The Communist Plan to Conquer America to be by Inciting Anarchy via Black Racism & Anti-Gentilism

Workers Library Publishers,an arm of the Communist Party, originally published this pamphlet in 1928; a template for inciting racism and labor strife among other torments in American culture. They have been splendidly successful amongst the innocent, trusting, and uninformed Americans. This pamphlet is quite scarce in the original. We scanned this from the original booklet.

THE COMMUNIST FIGHT FOR THE NEGRO CAUSE...how it began, Communist publication

  AMERICAN

NEGRO PROBLEMS
  

AMERICA NEGRO PROJECT
WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS
35 East 125th Street New York
 
  THE WORKERS LIBRARY

No. 1-THE TENTH YEAR-The Rise and Achievements of Soviet Russia (1917-1927)
By J. LOUIS ENGDAHL . . . 10 CENTS
No. 2-THE COOLIDGE PROGRAM-Capitalist Democracy and Prosperity Exposed
By JAY LOVESTONE . . . 5 CENTS
No. 3-QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS TO AMERICAN TRADE UNIONISTS-Stalin's Interview with the First American Trade Union Delegation to Soviet Russia . . . .25 CENTS
No. 4-I 928-The Presidential Election and the Workers
By JAY LOVESTONE . . . 20 CENTS
No. 5-THE TROTSKY OPPOSITION-Its Significance for American Workers
By BERTRAM D. WOLFE . . . 25 CENTS
No. 6-WHY EVERY MINER SHOULD BE A COMMUNIST.
By JOHN PEPPER . . . 5 CENTS
No. 7-THE COMMUNIST NUCLEUS-What it is; How it Works
By M. JENKS. . . 15 CENTS
No. 8-WHY CO-OPERATION? ---Consumers Co-operative Movement in the U. S. A.
By GEORGE HALOMEN . . . 10 CENTS
   
Copyright 1928
WORKERS LIBRARY PUBLISHERS, INC
Foreword

THE COMMUNIST FIGHT FOR THE NEGRO CAUSE   The two major capitalist parties, the Republican and Democratic, and their small brother, the Socialist Party, have an unwritten "gentleman's agreement" on the Negro question. According to this sacred "gentleman's agreement," which no capitalist politician has dared to violate in the present election campaign, there is no Negro question in the United States, there are no problems of social and political equality, no questions of discrimination against the Negro masses. 

During the whole course of the election campaign there has been only one political party which has had the courage to violate this "gentleman's agreement" to keep a deathly silence on the Negro question. The Workers (Communist) Party of America has come out in its election platform and in its whole election struggle as the fearless champion of the Negro masses.

The southern states are stirred up by the political struggle of the communist speakers and organizers for the Negro masses. Communist anti-lynching leaflets are being distributed everywhere.

The candidates of the Communist Party are everywhere putting up a courageous fight for the full social and political equality of the Negro race.

The meetings of the Communist Party have been broken up in Arizona, in Texas, in Delaware, and in other southern states, because the communist spokesmen dared to tackle the Negro question and were bold enough to call the Negro workers to their meetings.

The Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, the forces of police and other organs of governmental terrorism are mobilized everywhere against the communists, because the Communist Party is the only party of the working class and of the oppressed Negro masses.

One, if not the most outstanding, feature of the election campaign of 1928 is the fact that communist speakers, organizers, and candidates for President, vice-president, and Governor are being jailed everywhere because of their uncompromising struggle for the Negroes.

To this brief foreword to the following essay on some of the basic Negro problems in America, we wish to add the principal demands for the oppressed Negro masses as embodied in the Platform of the Workers (Communist) Party of America:

1. Abolition of the whole system of race discrimination. Full racial, political, and social equality for the Negro race.

2. Abolition of all laws which result in segregation of Negroes. Abolition of all Jim Crow laws. The law shall forbid all discrimination against Negroes in selling or renting houses.

3. Abolition of all laws which disfranchise the Negroes.

4. Abolition of laws forbidding intermarriage of persons of different races.

5. Abolition of all laws and public administration measures which prohibit, or in practice prevent, Negro children or youth from attending general public schools or universities.

6. Full and equal admittance of Negroes to all railway station waiting rooms, restaurants, hotels, and theatres.

7. Federal law against lynching and the protection of the Negro masses in their right of self-defense.

8. Abolition of discrimination practices in courts against Negroes. No discrimination in jury service.

9. Abolition of the convict lease system and of the chain-gang.

10. Abolition of all Jim Crow distinction in the army, navy, and civil service.

11. Immediate removal of all restrictions in all trade unions against the membership of Negro workers.

12. Equal opportunity for employment, wages, hours, and working conditions for Negro and white workers. Equal pay for equal work for Negro and white workers. J. P.

American Negro Problems

By JOHN PEPPER

The Negro question in America must be treated in its relation to the liberation struggle of the proletariat against American imperialism. The struggle against white oppression of the Negro masses is a tart of the proletarian revolution in America against capitalism. The American working class cannot free itself from capitalist exploitation without freeing the Negro race from white oppression. What Marx said about the United States is still true:

"Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded."

At the same time the Negro question in the United States of America must be treated in its relations to the huge Negro masses of farmers and workers oppressed and exploited by white imperial-inn in Africa and South America, The Negroes of the United States are the most advanced section of the Negro population of the world and can play a decisive role in helping and leading the liberation movement of the Negro colonies. Within the Negro population of the United States, the Negro working class is destined to be the vanguard of all liberation movements and may become the vanguard of the liberation movement of the Negro peasant masses on an international scale.

