THE BLACK WORKERS CONGRESS

1. THE BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLE, THE BLACK WORKERS CONGRESS AND PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION

History of the Modern Black Liberation and the Black Workers Congress - Summed-Up

In the year 1955, in the old southern city of Montgomery, Alabama, a Black woman by the name of Rosa Parks stood up, and then sat down. Then masses of Black people kicked off the modern Black liberation struggle.⁸⁰

The NAACP filed over 55 desegregation suits in 1955. Emmett Till was lynched in Mississippi while Roy Wilkins was named to succeed Walter White as head of a hounded NAACP throughout the south. Black veterans were, by and large, home, or on their way back from Japan and Korea telling stories of how they had seen those courageous Chinese troops fighting a much better equipped American Army. The ruling class and Joe McCarthy had just finished the job of catching the CPUSA disarmed and flabby the results of a criminal, revisionist policy unable to have been turned around. White mobs lined up to block school doors throughout the south. The battle of Little Rock broke after the people of Montgomery had defeated the Montgomery Bus Company’s Jim Crow Policy.⁸¹ 1957 was the year of Ghanian independence and the founding of SCLC. Members of the elite wing of the Black bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie proudly talked about going to Africa to serve the Ghanian government. The struggles of the African, Asian, and Latin American peoples revealed more concretely to masses of Black people here the lie of the “colored peoples inferiority.” On through Tent City, the lynching of Charlie Mack Parker, massive voter registration campaigns, the bursting upon the scene of the heroic, young Black students, Robert Williams and the people of Monroe, N.C., demonstrating the lie of “natural negro passivity,” expressed through ‘non-violence’, and the Black liberation movement surged onward. Toward the last couple of years of the ’50s, the Black masses were hit with an unemployment they were to never recover from. The face of the Black community would reveal more and more growing numbers of unemployed youth and their underemployed fathers and brothers of all ages. This is what was happening brothers and sisters.

By 1960 only 59% of Black people resided in the South. Outside and inside the south Black people lived overwhelmingly in large metropolitan areas. The same year saw the birth of SNCC and the election of the ruling class politician-JFK who wanted to “lead” the Black liberation movement (into the lion’s den). Black people unfolded mass struggle against every stronghold of Jim Crow, using sit-ins, freedom rides, legal suits, etc., while defying white mobs, dogs, and lying, “benevolent” politicians.⁸²

Malcolm X! Black Patriot! Malcolm summed up the decade 1955 to 1965, and even though the ruling class murdered him, his ideas and spirit are with us now. He articulated the aspirations of the period, even though many of us couldn’t understand what he was saying then. On the heels of tumultous mass struggle, Black people shouted: “Black Power”! as they learned that the Federal government was not really their friend but their enemy from top to bottom. In the last half of the 60’s Black people proclaimed straight up that if we were to be mashed into the dirt any longer, then the government needed its Army, Navy and police, but no unruly band of civilian whites would insult Black people, north or south, ever again. The chips were down. The “American system” was on the line. There was no where to run, no place to hide, except maybe one—the Uncle Toms of the Black bourgeoisie, and the right opportunists, like the CPUSA.⁸³

The Leading Role of the Black Liberation Struggle

Let’s back up a few years or so. During the entire period the Black peoples struggle baptized a generation of white youth and progressive white Americans in a wave of mass struggle and ruling class violence, opening the eyes of Americans of every class and strata to the hypocrisy of “American Democracy,” more so than any other mass movement with the possible exception of the mass peoples struggle against the imperialist war in Indo-China. And the Black peoples struggle played a key role in helping to launch the struggle against the aggression in Vietnam. The Black peoples struggle was a huge inspiration to the Chicano and Puerto Rican peoples whose struggles also shook U.S. society. The Black peoples struggles exposed the good-for-nothing CPUSA and all their foul deeds. The Black peoples struggle was objectively anti-imperialist from the ‘Git,’ and in the late 60’s it was becoming consciously anti-imperialist. This new, anti-Imperialist force reached its height at that time, with the birth of the Black Panther Party. The Black peoples struggle for liberation shook American imperialism to its knees throughout the 1960’s, giving birth to a host of anti-imperialists; black, brown, yellow and white, many who evolved into a small sector of conscious, anti-revisionist Marxist-Leninists.⁸⁴

By 1967, almost 50% of Black people lived outside the south and almost 90% of Black people lived in metropolitan areas of over 250,000 in population. Black people were overwhelmingly an urban people, a proletarian people. Black workers caucuses sprung up in practically all the basic industries. These caucuses aimed their fire at the fact that Blacks held the dirtiest and lowest paying jobs and were excluded from active participation in the unions.

The mass struggle of Black people burst forth before the Black proletariat was class conscious or organized enough to play the leading role. Consciousness of the necessity for revolutionary class struggle, a struggle against the Black bourgeois forces dominating the movement, of the need for independent organization which represented their class interests and could lead them into action against the imperialist system, only penetrated into a very small circle of Black workers in the early sixties. Therefore the crisis of the Black liberation struggle which became apparent in the late sixties, revealed itself more and more as a crisis of the leadership. With each advance of the struggle the bankrupt leadership of the Black bourgeoisie and the vacillating influence of the Black petty bourgeoisie became clear to the masses of Black people. For almost a decade and a half of active mass struggle, every coalition and organization in the Black community was led by preacher so-and-so or attorney so-and-so. They carried on “negotiations” with the ruling class whites for “reforms”: civil rights legislation, programs for housing, education, economic assistance, etc. NOT A SINGLE ONE OF THESE PROMISES HAVE BEEN KEPT! These promises turned out to be simply gestures to hide the exploitative nature of the present system and the class interest of the Black bourgeoisie, who knew how to use the militancy of the masses for their own selfish ends.

But it has been the Black masses themselves, 90% of whom are part of the laboring masses, who have been the driving force of the Black liberation struggle. They have taken to the streets, to the marches, and to the barricades demanding jobs, better housing, better education, increased wages and an end to the “heavy hand” of the state, especially in the form of “police brutality.” It was these demands and this reality which must be taken as the starting point in understanding the storms unleashed by the valiant Black people in the latter half of the sixties. Though the Black bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes assumed what it thought was its natural 100 year old right to leadership, the Black masses literally set fire to America in the 60’s after a decade of prattling about “non-violence” by these bourgeois forces.

Ruling Class Strategy: Carrot and Stick

In the midst of the sweltering cities the working class content of the Black peoples demands could not be mistaken, nor could they be altogether denied. In the face of such storms the ruling class showed that it knew how to use the carrot as well as the stick—they knew how to bribe and flatter, and who to run to. Under the guise of “economic self-development,” and “Buy Black,” “Do our own thing,” etc., the monopoly capitalists pumped literally millions of dollars into Black enterprises—banks, cooperatives, farms, franchises, night clubs and insurance companies, with the accumulating wealth of the Black bourgeoisie jumping from $500 million in 1965 to $1.6 billion in 1973! The Black petty-bourgeoisie on the other hand, was rewarded with a host of new positions in the corporate structure, and the proliferating “poverty-programs” popped up in every Black ghetto in the country. Nevertheless, these bourgeois and petty bourgeois forces maintained their leadership of most of the major Civil Rights organizations—SNCC, CORE, SCLC, the URBAN LEAGUE, and the NAACP. Even where militant, younger forces had come forward to challenge the old guard forces, as in SNCC, it was the radical wing, by and large, of the petty bourgeoisie speaking, a younger, radical wing who would vacillate between continuing the revolution or capitulating to the Ford Foundation, the “liberal” bourgeoisie, and the Democratic Party.

The reasons the Black bourgeoisie took the course that they did were not accidental:

1) Their objective was economic position in society—small and medium size capitalists who wanted a “bigger piece of the action” of imperialist America, and a chance to exploit more of the ‘Black Market’!

2) The fear of arousing and bringing into revolutionary action “their own” deprived peoples, many who already recognized the need for destruction of the present system as the only way out.

3) Fear of the working class and communism in general, especially frightened by the victories of the heroic Vietnamese peoples whose examples were an inspiration to oppressed peoples everywhere, including Black people in the U.S.

The Black Panther Party

The Black Panthers became the first to see through this unholy alliance, and from the far off shores of the Bay Area California, gave the call for Black people to continue to fight against U.S. imperialism and racism. They helped to expose the treacherous activities of the Black bourgeoisie who were ready to sell out Black people for a few pieces of silver. They raised the banner of Marxism-Leninism as the only ideology for Black people, and conducted merciless criticism of cultural nationalism, mysticism, and Pan Africanism of the Black bourgeoisie. They raised the banner of armed struggle as the final answer to any oppressed peoples situation and actively participated in the armed self-defense of several Black communities. Because of the Black Panther Party, the ruling class was unable to douse the flames of the Black liberation movement that many thought was already dead.

But the BPP made some serious mistakes. Foremost among them being the idea the lumpen, or street elements of the Black community were the vanguard of the struggle. Responding to who they saw as the main elements in the city rebellions of Detroit, Newark, Harlem, Cleveland, and Watts, the BPP concluded that it was the unemployed and semi-employed youth that were the main force in the Black community. They were unaware of the powerful Black proletariat in the big industrial cities, and the leading role of the proletariat in general, which was just beginning to stir. Also, the Panthers were reacting to the revisionist line of the CPUSA which was advocating the “peacful transition to socialism,” and who had already sold-out the working class in the U.S. and condemned it to a state of disorganization and disarray. The desperation and despair of the unemployed youth, which made up the BPP, was real, as was their revolutionary fervor. Undoubtedly, this element of the Black community will play an extremely important role, but again, only the proletariat, with its ideology and its vanguard, a Communist Party, can lead. Despite the mistakes, the BPP played a tremendous role in raising the mass struggle of Black people to a new level, and paved the way for the Black proletariat to play the role it is historically destined to play.

The political situation within the Black liberation movement had seen the temporary lulling of the momentous mass struggles of the 60’s and the earlier part of the seventies. Repression was aimed like a killer knife at the Panthers, though all Black people were the target. But in the early 1970’ s rebellion after rebellion began to rock the prisons from Folsom to Attica. Inflation was already choking the American people; unemployment was astronomical in the ghettos. The Nixon-Kissinger gang in Washington was frantically pursuing their Nazi-terror in Vietnam, while lashing out at the people here at home. The ideological and political confusion caused by all the militant rhetoric of the “Black Power” days was dispersing the militants of the Black liberation struggle, and sending the “white radicals” back to their campuses. At the same time Black workers in basic industry were building militant rank-and-file organizations to combat the oppressive conditions of plant life and the racist, sell-out policies of their “union leaders.” Within the working class, strike after strike hit the monopoly capitalists where it hurt most—in their pocket book—workers’ strikes caused a loss of 51.6 million man hours in 1970.

Revolutionary Upsurge Among Black Workers

In 1969, the first revolutionary Black workers organization of the modern era—The League of Revolutionary Black Workers—was formed in Detroit. As we stated before, there is a close connection between the mass anti-imperialist uprisings of the Black masses, especially the Black Panthers, and the awakening of the Black proletariat with the formation of the League. Without the Civil Rights struggle and the mass rebellions in the cities, the struggles of Black workers and the formation of the League would not have taken place when it did. The formation of the League, in turn, greatly influenced the Black struggle and the entire revolutionary movement of the proletariat in the U.S.

This is what Mike Hamlin, Chairman, and one of the founders of the League, had to say about the League’s program:

“The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is dedicated to waging a relentless struggle against racism, capitalism, and imperialism. We are struggling for the liberation of Black people in the confines of the U.S. as well as to play a major revolutionary role in the liberation of all oppressed people in the world.”

The formation of the League represented an important new turn, the beginning of a new stage in the anti-imperialist struggle of Black workers and masses of Black people. Before the League, Black workers had participated in the mass struggle, but not as an independent and organized force, merely as another “interest group,” following the leadership of another class. The formation of the League marks the beginning of the transition where the Black liberation movement merges with the revolutionary movement of the proletariat as a whole. And who but the Black sector of the proletariat was in a better position to lead such a transition? Indeed, the major question which confronted the League was precisely—Who will assume the lead of the next high tide in the Black struggle? After 1969, only sheer opportunists, or people who didn’t know any better, could place any hopes in the revolutionary capacity of the Black bourgeoisie. The radical Black petty bourgeoisie, represented in the main by SNCC, were splintering, some going to the Ford Foundation, others to Africa, others underground, and still others, nowhere. A few had made attempts to link up with the BPP, but that didn’t work either.

In response, the League put forward the following position: The sole class which owing to its objective position, is capable of leading the Black liberation movement is the proletariat! The League proved this by causing major shut-downs in the big auto plants of GM and Chrysler, which rekindled the spark of the working class movement. Thousands of Black workers walked off their jobs to protest the racist and brutal treatment they received at the hands of both the company and the union. These struggles, which were also supported by many advanced white workers, scared the hell out of the giant auto companies which dominate the economy of the United States. Additionally, these struggles had a particularly profound effect on the workers and Black revolutionaries everywhere. The Black working masses had become active and revolutionary (at least in Detroit) and were led by an openly revolutionary organization—the League! In light of these struggles, not only the national oppression, but the class exploitation of Black people was more clearly revealed, striking another blow at the bourgeois nationalism of those Blacks who said we are only fighting against “all white people.” Though the social-political activity of the bourgeois-led Civil Rights movement had a stimulating effect on the Black sector of the working class, the open treachery of the Black bourgeoisie discredited it in the eyes of this sector of the Black population, and in turn, stimulated the Black workers to organize themselves independently. The formation of the League, and its subsequent development, marks the point where a new current of events was to be observed in the Black movement:

- Considerable numbers of the masses of Black working people, industrial proletariat, bagan to break away from the “bourgeois nationalist” leadership of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie.

- The deeping of capitalist relations within the Black community, spurted by the development of the Black bourgeoisie and the growth of the Black proletariat, polarized the Black community even more as the struggle over “who will lead” the Black people intensifies. Class struggle within the Black Nation sharpens.

- The growth of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought among the Black proletariat and the radical wing of the Black petty bourgeoisie, signals the wanning influence of bourgeois nationalism among the advanced sector of the Black population.

The League played a key role in inspiring the Black Liberation Movement and spreading Marxist-Leninist ideas among Black workers and workers in general, as well as other progressive sectors of the population. However, due to weaknesses in proletarian ideology, the League made mistakes in regards to succumbing in many respects to bourgeois nationalism and syndycalism.

Today the Black sector of the proletariat, though far from being leadership of the Black liberation movement, is nevertheless making its presence felt. The great storm that was the mass struggle of the Black masses brought forth many individuals and organizations, each claiming to represent the “truth,” leading Black people to their “final place in the sun.” Most of these organizations showed the determination arid fighting capacity of Black people, but in the main they have come and gone with little trace of their presence left behind. This only has proven what we’ve been saying all along. Only the proletariat, and within the Black liberation movement, the Black proletariat, is capable of leading all classes and strata in the final assault against U.S. imperialism and monopoly capitalism, to peace, liberation and socialism.

Formation and Development of the Black Workers Congress

The mass upsurge of Black people during the sixties—the Civil Rights Era, the rebellions in the cities, the Black Power era, the community and prisons struggles and the development of militant rank-and-file Black workers movement—largely spontaneous in nature, provided a real meaning and real basis for the calling of a Black Workers Congress. The masses of people knew that rebellions, no matter how militant and destructive they were, could only go so far without leadership and organization. The Panthers had been routed with their leadership split and their local organizations riddled with informers. There was no thought of turning to the Black bourgeoisie, and even less so to the CPUSA and various white “revolutionary” groups. The League was there but it was a local organization centered in Detroit, and was unable or unwilling to expand. Therefore, the desire for an independent Black worker’s organization, with a clear revolutionary line, that was national in scope, was a general aspiration of the advanced sector of the Black population.

Various Black worker’s organizations like the League, the United Black Brothers in Newark, caucuses in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland and Gary, Indiana, together with “movement activists,” students and revolutionary intellectuals from various backgrounds and experiences in the Black struggle, former members of SNCC, and the Black Panther Party, formed the Black Workers Congress, on December 2, 1970. Combined, these forces represented a sector of the most advanced wing of the Black liberation movement, some with wide experience through all the stages of the struggle. There were about 30 delegates representing a dozen or so organizations, divided more or less equally between worker and revolutionary nationalist groups. The overwhelming majority of the delegates and groups were working class, but the leadership was clearly in the hands of the intellectual elements, and those who had little or no experience in the workers movement, or in organizing workers. As such the character of the founding conference was mainly petty bourgeois in its ideological and political outlook.

The ideological basis of this new, national organization was only superficially touched on. A draft Manifesto was passed out. James Forman, organizer of the conference made a speech on the importance of organizing Black workers. Discussion of the Manifesto was light. The League representatives were hesitant and expressed concern as to whether such an organization could be built. The representatives of the United Black Brothers, however, pushed for the formation of a national organization, as did most of the other delegates. A continuations committee was formed and a second conference was scheduled for Chicago in January to review the work of contacting other workers in different parts of the country, and make further decisions. In the interim, the Manifesto was published on newsprint for distribution.

The Congress developed in a contradictory way. A fairly rapid tempo of organizing work, which pushed the organization into nearly 20 cities in a few months, began under the conditions of an emerging internal struggle. The United Black Brothers was to attend only one other meeting before leaving over a struggle about the “ratio of workers to activist on the central committee.” SNCC and the Third World Women’s Alliance attended no more meetings, apparently because they objected to Forman’s leadership of the new organization. The United Front of Cairo, although always open to the BWC attended one or two meetings later on, but they never really participated in much work of the organization. At just about every meeting there were long discussions and struggles on the questions of Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought, the National Question, how the organization was to be built, the political line of the BWC, the nature of the Black liberation movement, the “white left,” etc.

Without a doubt, the Manifesto of BWC reflected, especially in its demands, some of the aspirations of Black people, Black workers and the general anti-imperialist movement at that time. But demands are not a program, and the ideological and political basis of the organization was left unclear. For instance, the BWC in its Manifesto, stated its ideological basis in this manner:

“The systematic study of revolutionary theory and experiences of movements and socialist nations so that we might learn from them, but in our learning we must at all times remember that we must apply all theory to the concrete realities of the U.S.”

It was very difficult to tell what the BWC was guided by since Trotskyites, Revisionists, Anarchists, all claim to have a revolutionary theory in the world. What we needed was not All Revolutionary Theory, but Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of Mao Tse Tung, which is the only genuine revolutionary theory in the world. It was easy to see why the BWC was ransacked with ideological struggle, because its vague and opportunist line left room for all sorts of political tendencies which kept the organization from becoming politically and ideologically unified. This was demonstrated clearly by subsequent events.

Throughout the years 1971 and early 72 the BWC was engaged in a tremendous organizing campaign in about all the major cities in the U.S. from Los Angeles to New York, New Orleans to Chicago. Dozens of conferences were called in an effort to find anti-imperialist forces (individuals and organizations) and future cadres for the organization. This effort proved more than successful as hundreds of new revolutionary elements came to the fore thirsting for a revolutionary organization they could belong to. Though most of them were revolutionary students and youth, many advanced workers were contacted and joined the BWC. This also energized potential Black revolutionaries and communists, who had not participated in the mass upsurge of the sixties, but who became inspired to revolutionary activity by what they had seen, heard, and read about those struggles. More than anything else, this organizing activity helped dispel the myth that Black people “were not ready for Marxism,” and were “politically backward,” were “demoralized” by the Panther experience so on and so forth.

The early experience of the BWC proved that not only was the Black liberation movement alive and well, but that its real potential had hardly been tapped. For the masses of Black working people, here was an organization dedicated to working for their interest, around the concrete day-to-day issues of their lives, and not some pie-in the sky Black thing. The masses of Black people were tired of all the rhetoric of the Black Power movement which promised them everything and gave them nothing. Indeed, the Congress saw as one of its main tasks, the spreading of Marxism-Leninism among the masses of Black working people who were clearly ready for it.

The sharpening of class contradiction between the Black masses and the imperialists, expressed most sharply in the “Law and Order” Nixon-Agnew Team, led to an intensification of the revolutionary struggle of Black people and the working class as a whole, particularly the strike movement of the working class in the early 1970’s, and the mass prison rebellions throughout the country. For example, in 1972, during the first seven months alone, there were over 4,500 strikes in the U.S. in which 3 million workers took part. Many of them, like “Oneita Strike” in South Carolina, were led by Black workers. Since 1970 there have been numerous struggles involving Black workers in Steel, Aero Space, Rubber, Transportation, Communications, Longshore, etc. etc. The most important aspect of these struggles, however, was that in many cases, political rather than economic demands were put in the forefront as in the Longshoremen’s strike in Louisiana, who refused to unload chrome from Rhodesia.

The BWC was able to play a good role in the prison struggle through the Harriet Tubman Prison Movement which it directed. This organization of activists and ex-prisoners also covered the country, and generally heightened the awareness of the masses to the nature and character of the prison movement which was sweeping the country. Harriet Tubman set up many organizing committees of community people to build outside support for the prisoners’ struggle and aided the prisoners inside with legal and political education, and also set up many Marxist study circles inside the prisons themselves. At the time of the Attica Uprising, the BWC in coordination with Harriet Tubman, called many significant mass demonstrations, rallying the Black community in support of the prisoners’ demands. In Buffalo, for example the largest demonstration in the history of the Black community was called—over 4,000 angry Black people gathered!⁸⁵

Around the end of 1971 the BWC was in a very good position to build a mass anti-imperialist movement in the Black community as well as in the plants and factories, since it had a good deal of cadres, and was the only national organization that was beginning to sink some roots within the Black sector of the class. Additionally the organization had a year of organizing experience behind it with people who were really respected and known amongst the masses. The organization was just beginning to come out of its cocoon, so to speak, and was beginning to spread its revolutionary wings.

But this potential was not realized. At least not then, anyway.

“The creation and advocacy of revolutionary theory plays the principal and decisive role in those times as Lenin said: ‘without a revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.’ When a task, no matter which, has to be performed, but there is as yet no guiding line, method, plan or policy, the principal and decisive thing is to decide on a guiding line, method, plan or policy.” Mao

Just as the greatest political opportunities for the BWC began to mature, the organization became bogged-down in an intensified ideological struggle over just what was its principal and chief task, its “guiding line, method, plan or policy.” The continuing struggle, which was waged mainly within the leadership of the organization and was a reflection of the political and ideological differences within the organization and movement, paralyzed the organization in almost every respect. The leadership of the BWC, in the later half of 1972 and early 73, could not claim to have any unity on any of the burning questions of the revolutionary movement—the National Question, Party Building, the United Front, the Student and Youth movements, the Women Question, you name it. Naturally, this state of affairs could not continue for very long without something coming to a head. It did. The objective demands of the revolutionary movement along with better grasp of Marx-Leninism compelled the BWC to make the necessary criticism and self-criticism, compelled us to learn from our mistakes, compelled us to make the changes that were necessary if the organization was to go forward.

The struggle centered around the following question: “What is the principal problem facing the BWC and what is the solution to this problem?” On this question the leadership split, and two lines began to emerge. There was one line which said the principal problem of the organization was the absence of a unified proletarian ideological and political line, and the presence of a bourgeois and petty bourgeois line dominating the organization. The other position said that “administration” and “structure” and “incompetent personnel” was the principal problem. To get to the truth, it was necessary to sum-up the experiences of the organization and see whether or not its original ideas, theories, plans, and programs corresponded to what came to pass.

Early History

Armed with a minimum amount of ideological unity, the BWC spread itself over the continental U.S. in a matter of a few months. The main way the organization was to build itself, was through the mass conferences we spoke of earlier. Reality turned out to be quite different. No more than 5% of any who attended those conferences became members (not altogether a bad thing). These conferences were open, mass events and anyone could attend, regardless of political outlook. Now these conferences were good for making contacts and meeting people, but it is just not the way to build a communist organization. Even then, the organization failed to establish any on-going committees that could maintain links with the masses after the conferences were over. All in all, the conferences turned out to be good rap sessions, and showed the organizing abilities of many of the BWC cadre, but they were all too expensive and really not worth the effort. Why then, did the BWC pursue its political and organizational work in this way?

The BWC operated with an erroneous and opportunistic concept of how to build a revolutionary communist organization. The Congress was to be simultaneously both a cadre and a mass organization. The concept was developed by James Forman and was called “cadre/mass.” In practice, this broke down to mean that some people in the BWC had to accept Marxism-Leninism while others did not. Forman, and the BWC leadership at that time, thought that the main problem of the communist movement was “sectarianism,” and in order to combat this, what we needed was a communist organization of thousands, even millions of people. Therefore, the BWC followed this line, the line of building the organization as a “mass” organization “with cadres.” The BWC was to be a group that was simultaneously a mass Party and a cadre Party. Forman predicted we would have 5,000 cadres by “1975.” In the final analysis, this was pure ideology, politics, and organization.⁸⁶

The BWC operated with the view that the main problem of the Communist movement was not of an ideological and political nature, but merely one of “organization.” What was wrong with the Communist movement was “too small,” rather than that it lacked a unified political line and program on which to unite all the genuine Communists into one organization, a new Communist Party. From its incorrect appraisal of the objective and subjective factors of the revolutionary movement, the BWC’s plans and programs were put together with the expansion of the membership of the organization as more important than anything else. To facilitate this, the organization’s structure was made so loose, that one only had to agree to the mixed-bag of points in the “Manifesto” to be a member. To make matters worse, never were any of these “organizing drives” carried out with an understanding of our ability to service and educate these new members. Thinking we could solve ideological and political problems through “organization,” the BWC only wound up disorganizing itself! “Organization” only becomes key in the final analysis after there is ideological unity and clarity around the basic political line.

Of course, the Communist movement is small in the U.S., too small. But it must be clear that the mass character of a Party and its influence with the masses, is not determined above all by its LARGE MEMBERSHIP but primarily by the CLOSE TIES WITH THE MASSES, by the Party’s POLITICAL LINE, which defends the interests of the masses, and how it carries out this political line in practice. The CPUSA, for example was at one time 100,000 strong, but that didn’t help it become a genuine Communist Party, which never happened.

Because of the lack of a correct line, the mistakes in the organizational field reflected themselves primarily in a mass, loosely structured organization with no centralized leadership. Thus the leading bodies of the BWC were unable to give firm direction and discipline. Unified political action, even on a local scale sometimes was impossible, as was the proper selection and training of cadres. As a result, many of the members became demoralized, cynical and finally left the organization before it had a chance to correct these errors. The collective leadership of the organization was undermined as a further consequence as each section of it operated semi-autonomously, each “doing their own thing.”

Internally, the incorrect organizational line manifested itself through Liberalism—the lack of a critical attitude towards the leadership by the members, and among the “leaders” themselves. It more or less had become a tradition that everything the leadership said was right, even though many of the directives were ignored anyway. Everyone would pat each other on the back. Programs (especially those proposed by Forman) were rubber-stamped, without being first discussed and thoroughly thought over. A correct Leninist style and method of work was consistently ignored for a style of helter-skelter campaigns which were started and stopped at a moment’s whim. Besides the liberalism prevailing within the organization, this lack of a critical attitude was due, among other things, to the theoretical weaknesses, which again stemmed from the lack of clarity around a basic line, a necessary foundation upon which to refute any erroneous views, whether from the leadership or not. This naturally lead to a lot of unprincipaled struggle (gossiping, rumor-mongering, etc.) and factional intrigue inside the organization, because again, in the absence of a unified ideological and political line how can principaled struggle unfold in an organization? If for some reason a comrade is in error or out of step, it is on the basis of the organization’s ideological and political line that he has struggled with-against either right or “left” deviations. How can such a process occur in the abstract? And what if a comrade attacks the line itself? Well, in all cases that is what right and “left” errors amount to, an attack on the line, but in direct assaults on the line we have the right to demand that the comrade prove his position concretely. It is on such a basis that changes are made or rejected inside Communist organizations. Of course there are certain Marxist-Leninist tenets which are not open for a vote or debate, like the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. The experience of the BWC in organizational work proved once again, that the best “organizers,” if not armed with a correct political line, will get bogged down and not be able to carry out any serious political work.

Because of the bourgeois and petty bourgeois nature of its own line, the BWC fought the “sectarianism” of the Communist movement with “spontaneity.” Genuine revolutionary organizations cannot defer or bow to spontaneity, and must prepare ideologically, politically, and organizationally for any mass work and in the most serious manner possible. They must keep in close contact with the masses, who after all are the real makers of the revolution.

The Struggle Between the Two Lines

It became clear to more than a few members of the organization that what was passing for a guiding line and political program did not reflect an understanding of the unity of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought with the concrete practice of the Black liberation movement nor of the worker’s or communist movement. All were agreed on this, but again there was no unity within the leadership as to how to resolve the problem.

In the meantime Nixon mined the harbors of Haiphong. A program called: “The Vietnam Summer Offensive,” was put together and hurriedly written, then rubber-stamped by different sections of the leadership under pressure from Forman who was “morally-outraged” at what was happening in Vietnam. The Offensive was an entire package. The first event was to be an Emergency Summit Conference of Third World People held in Gary, Ind. In the meantime another conference was being held in Buffalo by the BWC for Vietnam Veterans, this being done without even the knowledge of the local BWC leadership. After cadres were exhausted, and everyone had gone home, what could be said about the blitz of conferences was not more than some more good “rap” sessions. NOT ONE CONCRETE PROGRAM CAME FROM ANY OF THIS! Again the BWC had substituted digging deep roots within the working class for the glimmer and shimmer of the movement spotlight!

On July 8th 1972, the Central Committee called an extended meeting (Plenary Session), to be used primarily as an educational conference for the rank-and-file. What began as an educational conference developed into a full blown ideological struggle between two sections of the leadership over the nature of the organization’s problems, its present condition, and its future development. From that meeting on, what was becoming clearer and clearer to the majority of the members of the leadership was the clear-cut ideological struggle in the BWC between proletarian and bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology. It was not enough to just list what the contradictions in the organization were—over-extension of cadre, lack of unity within the leadership, no positions on the burning questions like Party Building, the National Question, and so forth; for that had been done before, only to reappear again at another meeting. It became necessary to get to the bottom of these problems, to examine their social, historical, and ideological roots, and the class forces behind them. During the July 8th conference itself, almost every cadre present spoke about how his or her work was affected because there was no ideological and political center in the organization; on how the work suffered because there was no single part of the organization that knew anything about the work of any other; on how there were no unified positions on a number of important organizational and political questions around which disputes between individual members could be settled and work carried out; on how demoralizing it was to watch different individuals within and outside the leadership set their own agendas; on the shameful manner in which the membership’s education was handled; on how criticism and self-criticism was unfolded in the organization; and finally, on how the work of the organization, as fragmented and disjointed as it was, was never properly analyzed and summed up.

As the process to rectify the organization began, some elements of the leadership, led by James Forman resisted. They continued to maintain that “administration” and “incompetent personnel (meaning the rest of the leadership)” was the problem. According to Forman the ideological struggle which had unfolded, was no more than a “jockeying for power,” by a “factional majority,” that was “trying to seize absolute power” in the BWC, and were out to “wreck me personally and politically.”

The struggle inside the BWC was indeed a struggle for power. Not so much between a “majority and minority faction,” as Forman and his people contended, but a struggle to promote the leadership of the working class over that of the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, to promote the interest of the revolutionary class over all the rest. There is no such thing as a struggle in class society—be it inside an organization, a family, between friends, etc.—that takes place isolated from the political and ideological tendencies of different classes. The struggle inside the BWC was only a reflection of the same class struggle taking place everywhere in the U.S. society. As Lenin said:

“Every trend in Social Democracy (genuine revolutionism) receives the adherence of a greater or lesser number of not purely proletarian but semi-proletarian, elements, how rapidly it rids itself of the other trends, how rapidly it successfully combats them.”

Intellectuals, Petty-Bourgeois and Proletarian

It wasn’t so much Forman the individual that was the problem, but the class tendencies he brought into the working class. Forman was an intellectual. He was part of the intelligentsia—the doctors, lawyers, writers, journalists position in capitalist and revisionist countries. Subjectively, they regard themselves as being superior to working people. They generally come from the petty bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie, but in the U.S. many have working class and even “peasant” backgrounds. Intellectuals play an important role in these societies because of the division between mental and manual work which gives them a monopoly of the word and pen. During revolutionary times, many intellectuals come into the worker’s movement in large numbers. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the good side, the proletariat needs revolutionary intellectuals because of their many skills and their wide knowledge. But the proletarian intellectual, is an intellectual of a new type. He is a transformed intellectual, or one who is sincerely trying to integrate with the workers and peasants, one who gets rid of his or her bourgeois and petty bourgeois baggage.

He integrates himself with the masses and learns from them as well as teaches. Over a hundred years ago Marx said:

“If people of this kind from other classes join the proletarian movement, the first condition must be that they should not bring any remnants of bourgeois and petty prejudices with them but should wholeheartedly adopt the proletarian outlook.”

On the bad side, intellectuals, especially those in the U.S. bring into the worker’s movement all sorts of bourgeois and petty bourgeois prejudices, especially subjectivism; petty bourgeois radicalism. While this subjectivism takes many forms—empiricism, pragmatism, anarchism, individualism, etc., in essence it’s the same, an approach to reality that is dogmatic and one-sided and is based on wishful thinking, “feelings” and imagination, rather than on concrete analysis of a concrete situation. Generally these tendencies lead to “left” and right opportunism in political and organizational work. The bourgeois and petty bourgeois intellectual is generally removed from the masses and has little faith in their ability to make revolution. They are generally impatient and are apt to spontaneous activity.

The Expulsion of James Forman

These are the type of individuals which dominated the leadership of the Black Workers Congress, and whose ideological influences have played havoc with the organization. “Their way of appraising a situation was to take individual incipient, indirect, one-sided, and superficial phenomena favorable to their viewpoint and magnify them into something widespread, grave, direct, all-sided and essential, and they were afraid to acknowledge or were blind to all the facts not in conformity with their viewpoint” (Mao). During and after the July 8th Conference, the more proletarian elements in the leadership waged a bitter struggle against the petty bourgeois tendencies and the opportunist line of James Forman. Forman and his group turned a deaf ear to the honest criticism as “unjust” and “incorrect.” Never once did he admit to doing anything wrong, attributing all the organization problems to “the historical conditions of the time.” His egotism was so strong, that he walked out of a central committee meeting while being criticized by other C.C. members, again refusing to acknowledge he was guilty of anything. This together with the tremendous problems his line caused the organization, precipitated his expulsion, together with a few of his followers. On April 4, 1973 James Forman was expelled from the BWC for refusing to criticize his opportunism, his elitism, and bourgeois individualism.

Forman’s expulsion did not end the struggle against petty bourgeois and bourgeois tendencies, however. Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Thought teaches us that the law of the unity of opposites is universal, that there will always be contradictions in anything. Inside parties and organizations will be manifested in ideological struggle against “right” and “left” tendencies, and will only be a reflection of the class struggle going on inside the society at large. Liberalism, opportunism, revisionism, and subjectivism, will remain dangerous tendencies that the developing worker’s movement in the U.S. will have to wage a bitter struggle against, at each twist and turn, in the revolutionary movement.

