C.L.R. James (aka J.R. Johnson) on The Negro in Industry, November 3, 1939
“Labor with a White Skin Cannot Emancipate Itself Where Labor with a Black Skin Is Branded” – Karl Marx
(3 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 84, 3 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Negroes in Industry
The future of the Negro is hound by unbreakable chains of iron and steel to the industrial system of this country. We, as a revolutionary party, must therefore has a very clear conception of the relationship of Negroes to this system, and the Negroes too must see the position as it is. Ninety-nine Negroes out of every hundred, to be more accurate, 999 out of every 1,000, firmly believe that Negroes are discriminated against in industry because they are black. “We could get such and such jobs. Only one thing prevents us. As soon as they see our black skins they turn us away. Obviously it is because we are black.”
The reasoning seems unanswerable. But it is false. In fact it is not the least exaggeration to say that the Negro’s skin has nothing at all to do with the fundamentals of this question. Bet me repeat that. The color of the Negro’s skin has nothing at all to do with the fundamentals of the question.
And now for the proof of this apparently bewildering statement. In India, Hindus and Moslems are quite often, the same color to the last shade. They, however, are divided by their religious differences. Therefore one of the chief strategies of the British government in India is to push fire between Hindus and Moslems in industry, in politics, and in every sphere of life. By this means they divide the Indians, particularly the masses, and make their own position more secure.
Take again Northern Ireland. There the population is white. The British ruling class must find some method of division, They find it in the different religions, one group Catholic and the other group Protestant.
The technique employed is simple as daylight. The Prime Minister and the chief spokesmen always preach about the necessity of unity, how the government duty is to keep the peace, protect the rights of all citizens, etc. So much in words. In action, however, the Government drives wedge after wedge between Catholics and Protestants, and keeps the antagonism at fever pitch.
In Germany Hitler found another source of dividing the workers, the peasants, and the lower middle class: he foamed at the mouth whenever he mentioned the Jews and persecuted them when he came to power.
Divide in Order to Rule
It is perfectly clear that your capitalists, your representative of the ruling class, seeks above all to divide in order to rule. In Britain where so much of the population is of the same racial type and of the same religion your capitalist is in difficulty as to how best to divide the workers. He does it by paying higher wages to some and creating a body, relatively small, of privileged workers. These, being quite satisfied, then become conservative and act as a check on the millions whose dissatisfaction with their lot would be a constant threat to the system if it were not suppressed by this privileged section within their own ranks.
Your capitalist must divide the workers in order to weaken them. In India he fans the flame between Hindus and Moslems. In Ireland between Protestant and Catholic, in many other countries between Jew and Gentile. But the Negro has a black skin. This makes him easily distinguishable from others. Your American capitalist, therefore, at his perpetual game of dividing the workers, leaps with joy and rubs his hands at the good God who made the Negro black. It is so easy to say: “There, don’t you see his black skin? White workers, my good friends, let us keep that black man in his place.”
The black skin business is only an excuse, as Hindu-Moslem, Catholic-Protestant, Jew-Gentile is only an excuse. Now you can’t look at a man and say whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Hindu or Moslem. But a Negro is seen to be different to the white man at first glance. Hence the viciousness and the obviousness of the discrimination against Negroes. But the root of it is in the system which gives the capitalist the need and the power to divide. And the cure is the abolition of the system which breeds this necessity to divide.
The Wherefore of Race Prejudice
Both Negroes and white workers who are advanced politically beyond their fellows must understand this, must have it in their bones. That is the truth and nothing but the truth. Naturally, there are other aspects of the question. Your capitalist does not say this openly. That would, ruin everything. He builds up great theories of Negro inferiority, Negro incapability, etc. These are taught in schools from generation to generation, and millions of unsuspecting people learn this and never think that it is in reality nothing else but capitalist rationalisation for the benefit of capitalist pockets.
Having imbibed these ideas with their mother’s milk so to speak and seeing Negroes living in dirt and slums, most white workers think what they hear all around them is quite true. And when white workers find that being white means the possibility of working in any factory and being black means exclusion from half of them, that being white means 70 cents an hour and being black 45 cents an hour for the same type of work, then these capitalist ideas receive a powerful material enforcement in the working class. This is the reason for race prejudice among the white workers. What the white worker does not see is that by combining with the Negro both can get 90 cents, or overthrow the system altogether. Your capitalist sees that quite clearly however.
How to clarify the minds of workers, both white and black, is the revolutionary problem. Propaganda and agitation to break down the capitalist propaganda; but above all joint action. As the economic crisis deepens, the white workers are driven to revise their previous conceptions. The crisis drove some 400,000 Negroes into the CIO. Thus millions of white workers have begun to think differently about Negroes. Another sharpening of the crisis, another stride forward of the organized workers, will bring thousands upon thousands of Negroes into the ranks of organized labor. But we cannot wait for these developments. We must work in preparation for them.
The first thing therefore is to know something about the Negro’s position in industry, not to know in the abstract, but to be familiar with it. How did the Negro enter into certain industries, what was his status there yesterday, what is it to-day? It is by this study, that we can get some real living conception of the role of the Negro in the working class movement. Few white workers have any conception of the history of this development. Still more tragic, fewer Negroes know anything about it.
