[A-List] National Factor . . . certain aspects/ dateline Detroit/

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

>But in the meantime I hope that you continue posting here -- the whole issue 
of the NNCQ and its ramifications was something unknown to me until you 
brought it up here and elsewhere. Be assured that your contributions are having an 
impact.<

Michael

Reply

NNCQ means Negro National Colonial Question. The first edition of the NNCQ by 
Nelson Peery was published in 1972, with the 1975 edition still available. 
The concept embodied in NNCQ remains valid but is simply outdated. Thus it is a 
historical document that makes best sense in the historical period in which it 
was produced. Today, one would speak of African American Liberation and South 
Revolution and the factor of the Solid South or the Black Belt of the South. 

Profound changes in American society have taken place in my lifetime. 
Nevertheless, every single generation of Marxists and communist in America has 
politically split over what in history is called the Negro Question . . . going all 
the way back to Emancipation. 

Peery's NNCQ was of course not a mandatory document in our group. The only 
mandatory document we have ever insisted upon is the Communist Manifesto. Along 
with perhaps a large MINORITY of members, I personally thought the document 
was brilliant and with each passing year it grows in status. Chapter 3 is called 
"From the Negro Bourgeois Democratic National Movement to the Negro Peoples 
National Liberation Movement." 

The October Revolution is the definitive political juncture creating a new 
political polarity and new political alignment of class forces in conflict with 
bourgeois property. The First Imperial World War altered forever what is 
called the National Question as the fight for the redivision of the world - spheres 
of influence, took place. The national question became a question of colonial 
entrapment and enslavement or the national-colonial question and not simply a 
question of "non historic peoples" during the era of transition from 
feudalism to capitalism or more accurate from landed property relations to industrial 
relations. 

To a large degree Lenin's many writings on the national question and Stalin's 
"Marxism and the National Question" became outdated as doctrines of combat. 
The underlying theoretical premise remained historically valid but as doctrine 
a new political alignment had taken place and was consolidated by the October 
Revolution itself. The post October period proved conclusively that the 
national and colonial question are inseparable from the question of emancipation 
from the rule of capital. 

This was not the case with the American Revolution which was most certainly a 
colonial revolt. The question of the overthrow of capital or bourgeois 
property had not yet emerged during the American colonial revolt. 


Prior to October Marxism admitted the possibility of the National bourgeoisie 
leading the national movement and creating a breach in the imperial chain of 
enslavement. In fact it was the American bourgeoisie that inaugurated the new 
national-colonial movements on earth in 1776. The October Revolution brought 
this era of history to an end. The period between say 1776 and October 1917 
constitutes a historical era in the development of the National Question. 

Emancipation or 1865 falls within this period and what arose in its wake was 
a bourgeois democratic national movement in the deep South. This Bourgeois 
Democratic National Movement, which attempted to expropriate the large land 
owners and democratize the South was defeated. In American speak this is called the 
overthrow of Reconstruction. Marx and Engels writing on the "National 
Question" fall within this historical era, and so does Lenin's. 

"From the Negro Bourgeois Democratic National Movement to the Negro Peoples 
National Liberation Movement," means that a shift took place that conformed to 
the new polarity created by the October Revolution, although the real 
realignment took place as the result of the economic crisis of 1920-1922 when one-half 
to 1/3 of all Negro businesses were wiped out.  

The October Revolution disclosed that the unequal nations and colonies could 
not be liberated without the overthrow of capital. 

The Negro Peoples National Liberation Movement is intertwined with the 
question of the Solid south but not the same. Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967 manifested 
the political split between the black bourgeoisie and the black proletarian 
masses. This represents another political juncture in the development of the 
national-colonial question and what would emerge is the National Factor. The 
spilt could not and did not take place as long as all African Americans were 
segregated under Jim Crow. Going into the 1970s and most certainly by the 1980s 
what emerged was the question of African American Liberation and Social 
Revolution. 

On a world scale the victory of the Vietnamese ... aligned with Soviet Power 
is the definitive end of a political era. Their victory was not possible 
without the aid of the proletariat within the polarity that was the October 
Revolution. As an economic era the victory of China 1949 is the definitive line of 
demarcation although the Second Imperial War World fundamentally destroyed the 
last lingering bastions of feudal structures. 

Today - 2004 September 27, a new epoch . . . not era, stands before us. In 
every country on earth the question that face us is not a transition from 
agriculture to industry or colonial liberation . . . in the main . . . but 
proletarian revolution directly. In Chechnya the issue facing the masses is that same 
as that facing the masses in Detroit, the overthrow of bourgeois property 
directly. The national factor is subordinate, a subsidiary question to the question 
of the overthrow of capital. 

In today's world the demand for self determination means Balkanization or 
what has taken place is Yugoslavia. 

The National Question is not a matter of definitions, although one must 
define their meaning. It is difficult to talk about African Americans in the 
American Union because they were the slaves of what would become the Anglo-American 
people and the Marxist in American have always understood proletarian to mean 
white workers.  

Matters really become downright stupid when dealing with the Southwest and 
the National Factor there. An entire generation of Mexican and Chicano Marxist 
will not even enter into dialogue with the so-called Marxists and not because 
of the language question but because these revolutionaries write from the 
standpoint that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and Nevada do not even 
exist. 

Melvin P. 

Melvin P.