The debate over Black self-determination, and the question of national struggles more broadly, around the Sixth Comintern Congress is engaged by Endre Sik, an exiled Hungarian revolutionary living and teaching in Moscow. In prefacing his amendments to the proposed document, Sik first seeks to define “race” and the role it plays.

‘The Comintern Programme and the Racial Problem’ by A. Shiek from Communist International. Vol. 5 No. 16. August 15, 1928.

HITHERTO the question of racial oppression and racial movements has unfortunately always been thrust into the background, has been ignored, unnoticed, mistakenly identified with the national-colonial question, and mechanically connected with it. The so-called “racial problem,” as it is treated by reactionary bourgeois sociologists, does not exist for us. The theory of “superior” and “inferior” races, of the role of the racial factor in history, and similar conceptions are all pure falsehood. Such things as “superior” and “inferior” races do not exist. Of course, there exist inherited, comparatively stable (although not by any means absolutely invariable) physical differences between peoples, which give anthropologists the right to divide the human species into various so-called racial categories according to the colour of their skin, the shape of the cranium and so on. But all these secondary bodily distinctions have no positive relation whatever to the intellectual, moral and cultural development of peoples. The role of physical racial differences as such is practically non-existent in the history of humanity. The intellectual, cultural and other nonphysical differences between individuals and peoples are the results not of these inborn physical differences, but are created by the influence of external natural and social circumstances. The very postulation of the question of “superior” and “inferior” races in regard to modern peoples is pure nonsense, for science has proved beyond all doubt that all modern cultured peoples without exception are extraordinarily mixed from the racial point of view. “Pure races” exist only in the heads of blinded bourgeois politicians.

“Pure Races”

None the less, this radically false theory of “superior” and “inferior” races is not a simple invention of individual mistaken scientists or blinded politicians. It is the theoretical justification for the racial policy of the definitely exploiter classes.

1. The bourgeoisie of the oppressing nation exploiting the backward colonial and other weaker nations, is interested in consolidating the present conditions, favourable as they are to the achievement of super-profits at the expense of the oppressed nations, in order artificially to keep in check the economic development of these nations. Consequently their interests demand the continuation of the isolation of the oppressed nations as such, their complete segregation from the oppressing nation and the prohibition of their intermixing with the latter. In order to ensure itself the support of the great masses of the toiling population of its own country (which masses are not interested in the oppression and exploitation of colonial and subject nations and have to carry on their backs the enormous expenses indispensable to the realisation of this oppression), the bourgeoisie on the one hand bribes the upper ranks of the petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat, granting them a certain share of their colonial super-profits. On the other hand, in order to establish a strong barrier between the toiling masses of their own nation and the nation it is oppressing, the bourgeoisie creates a false racial ideology and spreads it among its own nation, working up hatred and contempt for the oppressed nations among the working masses, and thus lightening the task of the ruling class of carrying out their policy of violence and isolation in regard to these oppressed nations. It is true that occasionally the bourgeoisie of the oppressing nation resorts to the diametrically opposite policy, to the policy of enforced assimilation, but the isolation policy is the rule, and the assimilation policy is the exception. The latter is applied only in those cases, also truly not rare instance, when there can no longer be any question of keeping the oppressed nation in the position of a backward nation exploited beyond the normal, and when it is a question only of retaining the territory of the oppressed nation or its oppressed masses for their exploitation at least equally with the home territory and the home toiling masses.

Racial belief and racial prejudices are also exploited by the imperialist bourgeoisie for other purposes, and particularly in two directions.

2. The bourgeoisie of the U.S.A., owing to the historical development of circumstances, cannot ensure itself such a share in the exploitation of colonial countries as would correspond to the incredibly swiftly expanding appetites of American capitalism. The American bourgeoisie has extricated itself from this difficult situation by establishing a system of superexploitation of the negroes, at first as slaves, and afterwards (when thanks to the development of large capitalist industry, the slave-owning plantations became disadvantageous to the stronger, Northern section of the American bourgeoisie, interfering with the further development of capitalism) as a special social group, placed in the position of non-equal members of the nation and society, ostensibly on the ground of racial disparity in value.