The BWC Today

The temporary setbacks the BWC suffered only hastened the resolution of the problems of the organization. Subsequently, the organization has continued to consolidate a proletarian line by summing up its revolutionary experience, the experience of the communist movement in the world and in the U.S. and the experiences of the Black liberation struggle. Though not a very large organization, we have dedicated and able cadres throughout the East, Mid-West and Southern United States who are carrying out revolutionary work within the Black sector of the class, the workers movement as a whole, and the anti-revisionist Communist movement. As an organization of Black communists we are fully dedicated to joining with, arousing and leading the U.S. proletariat and Black people in general, and other national minorities in overthrowing U.S. imperialist rule and building socialism in the U.S., under the dictatorship of the proletariat and its revolutionary, multi-national Communist Party.

Summary

In summing up the experiences of the BWC—the first national revolutionary Black Communist organization in recent history—the first stage of its existence was characterized by the penetration of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas in both mass and organizational work. In this stage too, the organization expanded tremendously, picked up many new forces, and sunk some roots in the working class and Black community. The second stage was characterized by the struggle against the bourgeois and petty bourgeois influences in ideological, political and organizational work. In this stage, the organization consolidated itself, and placed more emphasis on training its existing cadres, rather than recruiting new ones. The third and present stage is characterized by the consolidation of a more proletarian line, though the struggle against alien class influences is still continuing. And during this stage also, while we will deepen and expand our work and influence among the black sector of the proletariat, and black people generally, we will also give primary attention to the ideological, political and organizational problems of the Communist movement as a whole. All in all, we can say that the future is bright though the struggle is full of twists and turns and beset with many sacrifices.

In summing up once again the class struggle inside the BWC, we can say that the penetration of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideas came from at least the following sources:

First, from the very class nature of the original leadership who were Black intellectuals and “movement activists,” and whose objective position in U.S. society is in between that of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and whose subjective outlook naturally tends to be a vacillating one between revolution [incomplete sentence].

These intellectuals were not armed with the Marxist-Leninist stand, viewpoint, method and outlook, but instead interjected their own petty bourgeois and bourgeois theories. Secondly, from the bourgeoisification of the proletarian elements in the organization who were greatly influenced by and followed the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie. But even more so, what caused the proletarian elements not to exert their leadership was their own inadequate grasp of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought and the experience and reality of the United States and the communist movement as a whole. Third, these errors and alien influences were due to the uneven development of the Black liberation struggle and workers movement in different parts of the country, and the lack of experience and traditions of Marxism-Leninism within the Black community. And finally, to the lack of a genuine Communist Party in the United States, which has caused the necessity to build a new Communist Party that is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse Tung Thought and is free from subjectivism, opportunism and modern revisionism, has a correct political line which includes a revolutionary solution to the problems of black people and oppressed national minorities in making proletarian revolution, has a thorough understanding of the problems of strategy and tactics of revolutionary struggle in the U.S., masters the main form of struggle at each stage, as well as secondary ones, and is capable of uniting all who can be united in a revolutionary united front against U.S. imperialism under the leadership of the working class, has deep roots among the masses of the people and consists of the most trusted and experienced cadres from the ranks of the revolutionary movement!

The revolutionary cadres of the BWC have acquired a better understanding of the Marxist-Leninist proletarian line as applied to the concrete situation of the U.S. and have raised their fighting spirit to an entirely new level. We have learned from our own experience the truth and wisdom of Comrade Stalin’s teachings: “The Party becomes strong by ridding itself of opportunist elements.” At the same time, the BWC cadres know full well that truth does not fall from the skies, nor is it hatched in the brains of some great man of history. No! Mao Tse Tung Thought teaches us, and life, our own experiences, have fully confirmed:

“Truth develops through its struggle against falsehood. This is how Marxism develops. Marxism develops in the struggle against bourgeois and petit bourgeois ideology, and it is only through struggle that it can develop.”

Mao Tse-Tung

SMASH OPPORTUNISM, MODERN REVISIONISM AND IMPERIALISM! UP WITH THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!

BUILD A GENUINE MULTI-NATIONAL COMMUNIST PARTY! . . .

WHY WE NEED A “NEW” COMMUNIST PARTY AND THE ROLE OF A BLACK COMMUNIST ORGANIZATION

The Role of the Black Workers Congress

As we stated in the beginning sections of this pamphlet, the Black Workers Congress—a national communist organization—developed as a result of the revolutionary national movement of Black people.

Though we are a predominantly Afro-American communist organization, we see the central and immediate task today as uniting all genuine communists and advanced workers into one revolutionary party regardless of nationality.

We arrived at this conclusion because we realized that though there are historical reasons for such a communist organization as the Black Workers Congress—the scattering of communist forces after the revisionist betrayal of the CPUSA, and the national character of the Black liberation struggle, we do not intend to raise this aspect of our history to a principle. After 1957, and through the sixties, there was a period of disunity and isolation among the communist forces the main reason communists played little or no role in leading the mass upsurges of those periods. The spontaneously awakening mass movements (Black liberation, student, youth and women’s movements) thus developed in a period of historically evolved isolation (further increased by our sectarianism and isolation from Marxism-Leninism). Some groups, (like the New Left) elevated this “independence” to a principle—proclaiming this isolation and disunity a permanent feature of the U.S. revolutionary movement—‘American Exceptionalism’!

On the other hand, some say because we are a “national form” we cannot be a communist group. They try to compare us to the Jewish “Bund” in Russia. They would like us to liquidate ourselves and join their “multi-national” form or group. Again we would like to make clear we are for the fusion and unity of all Marxist-Leninists Into one Communist Party. This is the only basis on which we unite—“multi-national forms” are not the multi-national party. All Marxist-Leninist organizations will have to “Liquidate” themselves (we like the world “unite” better) if they intend to be members of the party, not just the “national forms.” Prior to the party, no particular “form of communist organization” is higher or “lower” than any other (that is, unless some groups think they are the party already?)—all are affected with the same narrowness and amatuerishness one has, but whether or not one is willing to openly and resolutely admit its short-comings and to move towards genuine unity, away from the path of isolation and sectarianism to the path of uniting on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and the building of a new, genuine, revolutionary Communist Party.

Only such a party (national in scale, Bolshevik-type) can lead the working class and its allies to power and socialism and guarantee the complete emancipation for the Afro-American, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian, and Native American (Indian) peoples. Only such a party can liberate women from their age-long oppression and guarantee them full equality with men in the struggle. Only such a party can release the full energies of the youth and allow full-play to their ambitions and talents. In a word, only such a party can bring proletarian revolution to America.

Again we want to stress the importance and decisive necessity for building the new Communist Party now! In the United States today the objective conditions for revolution are more than ripe. The ever deepening economic and political crisis seen in the “energy crisis” and the ‘Watergate’ scandal point to the doom of American imperialism. Massive unemployment, the deteriorating living standards of American working people, the increased repression directed at the oppressed nationalities and working class generally, is a testament to this fact. While the ruling class mounts offensive after offensive, shifting the burden of their economic and financial crises on the backs of the people, the proletariat is disarmed without revolutionary leadership and organization. What is worse, some “Communists” would like to enshrine this present state of affairs while they go about saying “we must build this and that mass movement! Genuine Marxist-Leninists must liquidate this present state of affairs by concentrating our forces, first of all, on building a revolutionary Party and not scattering our forces by seizing on tasks which we are in no position to carry out.

In Party building we recognize both the ideological and organizational aspects. The ideological unity of Marx-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought as the ideological basis for their actions and integrate it with the concrete situation of their country. Organizationally this unity may be achieved through the medium of a National Political Newspaper of the Iskra type or some other forms yet unknown.

Ideological unity must eventually take an organizational form, the Party itself; no matter what all the steps that must be taken in advance. One guiding principle should be, QUALITY OVER QUANTITY, at this time, so that when the Party does come into being it will be able to build a closely-knit organizational structure with iron discipline (a minimum necessity given the tremendous tasks that face us and the strength of the enemy) and which will enable it to be closely bound up with the masses and mass movements and organizations. Party building must be closely linked to the political line (or program) for revolution in America.

We unite with genuine Marxist-Leninists in the struggle to build the ‘New’ Communist Party. In the interim (Party building is a process of struggle and not a single act), the Black Workers’ Congress has set basic tasks for itself, the successful completion of which will advance the whole Communist movement:

1) Help build a genuine Communist Party of a new type composed of the most courageous and revolutionary elements of the class—black, brown, yellow, and white, male and female, young and old.

2) Bring Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought to the advance elements in the national-revolutionary struggle of the Afro-American people and black sector of the proletariat (though not exclusively).

3) Fight for the hegemony of the black proletariat in the black liberation movement and the leading role of the proletariat in general, to isolate the treacherous influence of the Black bourgeoisie in the black liberation movement and the influence of the bourgeoisie in the working class in general. . . .

The Trade Union Question

The development of capitalism, particularly the industrial revolution, marked the entrance into history of the working class, a class that was totally propertyless, having no way to earn a living except to sell its ability to work for the capitalist or property-owning class. In return for selling its labor the working class receives “wages”—only partial payment for the value it created, and barely enough to return back to work another day, to produce more value and profits for the capitalist.

The nature of capitalist society is such that the capitalist always tries to minimize the cost of production and maximize his profits. This can only be done at the worker’s expense, the worker that finds himself constantly the victim of attempts by the capitalist to lengthen the working day, or speeding up production and reducing wages.

Trade Unions arose in the era of modern industry.

“The Trade unions were a tremendous progressive step for the working class in the early days of capitalist development inasmuch as they represented a transition from disunity and helplessness of the workers to the rudiments of class organization.” V. I. Lenin, Left-wing Communism

The workers and capitalist do constant battle over the level of wages, the price of “labor.” A long time ago, when the individual worker attempted to present his grievances to the capitalist, he was laughed at and crushed.

The emergence of modern, large-scale industry meant the increased socialization of the working class. A few workers scattered in many small shops because a mass of workers concentrated in a few large shops. Coupled with the practical experiences of day-to-day struggle against the employers, the working class had learned that in order to get their grievances met, they would need an organization that would represent their interest and would improve their chances of winning struggles. Thus developed the first form of mass working class organization, the Trade Union. The trade unions would fight over such issues as the intense exploitation of the working class, shorter working hours, better working conditions, speed-ups and increased wages, etc. But the trade unions had their limitations.

Trade Unions Have Their Limitations

“Trade Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from injudicius use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of trying to use their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system.” Marx, Wages, Prices & Profit

The trade unions see their struggle as one waged primarily inside of the capitalist system for the improvement of the worker’s condition. The trade unions fight around contracts serves as an excellent example of the role and limitation of the unions. Instead of really using contracts to improve the worker’s condition, the unions, when they do “negotiate,” act like people at a trading fair, like businessmen at an auction, rather than representatives who are supposed to “protect” the interest of their people. But even a “good contract” still simply means the worker has only won a better deal for the selling of his labor power, the fundamental cause of this problem still exists—the capitalist system.

This is why it is important not to confuse the trade unions with the revolutionary Party of the proletariat, the highest form of working class organization. The party not only fights for the day-to-day interest of the working class (low wages, speed-up, poor working conditions, etc.) it attacks the fundamental cause of these problems—the capitalist system itself. Frederick Engels in his series of articles on the British Labour Movement, sums up the relationship of the trade unions to the struggle to abolish the capitalist system in this way: “Trade-Unions should not be seen as an end in itself but only a means, a very necessary and effective means, but only one of several means towards a higher end: the abolition of the wage-slave system itself.” But trade unions are not what they used to be in Engels time.

Trade Unions Under Imperialism

The development of capitalism into monopoly capitalism, to imperialism, has also been felt within the worker’s movement. The super-profits obtained by the monopoly capitalists from their super-exploitation of oppressed peoples at home and abroad enabled them to bribe the upper sections of the working class in the capitalist countries, especially the trade union bureaucrats. The notorious Samuel Gompers and the AFL of the early 1900’s are the classic examples. Gompers was the one who coined the phrase: “What’s good for American business is good for the American worker.”

Today the trade union movement is controlled by these types of bureaucrats—labor lieutenants of the capitalist class within the worker’s movement. These people like George Meany and Leonard Woodcock, no more represent the worker’s interest than David Rockefeller or Richard Nixon if they were president of the AFL-CIO or the UAW. Almost to the man, these traitors and their lap dogs down the union scale, “bargain” the workers lives and security away at every contract time, refuse to deal with any of the concrete issues that workers on the line, in the pit, or on the road face, refuse to deal with the question of the unorganized worker in a serious way, refuse to fight racism and discrimination on the job or in the union, at the same time as they mumble rhetoric about “equality” and go around shaking the hands of “civil rights leaders,” and buffoons like Bayard Rustin who no more represent the interest of Black workers than they do white workers, or any worker for that matter. The unemployed worker is not a problem to them because he pays no dues. And they work overtime to make sure that whatever little democracy is left in the union is stamped out fast. The average salary for these criminals is $50-$100,000 a year, with “expense accounts” equal or past that sum! If anybody knows would you please tell us, what do these opportunists have in common with the average American worker, black or white, who barely makes enough to keep him and his family alive?

The more and more the rank-in-file has found itself up against the wall by the capitalist, the more it has found its “labor leaders” acting and talking more like “management.” This situation has given rise to the militant struggle going on in almost every union in the country, between the rank-in-file and the bankrupt union leadership. This struggle is a key aspect of the overall struggle between capital and labor, between revolution and reaction. It is literally impossible for workers to struggle against a given contract and management without at the same time waging a militant struggle against the companies’ agents within their ranks—the class collaborationists union leadership.

“If things are as they say,” some may ask, “why then do you continue to work in these unions?”

Communists work inside the unions controlled by these enemy agents in order to win the workers of these unions by mobilizing and building rank-in-file organizations, developing the consciousness and unity of the rank-in-file, and getting them to rely on their own strength to get things done. Communist work inside these unions not in order to “push the leadership to the left,” or into the struggle period, but in order to kick these traitors out of the workers movement! Communists work inside these unions only in order to win the workers to revolutionary struggle, and not to inspire the masses with the spirit of obedience and loyalty to the trade union bureaucracy like the CPUSA still does. Communists work inside unions to win the masses of the workers and not to “gain control” of the trade union machine, and the trade union officials like the CPUSA still does. Communists work inside these unions in order to learn to lead day-to-day struggles of the proletariat so that they can link this struggle to the total revolutionary movement and raise it to its highest level to proletarian revolution and not to reformists campaigns like the CPUSA still does.

Super-Exploitation, White Chauvinism and Racism in the Trade Union Movement

Because the U.S. is a multi-national imperialist state which oppresses people within its own borders as well, as outside, Black and Third World workers (Puerto Ricans, Chicanos, Asians, etc.) find themselves excluded from some jobs altogether, at the same time, again because of racism and national discrimination, find themselves locked into the worst and hardest jobs at the lowest pay in the labor market. Not only are they the “last hired, first fired,” but are victims of discrimination and racism; in job placement, promotion, security, classification and retirement. By forcing Black and other Third World workers into a limited section of the job market, namely the bottom of the barrel and exclusion from some jobs altogether, namely the highly paid-highly skilled ones, the bourgeoisie wields a double weapon. First, it has a tremendous reserve of labor power willing and ready to work at any price whenever there is a labor shortage, thus driving down the wages of all workers the monopoly of the higher paying, highly skilled jobs, and thus easing the competition they have to face on the labor market. Over the years the U.S. ruling class has shown how skillfully it can use both whenever necessary. Additionally, Black and other Third World workers are forced to work for a smaller wage for the same work as white workers, thus enriching the bourgeoisie even more. In 1969 it was estimated that Black workers earned $3,000 less per year than white workers in the same job category. With at least 10,000 Black workers in the labor force, this means an extra $30,000,000,000 (30 billion) for the bourgeoisie. Who says discrimination doesn’t pay?

Union bureaucrats, because they receive the most from this bribery (which usually takes the form of the high salaries and “expense accounts” we talked about) have a material stake in keeping racism and the national oppression of Black and other Third World workers alive and well. For example, do they ever use the strength of the union to deal with the question of job discrimination? Of course not. Take the U.S. Steel workers union which has somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 Black workers, or about 30% of the total membership.

A study made of Black employment in basic steel by the Pittsburgh Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 1968 observed that “negroes comprise 12.27% of laborers, 12.93% of the service workers and 10.86% of the semiskilled operatives, while holding only 3.21% of the total work force, while only 7% of the higher paid jobs within these industries are held by Blacks, while 25% of the lower paid jobs within these same industries are held by Blacks—this situation is not due to the fact that Blacks are not unionized! In fact we find that 35% of Black males are unionized as compared to 30% white and within the female workforce, we find 14% Black women are unionized as compared with less than 13% white! The explanation and heart of the problem lies in the fact that racism and national discrimination are profitable and that the labor bureaucrats are loyal to the capitalist class, and are the enemies of all works.

These criminal labor bureaucrats who do the bidding of the bourgeoisie in the Trade Union movement, obviously also advance the policy and practice of racism and national discrimination within the unions themselves. Some unions in fact most of the craft unions, exclude Blacks from membership or have only a handful of token members. Unions where Black workers are found in large numbers, notably those like UAW with 350,000 blacks and USSW with 250,000 blacks virtually hold token positions at best.

Moreover, Black and Third World workers are forced to provide the prime fodder for the increased extraction of surplus capital, the accelerated rate of exploitation which Nixon and his ruling class cronies currently plan for the American working class.

The Black workers have traditionally played the role of the most exploited brutally oppressed, and the most profitable source of labor, that was so cheap that they received no renumeration for their work, except that required for bare subsistence—minimum food, clothing and shelter. That source of cheap labor was so productive that it earned huge profits for the white overloads of yesterday and today. Basically, from the billions and billions of dollars ripped from the hides of our forebearers the American capitalist class accumulated the necessary capital to build the American empire.

Since slavery, Black labor has continued to assume particular importance in the development of both domestic capital and international imperialism, primarily because Black female and male workers are the final prop, the ultimate mainstay, onto which capitalism shifts its weight in order to survive. Black workers have remained a source of the cheapest, most productive labor. First as agricultural labor, then as miners, merchant seamen, government, transportation, and service workers, dock and warehouse workers, etc. and finally as the most exploited section of the proletariat in light and heavy industry. Today Black and other Third World workers are still solidly entrenched at the base of production.

So we see that Black workers still are:

– the lowest paid sector of the working class

– Forced into the worst jobs in the labor market except when needed to suppress the wages of “higherpaid” whites

– Subjected to the most hazardous working conditions, higher mortality rate (2-1/2% more than whites) and higher rates of industrial disease

– Subjected to harsh regimentation and discipline on the job

– In a position of having little or no control, influence or power in their unions

– Leading the struggles of the working class against these as well as other conditions that affect the working class as a whole, by militant rank and file struggles inside the plants and factories as well as within the unions.

Trade Unions in the Declining Stage of Imperialism

With the sharpening of general crisis of capitalism, imperialism makes a last ditch effort to save itself. It moves more and more to open terroristic rule, discarding its own “bourgeois democracy,” in favor of fascism. Crucial to this development are the trade unions. In the declining stages of imperialism, the government moves to bring the trade unions more directly under its control, transforming them from organizations designed for struggle against the capitalist class, into organizations and agencies for the planning of production and for “industrial peace.”

Let’s look at what’s happening inside the trade unions today. In 1971 the United States Steel Worker’s Union under the class collaborationist leadership of I. W. Abel, “negotiated” a 3% wage increase over a three year period. In the same contract, the USSW leadership agreed to work with the steel industry in setting up “productivity committees” which would increase the “productivity of the worker”! The year 1973 will go down in history as the year the U.S. working class was caught with its pants down—wages frozen by the government, forced over-time, increased speed-up, “meat crisis,” “milk crisis,” “wheat crisis,” “energy crisis,” etc., and a cost of living reaching the sky! 1973 caught the U.S. economy staggering with inflation, recessions, high unemployment, tax increases, funds cut from health and welfare services while corporate profits reached unheard of records.

All the while this is happening the bourgeoisie is steadily tightening up its faithful, time-tested lackeys, the labor bureaucrats, giving some of them cabinet posts with one hand and with the other, beating down the insurgent movement of the rank and file and trying to smash out of existence the few remaining “progressive unions.” The appointment of the racist, hard-hat supreme—Peter Brenan—former head of the N.Y. Building Trades Council to Secretary of Labor, and the other offers of the Nixon administration to appoint more union heads to official government posts, is part and parcel of the policy to use these traitors to do the work of the government and police in stopping the militant rank and file movement.

Over the past ten years we have witnessed a great upsurge in the workers movement expressed among other things in the development of militant rank and file workers organizations, and in particular in Black worker’s caucuses like—DRUM (Detroit), the United Black Workers (Newark), Concerned Transit Workers (Chicago), HRUM (New York), Fight Back (N.Y.) etc., only to mention a few that have played a major role in this development. Not only have these worker’s organizations struggled around economic issues such as speed-ups, discrimination in hiring, harassment of Black and Latin workers by racist foremen, low wages, etc., but have raised anti-imperialist demands like “U.S. out of Indochina,” “No chrome from Rhodesia,” “Stop police brutality of Black people in the community,” “End the oppression of women,” Support the struggle of the Palestinian people, fight Israeli aggression, etc. etc.

Another type of caucus that has developed during this period and is based primarily on the discontent of the rank and rile with much of its present class collaborationists leadership, are caucuses like—‘United National Caucus (UAW),’ Youngstown Steel Workers Group (Ohio), and the ‘Miners for Democracy (West Virginia).’ In the main these caucuses directed their struggles around the lack of union democracy and the corruption of the union leadership, like the Tony Boyle case. Through genuine rank and file organizations with good mass membership, these caucuses are led by reformists, and would-be union bureaucrats, or in the case of Miners for Democracy—by a bourgeois lawyer! These caucuses are usually national or industry-wide, but very seldom if at all, lead and develop local or for that matter, national mass struggles around issues facing the rank and file. At the end of every issue is the would-be union bureaucrat or reformist crying: “Elect me and I will get things done!” These caucuses are nevertheless progressive to the degree that they do challenge the class collaboration of the union leadership, but are weak in the sense that the reformist leadership and the basic programs have not and cannot make any essential changes in things or develop the workers’ consciousness to a higher level.

The third type of caucus found in almost every union are the “election coalitions,” which usually come to life around election time and usually have no life outside of the election period. These caucuses are merely more often than not, political machines for the local union politicians or would be politicians and are used by both black and white bureaucrats. However, many honest and sincere workers join these caucuses because they see nothing else around or because they are dissatisfied with the present leadership.

Our strategy in the Trade Unions and worker’s movement generally is simply to unite all those who can be united around the immediate political and economic issues of the workers. Our task is to raise the level of spontaneous consciousness of the workers to revolutionary working class consciousness by introducing socialist consciousness and taking the lead in the day-to-day struggles of the working class and by proving to them in practice that communists are their real leaders and the real fighters!

In approaching our work we start from the concrete, day-to-day issues, political and economic, facing the masses of workers; while at the same time raising this struggle to higher levels by pointing out to the workers how the immediate problems are related to the overall system of monopoly capital and the revolutionary movement as a whole. We do not lie to the workers like the opportunists in the CPUSA, or give them the illusion that their problems can be solved simply by improving an abuse of the capitalist system, like the CPUSA does. But we prove this to them by participation in mass struggle and not just by handing out leaflets at the plant gates. Because only through the course of revolutionary mass struggle do the masses learn the necessity for revolution. Today at the present stage of the revolution our task is to win over the “vanguard (i.e., build up cadres, create a Communist Party, work out the programs, the principles of tactics).” STALIN⁸⁷

We do this mainly by organizing propaganda, political exposures—introducing socialist ideology to the most advanced sectors of the working class, but also by participating in and building Black workers caucuses, multi-national rank and file caucuses in the plants and unions, anti-imperialist worker’s organization, organizing the unorganized (bringing in unions into an unorganized shop) as well as by experimenting with new forms of revolutionary struggle as they arise. As Black communists, interested in building a new Communist Party, we need to sink deep roots in the black sector of the class, as the best and most expedient means of building the revolutionary unity of the working class as a whole at this time.

The defense of the day-to-day interest of the working class is just as much a job for communists as is the struggle for socialism. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote “that communists have no interests separate and apart from the proletariat as a whole, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the worker’s movement as a whole.”

In our work in the workers movement we must do four things:

— develop cadres from the ranks of the advanced workers for the BWC, and other genuine communist organizations, and the future Communist Party.

— raise the consciousness of the workers to revolutionary class consciousness

— struggle to defeat a given policy of the imperialists

— help merge the national and class struggle by holding to the right

— to political secession of Black people and equal rights for the other oppressed nationalities.

In the Trade Union movement our task is to win the ideological, political and practical leadership of the proletariat in the trade unions, the revolutionary proletariat.

Our political task in the trade unions today means first of all winning the advanced elements of this struggle to communism, and then developing the rank and file workers movement into a revolutionary class consciousness workers movement. We do this by persistently interjecting socialist consciousness into t workers movement and by seriously involving ourselves in the day-to-day political and economic struggles of the working class, particularly the struggles of Black workers, in order to direct and lead these struggles to higher forms, and to merge the national and class struggles of oppressed and working people generally into one mighty fist directed against imperialism. This task can only be fulfilled by strengthening our ties with the masses of workers in the trade unions, especially the most advanced; by organizing them into anti-imperialist worker organizations in the plants and unions and those that may spring up in the future. These anti-imperialist worker’s groups, must be organized around a concrete political program, including a strong Marxist-Leninist study program. They must, in order to advance and link themselves with the masses of the workers, engage in mass revolutionary struggle; against wage cuts, racial and national discrimination, imperialist aggression abroad, police brutality, unemployment, compulsory overtime, inflation, organizing the unorganized, etc., etc. And they must especially conduct merciless and unremitting criticism and exposure of the traitorous trade union bureaucrats, revisionist, and Trotskyites, so that the workers can be able to distinguish genuine Marxism from sham Marxism.

While engaging in trade union work, we must be especially on guard for the errors of economism and right opportunism. Even within the anti-revisionist communist movement these tendencies are making themselves felt. Among communists generally, they are manifested in a tendency to “hide” our politics from the workers and shying away from political and ideological struggle in the union and plant. This is especially true in regards to struggles that take place outside of the workplace and do not have an obvious “economic character”—like police brutality, imperialist aggression, community struggles and so forth. The flip side of the coin is to raise these “other” struggles in an scholastic and abstract manner so that the workers can’t possibly get the connection. But the main tendency is not to raise them at all. For ‘white’ communists in particular, right opportunism is expressed in a definite tendency not to raise the national question among white workers while acting in a paternalistic manner towards black workers. In this way, they wind up alienating themselves from both white and black workers who are in general not interested in revolutionary phrase-mongering, not backed up by revolutionary deeds. Since many do not know how to even raise the struggle against chauvinism and racism among the white workers, they end up not raising it at all, and thus fall into opportunism and “economism” (issues that white workers “can relate to”). They have to realize that they cannot shy away from this struggle against chauvinism and racism even if it means “going against the tide,” at present. “Going against the tide is a Marxist Leninist principle.” Otherwise, they fall into chauvinism themselves, even if this chauvinism takes the form of “Liberalism,” and wind up, in practice, following the CPUSA’s revisionist line.

For Black communists in the trade unions, there is a tendency not to understand and apply the proletarian line on the national question. They shy away from developing the leading role of Black workers in the trade union movement and the Black liberation struggle generally. They especially shy away from struggle around the relationship between Marxism-Leninism Mao Tse Tung Thought and the Black liberation movement, revolutionary nationalism and anti-imperialism and the struggle against Black bourgeois influences. Many black communists suffer from the disease of “black leftism,” and in their efforts to develop the “pure proletarian class struggle,” negate or don’t understand the revolutionary role and significance of the mass, anti-imperialist struggle of Black people and the leading role of the Black proletariat. They must always keep in mind the prophetic words of Mao who said that the Black liberation movement was a clarion call to the entire working class and oppressed in America.

The struggle for the revolutionary unity of the working class in the trade unions is the job of all genuine communists in the U.S. But revolutionary unity can only be built from an understanding of the causes of disunity. The revolutionary unity of the working class in the U.S. is hampered by the splits in the U.S. labor movement, which are objective and real, and cannot be wished away. This split is due primarily to opportunism and white chauvinism. It has been compounded by the revisionist betrayal of the CPUSA and the strong traditions of “social democracy” within the U.S. communist movement. Marxism-Leninism teaches that where the labor movement is split (and it is split in every capitalist country), a bitter and determined struggle for its UNIFICATION should be conducted. But, in order to do this, our work in the trade union in the present period must be linked to the necessity to build a genuine communist party. We say that NO CONCESSIONS can be made in regards to white chauvinism and opportunism, they have to be thoroughly rooted out and liquidated. This can only be done during the course of a long mass struggle, but it must be done steadily and systematically. Only then can the historic role of the great U.S. proletariat be fulfilled.

The Black Liberation Struggle, The Black Workers Congress, and Proletarian Revolution: A Comprehensive Statement by the Black Workers Congress, pp. 20–32, 38–39, 43–48. Pamphlet in possession of the editors.

2. EXCERPTS FROM THE BLACK WORKERS CONGRESS MANIFESTO

Our Objectives:

1) Workers’ control of their places of work—the factories, mines, fields, offices, transportation services and communication facilities—so that the exploitation of labor will cease and no person or corporation will get rich off the labor of another person, but all people will work for the collective benefit of humanity.

2) An elimination of all forms of racism and the right of self-determination for African people, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asians and Indians who live in the United States and Puerto Rico.

3) The elimination of all forms of oppression of women in all phases of society, on the job and in the home.

4) The right of all people to express and develop their cultural heritage throughout the United States.

5) The right of all people to express and develop their cultural and religious views without fear of prosecution.

6) A halt to the growing repression and increasing fascism of the United States, the militarization of the police, the arming of right wing forces and the repeal of all repressive legislation that abolished the right of people to assemble, to speak freely, to have privacy and to publish their political views.

7) The replacement of all class collaborators in the trade union movement with leadership that will fight for the international solidarity of all oppressed people, a leadership that will fight all manifestations of racism, white skin privilege, capitalism, and imperialism (the sending of money, armed forces and Christian missionaries from one country to another for the purpose of exploiting and oppressing its workers). This leadership must demand real equality for women in employment.

8) The creation in the labor movement of revolutionary Black caucuses, Chicano and Puerto Rican revolutionary caucuses, Third World labor alliances, independent revolutionary union movements and other forms of revolutionary labor associations that will break the strangle-hold of the reactionary labor bureaucrats and the capitalist class collaborators that help to prevent the working class people from understanding their historic role in controlling the means of production.

9) A twenty-hour work week where all the people of the United States will be employed and have the necessary funds for food, clothing, shelter and the right to improve their standard of living and enjoy the benefits of an industrialized society.

10) Thirty days of paid vacation time each year for all workers including women in the house and the use of all resort areas and the creation of new ones for working class people and the elimination of special privileges at resort areas for any group of people.

11) An elimination of speed-up, compulsory overtime, unsafe working conditions, inadequate medical facilities on the job, brutality and terror in the mines, factories and industrial plants of the United States and Puerto Rico.

Siege: National Voice of the Black Workers Congress, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1971):12.

3. ORGANIZE THE REVOLUTION DISORGANIZE THE STATE!

300 Attend National Conference

The first national conference of the Black Workers Congress was convened in Gary, Indiana over the Labor Day weekend. Approximately three hundred Black and other Third World workers and students participated in this conference, an historic first. The thrust of this conference was to pull together the efforts of Black and other Third World Workers in a unified struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys.

The conference began on Saturday morning with opening remarks by Michael Hamlin, Chairman of the Black Workers Congress. Following these remarks came a speech by John Watson on the Objective Conditions of Black and Other Third World Workers Today (text herein). The speech gives an analysis of the crisis that capitalism is in today, of how Nixon’s wage-price freeze is used as a tool of economic sanction to capitalist business and how this new economic policy further exploits working people, Black and other Third World workers in particular. Watson’s speech ended with a call for workers to organize and struggle against economic oppression.

Other delegates to the conference gave brief speeches of solidarity to the concept of Black Workers and other Third World people moving against Imperialism and industrial repression. Representatives from the Chicano, Puerto Rican, and Asiatic oppressed communities spoke to the need to escalate struggles against imperialism.

Workshops were convened on organizing workers, youth, and women. A cross section of workers shared their experiences in struggling against imperialism. The workshops focused on how to build struggle around the concrete issues which workers face, and how to mobilize and involve workers in day to day issues of struggle. Another important topic was building working class unity, through actions against plant atrocities especially when workers are murdered due to unsafe conditions in plants.

The Black Workers Congress Women Commission is organizing to fight imperialism as it exploits Black and other Third World women on the job or excluded from the job; to fight imperialism as it controls Black and other Third World women on welfare rolls; to fight imperialism as it keeps the wives of Black and other Third World workers locked economically and socially into their households or that they don’t recognize and move against the common enemy; to fight imperialism as it uses capitalism, racism, and anti-woman propaganda and practices to oppress Black and other Third World people, the rest of the working class, and oppressed people around the world.

A highlight of the conference was a film “The Red Detachment of Women” made in China released in 1970 over three years after their Cultural Revolution. This precedent-setting film depicts the role of women in revolutionary struggle. This detachment of women was given the task of struggling politically and militarily with the Chinese landlord class.

The Women’s workshops were greatly inspired by this movie as well as the organizational experiences shared with them by other Black and Third World women and men.

A proposed constitution for the Black Workers Congress was presented and accepted in principle.

Siege: National Voice of the Black Workers Congress, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1971):1, 10.

4. CONDITIONS FACING BLACK AND THIRD WORLD WORKERS

Speech given by John Watson at the first National Conference of the Black Workers Congress Gary, Indiana, Sept. 5, 1971

Brothers and Sisters:

It is a great honor and pleasure to address you at the first National Conference of the Black Workers Congress.

Black and other Third World folk, who have always been available whenever American Capitalism needed victims to exploit are now being made the primary victims of Nixon’s New Economic Policy.

Whenever capitalism is in a period of acute crisis and sees its vital interests threatened, the ruling class forces the working class to bear the burden and make the supreme sacrifice to overcome the crisis.

Thus, under the guise of patriotism the ruling class herded millions of working class youth into the armed forces to fight and die in the unjust imperialist war in Vietnam, and now it calls on the working class to tighten its belts and bear the lion’s share of the suffering caused by the present Wage-Price Freeze. And just as the Black and other Third World workers have been forced to take a disproportionately high rate of casualties in Vietnam, today they will be forced to bear the greatest brunt of the economic austerity program of the ruling class.

Moreover, Black and other Third World people are forced to provide the prime fodder for the increased extraction of surplus capital, the accelerated rate of exploitation, which Nixon and his ruling class cronies currently plan for the American working class.

The Black worker has traditionally played the role of the most exploited, brutally oppressed, and the most profitable source of labor that was so cheap that they received no remuneration for their work, except that required for bare subsistence, minimal food, clothing and shelter. That source of cheap labor was so productive that it earned huge profits for the white overlords of the day. Basically, from the billions upon billions of dollars of profits ripped from the hides of our forebears the American capitalist class accumulated the surplus capital necessary to build the American industrial empire.

Indeed the mighty industrial fortresses of General Motors, IBM, U.S. Steel, etc., are all laid on a foundation of Black and Brown blood, sweat and tears.

