concrete measures of affirmative action - adjustments, compensatory measures to make up for inequalities of the past.

It is another hard fact that the super-exploitation of part of the U.S. working class (the racially and nationally oppressed) intensifies the exploitation of the whole working class. The struggle for democracy will be limited and will flounder if it does not take up the struggle for those whose democratic rights are most brutally violated.

The struggle against this poison will be a protracted one. Racism will begin to disappear by virtue of the experiences gained in class struggle on common interests against the common enemy.

But, even then, it would be an error to think that it will disappear automatically. The process of freeing our country from the influence and effects of this poison takes place through class unity and unity in struggle, through education and discussion.

And, of course, it is not possible to dig out all of the roots while capitalism exists, since the evil is inherent in the very nature of capitalism. But it is possible to sever many of the roots and to destroy offshoots and branches, even while the dying tree of capitalism still stands. Victories are a realistic goal now. Otherwise, one would have to wait to resolve it until socialism USA - a time which is not at hand now.

Winning a life of full equality for all of our people comes up for achievement at a new moment in the history of humanity - at a time when the development of science and technology has made a world without want or the fear of want a realistic possibility.

The material basis for a world without want can also be the basis for a world without wars, without racism, prejudice or bigotry, without oppression of individuals, peoples or nations.

This goal is within the grasp of humanity. The obstacle to its realization is capitalism. Big business and its insatiable greed for maximum profits is the one great hurdle civilization must overcome before it can proceed to a world finally free of want, oppression and wars. The new social order that has discarded the greedy motive of private profit is socialism.

As the people of the U.S. struggle in unity against poverty and racism, they will eventually arrive at a point where they too will decide to discard the evil system of monopoly capitalism and re-organize our country's life along socialist lines. With that act, we will have joined the mainstream of humanity's march to a better life.