Periodically this column will examine the Negro’s role in industry, the understanding of which is an indispensable preliminary to correct revolutionary action. In the next issue we shall have a general survey of the Negro in industry during the last hundred years, after which we shall examine his situation in steel, meat packing, etc. There we shall see how in the South, the employer used 5 Negros to one white in skilled industry before slavery was abolished, how after emancipation he used five whites to one Negro, how he started to use more Negroes to break the fighting power of the whites. In other words we shall see concretely how little the color question means to the employer where his pocket is concerned.
(7 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 85, 7 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Industry and the Negro
The first, the absolute indispensable necessity for Negroes who want to struggle for their emancipation, is to understand that difference of color is not the cause of discrimination against them in industry. The intelligent capitalist knows this. The Negroes must know it too. Not that the race question is unimportant. Not at all. It has acquired a tremendous importance. But it is a subordinate question.
In our pamphlet on the war, (Why Negroes Should Oppose the War, J.R. Johnson, 5 cents) we wrote the following: (p. 23)
“Whenever a problem faces us we should examine it in all its aspects, then examine similar situations in foreign countries, look back into our own history, see where the circumstances are alike and where they differ, and then attempt a conclusion.”
To that something more can be added. We must see where the problem is today, then where it was yesterday, then see where it is likely to be tomorrow. In other words we see it from all sides and particularly we see in what direction it is moving, what is likely to happen tomorrow. This is known as the dialectic, and the method of investigation is called the dialectical method.
The very opposite of the dialectical method is the kind of argument that runs as follows:
“I went for a job yesterday. As soon as they saw my black face they turned me back. But the fellow who followed me was white and they gave him the job at once. Therefore the Negro problem is a race problem.”
What Makes for Slavery?
It sounds good, but is it? Let us see.
First take the question of slavery. To too many Negroes, slavery is the badge of the Negro and his black skin. Error Number One. For white men were slaves for thousands of years in the greatest empires of antiquity, particularly the empires of Greece and Rome. White men enslaved white men by the millions. In fact white men have been slaves in Europe for far more centuries than white men have been free. Similarly, black men in Africa enslaved black men, and yellow men in China enslaved yellow men. Wherever economic conditions and political power enabled one class of men to enslave another class, there slavery existed, until the economic and political conditions changed and slavery was abolished. Color has nothing to do with it at all. So that a Negro who goes for a job and is refused because he is black, must stop and consider if there isn’t more to this question than appears at first sight.
Let us now look at slavery in America. The Europeans who came to America in the early days tried to make the Indians slaves. But the Indians could not do the work. They died in millions. In the smaller islands of the West Indies they were wiped out almost entirely. On the American continent which was large they could fight and retreat before the invader. When they were caught they fought back, for their brothers and friends were carrying on the struggle elsewhere.
The European invaders then tried to enslave whites. They imported poor white people from Europe and worked them in the fields side by side with the Negroes. In other words, the color question did not trouble them at all.
But white slaves did not stand the climate well. Enough of them could not be got from Europe to do all the work that was to be done. So that the employers of those days, looking round for labor, decided to use the Africans from Africa because they were the most suitable. There were many more Africans in Africa than there were Indians in America. The weapons the Europeans used were technically so much advanced and deadly that they had the Africans at their mercy.
The Africans were strong and could stand the hard work as slaves. Once brought to America, they had no hope, no society, no common language, no common tradition to bind them together and stiffen their resistance as the native Indians were stiffened. They had no perspective for freedom. So that they could only make periodical revolts one after another, which failed and left them often more miserable than before. In the same way the millions of slaves in the ancient Greek and Roman Empires made their periodical revolts and then submitted.
What we must note is that in America the slave-owners tried Indians, tried whites, and then finally settled on Negroes as slaves; obviously not because they were black but because they were the most suitable from an economic point of view.
Here again, therefore, a Negro who is refused a job because he is a black man, must think over history and note how unimportant the question of color was in the history of slavery and how it was the economic factor, the question of highest profit, which predominated. This is the dialectical approach. We watch the subject in different periods of history, in different countries in our own country, see where, it was yesterday, where it is today and where it is going tomorrow. That is the most important thing for us. Where is it going tomorrow? When we know that, we know how to act today, and how to prepare action for tomorrow.
Slave-Drivers Disguise Truth
Now there is another very noticeable fact about history which we must always bear in mind. In the same way as a man tries to cover his naked body with pleasing clothes, so men like to cover naked economic facts with pleasing moral ideas. Roosevelt wants to go to war for the sake of American investments? But he does not say that. He talks about war for “democracy”. Does Hitler want to go to war to seize territory? He does not say that to the German workers. He says “the Aryan blood” the Nordic race and much tripe of the same sort. The reason for this constant bluffing is plain. These men of privilege and power must fool the common people. If they spoke plainly “War for colonies and for profits” the masses, who never get any profits, would reply “Go and fight yourselves for your profits.” The naked truth must be disguised.
