party
reaffirmed its belief that the ultimate
victory of socialism in Latin America was
possible through legal and nonviolent
means.
TEXT OF FRENCH COMMUNIST PARTY ATTACK ON STOKELY CARMICHAEL
[The following is a translation made by World Outlook of an article directed against Stokely Carmichael which appeared in the December 18 issue of 1'Humanité, the daily newspaper of the French Communist party, under the title, "Les Noirs américans pourront-ils trouver le salut dans l'organisation systématique de révoltes armées?" (Can the American blacks find salvation in the systematic organization of armed revolts?5
[The author of the attack is Thomas Buchanan, who is identified by the editors of 1'Humanité as follows: “Thomas Buchanan is a progressive American journalist, well known in France. Author of the book, 'Who Killed Kennedy?', he was the first to criticize the conclusions of the official authorities and to demonstrate that the Dallas assassination was the result of an organized plot. After the second world war, Buchanan was the secretary of the ‘Civil Rights Congress,' whose headquarters was in Washington."
(The article is of special interest as one of a series by various authors, which have appeared in publications of the pro-Moscow Communist parties, attacking the Cuban leaders and the basic revolutionary position taken by the Organization of Latin-American Solidarity (OLAS). *
[For a reply to Buchanan see the article by Joseph Hansen on page 45 of this issue of World Outlook. ]
* * *
While leaving "wide open" the possibility of "new paths to freedom" now being sought by "courageous young leaders," a group of eighty black Marxists, who recently held a conference in New York, rejected appeals to "terrorism" in the
*For Fidel Castro's statement of the inmmediate issues that precipitated the public dispute, see the text of his speech, "Those Who Are Not Revolutionary Fighters Cannot Be Called Communists," in World Outlook, March 31, 1967, p. 330. For the opposing position, see the following articles in World Outlook in 1967: "Venezuelan CP Leaders Denounce Castro's Speech," April 7, p. 371; "French CP Attacks Revolutionary Line of OLAS Conference," September 22, p. 781; "Chilean CP Leader Joins Foes of OLAS," September 22, p- 800; “Brazilian CP Attacks OLAS Conference," October 20, p. 830; "Alas for the Canadian CP on OLAS," October 20, p. 831; "'Pravda' Sets the Line for CP Attack on OLAS," November 10, p. 912; "The Soviet Press Features a Venezuelan 'Authority' Against the Cubans," December 1, p. 985. black ghettos of the United States. It was their judgment that the black people should seek alliances with the progressive forces and the working class based on practical demands:
1. The immediate adoption of a multibillion dollar program to meet the needs of black America.
2. Rapid elimination of white policemen and white officials in predominantly black communities.
3. U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam where a disproportionately high percentage of black. troops are being used to fight against a colored people.
The conference implicitly rejected, among other things, Stokely Carmichael's thesis in favor of a kind of "guerrilla movement" in the black ghettos. This thesis has provoked sharp controversies among American black leaders since the rebellions of this past summer in more than 100 U.S. cities, which left 400 seriously wounded, 100 dead and caused damage estimated at more than 500 million dollars.
Should such uprisings be systematically organized with the political aim of destroying the capitalist system? Yes, replied Carmichael in Havana on August 2 in a statement which attracted the attention of world public opinion. As a speaker, Carmichael is the most dynamic young spokesman for the black people of the United States. But Martin Luther King, who also opposes the war in Vietnam, is by far the most respected leader for the majority of black people, as the most recent polls indicate.
Stokely Carmichael was invited by the Cuban government along with some other Americans as an observer to the OLAS conference where the principal subject of discussion was what strategy to adopt against the United States in the Western Hemisphere. The members of the press corps and the official representatives of twentyseven delegations were gathered in a large room in the Havana Libre hotel (formerly the Hilton) to hear one of the main speakers of the conference, the representative of North Vietnam, when Carmichael invited the reporters up ‘to his room on the twentysixth floor to hear a special statement on the situation inside the United States. There he told them that the black population was "moving into open guerrilla warfare in the United States...The only good thing about Vietnam is that the United States has taught us how to kill. Our brothers returning from Vietnam will put thig training to use in the cities of the United States."