A NEGRO PROLETARIAT APPEARS

The industrialization of the agrarian south of the United States, the concentration of a new Negro working-class population in the big cities of the east and north, and the entrance of the Negroes into the basic industries on a mass scale, have been changing, in the last few years, the whole social composition of the Negro race in America. The appearance of a genuine Negro industrial proletariat creates an organizing force for the Negro race, furnishes a new working-class leadership to all Negro race movements, creates the possibility for the Negro workers under the leadership of the Communist Party to assume the hegemony of the Negro liberation movement, strengthens immensely the fighting possibilities for the emancipation of the Negro race and increases the importance of the Negro question for the revolutionary struggle of the American proletariat.

American imperialism oppresses in the most terrific way the nearly 11 million Negroes who constitute not less than one-tenth of the country's total population. White capitalist prejudice considers the Negro race a "lower race," the born servants of the lofty white masters. The racial caste system is a fundamental feature of the social, industrial and political organization of the United States.

The Workers (Communist) Party of America, in its fight against imperialism, must recognize clearly the tremendous revolutionary possibilities of the liberation movement of the Negro people. Today the "solid south," the millions of Negro farmers of the "black belt," living under the most oppressive conditions, "half-feudal, half-slave" (Lenin) constitute one of the props of American imperialism. It is the basic duty of the Communist Party to develop all revolutionary possibilities of the Negro race, to transform the "solid south" and the "black belt" from "reserves of forces for the bourgeoisie into reserves of forces for the proletariat" (Stalin). The Communist Party must consider itself not only the Party of the working class generally, but also the champion of the Negroes as an oppressed race and especially the organizer of the Negro working-class elements. The Communist Party cannot be a real Bolshevik Party without being also the Party of the liberation of the Negro race from all white oppression.

THE SOLID SOUTH-AN AMERICAN COLONY

The Negro tenant farmers, sharecroppers, and agricultural workers of the south are still, despite all the pompous phrases of "freeing the slaves," in the status of virtual slavery. They have not the slightest prospect of ever acquiring possession of the land on which they work. By means of a usurious credit system they are chained to the plantation owners as firmly as plantation slaves. Peonage and contract labor are the fate of the Negro cotton farmers. The bankers of the east and the south are increasingly becoming the landowners. The landowners, who are at the same time the merchants, having a monopoly of marketing the crops of the Negro tenant farmers, and of the government in the south, rule over the Negroes with a merciless dictatorship.

The most backward half-feudal, half-slave methods of exploitation by the plantation owners, are merged in the south with the most modern forms of capitalist exploitation by the huge trusts and banks of financial capital. No other section of the American toiling masses feels the ruthless capitalist dictatorship of the much-vaunted American bourgeois democracy more than the oppressed Negro masses. The Negroes of the south are disfranchised politically. Sheer force prevents the Negroes from exercising their so-called political rights. Lynch law is the law over the Negroes. The terror of the Ku Klux Klan is the constitution for the Negroes. Most infamous segregation policies prevail everywhere against them. The white masters try to reduce the Negroes to illiteracy.

The "black belt" of the south, with its starving and pauperized Negro farmers, and Negro agricultural working masses; with its Jim-Crowism, its semi-feudal status and its political system still bearing the earmarks of the period of slavery, constitutes virtually a colony within the body of the United States of America. The super-profits extracted from this Negro "colony" are one of the most important sources of the growth of American imperialism; the oppression of the Negro race is one of the most important bases of the government apparatus of American capitalism. The prejudices created in the minds of large sections of the white workers against the Negroes are the most dangerous obstacles to the unity of the American working class.

CLASS DIFFERENTIATION OF THE NEGROES

A sharp class differentiation has taken place in the Negro population in recent years. Formerly the Negro was in the main the cotton farmer in the south and the domestic help in the north. The peasantry (the Negro farm owners, the share-croppers, the Negro tenant farmers) and the agricultural workers are still the largest stratum of the Negro race. Out of eight million Negroes in the south, there are six million still on the land. In the big cities and industrial centres of the north there is concentrated to a growing degree a Negro working-class population. There are already one and one-half to two million Negroes in industry in the north. At the same time there is a rapid development of a Negro petit-bourgeoisie, a Negro intelligentsia and even a Negro bourgeoisie. The very fact of segregation of the Negro masses creates the basis for the development of a stratum of small merchants, lawyers, physicians, preachers, brokers, who try to attract the Negro workers and farmers as consumers. There is no Negro industrial bourgeoisie. Predominance of white trusts restricts the young and weak Negro bourgeoisie to the fields of trade and second-rate banking.

It would be a major mistake to overlook the existence of class differences among the Negroes, especially the crystallization of a Negro bourgeoisie. There were in 1924, 73 Negro banks, carrying an annual volume of business of over 100,000,000 dollars. There are 25 Negro insurance companies; 14 of these have assets totalling 6,000,000 dollars and during 1926 alone paid over 3,000,000 dollars in claims. This Negro bourgeoisie is closely tied up with the white bourgeoisie; is often the agent of the white capitalists. Economically the Negro banks are often part of the Federal Reserve System of banking.

Politically the Negro bourgeoisie is participating, to a growing degree, in the so-called "commissions for inter-racial cooperation." These committees exist in eight hundred counties of the south and are spreading all through the "black belt." But the ideala~tica1 and organizational bearer of the national racial movement of the Negroes is today rather the intelligentsia and petit-bourgeoisie.

PROLETARIANIZATION AND PAUPERIZATION OF THE FARMER

There is a growing process of disintegration going on among the Negro farmers. Ever larger sections are transformed into agricultural workers (2,000,000) and hundreds of thousands of Negro farmers and agricultural workers desert their lands and migrate to the big cities and industrial centres. This migration is not only to the industrial centres and big cities of the east and north, I but also to the rising industrial centres of the south. There is even migration from the plantations to the villages of the south where there is a non-agrarian Negro population of about two millions.