It is in accordance with this historical law that the slave-drivers, when people began to challenge the system of slavery, did not dare to say “We tried Indians, we tried whites and now we use Negroes because they are the most suitable.” No. They said “This black man is a barbarian. He lives like a wild beast in Africa. He is an inferior creature. God intended him to be a slave.” Thus, to justify economic exploitation, they elevated the race question into a position of importance which it had never had before.
It wasn’t an easy thing to do this, even in the South. A hundred and twenty years ago, there were many white people who denounced slavery. Wherever a man had a small farm, or where mines were worked, wherever in fact Negroes were not required for large-scale cotton plantations, the whites as a rule opposed slavery. There were scores of abolitionist societies in the South in the period around 1800. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the great men of those days had no love for slavery, and hoped that it would soon be abolished. And it would probably have beep abolished long before 1863, if Eli Whitney had not discovered the cotton-gin in 1793.
This invention could do the work of a dozen slaves. Straightway cotton production began to jump. In 1791 it had been two million pounds. Ten years after, in 1801, it was forty million pounds. Ten years after that, in 1811, it was eighty million pounds and still ten years later, in 1821, it was 177 million pounds.
Huge cotton farms employing hundreds of slaves, spread over the country. The small farmers were driven off the land. So strong had been the abolition movement previous to Whitney’s invention that up to 1826 there were still 103 emancipation societies in the South. But, as fast as the production of cotton and the profits doubled, equally as fast the propaganda against the Negroes doubled. The more the slave-owners exploited Negroes the more they proved that he was a being created by God to be a slave. In other words, to disguise the naked economic exploitation they had to say that in reality they only did it because he was black and inferior.
But even while they proved by the word of God and the laws of man that Negroes were inferior creatures fit only to be slaves, the need for profits made them act in a way entirely opposed to their lying propaganda. They found that slaves could become highly-skilled mechanics and could make the implements, tools and furniture required for the plantation. It was cheaper to have them made by slaves than by free whites. So that by 1861, the number of Negro skilled workers in the South was five times as large as the number of whites.
When a Negro in the South is kept out of a skilled job because he is black he should meditate upon the strange fact that eighty years ago he had nearly all the skilled jobs. Quite true he was a slave. But the white mechanic starved. The white employer, making his profit wherever he could and however he could, simply ignored the fact that by his own argument the slave was a barbarian, and certainly he did not care what happened to the white skilled laborer. In other words he had his eye glued on the economic situation and he made his politics in strict accordance with his pocket. He didn’t let the race question interfere with his profits. Every Negro and every white worker should learn this great lesson from the capitalists.
(10 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 86, 10 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Industry and the Negro
Then came the Civil War. Every Negro should know by now why the Civil War took place. The capitalists and their allies of the North were fighting for control of American economy and of the Federal Government. The Southern slave-owners wanted to maintain that control. Every new State added to the union meant more representatives and more power to one side or to the other. If a new state was a slave-state then the slave-owners gained more power at Washington. If the new state was a state based on free labor, then Lincoln and the Northern capitalists gained more power. So that for years there was always a quarrel whenever a new state was to be added to the Union.
But the slave-owners were in a jam, not only politically but economically as well. To make profits at all they had to have new land. The huge plantations and their wasteful methods of cultivation exhausted the soil and periodically they had to extend the territory they controlled. So that when the North said, “No more new slave states” the slave owners replied, “If we do net get new territory our economy will collapse.” And the next thing was the Civil War.
Lincoln would never have fought to free the slaves. He didn’t intend to free slaves at all. But he found that he could not win unless he pulled the slaves powerfully over to his side. This he could decisively do only by declaring the abolition of slavery.
International Labor Aided Emancipation
There was also another powerful current sweeping Lincoln on toward the abolition of slavery in America. When the Civil War began, the British ruling class wanted to intervene on the side of the Southern slave owners. But the British working class, took the side of Lincoln. Led chiefly by Karl Marx, they maintained a powerful agitation in Britain, mass meetings, protests to Parliament, and open letters of support to Abraham Lincoln, etc. The British ruling class used to point to the fact that the North was not fighting any war to abolish slavery, for Lincoln himself had said so. But one of the strongest weapons, in the working class anti-war agitation in Britain was this very argument, that the war of the North was a war for abolition. Lincoln, therefore, for the sake of his valuable working-class allies in Great Britain, was further driven to declare the abolition of slavery in America. A Negro, therefore, who is really trying to get at the root of the Negro position today, cannot help drawing the following conclusions: “The actual question of color had very little to do with the abolition of slavery in America. Powerful economic and political forces were at work in America. The military assistance that the Negroes could give played a great part. And, finally, the international working-class movement, in this case the British working class in particular, played a great part in Negro emancipation.”
From this, such a Negro worker would be justified in thinking that if color played so little part in that great event it is not at all unlikely that in the great events of today, color and race, which in everyday affairs seem to occupy so large a place, will in reality at the decisive moment, prove as unimportant as they did in the Civil War.
Negroes Enter the Factories
How does that apply in recent history? The biggest event that has taken place in the history of the American Negroes since the Civil War is the great migration of millions of Negroes from the South to the North that began in 1915. Between 1915 and 1923, 1,200,000 Negroes came from the South to the North. The Negro gained a place for himself in industry. Now, ten thousand workers in a factory have infinitely more capacity to struggle for better wages, better living conditions, and an extension of their democratic rights than fifty thousand farmers scattered over the countryside. Thus the entry of millions of Negro workers into industry, particularly in the North, marked a decisive stage in the development of the American Negro. But how did it happen? Was it because the white employers had listened to some preachers and had been converted to the view that Negroes should have a better chance in life? Nothing of the sort.
