DEFENSE OF STOKELY CARMICHAEL
By Joseph Hansen
Thomas Buchanan has departed from his own specialty, which is investigation of the contradictions of the Warren report on the assassination of President Kennedy, a field of research where he has gained a certain renown along with others, to inject himself into a dispute involving the strategy and tactics of the Latin- American revolution and the black liberation movement in the United States, the position of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara on armed struggle, and the momentous problem of how to break out of the capitalist system and open the way to socialism on a world scale.
The debate flared when Fidel Castro, in March, 1967, denounced the rightist leadership of the Communist party of Venezuela for betraying the revolution in that country. The debate spread, with currents in the international radical movement backing one side or the other, a notable feature being the way in which spokesmen of Communist parties under the influence of the Kremlin, as in the case of the French party, have felt compelled to wage a virtual campaign on the subject.
Since it is a public dispute, anyone, of course, is free to venture his opinion and show where his sympathies lie. To be considered seriously, however, a participant, particularly one whose contribution appears in a publication that claims to stand for Communism, ought to at least indicate what the central difference is and where he stands on it. Buchanan does not do this. Instead, he offers an exercise in sophistry.
No matter how honored it is by time and custom, sophistry still remains sophistry. Its purpose -- and in this Buchanan adheres faithfully to the ancient principles of the art -- is to divert attention from the real issue and to instill prejudice against those whose views he is subjecting to attack.
A virtually perfect example is his manipulation of Henry Winston's attack against the stand voiced by Stokely Carmichael at the conference of the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity [OLAS] in Havana last summer. Instead of attempting an objective examination of the ideological differences and the context in which they arose, Buchanan seeks to inveigle us into assuming an attitude toward the images of the two personalities -- as presented by Buchanan -- and into judging their arguments on this hazardous basis.
With a few favorable touches for the sake of the record, Buchanan pictures Stokely Carmichael as not yet dry behind the ears in either age or experience, as being foreign-born and having a background not typical of American blacks (the readers of 1'Humanité must have savored this), a student at Harvard, socially acceptable among white intellectuals, knowing nothing of the struggle in the South save for a few "expeditions."
The venerable Henry Winston, in contrast, was sentenced ("when Carmichael was only eight years old"!) to five years in prison and went blind there when the authorities refused him medical attention. Winston, now the national chairman of the Communist party "was the principal spokesman of the group of eighty Marxists who have spent their lives in organizing the struggle of the black people in the racist South under conditions which Winston called ‘comparable to those faced in Hitler's Germany. ut
Can there be any question as to which authority you would want to accept?
The flimsiness of such arguments can be demonstrated by a single question. How do the images of Stokely Carmichael and Henry Winston, whether drawn by Buchanan or anyone else, compare with the image increasingly in the minds of black liberation fighters in the United States today -- the image of Malcolm X, who was turning toward revolutionary socialism when he was assassinated?
The question is highly pertinent. It involves the pattern of the coming struggles in the United States, the kind of leaders required to win, and the kind
of leaders coming to the fore today. In short, does it speak in favor of Stokely Carmichael, or against him, that he is deliberately seeking to follow the path blazed by Malcolm X?
Buchanan mentions Malcolm X just once -- as "the only black leader who applauded the assassination of President Kennedy." Buchanan's brevity belongs in the camp of those who felt relieved at the assassination of Malcolm X.
In contrast, Buchanan hands Martin Luther King a bouquet. King's efforts to fashion an American facsimile of Gandhi's passive, class-collaborationist movement, in essence an attempt to divert the Afro- Americans from taking the road of socialist revolution, runs parallel to the line of "peaceful coexistence" with the "progressive" sector of the capitalist class which has been the stock-in-trade of the American Communist party since the height of the cult of the personality of Stalin.
That this is the basic position of the American Communist party can be shown without much effort.
In the 1949 witch-hunt trial of the leaders of the American Communist party, which Buchanan refers to since it included Henry Winston, the basic CP position was openly stated. Thus, on June 22, 1949, Gilbert Green, one of the defendants, testified: "We departed from the policy of class against class around 1935." Green specified further: "Socialism is not an immediate issue for the next period. The issues are to extend democracy, preserve peace, curb the monopolies and prevent fascism."
This program does not reach beyond the limited vision -- and narrow class interests -- of the liberal wing of the Democratic party. In the epoch of the death agony of capitalism, when the fate of humanity hinges on breaking out of this antiquated system and building socialism, the program indicated by Green spells disaster. The workers cannot even "extend democracy, preserve peace, curb the monopolies and prevent fascism" without struggling for socialism.
This lesson was written out in some of the bloodiest pages in history in Germany and Spain, where the "peaceful coexistence" policy of Stalinism paved the way for the triumph of fascism and the catastrophe of World War II.
Buchanan, of course, is well aware of the policies of the American Communist party and in particular its program as outlined in the 1949 trial, which has not changed to this day. As 1'Humanité indicates, he served at that time as secretary of the Civil Rights Congress, the organization principally responsible for
rallying support for the defendants. *
This brings us to the heart of the
dispute. Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Gue-
vara hold that under the conditions ob-
taining in Latin America, where military
dictatorships backed by the imperialist
United States have been set up from one
end of the continent to the other, it is
not possible for the people to establish
governments representing their will ex-
cept through armed struggle. They add
*The Civil Rights Congress failed miser-
ably to win widespread support for the
CP victims of the witch-hunt. There were
two reasons for this. One was the low es-
teem in which the CP leaders were held
among militants because of their support
of the Roosevelt administration during
the war, which included defending and up-
holding the wartime wage freeze, engaging
in strikebreaking activities and sacri-
ficing the black liberation struggle. A
second reason was the sectarian way in
which the defense was conducted.