Lenin pointed out back in 1913, as one of the foremost characteristics of the southern rural areas, the fact that "its population is deserting it." The disintegration of the Negro peasantry means partly proletarianization of the Negro share-croppers, partly pauperization of the Negro masses. In the past the south has had a stratum of "poor whites," today it is developing a new statum of "poor blacks"- driven completely outside the process of production.

The southern plantation owners and their government have tried to hold the Negro farmers and agricultural workers in the southern cotton fields by force, but even their brutal terror has not been able to stop the mighty migration from the Cotton plantations to the industrial centres. This migration is an "unarmed Spartacist uprising" against slavery and oppression by a capitalist and feudal oligarchy. The Negro has fled from the south, but what has he found in the north? He has found in the company towns and industrial centres of the north and cast a wage slavery virtually not better than the contract slavery in the south. lie has found crowded, unsanitary slums. He has exchanged the old segregation for a new segregation in the worst sections of the cities. He is doing the most dangerous, worst-pad, unskilled work in the steel, coal and packing industries. He has found the racial prejudice of a narrow white labor aristocracy, which refuses to recognize the unskilled Negro worker as its e1tial. He has found the treachery of the bureaucracy of the A. F. of L., which refuses to organize the Negro workers into trade unions; he has found betrayal by the renegade Socialist Party which capitulated completely to white chauvinism. The lynchings of the south have their counterpart in the race riots of the east. The employing class deliberately arouses the racial hatred and prejudices of the white workers against the Negro workers with the sinister aim of splitting and dividing the ranks of the working class, thereby maintaining the exploitation and oppression of both the white and Negro workers.

"A cropper is a tenant who works the land for his landlord without supplying any of the working capital, but he might a1most as well be regarded as a laborer who accepts a share of the crop as his wages . . . The payment for their services in the form of a share of production rather than in the form of a stated weekly or a monthly wage is the part of a plan whereby the landlord is able to insure himself of their continued services throughout the season. In other words, while tenancy in theory represents mere/v a method of holding possession of the land, in practice it sometimes works out into a method of obtaining laborers to work on the land." Goldweiser and Truesdell "Farm Tenancy in the United States." Census Monographs IV. Washington, 1927).

THE SLOGAN OF SELF-DETERMINATION

The Workers (Communist) Party of America puts forward correctly as its central slogan: Abolition of the whole system of race discrimination. Full racial) social and political equality for the Negro people. But it is necessary to supplement the struggle for the full racial, social and political equality of the Negroes with a struggle for their right of national self-determination. Self-determination means the right to establish their own state, to erect their own government, if they choose to do so. in the economic and social conditions and class relations of the Negro people there are increasing forces which serve as a basis for the development of a Negro nation (a compact mass of farmers on a contiguous territory, semi-feudal conditions, complete segregation, common traditions of slavery, the development of distinct classes and economic ties, etc., etc.). It is true, the Negro people in the United States

have not their own language as distinct from the language of the oppressing white nation; but there is a certain amount of special Negro culture; there is still alive the Common, deep-rooted tradition of the bitter centuries of slavery; there is developing a new Negro literature and press.

First of all, we must consider the compact Negro farming masse of the "black belt" as the potential basis for a national liberation movement of the Negroes and as the basis for the realization of i/s right of self-determination of a Negro state. Despite growing migration to the north, in 1920 there were still over 3,000,00 Negroes who constituted a majority of the population in 219 counties over a contiguous area in the "black belt." There are many national movements of the Negro city petit-bourgeoisie and intelligentsia. The fact that the most important mass movement of this kind, the Garvey movement, was a sort of Negro Zionism and ha such reactionary, extremely harmful slogans as leaving the Unite States and back to Africa, should not blind us to the revolutionary possibilities of the Negro national liberation movements of the future. It is unquestionable that first of all the Negro farmers can be the basis of a Negro national liberation movement of the future, despite the fact that today the Negro farming masses of the south are so oppressed that they do not, yet show any signs of national awakening.

The Negro national liberation movement has tremendous revolutionary potentialities, despite the fact that at the outset its bearer will likely be the rural and urban petit-bourgeoisie. Lenin has stated: "There can be no doubt that all nationalist movements cannot be but bourgeois-democratic movements." But the knowledge of this fact did not prevent Lenin and the C. I. from recognizing the tremendous unexhausted revolutionary possibilities of the national liberation movement of the colonies and oppressed nations and races generally. As the national liberation movement grows, the Negro proletariat will play an increasing role in it and will struggle for the hegemony over it. There is a certain amount of assimilation going on among the Negro industrial workers in the north and east. The Negro worker works shoulder to shoulder with the white worker in the factories and plants, but at the same time it is necessary to recognize that there is practically no social contact between these workers. The social and residential segregation of the Negro workers in the north is complete and manifests an increasing tendency. Veritable Negro cities are being created in Harlem, New York, and on the south side of Chicago. This segregation of the Negro working class creates an economic basis for the development of a Negro petit-bourgeoisie even in the north and east, which loads additional exploitation onto the backs of the Negro workers and as a result of this distinct development, strengthens the basis of the Negro national movement in the north and east.

The Workers (Communist) Party of America must come out openly and unreservedly for the right of national self -determination for the Negroes, but at the same time the Communist Party must state sharply that the realization of this self-determination cannot be secured under the present relations of power under capitalism. National self-determination for the Negro is a bourgeois- democratic demand but it can be realized only in the course of the proletarian revolution. The abolition of the half-feudal, half-slave remnants in the south will also be only "a by-product" (Lenin) of the general proletarian revolution. It would be a ma/or mistake to believe that there can be any other revolution in imperialist America, in the country of the most powerful, most centralized and Concentrated industry, than a proletarian revolution.

 The Communist Party of America must recognize the right of national self-determination for the Negroes and must respect their own decision about the form of the realization of this self-determination. The Negro Communists should emphasize in their propaganda the establishment of a Negro Soviet Republic.