What happened was that Northern industry was faced with a tremendous opportunity for expansion due to the war. At the same time the stream of immigrants from Europe was cut short, because instead of working or coming to America to work these Germans, Austrians, Italians, and others had to spend their time and strength massacring each other for the profits of their imperialist masters. Our American capitalists, therefore, not only took Negroes into their factories but send hundreds of agents into the South offering Negroes free passage into the North and promising them a happy life. The Negro population of New York rose from 91,000 in 1910 to 327,000 in 1930, while over the same period the Negro population of Detroit rose from 5,700 to 120,000. This meant millions of dollars more in the pockets of Negro wage earners. Negroes were able to get much better education and opportunities for development. Negroes living in cities were better able to organize and fight for social and political equality. To serve the needs of these Negroes a greater number of Negro doctors, teachers, and other professional men was needed.
Of course we know that the Negroes still continue to suffer under heavy discrimination. But the fact remains that this migration and opportunity to enter into industry was a great step forward. And it had nothing to do with color. A great economic and social change was taking place in the country as a whole; great numbers of Negroes were swept along by it, and thus had an opportunity to improve their position.
The Next Step Forward
What was the next great step forward of the Negroes? It came in 1937 with the organization of the CIO. Here again we see that the decisive factor was not the question of race but the question of economic and social and political change, affecting American society as a whole. Up to 1937 the American Federation of Labor, representing on the whole the more privileged sections of the American working class, kept Negroes out of its ranks. But with the great crisis of 1929, American labor entered into a new phase of existence. One of the most important results of this shake-up was the organization of all workers in industrial unions, particularly the semi-skilled and the unskilled. The CIO was essentially the organization of the poorer types of workers. But the CIO organizers found that if they were to organize the workers in an industry as a whole they could not leave out the Negroes. In the packing-houses in Chicago and elsewhere the employers had deliberately brought Negroes into industry in order to use them against the white workers. Obviously these new CIO unions, to win their battles, had to have the Negroes in. And today, 1939, we can see hundreds of thousands of Negroes in the new unions, firmly knit with the white workers and gaining many of the great advantages that come to all workers who carry on militant struggles in workers’ organizations. This does not mean that prejudice and discrimination have been wiped away, even in the best of the new unions. But it means that a great step forward has been made. And here again the decisive factor was not color.
On the Eve of Great Upheavals
It may seem to an individual Negro that it is the color of his skin that is making all the difference. But this is true only to a limited extent. From an examination of history it can be stated with confidence that the Negroes as a whole, millions of them, have made strides forward owing to great economic, social, and political changes which were powerful enough to sweep aside the barriers of color. And this should teach us a great lesson for the future.
All human society today stands at the crossroads. Europe is plunged into a great war. In the Far East, Japan and China have been fighting for two years. America is visibly preparing to enter into the war. What is the cause of all this universal confusion? The cause is one thing and one thing only: the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. There are in America today over thirty million people starving in the midst of plenty. The capitalist system can no longer function, neither here nor elsewhere. The capitalists did not solve the crisis by the last war. The post-war crises have been more devastating than the pre-war ones. We are today on the ever of economic, social, and political upheavals infinitely greater than anything that took place in America during the Civil War. And in those upheavals color is not going to play any very great part. American society today, as society in all parts of the world, faces two alternatives. Either the workers and the poor farmers will get together in unions and political organizations and take over capitalist property, establishing the socialist system. Or, on the other hand, the capitalists will organize fascist bands, smash the workers’ organizations, and by this means insure their profits and the continuance of the capitalist system. That is the great conflict in the world today. It is a conflict in which the Negro must and will play his part. In America the white workers, as has been shown in the organization of the CIO, will in time seek the assistance of the Negroes against the capitalists as certainly as Lincoln had to seek it against the Southern slave-owners. But whereas Lincoln and the Northern capitalists were rich and powerful and their Negro allies were poor, today the Negroes and the whites are members of the same class. For this reason, in the course of the struggle and after it, the barriers of race prejudice will be much more easily overcome than they were seventy-five years ago.
On the international scale the workers of Great Britain and France, for instance, may feel today little solidarity with Negroes in Africa. But when they find themselves in deadly struggle with British and French landlords and capitalists they will welcome the news that the Negroes in Africa are striking at the brothers and sons and cousins of the European ruling classes, who oppress the Negroes in the colonies. It is to such great crises in human history that the whole world is moving today.
A Negro, therefore, who is turned back from a job because he is black will not lose courage. Instead he will see in what direction history is moving and, by means of political activity and industrial organization, he will try to assist those forces which make for greater solidarity among workers and farmers. That is the road along which we have to travel. It may seem slow, and it may seem also that it does not answer the immediate problems of the day. But there is no other road. And today the historical process is not at all slow. History is moving very fast. That is why it is necessary to know where we came from, where we are, and, infinitely more important, in what direction we are moving.
