Today's
Stories
February
13, 2006
Michael Neumann
Respectful Cultures and Disrespectful
Cartoons
February
11 / 12, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
How Not to Spot a Terrorist
Ralph Nader
Bringing Democracy to the Federal Reserve
Paul Craig Roberts
Nuking the Economy
Pat Williams
John Boehner's Dirty Little Secret:
Flying Lobbyist Air at $4,000 a Junket
Fred Gardner
Dr. Mikuriya's Appeal: a Last Minute
Twist
Saul Landau
From Munich to Hamas
John Chuckman
Cartoons and Bombs: Was Rice Right
for Once?
Roger Burbach
Evo Morales: the Early Days
Seth Sandronsky
Economy on Ice
Website of the Weekend
Just Say Know
February 10, 2006
Carl
G. Estabrook
A US War Plan for Khuzestan?
Sen.
Russell Feingold
A Raw Deal on the Patriot Act
Roxanne
Dunbar--Ortiz
How Did Evo Morales Come to Power?
Saree Makdisi
The Tempest Over the Hamas Charter
Website of the Day
The
New York Art Scene: 1974--1984
February 9, 2006
Dave Lindorff
Bush
and Yamashita: War Crimes and Commanders--in--Chief
Mike Marqusee
The
Human Majority was Right About Iraq
Paul Craig Roberts
How Conservatives Went Crazy: the Rightwing Press
Peter Phillips
Inside
the Global Dominance Group: 200 Insiders Against the World
William S. Lind
Rumsfeld the Maximalist: the Long War
Christine Tomlinson Innocent
Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's
Eavesdropping Program
Will Youmans
Church of England Votes to Divest from Israel
Robert Robideau
An American Indian's View of the Cartoons
Richard Neville
The Cartoons That Shook the World: All This from the Danes, the
Least Funny People on Earth
Peter Rost
The New Robber Barons
Website of the Day
Eyes Wide Open
February 8,
2006
Ron Jacobs
The
Once and Future Sly Stone: Soundtrack to a Riot
Stan Cox
Making
and Unmaking History with General Myers
Sen. Russ Feingold
Why
Bush's Wiretapping Program is Illegal and Unconstitutional
Robert Jensen
Horowitz's
Academic Hit List: Take a Class from One of the CounterPunch
16
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Bush Should Have Wiretapped FEMA and Chertoff
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Alberto Gonzales Channels Mark Twain
Don Monkerud
Covenant Marriage on the Rocks
David Swanson
Inequality and War
C.L. Cook
Nuking Ontario
Christopher
Fons
Chill Out Jihadis: They're Just Cartoons!
Jeffrey Ballinger
The Other Side of Nike and Social Responsibility
Website of
the Day
Encyclopedia of Terrorism in the Americas
February 7,
2006
Edward Lucie--Smith
An
Urgent Plea to Save a Small Estonian Museum from Neo--Nazis
Robert Fisk
The Fury: Now Lebanon is Burning
Paul Craig Roberts
Colin Powell's Career as a "Yes Man"
Neve Gordon
Why Hamas Won
Joshua Frank
The Hillary and George Show: Partners in War
Peter Montague
The Problem with Mercury: a History of Regulatory Capitulation
Jackie Corr
The
Last Best Choice: Public Power and Montana
Jeffrey St.
Clair
Rumsfeld's
Enforcer: the Secret World of Stephen Cambone
Website of the Day
Negroes with Guns
February 6,
2006
Christopher
Brauchli
Spilling
Blood: Two Sentences
Robert Fisk
Don't
Be Fooled: This Isn't About Islam vs. Secularism
John Chuckman
What Did Stephen Harper Actually Win?
Jenna Orkin
Judge Slams EPA for Lying About 9/11's Toxic Air
Paul Craig
Roberts
Who
Will Save America: My Epiphany
February 4
/ 5, 2006
Alexander Cockburn
"Lights
Out in Tehran": McCain Starts Bombing Run
Mike Ferner
Pentagon
Database Leaves No Kid Alone
James Petras
Evo Morales's Cabinet: a Bizarre Beginning in Bolivia
Alan Maass
Scare of the Union: Dems Collaborate with Bush on Surveillance
Fred Gardner
Annals of Law Enforcement: a Look Inside the San Francisco DA's
Office
Ralph Nader
Bush's
Energy Escapades
Bill Glahn
RIAA Watch: Speaking in Tongues
Saul Landau
Freedom 2006: Buying Sex on the Net or Those Older Freedoms?
