III. The United States
1952 was the first year in seventy-one years that there were no lynchings. But that does not mean that the bodies of black men who had offended whites were no longer found floating in shallow waters, or that at times black men disappeared, their relations and friends uncertain whether they had gone North or had been liquidated by white racists. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a predominantly middle-class organization, chiefly of blacks but including sympathetic whites, concentrated on the abolition of legal discrimination against Negroes and earned notable successes. Legal struggles and mass action reacted on each other. The famous bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, began on December 5, 1955, and this action, of a range and solidity unprecedented, unloosed a flood which became a torrent. On June 5, 1956, a Federal court ruled that racial segregation on Montgomery city buses violated the Constitution. Later that year, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court decision which banned segregation on Montgomery buses. Federal injunctions prohibiting this segregation were served on city, state and bus company officials on December 20. At mass meetings, Montgomery blacks called off the year-long bus boycott, and buses were integrated on December 21.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, the first federal civil rights legislation since 1875. That very year. President Eisenhower, with obvious reluctance to take such a step, ordered federal troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to prevent interference with school integration at Central High School. That was on September 24. These episodes might have seemed to be merely unusual types of struggles which in the past had been halfheartedly projected or even attempted. Rapidly they showed themselves to be precipitants of the greatest social crisis the United States had known since the Civil War.
It was black students who initiated this struggle. On February 1, 1960 four students from a North Carolina college started a sit-in movement at Greensboro, North Carolina, in a five and dime store. By February 10 the movement had spread to fifteen Southern cities in five states. In March, one thousand Alabama State students marched on the State Capitol and held a protest meeting. In April the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was organized on the Shaw University campus. In May, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960, but that was insignificant in comparison with the tremendous movement that now began among blacks: the masses of the population in city after city; the groups of “Freedom Riders”—black young men and women who faced the bombs, bullets, whips and prisons of the South, official and unofficial; the black students on the campuses; black youths in the schools. Let it not be forgotten that both the New Left and the revolutionary defiance of campus authority by white students began to take shape as a direct result of the black students turning from protests by asking for reforms to protests by revolutionary action.
It would be a mistake here to attempt to give details about either events or personalities. Even to name some is to omit and thereby discriminate against others. It may be said, however, that names such as LeRoi Jones, Stokely Carmichael, Eldridge Cleaver, Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, the Black Panthers, are household names not only among young people in the United States but among white populations all over the world. Summer after summer has seen tremendous struggles by the black masses, led by unknown, obscure, local leaders. Perhaps the most significant was that which followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, the world-famous black leader. The American government placed a cordon of troops around the White House and government buildings and areas in Washington. They then abandoned the city, the capital of the United States, to the embittered and insurgent blacks, who constitute a majority of the Washington population. The question to be asked: what else could the government have done?
One can only record the question most often and most seriously asked: can any government mobilize the white population, or a great majority of it, in defense of white racism against militant blacks? The only legitimate answer lies in the continuing militancy or retreat of the black population. This population is at least 30 million in number, strategically situated in the heart of many of the most important cities in the United States. If the black population continues to resist racism, the militants and youth actively and the middle classes sympathetic or neutral, then the physical defeat of the black struggle against racism will involve the destruction of the United States as it has held together since 1776.
IV. The Caribbean
The Caribbean is a small area where British and French have ruled for centuries and where at the present one or two British territories have been granted what is known as independence. There are a few points that are to be made about these extraordinarily significant but on the world scale minute territories.
First of all, it is only recently that a British scholar, Sir Richard Pares, in a work called Merchants and Planters, has made it clear that as far back as the middle of the eighteenth century the slaves actually ran the plantations—those plantations that were the source of so much wealth, which contributed so substantially to the advancement of the advanced countries. Merchants and Planters is a study of the Caribbean and was published for the Economic History Society at the Cambridge University Press. Pares notes that:
in all the inventories which are to be found among the West Indian archives it is very usual for the mill, the cauldron, the still and the buildings to count for more than one-sixth of the total capital; in most plantations one-tenth would be nearer the mark. By far the greatest capital items were the value of the slaves and the acreage planted in canes by their previous labor.