(3 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 84, 3 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The Negroes in Industry
The future of the Negro is hound by unbreakable chains of iron and steel to the industrial system of this country. We, as a revolutionary party, must therefore has a very clear conception of the relationship of Negroes to this system, and the Negroes too must see the position as it is. Ninety-nine Negroes out of every hundred, to be more accurate, 999 out of every 1,000, firmly believe that Negroes are discriminated against in industry because they are black. “We could get such and such jobs. Only one thing prevents us. As soon as they see our black skins they turn us away. Obviously it is because we are black.”
The reasoning seems unanswerable. But it is false. In fact it is not the least exaggeration to say that the Negro’s skin has nothing at all to do with the fundamentals of this question. Bet me repeat that. The color of the Negro’s skin has nothing at all to do with the fundamentals of the question.
And now for the proof of this apparently bewildering statement. In India, Hindus and Moslems are quite often, the same color to the last shade. They, however, are divided by their religious differences. Therefore one of the chief strategies of the British government in India is to push fire between Hindus and Moslems in industry, in politics, and in every sphere of life. By this means they divide the Indians, particularly the masses, and make their own position more secure.
Take again Northern Ireland. There the population is white. The British ruling class must find some method of division, They find it in the different religions, one group Catholic and the other group Protestant.
The technique employed is simple as daylight. The Prime Minister and the chief spokesmen always preach about the necessity of unity, how the government duty is to keep the peace, protect the rights of all citizens, etc. So much in words. In action, however, the Government drives wedge after wedge between Catholics and Protestants, and keeps the antagonism at fever pitch.
In Germany Hitler found another source of dividing the workers, the peasants, and the lower middle class: he foamed at the mouth whenever he mentioned the Jews and persecuted them when he came to power.
Divide in Order to Rule
It is perfectly clear that your capitalists, your representative of the ruling class, seeks above all to divide in order to rule. In Britain where so much of the population is of the same racial type and of the same religion your capitalist is in difficulty as to how best to divide the workers. He does it by paying higher wages to some and creating a body, relatively small, of privileged workers. These, being quite satisfied, then become conservative and act as a check on the millions whose dissatisfaction with their lot would be a constant threat to the system if it were not suppressed by this privileged section within their own ranks.
Your capitalist must divide the workers in order to weaken them. In India he fans the flame between Hindus and Moslems. In Ireland between Protestant and Catholic, in many other countries between Jew and Gentile. But the Negro has a black skin. This makes him easily distinguishable from others. Your American capitalist, therefore, at his perpetual game of dividing the workers, leaps with joy and rubs his hands at the good God who made the Negro black. It is so easy to say: “There, don’t you see his black skin? White workers, my good friends, let us keep that black man in his place.”
The black skin business is only an excuse, as Hindu-Moslem, Catholic-Protestant, Jew-Gentile is only an excuse. Now you can’t look at a man and say whether he is Catholic or Protestant, Hindu or Moslem. But a Negro is seen to be different to the white man at first glance. Hence the viciousness and the obviousness of the discrimination against Negroes. But the root of it is in the system which gives the capitalist the need and the power to divide. And the cure is the abolition of the system which breeds this necessity to divide.
The Wherefore of Race Prejudice
Both Negroes and white workers who are advanced politically beyond their fellows must understand this, must have it in their bones. That is the truth and nothing but the truth. Naturally, there are other aspects of the question. Your capitalist does not say this openly. That would, ruin everything. He builds up great theories of Negro inferiority, Negro incapability, etc. These are taught in schools from generation to generation, and millions of unsuspecting people learn this and never think that it is in reality nothing else but capitalist rationalisation for the benefit of capitalist pockets.
Having imbibed these ideas with their mother’s milk so to speak and seeing Negroes living in dirt and slums, most white workers think what they hear all around them is quite true. And when white workers find that being white means the possibility of working in any factory and being black means exclusion from half of them, that being white means 70 cents an hour and being black 45 cents an hour for the same type of work, then these capitalist ideas receive a powerful material enforcement in the working class. This is the reason for race prejudice among the white workers. What the white worker does not see is that by combining with the Negro both can get 90 cents, or overthrow the system altogether. Your capitalist sees that quite clearly however.
How to clarify the minds of workers, both white and black, is the revolutionary problem. Propaganda and agitation to break down the capitalist propaganda; but above all joint action. As the economic crisis deepens, the white workers are driven to revise their previous conceptions. The crisis drove some 400,000 Negroes into the CIO. Thus millions of white workers have begun to think differently about Negroes. Another sharpening of the crisis, another stride forward of the organized workers, will bring thousands upon thousands of Negroes into the ranks of organized labor. But we cannot wait for these developments. We must work in preparation for them.
The first thing therefore is to know something about the Negro’s position in industry, not to know in the abstract, but to be familiar with it. How did the Negro enter into certain industries, what was his status there yesterday, what is it to-day? It is by this study, that we can get some real living conception of the role of the Negro in the working class movement. Few white workers have any conception of the history of this development. Still more tragic, fewer Negroes know anything about it.