Laura Carlsen
Bad Blood on the Border: Killing Guillermo Martinez
James Brooks
Our Little Shop of Diplomatic Horrors
Mike Roselle
Hippies and Revolutionaries in Carcacas
John Holt
Black Gold, Black Death: Canada's Oil Sands Frenzy
Sarah Ferguson
Cops Suing Cops ... for Spying on Cops
William S.
Lind
Beware the Ides of March
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Price of Globalization: Free Trade or Free Speech?
Seth Sandronsky
The Color of Job Cuts in the Auto Industry
Derrick O'Keefe
Rumsfeld's Hitler Analogy
Michael Donnelly
Hop on the Bus
Ron Jacobs
Religion and Political Power
Elisa Salasin
RSVP to Bush
St. Clair / Vest
Playlists: What We're Listening to This Week
Stew Albert
God's Curse: Selected Poems
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, LaMorticella and Engel
Website of
the Weekend
Killer
Tells All!
February 3,
2006
Toufic Haddad
A
Parliament of Prisoners
Heather Gray
Working with Coretta Scott King
Tim Wise
Racism,
Neo--Confederacy and the Raising of Historical Illiterates
Conn Hallinan
Nuclear Proliferation: the Gathering Storm
Eva Golinger
Rumsfeld and Negroponte Amp Up Hositility Toward Venezuela
Daniel Ellsberg
The World Can't Wait: Invitation to a Demonstration
Dave Zirin
Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink
Robert Bryce
The
Problem with Cutting US Oil Imports from the Middle East
Website of
the Day
The Chavez Code
February 2,
2006
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Pentagon
Pork: How to Eliminate It
Stan Cox
Outsourcing
the Golden Years
Rachard Itani
Danes
(Finally) Apologize to Muslims (For the Wrong Reasons)
Mike Whitney
Afghanistan Five Years Later: Buildings Down, Heroin Up
Amira Hass
In
the Footsteps of Arafat: an Interview with Hamas' Ismail Haniya
Norman Solomon
When Praise is Desecration: Smothering King's Legacy with Kind
Words
Michael Simmons
Stew Lives!
Christopher
Reed
Japan's
Dirty Secret: One Million Korean Slaves
Website of the Day
State of Nature
February 1,
2006
Sharon Smith
The
Bluff and Bluster Dems: Alito and the Faux Filibuster
Jason Leopold
Enron and the Bush Administration
Cindy Sheehan
Getting
Busted at the State of the Union: What Really Happened
Joseph Grosso
Oprah
and Elie Wiesel: a Match Made in "Neutrality"
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Coretta Scott King was More Than Just Dr. King's Wife
Steven Higgs
Life After Roe. v. Wade
Robert Robideau
"God Given Rights": Palestine and Native America
R. Siddharth
Tales of Power: When Gandhi Rejected a Faustian Bargain with
Henry Ford
Jim Retherford
Remembering Stew Albert: the Quiet Genius
Rep. Cynthia
McKinney
The Legacy of Coretta Scott King
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
True State of the Union
Website of
the Day
Candide's Notebooks
| February
13, 2006
A Review of Black
Liberation and Socialism
Countering the Propaganda
of History
By RON JACOBS
In
a manner that seems typical of the way the powerful in the US perceive
the Black population of the country, the history of African-Americans
is relegated to one month. That month is, of course, February. While
I won't go so far as those who, half-seriously note that not only
is only one month given to studying the history of African-Americans,
but that month is also the shortest one, it is a curious fact. That
being said, and in spite of my objection to this thing called "Black
History Month," the arrival of Ahmed Shawki's recently published
history titled Black
Liberation and Socialism provides me with the opportunity to
review this comprehensive survey of the history of black-skinned
residents of the United States.