Since slavery, Black labor has continued to assume particular importance in the development of both domestic capital and international imperialism, primarily because the Black female and male workers are the final prop, the ultimate mainstay, onto which capitalism shifts its weight in order to survive.

Black workers have remained a source of the cheapest and most productive labor. First as agricultural labor, then as miners, merchant seamen, government, transportation and service workers, dock and warehouse workers, etc., and finally as the most exploited section of the proletariat in light and heavy industry. Today Black and other Third World workers are still solidly entrenched at the base of the proletariat.

In the building trades, for instance, only 4.3% of the operating engineers are Black and Puerto Rican, whereas they accounted for 39.3% of the laborers’ union.

Blacks have always been the major source of the reserve army of labor, that vast body of men and women who find themselves unemployed, semiemployed or often permanently underemployed and used by big business to suppress the general level of wages. From 1958 to 1968 the official black unemployment rate never dropped below 6.4% and for half of that period the rate was never lower than 10.2%. Today Black unemployment has climbed astronomically, with unemployment rates 40% higher for Black and other Third World workers in many large cities. With unemployment so high, Black and other Third World workers remain a prime source of cheap, highly productive labor, facing a continual suppression of wages due to increased competition for jobs, especially in the service sector, fast foods, and related industries.

This suppression of wages is expanding broadly throughout all areas of the economy.

In the past, the ruling class used the tactic of divide and conquer against the working class. First they denied jobs to blacks, then used blacks to break white strikes. They constantly pitted white against black labor through the use of racism and white skin privilege. Eventually the unions recognized they could not exist without Black workers and the accommodation of blacks into these unions was brought about under the guise of equality, but in reality we are still the victims of the virulent racism of both the companies and the unions.

Moreover the companies still attempt to use Black labor as a wedge to force wage levels down.

For instance, the capitalists are faced with a squeeze in the construction industry, where white racist unions have forced wage levels upward through the practice of restricting entry of Black and Brown workers into these crafts. The capitalists answer this practice by calling for the integration of the building trades using such schemes as the Philadelphia plan, as well as through the introduction of prefabricated and modular housing construction techniques employing low paid Black and other Third World labor in factories. They have also established a wage-price stabilization board for the construction industry.

So we see that Blacks still are:

1. The lowest paid sector of the working class.

2. Forced into the worst jobs in the labor market except when needed to suppress the wages of overpaid whites.

3. Subjected to the most hazardous working conditions, higher mortality rate (2-1/2 times that of whites) and high rates of industrial disease.

4. Subjected to discrimination on job placement, job upgrading, and classification.

5. Subjected to harsh regimentation and discipline on the job.

6. In a position of having little or no control of power in their union.

Of course these conditions have the subsidiary effect of maintaining such substandard conditions in Black working class communities as inadequate education and health care, inferior recreation facilities, police brutality, delapidated housing, and so on. Being relegated to the lowest paid, dirtiest jobs (as important as these jobs are to the U.S. economy) Black and other Third World workers often are forced to struggle for survival against both the unions and the companies. This continual struggle coupled with the rise of consciousness brought about by the civil rights movement and the rapid spread of revolutionary ideas has created in Blacks the most militant, class conscious, politically advanced and volatile section of the working class.

However it has been lack of organization that has prevented the power of Black and other Third World workers from being used to the fullest extent. Yet, generally without leadership, training, or organizational experience, Black working class organizations, caucuses, rank and file committees, and ad hoc groups have sprung up all over the nation in an amazingly wide variety of industries.

These groups are challenging both companies and unions on the issues of their racism, exploitation, and their generally class-collaborationist policies on health, safety, etc.

The reaction of the bourgeoisie to the rising militancy of Blacks has been the usual carrot and stick game.

On the one hand they have created a Black national bourgeoisie, new jobs as consultants on minority relations, personnel offices populated with Black tokens, minority training programs, etc. On the other hand the response has been stepped-up repression of militant organizations, caucuses and their leadership, the use of economic sanctions (firings, suspensions, etc.), the use of court actions and injunctions, blacklisting, slander and threats of violence—sometimes carried out—and the like.

None of this has stemmed the rise in class consciousness on the part of Black workers, however. In fact given the objective situation in the world, the steady rise of revolutionary consciousness, the African, Indo-Chinese, and Latin American anti-imperialist struggles, it is impossible to prevent the onward development of class struggle among all workers, much less among blacks.

The ruling class has thus attempted to prevent the development of conscious organization, especially, where it is under Marxist-Leninist leadership, resolutely dedicated to the anti-imperialist movement, and to deny the resources, skills and knowledge necessary to prepare and sustain organizational forms for revolutionary struggle.

While Black labor has reacted predictably to its objective conditions of existence (that is increasing militancy, national pride and class consciousness, and increasing resistance to oppression) the American capitalist class also has been beset by its own set of contradictions and has responded predictably.

Since World War II the U.S. has assumed the role of the dominant figure in the western imperialist system. As a result, a series of phenomena have led to political, economic and military disaster for imperialism’s top dog, the U.S.A. Some of these phenomena are:

1. The U.S. had consistently exported capital and currency through the use of foreign investment, foreign aid, maintenance of armies abroad, expanded tourism, and importing foreign goods.

2. The U.S. dollar had become the foundation (reserve currency) of the western monetary system while the U.S. accepted the gold standard (the price of gold was set at $35 per ounce). Foreign governments accumulated billions of dollars for which the U.S. did not have the gold to back them up. Consequently, the dollar became the object of regular recurring speculation by international currency dealers to force the U.S. to devalue, and giving the speculators a sizeable profit on the money markets.

3. The U.S. had expended vast sums of money on the defense of international imperialism, squandering dollars all over the world which were picked up by imperialism’s allies, i.e. Japan, West Germany, Israel, South Vietnam, etc.

4. The fact that the dollar was overvalued in the world money market led to a huge deficit in the balance of payments position of the U.S. and led to the first U.S. deficit in the balance of trade since 1893. In a word U.S. imperialism had stretched itself thin.

5. With the continuation of the war in Vietnam, the general pattern of inflation developed with prices continually rising, unions pressing for higher wages, and the development of a wide range of wage levels throughout the working classes, and a general pattern of falling rates of profit for capitalists.

Caught in the contradiction of over-production, an adverse trade balance, recession, galloping inflation and falling prices, the ruling class began screaming for drastic policies to stabilize the economy. In recent months, the capitalists began to experience panic between the competitive squeeze of foreign industry, economic gains won by major unions, the pressures of the international monetary system, and the Vietnamese war. . . .

With the government stepping in to enforce wage restrictions on the brink of banning strikes, the role of the class collaborationist union bureaucrats could be finished. They may be forced to fight—not in the interest of the workers, but to prevent the ruling class from using its direct powers to police workers thus eliminating the functional role now played by the established union leadership. Let there be no doubt that the Wage-Price Freeze is a gigantic giveaway to business at the expense of labor—especially Black workers.

The Wage-Price Freeze puts no limit on the interest that banks charge, creates no excess profit (as was the case in World War II), abolishes the excise tax on autos, creates a 10% surcharge on imports, and revives the investment tax credit allowing business to deduct 10% of their income tax. There is, however, no freeze on the rise of professional fees, and the freeze does not apply to the price of stocks. In fact, the stock market rose sharply immediately following Nixon’s announcement, and many corporations, mutual funds, insurance companies, banks and other capitalist institutions reaped millions in an orgy of profit taking.

This policy, coupled with $84.7 billion cut in non-military federal expenditures means long term layoffs and long term wage freezes for lower level governmental employees (Blacks). Nixon’s current proposals call for a nine billion dollar tax cut for industry against a two billion dollar cut for individual tax payers (which will primarily benefit wealthy individuals).

The wage freeze will be enforced by a chorus of cheering corporate leaders while there is no real enforcement mechanism on the price freeze. Corporations plan price schedules in anticipation of deferred wage increases won by labor in contracts signed months or even years ago. As a result, workers are losing the increases they struggled for, while many companies have increased their price schedules in advance. The United Farm Workers lose their 5 cent an hour raise negotiated last year and due this October while prices were raised in advance.

There is little doubt that there will be a continuation of the freeze in one form or another after November. There will most certainly be the creation of some kind of Wage-Price stabilization board to ride herd over the economic demands of workers. Currently the capitalist press sees no return to the old economic system: in fact, the Wall Street Journal predicted that the freeze would end “sometime less than infinity,” but the system would return to old ways.

Perhaps most sinister, yet least publicized, are Nixon’s plans on productivity. In the final analysis, the excess profits will once again be squeezed out of the backs of workers.

The steel settlement, described by I. W. Abel U.S.W. president as, “one of the most successful, if not the most successful contract negotiation” in the union’s history, won a 30% wage increase over a three year period, as well as a renewal of the previously lost escalator clause. At the same time, an agreement was made to set up “joint committees on productivity” to tackle the “major problem” in the industry, lagging productivity. Both Secretary of Labor James D. Hodgson and R. Health Larry, U.S. Steel Vice President (head of the management team), cited this provision as having the most potential impact of any in the agreement.

Immediately after the signing of the steel contract, Nixon slapped a freeze on wages. But there was no freeze on production rises, on increased regimentation, on the use of time or motion studies. Moreover the price freeze did not effect the steel industrial corporations. They were allowed to quietly raise the price of steel 8% after the freeze went into effect. Nixon’s call for the establishment of productivity boards on a national level is a clear step to increase the exploitation of workers.

We can expect working conditions to continue to decline, safety conditions to deteriorate even more and production to speed up to an even more exploitative rate.

The number of casualties resulting from the stepped up class warfare brought on by the “New Economic Policy” will increase in coming months and years. Accidents, disease, fatalities and injuries will increase, as will the harassment of workers by foremen and other supervisors. Disciplinary actions, suspensions and firings will increase, and workers in this country will respond to this violent pressure with increasing violence (for example James Johnson of the Chrysler Eldon Plant in Detroit or Ike Jernigan at Lockheed Plant in L.S.). Federal cutbacks in domestic spending will further exacerbate the problem of inadequate housing and education, inferior health care, the pollution of the environment and the many other insidious effects of a panicky capitalist system galloping wildly in a frenzied search for more profits.

The working class will move to defend its interests because it has no choice. The burden of capitalism is becoming too heavy for the workers to carry, and we can easily predict that Black and Third World workers who are most victimized by this new capitalist offensive which escalates that class war, will be in the vanguard leading the counterattack against imperialism.

But from where will these workers derive their leadership? Who will guide them into battle? Who will raise the slogans of class warfare? Who will unmask and expose the infinite tricks and duplicity yet to be used by business to satisfy its rapacious appetite for profit? Who will clarify the issues, and expose the sell out class-collaborationist union leadership?

Who will organize, call national demonstrations which raise the clarion for total class solidarity, for general strikes in which the power of workers at the point of production to seize control of industry is shown?

Who will put an end to the clique of madmen who presently manipulate the political and economic resources of this country so as to bring havoc and destruction to the world’s people?

Due to the years of class-collaborationist policies the established unions are hopelessly paralyzed when it comes to real class struggle.

The old left has long ago given up revolutionary practice for reformist and revisionist policies which are totally out of touch with present reality.

The new left is fragmented and demoralized and barely understands the role of the Black and Third World working class anyway.

The Black Workers Congress armed with a correct analysis and program, coupled with its projected activity being national in scope, is the only currently existing organization that promises to provide the leadership necessary in the upcoming struggle.

We must rise to this historic task. We must put forth the revolutionary slogans.

We must organize the broad masses to understand the necessity of building socialism.

We must train and educate a highly developed cadre of workers.

We must develop broad class solidarity and prepare to lead massive demonstrations and strikes.

We must relentlessly lay blow upon blow on our vicious class enemy to end the perpetuation of racism, capitalism and imperialism. Blow upon blow to these racist murderers and ruthless oppressors, blow upon blow to their repressive state apparatus, to their courts, their army, their police and other military and para-military forms, their foremen and executives, their corporations and all of their flunkies, high and low.

And we must continue to battle them until they are wholly, completely, resolutely, and utterly destroyed, and their evil influence is eradicated forever from the face of the earth.

John Watson

Siege: National Voice of the Black Workers Congress, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1971):9–10.

5. BLACK WORKERS DELEGATION IN VIETNAM

In 1924 a young Vietnamese journalist named Nguyen Ai Quoc wrote an angry and brilliant article condemning the common American practice of lynching Black people. He began that article with these words, “as it is commonly known, the Black people are the most oppressed people in the world.”

Nguyen Ai Quoc made that statement and launched his campaign against the brutalization of black people in America on the basis of his own personal knowledge. He lived for a while in the United States where he made his home in Harlem and became the the close friend of many Black people, among them Marcus Garvey, the father of modern day Black Nationalism.

Nguyen Ai Quoc later changed his name to Ho Chi Minh. By that name, Ho Chi Minh, his memory is loved and revered by the Vietnamese people as the father of the Vietnamese Revolution and the first president of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam.

True to the memory and heritage of Ho Chi Minh, the people of North Vietnam and the revolutionary fighters in the South Vietnamese Liberation Army still maintain their understanding, support and sense of brotherhood with Afro-American people and other oppressed people inside the United States.⁸⁸ In North Vietnam our delegation was greeted and treated like visiting relatives. Not only by Vietnamese officials, but also by farmers, factory workers, students, women and even young children who met and played with us on the streets where we wandered at our leisure without any guides, guards or escorts.

In complete honesty we must say that we found the Vietnamese leaders to be better informed, more factually up-to-date and more sympathetic to the plight of our people than any of the rich, white politicians who are sending our brothers to Indo-China to die - any of them, from Kennedy to Agnew, from Longstreth to Rizzo!

As a Black person who has lived in the ghettoes of Chester and North Philadelphia as well as in the racist wilderness of Mississippi, I must also say that at night on the streets of Hanoi and in the country side of North Vietnam, I felt perfectly safe and unafraid for the first time in my adult life. In North Vietnam there are no street gangs, no trigger-happy, nigger-hating cops, no pushers, no junkies, no unemployment, no children dying of malnutrition and deteriorating neighborhoods except in those areas where American bombs have left homes, schools, hospitals, farms, nurseries and churches in ruins.

But the Vietnamese people are rebuilding their country in the North even while defending their country in the South. Nothing less than the total nuclear destruction of Vietnam will bring the U.S. government and the U.S. military anything but defeat, defeat and more defeat. The Vietnamese will win. Our task, as Black people and as peace-loving people of any race, are: 1) to step up the movement against the war, 2) demand that Nixon withdraw all of the troops, and 3) to demand that not one solitary penny of our tax money goes to support the Uncle Tom Saigon puppet administration.

Most important, the task of Black people is to totally refuse to participate in the war in Vietnam: to stop letting Nixon make murderers and corpses out of our sons, and to encourage Black G.I.’s (who make up 50% of the battlefield forces in Vietnam) to either put down their guns or to turn their guns on our real enemies instead of the Vietnamese.

Similarly, we would do well to learn from the experiences and determination of the People’s Republic of China, the nation to which Richard Nixon sent Henry Kissinger on a beggar’s errand just a few days before our own very pleasant, non-secret visit which I hope we can discuss in more detail.⁸⁹

Siege: National Voice of the Black Workers Congress, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1971):11.

AUTO

6. BLACK WORKERS IN REVOLT

By Robert Dudnick

Black, White Together?

Something is happening in the ranks of American labor and neither the bosses nor the generality of union bureaucrats are pleased.

Militant black workers are on the move, demanding an end to racial oppression in the unions as well as in the shops. This development, mushrooming in Detroit, must be given complete support by the radical movement. It is one of today’s most significant struggles.

The privileged position of the white worker is the material base of white working-class racism. The white worker must be convinced to renounce this privilege. As long as millions of black workers are forced to endure double oppression—as workers and as blacks—often with the connivance of white workers who have accepted and even defended white privilege, the working class will be divided and class solidarity unobtainable.

Institutionalized racism, white supremacy, benefits only the ruling class in the end. But the short-run economic and social benefits of white supremacy are nonetheless real for many white workers. These privileges are false, not because they do not exist but because they lead white workers to line up with the boss against the rest of the working class. In many situations, white workers will have to fight against these short-run self-interests to win their class interest and establish class solidarity.

In conducting militant agitation against racism, the black workers in Detroit—forming themselves into such groups as the Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM), Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) and so forth—are striking a blow for eventual class solidarity. And if they have to do so by fighting and organizing against the “liberal and progressive” leadership of the United Auto Workers, so be it.

One of the UAW locals coming under fire from FRUM recently characterized the militant black workers as “black bigots.” This is a lie. The black workers are struggling for their minimal rights in a racist union in a racist company in a racist society.

White supremacy in the unions and the working class must be attacked as the basis for developing class consciousness and the solidarity necessary to battle the ruling class. This is a precondition. There can be no such thing as victory—even a reformist victory—if blacks, as blacks, are kept one degree below whites.

There used to be a slogan about “black and white together.” This was an illusion. How can there be “togetherness,” for instance, when a 20% across-the-board wage increase, or seniority rights, means one thing to the white worker and quite another to the black, who is paid less for similar work; who is the last hired, first fired; who is rarely promoted; who is forced to live in a ghetto; who is systematically miseducated; who is discriminated against in every aspect of life?

Storm in Auto

A specter haunts Detroit that tomorrow will haunt the nation. It is the specter of black revolution in basic industry—the unity of national struggle and class struggle. A week of investigation here indicates that the Detroit black workers movement is the most important revolutionary action in the country.

All the elements are here. The vanguard is here. The workers are here. The guts of monopoly capitalism’s production are here. And the conditions are worsening in Detroit’s auto plants.

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers operates from an office at 9049 Oakland in one of the city’s black ghettos. It is made up of three black worker organizations—the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), the Ford Revolutionary Union Movement (FRUM), and the Eldon Ave. Revolutionary Union Movement (ELRUM), at Chrysler’s Corp.’s only gear and axle plant. Joining it soon will be JARUM, the Jefferson Ave. Revolutionary Union Movement, at another Chrysler plant.

Since DRUM started at Dodge Main in Hamtramck, a suburb surrounded by Detroit, the movement has caught fire to the extent that the league plans to organize black workers wherever they are—not only in Detroit and not only in auto.

But the black insurgency would have a tremendous effect even if it were limited to this city’s auto plants. If they can be shut down, steel, rubber and glass will totter, too. And there is enough black muscle here to shut them down tight.

Those in the driver’s seat of the multibillion dollar auto industry are worried. The United Auto Workers union, run by Walter Reuther from the sleek Solidarity House here, is also worried. Both have tried to buy off the workers.

“We have also been informed by a reliable source that the company [Ford] has instructed some union officials [of UAW Local 600] to kill one of our people as an example and they have promised that the Dearborn police will not even arrest them,” Mike Hamlin of the league’s central committee said.

Two factors appear to have led to the black labor insurgency. One is the general black liberation movement, which has increased its pace and deepened its analysis since the old civil rights movement. The other is DRUM, FRUM and ELRUM’s ability to link that struggle to immediate conditions facing black auto workers.

In the Engine Plant

At Ford’s Rouge complex in suburban Dearborn, a company town even worse than Dodge’s Hamtramck, there is particular concern about the engine plant, where some of the hardest work is done. Before FRUM, conditions were so bad that some workers who are part-time preachers were holding prayer meetings during breaks with company consent. One assembly line is supposed to have a maximum production of 136 units an hour. But it often runs as much as 172 units an hour. Even the lower figure is considered dangerous to health and safety.

The UAW, born of violence and militancy in the 1930s, finally organized Ford in 1942, the last major auto producer to sign a union contract. Since then, it has done nothing for the black worker. In the Ford engine plant, for example, few grievances are filed for black workers. The contract says shop stewards are supposed to work the line four hours a shift and attend to union business the other four hours. But in return for not filing grievances, the company allows them “to spend the entire eight hours doing nothing,” a FRUM spokesman said.

Meanwhile, conditions at Dodge Main had led to five wildcat strikes before some young blacks helped lead a walkout on May 2, 1968. Although Detroit’s black revolutionaries had always had a working-class outlook, they had not had much success until that month.

Vanguard elements were grouped around the Inner City Voice, which started publication in September 1967 after the city’s black rebellion as the successor to the Black Vanguard, which ceased in 1964. The tiny Voice group had a long history in the black struggle and was able to mobilize its base around the paper.

Nine assembly workers came to the Voice group in 1968 and began working with a staff member who was fired from an auto plant for participating in a wildcat. They developed a revolutionary analysis and began publishing the DRUM newsletter.

At first the newsletter was written entirely by the workers, exposing conditions in the plant. But because, as one of the Voice staff members put it, “you can’t build movements on exposes,” the Voice group began “integrating ourselves with the workers” and writing political articles for the newsletter. Blacks from the streets and the Voice group distributed the newsletter at the plant, leading the company to charge that the Northern-style cotton choppers were being stirred up by “outside agitators.”

Union in Chaos

“By the eighth week of the newsletter,” Hamlin recalled, “the plant was in an uproar.” Black workers were screaming for a strike and DRUM membership was growing. “The company began to walk softly and the union was in chaos,” he said.

The leadership agreed with the demand to strike and Dodge Main was hit on July 8, 1968. The nine workers and the Voice staff mobilized militant community elements and manned picket lines, with the in-plant leadership talking to workers 100 yards from the picketers. Had they been any closer at that stage, they would have been fired.

The picketers stopped only black workers—about 70% of the workforce—and the wildcat was a “tremendous success,” closing the plant Friday and Monday. This was possible because nearly all black workers stayed out.

“We are learning,” Hamlin said. “We struck because the workers demanded a strike,” but did not continue past the two days because DRUM did not have the organization to run a protracted strike. The strike was seen as a test of what DRUM could do.

A surge of membership hit DRUM after the walkout—from Dodge Main and other plants as well. The organization went into a “very serious” effort to tighten structure while increasing organizing activities.

Meanwhile, DRUM began to move on the UAW another way—in Local 3 elections. Although DRUM considers itself an independent black workers organization, not an old-fashioned caucus, it tries to keep its tactics supple to fit the situation. DRUM entered union politics to demonstrate its power and race consciousness.

DRUM candidate Ron March led in the preliminary election for trustee, winning 563 votes to 521 for Joe Elliot, a white man backed by the Local 3 leadership. But even this was in doubt—DRUM charges many votes were stolen from March.

Cars with March posters were ticketed and delayed on election day by Hamtramck police. Cops swept through bars near the union hall, beating black workers. White workers and cars bearing other posters were not harassed.

About 50 black workers went to the Local 3 union hall to talk it over. The police, led by UAW official “Cannonball” Selpski, invaded the hall and maced the workers. They also used ax handles.

March lost the Oct. 3, 1968 runoff by what Local 3 claimed was about 700 votes. Local 3 has 10,000 members, of which 60% are black. But the local managed to mobilize more than 1300 white retirees, who are allowed to vote in UAW elections even though they no longer work.

From the beginning, DRUM had included workers at the allied Huber Ave. Foundry because they also belong to Local 3. Workers from other plants also attended DRUM meetings. “We took plants as workers came to us,” Hamlin said, and workers at several area plants are beginning to organize against the auto industry’s Big Three.

FRUM started when Ford workers who had been attending DRUM meetings came out with their own newsletter. The situation there was more difficult, however, because Dearborn is a company town. Ford even owns the highway into the plant. The factory is hardly as accessible as Dodge Main. “The few copies that were able to be distributed prompted an immediate and vicious reaction by the plant and the union,” a central committee member said. Aside from the kill-and-go-free deal, one FRUM organizer was challenged to a duel and some UAW shop stewards have taken to waving guns in work areas.

ELRUM, the next unit, was started by one man. “We began with this one fellow,” Hamlin said, “and we started publishing a newsletter at the plant. The response was the same; as a matter of fact, the response was even greater than at Dodge.”

Some problems developed in ELRUM—the workers did not at first have the theoretical background of the DRUM leadership and their tactics showed it. Furthermore, ELRUM grew too fast for the structure to keep pace. But conditions were bad enough so that ELRUM had to take a revolutionary line.

Things came to a head about two months ago, when, during the eighth week of the ELRUM newsletter, 300 black workers descended on UAW Local 961 and demanded to be heard. The local’s president tried to fob them off, but the workers presented a list of demands anyway.

The local adjourned its regular executive board meeting and the bureaucrats, with the 300 workers, went into a general meeting which lasted long enough for those on the afternoon shift to miss starting time.

When they returned to work the next day, 66 of the 300 were disciplined immediately and more were hit later. The discipline ranged from five days to a month off. The workers struck, using the same tactics that had been employed at Dodge. “The plant was stopped cold, meaning that if we had shut it down for a couple of days, Chrysler would have had to start shutting down plants all across the country,” Hamlin said. Chrysler has no other gear and axle plant. “It was just one day to let Chrysler feel the impact of the workers’ strength.”

“Chrysler moved immediately. They discharged 26 workers. Now, mind you, none of the workers at Eldon manned any pickets,” Hamlin said—the support cadre did that. Among those fired were four workers with at least 20 years seniority each.

Workers, joined by black and white radicals, resumed picketing at Solidarity House. Chrysler headquarters in Highland Park also has been picketed.

Additionally, a national boycott of all Chrysler products is being mapped so that by 1970 anyone who drives a new Chrysler Corp. car through any black ghetto “will be placing himself in grave danger.” Hamlin predicts that 90% of Detroit’s black people will support the boycott.

Most intensive organizing has been at Dodge and the company has threatened to move the plant—built in 1924 from Hamtramck. “Wherever they build these plants,” Hamlin said, “the nature of the work is such that black people will be required to do that work because the white people will not do the hard-ass work.” Besides, he added, it is more profitable to use cheap black labor than to automate because there is more surplus value extracted from live labor than from a machine at this point.

The league is an umbrella group for DRUM, FRUM, ELRUM and JARUM. It does not dictate policy to any of them (or to its high school affiliate, Black Student Voice), but provides a broad framework in which they can operate.

The league’s central committee handles technical assistance and resembles a working general staff. Within each revolutionary union movement, however, there is a structure which covers everything from the department to the overall plant. Constituent organizations are represented by the central committee, the members of which are responsible for specific areas—editorial, treasury, intelligence and security, internal education and so on.

The leadership plays down personalities, learning from the experience of some other black organizations. Central committee members teach each other whatever particular skills they may have to develop leadership depth.

What makes it all go, however, is the base. “DRUM has no intention of abandoning the man on the line,” central committee member John Watson said, “because the man on the line is DRUM; the man on the line is the basic unit of DRUM.”

Caste and Class

While there have been plenty of bread-and-butter and antibureaucracy rebellions in latter-day American labor history, nothing much has happened in a radical way since the formation of the CIO in the 1930s. Now, however, what could easily turn into a revolutionary kick in the pants for the left is developing among black workers.

Why? It is not merely a question of correct practice. Behind the practice lies a conscious theory, an ideological concept put into the mold of black requirements.

Its most powerful attraction is that it combines the struggle of domestically colonized Afro-America with the class struggle.

“Well,” said Mike Hamlin, a main spokesman for the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, “I think it’s inevitable that there has to be a revolution in this country, that the ruling class has to be overthrown, and I think eventually that at least all black workers will recognize this.”

“Most of our people probably see it as a caste struggle as opposed to class. I think that’s a natural development at this time,” he continued. “I think that in a protracted struggle it will become more of a class struggle. However, I don’t see much movement among white workers to begin to wage any kind of struggle. . . . We think that a certain kind of development is inevitable, given the actual situation in terms of the masses of people involved; there’s only one direction they can go.”

The caste and class terminology is a restatement of the position that black people are oppressed as workers, and also as colonized subjects of white America. In the latter instance, black people therefore must be approached on a national basis, as blacks. This can unite all sectors of the black community in an anticolonial struggle, in somewhat the same way the Chinese fought the anti-Japanese war while they fought the class war.

But the class analysis, which must develop after the caste approach, can sift out black workers from other black strata. It can also enable black workers to struggle together with white workers on a strictly class basis—if white workers ever get organized.

At this time, however, the league does not see any chance of that. “If you’re talking about a working class in this country,” a league leader said, “at this point you can only talk about black workers. We don’t see any identification of white workers with any kind of class movement. We know that white workers occupy a privileged position within the working class—at least they think they do—and they enjoy a great number of benefits.”

Although the league and its constituent groups work with all militant black groups here, there are sharp differences over theory. The league is not a cultural nationalist organization, although some people apparently think so. What the league does is to use black identity and anticolonialism—which are legitimate concerns in the first place—as part of a more general struggle.

Where the Buck Is

For example, central committee member John Watson, speaking of the ruling-class New Detroit Committee’s attempts to buy off black liberation, said: “If you simply have a ghetto analysis, you would think that when you begin to see all these black things in the ghetto—community centers, schools, that kind of black nationalism thing—that black people are actually getting somewhere. But when it gets down to the level of production, the level where the Man is actually making the buck off the black people, nothing is being done.”

Racism is seen as a product of economic and other forces. “I think it’s a bit of both,” one militant said, “more having an economic base, but I think racism has existed in this country for so long . . . that it has some of the other [cultural psychological] aspects in it. . . . Europeans in general have some kind of deeply rooted racist strain.” But this can be wiped out, he added, in the heat of the struggle.

What appears to make the league different from other groups is its stress on exploitation at the point of production. Even its national-form organizing is done there, rather than in the basically powerless “community.” Other black groups have paid some attention to point-of-production considerations. But they have asked or demanded more and better jobs. The thrust of the league’s ideology points to worker control of the means of production.

Revolutionary theory often is one thing and immediate practice something else. The league does not consider this to be a problem. “We think that our long-range objectives are inevitable and anything we do is just a step toward that end,” Hamlin said. He also said that black workers here have gone all the reformist routes and found them to be dead ends—a revolutionary line is the only clear road. The concept seems to be one of engaging the struggles on reformist issues which will clearly lead to revolution, rather than engaging in reformist battles simply for reformist ends.

Another central committee member said the league’s internal education program stresses Marxism, but takes from it what is most applicable to Afro-America. A similar process is used with the writings of Frantz Fanon who, while addressing himself to colonial liberation of peoples of color, did not write much about the peculiarly American condition in which the colonized people is a numerical minority oppressed by natives of the same land.

New Marxist Language

It is interesting to note that the league shuns the elitist position of some older leftist groups that confine themselves to internal debate. The league does not consider the workers stupid, but realizes that people who work on an auto assembly line 40 or more hours a week are not likely to sit through a session dead-weighted with heavy Marxist terminology. So those who conduct internal education “reinterpret Marxism in the language of the community.”

A DRUM leader outlined what probably is the basic ideological view: the working class can change society at the point of production. But there are two working classes at this stage of American capitalism—black and white. The blacks form a “subproletariat.” They can be organized on a caste basis, but can work revolutionary change on a class basis.

It’s Pure Hell

Anybody who thinks workers are bought off with color television and two cars hasn’t worked on an auto assembly line lately.

You can make maybe $130 a week on the line. But you’ll bust your ass doing it. Compulsory overtime is as certain as model changeover layoffs.

And if you’re black, it’s three times worse.

Rose Logan, a black woman, worked in Dept. 25 of Chrysler’s Eldon Ave. gear and axle plant here. She was run down by a forklift driven by a white man. The company doctor gave her a quick examination and sent her back to Dept. 25. Rose Logan finished out her shift, then went home.

A few weeks later she died from her injuries.

There is more. Injuries, racism and wanton firings occur every day in every plant. The following is a review of some instances:

One Friday night, Curtis Lee, a black man, was crossing the street in front of the Dodge Main plant in Hamtramck when he was hit by a car and thrown 100 feet. Plant guards refused to help, saying they did not know if the bleeding man in the street was a Dodge employe. Black workers went to his aid, but Hamtramck city cops told them to “move along.” When Lee finally got to the hospital, he was in critical condition from internal injuries, a fractured skull, three broken ribs, a broken arm and two broken legs.

On the night of Sept. 7, 1967, Willie Brookins, father and auto worker, was returning to Dodge Main from his lunch break. He had a paper bag with two sausages in it and showed the contents to the gate guard. Inside the property, a second guard demanded to see the contents, hinting that Brookins had a bomb stashed in the bag. Brookins ignored him and went up the elevator to his third-floor work area. The guard and his captain went up too, took the sausages from the bag, threw them to the floor and stomped on them. A fight broke out. Brookins was sent home. On Sept. 11, 1967, he was fired and denied unemployment compensation.

A white superintendent at Dodge named Little had a black worker, Floyd Daniels, suspended for sleeping in a rest area. A month later, Little caught a white union steward named Syl sleeping in a first-floor work area. No action was taken.

In Dept. 9160, where 60% of the workers are black, Dodge supervisory personnel locked the door to their office during the hottest part of the summer. The reason: their office had the only working Coke machine in the area.

There are other little things. Dodge suspended Ray Johnson for leaving a pair of safety glasses in a lunch area. John Matthews, Jr. was fired for being seven minutes late. Plant guards at Dodge Main are packing Mace.

These are individual manifestations of general company and union policies.

To get the broader picture, it helps to know that Ford, for example, fires about 600 black workers a week, who then hire on at other auto plants to be fired again. This gives the companies a revolving pool of desperate workers. It also allows Ford to replace the 600 with 200–300 new workers, thereby doubling and tripling the workload of those who are left. The 600 discharged workers usually are fired on their 89th day of employment, one day short of gaining seniority. Meanwhile, the United Auto Workers has already taken out its $20 initiation fee and three months dues ($7 a month). This means the UAW is getting at least $30,000 a year in all plants from 89-day-and-goodbye black workers.

On top of that, Ford and other companies collect poverty-program money for training “hard core” people, parolees and welfare mothers. They are told to do the job or have their parole revoked or welfare cut off. There are women working underneath cars on the line in pools of oil and grease. DRUM calls all this “niggermation.”

Until recently, the only acceptable excuse for absence was a doctor’s note saying the worker was ill and under treatment. Black workers needed two notes. The policy has been changed somewhat: Ford no longer accepts notes from black doctors.

Chuck Wooten, one of the founders of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement who was fired from Dodge Main, worked in the body shop there, making components for Dodge Chargers. He had to assemble three pieces of stock and do 24 spotwelds. “Now, most of the metal in the body shop is very sharp and gloves are hard to get, you understand,” he said. “See, what it is, foremen get a bonus—I think it’s on a quarterly basis-for the less safety equipment they have to use, such as gloves and aprons, and if you’ve got a foreman that’s profit-conscious, you’re gonna have hell getting gloves.” Gloves sometimes last a week, when you can get them.

“On the spotwelding line upstairs on the seventh floor,” Wooten said, “there’s a heavy concentration of smoke and workers are constantly inhaling this day in and day out. You might be working over a hole in the floor [the plant was built in 1924], you’re constantly working, you have to avoid the hole in the floor.”

Down in the Pit

Many jobs involve making several spotwelds on cars from the bottom. This means the worker stands in the pit, bent over backward, reaching above and behind him, all day. Between 56 and 64 cars come through the pit each hour. There are four workers in the pit. Each handles two spotwelding guns. They do this for the entire shift, except for lunch and two 23-minute breaks. “Usually on these jobs there’s not time enough to even light a cigarette. This is a fact,” Wooten said.

“The thing that sticks in my mind mostly,” he said, “is the incident that happened two years ago where there was a black inspector who worked next to me, inspecting the stock I put on the line . . . and they came up to him one day and told him that ‘We’re laying you off because there’s an overabundance of inspectors and we’re going to put you on the line.’ And the next morning he was on the line and the next morning there was also a new white hiree on his job as inspector.” The white man had never worked in an auto plant.