Periodically this column will examine the Negro’s role in industry, the understanding of which is an indispensable preliminary to correct revolutionary action. In the next issue we shall have a general survey of the Negro in industry during the last hundred years, after which we shall examine his situation in steel, meat packing, etc. There we shall see how in the South, the employer used 5 Negros to one white in skilled industry before slavery was abolished, how after emancipation he used five whites to one Negro, how he started to use more Negroes to break the fighting power of the whites. In other words we shall see concretely how little the color question means to the employer where his pocket is concerned.
(7 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 85, 7 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Industry and the Negro
The first, the absolute indispensable necessity for Negroes who want to struggle for their emancipation, is to understand that difference of color is not the cause of discrimination against them in industry. The intelligent capitalist knows this. The Negroes must know it too. Not that the race question is unimportant. Not at all. It has acquired a tremendous importance. But it is a subordinate question.
In our pamphlet on the war, (Why Negroes Should Oppose the War, J.R. Johnson, 5 cents) we wrote the following: (p. 23)
“Whenever a problem faces us we should examine it in all its aspects, then examine similar situations in foreign countries, look back into our own history, see where the circumstances are alike and where they differ, and then attempt a conclusion.”
To that something more can be added. We must see where the problem is today, then where it was yesterday, then see where it is likely to be tomorrow. In other words we see it from all sides and particularly we see in what direction it is moving, what is likely to happen tomorrow. This is known as the dialectic, and the method of investigation is called the dialectical method.
The very opposite of the dialectical method is the kind of argument that runs as follows:
“I went for a job yesterday. As soon as they saw my black face they turned me back. But the fellow who followed me was white and they gave him the job at once. Therefore the Negro problem is a race problem.”
What Makes for Slavery?
It sounds good, but is it? Let us see.
First take the question of slavery. To too many Negroes, slavery is the badge of the Negro and his black skin. Error Number One. For white men were slaves for thousands of years in the greatest empires of antiquity, particularly the empires of Greece and Rome. White men enslaved white men by the millions. In fact white men have been slaves in Europe for far more centuries than white men have been free. Similarly, black men in Africa enslaved black men, and yellow men in China enslaved yellow men. Wherever economic conditions and political power enabled one class of men to enslave another class, there slavery existed, until the economic and political conditions changed and slavery was abolished. Color has nothing to do with it at all. So that a Negro who goes for a job and is refused because he is black, must stop and consider if there isn’t more to this question than appears at first sight.
Let us now look at slavery in America. The Europeans who came to America in the early days tried to make the Indians slaves. But the Indians could not do the work. They died in millions. In the smaller islands of the West Indies they were wiped out almost entirely. On the American continent which was large they could fight and retreat before the invader. When they were caught they fought back, for their brothers and friends were carrying on the struggle elsewhere.
The European invaders then tried to enslave whites. They imported poor white people from Europe and worked them in the fields side by side with the Negroes. In other words, the color question did not trouble them at all.
But white slaves did not stand the climate well. Enough of them could not be got from Europe to do all the work that was to be done. So that the employers of those days, looking round for labor, decided to use the Africans from Africa because they were the most suitable. There were many more Africans in Africa than there were Indians in America. The weapons the Europeans used were technically so much advanced and deadly that they had the Africans at their mercy.
The Africans were strong and could stand the hard work as slaves. Once brought to America, they had no hope, no society, no common language, no common tradition to bind them together and stiffen their resistance as the native Indians were stiffened. They had no perspective for freedom. So that they could only make periodical revolts one after another, which failed and left them often more miserable than before. In the same way the millions of slaves in the ancient Greek and Roman Empires made their periodical revolts and then submitted.
What we must note is that in America the slave-owners tried Indians, tried whites, and then finally settled on Negroes as slaves; obviously not because they were black but because they were the most suitable from an economic point of view.
Here again, therefore, a Negro who is refused a job because he is a black man, must think over history and note how unimportant the question of color was in the history of slavery and how it was the economic factor, the question of highest profit, which predominated. This is the dialectical approach. We watch the subject in different periods of history, in different countries in our own country, see where, it was yesterday, where it is today and where it is going tomorrow. That is the most important thing for us. Where is it going tomorrow? When we know that, we know how to act today, and how to prepare action for tomorrow.
Slave-Drivers Disguise Truth
Now there is another very noticeable fact about history which we must always bear in mind. In the same way as a man tries to cover his naked body with pleasing clothes, so men like to cover naked economic facts with pleasing moral ideas. Roosevelt wants to go to war for the sake of American investments? But he does not say that. He talks about war for “democracy”. Does Hitler want to go to war to seize territory? He does not say that to the German workers. He says “the Aryan blood” the Nordic race and much tripe of the same sort. The reason for this constant bluffing is plain. These men of privilege and power must fool the common people. If they spoke plainly “War for colonies and for profits” the masses, who never get any profits, would reply “Go and fight yourselves for your profits.” The naked truth must be disguised.
It is in accordance with this historical law that the slave-drivers, when people began to challenge the system of slavery, did not dare to say “We tried Indians, we tried whites and now we use Negroes because they are the most suitable.” No. They said “This black man is a barbarian. He lives like a wild beast in Africa. He is an inferior creature. God intended him to be a slave.” Thus, to justify economic exploitation, they elevated the race question into a position of importance which it had never had before.