Shawki,
who is also an editor of the International Socialist Review--the
theoretical journal of the International Socialist organization--presents
a study of the relationship between the socialist movement in the
United States and the Black population. He also does a good deal
more here. Given the special history and relationship of African-Americans
to the power structure and white-skinned US citizens in general,
this is more than a study of that relationship. It is also a history
of the African-American struggle for freedom. This history is not
the first book to examine this historical relationship. However,
it is certainly one of the few that predicates the fundamental elements
of that relationship on the economic realities of slavery and the
necessity to construct a rationale for the racial nature of African-American
bondage and the racist structure that followed emancipation.
Shawki
notes early on in his history that the "dominant historical
view of slavery places ideas--in particular, racial ideas--as the
motor force of history." By doing so, argues Shawki, historians
completely underestimate the economic connection between "capitalism
and the development of racism." Echoing Karl Marx, Shawki notes
how the slave trade and the plantation system of the American South
enabled the accumulation of capital and the development of industrial
capitalism in the United States and those parts of Europe that also
took part. Because of this fundamental economic reality, and the
necessity of slavery to the US economy, racial (neé racist)
ideologies were developed to rationalize the continued enslavement
of other humans. As noted above, once slavery was finally outlawed,
these rationales were further developed to restrict and discriminate
against black skinned US residents. Sometimes they were encoded
into laws regarding employment, voting, housing, and marriage and--more
often--they were just part of the dominant belief system in US society.
This is a belief system that enabled employers to break strikes
with African-American scabs, create fears that led to lynchings,
and helped elect men and women whose interest run counter to the
economic interests of workers no matter what their skin color.
How
did this racist philosophy become part of the national psyche? How
could a country supposedly founded on the equality of all humanity
rationalize slavery and racial hatred? Shawki explains this by writing
that the white founders merely made non-whites non-citizens. Indeed,
male slaves were considered 3/5ths of a man and that was only for
taxation and representation purposes. The very same men who had
begun their rebellion against the Crown because they were denied
representation turned around and denied a similar representation
to black-skinned men (and all women). As time went on, this legal
designation that African-Americans were less than human was provided
moral justification by preachers, schools and the courts.
As
Black Liberation and Socialism continues past the Civil War and
into the Twentieth Century, the presence of the labor movement begins
to be noted. Racism was the norm there, too. It is the exceptions
that stand out and Shawki details a couple of them. He details the
use of African-American scabs in strikes but also tells the story
of strikes that united workers across racial divisions. Interestingly,
at least two of the better known ones occurred in the South: a lumber
strike in Louisiana and a widespread coal miners strike in West
Virginia and Kentucky. Despite the hesitancy of union leadership
to cross the racial divide, the rank and file often forced the issue,
innately understanding the strength such solidarity would create.
As
the socialist and communist movement grew around the world and in
the US, the situation of Black Americans became a central question
in the various parties. Within the Communist Party USA, African
Americans' status as a nation was debated. Indeed, this debate continues
to today, with some of its major development occurring in the 1960s
via the writings and speeches of Malcolm X, various Black Power
groups, the Black Panther Party, and other New Left formations.
Although this question is rarely raised today, the debate quietly
continues, as does the nature of African-Americans' oppression.
In addtion, the question of which segment of the black population
should be the primary focus of leftist organizing--the lumpen or
the workers--is unresolved. Shawki presents both elements of the
latter debate in his chapter on the Black Panthers and the Dodge
Revolutionary Union Movement--two Marxist revolutionary Black nationalist
organizations of the 1960s and 1970s.
This
book is a comprehensive look at the history of the struggle for
Black liberation in the United States. Shawki's effort is well worth
the read, especially for those who are looking for a good introduction
to this underexplored part of US history. The fundamental importance
of the nature of US capitalist economics to the oppression of African-Americans
is never forgotten in this book, but neither is this nature pressed
to the point of pedanticism.
If
racism is the chicken and economics the egg, Shawki makes a compelling
argument in these pages that the egg definitely came first. Quite
readable, Black Liberation and Socialism adds an important analysis
to the bookshelf of Black history. It doesn't merely belong in the
study group or the library. It should be part of the slowly growing
canon on that topic.
Ron
Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew, a history of the
Weather Undergrouind. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net
|
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