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Bio-Sketch
By the 1980s the "black liberation
movement" in America was all but destroyed, and Lil
Joe found himself homeless for 10 years. He ended up in the
Pico-Union District, which is largely comprised of immigrants
from Central America. Lil Joe used to argue with other homeless
people about the political events, the cops, the collapse of the
Soviet Union, the War on Iraq, and other issues. By this, Lil
Joe came to the attention of an underground Meso-American group
that was involved in protecting immigrants from police and
lumpen abuse. Lil Joe joined and worked with this group for
10 years in defense of the community.
Lil
Joe Bio
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The leadership of the Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists, Trans-Africa, and the Black Radical Congress
have joined with British and U.S. imperialism -- and
transnational capital that they represent -- in attacking
landless Zimbabwean peasants in their efforts to expropriate the
expropriators of Zimbabwean land.
These lackeys of American imperialism attack
the African peasants of Zimbabwe for being "lawless."
In particular, they reduce the natural occurrence of Zimbabwean
peasants taking back the land stolen from their Zimbabwean
forefathers to the private motives of a single individual:
Robert Mugabe, the head of the ZANU-PF government in Zimbabwe.
Furthermore, they reduce these mass acts of expropriation by
Zimbabwean peasants to Mugabe "initiating" same in
order to get re-elected.
On the defensive because opposed by
African-Americans in the United States who support the land
expropriations in Zimbabwe, the Black Radical Congress has been
circulating a February 14, 2001 speech made by Zwelinzima Vavi,
COSATU General Secretary, in which he denounced the African
peasants in Zimbabwe for seizing the lands that were stolen from
their forefathers. Zimbabwe Crisis
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On the other hand, Garvey differed ideologically from Booker
T. Washington in that, although Garvey accepted racial
segregation in the United States, he argued also that Blacks
should do as the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) demanded: Go back to Africa.
Garvey and the KKK Grand Dragons spoke at each other's rallies
-- they both denounced racial integration and interracial sex
and marriage. Furthermore, Garvey said that, as
Christians, Black Americans have more in common with the KKK
than with the American Communist Party. His reasoning was
that the KKK was "Christian," whereas Communists are
atheists.
Garvey's involvement with and statements about Blacks and the
KKK was at a time (the 1920s and 30s) when Blacks were being
lynched in the South and attacked in the North by the KKK, and
other racists. The only organizations that came forth in
defense of Black people (e.g., the Scottsboro Boys) was the
American Communist Party -- and Black trade unionists who were
organizing the Sleeping Car Porters Union, which eventually
compelled the white trade unionists to recognize them.
From his discussions with Claude
McKay, Lenin -- and, later, from his discussion with C.L.R.
James, and Leon Trotsky -- wondered aloud whether Blacks in
the United States were an oppressed "nation."
The Communist Party USA, later capitulated to racial pressures
in the United States, and declared that the Negro Nation did, in
fact, exist -- using Stalin's criterion, as stated in his
"Marxism and the National Question," and, in
particular, using the formula put forth by Harry Haywood.
Response to Addaes
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Table
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I must repeat. The Democratic Party is the
party of capital, not of labor. The Democrats in the trade union
bureaucracy would have us believe that the Democratic Party is
"progressive," supportable by trade union's dues.
This is class betrayal! Fundamentally, in the Senate, the
presidency and the national judicial representations the
Democrats are based in capital, not labor.
Were the Democratic Party a labor party it
would be a creature of organized labor in politics, in their own
name, as are the socialist parties in Europe, and Labour Party
in Great Britain. To be held accountable to labor, the
class party must be socially based in the working-class as a
class, and financially supported exclusively by trade unions. But
the Democratic Party in its national committee and in the Senate
and upper chambers of States and in the presidency and judiciary
is based socially and financially in contributions from domestic
and/or industrial capital.
U.S. Representative Dennis
Kucinich of Ohio presents himself as a worker
militant. In fact, he is from the working-class but this
is a case of the incidental or the inessential masquerading as
essential. This kind of masquerade comes on the scene every
Presidential election year. This masquerade—let's call
it what is, a charade—has a history going back to the
Communist Party U.S.A.'s promoting the millionaire Democrat
Franklin Roosevelt.
The so-called Left laps up the Democratic
vomit and rhetoric of "anti-party" Party hacks and campaign
artists such as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton who present the
Democratic Party as the "progressive alternative" to
the Republicans. Their rhetoric present themselves as Blacks in
the Democratic Party rather than what they are, namely,
Democrats in the Democratic Party.
Hypocrisy of Americas Two Party System
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The
fatal flaw in the '60s and '70s — that the
revolutionary cadres lacked the objective to take state power — had its basis in American anti-intellectualism and pragmatism
that degenerated into activism.
This became basic rebellion, not revolution, and the
confrontations with the state (for confrontations sake) resulted
in burnouts, deaths, the imprisonment of many comrades, and the
demoralization of others. All
of this was exacerbated by the fact that the ethnic nationalist
movements (e.g., Black and Chicano) were based in shifting
communities. The student-based anti-war movement was also based
in constantly changing and unstable student populations.
Revolution
cannot be based in a single ethnic community. It must be based
in the class to which ethnic communities belong.
Revolution displaces the the representatives of the existing order,
reorganizes, and structures the new order.
The overthrow of the ruling class by the oppressed
classes is a conscious struggle for class power.
The polemics in the revolutionary class should be
directed at the objective of developing a strategy to take state
power.
It is by
this "practical-critical," "revolutionizing
practice" (praxis) that revolutionary organizations are
formed and revolutionary theory developed.
The objective of taking state power — as part and parcel
of a strategy toward economic transformation — tests ideas and
mediates behavior.
Without
class-based revolutionary objectives formulated by the
revolutionary class, there can be no revolutionary movement or
revolutionary theory.
Revolutionary Movements of the 60s and 70s
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updated 16 October 2007
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