It wasn’t an easy thing to do this, even in the South. A hundred and twenty years ago, there were many white people who denounced slavery. Wherever a man had a small farm, or where mines were worked, wherever in fact Negroes were not required for large-scale cotton plantations, the whites as a rule opposed slavery. There were scores of abolitionist societies in the South in the period around 1800. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the great men of those days had no love for slavery, and hoped that it would soon be abolished. And it would probably have beep abolished long before 1863, if Eli Whitney had not discovered the cotton-gin in 1793.
This invention could do the work of a dozen slaves. Straightway cotton production began to jump. In 1791 it had been two million pounds. Ten years after, in 1801, it was forty million pounds. Ten years after that, in 1811, it was eighty million pounds and still ten years later, in 1821, it was 177 million pounds.
Huge cotton farms employing hundreds of slaves, spread over the country. The small farmers were driven off the land. So strong had been the abolition movement previous to Whitney’s invention that up to 1826 there were still 103 emancipation societies in the South. But, as fast as the production of cotton and the profits doubled, equally as fast the propaganda against the Negroes doubled. The more the slave-owners exploited Negroes the more they proved that he was a being created by God to be a slave. In other words, to disguise the naked economic exploitation they had to say that in reality they only did it because he was black and inferior.
But even while they proved by the word of God and the laws of man that Negroes were inferior creatures fit only to be slaves, the need for profits made them act in a way entirely opposed to their lying propaganda. They found that slaves could become highly-skilled mechanics and could make the implements, tools and furniture required for the plantation. It was cheaper to have them made by slaves than by free whites. So that by 1861, the number of Negro skilled workers in the South was five times as large as the number of whites.
When a Negro in the South is kept out of a skilled job because he is black he should meditate upon the strange fact that eighty years ago he had nearly all the skilled jobs. Quite true he was a slave. But the white mechanic starved. The white employer, making his profit wherever he could and however he could, simply ignored the fact that by his own argument the slave was a barbarian, and certainly he did not care what happened to the white skilled laborer. In other words he had his eye glued on the economic situation and he made his politics in strict accordance with his pocket. He didn’t let the race question interfere with his profits. Every Negro and every white worker should learn this great lesson from the capitalists.
(10 November 1939)
From Socialist Appeal, Vol. III No. 86, 10 November 1939, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Industry and the Negro
Then came the Civil War. Every Negro should know by now why the Civil War took place. The capitalists and their allies of the North were fighting for control of American economy and of the Federal Government. The Southern slave-owners wanted to maintain that control. Every new State added to the union meant more representatives and more power to one side or to the other. If a new state was a slave-state then the slave-owners gained more power at Washington. If the new state was a state based on free labor, then Lincoln and the Northern capitalists gained more power. So that for years there was always a quarrel whenever a new state was to be added to the Union.
But the slave-owners were in a jam, not only politically but economically as well. To make profits at all they had to have new land. The huge plantations and their wasteful methods of cultivation exhausted the soil and periodically they had to extend the territory they controlled. So that when the North said, “No more new slave states” the slave owners replied, “If we do net get new territory our economy will collapse.” And the next thing was the Civil War.
Lincoln would never have fought to free the slaves. He didn’t intend to free slaves at all. But he found that he could not win unless he pulled the slaves powerfully over to his side. This he could decisively do only by declaring the abolition of slavery.
International Labor Aided Emancipation
There was also another powerful current sweeping Lincoln on toward the abolition of slavery in America. When the Civil War began, the British ruling class wanted to intervene on the side of the Southern slave owners. But the British working class, took the side of Lincoln. Led chiefly by Karl Marx, they maintained a powerful agitation in Britain, mass meetings, protests to Parliament, and open letters of support to Abraham Lincoln, etc. The British ruling class used to point to the fact that the North was not fighting any war to abolish slavery, for Lincoln himself had said so. But one of the strongest weapons, in the working class anti-war agitation in Britain was this very argument, that the war of the North was a war for abolition. Lincoln, therefore, for the sake of his valuable working-class allies in Great Britain, was further driven to declare the abolition of slavery in America. A Negro, therefore, who is really trying to get at the root of the Negro position today, cannot help drawing the following conclusions: “The actual question of color had very little to do with the abolition of slavery in America. Powerful economic and political forces were at work in America. The military assistance that the Negroes could give played a great part. And, finally, the international working-class movement, in this case the British working class in particular, played a great part in Negro emancipation.”
From this, such a Negro worker would be justified in thinking that if color played so little part in that great event it is not at all unlikely that in the great events of today, color and race, which in everyday affairs seem to occupy so large a place, will in reality at the decisive moment, prove as unimportant as they did in the Civil War.
Negroes Enter the Factories
How does that apply in recent history? The biggest event that has taken place in the history of the American Negroes since the Civil War is the great migration of millions of Negroes from the South to the North that began in 1915. Between 1915 and 1923, 1,200,000 Negroes came from the South to the North. The Negro gained a place for himself in industry. Now, ten thousand workers in a factory have infinitely more capacity to struggle for better wages, better living conditions, and an extension of their democratic rights than fifty thousand farmers scattered over the countryside. Thus the entry of millions of Negro workers into industry, particularly in the North, marked a decisive stage in the development of the American Negro. But how did it happen? Was it because the white employers had listened to some preachers and had been converted to the view that Negroes should have a better chance in life? Nothing of the sort.