AGAINST WHITE CHAUVINISM

Not only the labor aristocracy but large sections of the American working class as a whole are permeated with white chauvinism. 'White chauvinism reflects itself in various forms even in some sections of the Communist Party itself. Individual comrades and even some local organizations have yielded occasionally to the racial prejudices of the white workers and retreated, instead of waging a courageous struggle against it. (Gary, Detroit, St. Paul, Harlem). The C. E. C. of the Communist Party of America stated in its resolution of April 30th that "the Party as a whole has not sufficiently realized the significance of work among the Negroes and that such work should be considered not as a special task of the Negro comrades, but as one of the special revolutionary tasks of every communist, of the whole Party."

It is imperative to begin outside and inside the Communist Part a relentless campaign of self-criticism concerning the work among Negroes. All signs of white chauvinism must be ruthlessly uprooted from within the ranks of the Communist Party. In this aggressive fight against white chauvinism, the Party must carry on a widespread and thorough educational campaign within the Party utilizing for this purpose to the fullest possible extent, the Party schools, the Party press and the public platform to stamp out all forms of antagonism or even indifference among our white comrades towards the Negro work. This educational work should he conducted simultaneously with broad campaigns to draw the white workers and the poor white farmers into the struggle for the support of the demands of the Negro workers and tenant farmers.

The struggle against white chauvinism must be combined wit the struggle for genuine internationalism in the ranks of the working class and in the ranks of the Communist Party. The Communist Party of America must emphasize in all its campaigns the solidarity of the white and black workers. In the ranks of the Communist Party there can be no place for nationalism. The Communist Party must be the Party of internationalism.

TASKS OF THE COMMUNISTS IN NEGRO WORK

The appearance of a Negro industrial proletariat on a growing national mass scale makes it imperative that the main emphasis of the Party work should be placed on these new proletarian forces. The Negro workers must be organized under the leadership of the Communist Party and drawn into joint struggle, together with the white workers. The Party must understand how to link up all racial, national demands of the Negroes with the economic and political struggles of the workers and poor farmers. Much more emphasis than before must be laid on the trade-union organization of the Negroes. The Party must penetrate all existing Negro trade unions. It is a basic task of the Communist Party to organize the Negroes into trade unions. In all the work of organizing the unorganized carried on under the leadership of the Communist Party, we must insist upon the inclusion of Negro workers with white workers in the newly organized trade unions. In the existing trade unions, the Party must fight for the admittance of Negro workers. Where the labor bureaucracy refuses to admit Negroes, it is the duty of the Communist Party to organize Negro trade unions. At the same time the principle of one union for each industry, embracing white as well as Negro workers, should be the aim of the Communist Party.

The importance of trade-union work imposes special tasks upon the T. U. E. L. The T. U. E. L,. has neglected the work among the Negroes, notwithstanding the fact that these workers are objectively in a position to play a very big part in carrying through the programme of organizing the unorganized. Greater contact must he established between the T. U. E. L. and the Negro masses. The T. U. E. L. must become the champion of the rights of the Negroes in the old unions and in the organizing of new unions for Negroes and whites, as well as separate Negro unions.

It is one of the biggest tasks of the 'Workers Party to extend its activities to the "Solid South," the beginning, of which has been made in the election campaign.

The Party was not able to carry on any work among the Negro farmers and agricultural workers of the "black belt." It is the duty of the Party to study and analyze the conditions of the Negro farming masses, to work out demand to meet their situation, to organize special Negro farmers' organizations as well as organizations of the agricultural workers. It i necessary that the Party should establish new district organization in the south, especially in the most important industrial centres. The Party organizations in these industrial centers of the south should b the bearers of the educational and organizing work of the Party among the Negro farmers and agricultural workers.

The fight against segregation, lynching, and political disfranchisement of the Negroes, must be organized. It is necessary to help the Negro masses to organize themselves for active resistance and self defense against the lynching terror of the Ku Klux Klan and similar terroristic gangs of the white bourgeoisie. 

The I. L. D. which so far has almost completely neglected work amongst the Negro masses, must hereafter put in the forefront of its propaganda, agitation and activities, energetic campaigns against lynching and juridical oppression of the Negroes.

The communists must participate in all national liberation movements of the Negroes, which have a real mass character. The existing national organizations and movements of the Negroes are today under the domination of the Negro petit-bourgeoisie and even their bourgeoisie. The aim of the Communist Party must be to fight for the hegemony of the working-class elements in the national liberation movement. The basic task of the communists is to form working-class organizations for the Negro proletariat and agricultural workers, and farmers' organizations for the Negro farmers and to turn these organizations into energetic integral forces of it whole class struggle. The communists must not forget for moment that the struggle for the national liberation of the Negro includes the relentless struggle against the Negro bourgeoisie and the struggle against the influence of the petit-bourgeoisie over the Negro proletariat. It is permissible to form a united front (f 1 example in the form of a Negro Race Congress) of the working class elements with the petit-bourgeois elements. The policy of the communists within this united front must be:

(a) To free the working class from the ideological and organizational influence of the petit-bourgeois elements.

(b) To begin the struggle for the leadership of the working class.

The communists must bear in mind that the alliance of the Negro working class with the Negro petit-bourgeoisie can be maintained only under the following conditions:

(a) A revolutionary fight of the petit-bourgeoisie for Negro race demands against American imperialism.

(b) No obstacles by the petit-bourgeoisie against the special class demands and organizations of time Negro workers and exploited farmers.

The communists must under no circumstances merge their organization with the petit-bourgeois organizations and must reserve for themselves fullest rights of criticism and propaganda.