2. In many countries, the bourgeoisie puts forward pseudo-intellectual and moral racial peculiarities in relation to one or another national, ethnical or other group, in order on the one hand thus to save themselves from the rivalry of certain other strata of capitalist bourgeoisie, which rivalry is undesirable from the viewpoint of the politically dominating strata of bourgeoisie. On the other hand they are put forward in order that by sowing hatred and dislike among various sections of the toiling population, the bourgeoisie can lighten its task of breaking the opposition of its own toiling masses to capitalist exploitation, and particularly in order to weaken the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, especially where there is no possibility of doing this on a national basis owing to the presence of national dismemberment. Anti-semitism is a typical example of this kind of racial policy.

From the foregoing it is clear that in all three instances the racial policy of the exploiters has a concrete economic basis.

In the first instance we are concerned with the oppression and exploitation of certain social groups in their quality as nations, in the other two instances with their oppression and exploitation on the verbal basis of their ostensible racial disparity in value, but actually in consequence of the historical development of force relationships between them and the oppressing groups, (the negroes, former slaves; the Jews, a former nation scattered throughout the world).

What is a Race?

In not one of these cases does either the “race” which oppresses or the “race” which is oppressed correspond with the “race” of which anthropologists speak. They talk, say, of a “yellow race,” but not of the “race of Chinese,” or of a “black race,” but not of a “race of American negroes,” and so on. The race subjected to special oppression represents only a part of the anthropological race, another part of which perhaps is quite unoppressed on a racial basis, (the differing position of the Jews in various countries), or is oppressed in completely differing ways, (the racial oppression of the American negroes and the national oppression of the African negro peoples).

The establishment of this fact is very important in order to get a clear idea of the radical error in the resolution of the Comintern Fourth Congress dealing with the negro question, which says that “ it is necessary to organise a world movement of negroes,” that the “ American negroes, especially the negroes of the North,” are the advance-guard of the emancipation movement of the “entire African race,” that the Comintern must set up “an international organisation of the negro people.”

The same resolution says that it is “the duty of the Communists to apply” the theses on the colonial question “to the negro problem.” But at the same time it is clear that it is impermissible simply to identify racial oppression and exploitation with national-colonial oppression, that it is impermissible to deal with the racial under a clause on the national question. For of the instances specified above, in the one sole case where the oppressed race is a nation, there is no question of special racial oppression as such. The Chinese people or the African black peoples are oppressed not as races but as backward colonial nations. The racial factor, or better speaking the racial ideology found among the great masses of white population and created by the imperialist bourgeoisie, and the racial prejudices exploited by that bourgeoisie here also, of course, play a great role, by increasing and intensifying the national colonial oppression. None the less this form of oppression and exploitation comes entirely under the category of the “national-colonial question,” and the “theses on the colonial question” are entirely applicable to it. But neither in the second instance (negroes in America) nor in the third (the Jews) have these theses any point. For when we speak of the oppression of colonial or other subject nations, we have in mind not social groups, formed on the basis of general secondary physical peculiarities, having no practical importance, but groups consolidated by the real bonds of common territory, economic system, language and culture, and striving towards an independent national existence. There is no question of these factors existing among the American negroes, or say the Hungarian or Polish Jews. John Reed’s words, uttered at the Second Congress, to the effect that “The negroes make no demands whatever for national independence,” are absolutely true not only for 1920 but for to-day. (Of course, Reed is referring to the American negroes.) All those movements which had as their aim an independent national existence for the negroes, have been failures, as happened with the “Back to Africa” movement. The negroes regard themselves as Americans and feel quite at home in the United States.