What happened was that Northern industry was faced with a tremendous opportunity for expansion due to the war. At the same time the stream of immigrants from Europe was cut short, because instead of working or coming to America to work these Germans, Austrians, Italians, and others had to spend their time and strength massacring each other for the profits of their imperialist masters. Our American capitalists, therefore, not only took Negroes into their factories but send hundreds of agents into the South offering Negroes free passage into the North and promising them a happy life. The Negro population of New York rose from 91,000 in 1910 to 327,000 in 1930, while over the same period the Negro population of Detroit rose from 5,700 to 120,000. This meant millions of dollars more in the pockets of Negro wage earners. Negroes were able to get much better education and opportunities for development. Negroes living in cities were better able to organize and fight for social and political equality. To serve the needs of these Negroes a greater number of Negro doctors, teachers, and other professional men was needed.
Of course we know that the Negroes still continue to suffer under heavy discrimination. But the fact remains that this migration and opportunity to enter into industry was a great step forward. And it had nothing to do with color. A great economic and social change was taking place in the country as a whole; great numbers of Negroes were swept along by it, and thus had an opportunity to improve their position.
The Next Step Forward
What was the next great step forward of the Negroes? It came in 1937 with the organization of the CIO. Here again we see that the decisive factor was not the question of race but the question of economic and social and political change, affecting American society as a whole. Up to 1937 the American Federation of Labor, representing on the whole the more privileged sections of the American working class, kept Negroes out of its ranks. But with the great crisis of 1929, American labor entered into a new phase of existence. One of the most important results of this shake-up was the organization of all workers in industrial unions, particularly the semi-skilled and the unskilled. The CIO was essentially the organization of the poorer types of workers. But the CIO organizers found that if they were to organize the workers in an industry as a whole they could not leave out the Negroes. In the packing-houses in Chicago and elsewhere the employers had deliberately brought Negroes into industry in order to use them against the white workers. Obviously these new CIO unions, to win their battles, had to have the Negroes in. And today, 1939, we can see hundreds of thousands of Negroes in the new unions, firmly knit with the white workers and gaining many of the great advantages that come to all workers who carry on militant struggles in workers’ organizations. This does not mean that prejudice and discrimination have been wiped away, even in the best of the new unions. But it means that a great step forward has been made. And here again the decisive factor was not color.
On the Eve of Great Upheavals
It may seem to an individual Negro that it is the color of his skin that is making all the difference. But this is true only to a limited extent. From an examination of history it can be stated with confidence that the Negroes as a whole, millions of them, have made strides forward owing to great economic, social, and political changes which were powerful enough to sweep aside the barriers of color. And this should teach us a great lesson for the future.
All human society today stands at the crossroads. Europe is plunged into a great war. In the Far East, Japan and China have been fighting for two years. America is visibly preparing to enter into the war. What is the cause of all this universal confusion? The cause is one thing and one thing only: the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. There are in America today over thirty million people starving in the midst of plenty. The capitalist system can no longer function, neither here nor elsewhere. The capitalists did not solve the crisis by the last war. The post-war crises have been more devastating than the pre-war ones. We are today on the ever of economic, social, and political upheavals infinitely greater than anything that took place in America during the Civil War. And in those upheavals color is not going to play any very great part. American society today, as society in all parts of the world, faces two alternatives. Either the workers and the poor farmers will get together in unions and political organizations and take over capitalist property, establishing the socialist system. Or, on the other hand, the capitalists will organize fascist bands, smash the workers’ organizations, and by this means insure their profits and the continuance of the capitalist system. That is the great conflict in the world today. It is a conflict in which the Negro must and will play his part. In America the white workers, as has been shown in the organization of the CIO, will in time seek the assistance of the Negroes against the capitalists as certainly as Lincoln had to seek it against the Southern slave-owners. But whereas Lincoln and the Northern capitalists were rich and powerful and their Negro allies were poor, today the Negroes and the whites are members of the same class. For this reason, in the course of the struggle and after it, the barriers of race prejudice will be much more easily overcome than they were seventy-five years ago.
On the international scale the workers of Great Britain and France, for instance, may feel today little solidarity with Negroes in Africa. But when they find themselves in deadly struggle with British and French landlords and capitalists they will welcome the news that the Negroes in Africa are striking at the brothers and sons and cousins of the European ruling classes, who oppress the Negroes in the colonies. It is to such great crises in human history that the whole world is moving today.
A Negro, therefore, who is turned back from a job because he is black will not lose courage. Instead he will see in what direction history is moving and, by means of political activity and industrial organization, he will try to assist those forces which make for greater solidarity among workers and farmers. That is the road along which we have to travel. It may seem slow, and it may seem also that it does not answer the immediate problems of the day. But there is no other road. And today the historical process is not at all slow. History is moving very fast. That is why it is necessary to know where we came from, where we are, and, infinitely more important, in what direction we are moving.
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