"Washington," he said, "will find itself put in a difficult situation in fighting rebellions in the black sections of our big cities. Inside the United States they will have to fight hand to hand. They won't be able to use napalm and bombs." He admitted that an isolated uprising could be defeated by military intervention but predicted that if there were fifteen rebellions on the same order in all the big cities and a corresponding number of "Vietnams" in other countries that that would mean the death of imperialism. "Guns," he told the journalists, "are the only way. We have no other alternative but to use aggressive violence in order to own the land, the houses and the stores in our communities and control the politics of these communities. We welcome all who are willing to take guns with us. Everything else is talk." Not only did Carmichael advocate guerrilla warfare in the United States but he said that there were good reasons to think that it would be successful. He told the journalists moreover that black militants are now preparing lists of official government figures who are to be assassinated if possible. One of them, he said, would be Lyndon Johnson. It will be recalled that Malcolm X, who with Fanon, has been Carmichael's principal mentor, was the only black leader who applauded the assassina-— tion of President Kennedy.
In the civil war (which he asserted is beginning), the 25-year-old former student said that the following groups must be rejected as allies:
The middle-class liberals and pro- 1 gressives. He described them as "enemies of the black people" because they are generally rich and profit from the imperialist system in the United States. Thus, he said, these liberals fight to maintain the system in the United States which he and his people are trying to destroy.
the U.S. working class is interested only in getting the highest possible wages and that it wants no change in the present social structure by which the black people is oppressed. y] The white workers. He said that
cial integrationists, have sought to establish equal access without regard to skin color to hotels and other public places as well as to jobs. The objectives of the civil-rights movement reveal its bourgeois nature, Carmichael said. Only a small handful of black people have enough money to eat in expensive restaurants and sleep in deluxe hotels or have sufficient training to hold the jobs to which they are now legally entitled. Therefore, he said, the unskilled black workers and the unemployed will gain nothing from the desegregation program. 3 All the black leaders who, as ra-
He concluded from this that in this sun-
mer's racial uprisings these groups were
perfectly justified in smashing store
windows and taking what they wanted, and
he accused the Reverend Martin Luther King
of being "against the black people of the
United States" because King condemned such
tactics.
The American Communists both black
and white. He said that the U.S.
Communist party has no working-class
base and is "filled with rich people who
enjoy the capitalist system. They have nice
homes and servants and make a lot of money.
They get along fine with the ruling class.
If Marx and Lenin had gotten to know the
American Communist party, they would have
become capitalists."
5 tional Communist movement who en-
dorse and support the Soviet Union,
the white workers and the left movements
of all the European countries were called
"racist" and "reactionary." They were ac-
cused of profiting from the exploitation
of the world's predominantly colored popu-
lation. There is no white proletariat ac-
cording to Carmichael's definition.
The great majority of the interna-
On whom then can Carmichael count
to march with him?
1. The masses of desperate young
blacks who live in the urban centers, many
of whom are unemployed...a revolution of
the lumpenproletariat which has lost con-
fidence in a proletariat judged too cor-
rupted by the capitalist systen.
2. The third world or at least the
part of it which is already waging an
armed struggle against American domina-
tion. The black people, Carmichael said
a little later in Algeria after a visit
to North Vietnam, have tried "peaceful
coexistence" with the whites in the United
States for 400 years. "The price of peace-
ful coexistence has been lynchings, arson
and bombing attacks on the homes, schools
and churches of black people. It is clear
to us now that peaceful coexistence means
no more than maintaining the status quo.
That is why for us armed struggle is the
only solution."
Coming at another time, Stokely
Carmichael's impatient manifesto would
have beencompletely ignored. He went to
Havana as the former leader of a minority
section of the black student movement
largely originating from the black bour-
geoisie, who, unlike most of the black
population, have the means to send their
children to universities like Harvard,
where Carmichael went to school and from
which he graduated.