In the four years Wooten worked at Dodge Main, he saw the assemblyline chain break at least 15 times. This is the chain that propels the cars on dollies down the line in somewhat the manner a carwash chain works. When the chain breaks, the force hurls the dollies together at 60–80 miles an hour. Many workers labor in the foot and a half space between the dollies. Last time the chain broke, a foreman was caught between dollies. Both his legs were cut off below the knees.

And so on.

The White Workers

Where do white workers stand in relation to the black revolt in the auto plants? How can whites be organized? Should they be organized? There are a lot of opinions.

The Ford Revolutionary Union Movement, part of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, gave this advice: “We as black people do not need white people to move in behalf of us, but they move because they are oppressed too, and we of FRUM do not see that type of action at present so we say to the other [white] groups—keep up the nibbling and we’ll do the chopping.”

Among white radicals in and out of the plants, opinion is divided. Jim Jacobs of the National Organizing Committee’s Detroit collective believes that auto production will be all black in the next 40 years, with whites in all skilled classifications. Meanwhile, however, he sees white workers as “caught in a terrific bind”—real wages are down, speedups are increasing and younger whites intensely dislike factory work.

As basic industry turns black, Jacobs reasons, white workers will increasingly go into service work, thus fragmenting them and breaking down the socialization of labor upon which revolutionary action is based. He believes it will take far sharper objective conditions to move the white working class. But from the present conditions it is possible to recruit and develop organizers.

Jacobs and Detroit NOC believe sharper contradictions are not impossibly far off. In a position paper presented at a general NOC conference in Chicago Feb. 22–23, the Detroit staff said, “Profits once made on expansion must now be made on speedups, increased productivity through heavier automation and wage controls or layoffs” because of developing world recession.

“The effects on older, skilled workers may be serious too,” the draft document declares. “But young workers and blacks with less seniority in the shop and less capital invested in their skills will be hit hardest and first. The blacks have their movement but there is no equivalent for young whites—only George Wallace.”⁹⁰

Martin Glaberman, national chairman of Facing Reality, an organization grouped around author C. L. R. James, takes a somewhat different view. He says that white workers are in a minority here and it no longer really matters what they do. Elsewhere, however, Glaberman adds, organizing white workers is crucial.⁹¹

He sees the white working class as both inherently revolutionary—and racist. “People were educated into racism,” he says, “and conceivably they can be educated out of it” as long as it is understood that black demands will not be submerged in the process.

Detroit’s black workers are vital, he believes. Glaberman recalls something many have forgotten: the 1967 black rebellion here shut down the auto plants in addition to burning out some ghetto merchants. This had an effect on white workers as well as blacks. When auto plants shut down, a lot of American industry quivers.

Another view is expressed by Art Fox, head of the United Caucus in UAW Ford Local 600. Altough United Caucus leaders have taken individual antiracism stands, he says, the caucus itself has no official position on FRUM. “Most of us see the need for a combination of forces,” but FRUM does not, he complains. “Racism unfortunately cannot be a primary” aspect in organizing white workers, Fox believes. On the other hand, he says, “racism is the key to the whole business” and FRUM sometimes indiscriminately attacks white workers for the same kind of racism displayed by company and union personnel.

(A Guardian reporter, however, read a mountain of revolutionary union movement literature and could find no more than four or five such instances, apart from the use of words “honkie” and “Polish pig.” In the overwhelming majority of cases, white racism was discussed in terms of supervisory and union personnel).

Fox, whose United Caucus is centered in the skilled trades, holds a view at sharp variance with that of other white organizers. NOC’s Jacobs believes racism must be attacked first so that white privilege can be knocked down. Glaberman thinks racism should be quickly handled.

Must Begin Now

Jim Griffin, a Marxist toolmaker apprentice in an auto plant, says that white radicals have “got to start now because the black struggle is not going to stop for anyone.” But he also says that racism will not disappear before captialism goes and it is necessary to attack the root before the leaf. He fears that as the black struggle spreads to other cities where the Detroit savvy does not exist, there may be a tendency for blacks to take a strictly nationalist line in the tone they use toward white workers.

Mike Hamlin of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers looks at it as a matter of no-choice survival. “We have got to do our thing, which is to organize blacks to carry out the struggle, and in order to insure that history doesn’t repeat itself we have to move in this way. Progressive elements in the white populace will understand because of their knowledge of this history.”

The history he refers to is the general submergence of black interests to white bread-and-butter issues during the days of the old left’s caucus approach to rank-and-file insurgency.

How are white workers reacting to the black movement? Opinions differ here too.

“There have been two reactions,” Hamlin says. “The majority of them have become passive and there’s another segment that has become reactionary; they’re frightened, they’re carrying guns. They’re reacting in various ways, including supporting Wallace, but they don’t do that openly too often, depending on whether or not they constitute a majority in the plant.”

Griffin, who worked on the assembly line before his apprenticeship, thinks that the white reactions will break down this way when the black people get up even more steam:

1—Surprise, with some expression of racism, but general passivity.

2—Behind that, a feeling of admiration of black courage.

3—A learning of lessons, some private conversations, and a few whites moving into supportive roles, especially if there are white radicals around who “always drive the basic lessons home” about racism.

White racism from workers, Chuck Wooten of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement says, “used to be a problem before DRUM . . . until we started organizing black workers around the issue of racism. . . . I think it’s a question of more respect for the black workers now. Like it would be nothing for a general foreman to run up and immediately start harassing the black worker for making some type of mistake, when now they’re usually met with as much argument as they give. In a few instances, we’ve had some ass-kicking done.”

This ties in with Griffin’s factory experience that workers want people to “prove that you have a backbone—that you know what you can get away with.”

Griffin believes there is a sharp need for white factory organizers. “Hell, let’s face it,” he says, “a lot of white radicals are floating around doing nothing.” If those radicals with working-class politics want to get into carefully selected factories, “it’s time to start doing it now,” while maintaining the campus strength the white movement has built,” he says.

Hamlin seemed to sum it up: “A conscious proletariat cannot be racist.”

A Working Town

When it comes to Midwestern cities, Chicago may be hog butcher to the world, as the poet said, but it took Detroit wheels to get the hogs on their way.

Detroit has several other industries—chemical, some rubber and electric—but the town rises and falls with auto. A B. F. Goodrich advertising sign along a freeway tells you at a glance what the year’s to-date auto production is. Men riding home on the bus talk more about welding than the stock market; they carry little yellow lanterns instead of attache cases.

It’s a working town with dirt under its fingernails. Downtown closes early—people have to get up early.

Detroit has a reputation as a good town for black people. It’s not true.

The main black ghetto runs along 12th St., but there are many other black areas scattered across town, starting from the old ghetto near downtown and the Detroit River. The area has become an urban renewal target and the houses, a few of them still occupied, look a lot like those in the black area of Greenwood, Miss. The only difference seems to be that a school on East Lafayette has been named for the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

The July 1967 rebellion sent funnels of smoke high into the air and white Detroit didn’t quite know how it happened. Many white people went across the river to Windsor, Ont., to look at the burning skyline. Some even moved there. The new vantage point does not seem to have improved their perception much.

But Martin Glaberman, a white radical, has an unusual view of what happened here. He says the rebellion stemmed not from “despair,” but from a positive sense of black power. The civil rights movement left some impression on Detroit and the city’s ghettos are populated by workers to a high degree. The last point is confirmed by black leaders.

For a look at how the ruling class does its duty here, John Watson of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the South End, Wayne State University student paper, puts it this way:

“The ruling class here has been making certain kinds of moves designed to coopt the revolutionary movement and designed to buy off revolutionary leaders. The most obvious example of this developed immediately after the revolt. What’s happened is that you’ve had a two-poled movement here going at the same time. One is a movement to organize an independent base of black workers which has been developing out of the conditions black workers face in the plants, and the other is an attempt by the ruling class to develop all sorts of progressive-sounding programs . . . and give all sorts of people positions and money and projects to run. . . .”

The white left is rather unusual here. Detroit has been a stronghold of Trotskyism; there are several groups which split from the Socialist Workers party in addition to a barrelful of independent ex-Trotskyists. The Communist party, once a power, no longer has any independent influence, but does hold some strength in parts of the Democratic party. SDS at Wayne State is small, but is trying to look toward the working-class and community colleges. The whites appear to be trying to get themselves together.

The media are among the worst in the nation’s big cities. The evening Detroit News is heavily slanted against black people, the morning Free Press less so. WJBK-TV also slants the news.

Combatting this is the South End, the Wayne State University student newspaper, which is controlled by black and white militants, an underground FM station, WABX, and the Fifth Estate, which tries to steer a course between hard politics and hippie culture. A black daily paper is being talked about.

Detroit is also the hometown of the White Panthers, headed by John Sinclair. The White Panthers sound like the extreme left wing of the Yippies. They do a pale imitation of Black Panther rhetoric and see revolution as a cultural event. Although not considered a serious force, some sources say they have helped discredit the white left among black militants.

‘Why I Joined DRUM’

Chuck Wooten is one of the original nine workers who founded the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement here. Speaking with the Guardian, he told why:

My thing for getting in DRUM was that from the first day I got hired in, I noticed immediately that the day I was hired there were about 60 of us hired at the same time and we were all taken to the body shop. And out of that number, about 40 were black. Out of this group, I think it was between seven and 10 of the white workers that went into the body shop went into inspection and the others [whites] were systematically given light jobs on the sixth and seventh floors.

The area of the line I went into, it was putting fenders and doors on the cars and, well, the door job was the worst job in that area. And from the time I started in there until I left that area, until I went on days, every time a new black worker came in he was given that door job. All the time I stayed in that area I never saw a white worker work that job.

We constantly used to talk about these things, you know, but in all the time I was there up until the start of DRUM, this was my main thing: what are we going to do about the way black workers are treated in here? And it took almost four years for me to find anybody else that was really ready to do something about it and this is where DRUM came from.

During the wildcat strike of May 1968, upon coming to work that morning, there were picket lines established which, ironically, were manned by all white workers at the time and as a result of this all the black workers received the harshest disciplinary actions.

A few workers and I went across the street and sat in the bar, sitting there drinking. We were sitting at that table talking and it was here we decided we would do something about organizing black workers to fight the racial discrimination inside the plants and the overall oppression of black workers. Well, this was something I’d been trying to get started in the body shop for the four years I was in there, but I just never ran into anyone who was conscious enough to really take some steps about doing something about this.

And this was the beginning of DRUM.

Beyond Detroit

What can the radical movement learn from Detroit’s black auto workers? The answer, I think, is plenty. The lessons seem to boil down to two essentials:

1—Capitalism can only be killed where it lives: at the point of production.

2—Contrary to all the fears of certain tattered fringes of the white left, Detroit emphatically demonstrates that the national form of struggle has been a necessary prelude to a general class-line assault by Afro-America on the holders of power.

It is no longer necessary to belabor the first point. The movement is beginning to realize, as much of it did not before, the central role of production in any revolutionary endeavor. For several years, the white and black movements concentrated on “community organizing.” The general failure of this line of attack has obliged us to look to more powerful crowbars of change. It has been comparatively cheap for capitalism to handle the issues raised by community organizers. If all the rats and roaches, all the pot-holed streets and all the rest of it were cleaned up in the “community,” capitalism would still stand because only one or two of its fingers would have been amputated. The heart would still be intact. From cops to welfare, the strictly “community” issues are only secondary aspects of capitalism: they are used as control devices, but they are not a system of themselves. That system is production for profit.

This should not be taken to mean that the radical movement should ignore community issues, for no revolutionary movement can ignore the immediate conditions of the people in whose name it operates. But a conclusive solution to these conditions—one which ensures that they will not recur—demands production of, by and for the workers. If production is the central arena in which captialism will be slain, therefore, it follows that the hand that holds the wrench shall be the hand that holds the gun.

The black community, however, nonetheless has had an amazing impact on America. The courageous rebellions and the general ferment have by and large been the result of (a) objective conditions and (b) increased black awareness as a development of national struggle. The national form was necessary and therefore inevitable. No oppressed people can develop a politics without self-definition of the group, especially in the case of black America, which has suffered from a pattern of psychological warfare too extensive and too well-known to go into here. The Detroit movement indicates that the group is being welded together and that the black national aspects are becoming part of a higher level of struggle.

The developing unity of class and national struggle presents some considerations of tactics. What strikes the observer in Detroit and elsewhere is that dual unionism—the establishment of independent workers’ organizations—is arising out of the ashes into which “organized labor” dumped it years ago. There is promise here.

Since black interests have consistently been submerged to more general trade union questions “to avoid splitting the working class,” the development of independent bases of black worker power should surprise no one. Black dual unionism can provide a powerful force for the most oppressed sector of the working class by giving it instruments which, if truly democratic, would be in hock to no one else. Certain tactical freedoms would be possible. The League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, for example, considers itself to be such an independent base, but also has engaged in United Auto Workers politics as the tactical situation demanded.

Perhaps the most important problem involved in the black dual union approach—given the existence of a class struggle—is its relation to the movement of white workers, when that happens. It is not much of a problem now because there is very little motion in the white working class. But should white workers start to move, and many white organizers think they will, the problem could become acute. Would each movement take its own course, as the white student and black movements of today have done? If so, how may they become parallel movements? Will white racism, even among workers who are in motion along more or less radical paths, still stand in the way of true class solidarity? Will black workers realize that it will take all workers to overthrow the system that lies at the root of black oppression? Will white workers understand that, in addition to class interests, black workers must be supported in their legitimate drive for self-determination?

So much depends on what white workers and their vanguards—self-appointed and otherwise—do. If the traditional caucus-style struggle can be modified to provide a parallel, in-union form to the black dual union, there is the possibility of class solidarity. But if caucus organizations continue to be based on the “black and white, unite and fight” slogan, they will entirely miss the correct and irreversible mood that is growing among black workers.

Dual unionism is a much more difficult undertaking for the white working class. Black dual unions will have a previously mobilized community behind them. The white “community” has rarely been organized as such and experience shows that when whites are organized along these lines racism is strengthened. Whites are not colonized subjects in America. Without community support, white dual unions can be smashed by the superior financial power of the established unions. Who is going to join a new union that has no strike defense fund? The answer is no one except a black worker who knows that a community initially organized on a national basis will contribute to such a fund.

Like the Detroit black workers, white workers will have to approach dual unionism with tactical suppleness. There appear to be some possibilities of dual unions among white workers, especially welfare employes, but this group is not basic to production.

Some white factory organizers are complaining that the insurgent black workers have no class analysis and that this makes their job among white workers more difficult. Aside from the obvious fact that it is not the black man’s job to make things easier for white organizers, what needs to be asked is, what do these white organizers think their job is? To gain a little more money for the skilled trades? The job of white organizers, rather, is to build explicit class consciousness and defeat racism. In this sense, white workers have far less class consciousness than black workers. The black people, as seen in Detroit, have been doing their job. Our turn is long overdue.

Black Workers In Revolt: How Detroit’s New Black Revolutionary Workers are Changing the Face of American Trade Unionism, pp. 1–15. Pamphlet printed by The Guardian (N.D.) in possession of the editors.

7. WILDCAT!

By Detroit NOC

A wildcat strike is an act of defiance, a clearly illegal action directed at the union as well as management. It occurs when the everyday tensions of industrial conflict burst into collective struggle. The workers, in order to express their power, attempt to stop production.

Since wildcats are primarily spontaneous movements of workers, they are often confused struggles that are easily crushed. When they first walk out, workers are permeated with a feeling of power, “we actually shut it down.” Later, as the wildcat continues, management threatens to fire them, and the international union bureaucracy moves to place the local under discipline. The struggle becomes grim. Workers are unsure how long they can hold out. They begin to feel economic pressure from loss of a weeks pay. Management moves to “negotiate the issues” providing the workers return. Many of the older men, who have experienced walkouts before, begin to predict its demise. Wildcats that do not develop leadership at this point are usually crushed through the collective resources of management and the unions.

Back at work the immediate issue is “solved” through negotiations and everyday life returns to the shop. Workers feel little has been achieved, yet take no action. All is calm until the tensions build again—the sell-out contract, deteriorating working conditions, safety hazards, the arrogance of the foremen, the compulsory overtime, the years of frustration of hard work just to break even economically—this oppression surges into the minds of the workers and another wildcat begins over some ordinary worker-management confrontation.

The walkout at the Sterling Stamping plant was similar to the above sketch, except for one important difference. On the side of the workers was the active participation of organizers and students who placed the wildcat into the context of political struggle. Through their efforts, the wildcat became more than an industrial dispute. If nothing else was gained at Sterling, many workers learned to respect the students for turning out to support their strike. Hopefully, out of the wildcat will emerge a cadre of revolutionary workers who see their role as organizers laying the ground work for a mass-based working class movement in Detroit.

This goal is the thrust of NOC’s work in factories and it guided our actions during the Sterling struggle. As a cadre of organizers, the National Organizing Committee seeks to develop groups of politically conscious white workers in the shops. These groups will provide the outreach into the plant through literature, production and struggle. While our factory work is very limited (we only began four months ago), the wildcat at Sterling provided us with some experience and insights into organizing workers in basic industry.

The Plant

Opened in 1955, the Sterling Stamping Plant is a relatively recent addition to the Chrysler empire. Employing over 3,500 production and skilled workers, the 80 million dollar plant sprawls over 1/2 mile of land in the white working class suburb of Sterling Heights. At Sterling, hoods, frames and fenders are made for almost all Chrysler models. Engineers are proud of the plant’s flexibility: stamping dies can be moved in and out of the 167 major presses, changing the whole line in less than six hours. The Sterling plant is critical to the auto parts supply of the four major Chrysler assembly plants in Detroit: Lynch Road, Hamtramck, Warren Truck and Jefferson.

Of all the Chrysler plants, Sterling Stamping is one of the few containing a clear majority of white workers. At least 70% of the workers are white, mostly Polish and Italian, with some Southern white. Ethnic loyalties are strong in the plant: there are “Dago” and “Pollack” production lines. Since Sterling is such a new plant, a good majority of the production workers are young guys between 18 and 30, most of whom are married.

Although Sterling Stamping is a new plant, the working conditions are very poor. The presses leak oil, making the floors slippery; hi-los often break down; aisles are cluttered with razor sharp scrap metal and machine parts; and the conveyor belt, used to take metal scrap from the presses to the bailing room often breaks down. In the past five years many workers have been injured. A few of them have lost their fingers or hands under the huge presses.

The local leadership of UAW local 1264 has always been a militant thorn in the sides of management and the international UAW. During the 1967 contract ratification process, workers remained out over a week refusing to settle on plant working conditions issues. It wasn’t until UAW International Board member Douglas Fraser threatened to put the local under receivership that the men returned to work. Last summer, two wildcats occurred over the lack of ventilation in the plant. In all instances the local leadership, which is supposed to maintain its side of the contract and discipline the ranks, supported the wildcats. Given this militant leadership it would be in the interests of management to crush the local.

The need of Chrysler to keep its workers in line is particularly pressing in the spring of 1969 as the auto industry suffers its first effects of what might be a long-term economic stagnation. Sales are down substantially, increasing inventories to the highest in automobile history (at the time of the wildcat there were 1.7 million cars unsold). Production is being cut back. During February production was slowed down as many assembly plants were shut down for a week. Overtime became scarce and there were plans for an early model change this year.

Of the big three, Chrysler is in the worst economic position to sustain any possible recession. In 1961, the company almost went out of business. Through a re-organization of dealerships, a new five-year warranty plan (revoked on 1969 models), and industrial diversification (Chrysler is now moving into the plastic industry, and is also purchasing over 2 million dollars worth of real estate a week) Chrysler has maintained 17% of the domestic auto market. At the time of the Sterling Wildcat however, Chrysler held almost 400,000 unsold cars, an 83 day supply according to recent sales rates and the highest in the industry. If inventories remained that high, it would be necessary for the auto company to cut back production in June. During these lay-offs, the corporation would have to pay 95% of the base pay of all workers with one year seniority. The wildcat at Sterling, which idled 35,000 workers for eight days, served to keep production down, while management could blame the workers for the disruption and save money by not paying any SUB benefits to those laid off.

In addition, the wildcat was a golden opportunity to harass the union leadership. As profits grew less in a period of slow expansion, capitalists make up for losses in sales by forcing more labor out of workers. After experiencing the power of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers at Dodge Main and Eldon Gear and Axle, Chrysler was very anxious to keep industrial discipline tight. Workers should not be able to cut into production, nor a local union leadership be permitted to encourage the challenge to discipline. The workers of Local 1264 needed to be taught a lesson—a wildcat strike would enable management to fire some of the plant militants as well as force some of the local leadership into dealing with the power of the International. Thus, it is very likely that Chrysler, because of its high inventories and its need to assert industrial discipline, provoked the incident which initiated the wildcat strike.

Wildcat

The wildcat began over safety conditions. On Wednesday, April 2nd, workers were ordered to clear out 12 feet of scrap metal which had piled up because the conveyor belt had broken down. The metal was razor sharp, and with the floor slippery from spilled oil, the job was clearly a dangerous one. When local union officials advised workers that they did not have to clear out the basement, Chrysler fired all the stewards, committeemen and union officials on the spot. The walkout began as workers learned they had no union representation against management. Picket lines were established and until Thursday, April 10th, no production was turned out at Sterling Stamping.

During the first night of the walkout, scabs driving through the picket lines were attacked and cars smashed. Thirty-four workers were arrested. After that, except for a few isolated incidents, the lines remained firm. Solidarity between the plant workers and the Chrysler truckers, who take the auto parts to the assembly plants, was strong. None of the big blue trucks crossed the picket lines.

NOC organizers arrived on Thursday morning and found solidarity in the ranks very high. Most workers were militantly anti-Chrysler and anti-UAW International. They were pissed off at the arrogance of management for poor working conditions and continual mistreatment. They were angry at the UAW International for not supporting their actions. Workers supported their local officers and most sought to build a strong local union. The men on the picket lines were primarily young guys, and most of the stewards and committeemen, generally a bit older, were also present. The wildcat was headed by the union president and vice-president, both politically sophisticated and able men.

Union Consciousness

Not surprisingly the workers militance stayed at the level of trade union consciousness. While the men disliked Chrysler, few supported the concept that they should control the company. Many looked toward an “honorable settlement” of their grievances. The issues of safety conditions and firings were treated as demands unrelated to other struggles in the auto plants. Many workers said that Sterling, in comparison to plants in the Detroit areas, was basically a good plant to work in, except for some problems with working conditions and a few foremen who were bastards. Yet in discussions they revealed the common problem affecting all auto workers. Although most guys saw a broader struggle of management everywhere trying to crush militant workers they were uncertain how to relate to it. For the workers at Sterling, the wildcat was primarily an action to achieve better conditons in this particular plant.

As militant unionists, workers had little understanding of the role of the state. Even after the police arrested 34 workers, most guys did not perceive the partisan role the cops played in class conflict. For them there were good and bad cops. Although many guys served in Vietnam and were profoundly influenced into an anti-war position, they did not relate it to their struggle with Chrysler. Finally, the wildcat leadership (local president and v.p) is involved in the activities of the local Democratic party making them unwilling to see struggle except through existing institutions. As the wildcat continued, the politics of the leadership presented a problem to our efforts in organizing.

Finally, most workers were unable to deal with white supremacy. When we asked why weren’t any blacks on the picket lines, the standard reply was, “those guys don’t care, they are just over at the union hall.” Many guys felt that whites were given the more difficult jobs in the plant because management would know it got done properly. Yet, when pressed on their feelings, workers admitted that there was no equality in the shop. Although 30% of the plant is black, there are no black stewards or committeemen. Even the most racist southern workers admitted that there is a problem when they said the skilled trades department is all white. Some even saw the need to relate to groups like DRUM and ELRUM in their fight against Chrysler.

We spent the first days on the picket lines trying to put the issues of the wildcat into political perspective. We ran down stuff on the UAW—how it does not fight for better working conditions in the national contract, how the contract screws local union power, how grievances are settled from the shop floor, etc. We provided legal counsel for the local union officers in their attempts to head off a threatened Chrysler injunction on picketing. Finally, we began to place the wildcat into the larger context, laying out Chrysler’s reasons for provoking the strike. Much of our analysis was confirmed when on Sunday, management fired 69 guys for strike activity. Many of the firings were arbitrary; some, however, were against the most militant workers who had been identified from photographs taken by foremen escorted out to the line by plant pigs to identify picketers.

Role of NOC

We came on hard about our politics, telling guys that NOC was interested in workers taking power, the right of workers to control the production process and the state. We passed out fist buttons which were gobbled up immediately. We were very hard on white supremacy, making it clear to guys that they should support the demands of black workers for if they really wanted to beat Chrysler, they would need to unite with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and this could not be accomplished unless white workers accepted the legitimacy of black demands.

We raised questions concerning the relationship of guys to their wives. Were they telling their wives about the strike? How come very few of their wives were on the line? Through these raps, particularly on white supremacy, many workers disagreed violently with our analysis. Yet, almost everyone recognized and accepted us as “agitators,” “organizers,” or “anti-establishment people” who had been active in the student movement, black liberation struggle, or worked organizing poor people.

Our leafleting efforts were modest, as we placed heavier emphasis on personal contact with workers on the picket lines. There were several difficulties with this approach. At night great quantities of beer and dope were consumed as many workers transformed the picket lines into a party-like atmosphere. While remaining solid in preventing any scabs from crossing the lines, guys were certainly not interested in political raps. Another problem with personal contact was, except for a small group of guys who were there most of the time, the same workers did not show up. During the eight days of picketing very few of the workers came regularly. In fact, as the wildcat continued, the personnel changed rapidly. Many guys we talked to at the beginning of the wildcat simply didn’t show up as picketing became pretty much a routine affair. Finally, since the plant was in the suburbs, there were very few cafes or bars nearby, making it difficult to bring a few workers together for some long political raps.

At one point when it appeared that management was going to break through the lines to get at some of the auto parts remaining in the plant, we prepared a leaflet that was to be distributed in the community by high school groups working with NOC. The leaflet listed the demands, gave an analysis of why the wildcat (Chrysler’s desire to crush the leadership as well as save money while inventories are high) and called for community solidarity with the strikers. The leaflet was not distributed however, as Chrysler backed away from confrontation with the workers. In retrospect, our decision not to turn out more leaflets for the community and the workers may have been a tactical error. Leaflets might have overcome some of the problems inherent in the personal contact approach. Yet, in all cases contacts with workers on a face to face level were extremely important.

Tactical Error

Perhaps the most important tactical error we made was not engaging students in the struggle from the outset. At first we felt that students would turn off the workers. Their life-style is so different and their knowledge of the issues so limited that we anticipated workers would be hostile to their participation. Yet, on Sunday, independently of our actions, SDS chapters began to appear on the line. Our analysis of student participators was incorrect. In fact the presence of students was critical to the continuance of the wildcat.

By Sunday, the wildcat had reached the fifty day. After the first two evenings, very few scabs attempted to cross the picket lines, and marching around the plant exit gates became an uneventful chore. Fewer and fewer workers began showing up on the line. Those that did appear grew increasingly uncertain of whether the wildcat would last.

The diminishing worker support for the wildcat would be critical at the first shift change Monday. Since the wildcat began right before the Easter holiday, many workers took advantage of the strike to have an extended weekend vacation. They were ready to return to work on Monday. Without a strong show of pickets the wildcat would be broken.

On Monday morning only a handful of pickets appeared, but bolstered by about 75 SDS people from the University of Michigan, cars were turned away. The wildcat continued and the spirits of the workers rose. Guys began showing up on the line again, partly because they were interested in meeting the students. The older workers were disturbed by the presence of the students on the line; one brought up a razor and shears to cut some of their hair. However, the younger workers were open to the students and interested in talking with them.

Through their discussions, workers learned about the movement. They clearly understood what students were about for as one worker put it: “the students are always on the side of the underdog.” Many workers stated flatly that the students made the difference when the fate of the wildcat was in doubt on Monday. In general they were very open to political discussions with students.

On the other hand, most students simply don’t know enough about workers and the issues effecting them to lay out some concrete analysis. Their rhetoric had little relationship to the lives of these young workers. Even though many of the guys at Sterling were the same age as the students they were in a world altogether different than college students. Most were married, faced with consumer problems, raising children and attempting to find ways to exist for a lifetime in a factory. They were not pissed off at the pigs. The war and the draft had little direct impact on them. Most of their problems were centered around dealing with industrial discipline. They were working hard (some had been working seven days since Christmas) and finding the money they earned was just enough to make ends meet. For them the students were visions of people which only their children might become. Regardless of the effect of the students on the attitudes of the workers, the mere visible signs of students manning the picket lines with workers forced the UAW into action.

International Seduction

The International union played a subtle role in forcing the wildcat to end. In the beginning of the strike the International’s pressure was absent. However, as the wildcat continued and students joined the workers the UAW pushed quickly for a settlement. On Monday, the UAW summoned the local union leaders to Solidarity House, the UAW headquarters. During this meeting the UAW bureaucarts told Local 1264’s union representative that if they did not order their men back to work the local would be taken into receivership by the International. That afternoon the local was put into receivership and Douglas Fraser, executive board member and head of all of the UAW’s Chrysler division, ordered all of the workers at Sterling Stamping back to work.

The next morning, to the surprise of many, they refused. Many men were confused and started to go to work, but when they saw the picket line they turned around and went home. Fraser’s response was to call a mass meeting for the Local 1264 members.

At the meeting the UAW used all the traditional ploys. The vast majority of the rank and file came to the meeting feeling angry and militant. Fraser and others, who spoke about ending the strike were booed and heckled. When Fraser first called for a strike vote, only a handful voted in favor of returning to work. Fraser started to put down the presence of students on the picket lines and guys shouted back: “The students did more for us than the International!” Still, Fraser monopolized the microphone and dragged the meeting out for two and a half hours. Many workers left disgusted. In essence, Fraser said that the only way to get the 69 fired workers’ jobs back was to go back to work and let Fraser, as the UAW representative, bargain with the corporation. He said the only alternative was more firings, more people laid off at other plants. He then introduced a fired worker who got up and told the rest of the workers to go back. The meeting was controlled by the careful selection of speakers and by the refusal of the chairman to let militant workers effectively question Fraser. Finally, on the third ballot Fraser pushed through a return to work vote, primarily by promising to allow a regular strike vote in the plant on the next Monday. Many workers, however, were confused and did not vote at all.

Workers went back, only to overwhelmingly sanction an official walkout for May 8th. Yet, the last minute negotiations produced an agreement in which Chrysler agreed to keep oil off the floors, repair the conveyor belt, and fix some of the machines. Sixty-five of the men were re-hired, most punished through loss of back pay, and the jobs of five men remain contested in binding arbitration. Although the local leadership fought for the settlement, it was a sell-out as the union did not even win amnesty for all the men. In a ratification vote, the local membership approved the settlement, 1,380 to 794.

Since the wildcat we have been meeting with guys who expressed an interest in working with us. We aided one worker in putting out a leaflet that named the scabs. During the wildcat guys promised to get the scabs after the strike was over. A good number of the car windows have been broken and tool boxes crushed in the presses since the leaflet. One problem we have been facing is the inability to get all our contacts together to plan collective action. Sterling works on three shifts and since the wildcat many guys have been working seven days a week as Chrysler planned for a local strike that would shut down operations until the summer. There has not been a single day when everyone was off. In addition, workers are spread all over the suburbs and eastern half of Detroit, making it difficult to select a central meeting place. We hope, however, to have a group of workers attending educationals and planning activities on a regular basis in the near future.

The struggle the wildcat initiated will continue in the shops. The critical need for us is to evaluate our efforts in dealing with some problems in organizing in a wildcat situation. It is to these questions we now turn.

Essentially the problems we encountered focused around four areas: a) the ability of young workers to organize; b) white-black worker relationships; c) the woman question; and d) relationship with local union officials.

Young Workers

The emphasis in NOC’s work has been on young workers for the following reasons: 1) since they are just being integrated into the shop young workers are the most likely to rebel against industrial discipline; 2) young workers are less ensconced in a life style and family pattern which will impede their development as organizers; 3) young workers are the most oppressed by the seniority rules, wage levels, unemployment compensation and lay-offs; and 4) young workers grew up after the Depression making them a different view of solely wage and fringe benefit increases than their fathers. At Sterling we found that young guys were interested in our politics.

Yet, so pervasive is the bourgeois notion of individualism that most of the workers have not experienced collective work. During the wildcat we found continually that guys did not know how to organize. There was no leaflet distributed to all workers explaining the reasons for the wildcat. The picketing was unorganized; it was assumed workers would show up to fill each shift. Although most workers were interested in getting publicity for their actions, the idea of passing out leaflets in their communities never occurred to them. All through the 8 day walkout, there was no communications center as most business was conducted in a haphazard fashion. Had some of the militant workers organized themselves for the Wednesday meeting with Fraser, the outcome might have been considerably different.

In part, the failure of the workers to organize themselves was due to the local president and vice-president. The rank and file were denied information during the wildcat by these union officials who kept negotiations with the UAW International or Chrysler a deep secret. The local would not even give names and telephone numbers to workers to get guys out on the picket lines. Both these union officials were very capable men and could have easily organized groups of militant workers to carry-out the business of the wildcat, yet because of their politics, they refused to see this as a desirable end.

Elitism

One of the very important orientations of the American union is to keep workers systematically deprived of the skills by which they can organize themselves. In the UAW, it is the International structure that is responsible for organizing drives. Working through the local leadership, the International passes on its elitist politics: keep the rank and file in the dark as much as possible, then there will be no disruptions. They do not understand the nature of contemporary capitalism. At Sterling the local president and vice-president, no matter how much they thought of themselves as anti-establishment, conformed to that rule. As the UAW applied pressure, both through threat and reward (the local leaders were told that if they did not urge the men back to work their careers with the Democratic Party would be over, at the same time, jobs on the International staff were dangled before them for their help in stopping the walkout), the local leadership began to urge the end of the strike. The stewards and the committeemen however, remained loyal to the wildcat, reflecting the division between the vice-president and president who stayed outside the plan, and those officials of the union on the shop floor.

We tried hard to counter the lack of organizing ability by first getting guys to see how important it was to be together. Continually we would ask: what are you going to do when the wildcat is over? How are you going to take-on Chrysler with all its resources? How can you even take control of your own local, let alone the International? As best as possible, when guys expressed interest in organizing, we attempted to pass on techniques.

For example, if a leaflet is to be passed out in the shop we stressed the need for a distribution system where workers pass along material from department to department. This prevents management from singling out one individual for handing it out, and also engages many workers in an action, establishing new contacts for a plant caucus. Any leafleting of plants should recognize the importance of an internal distribution system. It is much more efficient to give a worker 50 leaflets, if he will hand them out inside, then dispose of 500 during a shift change.

White Supremacy and Male Chauvinism

We faced another key problem at Sterling with the lack of black participation on the picket lines. While many blacks hung around the union hall, very few went out on the lines. For most of the white workers the lack of black participation was proof, “they didn’t care about the strike.”

