The key to the puzzle is that Theirstory (imperialist Euro-Amerikan mis-history) is not incomplete; it isn’t true at all. Theirstory also includes the standard class analysis of Amerika that is put forward into our hands by the Euro-Amerikan Left. Theirstory keeps saying, over and over, “You folks, just think about your own history; don’t bother analyzing white society, just accept what we tell you about it.” In other words, it’s as if British socialists told Afrikan colonial revolutionaries to just study their own “traditions” and history – but not to study British imperialism. Or if revolutionaries in Czarist Poland or Finland were told not to examine the oppressor Great Russian nation. Theirstory is not incomplete; it is a series of complete lies, an ideological world-view cleverly designed to further imperialist domination over the oppressed.
Of course we are being tugged, pushed and pulled away from analyzing Euro-Amerikan society – why should imperialism want us to understand our enemy? But we should want to. In fact, for us and for revolutionaries of all nations it is a necessity. Even Third-World attempts to recover our varied histories here are thrown off when the central piece in the U.S. Empire – the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation – is removed from view.
This work attempts to throw the light of historical materialism on Babylon itself.* For so long the oppressed have been the objects of investigation by Euro-imperialist sociology, anthropology, psychology, etc., etc. – all to further pacifying and controlling us (anthropology, for example, had its origins as an intelligence service for European colonialization of the world). Now it is time to scientifically examine the oppressor society, to go beneath the outward surface of the U.S. Empire to discover its fundamental structure, dynamic and contradictions. And as we reexamine and sift through the development of the oppressor nation we shall see ourselves there, visible from another angle.
We all know that the “United States” is an oppressor nation; that is, a nation that oppresses other nations. This is a characteristic that the U.S. shares with other imperialist powers. What is specific, is particular about the U.S. oppressor nation is that it is an illegitimate nation.
What pretends to be one continental nation stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific is really a Euro-Amerikan settler empire, built on colonially oppressed nations and peoples whose very independent existence has been forcibly submerged. But the colonial crime, the criminals, the victims, and the stolen lands and labor still exist. The many Indian nations, the Afrikan nation in the South, Puerto Rico, the northern half of Mexico, Asian Hawaii – all are now considered the lands of the Euro-Amerikan settlers. The true citizens of this U.S. Empire are the European invaders and their descendants. So that the “United States” is in reality not one, but many nations (oppressor and oppressed).
We see the recognition of Amerika as a “prisonhouse of nations” as the beginning – no more, no less – of the differences between revisionist and communist politics here. We note the hysterical energy that upfront revisionists pour into denying the existence of various oppressed nations, most notably the Afrikan Nation. It’s interesting that the leadership of the KDP (Union of Democratic Filipinos), for example, has participated in several major theoretical expeditions to prove that the Afrikan Nation never has and never will exist. In the well-known 1975 Critique of the Black Nation Thesis, the KDP leaders and other Asian and Afrikan radicals claimed not only that the Afrikan Nation was a crazy idea thought up by racist whites, but that nationalism has never had any support in the Afrikan communities. The document even goes so far as to say that no nationalist movement has ever existed among Afrikans here in the U.S. Empire.
Now united with other revisionists in the “Line of March” organization, these Asian-Amerikan activists are still writing documents arguing that Afrikans suffer no national oppression within the U.S. Empire (only “racism”). Why is this supposedly non-existent Afrikan Nation so, so important to them? Why spend years writing about something you claim doesn’t exist? Unless you fear that this supposedly non-existent Nation and its very existent revolutionary struggle will upset your applecart of reformist-integrationist schemes and alliances. It’s interesting that during these years the KDP leadership, which has been so concerned about combating Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalism, has yet to concern itself with doing a significant class and national analysis of the Filipino community here in the U.S. We hold that once this outward shell of integration into a single, white-dominated “U.S.A.” is cracked open – to reveal the colonial oppression and anti-colonial struggle within – then the correct path to a communist understanding of the U.S. Empire is begun.
We hold that settlerism is the historic instrument created by the European ruling classes to safeguard their colonial conquests with entire, imported populations of European invaders. In return for special privileges and a small share of the colonial loot these settlers became the loyal, live-in garrison troops of Empire over us. As such they objectively side with our oppressors and become imperialism’s willing servants. Everywhere they are filled with white supremacy, national chauvinism, and a hatred and fear of the oppressed. So that in South Afrika, in Palestine, and right here in the U.S. Empire, the Revolution objectively is locked in battle with the European settler masses. On this matter there is no choice.
Usually it is argued that the majority of Euro-Amerikan settlers are exploited proletarians, and that the class exploitation they suffer is or soon will be opening their eyes to revolutionary unity with us, their fellow proletarians. This is not just a view that is identified solely with those comrades who have diluted themselves away into one of the many white “Left” parties. For example, this line clearly dominated the historic May, 1974 national conference on “Racism and Imperialism” given by the now-defunct Afrikan Liberation Support Committee.
We mention them especially because of the great significance of the A.L.S.C. at its peak, and also because of the vanguard role of the Black Liberation Movement as a whole played during the 1960s and 1970s in reawakening all resistance to U.S. imperialism on the continent.
Most of the leadership-panelists at the Conference strongly supported one or another variation of this line. (1) Abdul Alkalimat of Peoples College pointed out that “the white working class” were “friends” of Third-World people, and that the problems caused by their white supremacy should be handled by “the methods used to resolve non-antagonistic contradictions among friends…” Kwame Toure (sn Stokely Carmichael) of the AAPRP bluntly told the audience that: “… for real socialist transformation to come to America, the white working class is the crucial element… History has demonstrated to us the willingness of the Black man to work with his ally, the white working class… Although the Black worker must be the vanguard, he must push the white worker out front. The Black worker must not move unless the white worker is moving.” And so on.
The only two revolutionary voices on the panel opposing this view of uniting with the white masses were Amiri Baraka (of CAP) and the three spokesmen for the Afrikan Peoples Party (APP). Baraka commented that: “Racism renders talk about the entire working class, at this time, as idealistic conjecture.” One of the APP representatives stated that: “There is a class struggle, but this class struggle is between white workers and capitalists is dormant, asleep, and we can’t wait until it wakes up before we struggle for our demands.” Another APP spokesman said that the way to awaken the white working class was by liberating the oppressed nations:
“We are not claiming that there are not class contradictions within the U.S. The less the oppressor nation receives from the Afrikan colonies the harder they will have to come down on the so-called white proletariat…”
Today, CAP and Amiri Baraka have been convinced that counting on the settler masses is the right road to revolution. CAP has dissolved into another “multi-national” organization, and Baraka has repudiated his former views. The APP has now put forward in their recent theoretical journal, Black Revolution, that in Amerika: “The problem is institutionalized racism.” Their lead editorial states that because of “racism” the white majority “doesn’t see it in their class interest to unite with New Afrikans and are becoming more openly racist.” But the APP believes that if we can defeat “racist repression,” then white and Third-World workers will see that they are all united parts of “the true majority of the people, the many-sectored working class.” (2)
