Louis C. Fraina in the discussion on the ‘National and Colonial Question’ introduced by Lenin during July, 1920s’ Second Congress of the Communist International. Speaking immediately after John Reed reported the situation of Black workers in the U.S., Fraina’s focus is on the other subjects of the U.S. empire; foreign-born workers and all of Latin America. The session was chaired by Zinoviev, and among the most consequential of the early Comintern. Fraina would become Comintern representative to Mexico shortly after.
‘On The National and Colonial Question’ by Louis C. Fraina from Proceedings of the Second Congress of the Communist International, 1920.
The previous speaker spoke of the negroes as a subject people in the United States, but we have two other kind of subject peoples–the foreign workers and the peoples in the colonies.
The terrible suppression of strikes and revolutionary movements in the United States is not a consequence of the war, but an intensified political expression of the previously existing attitude towards the unorganised unskilled workers. The strikes of these workers were brutally crushed. Why? Because these unorganised unskilled workers are mostly foreigners (constituting about 60 per cent, of the industrial proletariat), and the foreign workers in the United States are practically in the status of colonial peoples. After the Civil War (1861-1865) capitalism developed rapidly; the great undeveloped West was opened by the trans-continental railway system. The investment capital for this development came from the Eastern states and Europe; while immigrants became the human raw material precisely as the peoples in a backward colonial country are being “developed” by an imperialistic force.
Concentration of industry and monopoly arose—all the typical conditions of an internal imperialism, before the United States developed its external imperialism.
The horrors practised upon colonial peoples are not worse than those practised upon foreign workers in the United States. For example, in 1912 there was a miners’ strike in Ludlow; soldiers were used and the miners thrown out of their homes, being compelled to live in tents. One day, while the men were some miles away fighting with the mine-guards, a contingent of soldiers surrounded the tents, set them afire, hundreds of women and children being burned to death. Under these conditions the class struggle in the United States partly assumes a racial form. Precisely as in the case of a negro revolt being the signal not for the proletarian revolution but for the bourgeois counter-revolution, so in the case of a revolt of the foreign workers. The great task is to unite these with the American workers in one revolutionary movement.
The whole of Latin America must be considered as a colony of the United States, and not simply the actual colonies, such as the Philippines, etc., in Central America; the United States is in complete control by means of an army of occupation. But this control also exists in Mexico and North America, exercised in two ways: (1) By means of economic and financial penetration, all the more powerful since the expropriation of German interests in these countries; (2) by means of the Monroe Doctrine, which from its original form of protecting the Americans from monarchical schemes, has been transformed into an instrument to assure the supremacy of United States Imperialism in Latin America. One year before the war President Wilson interpreted the Monroe Doctrine as giving the American Government power to prevent British capitalists acquiring new oil wells in Mexico. In other words, Latin America is the colonial basis of the imperialism of the United States. The economic conditions in the rest of the world become more and more disturbed; the imperialism of the United States recoups itself by increasing the exploitation and development of Latin America. It Is necessary to strike at this imperialism by developing revolutionary movements in Latin America precisely as it is necessary to strike at British Imperialism by developing revolutionary movements in its colonies. The movement in the United States has up till now paid no attention to the Latin American movement, with the consequence that this movement ideologically depends upon Spain instead of the United States. The Latin American movement must be liberated from this dependence, as well as from its Syndicalist prejudices. The American Federation of Labour and the reactionary Socialist Party are trying to arrange Pan-American organisations, but these are not for revolutionary purposes. The Communist movement in the United States in particular, and the Communist International in general, must actively intervene in the Latin American movement. The movement in the United States and in Latin America must be considered as one movement, war strategy and tactics must be envisaged in terms of the American Revolution, comprising the whole of the Americas, a fundamental task of the Communist International, the accomplishment of which alone will assure the World Revolution, is the destruction of United States Imperialism; and this destruction is possible only by means of a gigantic revolutionary movement embracing the whole of the Americas, each national unit of which subordinates itself to the unified problems of the American Revolution.
Proceedings of the Second Congress of the Communist International. Publishing Office of the Communist International, America. 1921.
Contents: Editorial Note, Convention Call by G. Zinoviev and K. Radek, FIRST Session July 19, Zinoviev’s Opening Address, Theses on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International (Lenin), Greetings, SECOND Session July 23, Standing Orders and Agenda, Discussion on the role of the Communist Party in the proletarian revolution (Opened by Zinoviev), THIRD Session July 24, Procedural, Discussion on role of Communist Party continued (reply by Zinoviev), Theses on the Role of the Communist Party in the Proletarian Revolution, FOURTH Session July 25, Report on National and Colonial Question (Lenin), Supplementary Theses on the National and Colonial Question (Maring), Discussion America and the Negro question (John Reed), FIFTH Session July 28, Discussion on National and Colonial Question, Discussion, on the Jewish Question (Frumkina), Theses on the National and Colonial Question, SIXTH Session July 29, Conditions for entry into the Communist International (Zinoviev), Discussion on Conditions for Entry. 234 pages.
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