At the wildcat we were unable to deal with this problem in concrete terms. We did talk to a few black guys about the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the League is now in contact with them, but there was little racial interaction during the wildcat. Our experience at Sterling indicates how important it is to raise black demands that will involve black workers in the struggle. Otherwise it is likely that most black workers tend to view the struggle as a white man’s affair. In other plants, however, black and white have worked together on wildcats, so the Sterling situation is not universally applicable.

If our handling of the problem of black workers was insufficient, the way we dealt with male supremacy was a disaster. Although we talked about these issues to workers, as in the case with the black workers, little concrete organizing was accomplished. NOC women should have visited the homes of workers to talk to their wives about the strike. We failed to reach the significant minority of women workers in the plant. Although there were very few women workers on the picket lines, at the union meeting with Fraser many did show up and some contacts should have been attempted.

Our failure to deal with the question of male chauvinism in concrete terms reflects a blind spot particularly present in working class organizing: you go to the bar and talk to the guys. Of course the women are supposed to fall in line behind the men. In part, our attempts at Sterling suffered from that perspective. To counter this dangerous tendency NOCs women’s sub-collective has been established to deal with organizing working class women both in the factories and the communities.

Leaders vs. Rank and File

Finally, during the walkout we had many problems with the local union officials. While they accepted our aid (when faced with the threat of attack from both management and union, they would have accepted anyone’s aid), they became suspicious of our intentions, particularly as the UAW pressured them into urging the rank and file back. As already stated, there were political reasons why the leadership would support the UAW International.

Adding to different political perspectives was the complication that in order to help the wildcat during its initial stages we provided independent legal counsel for the local. A very important area of any working class organizing in factories is knowledge of labor laws. Unlike the university, the internal behavior of unions is subjected to a variety of federal and state laws that can lead to court action by management or the union. We also gave advice on strategy and tactics. This placed us in close contact with the leadership, while at the same time we had little hopes for them remaining anything but reformist during the struggle. Throughout the wildcat we remained in uneasy contact with the leadership not sure how much to work with them or how much to be independent. This problem has still not been resolved as the present union leadership has asked we help them in the next union election.

Our experience suggests keeping away from specific dealing with the local leadership. On the other hand, the in-plant leadership, union stewards and committeemen, seem very open and willing to move. The goal should always be to remain with the rank and file. We went up to the picket lines at Sterling with the idea that the wildcat would be crushed, and it was important that the struggle, initiated by the action would be carried on in the plant through a Solidarity caucus. Our time aiding the local leadership was important in terms of contact and access to information about conditions within the union, yet involvement with the leadership was always risky, for even the most militant do not have the same interests as radical organizers and they could crush whatever actions we had begun.

One observation that ties together our experiences at Sterling is that most workers are without a political perspective. Deprived knowledge of an anti-capitalist analysis, workers are often unable to deal with the forces oppressing them. Many guys at Sterling were extremely pissed off about how the bosses screwed them, but became frustrated because they didn’t know how to move. These workers were some of the first to walk out of the meeting with Fraser. Workers cannot be expected to be able to cope with the contradictions they face every day on the job without the placing of these contradictions in a general political framework. The UAW International plans its political actions carefully. Workers can only respond with a gut action—a wildcat—but cannot sustain a struggle. It is our job to begin that process of political struggle. The working class is in motion; it always has been. The task is to develop the political program and ideology that will mobilize workers into a struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

The Movement, 5 (June, 1969):12–13, 21.

8. CONFRONT THE RACIST UAW LEADERSHIP

WHERE: COBO HALL

WHEN: 11:00 O’CLOCK AM

SUNDAY, NOV. 9

BE THERE

JOIN THE LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS

Our basic demands of the U.A.W. are:

1. Halt U.A.W. racism. 50% representation for black workers on the international executive board. Fire Reuther and elect a black president and one black vice president, 50% of all international staff members should be black. Open skilled trades and apprentices to any black worker who applies. Recognition of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and its affiliates as the official spokesman for black workers on the local and national level with the power to negotiate black demands on the company and union and the power to call officially sanctioned strikes.

2. We demand that the grievance procedure be completely revised so that grievances are settled immediately on the job by the workers in the plant involved. The grievance procedure is used to prevent workers from using their strike power to fight abuses from management. Since the procedure completely ties the hands of workers and basically serves company interests it should be scraped and replaced by a completely new system.

3. Elimination of all safety and health hazards in the auto industry. This means cleaning the air in the foundry and redesigning dangerous machinery and cut back in production on hazardous jobs.

4. The union must fight vigorously against speed up and increases in production standards. The companies should double the size of their work force to meet the present workload. There were 650,000 production workers in auto in 1947 producing 4.5 million vehicles. In 1966 650,000 workers produced nearly 10 million vehicles loaded with accessories and options. We are working two and three times as hard for the same real income. With today’s technology production standards can easily be cut to reasonable humane lines.

5. The union must fight for a five hour work day and a four day work week. The profit level of industry is high enough to allow for more leisure time for workers.

6. The union must fight for an immediate doubling of the wages of all production workers. Since 1960 wages of black workers have risen less than 25%. Yet profits have risen more than 90%. The pitifully small increase the black production workers have received has been completely wiped out by inflation. We know how wealthy the company is. We know how low their labor costs presently are. In fact, we know that it costs less than $100 in labor to produce a $3,000 car. We say increase that labor cost to $200. per car and double the wages immediately.

7. We demand a cut in union dues. The union already collects $10 million a month from its members and can’t defend the rights of the workers.

8. We demand the end of the checkoff of union dues. While the check off was progressive in the 30’s today it prevents workers from disciplining poor union leadership.

9. We demand that all U.A.W. investment funds be used to finance economic development in the black community under programs of self determination. The union now holds over $90,000,000 in strike funds in white banks. They lost over $1,000,000 in strike funds when a bank in California folded two years ago. We demand that all such money be held in black institutions and used in the black community.

10. We demand that the union end its collusion with the United Foundation. Black workers should contribute only to black controlled charities working for the benefit of the black community.

11. We demand that all monies expended for political campaigns by the U.A.W. be turned over to the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and the Black United Front for black controlled and directed political work.

12. We demand that the U.A.W. end its collusion with the C.I.A., the F.B.I, and all other white racist spy institutions.

13. We demand that the U.A.W. end all interference in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the black community. That community and the black workers in it are to exercise self determination in all political, economic, social and cultural activities and are to use black contributed union funds in any such activities. This means that the UAW end its affiliation with MDCDA, New Detroit, and other such programs and place all administration authority and funds in the hands of the black community.

14. We demand an end to the harassment of black revolutionists and their leaders by the auto companies with U.A.W. Cooperation.

15. We demand that the U.A.W. use its political and strike powers to call a general strike to demand immediate:

a. An end to the Vietnam war and withdrawal of all American troops.

b. An immediate end to all taxes imposed upon workers.

c. Increases in profit and industrial property taxes to make up the difference.

d. Reallocation of all Federal monies spent on defense to meet the pressing needs of the black and poor populations of America.

The League is calling for all concerned black people to support and participate in this action.

There are several things you can do to help:

1. Lend your name to the list of supporters of the Nov. 9 action.

2. Have your organization endorse the demonstration and encourage members to support.

3. Help publicize the demonstration by passing out literature, word of mouth, announcements at meetings, etc.

4. Come out on Nov. 9th and bring as many people as you can.

A brother from the League will contact you soon to get your signature on a support petition. In the meantime call us at the League office 865–8184 for more information.

League of Revolutionary Black Workers circular (November, 1969) in possession of the editors.

9. BLACK WORKERS PROTEST U.A.W. RACISM

MARCH ON COBO HALL

The leadership of the United Automobile Workers Union has concocted another plot to increase the wealth, power and prestige of the big time white racist union bureaucrats at the expense of the black community and the rank and file black union member. Walter Reuther and his company owned henchmen have called for a special U.A.W. convention to be convened on Nov. 8 & 9, 1969, at Cobo Hall.

The excuse the Reuther clique has given for holding this convention is “to raise strike benefits.” Now we are all in favor of higher strike benefits for brothers struggling against the tyranny of the auto bosses, but we know that Reuther and his boys really are not concerned with the welfare of their own rank and file members. Quite to contrary, workers who attempt to strike and carry on strong struggles against racism, for higher wages and better working conditions, find that they must fight their own union leadership as resolutely as they do the company. As a result, most strikes are wildcats in which the union provides neither strike benefits or fight for the rights of workers who are suspended, fired or otherwise face disciplinary actions.

We recognize that the real reason for holding this convention is to provide an excuse for the raising of your union dues!

The record of the Reuther gang does not even warrant a continuation of the present level of union dues. While profits have risen over 50% in the last ten years, wages have not even kept pace with the rise in the cost of living. Speed up and increases in production standards have made automobile labor a living hell. Reuther is running a sweetheart shop. Hand in hand with Chrysler king pin Lynn Townsend, billionaire Henry Ford II, and G.M. dictator Edward Cole, the Reuther clique helps extract billions of dollars in profits for the white racist monopoly capitalists of the automobile industry.

Reuther doesn’t need anymore of our hard earned, blood and sweat drenched money. He needs to be overthrown, deposed and disposed of along with the cheap gang of cut throat thugs, bureaucrats, crooks and sellout politicians who hold on to his coat tails for dear life.

The U.A.W. needs a special convention. It needs profound changes in its leadership, its tactics, strategy and overall goals. A special convention should address itself to the pressing needs of the black production worker, and the black community. Any so called union convention which does not should be attacked and attacked vigorously by the Black community and the black working class. The time has come for the people to put a permanent halt to the sell out, power made games played by the Reuther bureaucrats at our expense.

The U.A.W. Must End All Racist Practices Within the Union and Fight Racism in the Company.

Walter Reuther and his henchmen are a bunch of phoney bigots. Reuther shed alligator tears when Martin Luther King was assassinated and piously marched to Selma, Alabama for “Negro Rights.” Yet how many times has he cried over the bodies of black workers who have died in industrial accidents in Detroit auto plants, how many times has he marched for the rights of Black workers in his own back yard. The Reuther concern for civil rights is a cheap facade designed to prevent black U.A.W. members from seeing clearly the deplorable record of the U.A.W. in establishing and maintaining racism in its own shops.

Early in the history of the U.A.W. racism was an established fact. In Chrysler and G.M. plants blacks were often denied employment in all fields except janitorial service. Henry Ford recognized the labor value of the “big black buck” and hired thousands of black men to work in his sweatshops before the U.A.W. was organized. When the U.A.W. first tried to organize Ford Rouge, under the leadership of Reuther and others of his ilk, one of the white unionists demands was that all black men be excluded from employment. It wasn’t until the black workers made it clear that if they were to be excluded that there would never be a U.A.W., that the Reuther clique relented and allowed integration of the hardest, dirtiest and lowest paying jobs. The racist union leadership only made this concession after black workers broke picket lines set up by racist white union organizers. After the U.A.W. gangsters promised equality inside the union black workers joined, fought and died to win the struggle for unionization.

The union’s promise of equality was, of course, a hollow one. The big-shots first bought out a few of the more weak kneed black labor leaders. “Buddy” Battles, president of the foundry unit at Local 600 once led black workers through U.A.W. picket lines as a protest against union racism; but today Battles is a paid agent of Reuther, active in stifling militant black action in and outside of the plants. Once a few colored “brothers” had sold out the rest of the black workers were set up as easy prey for the company. “Token” integration of the union leadership didn’t allow blacks the political power to effectively demand equality. Even today with 45 to 50% of the U.A.W. membership black, only two of 26 international executive board members are black, and only about 75 of over 1,100 international representatives are black. The few blacks in the hierarchy understand that their jobs depend, upon their jumping in rhythm with Reuther’s tune. They are the most conservative element in the leadership of the black community, and the least independent.

Under control of Reuther’s racist machine, the black worker has fared no better inside the plant than he has in the union. Racism has been the calling card. Blacks are first of all systematically excluded from the skilled trades, white collar jobs, and all but the lowest level of management. Blacks are employed under the most dangerous conditions. In the foundries, for instance, 95% of the workers suffer from sillicosis and other lung diseases and have their life expectancy cut 15 to 20 years short. Black workers are found in great numbers in the stamping plants where fingers and toes are severed almost daily. Black workers are found in the shops, the body shops, spot welding on final production lines, and anywhere else where men drop dead from exhaustion fighting never ending, constantly accelerating production lines.

Under the Reuther machine black men 50 years old are tied to the production lines while 20 year old white boys get jobs as clerks in the stock dept. or in transportation; and the white youngsters are soon promoted to supervisory or other white collar jobs. For the black worker the pressure of production never ceases. In fact, because of the super exploitation of black labor, profits in autos have soared. A process called “niggermation” is more pervasive than automation. Often new black workers are forced to do the work of two white men. An investigation by members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers uncovered a typical case at the Ford engine plant where a young brother was producing over 120 units an hour on a job previously worked by two men at a pace of 70 units an hour; the previous men had exercised seniority to get off the job because it was too strenuous.

Black workers earn billions of dollars of excess profits for the white racist corporations because of U.A.W. sanctioned and enforced racist practices. As long as the official representative of black workers perpetuate their continued enslavement we can make no progress; therefore we must use whatever pressure and force we can bring to bear to end all racist practices in the union and demand that the union movement fight to the end against racist practices of the company.

The Union Must Fight Speed-Up and Win Better Working Conditions.

The fault of the U.A.W. doesn’t end with racism. Even privileged white workers suffer because of the neglect of duty of the Reuther gang. Speed-up, safety hazards and unhealthy working conditions have become regular fare for all auto workers. Through cooperation with the company in increasing production, Reuther and his gang have made millions for the auto barons at the expense of the worker. In 1947, the auto industry produced 4,800,000 cars with a production labor force of 626,000. In 1966 the industry produced 10,560,000 cars and trucks with a production labor force of 668,400. Moreover, the late model cars are bigger and have more accessories and options than anytime before in our history. So black workers are now producing at least twice as much as auto workers twenty years ago.

On the sweat and muscle of black workers the auto companies have doubled and tripled their stock. In 1946 Chrysler was worth $283 million, today they are worth over $2 billion, and only 10% of this rise came from the sale of stocks. The rest was squeezed from the backs of black workers. G.M. rose in capital worth from $1.4 billion to $8.7 billion with less than 10% new investments; and Ford increased its value from $771 million to $4.8 billion with less than one half of one percent in new money. Since 1960 average wages have increased about 25% for black workers; during the same period profits for the white owned and controlled corporations rose 77%, dividends rose 60%, personal interest income rose 80.6%, and undistributed corporate profits rose 83%. While wages rose to an average of $3.50 hr., inflation wiped out any real rise in our income and we are often forced to work overtime or extra jobs simply to make ends meet. So speed up has reaped untold fortunes for the white auto capitalists while we barely manage to survive. Who’s interest do the Reuther gang really represent?

End Harrassment of Black Workers and Black Revolutionists.

As if the record wasn’t bad enough, the Reuther gang cannot leave the black worker to his miserable job. Black people are constantly harrassed and intimidated by the company with the full cooperation of their union “representatives.” Brothers are forced to contribute money to the white controlled United Foundation for instance. If they refuse they are usually punished by some petty unofficial form of discipline. Black men who wear beards or dashikis, tikis, naturals or other symbols of black pride are often intimidated by their supervisors. This harrassment must end, and the union must quit siding with the company, or must be recognized and destroyed as an agent of the company and replaced by a viable organization representing the most progressive sector of the labor movement.

Fiscal Responsibility to the Black Community.

The U.A.W. collects over $10 million every month from its membership. This money, the bulk of it from the pockets of black workers is used to provide salaries, staff and facilities for the U.A.W. sellout leadership. Millions of dollars are used by Reuther and his bunch for their pet projects and for investment purposes. The projects, however, are never designed to benefit the black community. Millions are squandered on political campaigns for special conferences and conventions and do nothing for recreation and reform programs in the inner city as well as the suburban areas. But the money (our money) is rarely used to support black candidates (except for known Reuther flunkies) or invested for black economic development, or for independent community organization in the ghetto. Millions of dollars which black Detroit area workers pour into the union coffers every year could be used to build new homes, schools, universities, libraries, recreation and social centers, rifle ranges, food co-ops, small industries, etc. Instead Reuther supports further blackmail of the black workers by social faggots like the United Foundation. We pay enough in union dues to provide 10 black controlled United Foundations. The money now taken from black workers and administered by the U.A.W. must be turned back into the hands and control of rank and file black U.A.W. members. We have already spent too much in supporting the needs of white America, and we want the white ruling class, also Reuther and the auto barons, to keep out of the business of the black community.

The Union As a Political Force.

A union of workers is power. They can, if they so decide, control the economy of a country as large and powerful as the U.S.A. simply by calling a general strike. When workers are abused by a racist capitalist controlled government, they can respond by closing down the economical heart of the nation. Black workers are drafted, have incredibly high income taxes, state taxes, etc. We are brutalized by the police, and robbed by corrupt politicians, but because of the Reuther leadership we cannot use our natural power to strike, for political reasons. As a result the war goes on, taxes increase, inflation, spirals, cops shoot at children, our schools are undereducating our children and our community rots in decay. Yet, Reuther does nothing more than preach his “love” for “civil rights.” Black workers make up 35% of the industrial labor force as represented by production workers. Our hands actually create the wealth of America, and without us the nation could not continue its existence. This is power, real power, in the very hands of black labor. Because Walter Reuther and his henchmen hold the leadership of “our” union with the sweethearts of G.M., Ford and Chrysler, we have been unable to join together to use our power in our own interest.

The time, however, is coming near. The U.A.W. will either respond to the needs of black folk, or we will move independently of the official unions to exercise the power for our own benefit rather than for the auto bosses and their friends.

This is the crux of the matter. Black U.A.W. members are overworked, underpaid, abused, misused, and usually refused when they ask for redress. Yet Reuther is calling a convention to raise a strike chest larger than the $90 million on hand (to be invested by white capitalists). The strike benefits should be raised if the union is really going to struggle against the system. But the Reuther clique isn’t interested in the black worker, or his family or his community, he only wants more of your money to do with as he pleases. This policy must stop; the Reuther gang must be confronted, the U.A.W. must begin to represent the interests of black workers.

Join us in the movement to free the black workers from the final chains of slavery to the chain gangs of Chrysler, G.M. and Ford. Join us in our exposure of the Reuther clique of white hearted bandits. Demonstrate with the League of Revolutionary Black Workers.

CONFRONT THE RACIST U.A.W. LEADERSHIP

COBO HALL

NOVEMBER 9, 1969

League of Revolutionary Black Workers circular (November, 1969) in possession of the editors.

10. LEAGUE OF REVOLUTIONARY BLACK WORKERS GENERAL POLICY STATEMENT, LABOR HISTORY, AND THE LEAGUE’S LABOR PROGRAM

As the betrayal of Blacks became more of a reality, and capitalism became entrenched in the society, white labor became more outrageous. Strikes were numerous and most of them were against the hiring of Black workers. Observe the following list of strikes from 1882 to 1900:

Aside from the fact that white workers were racist, we can’t ignore the fact that the rise of imperialism worked hand in glove with buttressing the demands of the white labor. In essence, white workers had the following ideals:

American labor talked of spiritualism of labor; talked of merging labor with the rising monopoly class, the class that was brutally exploiting Blacks, Whites and the world; spoke for the annexation of other territories.

This was the level of consciousness of the white worker and many times their leaders; he ignored slavery, refused to acknowledge the Blacks as vanguard in struggles, fought for expansion of slavery and concomitant to this, worked hand in hand for the rise of imperialism.

It’s important to understand that the move by America to annex Santo Domingo, Philippines, and other places enhanced the polarization between Black and white workers. The support of the capitalist system by the white worker granted them certain privileges that blacks were and still are denied.

The labor movement as represented by United Mine Workers, Steel Workers, UAW, AFL-CIO, etc., are all the antithesis of the freedom of black people, in particular, and the world, in general. For the most part, at this stage, white labor must be viewed as an enemy because of the positions it holds in working hand in glove with the imperialists.

The UAW and AFL-CIO, as well as other major unions, support imperialist, fascist wars in Vietnam. Labor supports strong legislation against “crime in the streets,” but says nothing about organized crime or the crimes against the people of Vietnam, etc. Nor do they protest the past and current crimes against black people. Aside from white labor’s political stance, they are at best, pressure groups to obtain bourgeois rights. They request wage increases, living allowances, etc., but say nothing about worker control of plants, production and the state. Such bourgeois demands exemplify a desire to live in this burning house.

In reality, the white worker is moving more and more to think of himself as a middle class suburbanite than as a worker. Many white workers are living in small towns surrounding large cities and are involved in forming militias against the so called threat of black rioters, as well as fight against legislation for welfare and education for the cities.

The exploitation of working class youth for a racist, imperialist war in Vietnam, the high cost of living coupled with increasing taxes and lower real wages, has caused the white worker to lose a good deal of his previous privileges. The contradictions within the system are forcing him to struggle against it and those in real control of the factories, state and system.

Another major factor is to understand that the development of imperialism in the late 19th century and its subsequent decay in the twentieth century, has to be recognized and evaluated. Capitalism’s pacifications via privileges for white labor are decreasing because of the revolutionary actions around the world against capitalism and its concomitant, exploitation. Privileged positions and benefits are being taken away via taxes, wars, and other factors that deny whites their excuse for racism and failure to act with working class consciousness.

The revolutionary fronts around the world, as represented by Zanzibar, Congo, Brazzaville, Frelime, China, the NLF, the French workers and students, and the black liberation groups in the U.S., are all demanding the immediate destruction of a burning house. White labor, on the contrary, supports the very obstacles to freedom of blacks, and ironically enough, to their own freedom from capitalist exploitation of their labor.

The one outstanding factor at this point is that as long as white workers think of themselves as white workers or white middle or lower class, they will be counter to the struggle, and will retain white consciousness as opposed to class consciousness. To think in those terms means a struggle for the decaying privileges that buttress the system of racism and exploitation instead of for the liberation of all working people.

It is without question that white labor will be forced to shift gears. Currently, however, the liberation struggle of blacks is moving at a quickening pace. It is our contention that the key to the black liberation struggle lies with the black workers.

As previously stated, the black liberation struggle is part and parcel of a world struggle of the oppressed against the oppressor. However, we must carefully scrutinize which groups in the struggle are the most important in changing a society and stopping its functioning the way it is. That is the group most able, due to their position in production, to lead and carry on the revolutionary struggle.

We say black workers, but this group must be defined better. There are many “workers” among our people, like small shop owners, professionals, service workers, and also the factory and mine workers. It is the latter group that we speak of as the backbone of the revolutionary forces. Specifically the mine and factory workers, because they do the jobs that grant the most profits to capitalist, the ruling class.

Auto plants, mine companies, chemical corporations, steel, aluminum, etc., all make their billions at the expense of foundry, assembly, etc., workers, all of whom work for far below the wages they should get in relation to work done and, in fact, do most of their work so the owners can pocket the profits.

These blacks comprise the majority of the workers among the black working class. It is also significant to note that this class is the most organized group. The organization of black labor dates back to the late 1860’s early 1870’s, as a direct result of manipulative use by the monopoly capitalist class of white labor’s racism.

Aside from numbers, organization, viability, and strength, this group (along with all workers in the plants and mines) are in direct conflict with the owners of the means of production. Just as the peasant in South America, the black mine worker in Africa, the worker in Europe, are the backbones of production in their countries, blacks have been and still are, the backbone of exploitative labor in this country.

Union management means labor versus boss or exploited versus exploiter. Another significant factor is that this monopoly capitalist system’s major apparatus for control does not serve the black worker at all.

Overall Position of Black Workers:

Even based on government statistics, the position of the black worker in the labor force is clear. In 1970 the total civilian labor force was approximately 84,617,000 with a total black force of 9,560,000 or 10.1% of the total labor force. The total labor force represents a 59.6% participation rate by the entire white population and a 62.4% participation rate by the total black population.

Unemployed statistics show that there are 2,214,000 or 3.1% of the white labor force out of work as compared to 523,000 or 6.1% of the black labor force out of work.

In concluding the findings of these tables we state that black workers make up a significant section of the reserve army of the unemployed and that the rate of unemployed among black workers is twice as high as that amongst whites. The labor participation rate percentage categories demonstrate that blacks as a people, are more of an integral part of the proletariat than whites and would even have a greater labor participation rate if jobs were not so hard for blacks to find.

Tables further indicate that black workers are disproportionately located in blue collar and service worker positions. In blue collar positions black workers are mainly operatives and laborers working on the hottest, dirtiest, and most dangerous jobs. In this category black workers comprise 23% or nearly 1/4 of all positions. Figures fall to present an adequate picture in the industries and plants like Dodge Main, Eldon Avenue, Ford Rouge, etc., black workers make up 70 to 85% of the work force and have the ability to bring all production to a halt, by methods of closing down the hot dirty foundries, steel mills, and production plants. Whites working in the operatives and laborer category are able to gain the fruits of their white skinned privileged positions by being placed in the easiest jobs such as stock chasing, transportation, and light assembly positions, leaving black workers make up only 3.1% of all apprenticeship positions which is directly related to the lack of upward mobility from the operative blue collar sector. In skilled trades sector black workers once again are heavily concentrated in dirty, hard positions, they comprise 12.3% of all masons, tilesetters and stonecutters, 22.8% of all plasterers, lathers, and cement finishers placing them at the bottom of the building trades. Black workers make up 23.8% of all furnacemen, smelters, and pourers, and 25% of all metal molders are found in the smog and polluted air of the foundries.

To the contrary, the percentage of white craftsmen and foremen is double that of blacks and a definite product of the white skinned privilege which degrades black workers, especially in the area of promotions.

One half of the white working force is employed in white collar positions, as compared to one quarter of the black working population. But even in these categories perform the hardest and steady physical work, 11% of black workers in this sector are tied to low clerical positions categorized by low pay and constant physical work. Black workers are employed to such a degree in the clerical sector that once again, they are essential to many industries and have the power also to bring all work to a standstill.

In the service sector black workers are employed three times to the degree of whites and have a near monopoly in household services. Whites working the service sector enjoy the luxuries of homes of the ruling class barons and earn lucrative salaries for their services; mainly the management and overseeing of black service workers.

In the farm worker sector, black workers perform mainly the migrant employment categorized by next to slave wages and subhuman living conditions by the families of those involved. While whites in this sector are mainly owners of the land and the farm products being produced.

The tables finally show that black workers are systematically excluded from all decision making positions—judges, lawyers, and administrators and are left virtually in a powerless position not only in industry on the job, but also at home in the black community. Black workers find themselves as paupers as the white skinned privilege outside the places of work takes the form of white racist domination in order to maintain the resolute privileged position occupied by white racist anti-black and backward administrators who only carry out those policies which are in opposition to the interests of blacks.

Because of the positions which blacks occupy as workers which are characterized generally by hard work and low pay, they are forced into a position of perpetual suffering, economically. The wives of black workers are very often forced to take extra employment in order to meet basic family needs.

Economic Situation of Black Workers

Categories in which white workers are heavily concentrated are areas of highest pay and power. Professional positions, categories in which whites are employed heavily, represents the areas of highest pay. Management and skilled positions in which whites are employed up to five times the degree of blacks also, are the recipients of high pay scales.

In comparison, the economic position of black workers, in their areas of highest concentration, blue collar service, lower clerical and farm workers, represent the lowest position of the wage scale. The combination of the dual oppression of black workers of the hardest, dirtiest jobs, and at the same time, receiving the lowest pay, has had the effect of raising their political consciousness more and more to the point of open class war at the point of production. The struggle of black workers has been systematically stifled by the overall political economy of poverty. The ruling class has systematically dressed up the realities under which black workers live. Through constant streams of propaganda, in the form of advertisements, they have been able to some degree, to foster false hopes and dreams in the minds of black workers. The educational system has perpetuated false notions in terms of understanding the fundamental characteristics of life under monopoly capitalism.

Both the unions and the companies have denied blacks the knowledge of the fundamentals for organizing techniques and propaganda skills which has fostered strong feelings of individualism and personal gain.

The ruling class has acted as though it was seriously addressing itself to the problems of black workers by extending its rolls of non-productive employees in order to have more troops to dupe the already confused and unorganized black workers. The companies have created hard core programs and backed certain community organizations and propagandized heavily about them via the mass media. They have mixed repressive techniques with soft-lined measures in order to crush and stifle rebellion simultaneously. Many reform groups and civil rights organizations have attempted to gain purely economic reforms without addressing the importance of the political economy of poverty. The monopoly capitalist class has to maintain a system of strict poverty domestically. It cannot afford to spend the billions of dollars thrown away annually on imperialist wars here, at home, for fear of it changing the objective power relationships between itself and the proletariat. During a few lucrative months during 1966, before the rising inflationary prices and high taxes had begun to deplete the wage gains of workers, it became necessary for many companies to stop paying afternoon shift workers on Thursday, which has been a long ago established standard, because over half of the workers would not come to work the following Friday. Once black workers had earned enough to meet their immediate objective necessities, the extra day gave them time to explore organizing methods or hire organizers to buy guns which they in turn, could use in their struggles against the ruling class.

The monopoly corporations have placed great emphasis on the political aspect of the economy of poverty. They have done everything possible except slow down the level of production and raise the economic level of workers, which is the reality which has sparked class struggle amongst black workers inside basic industry.

So that reality still exists, black workers are the main producers in this society. It is the bare hands of black workers which turn raw materials into finished products. They are transforming those raw materials far out of proportion to what statistics show they are producing in increasingly greater numbers as production becomes harder and faster. Black workers are toiling under more and more severe working conditions while black children and wives go hungry because of the low wages, inflationary prices, and increased taxes. They exist as the most oppressed and exploited section of the proletariat and have the power to bring all of industry to a schreeching halt. Their only hope can be seen through open class war and the potential of carrying out a Black General Strike which would bring the entire U.S. productive capacity and its monopoly capitalist owners to their demise.

Inner-City Voice (official organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers), 3 (February, 1971):10–12.

11. DRUM BEATS WILL BE HEARD

In the beginning of 1970 we characterized the coming year as the “year of the struggle.” Indeed, in retrospect 1970 can truly be considered the year of the struggle. But, now we are confronted with the harsh realities of 1971. The overall condition of black, non-white, and poor white people in America had developed into a situation fraught with serious and far-reaching consequences. Intense recession, accompanied by high unemployment especially for young black workers is imminent. Inspite of the insidious rhetoric of President Nixon forecasting the gradual decline of the unemployment rate, one has only to note the ever increasing unemployment lines. The unemployment rate rose to a five year high of nearly 5.6% last year. An atmosphere of repression has reached a crescendo reminiscent of Germany of the 30’s witness the vicious assassinations of Ralph Featherstone, Fred Hampton, Bro. Chaka, and in the same breath let us not forget to raise question with regards to the mysterious disappearance of our beloved brother H. Rap Brown. Consider the unjust and inhumane incarcerations of Martin Sortre, Soledad Brothers, Bobby Seale, James Johnson, Cleveland Sellers, Fred Ahmed Evans, and especially Angela Davis, who is presently facing the gas chamber in California. The educational institutions are in utter chaos. Already this year there have been reports where black and white high school students have erupted into violent confrontations. Black students across the nation are demanding an end to the racist nature of these institutes of “learning.” They are proving stubbornly defiant in their heroic efforts to re-evaluate the entire educational process. What is most significant to note is that they are not just demanding a more “relevant” education for blacks (i.e. Black history, black music) but are challenging the very fabric of these institutions.

The numerous federally funded reform programs such as jobs, C.A.P., and Model Cities have virtually gone for naught. These short lived programs served the suffering black masses, in the decade of the 60’s. The proliferation of literally hundreds of “hope” programs were supposed to placate the volatile urban areas. The failure of these programs, which were inevitable, in turn have ironically served to manifest the latent frustrations and angers which had for so long remained tacit.

Amidst the miserable conditions of a people whose legitimate struggle had for over 400 years been stifled by the forces of oppression rose the murmur of D.R.U.M. beats. D.R.U.M. beats could be heard in the wildcat strikes, and union elections at Dodge Main (strike 68, Trustee Election, and DRUM slate election 68, 70). D.R.U.M. beats rapidly permeated to other plants; such as Eldon Gear and Axle, and Ford Rouge. As far away as Mahway, New Jersey (United Black Brothers) and Cambridge, Massachusetts (Polaroid Workers Revolutionary movements) similar beats could be heard.

The increased militancy on the part of black workers found both the bureaucratic unions and management unprepared. But, with great resilience on the part of these reactionary elements they were able to a certain degree impede the tangible development of these black workers movements. In 1970, towards the end of a two day union election held in Detroit at the U.A.W., workers who had served as voting challengers were forcibly removed from the union hall by union officials and the local police with three voting booths left open. As a result of this violation of election procedure the U.A.W. functionaries were able to maintain their strangle hold on the local.

Now the D.R.U.M. beats are sounding the tune of International Black Appeal. The International Black Appeal is a charitable fund apparatus, which is attempting to address itself to the problems of the black, non white, and poor white workers. It has five major areas of concern (1) Emergency food and Health Centers: This component speaks firstly to the severe nature of hunger and incorrect diets of the black and poor people. We will have use of churches and our churchmen to provide services in minimizing this problem. Information about the conditions and a stringent effort to support groups to combat this problem. In addition, and equally important, we seek the immediate construction of medical neighborhood clinics which will provide immediate emergency relief. This would also identify and assist in developing drug centers to alleviate the problem as much as possible. (2) Labor strike and deals with the problems of black and poor worker’s families who because of circumstances many times beyond their control, find the worker of the family is fired, laid off, or becomes severely ill. We want to address ourselves to the families of these needy workers and assist the worker in combating his problems (i.e. stamping out racism in plants, better work conditions, safety conditions, etc.). Familes of the black and poor feel these problems in an economic and social order thats overflowing with racism and class preferences. (3) Legal Defense services: Black and poor people are the greatest victims of racism and unequal justice under the law. Here again, the problems of families are affected many times by the loss of the bread winner, inadequate or non-existent money for bail, equally little money for good lawyers, etc. It is within this realm that the fund wishes to address itself. (4) Welfare system: Here the fund shall address itself to groups of organizations that attempt to make the welfare system and its agencies more responsive and cognizant to the needs of the black and poor communities. (5) Housing and Recreation: This field of endeavor is crucial to the black and poor people’s areas. Many problems occur because of the inadequacy or lack of both these facilities. The fund shall seek out organizations to involve itself in combating these problems.

Albeit the I.B.A. is still in its initial stages, however black workers from many of the Detroit area plants have given it their full support. Already many of these workers have spent invaluable time working for I.B.A. Black workers such as Rufus Burke (Great Lakes Steel), Ron March (Dodge Main), Fred Hosley (Eldon Gear and Axle), and many others have made presentations on the program of I.B.A. on various local black programs. Soon they will begin to distribute literature at the various plants. It is incumbent upon black and poor people to take an interest in the development of a program, which like no other program in the history of America is geared to operate in their interest. Black workers, especially must make resolute their determination to insure that in 1971 D.R.U.M. BEATS WILL BE HEARD.

Inner-City Voice (official organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers), 3 (February, 1971):3.

12. BLACK WORKER RAPS

This is an interview with Brother Rae Johnson, a member of DRUM, and a former worker at Dodge Main. He like so many other black workers have been fired because of his attempts to bring about a change in the unbearable working conditions at the plants, and the racist repression leveled against black workers.