This question is of great importance because the American negroes, like the whole American nation of which they are members, are divided into classes. To the negro worker and poor peasant all thought of national independence is foreign. Moreover the negro bourgeois is not averse to having a monopoly in the super-exploitation of the millions of toilers of his own race. It is the coloured bourgeoisie who invent all sorts of legends anent a “special negro culture,” the “brotherhood of the whole African race” and similar nonsense. (One cannot understand why these terms could have found their way into the Fourth Congress resolution.) It is they who project the various “nationalist” movements of negroes demanding self-determination. But Communists should not allow themselves to be caught in such snares. They should put forward demands on behalf of the oppressed American negroes not as a nation, but as a race (and the same applies to the oppressed Jews in certain capitalist countries) and they should demand not the right to national self-determination (self-determination has no practical meaning here!) but complete political and social equality.

National Wars and Colonial Revolts

The Draft Programme says that national wars and colonial revolts, “though not in themselves being socialist movements of the revolutionary proletariat, objectively constitute a component part of the world proletarian revolution.” (Section a, par. 1.) This (with certain provisos) can and ought to be said also in regard to the emancipation movement of an oppressed race whereas a racial movement makes its appearance in a pure form, i.e., wherever it is a question not of a movement of colonial peoples, the oppression of which is intensified by the racial policy of the imperialist oppressors, but one of the oppression and exploitation of a racial minority within a capitalist country. Such racial emancipation movements and national antimilitarist movements among the colonial peoples are distinct from one another by the character of the movement, and by the role played in it by the bourgeoisie. In so far as they are really directed against the imperialist bourgeoisie and in favour of national emancipation (and not against one imperialist Power in the interests of another) the movements of the colonial peoples or national minorities can be revolutionary, even when they are directed by the bourgeoisie, and even if there is no proletariat, or almost no proletariat in the ranks of the movement whatever. But the bourgeoisie of an oppressed racial minority cannot play a revolutionary role. As a component part of the bourgeoisie of an imperialist nation, they are not interested in an anti-imperialist movement. Their aim is not the overcoming of imperialism, but only the winning of complete equality for themselves, and participation in the imperialist spoils on a basis of equality with the rest of their class. They strive not to overcome the imperialist oppression of the toiling masses of their own race, but towards an agreement with the white bourgeoisie in regard to the exploitation of those masses.

But an enormous revolutionary role can be played (and always is played) by the anti-imperialist racial emancipation movement of the workers and the petty bourgeois masses of a racial minority, directed by the proletariat. (The petty bourgeoisie, who waver between the revolutionary anti-imperialist proletariat and the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, cannot have an independent movement.) Communists should support and organise such a racial movement by all means, but on no account should they support “any form of negro movement,” as the Fourth Congress resolution says, nor the “international racial movement against capitalism and imperialism” (in the same resolution). The latter movement cannot exist in nature, for as we have seen above, such a movement can be only bourgeois and reactionary.

The Negro Question

In the United States more than ten million negroes represent an enormous reserve for the revolutionary proletariat of America, one that can be a mighty ally in its struggle against American capitalism. In order to transform this potential into an actual ally the C.P. should work out a corresponding revolutionary strategy and tactics in regard to the negroes and their movement. The basic strategic task is to safeguard the hegemony of the proletariat in the emancipation movement of the race, consolidating the great masses of the oppressed racial minority around the Party in the form of a non-Party mass racial organisation, under the leadership of Communists. To this end it is necessary to ensure the confidence of the negro masses in the Party. And this cannot be achieved otherwise than by way of bringing certain activities to the forefront as part of the militant tasks of the Party. Such activities should be the re-education of the white workers, and of the Communists themselves in the first place, in order to speed up the process of outliving racial prejudices, with at the same time a declaration of a ruthless ideological struggle against such prejudices within the Party and within other workers’ organisations under Party influence and also the concentration of special attention on the racial question in the everyday struggle of the Party.

What statement should the Comintern make in its programme in regard to the racial question?