The American Negro Labor Congress which is still very weak, must he reorganized and activized. The communists working within this organization should try to make it serve as an intermediary mass organization, as a medium through which the Party can extend its work among the Negro masses and mobilize the Negro workers under its leadership. After careful preparatory work which must be started at once, another convention of the American Negro Labor Congress should be held. For this convention a carefully worked-out program should be prepared. It should contain not only demands of the Negro workers, but also the agrarian demands of the farmers and agricultural workers.

The Negro miners' relief committee and the Harlem Tenants League are examples of united front organizations, which may be set up as a means of drawing the Negro masses into struggle. But these organizations can be considered only as a beginning. The communists working within these organizations should try to broaden them, and similar committees should be organized in other Negro centers. In every case the utmost effort must be made to combine the struggle of the Negro workers with that of white workers and to draw the white workers' organizations into such united front campaigns.

One of the greatest shortcomings of the work of the American Party among the Negroes is the lack of sufficient Party cadres among the Negro comrades. The next and most important task of the Party in this respect is the selection and education of a cadre of Negro communist workers. The proletarian character of the Negro Party leadership must be brought forward more clearly than before.

At the same time the proletarian Negro intellectuals must be utilized to the full. It is imperative to utilize all Party schools in the U. S. A. and abroad to train Negro comrades as leaders and for special work among the Negro farming masses.

The activities of the Negro comrades should not be confined exclusively to the work among the Negroes, but they should participate in the general Party work. 

Simultaneously white comrades must be specially trained for work among the Negroes. The Negro Champion must be published regularly. Every effort must be made to develop it into the mass organ of the Negro workers and working farmers. The general Party press must be utilized to its full extent for propaganda among the Negroes. A regular Negro news service must be built. 

The utmost effort must be made to attract Negro workers and Negro agricultural laborers as members into the Communist Party. The present Negro membership of the Communist Party is inadequate to fulfill the great tasks before it. A special recruiting campaign for Negro workers should be initiated in connection with the general economic and political campaigns of the Party. In the present election campaign, wherever possible Negro communist candidates should be nominated in the important Negro centers.

The Negro question in the United States must be treated in its relation to the general international Negro problem. The question of a Negro World Congress should be considered but it can be realized only if a Negro working-class leadership in the Congress can be secured. One aim and purpose of the work among the Negroes in the U. S. A. should be to organize them as the champions of the Negroes all over the world, against imperialism. A strong Negro movement in the U. S. A. will be able to influence and direct the Negro movement in all those backward parts of the world where the Negroes are oppressed by the various imperialist powers.


As testimony to the Communist affection for this destabilizing publication, they've published it as a resource document on their own site!

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Secession Begins at Home

January 30, 2015Jeff Deist

[This article is adapted from a talk presented at the Houston Mises Circle, January 24, 2015.] To listen in audio 22mins.

Presumably everyone in this room, or virtually everyone, is here today because you have some interest in the topic of secession. You may be interested in it as an abstract concept or as a viable possibility for escaping a federal government that Americans now fear and distrust in unprecedented numbers.

As Mises wrote in 1927:

The situation of having to belong to a state to which one does not wish to belong is no less onerous if it is the result of an election than if one must endure it as the consequence of a military conquest.

I’m sure this sentiment is shared by many of you. Mises understood that mass democracy was no substitute for liberal society, but rather the enemy of it. Of course he was right: nearly 100 years later, we have been conquered and occupied by the state and its phony veneer of democratic elections. The federal government is now the putative ruler of nearly every aspect of life in America.

That’s why we’re here today entertaining the audacious idea of secession — an idea Mises elevated to a defining principle of classical liberalism.

It’s tempting, and entirely human, to close our eyes tight and resist radical change — to live in America’s past.

But to borrow a line from the novelist L.P. Hartley, “The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.” The America we thought we knew is a mirage; a memory, a foreign country.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why we should take secession seriously, both conceptually — as consistent with libertarianism — and as a real alternative for the future.

Does anyone really believe that a physically vast, multicultural, social democratic welfare state of 330 million people, with hugely diverse economic, social, and cultural interests, can be commanded from DC indefinitely without intense conflict and economic strife?

Does anyone really believe that we can unite under a state that endlessly divides us? Rich vs. poor, black vs. white, Hispanic vs. Anglo, men vs. women, old vs. young, secularists vs. Christians, gays vs. traditionalists, taxpayers vs. entitlement recipients, urban vs. rural, red state vs. blue state, and the political class vs. everybody?

Frankly it seems clear the federal government is hell-bent on Balkanizing America anyway. So why not seek out ways to split apart rationally and nonviolently? Why dismiss secession, the pragmatic alternative that’s staring us in the face?

Since most of us in the room are Americans, my focus today is on the political and cultural situation here at home. But the same principles of self-ownership, self-determination, and decentralization apply universally — whether we’re considering Texas independence or dozens of active breakaway movements in places like Venice, Catalonia, Scotland, and Belgium.

I truly believe secession movements represent the last best hope for reclaiming our birthright: the great classical liberal tradition and the civilization it made possible. In a world gone mad with state power, secession offers hope that truly liberal societies, organized around civil society and markets rather than central governments, can still exist.

Secession as a “Bottom-Up” Revolution

“But how could this ever really happen?” you’re probably thinking.

Wouldn’t creating a viable secession movement in the US necessarily mean convincing a majority of Americans, or at least a majority of the electorate, to join a mass political campaign much like a presidential election?

I say no. Building a libertarian secession movement need not involve mass political organizing: in fact, national political movements that pander to the Left and Right may well be hopelessly naïve and wasteful of time and resources.

Instead, our focus should be on hyper-localized resistance to the federal government in the form of a “bottom-up” revolution, as Hans-Hermann Hoppe terms it.

Hoppe counsels us to use what little daylight the state affords us defensively: just as force is justified only in self-defense, the use of democratic means is justified only when used to achieve nondemocratic, libertarian, pro-private property ends.