Q. What was your job at Dodge Main, brother Rae?

A. I was, at the time I was fired a spot welder, which is one of the most dirty jobs in the plant body shop. But before that I had worked in many parts of the plant, being switched around often because I couldn’t get along with the racist practices and bad conditions in these different areas.

Q. What is the feeling or the mood of Black workers at Dodge Main?

A. Well they are pretty disturbed about the racist foremen, and all the penalties they are issued by them; they are also upset about the mess they got over the contract settlements because they realize that they didn’t from them. They also realize that since the Union doesn’t represent them, that they don’t have anyone to fight for them, and that they put their jobs on the line everytime they try to speak up for some kind of change.

Q. What kind of harrassment do the workers get, are you speaking of fines, penalties, and this type of thing?

A. Yea, this and other things. For example if a man works ten hours a day six days a week, or maybe seven days, then naturally he wants to take off, but what happens is if he takes off and comes back, if he doesn’t have a doctors excuse, then he can expect penalties as large as 30 days lay off or maybe being fired, depending on who you are, and your record, that they have on you. But a man doesn’t have to be physically sick, to be sick of that line, you’re just tired as hell.

Q. Are White workers harrassed like the Black workers?

A. Not to the degree that Black workers are. For instance the places in the plant where the dirtiest jobs are, there are predominantly Black workers doing them, like the foundry for instance, and the body shops. I know when I came here in 1964, that most of the Blacks that came in were sent to these dirty and dangerous jobs, and these are the areas that Blacks catch the most hell, and this practice is still going on today.

Q. What kind of grievance procedure if any, does the union cut Blacks into, or does the worker have any way of airing his grievances?

A. There is a grievance procedure, but it has been proven insufficient especially for the Black worker. You have problems when a Black worker is being treated unjustly because he’s Black, and the union doesn’t address themselves to this at all. Plus you have the working conditions, you can tell them that the working conditions are unsafe but the Union doesn’t seem to address themselves even to this. In fact if you worked where the job was so bad that you wanted to walk out in protest, like most Black workers do, then you stand a chance of getting fired quickly, and the UAW has not to this day backed up the men in this respect.

Q. What are the strengths and the weaknesses of the various contracts that have been signed?

A. Well there are two contracts that were signed, one was a National contract, and the other a local contract, but as I said it doesn’t matter because in reality you don’t get anything from either one. The National contract supposedly gave the men better fringe benefits and wages, and other junk but nothing at all about better working conditions, and this is the most important issue. The raises they give you don’t amount to anything, like you’re supposed to get about a fifty cent raise, but actually when that fifty cents is broken down what you really have is about thirty three cents cost of living from the old contract, then you had about 11 cents raise that will come if you speed up the production, so actually this will come to about a 6 cents raise which is only about 20 dollars a year, and with the cost of living gone up twice that, this doesn’t amount to anything at all it’s just a game they play to make the workers think they’re getting something, and the strike serves to sell the surplus of cars they already have.

Q. So it’s all just a sham then?

A. Yeah, and then you go down to the local level where they claim that they are really supposed to be dealing with plant conditions and they really didn’t do much of anything, except made a couple of political moves that will probably help them in the next election. As for working conditions in the plants, they are just as bad, if not worse.

Q. Working conditions, what exactly do you mean when you speak of the working conditions in the plants. Do you mean, like for instance when I was working in a plant on the line, they didn’t have suspension brakes for the high-lows, and grease from axles was all over the floor, things of this nature?

A. Yes, you have that kind of problem in all plants where they don’t fix the machines and machines are run unsafely. Like for instance in our plants where you are running cars on a line, gas fumes are rapid in fact just a couple of weeks ago they had to put everybody out because of a fire that started because of the gas, in fact a worker lost his life trying to put out the fire, and at the time of the fire the fire extinguishers were not working. So the safety thing at Dodge Main is just ridiculous. About a year ago they had another explosion in skill trades and many men were burnt badly, so this type of occurrence is quite frequent.

Q. You were fired because of your actions and affiliation with DRUM, is that right?

A. When I did start moving with DRUM, management really started to come down hard on me and some of the leaders of DRUM that worked at the plant. The foremen and management would start saying things like they were going to discipline me for being one minute late, and any other petty thing they could get a hold of. Things of that sort that a White worker or one of these guys that just does anything they want him to do without giving them any, what they call trouble, could do, and never get into trouble for. I would continuously be harrassed and they would try to make me attack them so they would have a reason to fire me, but I wouldn’t fall for that.

Q. What exactly did they fire you over?

A. Well this job I had was a key job, because it can slow the line down, and they never did like this because they want as much production as possible. However, they claim they also want quality, so they say, and if you’ve been on a line you know that on the line you can’t get quality and the kind of speed in production that they want. So if I got the speed they would come down on me for the quality, so I slowed down the line to give them that good “Chrysler quality” but they didn’t go for that and anything I did they would attack me. Like I was in this pit, which was a safety hazard in the first place, and you are under the car, and what they want to do is run the car over you, while you do what your supposed to do to it, and this way they can speed up production. But this time they hadn’t been doing that, they were just bringing the car in and you adjust the car like you supposed to, the front end is what I had to work on and then start it up and move it down the line. However, one day they decided that they would speed up production, and keep the car running while I worked on it, you know underneath a running car isn’t the safest thing, but damn the man down in the pit, this way was cheaper and more expedient and this way they wouldn’t have to take the time to start the cars up after the man finished his part, because sometimes the cars wouldn’t start and this would cost them a few minutes in time trying to start the car again. So I raised a lot of hell over this, called down the plant safety men and told all the other brothers in the plant, what was going down, and really did whatever I could to bring this to the light. But what made it so bad on me I was the only one in that pit complaining about what was going on. So they didn’t go for that because the safety men found it was a safety hazard, and I had called them. The way I understand it now is that the union has got a new ventilation system and all this time its been costing the plant plenty bread, and you know they don’t go for that. All this time I had been going to the union and complaining to the board of trustees at the meetings it has been stated that it was the unions doing that got this ventilation system and I’ve been fired.

Q. So they fired you because you were trying to bring about some safety conditions?

A. Yeah, safety conditions and them not getting the production they wanted out on the line, and do it just happen that these racist foremen, all of the foremen are White, even though most of the workers are Black, felt that they weren’t getting enough production and it was my fault. So what he did was one day come up to me about five minutes before quitting time, and charged me with walking off the job five minutes before the whistle blew. This I may add is a common practice for the workers around the plant. Especially the White workers, so if they fired people for doing that, there wouldn’t be anybody in the plants because like I said it is common practice, even the foremen do it. But, what was really bad is that I didn’t walk off the job five minutes early, so it was an out an out racist act. I feel that they are going to have to take me back though because the charge is so ridiculous, if they make it stick, that will be one more example of the bullshit that goes down in the plants.

Inner-City Voice (official organ of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers), 3 (April, 1971):3.

13. NATIONAL WORKERS PROGRAM

Black Panther Caucus

1. Organize the Unorganized

There are more than 71 million workers in the U.S. Only 20 million of them (28%) are union members. In order for the workers to have the strength and unity we need in fighting the bosses, we must organize all workers into unions.

2. Shorter Work Week

The work week should be 30 hours per week (with no compulsory overtime) at 40 hours pay, or fewer hours if necessary to guarantee full employment.

3. Stop Runaway Shops

When a boss decided to move his shop, all workers must be given the choice of: a) going with the shop at the same wages and conditions (with transportation paid by the boss), or b) taking 3 years severance pay with continuation of health and welfare plans for 3 years or until they find new jobs. The union contract must go with the shop to its new location.

4. Women Workers

One third (1/3) of the workers today are women. Unions must lead the fight for an end to discrimination against women. Women must have equal rights to jobs and must receive equal pay for equal work. Unions that represent women workers must guarantee leadership positions to women. As part of the struggle for these ends unions must demand child care centers to be provided by the companies and the government for the children of working women.

5. Automation

The unions must fight to win the right to negotiate all automation with the company before it takes place. The unions shall set the conditions of automation so that there are no lay-offs and job safety is guaranteed.

6. Health and Welfare

Every year in the U.S. 14,500 workers are killed on the job; over half a million fall ill with occupational diseases; 7 million are injured; and 2 million are disabled.

Unions must fight for the right to set and enforce health and safety standards on the job.

Unions must fight to win fully paid medical and dental coverage for all workers and their families. At the same time, labor must struggle for free medical and dental care for all the people.

7. Anti-Labor Laws

Labor must take the offensive against anti-labor laws by demanding their repeal and defying them when they are used.

8. End Racism

The labor movement must struggle against racism in the unions in order to effectively combat racism in the society. The unions must educate the workers to understand that racism serves the bosses by dividing the workers and preventing the development of class consciousness.

9. End the War

Labor must demand an end to the war in Vietnam and all aggressive imperialist wars. This must be coupled with a struggle in this country against racism and growing fascism.

10. Union Sell-Out

All of the problems we have outlined can be blamed in part on the sell-out of union leadership to class collaborationist, cold war, and racist policies. We must rebuild a militant trade union movement by combating these policies through the formation of rank-and-file caucuses and the fight for class consciousness.

Auto Workers Focus (rank and file newspaper of the Black Panther Caucus), 1 (August, 1970):8.

14. BLACK WORKERS—DUAL UNIONS

I’d like to take this opportunity to define what “dual unions” are and what role they will play in the black workers liberation struggle. The position black workers must take on such a question, I will try to relate in this article.

First let us examine the Communist Party’s position on dual unions. The clearest example of that was in Chicago at the rank-and-file conference. I was a witness to a verbal attack on a black rank-and-filer because he’s trying to build a dual union that will serve the true needs of the workers in his union (New York City Transit Authority). The event took place at the start of the panel discussion on racism. The panel was headed by an old black cat who’s in the CPUSA, and it seems he allowed a white dude to get up and run his thing against dual unions, then sit down with a shit-eating grin on his face.

When the brother from NYCTA tried to present his side, he was told to be quiet and sit down—that white dude had done his thing. The Community Party’s historical position on dual unions has always been dogmatic and backwards. And black workers must be clear on this point.

To illustrate. Workers know that union leaders wish them to remain ignorant on all political issues because these misleaders have spent years building their power and they are not about to let some small group of young cats beat them at their own game.

The time will come when these brothers will have to break away from the racist unions as they exist today and form their own rank-and-file union to protect themselves and their interest which is not only based in the union but also in the black community. Our union leaders have us thinking that we as employed are better than the unemployed or lumpenproletariat. We do not own any means of production, thereby we have nothing to protect in those factories, so how can we be better than the street brothers?

In labor today there is a strong right-wing leadership (AFL-CIO George Meany; Frank Fitzsimmons, Teamsters; W.A. Boyle, Mine Workers; C.J. Haggerty, Building Trades; and, last but not least, L. Woodcock, Auto Workers), and when I hear somebody talking about we should not get away from these racists, and that I should work within the framework of the present leadership, I say later for them racist bureaucrats and I suspect their friends in the Communist Party.⁹² We’ve heard the echoes of “work in the framework” before, and there’s no difference between the Nixons and Kennedys, Wallaces or Unruhs, Agnews or McCarthys, Reagans or Daleys of our time.⁹³

We say the friends of our enemies are our enemies and there is no thin line, and when our so-called friends echo the words of our class enemies, then we must deal with our so-called friends, because it is clear they only want to replace the “bad guys” with their “good guys” who have every intention of the union structure remaining.

The time to move is now. The examples have been shown to us by Brothers “Ike” Jernigan, L.A., California, and James Johnson, Detroit. These brothers dealt with the bosses and the union leaders in the only manner they have left.

Dual unions are necessary for all oppressed workers and anybody who stands in the way of this must be shown the method Jernigan and Johnson showed their oppressor.

Free Jernigan

Free Johnson

Free All Political Prisoners

Kenny Horston

Chairman, B.P.C.

Auto Workers Focus (rank and file newspaper of the Black Panther Caucus), 1 (August, 1970):3.

15. AUTO MONGERS PLOT AGAINST WORKERS

By William Allan

DETROIT—It’s expected soon that the Big 3 of auto, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, both in the U.S. and Canada, will drop their boom (their reply to the United Auto Workers demands) on the 1-1/2 million member UAW. Certainly the modest demands of the UAW for a “substantial” wage increase, reported to be around 15 per cent, will encourage the profit-swollen Big 3 to come forth with even more modest offers backed up with lots of hookers.

Long ago the GM moguls laid down the line for the 1970 negotiations, which was that before any money was to be transmitted commitments would have to be forthcoming on a weakened grievance procedure and increased productivity to “cut costs.”

The time is getting near. The flim-flam of TV lights, radio reporters, the extraneous questions of the pencil and paper reporters, has gone, and now it’s down to the nitty-gritty bargaining and to see how much the corporations can get away with.

The auto moguls are also encouraged by the lack of mobilization of the UAW’s militant rank and file, who are eyeing uneasily the “15%” reported demand of their union leaders.

Leonard Woodcock, UAW president, at present making the rounds of the boondocks speaking at many meetings to get better known, is feeling the uneasiness and concern of the workers at the disquieting lull in the negotiations.

Woodcock is telling the membership if the companies agree to pay 26 cents owing the workers because of increased cost of living, plus a package increase of 8 per cent, “the union would tell them they are getting warm.” The 8 per cent would cover a pension of $500 a month with 30 years seniority, and other fringe demands. But the word coming back from the rank and file gatherings Woodcock is speaking to is that he wants the 26₵ plus something in the neighborhood of an additional 12 per cent.

Workers that reporters of the Daily World spoke to say that isn’t enough because the 26₵ is not “new money,” but old money, and a mere 12 per cent from companies who between 1947 and 1969 made a total of $82 billion in profits before taxes, is not even crumbs.

But the main hammer being quietly used in negotiations against the workers is on working conditions. A sample is the demand by the companies for the right to discharge employees after three days of absenteeism if they don’t notify the company they are ill. Also the companies want the right to have their own doctor examine a sick worker to decide if he is ill.

This will affect in great numbers black workers, who because of working in the dirtiest, hardest, hottest, most disagreeable jobs in the industry, the racetrack, gutbusting jobs have to lay off from sheer exhaustion. In this summer heat of 90 degrees outside and 110 inside many sicken and collapse.

This demand of the companies is a racist attack on the black workers and means the companies want to use this to wipe out many of the militant sections of workers, bypassing the grievance procedure. What’s alarming is that a UAW spokesman, Nelson Samp, Ford UAW team, was quoted in the press as saying, “We can go along.” The companies of course say absenteeism is heaviest on weekends, insinuating workers are off for a weekend somewhere.

While 41 papers have been presented by the UAW on the 1970 demands, not one that we can learn of has been delivered on working conditions, the main problem facing the workers in the plants.

The companies are making moves also to shift local plant demands and negotiations into higher echelon negotiations figuring that in this way they can avoid rank and file strike action unless local demands are won. In the past scores of plant strikes have held up national ratification until these shop demands were won. They are the real nitty-gritty demands, like speedup curbs, health and safety, curbs on overtime, fighting discrimination, equal pay for equal work for women, streamlining the grievance procedure. For example, in the giant Ford Rouge plant, it’s learned that 450 grievances from that plant alone are before the national UAW-Ford empire. With scores of Ford plants in the U.S. and Canada, the amount of grievances could run into many hundreds more. Any mobilization by top UAW of rank and filers would send these shop demands into major issues, which they are. Failure to mobilize the workers on these fundamental issues takes the heat off GM, Ford, Chrysler and leaves the union open for a smasher of an attack and weakening. No 12 per cent package could remedy that. That’s why the present lull is disquieting; it helps management, not the cause of the workers. The negotiators need rallies, marches, demonstrations to put on the heat.

Auto Workers Focus (rank and file newspaper of the Black Panther Caucus), 1 (August, 1970):1.

16. BLACK WORKER SHOOTS FOREMEN: RESOLVE PROBLEM WITH MANAGEMENT

On Wednesday evening, July 15, James Johnson, Jr. responded to months of harassment and years of oppression and shot to death two (2) foremen and one (1) job setter at the Eldon Ave. Gear and Axle Plant. Dead were Hugh M. Jones, 44, a black production foreman; Gary L. Hinz, 32, a white production foreman; and Joseph Kowalski, a white job setter.

Bro. James Johnson was a conveyor loader in Dept. 78, the Brake Shoe Dept. and had been so employed for the past three (3) years. Eldon Ave. Gear and Axle Plant, the home of ELRUM, has some of the worst working conditions of any plant in existence. The plant is so unsafe that all of its 4,500 employees are risking their lives when they walk through the gates. In Dept. 72, there is an inch and a half of oil covering the floor of the aisles. The oil comes up over the soles of the workers’ shoes. The entire ventilation system is inoperative. The jitney trucks have no brakes, lopsided tires, no horns, and no lights. The aisle-ways are blocked by skid boxes, axles and scrap iron. Drill presses, cutters and grinders do not have safety guards. The management at Eldon is one of the most backward managements in town and totally nonresponsive to the just cries of black workers. The plant is the only gear and axle plant the Chrysler Corporation has and is the key to continued production of the entire Corporation. Unlike assembly plants where lost production can be made up, overtime or lost time at Eldon means a slow down at assembly plants. Working conditions are so bad that black foremen have been employed for over 10 years in order to moderate racial conflict at the point of production.

All the hourly employees are represented by Local 961 of the U.A.W.-C.I.O. The union President is Elroy Richardson, a former black Vice-President who rode the tide of black consciousness to the presidency in the spring of 1969. The local executive board consists of a group of loyal flunkeys in the service of every qualm of the President. Local 961 is a backward local with none of the so-called reforms which some other locals have. It has no education department and no good and welfare fund and the union hall is locked more than open. Elroy Richardson is the only Local President out of over 3000 locals to attend the 22nd Annual Constitutional Convention as a Sergeant-of-Arms in Atlantic City in April of this year.

For over the last six (6) months, the already oppressive conditions worsened with the increase in layoffs and accompanying speed-ups of gear and axle production. The first open manifestation of these conditions took place on April 16, 1970, on the midnight shift in Dept. 73, when a white foreman named Ervin Ashlock threatened to bash Bro. John Scott’s head in with a pinion gear. Scott then informed his committeemen and the following procedure ended in the discharge of Bro. John Scott. Elroy Richardson, the Union President, sent his union Stewards into the shop and ordered the workers out on a wildcat strike. The strike lasted two (2) days and the President got cold feet and ordered the workers back to work. Two weeks later Chrysler Corporation responded by discharging fourteen (14) Union Representatives and once again the plant went on an unauthorized strike. This strike also lasted two (2) days and the workers were sent back to work without any Union representation.

No Union Stewards were reinstated until about mid-May, which means the workers were forced to toil without any representation whatsoever. During this period the racist management at Eldon took extreme advantage of the situation by arbitrarily forcing workers to perform two (2) jobs, attempting to provoke them to the breaking point. The workers had been beaten down and their spirits defeated by two (2) unsuccessful strikes. They had seen their Stewards discharged in mass and nothing was done about it and if the Chrysler Corporation was bold enough to discharge fourteen (14) union representatives, it was obvious that individual workers’ jobs meant nothing. Hope was gone and each worker feared arbitrary discharge for disobeying foremen orders. It was this period of time that witnessed the death of two (2) black workers arising out of harassment from the Medical Department and unsafe working conditions at Eldon. Sister Mamie Williams died in the hospital after being forced back to work by a Chrysler Corporation doctor, which was contrary to the orders of her private physicians who had ordered her to bed. Precisely two (2) weeks later Gary Thompson, a 22-year-old Vietnam war veteran, was crushed to death under a two (2) ton skid box which fell off of his faulty jitney truck. On June 2, 1970, Gary Thompson was buried and both Local 916 and Chrysler Corporation responded merely by sending representatives to his funeral services. In the weeks since the 1st of June, the Eldon management has continued its wanton arbitrary discharges and suspensions while some of the discharged Stewards are still in the streets.

Needless to say, these are the precise and particular conditions under which Brother James Johnson had toiled under in his last six months at Eldon Ave. Gear and Axle Plant. The events around his personal existence as a black employee at Eldon are intricately intertwined with the overall objective conditions mentioned above. James Johnson’s dept. is Dept 78, which is brake shoe dept. in which new conveyor belts were added in February. The new conveyor belt ran at such a rate that it threw brake shoes all over the floor, adding extra work for James Johnson, the conveyor loader on afternoon shift. On the afternoon shift Dept. 78 is under Steward District 11 which is covered by Clarence Horton, who ran unopposed in the last election for steward. Clarence Horton represents three (3) departments: 78 (brake shoe), 80 (brake assembly), and 83 (brake drum). Clarence Horton is a poor union steward who is not even very knowledgeable about union procedure. He is a very poor spokesman and a loyal supporter of Elroy Richardson, the Union President. Clarence Horton was discharged along with thirteen (13) other stewards on May 1st, and was not reinstated until the 2nd week in June. For six (6) weeks James Johnson was employed at Eldon with no union representation. In the early part of May, James Johnson was involved in an automobile accident and he himself being placed under doctors care. The medical officials at Eldon Ave. ordered him back to work over and above the recommendation of his own private physicians. These were the same officials who ordered Mamie Williams back to work, which led to her death one week later. James had signed up for his vacation time for mid-May. After being ordered back to work, he left the plant on his two-week vacation time which he had previously been granted. James returned to work in the first week in June and was discharged without reason and his vacation pay was denied. At the time of his 1st discharge his union steward was himself discharged. His first discharge was so flagrant that management was forced to reinstate him two (2) days later on its own initiative. After his reinstatement James Johnson became the object of constant surveillance and harassment. All of the foremen in Dept. 78 are merely high school graduates and very blatant and bold in the manner in which they exercise their authority. Management has set out consciously to attempt to provoke James into committing an act for which they could discharge him.

On Wednesday evening, July 15, James Johnson was taken off his job as conveyor loader and replaced by a worker with two (2) weeks seniority. He was then placed on the brake oven job which consists of placing brake shoes in bake ovens which bakes the coating on the brake shoes. The entire operation is done in 120-degree heat. It was at this point that Bro. James Johnson spoke out in protest at being removed from his job. He was taken to labor relations office with his steward, Clarence Horton, and his General Foreman, Jim Rhoades, at which point he was suspended for insubordination and told by his steward to go along with their decisions. Management had reached its long-awaited objective; they had provoked Bro. James to speak out against his treatment. James Johnson was then escorted out of the plant by plant protection guards. He returned shortly, armed with a 30-caliber carbine, in a desperate search for his General Foreman, Jim Rhoades. He supposedly asked all of his fellow workers to stand back for he was not going to hurt them. En route, in pursuit of James Rhoades, he encountered his foreman, Hugh Jones; a foreman in an adjacent dept., Gary Hinz; and a jobsetter who tried to disarm him. Johnson then supposedly threw his weapon down, saying, “I’m satisfied,” and walked back to the guard shack, where he was apprehended by the Detroit Police Department.

Bro. James Johnson has moved the Black Workers struggle at the point of production to a new and higher level. As we have stated over and over, the oppressive and inhumane working conditions inside the auto industry, coupled with the sellout and class-collaborationist unions, have sparked open rebellions in basic industry. Often times in the past black workers have been driven to the point where they could stand no more and have lashed out viciously at their tormentors. In February of 1969, Bro. Rushie Forge was driven to the breaking point and lashed out, stabbing a black Labor Relations Representative, William Young, at Dodge Main. Bro. Chuck Wooten reached his breaking point minutes after Rushie by stomping Dick Prallie, a white General Foreman, in Dept. 9110 at Dodge Main. In August of 1969, Bro. Sid Lewis was likewise driven to that point and lashed out at his foreman, Howard Lewis, in Dept. 9130 at Dodge Main. In July of 1969, Bro. Ike Jernigan, employed at Lockheed Aircraft in Los Angeles, California, lashed out and shot and killed his foreman, his Union President, and another Union official. In September of 1969, another black worker in Dept. 9150 at Dodge became outraged and locked his foremen in the trunk of a car on the assembly line. Individual outrages at the point of production represent only one form which the struggle of black workers has taken. There have been individual acts of sabotage against property and all forms of wildcat strikes and numerous caucuses have been formed—all in response to the monstrous oppressive conditions that exist inside basic industry. As black workers rise up we have nothing to lose but our chains, we have nothing to lose but our jobs, our homes, our families and our future, our automobiles and our television sets. The owners and operators of the means of production own our jobs, our homes, and our families. We have neither security nor hope for the future. They control our places of employment, the schools that our children attend, decide what our wages shall be, and what kind of society our children will live in. They tell us when, where and how long and how hard we shall work. They own everything of value.

Brothers, they even think that they own us. The owners and operators of the means of production may cause one brother to lose his job, but they can’t fire one thousand. They can take away one man’s home, and one man’s car; but they can’t steal from one hundred thousand. They cannot repossess from one million. They can wreck one family, but they cannot wreck the unity of one million families. They can enslave thousands, but they cannot enslave the unity of millions. And they can defeat one armed enraged black worker, but they cannot defeat a million armed black workers or the unified mass of 20 million.

Auto Workers Focus (rank and file newspaper of the Black Panther Caucus), 1 (August, 1970):4–5.

17. MARUM NEWSLETTER

The Pig Is Back

We understand the Pig is back to work (Stanley Vaske) doesn’t it strike you funny that the pig got caught stealing and was paid off by labor relations a very short time ago, well he sure got back to work awfully fast, just goes to show what these honkies will do, if it were a black worker paid off he would stay off for a long time but if its a honkey worker he gets back to work in less than a month. Of course you know we have a honkey labor relations man and he looks out for all wrong doers if they are white, there are many black brothers stay out much longer for less crimes, but then that is some of that Mississippi justice Georgie boy is dishing out. We want to remind labor relations of one thing and that is this shit is playing out and you don’t have very long to straighten it out. If he thinks he can continually get away with this double standard shit he is badly mistaken, we don’t see how he sleeps nights but we know he does although he have cause some bread winners to suffer. When we start our bargaining with upper management one of our first demands will be that Georgie boy Doty and Kiel must go they are not fit to manage nothing, they don’t know how to treat people especially if they are black.

To show you that the union are in co-hoots with the corp. there is no way in the world the pig could have gotten back to work this quick if there hadn’t been a deal made. It’s funny how he got back and no one else in the history of the union got back that fast. Between the two racist Dorman and Georgie Boy some dealing went on, and we are aware of what went on. We know that the union gave away quite a number of grievances. They give away all the workers problems just to get that greedy ass Vaske back. What if the pig had been black? He would be two years getting back.

Sweat and Blood

We give our sweat and blood to this racist outfit, we even buy what we build trying to make it strong and what do we get in return? We get a hard way to go, we can’t go into the better jobs because of racism, and all this is in co-hoots with the UAW, no black workers can make a mistake without paying for it. Labor Relations doesn’t give a black worker a chance. What ever the situation is the black pays. It is a double standard type justice going on and this includes the top of the Personnel right down to the lowest foremen in the plant. A foreman can claim a black worker does something and without trail or investigation Georgie boy stamps his doom seal on the worker, the foreman don’t even have to be present, just leave a note and labor relations goes to work.

To show you that this corp. don’t mean black people any good they say they don’t discriminate yet if a supervisor commits a wrong against black workers and have to be dealt with he not only don’t get punished, he gets a better job, which in turn gives other whiteys the incentive to mess over black workers. Underwood and Polite wound up with better jobs just because they mistreated some black workers. We are damn sick and tired of this double standard shit and the next time this racist ass corp. does something like that they will remember it a long long time. We are giving this corp. a chance to stop this bull, and if they don’t we will inform you of another course of action. Look at the situation in Pittsburgh, first they say black people are lazy and when they try to get into a better job then they say what do they want. This has been going on for the past four hundred years, first you are lazy and when you try they want to know what do you want, and that is how that damn Welfare started.

We say one thing and that is the hell with the welfare and to hell with this double dealing shit, everything in the United States is just as much ours as it is theirs and we intend to get it.

Fools Set Foolish Examples

There is one of our brothers that is the biggest Tom in the plant, and to top it all off this clown is a young fellow, we refer to one conk head BRADY. If he were an old man you could expect Tomism but this country ass fool is a young man. Look at some of the things this fool does. He cooks and brings honkey Joe Williams breakfast every morning and spreads it out on the table, could it be that honkey Joe is screwing him. He sure acts like his wife and when he is not playing wife to Joe he is stuck up in the Canfield Bar hoping to get something from that honkey broad that runs the joint. Maybe he has a double thing going but we don’t think so. The thing he better watch is Joe and the broad may have a thing going. Another thing is very plain to see and that is that broad hasn’t got him on the back side of her ass. He had enough nerve to say he was going to run for chief Steward, well if a vote came between him and a toilet stool we would have to vote for the stool.

YOU CAN TAKE TOM OUT OF THE COUNTRY BUT! YOU CAN’T TAKE THE TOM OUT OF BRADY.

A Word to Bobby Bell

A few weeks ago Bobby Bell was suspended for allegedly pushing a foreman, we know he wouldn’t be dealt with fairly because right away that double standard practice went into effect. Now who even heard of a worker hitting or pushing a foreman that he doesn’t even know, he had never seen this bum before but he still was fired. What about the foreman? What did he do to provoke this action. The double dealing Corp. sent Bell a letter saying he was fired instead of a suspension, they suspended him first and that was to get him out of the plant and then they sent him the letter saying he was fired.

We still want to know what did that foreman do to provoke this? We also want to know why labor relations fire people without hearing both sides of the story. Of course we knew Bobby wouldn’t be dealt with fairly because he happened to be a black man and on the other hand georgie boy double standards must prevail.

We wonder how labor relations sleep nights after having put a working Father with children in the streets. Maybe he thinks black children don’t have to eat.

Progress: Means to Look Ahead

Now progress means to go forward and to go forward means to look ahead, but in order to look ahead one must have foresight and when we look at the jokers running the local all we see is Hindsightedness.

Honkeys like Dorman and Zappa and Toms like Ghant and Marshall aren’t capable of running a local. What have Dorman done since he has been president other than put the racist ass Britten in the local when the local was already full of honkies. What has Joe Zappa done and has he been around the local quite awhile. About the only thing he ever did was to help keep blacks out of the skill trades.

It was bad enough that we weren’t getting any representation at the mack plant but then they had to go and assign that Tom ass Bill Marshall to represent the mack plant, this Tom isn’t capable of representing a hens ass much less talking about people. He will sell his soul out for a dime. Hank Ghant isn’t any better because he already said what ever the honkies do or tell him to do is alright with him.

There is one thing we must do right away and that is get rid of these Toms, we also told you guys in 1970 that if you want to progress that you would have to get rid of Stanley James and Sambo Weary, in the first place they are not capable of representing you and secondly they are playing games with your bread and butter. These Toms make deals but the deal is not in your favor.

MARUM

The UAW sneaked into the plant and left a pink leaflet (just like the sneak’s they are) and they are trying to get your mind off of the real issues just like they have been doing for years, they are talking about electing management personnel and all that bunk and the vacation pay, etc., well we don’t give one damn about this crap they are talking. We want EQUALITY AND DIGNITY: What good is all this shit if you have to go into the back room to have yours. Lets talk about the real issues since they brought us the subject, that is concerning the Chrysler Corp. and the UAW.

CHRYSLER: What about better jobs for black people, how come there are no black UP-GRADERS in tool and die, how come there are no Superintendents in the plant, and how come there are no black people on good jobs as a whole? The reason is simple that racist corp. works real hard at keeping black workers down, and these double standard double dealing policies they have must go and the time is running out.

UAW: Lets talk about throwing rocks at someone else when you live in a glass house yourself. There are more PREJUDICE in the UAW than there are in the Chrysler Corp. although they are in collusion with each other. Lets look at some facts. You have over one thousand international Reps and less than one hundred are black, you have a dozen or more reps from Local 212 and only one (1) is a black, the same thing applies to the local.

Now you tell us what the above statement has to do with pensions, insurance, etc. The fact of the matter is these honkys don’t want to see black people with a damn thing. They want your dues but they don’t want you to participate in the management of the affairs of the union. So the Hell with the UAW, all we want from you is OUTVILLE, and this came from Mack Ave. not Wayne.

MARUM (Mack Ave. Revolutionary Union Movement), Vol. 1, No. 2. In possession of the editors.

THE PROGRESSIVE LABOR PARTY

18. BLACK WORKERS: KEY REVOLUTIONARY FORCE

January 1969

Imperialism has one primary need—to amass maximum profits. Therefore, the oppression of Black workers at home and the domination of oppressed peoples in Asia, Africa and Latin America is not merely an aberration of deranged imperialists, but the necessary operation of imperialism.

Racism is the political expression of imperialism; it organizes and justifies such brutal exploitation at home and abroad that the exploitation of Black workers is the most profitable domestic business of U.S. imperialism.

Wage differentials between Black and white workers each year amount to $22 billion. In addition, billions more are saved by denying Black Americans the vital social services necessary for survival; this is the enormity of Black oppression.

Imperialism as a system must perpetuate racism in order to thrive; it must continue to reap the super-profits derived from the “racial inferiority” thesis it has drummed home into both Black and white workers.

Consequently, the ability of the working class to reject racism is crucial to its ability to end class oppression. U.S. imperialism cannot exist without the brutal super-exploitation of Black people and, therefore, will never grant equality to Black workers.

The fact of this $22 billion of super-profits raked in by the bosses in this country permeates every aspect of life. It leads us to the conclusion that unless an all-out fight is made against the racism that permits this robbery—a battle waged by revolutionaries in the first place and by the working class in general—then (1) the workers will be unable to make any basic advances in their class interests and establish a Left-Center coalition to lead their fight against the bosses; (2) the danger of fascism will increase; (3) the hacks who serve the ruling class at the head of the trade union movement will continue to ride roughshod over the interests of the rank and file; and (4) no Marxist-Leninist revolutionary party will succeed in the United States.

The basic industries on which the U.S. ruling class depends for its very existence are increasingly using Black workers as a source of labor power. In the auto industry, which affects one out of every seven jobs in this country, there is a growing Black minority. No longer limited to 10 or 20 percent of the work force, it now makes up 35 to 50 percent, and in many plants Black workers are in a majority. In the steel mills the Black work force has reached about 35 percent of the total. In the next 8 to 10 years the present 500,000-man work force in basic steel is expected to dwindle to 200,000 if the $2 billion annual capital investment plans of steel bosses produce their planned results. Since the preponderance of Black workers are among the unskilled—those most likely to be affected by such plans—a fierce struggle involving tens of thousands of Black workers is looming.

The transportation industries are gaining increasing numbers of Black workers, since this is another area that hires many unskilled workers. In many metropolitan mass transit systems, Black workers form a majority. This is also true in other “vital city services” such as sanitation where Black workers compose from 30 to 70 percent of the work force.

Thus, though Black workers compose only 10–15 percent of the population, their presence—and militancy—in such vital areas of the economy as basic industry, the key unionized sectors, and key industries in big cities, gives them a far greater importance than their numbers suggest; in fact, a decisive importance.

Consider New York City, for instance: Black and Latin workers make up 25 percent of the population but are a majority, or near it, in mass transit, sanitation, garment, post office, welfare department, and are sizable minorities in teamsters, railroad, longshore, distribution and city government. Though New York’s white workers form majorities in some of these industries, most of them are in the skilled crafts and in the white-collar sales areas. Black workers, therefore, being either a majority or sizable militant minority, can bring the city’s politicians and their bosses to their knees.

