[Marxism] Afircan AMerican History Month 2209: Intro dialectics of social change 1 of many

[Waistline2 at aol.com]

Change wave and process logic: The dialectic of  change 

When fundamental things change, everything dependent upon them  must also 
change. This does not imply that results of change are direct or  immediate and 
most certainly it is not to say that everything changes at one  time. However, 
scientific thinking demands that we find the motivation for  fundamental 
change, place such changes in its proper context and make some  estimate of their 
consequences. 

Profound social changes, driven forward  by changes in the productive 
machinery of the economy, are opening a window of  opportunity that allows us to  
make up for the past half century of  stagnation. As in previous moments of great 
change, some revolutionaries become  stuck in the mud of yesteryear and are 
unable to move forward with changing  times. That mud is theoretical confusion. 
This confusion arises when  revolutionaries hold to unchanging doctrine or 
theory while disregarding  constantly changing facts. The unending fight for 
clarity is  precisely the  effort to keep theory and doctrine united with and 
reflecting the  facts of  a constantly changing world. 

The fight to caught up with a changing  world is unending, and requires 
collective discussions and many inputs by  communists, because of the nature of 
flesh and the human mind. Not simply  because we must rely upon data made 
available to us by the bourgeoisie, or the  inability of any individual to see the 
totality of our filed of battle, but also  because of the law system governing 
the emergence of qualitative change -  something new, and the virtual 
impossibility of the minds eye to see emergence.  

When we are able to observe something new, a new qualitative definition,  it 
means that we are witnessing it second phase of development.  The first  phase 
is always a complex combination of the new quality entering a  field,  
altering that, which is fundamental, then compelling everything dependent on it  to 
begin the change process. Nothing can change all at one time in the social  
sphere. Some understand this as the concept of uneven development. That is fine. 
 

Such is the case in isolating for a moment, the history of the African  
American people. 

For a moment I want to speak of the Communist Party USA  (CPUSA), not as a 
knee jerk hater, but because much of their history spans the  20th century. I 
remember being taught in the early 1970s by a much older  communist, how the 
party was unable to shift, when the magnificent struggle of  the Negro People 
broke out and into the public sphere in Montgomery Alabama on  December 4,  1955. 
The party was reeling from the jailing of its members  during the Second  Red 
scare - Mc McCarthyism, and going through various  ideological splits with  
the publication of  Khrushchev “secret  speech,” but more than that it was 
caught flatfooted by the speed and pace of  the surging Negro Peoples Movement of 
that time. 

The party's remaining  members was more than less in heavy industry at a time 
where that was the last  place the blacks could be found. Hence, to no 
significant degree could they  impact the movement. Some older comrades had 
anticipated the outbreak of the  Negro Peoples Movement based on a subtle awareness of 
realignment taking place  in post WWII America. Many of these comrades were 
ex-soldiers, trained by Uncle  Sam and understood that a wave of repression, 
always accompanying the return of  black solider into American society, who were 
willing to fight the worse  features of Jim Crow with guns in hand. 

The CPUSA  clung to old  doctrines rooted in the formation of the industrial 
working class  and  virtually missed the 1960s and 1970s. 

Although I have never been a  member of the CPUSA, but was a member of 
another communist groups, I remembered  this lesson again reading a “FAQ” outline 
in Political Affairs 

Here is  how the entire the decade of the 1960’s and 1970s is summed up, in 
respects to  the Civil Rights Movement. 

“We participated in the beginning of the  Civil Rights Movement. 

In the 60s, we helped begin the movement against  the War in Vietnam, which 
we opposed from the very start. Members volunteered  for Mississippi Summer, a 
project that brought Northern volunteers, mainly  students, south to help with 
voter registration. 

We initiated or  participated in many union rank-and-file committees and 
movements, working to  democratize and radicalize unions and union members. In 
1968, for the first  time in several decades, we ran candidates for President 
and Vice-President.  

In the 70s, we led the movement to Free Angela Davis, organized to  fight  
the effects of double-digit inflation on workers and their families.  We 
continued to fight against the Vietnam War, and supported welfare  rights  organizing 
and other efforts to broaden the base of progressive  movements. We  
continued to run candidates for national and local offices,  and fought to be a  fully 
legal political party.  (http://www.cpusa.org/article/static/511/#question27) 
” 

Again the  purpose of mentioning the party is not to brow beat them, but the 
Negro Peoples  Movement was the catalyst for the broad student movement of 
that era; expansion  of the "ban the bomb movement" and its passing over to the 
anti-war movement;  and reignited an interest in revolutionary Marxism, which 
in turn provided the  intellectual material for the formation of the so-called “
New Communists  Movement” of militants.

To this day it irritates me  when our  bourgeoisie pretends that the 1960 and 
1970s was dominated by “hippies”   and flower power children. No, the 
decades of the 1950s, 1960, 1970 was  dominated by the intense struggle of the Negro 
People and all indicates show  that the next decade is going to be dominated 
by a new form of class  intersection, perhaps as different at the Negro People 
Movement was from the  1930 and 1940, when communists of all kinds pushed for 
the transition from  craft  to industrial unionism. These communists pushed 
events by organizing  the movement itself. 

In the case of the transition from craft to  industrial unionism and then the 
Negro Peoples Movement, what they both had in  common was neither was geared 
to or could be  geared to a movement to  overthrow the power of capital. Both 
movements sought to reform the   relations within and between classes, which 
is the definition of   reform.  The most the Marxists and Marxists-Leninist 
could do is recruit  individuals to the ideology of communism; the ideology of 
revolution and  carry  on the systematic education of Marxism to the best of our 
ability.  Clearly the past 40 years have proven the impossibility of being 
revolutionary  in a on revolutionary environment, except in ones head. 

It is absolutely  correct for communist to fight within these movements,  
keep them on track  and lead such reform movements to their conclusion, without 
hidden agenda or  trying to make them something they are not. 

Changes in the machinery of  productive forces cause changes in society. In 
the case of the industrial union  movement the change was the huge growth of 
industrial production. In the case of  the Negro Peoples Movement it was excited 
and driven by the mechanization of  agricultural and the release of 11 
million sharecropper from the land; 5 million  black and the need to overcome any 
barriers against their entry into the post  WWII industrial expansion. This need 
in turn excited the Black Power Movement  whose demand was for inclusion into 
the  electoral machinery of our  bourgeois superstructure. 

When one strips from their mind the old  concepts of race and suspend the 
color factor for a moment, it is  easy to  see that the migration of blacks South 
to North follows the exact same   pattern of all ethnic groups. The newly 
arriving migrant or immigrants settle  into their ethnic community. At a certain 
stage of growth of their numbers the  fight for political representation takes 
place. Such was the case with the  Irish, German, English and Italian, and 
the blacks, although the blacks probably  actually had it better  than the early 
Italian immigrants. 

It is  this context that Obama election as President will be looked at. 

The  worse mistake a communist can make is try and make something what it  ain
’  t. My kids or rather young adults say, “it is what it is.” 

Another law  of the social struggle emerges; once a social process, that is  
a change  process gripping all of society, is underway no one can stop it 
until it has run  its course. What we can do is impart our distinct character to 
it in the way of  its consciousness and understanding. 


WL.  

**************Stay up to date on the latest news - from sports scores to 
stocks and so much more. (http://aol.com?ncid=emlcntaolcom00000022)