1. The programme should first and foremost show the oppressed races that the C.P. does not recognise and does not possess any racial prejudices whatever, that it rejects any division of humanity into “superior” and “inferior” races according to their intellectual and moral qualities, that when speaking of a racial question, racial movements, “coloured races” and so on, as a political question, it has in view not the race as it is understood by anthropology, and not as it is understood by the imperialists and the non-class-conscious section of the white workers and petty bourgeoisie deluded by the imperialists and blinded by racial prejudices, but a race as a group of people distinct from their brothers by nation and class not only by the colour of their skin and other unessential bodily peculiarities, but by the fact that they are subject to special oppression and exploitation.

2. The programme should make it clear that the C.P. attaches great importance to the racial question, that in the oppressed masses of coloured proletariat it recognises its brothers by class and comrades in struggle, while in the other coloured toilers it recognises its closest allies in the struggle against capitalism and imperialism. And further that it realises and fully estimates the enormous revolutionary role of the racial movement of the toilers and supports it with all its powers.

3. The programme should tell the oppressed races that the Communist Party stands for the complete political and social equality of races, which equality it will realise without delay as soon as it captures State power; while until the victory of the revolution it will not only support the revolutionary anti-imperialist movement of the toiling masses of the oppressed race, but will itself struggle against the racial policy of the bourgeoisie, against super-exploitation on a racial basis, against all forms of political or social restrictions and inequalities suffered by coloured citizens.

In accordance with the foregoing, I propose the following definite amendments and additional paragraphs to the Draft Programme.

To the Introduction:

1. In par. 4, instead of: “With bonds of blood and iron it ties the proletarians of all countries, nationalities and races…” to read: “all countries, peoples and nations.” In the original draft the word “race” is used in the anthropological sense, which has to be avoided.

2. At the end of the same par., instead of: “Irrespective of nationality, race, sex or profession…” to read: “irrespective of nationality, national distinctions, profession, sex, colour of skin and similar physical differences.” If we speak of “racial distinctions” side by side with national distinctions, every negro will take it to mean that we recognise the existence of racial peculiarities in addition to physical differences.

3. At the end of par. 8 (7) instead of: “the Communist International was formed, and for the first time in history the most progressive strata of the European and American proletariat were really united with the proletariat of China and India and with the coloured labourers of Africa and America” …to read: “the most progressive strata of the proletariat of the western capitalist countries with the proletariat of China and India, and other colonial and semi-colonial countries.” Because (i) the America negro, who also is a “blackskinned labourer,” may not be separated from the “American proletariat”; (ii) the Communist International is not a federation of “labourers,” even of blackskinned labourers, but a federation of proletarians: it educates, organises and federates other labourers under its direction, but not in the ranks of the Comintern itself.

To Section One:

4. In the penultimate paragraph, instead of: “all the colonies, all races and all nations,” to read: “all the colonies, all peoples and nations.” (See par. 1 above.)

To Section Two:

5. In the middle of par. 12 (10) (on Fascism) after the words: “by a peculiar form of social demagogy,” strike out the word “anti-semitism” (within parentheses). Also a few lines lower, after the words: “discontent with the passivity of Social-Democracy” to strike out “etc.” and to add “in order to disintegrate and weaken the working class and the revolutionary toiling masses, Fascism zealously preaches racial theories, kindling racial hatred among various sections of the working class and toilers of the petty bourgeoisie (antisemitism, a contemptuous attitude to coloured peoples), and exploiting the racial prejudices of the non-class conscious masses of their own ‘race,’ inciting the latter to participate in terroristic acts organised by its own agents, which acts cost the lives of many hundreds and thousands of toilers of the oppressed races (Jewish pogroms, the lynching of negroes).” Anti-semitism is by no means simple “demagogy.” It is unfortunately practised not in words but in deeds!

6. In the same paragraph, after the words: “combination of social demagogy, corruption,” insert the words: “racial policy.”

