Quite literally still the cry and fever dream of the white imperialist. A 1929 defense of the Communist International’s demand that the Black majority of South Africa rule themselves. More than that, Communists support that self-determination within the ‘United States’ as well.

‘The Communists Are for a Black Republic!’ from The Daily Worker. Vol. 5 No. 268. November 12, 1928.

The whole capitalist press is up in the air. London exposures…Johannesburg exposures…Riga exposures…follow each other with dramatic swiftness. The charge is stupendous:

“Moscow wants to create an independent Negro republic in South Africa.”

The “charge” is well-founded. We plead guilty. The Communists do want a native Negro republic in South Africa! The slogan to establish a native republic in South Africa is not the invention of the Riga lie-dispensers; it is not the product of the lie-factories of the capitalist press in London or Johannesburg.

The Sixth World Congress of the Communist International took up the Negro question in all its ramifications. The deliberations of the Congress analyzed the situation of the Negroes in the United States of America, in the South African Union, in the Negro States of Liberia, Haiti, Santo Domingo, and in the Negro colonies of Central Africa. The Communist International considers the problems of the oppressed Negro race as one of the most significant questions confronting the Communists.

The thesis of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International on the colonial question describes in the following way the conditions of the Negro masses in South Africa:

“In the Union of South Africa the Negro masses–who constitute the majority of the population, but whose land is expropriated by the white colonists and the government and who are deprived of their political rights and of the right to freedom of migration–are subjected to the most inhuman forms of race and class oppression and suffer at one and the same time from pre-capitalist and capitalist modes of exploitation and oppression.”

The World Congress, of course, did not confine itself to an analysis of the situation of the Negro masses, but gave clear-cut instructions to the South African Communists how to fight for the oppressed Negroes. The first instruction is for an uncompromising struggle for full equality for the Negroes:

“The Communist Party, which has already achieved considerable success among the Negro proletariat, must continue, even more energetically, the struggle for complete equality for the Negroes, for the abolition of all special measures and laws directed against the Negroes, and for the confiscation of the land of the plantation-owners.”

The second instruction given by the World Congress of the Communist International to our South African comrades is for a determined fight for the establishment of an independent Negro republic in South Africa:

“The Party should determinedly and immediately put forward the slogan of the creation of an independent native republic, at the same time safeguarding the rights of the white minority, and should actually fight for its establishment.”

No, it is not the product of the Riga lie-factory but the product of the Leninist policies of the Communist International, when the World Congress instructs the South African Communists to put forward determinedly and immediately the slogan of the establishment of an independent Negro republic. The overwhelming majority of the population of the South African Union consists of Negroes. There is a thin layer of white capitalists who exploit and oppress the Negro masses. There is a stratum of white labor aristocracy which shares the profits of exploitation wrung from the Negro toiling masses by their white masters.

The slogan of establishment of an independent Negro republic in South Africa may sound unbelievable to the horror-stricken white capitalists, but certainly it is something natural and self-evident for revolutionary Marxians who accept the fundamental teachings of Lenin about the relations between white imperialism and the colonial peoples.

Mr. Tielman Roos, Minister in the Government of the Union of South Africa, came out with a vicious attack against the Communists, declaring that in the next election the issue will be nationalism vs. Communism.

He said:

“We shall fight to the utmost any attempt to develop natives along lines which will endanger the white standard of the Union.”

Mr. Tielman Roos is the embodiment of 100 per cent jingoism, and he is right when he declares that Communism endangers the “white standard” of the Union of South Africa. Communism means the liberation of the Negro masses of South Africa, means the establishment of a “black standard,” means the end of white exploitation and oppression. But to make the panic of the white capitalists and plantation-owners complete, we can furnish the additional information that the Communist International put forward the slogan of an independent Negro republic not only for South Africa but for the Solid South of the United States of America as well.

The same colonial thesis of the Sixth World Congress of the Communist International reads:

“In those regions in the South where the Negroes live in compact masses, it is necessary to proclaim the slogan of self-determination for the Negroes. A radical reorganization of the agrarian structure of the Southern States is one of the basic tasks of the revolution. The Negro Communists should make clear to the Negro workers and farmers that only their close union with the white proletariat and their common struggle against the American bourgeoisie can gain them freedom from barbaric exploitation, that only a victorious proletarian revolution can fully and definitely solve the agrarian and national questions of southern United States in the interests of the oppressed masses of the Negro population of the country.”

The Communist International is for the slogan of national self-determination for the Negroes in the South, where the Negro toilers live in compact masses, exploited and oppressed by the white plantation-owners and capitalists.

The Workers (Communist) Party of America in the election campaign just past came out openly and unreservedly for the right of national self-determination for the Negroes. National self-determination means the right to establish their own Negro State, if they choose to do so. The Communist Party declares that it respects the decision of the Negro masses about the form of realization of this self-determination. At the same time it is the duty of the Negro comrades to emphasize the solidarity of the Negro and white workers and to make clear to the Negro masses that only a victorious proletarian revolution can fully and definitely solve the national question in the Solid South in favor of the oppressed Negro masses.

It would be a dangerous illusion to think that the realization of national self-determination for the Negroes can be secured under the present relations of power under capitalism. National self-determination for the Negro race can be realized only in the course of the proletarian revolution. It would be a major mistake to believe that in imperialist America–in the country of the most powerful, most centralized and concentrated industries–there can be any other revolution but a proletarian revolution.

The Communist Party is the advocate of full racial, social and political equality for the Negro race, and pledges itself to fight for the right of national self-determination for the Negroes in the South. But the Negro masses must understand that their racial and economic liberation can be achieved only in alliance with the working class–whites and blacks alike–and as a product of the victorious proletarian upheaval.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1928/1928-ny/v05-n268-NY-nov-12-1928-DW-LOC.pdf