So that the greatest capital value (about 1760) of the sugar plantations, was the labor of the slaves and the acres they had planted. All sorts of economists do all sorts of studies about the West Indies but they don’t know that the real value of those precious economic units was the slaves and the land they had developed by their labors. This escapes nearly all, except this English scholar.
Pares goes on to say: “Yet, when we look closely, we find that the industrial capital required was much larger than a sixth of the total value. With the mill, the boiling house and the still went an army of specialists—almost all of them slaves, but none the less specialists for that.”
There was an army of slaves, but they were specialists. This tremendous economy that made so much wealth, particularly for British society—it was the slaves who ran those plantations. Pares drives home the point: “They were not only numerous but, because of their skill, they had a high value. If we add their cost to that of the instruments and machinery which they used, we find that the industrial capital of the plantations without which it could not be a plantation at all, was probably not much less than half its total capital.”
Pares obviously feels it imperative to reiterate what he no doubt has failed to find in previous studies. “But when we examine specifications of the Negroes, we find so many boilers, masons, carters, boatswains of the mill, etc., that we cannot feel much confidence in our categories, especially when we find individuals described as ‘excellent boiler and field Negro”’
So that about 1766 Negroes ran the plantations. A man is described as an excellent boiler and field Negro, but this prevents us from putting such persons on either side of the line. He not only worked in the fields but also did the necessary technical work. Further complication arises from the fact that specialist jobs were awarded to the sickly and the ruptured. The sickly or the ruptured were given the technical jobs to do—we have to look afresh at the rapid spread of technical skill.
That gives an entirely different picture of the kind of civilization that was in existence in the West Indies well before the French Revolution of 1789. In the United States in general skilled labor was the preserve of whites. There were no white laborers in the Caribbean. There is other evidence elsewhere and it seems legitimate to say that the slaves ran the society. If they had been removed the society would have collapsed. That in fact is perfectly clear in certain writings about Trinidad and Tobago.
What is the situation in the islands, what is inherent there and what may break out at any minute, is proved by the revolt that has in 1969 broken out in the island of Curafao, dominated by Dutch oil interests.
The revolt was a revolt of workers and unemployed youth and they burned down business houses of a value variously estimated between 15 and 40 millions (Dutch money). On the surface the revolt was a spontaneous process against Westcar, a sub-contractor of Shell Oil, who lowered salaries and laid off workers. But the ensuing strike spread to Shell, representing more than 90 percent of the national income. The workers marched on Parliament and when the marchers clashed with a column of armed police the eruption broke out.
Meanwhile, 300 political prisoners are in the penitentiary. According to local law, they can be kept there if need be for two years while their cases are being investigated.
Nominally “peace” would have been achieved by the arrival of 600 Dutch marines, but not in 1969. An uneasy peace was really secured by the resignation of the Democratic Government which had been in power for fourteen years. Facing a Revolution, it has agreed to hold elections. It is freely stated by leaders of the Working Class Front that if the Democratic Government is re-elected, the events of May will be repeated with even greater devastation.
Herbert Specer, President of the Federation of Petroleum Workers, states what is the obvious truth: “In the last analysis the significance of the May revolt is that people want change, and if they don’t get it anything could happen.” Small as they are, their historical origin and development have been such that these Caribbean islands can make highly significant contributions to the economics and politics of a world in torment. That is exactly what Castro’s Cuba has done.
V. “Always Out of Africa”
For many hundreds of years, in fact almost (though not quite) from the beginning of the contact between Western civilization and Africa, it has been the almost universal practice to treat African achievement, discoveries and creations as if Western civilization was the norm and the African people spent their years in imitating, trying to reach or, worse still, if necessary going through the primitive early stages of the Western world. We therefore will, before we place it historically, state as straightforwardly as possible the historical achievements that are taking place today in an African state.