7. Between the second and third paragraphs from the end to insert the following new paragraph: “ Together with the intensification of class contradictions between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, in a number of European countries, especially in the ‘liberated’ ‘national’ States newly created by the Entente after the world war, thanks to the creation of these States according to the needs of the larger imperialist Powers fresh severe national conflicts have developed, resulting in a constant clash between the bourgeoisie of the dominant nations in these countries on the one hand, and the bourgeoisie and still more the toiling masses of the oppressed national minorities on the other (Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, Yugo-Slavia, Roumania). In consequence mainly of the transference of enormous masses of negro poor from the agrarian south to the industrial north of the U.S.A., a process begun after the war and still continuing, the consciousness of the negro proletarian and semi-proletarian masses has greatly developed, dissatisfaction has grown with their lack of equal rights, and with their revolutionary determination to win complete equality. This has led on the one hand to numerous racial revolts, and on the other to the great masses of coloured toilers realising the necessity for the oppressed race to struggle in an organised manner against racial oppression. It is true that in the majority of cases the negro movement still remains under the leadership of compromising coloured bourgeoisie (Du Bois and Garvey’s movements, and others) but of recent years the first steps have been taken towards the organisation of the negro masses under the leadership of the revolutionary proletariat and its Communist Party (the Negro Workers’ Congress and the entry of negro workers into the Party) .”

8. In the following paragraph, after the words: “millions of the masses in the colonies”; to insert: “and also the oppressed national and racial minorities within the capitalist countries themselves.”

To Section Three:

9. In the section on world communism it is necessary to point to the disappearance of national and racial barriers among peoples. To this end the following new paragraph to be inserted before the last paragraph: “With the disappearance of all kinds of artificial barriers between peoples and all hindrances to their mingling with one another, and with the unprecedented perfecting of all the possibilities and resources of communication and transport, all national distinctions between peoples will gradually disappear. The physical racial distinctions now existing will cease to exist as racial, in other words group peculiarities, since no intermediate groups attached by the social conditions of life to one definite natural environment will exist between the individual and society. The physical distinctions between people, as also the distinctions in capabilities and knowledge, will continue to exist in the quality of individual distinctions, but they will be reduced to a minimum, thanks to social conditions of existence common to all members of the single human society.”

10. In the last par. after the words: “which have not yet managed to die out,” to continue: “including the traces of the now completely eliminated economic and social inequalities among nations, since on the one hand the cultural distinctions between peoples and the natural barriers to their complete union cannot be set aside in a moment, while on the other hand the elimination of the ideological superstructure will follow only tardily after the elimination of the economic basis.”

To Section Four:

11. In the first par., after the words: “Maturing social revolution,” to change the wording to read: “period of national wars, colonial revolts and revolutionary movements among the oppressed racial groups.”

In this section it is necessary to point out exactly what Communism gives the oppressed nations and races during the transition period of the dictatorship. To this end the following have to be added:

12. At the end of the fifth par. after the words: “overcoming of classes,” to add: “the total liquidation of national disputes and the gradual living down of all national and racial prejudices.”

13. In the thirteenth (12th) par., after the words: “abolishes inequality among citizens,” to continue: “abolishing all and every political privilege or restriction in rights founded on differences of sex, religion and nationality, without any delay and without exception.”

14. In the same par. after the words: “sex, religion and nationality,” (as above) to add: “colour of skin and other physical characteristics,” (or simply “races,” only then the word must be placed within inverted commas!)

15. At the end of the same par. after the word: “colonies,” to add: “ensuring the former oppressed races (negroes, Jews and others) the material realisation of their social equality.”

16. The beginning of the par. on the struggle with religion to be re-written as follows: “among the tasks in the struggle with bourgeois prejudices and superstitions the struggle with the opium of the people, religion, and with racial prejudices occupy special places. The struggle against religion must be conducted systematically…” etc.