The above example can be repeated in other large cities where Black workers make up an even larger percentage of the population—up to 40 and even 50 percent in places like Chicago, New Orleans, Newark, and Detroit.

Since capitalism as a system creates racism, there is more to the problem than just the effects within the working class at the point of production. The ruling class-created ghetto so permeates every area of life that white workers—and the middle class—can no longer escape its growing effects. During the New York school shutdown, a racist fight affected every neighborhood in the city as Black parents demanded better education for their children.

But the effects of the ghetto spread far beyond education: super profits to banks grow from mortgages on ghetto housing; rebellions begin to shape the uses of the army and national guard as well as local police forces; the flight of whites to surrounding areas makes Black people a greater force within the cities and creates sharper contradictions about “who pays” for the running of the city, since the remaining Black workers are the lowest paid; the hopelessness of ghetto life leads Black youth to enlist in the armed forces or await the draft, making for a less stable military to depend on in foreign imperialist wars and in domestic rebellions. The increasing revolts among Black servicemen in Vietnam and here at home attest to this instability. The special oppression also leads to a greater resistance to being drafted by many Black youth. Both types of opposition to the military creates a greater need for the ruling class to figure out ways to put more pressure on white youth to “serve their time,” resulting in all kinds of new gimmicks to maintain a standing army. Again the special oppression of Black people sharpens the contradictions for the whole population.

Of course, the ruling class has many “answers” for these problems: “community control”; breaking up present slums with middle-class housing and relocating Black people in new slums; making welfare clients into case-aides and eliminating caseworkers, who cost more money; hiring more Black cops and national guardsmen, as well as turning militant Black youths in the ghetto into local police forces over Black workers (“community control of the police”).

Though it’s been said that fascism will come to the U.S. in the guise of democracy, it is more important to say that racism will be the main tool the ruling class uses to turn white workers and the white middle class to fascism. The bosses will try to present the Black workers as the main enemy in every one of the situations already cited, thereby preventing the specially oppressed Black workers from leading the whole working class in revolution against the bosses.

Recent Experiences in Labor Movement

The central importance of the fight against racism—and the potential for working-class victory if the fight is successful—is reflected in the fact that it is fast becoming the burning question in just about every major trade union and community struggle now taking place.

In the New York City school shut-down, the Shanker leadership of the United Federation of Teachers has done the bidding of the bosses by calling a racist walkout directed essentially against the Black and Latin working-class parents of the city. The split between white and Black workers in New York has not only hurt any common class struggle against these bosses, but has set rank-and-file white teachers fighting ghetto parents, and generally taken the heat off the main enemy—the ruling class’s Board of Education. (For a full analysis of this struggle see Challenge, October 1968 and the section of the Black Liberation Program on community control, in this issue).

In a recent major rank-and-file-led strike in New York’s largest industry, garment (see PL, October 1968), racism was the tactic the bosses tried to use to split the Black and Latin workers. This was a particularly important gambit for the garment bosses because these workers were setting an outstanding example to the 250,000 workers in the garment center and could become of decisive importance in breaking the boss-banker-ILGWU-Mafia-police hold on those workers. Nor did the ruling class lose sight of the fact that half of these quarter-million workers live in the ghetto and could bring in special organized leadership because of the experience gained in their struggles against the bosses at the point of production.

In recent auto wildcats, the issue of racism assumed an increasing importance. First there were the King assassination walkouts, led by Black workers, which shut down the plants; in some cases the companies tried to forestall the movement by voluntarily closing down “in memoriam” before the Black workers walked. Then there were disorganized attempts by white workers to walk after Kennedy was killed, but these were racist reactions. (If “they” could shut it down for one of “their own” why can’t we do the same for one of “ours”). For the most part these failed to shut the plants.

In two wildcat strikes in Chicago—Railway Express and bus drivers—again it was Black workers in the lead, with the bus strike contributing to the disruption at the Democratic convention.

And there have also been welfare client demonstrations. Since these were generally led by government anti-poverty forces, the caseworkers were on the spot. They had to find a course of action that would neither be directed against the clients nor seek out the cops as allies but would, at the same time, help build the union against the city, not against the clients and also defeat the racism existing among both white and Black caseworkers.

These struggles—involving either the leadership of Black workers, the fight against racism by Black and white workers or the use of racism by the ruling class to divide and weaken the working class—follow many battles of a similar nature in the past year: a wildcat at Ford’s Mahwah (N.J.) assembly plant when Black workers walked out with the support of white workers after a white foreman called one Black worker a “Black bastard” (see Challenge, May 1968); the historic Memphis sanitationmen’s strike, which fought the whole ruling class structure of that deep Southern city for union recognition and decent pay and conditions, setting a fighting example for unorganized workers all over the South (see PL, June 1968); the wildcat strike and two-day rebellion of 15,000 Black and white workers at Newport News (Va.) Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co., initiated by 200 Black workers over oppressive working conditions and discrimination, and joined by the rest of the workers, a majority of whom are white (see PL, Oct.-Nov. 1967). No doubt still more examples both inside and outside the trade union movement could be cited to prove the point that racism and the fight against it, especially when led by Black workers over class issues, has become the all-pervading issue in the country.

Ruling Class Reactions

That the ruling class recognizes the importance of maintaining racism is evident from its latest actions. A two-pronged drive has unfolded raising racism among white workers to new heights and also pushing anti-working class Black nationalism to an unprecedented degree.

The ruling class made “law and order” (meaning shoot Black people) the main issue in the recent elections; it gave Wallace tremendous publicity to bring out the worst racism among white workers; under the guise of “community control” it provoked a school shut-down in New York City designed to weaken and destroy the teachers’ union as well as whip up racism among white people; it is attempting to use professional workers such as teachers and welfare workers—people with middle-class backgrounds, aspirations and ideology—as a base from which to launch strong attacks on Black and Latin workers and the class consciousness of workers generally; and it is using every anti-working class Black nationalist it can create or buy as a target for white people to vent their racism on.

And that is the other side of the ideological coin: the capturing of the Black movement by anti-working class nationalism, using the very increase in Black consciousness itself as a weapon against both Black and white workers. The ruling class is afraid of the class leadership Black workers in Black caucuses can give to white workers, setting them in motion against their sellout leaders. Thus, the big pitch for “Black capitalism” (a major plank of Nixon’s campaign), or “sitting down with the Black Panthers,” or “making contact” to keep things cool—meaning buying off any Black militants, an approach increasingly used by mayors such as Alioto of San Francisco and Lindsay and his “urban task force” in New York, and “community control”; in other words, anything to prevent Black workers from developing a revolutionary, Marxist-Leninist outlook.

The ruling class “lieutenants” in the labor movement are busy, too. It is no accident that Reuther is forming a second labor federation at this time. In addition to the unions considering joining (UAW, teamsters, chemical workers, rubber workers—all with large numbers of Black workers), it will probably include unions such as District 65, the drug and hospital workers’ Local 1199 and the UFT in New York, as well as many ex-left-led unions that are having plenty of trouble keeping their increasing Black memberships in line. Reuther, himself, sees the handwriting on the wall in the UAW, with Black workers increasing in membership and in leadership of rank-and-file actions.

Therefore, what better way to create the illusion of action than to set up a safety valve for more militant workers to “fight the Meany old guard,” which, of course, includes the “fight for civil rights.” As things stand now, the Alliance for Labor Action may have four million members. It will be looking for—and feeding—Black nationalists and sellouts to join the payroll and become the leaders of the militant Black workers. In other words, the main feature of this new federation will be to contain the rising rank-and-file militancy in the labor movement, of which the Black workers form a crucial part. The organizers are even “sponsoring” (unofficially, of course) Black caucuses in their own unions (Reuther in the UAW, Shanker in the UFT) to steer the workers down the wrong road.

Fighting Racism: Principled Struggle

In PLP’s Black Liberation Program we stressed the necessity of organizing Black workers in the shops and at the “point of production.” Here, we have emphasized the role of Black workers in certain key industries and the all-pervading influence of racism and the fight against it in every important people’s struggle now occurring. From this it must be concluded that unless an all-out fight is made against racism within the working class (which, of course, includes our own members), a Marxist-Leninist party cannot grow or succeed in the United States. Furthermore, the ability to defeat a ruling-class move to fascism will be seriously weakened. We will not even be able to construct a Left within the trade union movement, let alone a real Left-Center coalition.

It is not only crass racism to conceive of building this Left and this coalition without major emphasis on the role of Black workers in leadership of of—it is also impossible. In the past, many of us have coupled the correct idea of the Black Liberation Movement being the “vanguard of the revolutionary process” in the U.S. with the false notion that this meant the Black people as a whole were in advance of the white workers, especially in basic industries. And, further, that while the Black people could not wait for the white workers, at some time the white workers would catch up and assume their rightful place (being the majority, after all) in the leadership of the working-class movement. It is time to bury this theory, for it is now clear that the trade union movement—and any budding Left-Center coalition within it—will be smashed unless it decisively includes Black workers in its leadership as well as, of course, in its rank and file. Therefore, the Black workers (not the “all-class” Black population) are an essential part of the revolutionary potential of the U.S. working class and in a quality and quantity far exceeding their percentage in the population. Without the Black workers, no rank-and-file movement of workers in any key area of the trade union movement can succeed for long, if at all.

The fight against racism is inseparable from the fight of rank-and-file led unions, from working class solidarity. We can thus define the New York school shutdown as a racist action, not a strike in the class interests of workers. And we can oppose “solidarity” in the abstract by asking “solidarity with whom and for what?” In New York it was solidarity with the teachers’ bosses, and administrators and principals, to say nothing of the cops necessary to “protect” teachers’ “job security” in the schools. That’s about the last place to look for job protection—to the police whose job is to break the class actions of workers.

Contradictions such as these are going to increase. We must prepare to analyze every action led predominantly by white workers from a class viewpoint that considers racism an anti-working class factor. We must carefully determine if the action is building solidarity against the ruling class or for racism.

From all this we must conclude that the question of fighting racism is a principled question, a question of strategy, not tactics. Building a base for revolutionary ideology and for a Marxist-Leninist party, rather than a base “for the union” or a personal base for ourselves, can only succeed if the fight against racism is made a central task of the Marxist-Leninist party.

This problem is most clearly revealed among teachers in New York because the class struggle is a lot hotter, at the moment, on the school issue than it is in many other trade union situations. But when the battle heats up in other industries and areas of working-class struggle, we will be faced with the same ruling-class drive to raise racism to a fever pitch. We could then easily give in to it (since to fight it “isolates me”) the way some teachers did.

Such behavior stemmed from the confused idea that the struggle was for solidarity in a trade union class struggle, rather than a racist action; therefore, any opposition might lead to isolation from one’s fellow teachers. Yet, in nearly every instance where the class analysis of the action as racist was put forward, some teachers—and parents—were won over to that understanding, and won over on a higher level than ever before. This is building a base for a Marxist-Leninist party, for a revolutionary ideology. To “defend the union” under any and all circumstances, without examining the class content of that defense, is economism, not Marxism; and in this case was also racism. Such a defense will have the opposite result: It will destroy the union as a viable weapon of class struggle for rank-and-file teachers. In such a situation Black and white workers (in this case, Black parents and white teachers) who see “going into school or staying out” as a purely tactical question are thinking of racism itself as a tactical question. Here we see, in sharp relief, the inseparability of class-conscious trade unionism and the fight against racism, since in not fighting racism in a principled way the union, as an organization that is supposed to fight in the class interests of its members, is being destroyed.

We cannot adopt an approach that says: “Racism is a tough question; it splits workers if you fight on it too soon. Therefore, fight on other not-so-tough economic questions first.” With racism staring us in the face now in just about every situation we encounter, the “too soon” approach will tend to make the fight against racism a tactical question. This would be a disaster for a Marxist-Leninist party. We must make the fight against racism a cardinal principle. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the first time one meets a particular racist white worker he should be fed the entire Marxist-Leninist analysis in one swallow. But it does mean that the path of how to—and the necessity to—fight racism every step of the way is laid in concrete discussions in our PLP clubs, in caucuses, and in all organs of people’s struggle.

For our part, in PLP, we must re-emphasize the struggle to win over the white workers, away from racism and to a class line. Not to do this would be to all into the trap of: “All white workers are racist; therefore develop relations with only Black workers.” It is possible to make progress among most white workers, as we have found from our own experience. Even more important, we must develop the kind of mutual trust and confidence among workers that goes into their understanding of us as communists. Such a relationship will go a long way to helping us get listened to and break down racism among white workers. The main concentration for white communists is still among white workers.

Black Communism Reflect Anti-Racism

A real measure of whether we’re fighting racism among the masses is whether we’re recruiting Black workers to a Marxist-Leninist party, which in turn is a reflection of how well we’re fighting racism among white workers. No Black worker can be expected to join such a party unless it is actively fighting racism among white workers who are racist. Thus, recruiting Black workers becomes a key question and forces white communists to measure up to what they’re doing among white workers as well. For instance, are white workers being recruited to a line that doesn’t include fighting racism as a principled question?

There are, of course, many special aspects to the fight against racism. For example: People who come from middle class or student backgrounds acquire a special brand of racism over and above the brand developed among white workers, a certain class snobbishness that is directed against all workers but that becomes a racist attitude when it involves Black workers.

Another problem concerns teachers. Teachers have a particular problem in fighting racism because they are involved not only with their fellow workers but also with the children and parents in the large cities where a high proportion of the population is Black or Latin. Though an auto or garment worker may not like his work, this doesn’t necessarily reflect itself in racism towards his fellow workers. But if a teacher doesn’t like children, he will inevitably adopt racist attitudes toward the ghetto children similar to the racism of his fellow teachers. Teachers deal mostly with the children of the working class and in a high percentage of cases with the children of the specially oppressed Black and Latin workers. Under these circumstances, to dislike children will inevitably result in anti-working class and racist attitudes. If the cornerstone of any strong teachers’ union is an alliance with parents, and if these parents are part of specially oppressed groups—victims of racism—certainly a dislike of children that becomes racism will defeat the aim of any teacher attempting to fight in the class interests of his fellow teachers or of the working class as a whole.

Racism is the main tool the ruling class has to divide the working class. In every instance where its use has been successful, all workers have been set back, no matter how much a privileged group of white workers think they’ve gained, because the united struggle of workers as a class has been weakened. And in all the instances cited in this article, where racism has been forced to take a back seat, the class interests of all workers—Black and white—moved forward.

To root this cancer out of our Party and the working class is a first order of business. We must make a qualitatively renewed effort to study the questions of racism and nationalism as they reveal themselves in our everyday relations with white and Black workers. We must oppose racism whenever and wherever it bursts forth, in the smallest incident as well as the biggest strike or working-class struggle.

The fight against racism is a life and death matter in the United States. To succeed means to bring the militant and revolutionary leadership of the specially oppressed Black workers to the working class as a whole in the total fight against the same exploiter—the bosses who own and run this country. It means to build a base for socialism within the trade union movement, and a Left-Center coalition that will toss out the present sellout misleadership and work in the class interests of the rank and file. And it means that a truly revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party will be built in the U.S., one that will not in any way accommodate itself to the ideology of the class enemy.

Therefore, for the working class to emancipate itself and all oppressed people, for it to eventually seize state power as a class, with a Marxist-Leninist party in its vanguard, the racism that splits the working class must be buried.

Progressive Labor Party, A Plan for Black Liberation (New York, N.D. 1969?), pp. 19–25.

19. BLACK WORKERS MUST LEAD

The most important question facing the Black Liberation Movement is who—what class—will give leadership to the movement. Everyone and all classes cannot lead. There must be a focal point, a leadership, a guiding force, a section of the people that must give leadership.

That focal point and leadership must be a CLASS since all societies are class societies. This means that in all societies there are the people that rule and the people who are being ruled. They are the different classes. In the U.S. today the ones who rule are the boss class (called the bourgeoisie), and they rule over the working class—the overwhelming majority of the people.

The working class and the bourgeoisie are constantly in a struggle. For the moment the ruling class (the bourgeoisie) has the upper hand. As a result we are forced to work for them for low wages, forced to live in slum housing, forced into inferior schools, forced into the army, etc. If any have the illusion that they are not FORCED into these conditions they should consider how workers are treated by the cops, the national guards, the courts, the jails and prisons, etc. This rule depends on FORCE and is properly called the DICTATORSHIP OF THE BOURGEOISIE.

The dictators—the “ruling class” or bourgeoisie—is the group of bankers, bosses and landlords who own the large industrial plants, factories and farms, and buildings. They actually determine who will be president, governor, mayor, police chief, judge, etc. This class of rich people that run this country are the exact opposite of us and are our enemy and as long as they run the country we will never be free!

The working class (“proletariat”) are the people who must sell their labor-power in order to live. They own no means of production.

AMONG THE BLACK PEOPLE there are similar divisions into classes. But the Black bourgeoisie exists more as a state of mind, as something they would like. Most of these people are cheap imitators of the white bourgeoisie, the “Ebony magazine type Negroes”—with or without “naturals.”

Thus, what is called the “Black bourgeoisie” is in reality a member of the lower middle-class that WANTS to be in the ruling class and share the gravy of exploiting the working class. Many of these people work for a living (sell their labor power) just like any member of the working class. The major difference is that their loyalty is to the ruling class and not to the working class.

These social climbers will use any method to achieve their ends. They may yell to the skies “Black power!” “Black capitalism,” “We have to do our own thing,” “Buy Black,” “Support your own” (meaning themselves) and on and on. The key question is whether their program and action is for the liberation of the Black working masses—not just themselves and their few class brothers. We must ask who are they trying to organize and for what? And when we examine these questions we find that their class position is clear.

They talk and act in a manner that says clearly, “We are the educated class and we know what’s good for the movement.” They talk down to the Black workers, and, in fact, hold the Black working people in contempt! If they ever speak to the Black workers it is for the purpose of getting them to support some project whose main benefit will be just for themselves or their class. NATURALS AND DASHIKIS CANNOT HIDE THEIR BASIC PETTY-BOURGEOIS CLASS POSITION!

Sitting on the Fence

Most of these would-be members of the “Black bourgeoisie” have been college trained. What effect does this have on them? Let’s examine.

The ruling class has selected a handful of Blacks to send to college to be trained to carry out the policies that the ruling class has made. These students have been educated in middle-class values and, yes, trained to be white middle-class in Black skins! It is quite similar to the imperialist countries training local civil servants, teachers, police, etc. to carry out its policies in the colonial countries.

WITH THE TREMENDOUS UPSURGE of the Black rebellions and the increasing fighting spirit among large sections of the Black workers, these middle-class trained Blacks are caught in the middle. Many do not know which way to turn. Should they line up on the side of the Black workers or on the side of the “Black bourgeoisie” and the ruling class?

Many of them, at this point, have decided to try to straddle the fence. They don’t want to give up anything and at the same time they want to be identified with “the movement.” At no point do they change their “in” way of life, their aspirations or their relationship to the Black workers.

Sometimes they may change their outward appearances, but this is because they have no strength unless they get some support from the working class—which is 90% of the Black people. So they become the loudest talkers about “Black capitalism” and “Black culture,” etc. They claim this is “speaking to the needs of the Black people.” THE NEEDS OF THE BLACK PEOPLE ARE HOUSING, SCHOOLS, DECENT EDUCATION, JOBS, AN END TO POLICE BRUTALITY, END IMPERIALIST WARS. THE NEED IS TO END EXPLOITATION OF MAN BY MAN—TO DESTROY CAPITALISM—TO ACHIEVE SOCIALISM: IN OTHER WORDS—TO MAKE REVOLUTION! THIS WORKING CLASS RULE IS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT WE HAVE NOW AND IS CALLED THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT!

When leaders speak about and organize around these issues then they will be “speaking to the needs of the Black people!” But what most have been attempting to do is to hide their class position and their bourgeois world outlook in a lot of talk about Black this or Black that—to hide the fact that the things THEY want would be a sellout of the struggles of the vast majority of the Black people—the Black workers!

Who Must Lead?

For many years the Black Liberation Movement has been led by the so-called “Black bourgeoisie—in the name of preachers, students, nationalists, athletes, entertainers—in a word, by everyone EXCEPT the people whose interests all of this leading is SUPPOSED to be serving—the Black working people! Why do these mis-leaders get the spotlight? The reason is that when a true Black workers’ organization emerges the ruling class does everything in its power to smash it. But the RULERS will HELP the NON-working class leaders to flourish, by giving them money, giving them publicity, etc.

A clear example is the Black rebellions. The young workers and the unemployed have been doing the fighting and organizing the resistance to oppression, but it is the would-be Black bourgeoisie “spokesmen” that appear afterwards and get handouts. The ruling class helps them “feather their own nest” because this is the cheapest way to make sure that 90% of the Black people—the working class—the fighters—get nothing!

The so-called “Black bourgeoisie” cannot lead the Black Liberation Movement at this level of the movement’s development! When our movement was at a lower level of development some of the “Black bourgeoisie” did help by stirring things up. But now that the movement is very much alive the need is for much clearer leadership and they mess us up. Now it is up to the working class to seize the leadership. Leaders not in the working class will change with the wind and can be counted on to put their personal interests above that of the mass of the Black people—the workers.

YES, THE CLASS THAT MUST LEAD is the Black working class! This is the class that daily suffers at the hands of the bosses and the slumlords. This is the class that daily fights, in a thousand and one ways, to protect its class interests against the bosses. This is the class that controls production (the factories, the transportation system, the shops, the mine pits, etc.). They are the ones that can organize to hurt imperialism where it will hurt most—at the source of profit.

The Black workers have the organizing skills that they learn in the shops and in the unions; and it is in their most direct interest to overthrow U.S. imperialism because as long as imperialism exists they will never be free. U.S. imperialism CANNOT BUY OFF the entire working class (this would mean the end of their profits); whereas it is not difficult to buy off a handful of the so-called “Black bourgeoisie.”

The Black working people are stable and the chance of them wavering or straddling a fence very small. What fence is there to straddle? What is there to waver about? They have been born into the working class, have become workers and the odds are that they will always remain workers. This should be a source of pride because no economy or system can exist without the working class. The ruling class, through its propaganda machinery, always try to downgrade the people who use their hands to earn a living. They glorify the white collar workers and try to say that only the “misfits,” “those who can’t make it,” etc. wind up as workers with their hands. This is a lie and part of their attempt to keep our working men and women in slavery!

IT IS THESE WORKERS THAT ARE the most militant and that strike fear in the hearts of the ruling class. It is the working class, and the working class only that can properly lead the Black Liberation Movement. They have accumulated years of experience and have developed hatred for the ruling class and the bosses.

Students and the more advanced sections of the small bourgeoisie can join this leadership by serving the people—by putting their talents into the service of the working-class revolution.

Black Workers Organize!

The Black workers must kick out the fakers and pimps and bloodsuckers! Their leadership has meant sellouts and compromise. It has meant leaders accepting deals when the ruling class comes in with a higher bid. It has meant lining up with the ruling class—the enemy of the Black workers!

BLACK WORKERS, ORGANIZE the workers in your shops and plants against the corrupt union leadership and against the bosses, around your class demands! Where there is no union organize one that will represent the interests of the workers in the shop.

Organize in your communities against the slumlords, against police brutality, for a decent education for our children, against the dope traffic—organize to protect and save our communities against “Black removal.”

Organize to kick out the fakers who call themselves “leaders” but feather their own nests.

BLACK WORKING MEN AND WOMEN: ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE, ORGANIZE! You must take your rightful place at the head of the Black Liberation Movement!

Without your leadership there will be no freedom or liberation for the Afro-American people!

Progressive Labor Party, A Plan for Black Liberation (New York, N.D. 1969?), pp. 54–56.

MORE BLACK LABOR RADICALISM

20. RACISM AND THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT

Philadelphia Workers’ Organizing Committee

How the Few Rule the Many

Working people make up the vast majority of the population in this country. We, through our labor, create the wealth of this nation. Yet it is a small handful who exercise control over how that wealth is used and distributed. This handful, who own the mines, mills, and factories, possess vast wealth and power while those of us who created that wealth make just enough to scrape by and have little say in the important decisions that shape our everyday lives. We are the victims of inflation, layoffs and lousy, often dangerous working conditions. We endure a government that overtaxes and underserves us. We are sent off to fight wars to protect the investments of big business. We get empty gas tanks while the oil companies quadruple their profits. All these problems and many more that go together to make up our day to day life stem from the basic fact that this society is set up to serve the few at the expense of the many. It is based on the exploitation of the majority, the working people, for the enrichment of a small minority, the owners of the big corporations—the monopoly capitalists.

The monopolists, through their control of the educational system and the mass media, attempt to make this state of affairs seem like the natural order of things. By a trick of language they turn the profit system, which in reality is based on the exploitation of labor, into the “free enterprise” system and seek to convince us it works for our benefit. They reduce wars, unemployment, inflation and crime to just so many “kinks” to be ironed out. Or even worse, they try to tell us that we, ourselves, are the creators of these problems. This barrage of ideas, which we get in school and now get daily from the newspapers and television, is one important way in which this minority of exploiters seek to maintain their rule over the majority of exploited.

The employer class, realizing themselves to be in a small minority, do everything they can to keep us in the dark about the real roots of our problems. But in spite of these efforts working people know they’re getting the short end and have no choice but to fight back to protect their basic interests.

Knowing this the monopolists long ago realized that their best line of defense of their profits and privileges was to keep the working class divided against itself. If the struggles of various workers can be isolated from each other or better yet pitted against each other then the power of the working class, its power in numbers and in its position at the heart of production, can be neutralized. Whenever there has been this kind of unity in the history of our country the working people have made tremendous strides forward and the employers have had to beat a retreat. The Nineteen Thirties is a good example. The workers, through a militant unity, built the CIO unions, won unemployment compensation, social security, and many other concessions from the reluctant, but frightened monopolies and their agents in Washington. Thus it has always been almost an article of faith with the employers that they must prevent the creation of such unity and do everything in their power to break it once it does develop.

The single most important weapon in the arsenal of the bosses for dividing the workers is white racism. The employers discriminate against the Black workers (and Puerto Rican, Chicano, Asian and American Indian workers as well) and reap greater profits as a result of this discrimination. But more importantly they seek to instill fear, prejudice and hostility in the white workers toward their black counterparts. They seek to turn the white workers against the black struggle for equality. They count on the resentment this breeds among the black workers to lead to their blaming the white workers for their situation. The biggest reward they hope to reap from the sowing of racist ideas is the divisions this will create among the workers’ ranks. Without black-white unity the black workers will be unable to mount an effective challenge to discrimination. Without black-white unity all the workers will be unable to wage a successful fight for their interests. To the extent racial conflict can be created among the workers, class conflict, this is conflict with the employers, is averted. . . .

Racism Provides Superprofits

Within the U.S. this intensification of oppression of peoples abroad was paralleled by the stepped up oppression of the Afro-American people. Just as the cheap labor of the peoples of Latin America and Asia brought the monopolies super profits, so the labor of Black workers here in the U.S. was employed for the same end. The drying up of large scale European immigration underlined the need for new sources of cheap labor. The expanded production brought about by the First World War accelerated the demand for black labor. Thus from the early years of the twentieth century down to our own time, the U.S. has witnessed a great internal migration—the movement of Black people from the agricultural Southlands to the industrial cities of the North, Mid-West and Far West. This movement of Blacks from a farming people to an urban wage earning people was accompanied by continuation of racism. The inequalities of the plantation were transferred to the Northern ghettoes and factories. The features of this inequality must now be examined.

Racism: The Great Wedge

Workers Pitted Against Each Other

Great as these benefits of racism to the capitalist are, the single greatest service it renders him is its power to divide the mass of white workers from the black workers and mislead them into the employer’s camp. The white worker, as we have seen, is not profiting from racism. On the contrary, he too is threatened very directly by its effects. The white worker’s real interests lies in uniting with the black worker to put an end to the inequality between them . . . an inequality that enables the employer to oppress black labor, threaten the white worker, and pit the one against the other. But the white worker so often does not grasp this and instead views the black worker, rather than the employer, as the cause of his problems. This blindspot is the product of years of conditioning and of centuries of history. The idea of white supremacy has been cultivated in the white worker by a capitalist controlled culture, a culture that has developed to justify and smooth the way for the exploitation of labor and its division into two antagonistic racial camps.

To the extent the white worker leans toward racial conflict with the black workers as opposed to class struggle against the employers, he benefits not himself, but his boss. A good general example of this is the situation in the South where racism has served to lead many white workers into defending Jim Crow discrimination and to oppose the black struggle for equality. The result—disunity between black and white—has enormously aided the efforts of Big Business and their flunkey politicians to maintain the South as a capitalist paradise and a worker’s nightmare. No unions, low wages and the worst social services in the nation—these are some of the fruits of racism for the white as well as the black workers. In that stronghold of white supremacy, Mississippi, the average hourly wage of production workers is $2.77/hour, the lowest such average in the country. Compare this with Michigan, a state with a strong labor movement, where the average is $4.94/hour and the point is made even clearer. . . .

Black Workers and the Class Struggle

Rank and File Movement Grows

The importance of black-white unity is underlined when we look at the role black workers are playing in the trade unions and the struggles of working people generally.

In the unions in the last few years we have seen the development of a broad rank & file movement that takes a stand for a democratic, militant brand of unionism in opposition to the bureaucratic, sell out policies of the AFL-CIO leadership. Rank & file caucuses in auto, steel, transport and other basic industries have formed around the elementary need of workers for a union that genuinely represents them and fights for their interests. These caucuses have grown up in response to a union leadership that has collaborated with management to speed up production and improve “efficiency” at the expense of the workers . . . a union leadership that has by and large caved in before the joint demand of big business and government for wage controls in a period of escalating prices . . . a union leadership that has sat on its thumbs while our jobs are exported to unorganized low wage areas and a union leadership that has failed to challenge and even cooperated in the employer’s practice of racial and sexual discrimination. These misleaders have been able to carry out their disastrous policies in large part because they seek by fair means or foul to keep the rank & file out of the arena of decision making. Thus the caucuses have called for a return to rank & file worker’s basic interests. Another side to the upsurge of rank & file activity is the development of new unions like the Hospital Workers and Farm workers unions and new organizing drives by old unions like the Amalgamated Clothing Workers which are bringing thousands of previously unorganized workers into the ranks of organized labor and setting an example for the rest of the unions through their militant struggle.

Role of Black Workers

At the heart of this rank & file upsurge stands the black worker. In basic industry much of the leadership and initiative for the rank & file movement has come from the black workers. This leadership has taken many forms—black caucuses, revolutionary black workers’ organizations, and multi-racial rank & file groupings. While the black workers have naturally and quite correctly made the demand for equality and an end to racism a central concern of this movement, they have also been in the forefront in waging a fight for better wages and working conditions, union democracy and the full range of worker’s concerns. The situation in the United Steel Workers is a good example. USW president I. W. Abel and the bureaucracy he represents have a long history of collaboration with management in maintaining racial discrimination in the plants, consigning Black workers to the dirtiest, most dangerous and lowest-paying jobs. At the same time the USW is one of the most top down, undemocratic of unions. Recently Abel has taken his collaboration with the employers another step by going along with company inspired productivity schemes and by signing away the right to strike in the interests of profits and labor peace for the steel monopolies. A massive rank & file movement has developed in steel in response to these sell out policies and it has been the Black workers who have been most militant in fighting not only the racist discrimination policies, but the productivity plan and the no-strike pact as well.

Black workers have also been a key force in pushing the unions to take a broader view of their tasks—to see themselves not as narrow pressure groups, but as the fighting arm of the whole working class, battling on the political as well as the economic front. This phenomena too has taken many forms. Black longshoremen in the East, West and Gulf coast ports have taken direct action against the pro-business, racist foreign policy of the U.S. government by refusing to unload goods from the white supremacist states of South Africa and Rhodesia. Predominantly Black unions like the Hospital Workers actively mobilized their memberships in mass demonstrations against U.S. aggression in Southeast Asia.

In taking these actions Black workers demonstrated an understanding of the common interests of workers throughout the world as well as grasping the cost to U.S. workers of the government’s militaristic and aggressive policies. Solidarity with the struggles of other workers here in the U.S. is another side of the same spirit as when West coast Black longshoremen recently refused to load scab produce in support of the striking farmworkers. Black led rank & file struggle has also been characterized by an understanding of the need to link struggles of workers on the shop floor with struggles in the community. In Detroit, for example, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, a group based in the auto plants, joined forces with working people in the community in the fight for better education, health care, law enforcement and other concerns. This in turn made it possible to mobilize community support for struggles in the plant.

Why Black Militancy?

The militancy of the Black worker certainly has much to do with the nature of the conditions he or she faces. Since Black workers generally have the most oppressive jobs they have been hit the hardest by the speed up drive and the general attack on working conditions that the bosses have launched. Lower wages and the greater likelihood of a layoff slip, harassment by racist foremen, barriers to upgrading and a hundred other factors combine to make up the extra burden of oppression the Black worker carries. But oppression doesn’t automatically translate into resistance. The Black worker, concentrated in areas of heavy industry where labor is highly social and cooperative, learns the capacity for collective action from the job itself. Also the Black worker has been moved and educated by the growing intensity of the Black Freedom struggle over the last two decades. The Civil Rights Movement, the urban rebellions, and the various struggles of Black students, welfare recipients, tenants, and prisoners have all contributed to the political consciousness of the Black worker. These struggles generated a spirit of resistance in all Black people. For the Black worker this spirit has increasingly taken the shape of an across the board struggle against the forms of class exploitation. As has already been made clear the demand for equality and an end to racism is itself a demand that serves the whole working class, white and black. But what is also important is that the Black workers have been in the front lines of almost every struggle to better the way of life of all workers.

Labor and Black Liberation

The Labor Movement in its effort to protect the living standards of workers and push forward toward a decent society for working people needs allies. It needs staunch friends outside the trade unions. Black people generally, that is Black people outside the labor movement in civil rights organizations, welfare rights groups, Black political organizations and community groups have been the most consistent ally of the trade unions and have in fact often been far ahead of the AFL-CIO in fighting for the interests of the working class. This has taken many concrete forms—the fight for a minimum wage and a guaranteed annual income, for more jobs through expanding socially useful production of housing, schools, hospitals and the like, for improved social services, consumer protection and many other reforms all of which serve the needs of working people. Black organizations were far in advance of the AFL-CIO in opposing the Vietnam War and spiraling military spending. The Black Liberation Movement has, besides being a struggle for full equality, been a movement that necessarily embraces the full range of concerns of the working people, a reflection of the fact that the overwhelming majority of Blacks are workers (94%) with interests that unite them with the whole working class.

Thus in two fundamental respects the Black people’s interests and struggle coincide with the interests of the working class. First the struggle for equality is a struggle that serves all workers in that it aims at eliminating a powerful weapon of the exploiters—a means for greater economic exploitation and a wedge for dividing the workers against each other. Secondly, this struggle, given the class character of the Black people, not only concerns itself with ending discrimination, but demands across the board improvements in many other areas that concern working people as well.

All this throws into sharp relief the importance of Black-white unity. It makes clear why the bosses value their old friend Jim Crow above all others. Racism does not simply divide Black from white—it divides the white workers from the workers who have generally been the most militant and most conscious of the whole class’s interests, that is the Black workers. And it divides the workers movement from its most important ally, the broader Black movement that consists of Black people outside the work places as well as the Black workers and trade unionists.