At two conferences sponsored in
the summer of 1949 by the Civil Rights
Congress in hope of setting in motion a
broad movement against the witch-hunt,
spokesmen of the Civil Rights Congress
and the Communist party rejected a reso-
lution to support the case of James
Kutcher, the legless veteran fired from
a government job because of his admitted
membership in the Socialist Workers party.
They also rejected a resolution to support
the campaign then being waged to win
restoration of the civil rights of the
leaders of the Socialist Workers party,
who had been imprisoned as the first
victims of the Smith "Gag" Act under
which the CP leaders were being tried.
The grounds advanced by the CP to
explain this stand was that these victims
of the witch-hunt were "Trotskyists." The
result was a public scandal that gravely
hampered the struggle against the witch-
hunt and greatly increased the difficulty
in the following period of creating a
united front against the scourge of
McCarthyism. Years later, the CP recog-
nized that their sectarian stand was an
error.
It is worth noting that the Trot-
skyists, who remained faithful to the
program of revolutionary socialism, suc-
ceeded in building widespread support for
their cases. Organizations representing
more than 5,000,000 members in the labor
and civil-rights movement passed resolu-
tions and gave donations to help the
first victims of the Smith "Gag" Act.
James Kutcher gained such broad and sub-
stantial support that he won his case, was
reinstated on his job and granted full
back pay for the years he had lost.
that experience shows that from here on out, revolutions in Latin America, if they are to achieve their goals, must necessarily be socialist in character.
Against this view, the leaderships of a number of Communist parties maintain that the "democratic" or "electoral" road still remains open, that success can be won through "peaceful coexistence," and that the "progressive" sector of the national bourgeoisie can be relied upon in this struggle. To win the national bourgeoisie, a broad front must be constructed and socialism is out as a program for such a front, since it is not acceptable to the national bourgeoisie.
In response to this, the Cuban leaders point to the real course of these exponents of "peaceful coexistence ," which is to engage in the electoral arena aS a mere pressure group, supporting one or another of the tendencies in the bourgeois parties. This, the Cubans say, and quite correctly, is a betrayal of the revolution.
The question was debated at the OLAS conference in Havana which Stokely Carmichael attended. The statements he made there cannot be properly understood unless they are placed in this context.
First of all, it is obvious that the Cubans and the delegates from Latin America who agreed with their position convinced Stokely Carmichael that they were right as against the advocates of "peaceful coexistence."
Second, Stokely Carmichael brought before the conference his conclusions concerning the experience of the Afro- Americans in seeking redressment of their long-standing grievances in American society. This was the first time many delegates had heard an unbiased account of the black power movement in the United States. Stokely Carmichael succeeded in removing many misunderstandings about this movement, some of which had been implanted by adherents of the Communist party.
Third, the dialogue between Latin- American revolutionists and a leading spokesman of the black liberation struggle in the United States was of considerable political significance. It was a concrete expression of internationalism, the recognition of common aims, and, on this occasion, solidarity in support of the heroic struggle of the Vietnamese people.
That Stokely Carmichael used language that proved offensive to the ears of a Buchanan and those like him was not altogether negative. It provided another gauge of the distance separating the bedraggled Communist party from the developing black liberation struggle. In its first phases, such a movement is bound to speak a violent language expressive of its anger and frustration and determination to resort to other means when peaceful appeals for justice are contemptuously brushed aside.
A deeper question than language is involved. Buchanan quotes Henry Winston as characterizing conditions in the South as "comparable to those faced in Hitler's Germany."
In the light of that characterization, it is obvious that Stokely Carmichael's suggested course of action conforms much closer to the reality than the “peaceful coexistence" line of Winston and Buchanan. For their line is equivalent to advising the blacks to bow their necks to the master race, while Carmichael urges resistance, whatever the cost. Carmichael is expressing a widespread sentiment among Afro-Americans. It has become almost a slogan: "We will not play a role like the Jews did in Germany."
Does this mean that there are no tactical questions? Does the formula "armed struggle" or "guerrilla war" settle everything? I would be the last to agree that this is the case. Many mistakes have been made and opportunities missed because of a simplistic approach which eliminated from calculation such things as the mood of the masses, ways and means of bringing to bear the immense power of Latin America's populous cities, transitional phases of struggle, party building, and so on. These subjects will undoubtedly come under intensive discussion in the coming period among revolutionists in Latin America and elsewhere, including the black liberation movement in the United States.
But it is quite pointless to discuss these things with people who are in disagreement on the most fundamental question; that is, the historic pattern of struggle in the period we are now living in. Is the pattern one of colonial uprisings and socialist revolutions or of "peaceful coexistence"?
To substitute questions of tactics and language for this question is to divert the discussion and make it meaningless, if not positively harmful. That is precisely what Buchanan tries to do. Fortunately he is not likely to succeed.