17. After this par. to insert a fresh par: “In the struggle against racial prejudices the proletarian government will not limit itself to the declaration of the social equality of formerly unequal groups and the material guaranteeing of the possibility of realising that equality, but will moreover carry on an extensive instructional and educational work among the. great masses of the population, with a view to the ultimate outliving of all remnants of racial prejudices, and will keenly watch to ensure that the toiling masses shall not manifest an unjust or contemptuous attitude (inherited from the bourgeoisie) towards these groups of the population: while the endeavours of the overthrown exploiting classes to exploit the remnants of such prejudices for the purpose of inciting the non-conscious proletarians or the toilers of the petty bourgeoisie against the proletarian government (anti-semitic agitation, pogrom attempts, and such methods) will be punished with all the harshness of revolutionary justice.”

18. In the following par., after the words: “colonial revolutions,” to add: “anti-militarist racial movements.”

19. In the first phrase of the third par. from the end, after the words: “movements for national emancipation,” to add: “and movements of the toiling oppressed racial minorities for their political and social equality.”

To Section Five:

20. In the seventh (sixth) par. from the end (on the U.S.S.R.’s support of the revolutionary movements) to change the last phrase to make it read: “the support of the struggle against national and racial oppression in whatever form it may appear.”

To Section Six:

21. In the par. treating of the Party’s strategical aims, after the words: “guided by the Communist Party,” to add: “the winning of the confidence of the national and racial minorites and the guidance of their movement.”

22. In the par. on the strategy and tactics of the C.I. it is especially important to point out the Comintern’s attitude to the national and racial minorities, to their demands and their movements, which is done quite inadequately and unsatisfactorily in the draft. In the sixth par. from the end, nothing whatever is said about national minorities. In regard to racial minorities mention is made only of propaganda and the support of their movements, but there is not a word on the struggle of the Party itself. But mention is made of the support of any struggle carried on by the oppressed race “against the bourgeoisie of the oppressing nation,” which is inaccurate, since we ought not to support the reactionary racial movements of the coloured bourgeoisie, which are also directed “against the bourgeoisie of the oppressing nation.” Moreover, it is impermissible to mention the struggle against all forms of chauvinism in the same sentence as the struggle against imperialist racial policy, since we ought to struggle against chauvinism among the oppressed nations and races also. This par, must be re-written as follows: after the first parenthesis (for example in Latin America) to continue: “and also in the imperialist countries themselves; it not only supports all revolutionary, anti-imperialist movements of the oppressed and exploited national and racial minorities by all means in its power, and not only conducts a written and oral propaganda and agitation in favour of full equality for both these minorities (in regard to the national minorities in favour of their right to self-determination also), but in its every-day, practical work it energetically and uncompromisingly attacks the national and racial policy of the bourgeoisie, and both generally and in every separate case it insists on the abolition of super-exploitation on a national or racial basis, and also of all and every political or social restriction and inequality in application to individual members of oppressed national and racial minorities. While not for one moment ceasing its struggle for the complete political and social equality of races, the Comintern simultaneously puts forward clear and definite, concrete, militant partial demands, the realisation of which may in larger or smaller measure alleviate the position of the toiling masses of the oppressed national or racial minorities. The acceptance of partial achievements is not in the least contradiction with the principle of an uncompromising, militant, national and racial policy.

“The Comintern struggles against all forms of chauvinism and the arbitrary treatment of one nation by another, one race by another, but it struggles with especial energy against the chauvinism of the great power nations, a chauvinism which is preached both by the imperialist bourgeoisie and by its social-democratic agency the Second International; it further struggles with racial prejudices against coloured peoples and the Jews, continually contrasting the conduct of the imperialists…and so on.”

The ECCI published the magazine ‘Communist International’ edited by Zinoviev and Karl Radek from 1919 until 1926 irregularly in German, French, Russian, and English. Restarting in 1927 until 1934. Unlike, Inprecorr, CI contained long-form articles by the leading figures of the International as well as proceedings, statements, and notices of the Comintern. No complete run of Communist International is available in English. Both were largely published outside of Soviet territory, with Communist International printed in London, to facilitate distribution and both were major contributors to the Communist press in the U.S. Communist International and Inprecorr are an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/ci/vol-5/v05-n08-apr-15-1928-CI-grn-riaz.pdf