First the Tanzanian Government has nationalized the chief centers of economic life in the territory. That though important and necessary is not sufficient to create a new society. Less and less is nationalization becoming a landmark of a new society—today right-wing military dictators (Peru) and the Catholic hierarchy (with the blessing of the Pope) are ready to nationalize and even confiscate. The Government of Tanzania has gone further. In the Arusha Declaration of 29 January 1967 it aims at treating a new type of government official:
PART FIVE: THE ARUSHA RESOLUTION
Therefore, the National Executive Committee, meeting in the Community center at Arusha from 26.1.67 to 29.1.67, resolves:
A. The Leadership
Every TANU and Government leader must be either a Peasant or a Worker, and should in no way be associated with the practices of Capitalism or Feudalism.
No TANU or Government leader should hold shares in any company.
No TANU or Government leader should hold Directorship in any privately-owned enterprises.
No TANU or Government leader should receive two or more salaries.
No TANU or Government leader should own houses which he rents to others.
For the purposes of this Resolution the term “leader” should comprise the following: Members of the TANU National Executive Committee; Ministers, Members of Parliament, Senior Officials of organizations affiliated to TANU, Senior Officials of Para-Statal organizations, all those appointed or elected under any clause of the TANU Constitution, Councilors, and Civil Servants in high and middle cadres. (In this context “leader” means a man, or a man and his wife; a woman, or a woman and her husband).
Such a resolution would probably exclude 90 percent of those who govern and administer in other parts of the world, developed or underdeveloped. The Government aims at creating a new type of society, based not on Western theories but on the concrete circumstances of African life and its historic past.
Perhaps the most revolutionary change of all, it will reconstruct the very system of education in order to fit the children and the youth, in particular the youth in secondary education, for the new society which the Government of Tanzania seeks to build. The simplicity with which Dr. Nyerere states what his government proposes to do disguises the fact that not in Plato or Aristotle, Rousseau or Karl Marx will you find such radical, such revolutionary departures from the established educational order.
Alongside this change in the approach to the curriculum there must be a parallel and integrated change in the way our schools are run, so as to make them and their inhabitants a real part of our society and our economy. Schools must, in fact, become communities—and communities which practice the precept of self-reliance. The teachers, workers, and pupils together must be the members of a social unit in the same way as parents, relatives, and children are the family social unit. There must be the same kind of relationship between pupils and teachers within the school community as there is between children and parents in the village. And the former community must realize, just as the latter do, that their life and well-being depend upon the production of wealth— by farming or other activities.
This means that all schools, but especially secondary schools and other forms of higher education, must contribute to their own upkeep; they must be economic communities as well as social and educational communities. Each school should have, as an integral part of it, a farm or workshop which provides the food eaten by the community, and makes some contribution to the total national income.
This is not a suggestion that a school farm or workshop should be attached to every school for training purposes. It
is a suggestion that every school should also be a farm; that the school community should consist of people who are both teachers and farmers, and pupils and farmers. Obviously, if there is a school farm, the pupils working on it should be learning the techniques and tasks of farming. But the farm would be an integral part of the school and the welfare of the pupils would depend on its output, just as the welfare of a farmer depends on the output of his land. Thus, when this scheme is in operation, the revenue side of school accounts would not just read as at present: “Grant from Government … ; Grant from voluntary agency or other charity …” They would read: “Income from sale of cotton (or whatever other cash crop was appropriate for the area) … ; Value of the food grown and consumed … ; Value of labor done by pupils on new building, repairs, equipment, etc…. ; Government subvention … ; Grant from …”
Perhaps nothing shows more clearly the radical, the revolutionary, the complete break with Western habits and Western thought than the new attitude to the Tanzanian farmer. Some of them have followed the advice given to the African farmer officially and unofficially by Westerners: wishing him and his country well, they have encouraged him to individual effort, essentially capitalistic. Following this advice farmers in certain districts of Tanzania (mainly the slopes of the Kavirondo Mountain) have followed this Western type of agriculture with success. Note now the economic, in fact the political attitude of the Tanzanian Government to this type of farmer. Reviewing Tanzania “After the Arusha Declaration” Dr. Nyerere outlines the cooperative socialist community Tanzania aims at. He continues:
This is the objective. It is stated clearly, and at greater length, in the policy paper. We must understand it so that we know what we are working towards. But it is not something we shall achieve overnight. We have a long way to go.
A History of Pan-African Revolt (The Charles H. Kerr Library) Page 14