In other words, a bottom-up revolution employs both persuasion and democratic mechanisms to secede at the individual, family, community, and local level — in a million ways that involve turning our backs on the central government rather than attempting to bend its will.

Secession, properly understood, means withdrawing consent and walking away from DC — not trying to capture it politically and “converting the King.”

Secession is Not a Political Movement

Why is the road to secession not political, at least not at the national level? 

Frankly, any notion of a libertarian takeover of the political apparatus in DC is fantasy, and even if a political sea change did occur the army of 4.3 million federal employees is not simply going to disappear.

Convincing Americans to adopt a libertarian political system — even if such an oxymoron were possible — is a hopeless endeavor in our current culture.

Politics is a trailing indicator. Culture leads, politics follows. There cannot be a political sea change in America unless and until there is a philosophical, educational, and cultural sea change. Over the last 100 years progressives have overtaken education, media, fine arts, literature, and pop culture — and thus as a result they have overtaken politics. Not the other way around.

This is why our movement, the libertarian movement, must be a battle for hearts and minds. It must be an intellectual revolution of ideas, because right now bad ideas run the world. We can’t expect a libertarian political miracle to occur in an illibertarian society.

Now please don’t get me wrong. The philosophy of liberty is growing around the world, and I believe we are winning hearts and minds. This is a time for boldness, not pessimism.

Yet libertarianism will never be a mass —which is to say majority — political movement.

Some people will always support the state, and we shouldn’t kid ourselves about this. It may be due to genetic traits, environmental factors, family influences, bad schools, media influences, or simply an innate human desire to seek the illusion of security.

But we make a fatal mistake when we dilute our message to seek approval from people who seemingly are hardwired to oppose us. And we waste precious time and energy.

What’s important is not convincing those who fundamentally disagree with us, but the degree to which we can extract ourselves from their political control.

This is why secession is a tactically superior approach in my view: it is far less daunting to convince liberty-minded people to walk away from the state than to convince those with a statist mindset to change.

What About the Federales?

Now I know what you’re thinking, and so does the aforementioned Dr. Hoppe:

Wouldn’t the federales simply crush any such attempt (at localized secession)?

They surely would like to, but whether or not they can actually do so is an entirely different question … it is only necessary to recognize that the members of the governmental apparatus always represent, even under conditions of democracy, a (very small) proportion of the total population.

Hoppe envisions a growing number of “implicitly seceded territories” engaging in noncompliance with federal authority:

Without local enforcement, by compliant local authorities, the will of the central government is not much more than hot air.

It would be prudent … to avoid a direct confrontation with the central government and not openly denounce its authority …

Rather, it seems advisable to engage in a policy of passive resistance and noncooperation. One simply stops to help in the enforcement in each and every federal law …

Finally, he concludes as only Hoppe could (remember this is the 1990s):

Waco, a teeny group of freaks, is one thing. But to occupy, or to wipe out a significantly large group of normal, accomplished, upstanding citizens is quite another, and quite a more difficult thing.

Now you may disagree with Dr. Hoppe as to the degree to which the federal government would actively order military violence to tamp down any secessionist hotspots, but his larger point is unassailable: the regime is largely an illusion, and consent to its authority is almost completely due to fear, not respect. Eliminate the illusion of benevolence and omnipotence and consent quickly crumbles.

Imagine what a committed, coordinated libertarian base could achieve in America! 10 percent of the US population, or roughly thirty-two million people, would be an unstoppable force of nonviolent withdrawal from the federal leviathan.

As Hoppe posits, it is no easy matter for the state to arrest or attack large local groups of citizens. And as American history teaches, the majority of people in any conflict are likely to be “fence sitters” rather than antagonists.

Left and Right are Hypocrites Regarding Secession

One of the great ironies of our time is that both the political Left and Right complain bitterly about the other, but steadfastly refuse to consider, once again, the obvious solution staring us in the face.

Now one might think progressives would champion the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights, because it would liberate them from the Neanderthal right wingers who stand in the way of their progressive utopia. Imagine California or Massachusetts having every progressive policy firmly in place, without any preemptive federal legislation or federal courts to get in their way, and without having to share federal tax revenues with the hated red states.

Imagine an experiment where residents of the San Francisco bay area were free to live under a political and social regime of their liking, while residents of Salt Lake City were free to do the same.

Surely both communities would be much happier with this commonsense arrangement than the current one, whereby both have to defer to Washington!

But in fact progressives strongly oppose federalism and states’ rights, much less secession! The reason, of course, is that progressives believe they’re winning and they don’t intend for a minute to let anyone walk away from what they have planned for us.

Democracy is the great political orthodoxy of our times, but its supposed champions on the Left can’t abide true localized democracy — which is in fact the stated aim of secession movements.

They’re interested in democracy only when the vote actually goes their way, and then only at the most attenuated federal level, or preferably for progressives, the international level. The last thing they want is local control over anything! They are the great centralizers and consolidators of state authority.

“Live and let live” is simply not in their DNA.

Our friends on the Right are scarcely better on this issue.

Many conservatives are hopelessly wedded to the Lincoln myth and remain in thrall to the central warfare state, no matter the cost.

As an example, consider the Scottish independence referendum that took place in September of 2014.

Some conservatives, and even a few libertarians claimed that we should oppose the referendum on the grounds that it would create a new government, and thus two states would exist in the place of one. But reducing the size and scope of any single state’s dominion is healthy for liberty, because it leads us closer to the ultimate goal of self-determination at the individual level, to granting each of us sovereignty over our lives.

Again quoting Mises:

If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done. (italics added)

Furthermore, some conservatives argue that we should not support secession movements where the breakaway movement is likely to create a government that is more “liberal” than the one it replaces. This was the case in Scotland, where younger Scots who supported the independence referendum in greater numbers hoped to create strong ties with the EU parliament in Brussels and build a Scandinavian-style welfare state run from Holyrood (never mind that Tories in London were overjoyed at the prospect of jettisoning a huge number of Labour supporters!).