The Road to Victory Over Racism—Class Unity and Class Struggle

Unity

Given that racism is very profitable to the bosses, both economically and politically, it should be clear that they will not give up their practice of racial oppression easily. Black people have waged a stubborn and heroic struggle against their oppression from the time the first slave ship docked in the New World to the present. In our time we have witnessed this struggle at a high point of intensity. Through mass organization and action Black people have succeeded in eliminating the most blatant legal forms of Jim Crow. They have scored some gains in the areas of employment, housing and education. In the course of waging these struggles Black people have come to a greater understanding of their history and culture and attained a new degree of national pride and self-respect, qualities that the racist rulers have always sought to deny them. But still after almost two decades of intense struggle the situation of the mass of Black people is not greatly altered. The brutal every day realities of ghetto life remain intact and the overall pattern of racial discrimination survives.

The frustrations that this failure to uproot racism have created has led some Black people down politically self-defeating paths. Religious cults, separatist or Back-to-Africa movements, and isolated terrorist groups are some of the forms that have flourished in the wake of these frustrations. The basic reason for the failure to lick racism is again the successful splitting tactics of the employers who have been able to largely isolate the Black movement for equality and pit a substantial section of white labor against it. The plain fact of the matter is that it takes Black-white unity, the unity of the working class, to really beat racism back. Only a united, fighting working class has the numbers and social power, a power inherent in the worker’s role as the producer of all social wealth, to force the struggle against racism beyond its present stalemate.

Class Struggle

The road to defeating racism is the broad highway to class struggle. This means the demand for an end to racism has to be taken up as part of the overall demands of the whole working class. It has to be put forward as a demand that is vital to the interests of all the workers. To successfully defeat racism means relying on the working class as the main force. And this means projecting the struggle against racism from a working class viewpoint.

The struggles of the Black workers demonstrate an advanced grasp of this viewpoint. In spite of the indifference and hostility of many white workers, the Black workers’ movement has generally placed the demand for an end to discrimination in the context of a broad program that speaks to the interests of the mass of workers and has promoted Black-white unity. This understanding grows out of the actual experience of the Black worker on the job. It is obvious to most Black workers, at least in plants that are multi-racial, that the support of the white workers cannot be mobilized on the basis of abstract moral appeals against racism or still less by calling them “hunkies” or “devils.” They can only be won through demonstrating that racism hurts all workers. They can only be drawn into struggle on the basis of a clear program that puts forward demands that speak to the grievances of the mass of workers. These are the lessons that the actual struggle of Black workers against racism and exploitation teach. And these lessons are of vital importance for the larger Black Liberation Movement.

Workers Must Lead Black Movement

The Black People’s Movement is not of one mind on how Black people are to achieve freedom in America. These differences grow out of the reality that Black people, like white people, are in different social classes. While the vast majority of Black people are part of the working class, there is also a small but influential Black middle class. This middle class, composed mainly of small businessmen and professionals, is the social base for the ideas of separatism and so-called Black capitalism. This class tends to think of expanded business opportunities for themselves as the road forward for Black people. Separatist thinking is strong among this group because it seeks to develop and control a Black market in opposition to White owned business. Among the professions separatist thinking takes the form of promoting various poverty programs or “community control” projects that will enhance the opportunities and power of this strata.

It is important to recognize that the Black middle class is victimized by discrimination and racism. There can be no question that Black businessmen and professions should have equal rights with their white counterparts. The Black middle class is a legitimate part of the larger Black Liberation movement. But this class cannot be counted on to lead the Black movement. It cannot provide leadership for the mass of working class Black people for the basic reason that the working class viewpoint so necessary to the successful development of the struggle is alien to this class of small capitalists and independent professionals.

Their whole program of expanding Black business is no solution to the problems of Black workers. Black owned businesses are generally small retail and service operations that employ a handful of workers and have little economic importance. In an era of monopoly when it takes millions to start a major enterprise, these small businessmen can never hope to become owners of large scale industry. Even if they could this would leave the Black worker in a position where he was now exploited by a Black capitalist instead of a white one. The Black middle class cannot be counted on to consistently put forward a program that genuinely serves the Black masses. Nor can the black middle class be expected to champion the cause of Black-white class unity when it so often perceives its interests in terms of narrow nationalism and separatism.

The Black middle class has provided much of the leadership of the Black movement in the past. For this reason its influence and the strength of its ideas are very great even among the masses of Black workers. But to move the struggle against racism beyond its present stalemate it is the Black workers who must take the leadership of the Black Liberation movement. This is essential to building the unity between Black and white workers, the whole working class and the whole Black people. This does not mean that all Blacks from the middle class must be thrust out of leadership and only workers can occupy these positions. It means that the working class viewpoint must prevail over the ideas of separatism, narrow nationalism and Black capitalism. It is for the most part the Black workers who will carry forth this struggle for the working class stand. For it is the Black workers who have the clearest, most direct and most urgent stake in building a united working class movement against racism and the whole system of capitalist exploitation.

Can the White Worker Be Won to the Struggle Against Racism?

But, of course, the main block to going forward in the fight against racism is on the white and not the Black side of the fence. No matter how well organized, no matter how well led, no matter how politically conscious the Black Movement is, it can only go to a certain point without the full force of the whole working class being brought solidly onto the side of Black Liberation. The main problem and the primary task is to win the white workers to an understanding of the effects of racism on the workers’ movement and to gain the white worker’s active participation in the struggle for full equality. It is the special responsibility and obligation of the class conscious white workers to see that this urgent task is carried out.

In many rank & file movements there is a tendency to want to play down demands against racism on the grounds that “they divide people.” What this really means is that these demands will alienate sections of the white workers and thus weaken the struggle. What it also means, by way of implication, is that it is less important to alienate the Black workers by ignoring their oppression. Many white workers who make this argument may be sincerely interested in unity and unconscious of the racist bias it reflects. Some Black workers will even subordinate their own special concerns in order to make it easier to mobilize white workers because of the need for unity on what are seen as common concerns. In both cases this argument is fatally wrong. The source of disunity among the workers is not the struggle against racism itself. The struggle only brings racism out into the open. There is no way around it. The white workers must be won to this struggle. They must be convinced that it is vital to their interests. And they can be! The view, common to many Black workers as well as many progressive white workers, that the mass of white workers cannot come to take up this struggle is a denial of the possibility of class struggle—a denial that workers can understand their own collective interests and act on this understanding. It is also a view that is contradicted by both history and current events in the labor movement.

Historically racism has indeed been a powerful and destructive force within the labor movement. But there are also numerous examples of Black-white unity in opposition to racism. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was a militant revolutionary industrial union in the early years of this century. The “Wobblies,” as they were called, were unique among the trade unions of the time in that they actively fought racism. In their organizing drive among Black and white lumber workers in the South the IWW created racially mixed locals, which were unheard of at the time and condemned by the craft minded, racist American Federation of Labor (AFL). In spite of a vicious propaganda campaign waged by the employers to split the white workers away from the Blacks, the ranks remained united. The appeals to the white workers to uphold “white supremacy” by refusing to strike with Black workers fell upon deaf ears. Efforts to break strikes by getting other Blacks as well as Mexican laborers to scab also failed. The southern timber workers were finally crushed only through the organized violence of the state. The employers could not allow this example of fighting class unity to succeed because it threatened the whole foundation of white supremacy on which the capitalist house of cards rested.

During World War I revolutionary elements in the AFL succeeded in launching a successful organizing drive among the Chicago Packinghouse workers. This campaign, which breached the employer’s open shop dike in basic industry, brought thousands of Black workers into the AFL. The Packing trusts sought to wreck this campaign by splitting the workers racially. When the union sought to hold a march and rally, the city government acting for the Packers, refused to give the union a permit unless they would agree to separate Black and white marchers and rallies. The union compromised by agreeing to separate marches but holding a single rally. The white march went through the black community where the Black people cheered the marchers. The white workers carried placards making their opposition to the segregation of the marches clear. One white worker carried a sign that read: “The bosses think that because we are of different color and different nationalities we should fight each other. We’re going to fool them and fight for a common cause—A Square Deal For All.” Later the bosses fomented a violent race riot. The police and National Guard acted more to intimidate and brutalize the Black people than to restrain white racist mobs which were encouraged in their pillage by the Packers. The union played an important role in ending the riot and defending the Black community from racist outrages. At one point the union struck the Packers to bring the riot to an end.

In the late nineteen twenties the Trade Union Unity League, a Communist led group of industrial unions, made the demand for Black equality a central part of its program. The TUUL not only opposed racism on the job but agitated for social equality for Black people in all aspects of American life. The best known campaign in which the TUUL played an active role was the fight to free the Scottsboro Boys, nine Black youths who had been framed on a rape charge in Scottsboro, Alabama. The TUUL sought to educate the workers through this campaign and succeeded in mobilizing white as well as Black workers to oppose this legal lynching.

The unemployment struggles of the thirties are another important example of Black-white unity. The Unemployed Councils, which led and organized the struggle for jobs and relief, fought against discrimination in the administration of relief as well as in employment practices. The Councils also fought evictions and in numerous instances mobilized white unemployed to join with Blacks in opposing evictions of Black unemployed by ghetto slumlords. Black workers made up approximately half the membership of the Councils and were prominent in their leadership.

Nor is this kind of Black-white unity just ancient history. In the fifties the American Federation of Teachers, responding to the civil rights movement, expelled all its segregated locals in the South and supported integration of schools in that area. In 1965 District 65 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union conducted a successful strike involving over two thousand employees in New York’s textile converting industry for the specific purpose of opening up more jobs for Black and Puerto Rican workers. At the last conference of the United Steel Workers, which focused on upcoming contract demands, a substantial number of white workers joined with the Black fellows in calling for the elimination of racist practices in upgrading. In Fremont, California last year the Brotherhood Caucus swept the elections and won control of a UAW local. The Brotherhood Caucus, which successfully united Black, white and Chicano workers, included in its program a demand for a discrimination committee for each shift with a full time union representative and the power to redress grievances for discrimination. Even in the deepest South there are examples. A long strike against the Masonite Corporation in Laurel, Mississippi saw Ku Klux Klan members join with Black workers in common struggle. In the course of the strike the white workers dropped the Klan and spoke out against segregation at the Masonite plant.

This is not to underestimate the depth of the problem. The dominant reality is that the mass of white workers, both historically and currently, have not taken up the struggle against racism. But what these examples illustrate (and countless others could be cited) is that the white workers can be won to this struggle. The ruling employer class has sought to create the impression that the white workers are implacably hostile to Black people. They have suppressed the true history of working peoples, including the instances of class unity, in order to further this impression. They have tried to place the responsibility for racism in the U.S. on the white workers and not on themselves. The famous Kerner Commission Report, issued after the series of rebellions that swept the Black communities in the late sixties, is a good example of this. The report fully acknowledges and documents the existence of white racism, but it places the responsibility for this situation on “White America”—in other words on the mass of white working people. The report implies that it is their racist attitudes that hold Black people down. This, of course, lets the big monopolies and the politicians who serve them neatly off the hook. The institutions of government and business only reflect the attitudes of the white majority according to the Kerner view. The practical implications of this analysis are to focus on “education” of the majority rather than change of the institutions.

The mass media constantly reinforces the ruling class’s version of who creates and sustains racism. The “All in the Family” show is a good example. Archie Bunker is a stereotyped version of the white worker—an ignorant bigot. It is the Archie Bunkers, we are led to believe, who are the problem—their ignorance lies behind the racial oppression of Black people. There can be no denying that ignorance and bigotry exist among white working people (although Archie Bunker is by no means the “typical case” as the producers of this show suggest), but is this really the source of Black people’s oppression? Why are there no T.V. shows about David Rockefeller, whose Chase Manhattan bank makes millions from investments in the Apartheid industries of South Africa? What about the owners of General Motors who daily crush the life out of Black workers on their sped up assembly lines? Where, indeed, are all the big employers who daily wring millions of extra dollars out of the toil of black labor? They are faceless and invisible. The owners of public communications like TV are in solidarity with owners everywhere. What corporation will sponsor a TV show that exposes the real enemy—the monopoly corporations themselves?

This brainwash that the problem of racism is the creation of the white masses as opposed to the white ruling class must be countered. It is similar to that which is employed to explain all other social problems. (Pollution is not caused by the profit hungry monopolies but by the people who litter our highways and drive pollution making cars—war is the product not of the drive for more markets by the big corporations but by the “aggressiveness” of the people, etc.). This lie can best be exposed by the active involvement of masses of white workers in the struggle against racism. History shows this can be done. The interests of all working people demand that it be done.

The Fight Against Racism in the Trade Unions

Unions: Strengths and Weaknesses

The trade unions are the largest and most powerful mass organizations of the working class. Over twenty million workers are organized into unions, including most of the workers in basic, heavy industry. The union’s ability to make improvements in the wages and working conditions of its members is a matter of proven fact. The unionized worker makes an average of 2,000 dollars more a year than his unorganized counterpart. Pensions, health insurance and other fringe benefits are the ordinary fruits of trade unionism.

At the same time the trade unions as they exist today reveal serious weaknesses. They are dominated by a high paid, privileged bureaucracy that seeks to conciliate the employers at the expense of the rank & file. This leadership has traded away at the bargaining table many of the hard fought gains workers have won over the years—gains that include protection from speed up and the right to strike. Moreover this leadership has either gone along with or offered only token resistance to the various anti-labor policies of the Nixon administration. The unions have by and large failed to organize the unorganized and stem the flow of jobs to cheap labor, non union areas. Finally the unions have, again in general, failed to seriously challenge racial and sexual discrimination or even worse have practiced it directly themselves.

This is a sharp indictment of the present union leadership and the policies they represent. Unions do not have to be this way. And they can be changed. In spite of their bureaucratic character, unions are generally sufficiently democratic so that a strong and well organized rank & file movement can oust union misleaders and change union policy. The recent housecleaning in the United Mine Workers where the corrupt Boyle machine was sent packing by the rank & file is a good case in point. The new Miller leadership has taken important steps forward by restoring union democracy and adopting a more militant stance toward the coal operators.

Because of the immense real and potential power unions possess to wrest gains for the workers from the employers they are a central arena for any movement aimed at general improvements in the conditions of working people. For all rank & file workers the struggle to make the union a more democratic, fighting instrument is of vital importance. And for all workers the transformation of the unions from their present racist stagnation into genuinely anti-racist organizations is a must.

The racist practices of the trade unions grow out of the existence of a labor bureaucracy that is tied to the employer class in a number of ways. The bureaucracy receives large salaries and privileges that tend to separate them from the rank & file and tie their outlook to that of the employers. By and large they are saturated with a class collaborationist philosophy of trade unionism—the idea that conciliation of and cooperation with the employers is the best path for the labor movement. Since racism serves the interests of the employers, since it is vital to maintain the stability of their system of their high level profits, racism inevitably becomes part of the outlook of these agents of the employers within the ranks of the worker’s movement. It is important to understand that the labor bureaucracy is racist not by way of misunderstanding their interests, but rather because their interests are so closely tied with those of the employers.

The Case of the ILGWU

The case of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) is a good concrete illustration of the interrelationship between bureaucratic class collaborationism and racism. The ILGWU has a reputation as a progressive union (unlike the racist building trades unions which everyone knows are politically backward). This reputation is the product of its dim, distant past when it was truly a fighting union and of the clever public relations campaigns of its leadership. In terms of its actual trade union practice the ILGWU is rotten to the core.

The ILGWU consciously works to keep wages down and cool out worker militancy. For example in 1967 the union’s politically powerful leadership opposed a minimum wage bill for the city of New York, where the garment industry is centered, and used its muscle to defeat the bill. Wages of the mass of garment workers have fallen sharply over the years relative to that of other workers and at least for some years they have even fallen absolutely. The development of this policy coincides with the period in which the garment industry in New York became predominantly Black and Puerto Rican in terms of the workforce. The Union argues that wages cannot be improved because this would cause employers to fold or move with the consequent loss of jobs. In other words the union has become a force for holding down wages for the benefit of the employers.

Scuttles Democracy and Promotes Racism

In order to succeed in carrying out such a blatantly class colloborationist policy the union necessarily cannot allow rank & file democracy for if it did the mass of workers would clearly reject such a program. Thus the ILGWU in its constitution bans any form of rank & file organization. There can be no caucuses except for a short period prior to national conventions.

Furthermore through an involved series of undemocratic eligibility requirements the ILGWU restricts the right of the rank & file to run for and hold union office. In 1967 only one-fifth of one percent of the ILGWU’s 442,318 members were eligible to run for the General Executive Board (GEB), the union’s governing body, and only one twentieth of one percent were eligible to run for President or Secretary-Treasurer. Out of the union’s 145,000 Black and Puerto Rican members only four or five of them were eligible to run for the GEB and not a single Black was eligible to run for President. Furthermore under former President David Dubinsky all union officers had to submit a signed but undated letter of resignation to him as soon as they took office. Thus the ILGWU leadership is grossly unrepresentative of the workers and is completely subservient to the top. There is not a single Black on the GEB and virtually no Blacks and Puerto Ricans in leadership positions at the local level.

The garment manufacturers have sought to exploit the cheap labor market of New York City which is predominantly Black and Puerto Rican. The ILGWU is their accomplice in this undertaking. There are some well paying job classifications in the industry but these are restricted to whites. The union has maintained that upgrading Blacks and Puerto Ricans into better paying job classifications is not its concern. Until very recently the ILGWU maintained segregated locals. In short the policy of putting the employer’s interests first has inevitably led the ILGWU leadership to scuttle union democracy and defend and promote racism.

In order for the rank & file movement to develop its full potential—for it to become a force that really can transform the trade unions, these weaknesses must be corrected. The struggle against racism must become a conscious thrust of the whole movement, not simply the activity of Black caucuses. All rank & file groups must take the involvement of Black and other minority workers in leadership as well as in all other phases of activity an absolute priority. Rhetoric about wanting to involve Black workers is not the road to achieving this priority. Instead a program that raises the demand against discrimination must be developed and implemented. This is the key to building Black-white unity in the rank & file movement and transforming what are now predominantly white groupings into genuinely multi-racial organizations.

The exact content of an anti-racist program can’t be spelled out in advance. It depends on the concrete circumstances in each industry, shop and union. What may make good sense in one situation may be disastrous in another. But certain general concerns and demands are basic to virtually all job situations in at least some form. The following, then, outlines the general elements of a rank & file trade union program to challenge racism on the job.

The implications of this for the broader trade union movement are clear. The case of the ILGWU, while somewhat extreme, describes a problem that is common to most unions in one form or another. The fight against racism must be part and parcel of the fight to unseat the labor bureaucracy and defeat its policy of class collaborationism.

The rank & file movement as it presently exists within the trade unions has included the fight against racism as one of its major thrusts. But the movement is also very uneven in terms of this struggle. Black caucuses or rank & file formations with strong black leadership have been the most consistent fighters against discrimination. Here there has sometimes been a failure to place the struggle against racism in the context of black-white unity and the overall class struggle. The class interests of the white workers in defeating racism have not always been understood. In general, though, the Black workers have promoted a class struggle outlook in the fight against racism. In caucuses where Black participation is weak, the fight against racism has been correspondingly weak or even non-existent. This points to the failure of the bulk of militant white workers to grasp the import of this struggle. The reason there is little participation on the part of Black workers in these caucuses is precisely because of the failure of the white workers and caucus leadership to develop an active program that speaks to the racial oppression of the Black workers. This is one of the key areas of weakness in the rank & file movement.

1) End Discrimination in Hiring. The forms of discrimination in hiring are many and varied, ranging from companies that simply do not hire blacks at all to firms that hire substantial numbers but only in the lower job categories. The union should expect that Blacks be represented in all job classifications proportionate to their numbers in the labor market in the area. In other words if Blacks make up 50% of the work force in the community then the company’s hiring policy should reflect this in that roughly half the workers hired for all job categories should be Black. The union should demand that discriminatory educational requirements, unrelated to ability to do the job be eliminated. When there are legitimate qualifications that Blacks, because of discrimination in education, may be at a disadvantage in meeting, the company should be responsible for providing training. The union should create a watchdog committee to monitor company hiring practices. Many companies constantly violate existing civil rights laws in practicing discrimination. The union, besides taking action on its own, could make sure these violations are caught and get the Human Relations Commission or the appropriate government body to act to correct these abuses.

2) End Discrimination in Upgrading. Black and minority workers (as well as women) are kept in low paying, often dirty or dangerous job classifications through discrimination in upgrading or promotion policies. The forms of this discrimination also vary widely. In some industries (Men’s Clothing and Ladies Garments for example) there is no established procedure for upgrading and the bosses promote whomever they wish. In industries, like steel, the device of the double seniority trial has been used. Seniority is the basis for upgrading but only within a particular department—thus minority workers can be restricted to certain departments, generally the dirtiest, dangerous and lowest paying ones. Finally the device of apprenticeship or training programs is used. These programs often are discriminatory in the kind of qualifications they demand for entrance. To correct these abuses the union must insist on the principle of plant wide seniority as the basis for upgrading. All job openings should be posted and all workers should be able to bid with the job being awarded to the worker with the most time in. In cases where special skills or training is demanded, entrance to apprenticeship programs must not be discriminatory. Educational qualifications, testing and other requirements must be evaluated with this in mind. Unless the knowledge required is job related it should be dropped from the requirements. (You don’t need to understand European history to set dies or lay bricks). Here too the union must oversee the whole upgrading program and make sure that equal opportunity is really being offered. The only real test of the program is that over a reasonable period of time the inequality in the distribution of jobs disappears. As long as there are job classifications that are disproportionately white the problem still exists.

3) Stop Racist Harassment. Racist foremen or supervisory personnel can and do harass Black and minority workers. Insulting racist language, discriminatory job assignments and a racial double standard in evaluating quality of work and job performance are common forms of harassment. The demand of the Brotherhood Caucus of UAW local No. 1364 in Fremont, California is a good example of the kind of measure unions need to take to deal with this problem. Point nine of their program calls for a Discrimination Committee for each shift with power to deal with discrimination on the shop floor. The UAW in many locals have Fair Employment Practices Committees. At one time many of these committees really functioned to fight racism but in recent years they have been eliminated in many locals or have become nothing more than window dressing to hide the do nothing policy of the UAW leadership. The Brotherhood caucus is demanding a revival of this committee by making its chairman a full time official.

4) Equality in Union Leadership. A union’s leadership at all levels should reflect the composition of the union’s membership. If it does not, something is obviously wrong. While in the last few years substantial numbers of Black workers have been elected to union office, the situation remains grossly unequal. Here too the problem varies from union to union. The previously cited example of the ILGWU, a union with huge minority membership with a lily white leadership is one kind of situation and not a unique one. In some other unions like the UAW there is much more minority representation, although the top echelons remain disproportionately white. A rank & file movement must push for more minority participation at all leadership levels of the union. Obviously more Black leadership is not, in and of itself, a total solution to the problems of Black workers. But representative union leadership is an elementary part of union democracy and white support for Black union candidates is an important step in the process of forging Black-white unity. Since a number of unions have tried to cool out rank & file insurgency on the part of Black workers by adding a few more Blacks to their slates without altering their racist policies, it is always going to be important to stress that leadership, both actual and potential, be judged by the content of their program.

Not all anti-racist demands deal directly with discrimination. Many demands around wages and working conditions are blows against racism to the extent they aim at improving the conditions of minority workers and narrow the inequality between Black and white. For example the rank & file movement in steel, by pushing for improvements in working conditions in the coke ovens, which are predominantly manned by Black workers, is taking up the fight against racism while at the same time taking steps that will improve and protect conditions of all the workers. The anti-racist content of any rank & file program will undoubtedly consist in some large part of demands of this sort that speak concretely to the problems of the workers victimized directly by racism.

The rank & file movement must not only adopt anti-racist demands as part of its program. It must actively struggle for them within the union. These demands must be seen as educational tools to deepen the broader rank & file’s consciousness of the importance of the struggle against racism. This aspect is particularly important with the white workers who must be convinced of the need to struggle for these kinds of demands. A program is only as good as its author’s willingness to fight for it.

While the bedrock of any rank & file organization is a program that deals with questions of immediate concern to the workers on the job, there is also a need to take up broader political concerns. We as workers cannot solve all our problems within the framework of collective bargaining. Our experience with Nixon’s new economics of frozen wages, spiraling prices and mounting shortages is an illustration of this. The war in Vietnam, which gravely affected working people in the U.S., is another. The rank & file movement must take up these political questions as part of an effort to broaden the political horizons of the union—to make the union a fighter for the working class in all its battles as well as its defender on the shop floor. The unions must break out of the trap of relying solely on the two capitalist parties and take political action on their own. Nor should political action be limited to electoral activity and lobbying. The unions should take direct action—demonstrations, marches and political strikes.

Similarly the struggle against racism cannot be limited to the fight between the union and the company over wages, working conditions and other immediate concerns. The labor movement must take up the agenda of the Black liberation movement and adopt it as its own. This must occur if an alliance between these two forces is to be forged. And it is exactly such an alliance that is the cornerstone of the strategy to end the system of class exploitation and racism. The trade unions should join the fight for equality in education, housing and law enforcement. The drive of the Welfare Rights Organization for a guaranteed annual income should get the full support of labor. The unions must actively oppose the racist foreign policy of the U.S. which supports the white supremacist settler states of South Africa, funds the attempt to maintain Portuguese colonialism in Africa and lends support to Zionist aggression in the Middle East. Again the activity of the trade unions on these vital issues cannot be limited to resolutions at conventions. The trade unions must mobilize their ranks for mass action towards these goals. The key to moving the trade unions in this direction is the organized pressure of the rank & file. It is the task of the rank & file movement to take up these issues as part of the overall program for transforming the trade unions.

Organize!

Throughout this section we have talked about the tasks of the rank & file movement in relation to the trade unions. Finally we want to discuss the forms of that movement—the way it needs to organize itself. Rank & file organizations of all sorts exist. Many of them have no real program. They consist of those disgruntled with the union leadership who want to see some kind of change. These caucuses which lack any political and programmatic definition are likely to fall victim to careerist elements who will play on the real grievances of the ranks to get themselves elected to union office and once in power will continue business as usual. A rank & file group that is really going to make a difference can’t be built around simple opposition to the current leadership or around the personalities of a few of its leaders. It has to be built on the basis of a program that reflects the interests of the mass of workers and can draw them into struggle. It has to be a mass, democratic organization open to all rank & filers. It has to hold its own leadership accountable for upholding its principles and program.

Class Struggle Program

What should such a program be? It must be a class struggle program. In other words a program that proceeds from the assumption that the mass of workers have interests that are distinct and antagonistic to that of the employers and that the workers have to struggle against the bosses to get what they need. This kind of class struggle unionism is in opposition to the dominant business unionism in the country today which preaches cooperation with the conciliation of the employer as the road forward for workers. The broad content of the class struggle program has already been touched on in various places in this article. The union must fight for job security, better wages and improved working conditions instead of helping the company to justify speed up, low wages or the elimination of jobs. The union must be a genuinely democratic organization accountable to its membership. The union must take a stand of solidarity with workers everywhere—in other unions, in other cities and in other countries. The union must militantly represent the interests of the working people in the political arena as well as in the shop. And as we have stressed throughout—the union must resolutely oppose racism and champion the cause of freedom for all oppressed minorities. This is the kind of unionism that flows from an understanding that there is a struggle going on between the employer class and the working class. It is a union that expects the union, a worker’s organization, to choose the worker’s side. It is this kind of program that the rank & file must organize itself around in order to win back and transform their unions.

Representative Groups

Besides having a solid program the rank & file caucus must be broad. It can’t speak for the mass of workers if it only consists of a handful of people. It must not only draw in large numbers but it must be truly representative of the union’s composition in terms of race, sex, occupation and job classification. This need underlines the importance of developing the kind of concrete program that can appeal and activate the broad ranks.

Black Caucuses?

In many cases, as we have already mentioned, Black workers have organized their own organizations—all Black caucuses. Some may wonder is this not in contradiction to the need for broad all inclusive organization? The answer is that the very existence of a separate Black caucus indicates that there is not an immediate base for a broad, multi-racial or multi-national group. It indicates that the struggle against racism on the part of the white workers is at such a low ebb that the Black workers feel no confidence or trust in the white workers. In such a situation Black-white organizational unity would be at the expense of the Black workers. It would be a unity without principle. In these circumstances a Black caucus is not only justifiable, but correct and healthy given that the alternatives would be no organization or an unprincipled or unworkable alliance. While Black caucuses thus are a legitimate and necessary form within the rank & file movement, there can be no justification for a white caucus. Whites have no separate interests to unite around as whites. When whites do form a white organization it is always to protect their imagined racial interests and racial privilege. A white caucus is by definition going to be a racist form.

Black-White Unity

While recognizing the legitimacy of Black caucuses, our goal must be to build united Black-white caucuses. In a situation where a Black caucus already exists and there is no other form, the task is to raise the level of struggle against racism on the part of the white workers to a point where the Black workers in the separate organization feel confident that they can participate in a multi-racial form without compromising the fight against their racial oppression. The responsibility for advancing this struggle and laying the groundwork for Black-white unity is firmly on the shoulder of the class conscious white worker. At the same time the class conscious Black workers have a special responsibility to fight against separatism—the idea that even principled unity with the white workers is wrong.

The achievement of a united caucus on any principled, lasting basis is possible only on the firm ground of a serious, programmatic struggle against racism. Within the caucus as well the struggle against racism will and must go on. White workers, even the most class conscious, will not automatically shed all their blindspots overnight nor can they be expected to. Black workers will not overcome a distrust based on centuries of racial oppression in a minute either and they certainly cannot be expected to. Unity and progress will take large measures of both struggle and patience—the patience born of the understanding of our common interests as a class and our common need for a better life and a new world.

Racism and the Workers’ Movement, Philadelphia Workers’ Organizing Committee, Class Struggle Unionism Pamphlet No. 1, pp. 1–39. Pamphlet in possession of the editors.

21. UNITED COMMUNITY CONSTRUCTION WORKERS, 1971

Manifesto

Leaflet in possession of the editors.

22. BLACK WORKERS FIGHT IMPERIALISM: POLAROID CORPORATION

The image of Polaroid Corporation as a liberal company and an “equal rights employer” is under sharp attack by a group of black employees, the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement. On Wednesday, October 7, more than 200 people—most of them workers—gathered at Tech Square in Cambridge to hear spokesmen for the group denounce Polaroid’s trade and investments in South Africa.

They demanded: (1) That Polaroid announce a policy of complete disengagement from South Africa. (2) That the management meet the entire company and announce its position on apartheid (South Africa’s rigid policies of segregation and white supremacy) in the U.S. and South Africa simultaneously. (3) That the company donate all its profits from South Africa to the recognized African liberation movement in that country.

Although the vast majority of South Africans are black, the white supremacist government denies them basic political, civil and simple human rights. For a black person to move from one part of the country to another, they must first obtain approval from the government. Every black African must carry a pass book with official identification including his photo, legal residence, name of employer, and permits to live and work temporarily outside a “native area.” Polaroid admits that its film is used for passbook photos and also that its South African distributors have supplied 66 ID-2 systems to S. African military and industry since 1967.

Low wages and tight control of the work force make South Africa a haven for big corporations in search of super-profits. Average profits there are higher than anywhere else in the world, except Middle Eastern oil fields. And Polaroid has not hesitated to take advantage of this situation. Polaroid sunglasses are now manufactured in six countries outside the U.S., including S. Africa. Because of the higher profit rate, companies like Polaroid prefer to open new plants where labor is cheap—as in South Africa. In this way, the exploitation of black workers thousands of miles away threatens our jobs as well.

Polaroid’s development of personnel security systems is an even more direct threat to workers in both countries. The system now used in defense plants can easily be used in the future to monitor the coming and going of workers in other industries. Security systems will be used to prevent workers from ripping off some of the surplus value the companies make off our sweat. Security systems enable employers to blacklist job applicants who have been fired on a former job, have been thrown in jail, run up debts, been political activists, union militants, etc.

In an interview with THE MASS STRIKE, Ken Williams, a member of the Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement, accused the company of using black people as window dressing, giving them front office jobs and showing pictures of black employees prominently in all their public relations material. At the same time, the company’s international sales department is lily-white, and Polaroid’s money and ID system help to stabilize the most vicious, racist government in the world. The man responsible for Polaroid’s involvement in South Africa, former vice-president Stan Calderwood, is now head of WGBH, and has been strongly criticized by Boston’s black community for the station’s racist censorship and cancellation of the “Say, Brother” program.

Black workers at Polaroid are fighting back. They are blowing the whistle on a “liberal” company whose activities in fact bolster racism, imperialism and fascism, in South Africa and here at home. As workers we have the duty to demand that the products of our labor serve the needs of the world’s peoples—not lead to further oppression. Polaroid workers are showing the way, living up to their responsibilities to their brothers and sisters in South Africa. We enthusiastically support them. It’s our fight, too!

Leaflet in possession of the editors.

23. BOYCOTT POLAROID

The Polaroid Workers Revolutionary Movement calls upon everyone who believes in freedom and justice to help the people of South Africa by boycotting all Polaroid products until the following demands are met: (1) That Polaroid announce a policy of complete disengagement from South Africa. (2) That the management meet the entire company and announce its position on apartheid (South Africa’s rigid policies of segregation and white supremacy) in the U.S. and South Africa simultaneously. (3) That the company donate all its profits from South Africa to the recognized African liberation movement in that country.

Polaroid, the “humanistic corporation,” the “equal opportunities employer,” has been doing business with racist South Africa since 1938. They sell film, cameras, sunglasses and identification systems through a local distributor.

Hundreds of American corporations do business with South Africa. Many have opened manufacturing plants there because profits are higher than anywhere in the world except Middle Eastern oil fields. The reason for these superprofits is obvious: Black people, who are the vast majority of South Africa’s population, are paid an average of thirty cents a day and work under concentration camp conditions.

Polaroid knows this. We quote from “The Polaroid Newsletter” of Nov. 2, 1970: “The black native is treated as an unwelcome foreigner in his own country. His activities and movements are arbitrarily restricted. He is required to carry a passbook whenever he is in any of the work centers or cities and is subject to imprisonment without trial if caught without it. It is a crime for a black African to go on strike, to criticize the government’s racial policy, or to use a ‘white’ entrance instead of the ‘natives only’ entrance.”

Polaroid has agreed to prevent the use of its film for passbook photos. BUT IT REFUSES TO CUT OFF ALL ITS BUSINESS WITH SOUTH AFRICA. It refuses to stop selling ID-2 systems to the military, the backbone of apartheid, to the aircraft companies that make planes for the military, to the mining companies that profit from the forced labor of black workers. It refuses to stop the sale of cameras, film and sunglasses even though no black people could possibly afford them, even though any business with South Africa helps to stabilize that system and to give it a cloak of legitimacy. It refuses to turn its South African profits over to the African people’s freedom movement.

The United Nations has called for a total economic boycott of South Africa. As employees of Polaroid we demand that the company honor that position. And if Polaroid refuses to put the welfare of people over profits, then it is up to all thinking people to boycott Polaroid.

Leaflet in possession of the editors.

24. POLAROID BLACKS ASK WORLDWIDE BOYCOTT

By Parker Donham

Content removed at rightsholder’s request.

Boston Globe, October 27, 1970.