New Jersey, February 7—A Progressive Labor Party leadership school helped over 50 workers and students to become more committed, anti-racist fighters. Over two days of sharp and principled struggle, comrades and friends learned about the roots of racism in the New World.
The leadership school was a valuable experience of collectivity. It was mainly led by young women. For three days, we cooked, cleaned, played, taught, and learned together. The experience was shared by Black, Latin, Asian and white workers and students, ranging in age from 9 to 70 (see letters). There was sharp struggle, and not all of our disagreements were resolved. But we all vowed to keep talking and fighting together. On Sunday, four people joined the Party—the most powerful way to combat racism.
We discussed the invention of “race” as a ruling-class tool to divide workers and make super-profits from the enslavement of Black people. We also analyzed the dangerous dead end of identity politics, which further divides workers and deflects working-class anger into capitalist-led, reformist organizations. Most important, we clarified the necessity of a multiracial fight for communism, the only way we can smash capitalism and its racist atrocities.
After welcoming people to the campsite Friday night, including a number of workers and students who were new to the Party’s ideas, we kicked off the leadership school Saturday morning by reading a section of Lerone Bennett’s The Road Not Taken. Bennett showed how the rulers of the American colonies systematically created laws in the 17th century to control and separate the people they aimed to exploit: white, Black, and Native American. The colonial bosses laws outlawed intermarriage among these groups and differentiated between white indentured servants (who could buy their liberty in some places) and Black slaves (who were chattel property forever). These laws represented the roots of modern U.S. racism.
On Saturday afternoon, we discussed “Dear White America,” by George Yancy, a Black writer whose research has been underwritten by The New York Times, the capitalists’ most important mouthpiece. As a defender of white privilege theory, Yancy makes the fatal error of blaming all white people in equal measure for the racist society we live in. He makes no distinction between the capitalist bosses (of all “races”) who hold state power and the workers who are exploited and oppressed by them (see next issue for a larger discussion about racism vs. white privilege theory).
By contrast, Adolph Reed, a professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that liberal identity politics can only redistribute the stolen wealth of capitalism. The ultimate goal of the leaders of groups like Black Lives Matter is to share in these capitalist spoils. The ultimate goal of the revolutionary communist PLP is to smash the capitalist system and create an egalitarian society without money or privilege of any kind.