But if support for the principle of self-determination is to have any meaning whatsoever, it must allow for others to make decisions with which we disagree. Political competition can only benefit all of us. What neither progressives nor conservatives understand — or worse, maybe they do understand — is that secession provides a mechanism for real diversity, a world where we are not all yoked together. It provides a way for people with widely divergent views and interests to live peaceably as neighbors instead of suffering under one commanding central government that pits them against each other.

Secession Begins With You

Ultimately, the wisdom of secession starts and ends with the individual. Bad ideas run the world, but must they run your world?

The question we all have to ask ourselves is this: how seriously do we take the right of self-determination, and what are we willing to do in our personal lives to assert it?

Secession really begins at home, with the actions we all take in our everyday lives to distance and remove ourselves from state authority — quietly, nonviolently, inexorably.

The state is crumbling all around us, under the weight of its own contradictions, its own fiscal mess, and its own monetary system. We don’t need to win control of DC.

What we need to do, as people seeking more freedom and a better life for future generations, is to walk away from DC, and make sure we don’t go down with it.

How To Secede Right Now

So in closing, let me make a few humble suggestions for beginning a journey of personal secession. Not all of these may apply to your personal circumstances; no one but you can decide what’s best for you and your family. But all of us can play a role in a bottom-up revolution by doing everything in our power to withdraw our consent from the state:

• Secede from intellectual isolation. Talk to like-minded friends, family, and neighbors — whether physically or virtually — to spread liberty and cultivate relationships and alliances. The state prefers to have us atomized, without a strong family structure or social network;
• secede from dependency. Become as self-sufficient as possible with regard to food, water, fuel, cash, firearms, and physical security at home. Resist being reliant on government in the event of a natural disaster, bank crisis, or the like;
• secede from mainstream media, which promotes the state in a million different ways. Ditch cable, ditch CNN, ditch the major newspapers, and find your own sources of information in this internet age. Take advantage of a luxury previous generations did not enjoy;
• secede from state control of your children by homeschooling or unschooling them;
• secede from college by rejecting mainstream academia and its student loan trap. Educate yourself using online learning platforms, obtaining technical credentials, or simply by reading as much as you can;
• secede from the US dollar by owning physical precious metals, by owning assets denominated in foreign currencies, and by owning assets abroad;
• secede from the federal tax and regulatory regimes by organizing your business and personal affairs to be as tax efficient and unobtrusive as possible;
• secede from the legal system, by legally protecting your assets from rapacious lawsuits and probate courts as much as possible;
• secede from the state healthcare racket by taking control of your health, and questioning medical orthodoxy;
• secede from your state by moving to another with a better tax and regulatory environment, better homeschooling laws, better gun laws, or just one with more liberty-minded people;
• secede from political uncertainly in the US by obtaining a second passport; or
• secede from the US altogether by expatriating.
• Most of all, secede from the mindset that government is all-powerful or too formidable an opponent to be overcome. The state is nothing more than Bastiat’s great fiction, or Murray’s gang of thieves writ large. Let’s not give it the power to make us unhappy or pessimistic.

All of us, regardless of ideological bent and regardless of whether we know it or not, are married to a very violent, abusive spendthrift. It’s time, ladies and gentlemen, to get a divorce from DC.

via Mises.org

The Myth of the Voluntary Military

July 29, 2011 Jeffrey A. Tucker

Ludwig von Mises summed up the essence of government in words that are particularly vivid in wartime:

Government interference always means either violent action or the threat of such action.… Government is in the last resort the employment of armed men, of policemen, gendarmes, soldiers, prison guards, and hangmen. The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning. Those who are asking for more government interference are asking ultimately for more compulsion and less freedom.

What about those who are called upon to enforce state edicts, whether just or unjust? Every society includes people who are willing to act as the coercive arm of the state, those who are willing to use violence and freely risk their lives as they administer the law. The state has no great trouble recruiting policemen and prison guards. Are there enough such people to amass a huge army of hundreds of thousands of people who are willing to risk their lives carrying out destructive foreign wars of dubious merit?

When you see the pictures of American troops fighting their way through sand storms, in a strange land with strange people, seeking to overturn a government and transform a society that posed no credible threat to the United States, being shot at by average Iraqis who are clearly motivated only by the desire to expel the invader, it is not hard to imagine that US troops are wondering how it all came to this.

The British defense secretary, Geoff Hoon, claims that the coalition armed forces are made up of "men and women who made a free choice to serve their country," whereas Iraqi forces "are motivated either by fear or by hatred." It's hard to say what motivates Iraqi forces (perhaps the desire to repel invasion?), but what he says about coalition troops is simply not true.

The men and women now fighting initially agreed to be in the employ of the military. The United States is not yet conscripting people. And yet how many of these would leave Iraq if they could? What if Donald Rumsfeld announced that anyone now fighting in Iraq is free to leave without penalty? What would become of the US armed forces now attempting to bring about unconditional surrender in Iraq?

It's an interesting question, as a pure mental experiment, because it highlights the essentially forced nature of all modern military service. To leave once the war begins would amount to what the government calls desertion. This word sounds ominous, but in fact it merely describes what everyone in a civilized society takes for granted: the right to quit.

Deuteronomy's exhortation to encourage the Israelites into battle includes an invitation to freely leave: "What man is there that is fearful and fainthearted? Let him go and return unto his house." (20:8) But there is no such right in the modern US military. If you try to leave, you face coercion, particularly if you try to leave in wartime. In this way, the military differs from the police and the ranks of prison guards, jobs from which people are free to walk away without penalty.

Punishing people for attempting to leave the military — to avoid killing and/or being killed — is not a new practice. Mises speaks of the "barbarous" practices used in the 18th century to keep soldiers from deserting their units. The more undesirable wartime conditions become, the more necessary it is for the state to force people to continue to endure them.