His background is not typical of
American blacks. Born in Trinidad in a
mulatto family, he came to the United
—44e
States at the age of eleven and lived in New York with his parents. A cultured young man, he was socially accepted in this northern city by the white intellectuals with whom he associated; but he felt mainly condescension in this acceptance. His experience of the conditions in the struggle in the southern states has been limited to organizing a few "expeditions" which he undertook -- at the risk of his life ~- during his stay at Harvard. It would have been easy for his Marxist adversaries in the United States to call him a "romantic" and "petty bourgeois." But in the context of the Vietnam war and the situatiun in the United States, Carmichael's opinions received respectful attention from the American Marxist leaders whom he however accused of leading an “easy life." One of them is Henry Winston, a black American born in the South. When Carmichael was only eight years old, Winston, along with ten other persons -- the entire national leadership of the Communist party of the United States -- was sentenced to five years in prison on the charge of having done what young Carmichael now proposes: "teaching and advocating the overthrow of the American government by force and violence." While in prison, Winston told the authorities that he was going blind and asked for surgical treatment. His request was refused and the young black Communist leader lost his sight.
Winston, who has now become the national chairman of the Communist party of the United States, 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." And he observed that many Communists, black and white, "gave their lives in these hard first struggles."
Violence, Winston said, is "neither good in itself" nor "bad in itself" in the Communist interpretation. Communists, he said, support "the right of an oppressed people to violently overthrow an oppressive regime if the channels of democratic change are closed to them." The question of whether this right to revolt is to be exercised can only be determined by the historic conditions, the place and the circumstances and by a correct appraisal of the situation and the political conditions of the moment. Those who conclude, he said, that the present task is to give an organized character to the spontaneous uprisings which have occurred in the black ghettos are seriously mistaken both about the temper of the black communities and the relationship of forces which would result from such an organized revolt. The overwhelming majority of the American people, including the black people, are not yet convinced that the system must be changed and much less that it is necessary to do so by force. Armed uprisings for these objectives cannot be successfully undertaken by the black communities alone, no matter how courageously they struggle. They need powerful allies, principally in the white and black working class. Communists, he said, think that actions of a terrorist or conspiratorial character which are not based on a program aimed at improving the living conditions of the masses and which do not receive broad popular support are adventurist and of a provocative character. To unleash such actions, he said, would demonstrate political irresponsibility and bring reprisals against the black communities.
Communists also think, he said, that terrorism within the black community against those called "collaborators" or "Uncle Toms" or others who refuse to go along with the tactics proposed by some is entirely out of place and harmful and cannot but divide the forces fighting for freedom. Winston's statement does not anywhere condemn Stokely Carmichael and his supporters by name. Certain of Carmichael's speeches, such as those he made in Paris, indicate that his contacts with the world revolutionary movement during his most recent trips have produced an ideological evolution in him and led him to a more correct position with regard to the allies of the black masses. The analysis made by Winston had predicted such an evolution and had left the door open: "We admit," Winston said, "that we have much to learn from the courageous young leaders who are seeking new roads to freedom in this period, that the door must remain wide open to all new forms of struggle which are effective and forged by the test of combat. The effectiveness of any form of struggle must be determined by the following criteria: Does it enhance the struggle or does it hinder it? Does it divide or unite the masses of black people? Does it help us win allies or does it isolate us? The courageous acts of isolated individuals have played and can play an important role in the present struggle for freedom but the power of this struggle lies in its capacity to inspire mass militancy. It can never replace this. Individual courage, however, can be synchronized with the forms of struggle which the forces of the black people are ready to accept."
As for the racial uprisings which occurred this year, Winston's group solidarized itself with them, while expressing some reservations: "Although we do not advocate a policy of looting and arson, it is clear that while ghetto uprisings were unable to end the unbearable conditions against which the spontaneous revolts were directed, they did achieve certain positive results. They made it painfully clear to many white Americans
that life in our great cities will be unbearable for all unless it is made bearable for the people of the black communities. Furthermore the uprisings have permitted the development of resistance to the unjust Vietnam war. They have helped to gain the acceptance of a larger part of the white communities for cooperation with the black communities." And the black leader concluded, "the uprisings in -45-
the ghettos and many other heroic actions have shown that the black people are determined to fight for freedom now."
The task of black leaders, he said, is to seek in common the ways of best using the militancy of the black people: their duty, he said, is to keep this militancy from being turned against them by provocations.
IN