The scene that shocked me most in the movie Gods and Generals — and it was clearly not intended to be shocking — occurs when an assistant to Stonewall Jackson informs the general that some soldiers have been discovered in an attempt to desert the army under his command. The general orders them to be tried in a military court, and, if found guilty of attempted desertion, to be shot. They were indeed tried and shot. Thus did these men die for exercising their God-given right to walk away.

One of those shot in the film was a young man recruited by Jackson himself, the son of a friend who decided to return to the North. The scene was included to demonstrate Jackson's impartiality. This general is no respecter of persons — or (more plausibly) personhood. To me, the scene demonstrated the immorality of all modern notions of military discipline.

As the movie shows, the South believed it was fighting for the right of self-government, which required that the states be able to exercise their right to leave an increasingly despotic Union. But the military command would not allow their soldiers to secede. The Confederate generals believed that the Union must be voluntary, but the army itself must be kept together through coercion.

"The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world."

Of course, Northern armies employed the same practice. Many Union troops believed they were fighting against slavery, which amounts to nothing more than forbidding people from exercising their right to flee their alleged owners. But the imposition of the death penalty for soldiers choosing not to fight, that is, to flee their military owners, was assumed to be a normal part of military discipline.

Both North and South claimed they were fighting in order to abolish a form of captivity — the right to self-government in one case, and the right to not be employed against one's will in the other — but the ability of the military to imprison and kill fleeing soldiers was never questioned. It is not often questioned tod

The scene parallels the opening sequence in the movie Enemy at the Gates, when Russian troops in boats are being bombed from the air by German planes. Russian troops begin to jump in the water to get away. Their Russian commander starts to unload his pistol as they leap. The viewer is rightly shocked by this incredible display of totalitarian brutality. Yet, in essence, what we are seeing is nothing more than a fast-forwarded version of the court-martial, death-penalty scene in Gods and Generals.

Both scenes underscore a reality hardly ever discussed: all modern armies are essentially totalitarian enterprises. Once you sign up for them, or are drafted, you are a slave. The penalty for becoming a fugitive is death. Even now, the enforcements against mutiny, desertion, going AWOL, or what have you, are never questioned.

This is remarkable, if you think about it. Imagine that you work for Walmart but find the job too dangerous, and try to quit. You are told that you may not, so you run away. The management catches up to you, and jails you. You refuse to go and resist. Finally, you are shot. We would all recognize that this is exploitation, an atrocity, a crime, a clear example of the disregard that this company has for human life. The public outrage would be palpable. The management, not the fleeing employees, would be jailed or possibly executed.

Murray Rothbard frames the question nicely: "In what other occupation in the country are there severe penalties, including prison and in some cases execution, for 'desertion,' i.e., for quitting the particular employment? If someone quits General Motors, is he shot at sunrise?"

The military has done a study1  of what causes people to go AWOL, concluding that the practice "tends to increase in magnitude during wartime" and when "the Army is attempting to restrict the ways that soldiers can exit service through administrative channels."

The same study profiles the deserters, as compared with nondeserters, as less educated, having a lower aptitude, more likely to be from broken homes, etc. — all the usual reasons why a person is so dishonorably disinclined to want to be killed. Finally, this study examined the effects of desertion on the individual, concluding that choosing to be disemployed from the ranks of the armed and dangerous causes "loss of self-esteem and confidence" as well as "embarrassment and even shame." Well, what else would you expect from someone who has "chosen a certain path and failed to meet the necessary requirements and/or sustain the fortitude to meet those requirements"?

Now comes the report from Diwaniya, Iraq, heavily cited by a US military spokesman, that many Iraqi soldiers were fighting at gunpoint, threatened with death by tough loyalists of President Saddam Hussein.… "The officers threatened to shoot us unless we fought," said a wounded Iraqi from his bed in the American field hospital here. "They took out their guns and pointed them and told us to fight."

It could be that the captured soldiers are only trying to win sympathy. But it would hardly be surprising if it were true. To force people to fight when they would rather not is the very essence of modern military organization. In modern practice, there is no such thing as a voluntary military. Whether you are forced into the machine or not (via conscription or via payments in tax dollars), once you are a cog, you must stay in no matter how much grinding you do or how much you are ground.

The slave-like nature of the military commitment has no expiration date. Yes, there are contracts, but the military can void them whenever it so desires. Predictably, it desires to void these contracts (through so-called stop-loss regulations) when the enlisted most want to leave: when they must kill and risk being killed. All branches of the military have implemented these stop-loss regulations because of the war on terror. This amounts to the nationalization of human beings.

 

Still, one wonders how much the ranks of the militarily employed would shrink in absence of antidesertion enforcement. If modern presidents had to recruit the way barons and lords recruited, and if they constantly faced the prospect of mass desertions, they might be more careful about getting involved in unnecessary, unjust, unwinnable wars, or going to war at all. Peace would take on new value out of necessity. When going to war, they might be more careful to curb their war aims, and match war strategies with those more limited aims.

In fact, we might discover through the study of the history of antidesertion statutes the key to the transition from the limited war and decentralized military of the medieval world to the mass murder of the modern total war. The legalization of desertion might provide the very key to bringing about a more humane world.

In the meantime, US officials would do well to stop complaining that Iraqi soldiers are being forced to serve and forced to kill. A press release from the Air Force announcing its new stop-loss rule says, "We understand the individual sacrifices that our airmen and their families will be making.… We appreciate their unwavering support and dedication to our nation."

One might even have a greater appreciation for their sacrifice (even if not their mission) if one knew that it were undertaken willingly.

This article is excerpted from It's a Jetsons World, "The Myth of the Voluntary Military" (2011).

source: Mises.org