Full text of Padmore’s pamphlet published by the R.I.L.U.’s International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers.
‘Negro Workers and the Imperialist War’ by George Padmore. International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers. Hamburg, 1931.
1) Why the Negro Toilers must Defend the Soviet Union.
The international working class is to-day faced with the danger of an imperialist war on the one hand, and an armed attack by the capitalist states on the Soviet Union on the other. In either case the Negro workers will be utilized by the white capitalists of France, England and America to an even greater extent than they were used in the last war. Therefore, it is necessary to seriously undertake the tasks of organizing the Negro workers, especially the seamen, dock and harbour workers as well as those employed in the basic war industries, against war.
Every capitalist State is to-day increasing its army, navy and air forces and at the same time mechanising these fighting forces with the most modern instruments of slaughter and destruction. Everything is being done by the imperialists with the active aid and support of the leaders of the socialist parties to prepare intervention in the Soviet Union, and to plunge the workers and peasants of Russia in a blood bath.
These facts of war preparation were most glaringly exposed during the trials of the Russian counter-revolutionary engineers and scientists, the agents of French and British imperialists and the Mensheviks (Russian social-democrats), which took place in Moscow in December 1930 and March 1931. The leaders of the Russian social-democrats (bedfellows of Norman Thomas, Hillquit, and Rev. Mr. Muste in the U.S.A. and of Ramsay MacDonald and Henderson, the so-called Labour Ministers of England), were supported by the counter-revolutionary Second and Amsterdam Internationals as well as the American Federation of Labour, the greatest Negro-bating organizations in the world. They carried on their counter-revolutionary activities in order to prepare the ground for the armies of the imperialists to be better able to destroy the Workers’ Republic.
The Negroes must realize the economic and political reasons for intervention plans of the imperialists against the Soviet Union and the fact that the imperialists are militarizing the Negro workers in different parts of the world for use as cannon-fodder.
The true character of the imperialist propaganda against the Soviet Union, and the necessity of an organized fight being made together with the white workers against the war plots of the imperialists must be understood by all Negro toilers.
2) Why War on the Soviet Union?
The entire capitalist world is at present faced with the worst crisis which capitalism has ever experienced. This has called forth a ruthless offensive of the employers against the already miserable conditions of the working class.
The economic crisis has given rise to acute political struggles among the various imperialist powers. All the capitalist nations are trying to get new colonial markets. This struggle for a redivision of the world must inevitably lead to another imperialist war, as well as an attack upon the Soviet Union. If this war against Soviet Russia is successful, then the workers country will be destroyed and brought once more under capitalist exploitation.
Among the chief victims of the crisis are the Negro workers. There are at present millions of black proletarians and peasants starving in the United States, Africa, the West Indies and other colonies. The same applies to the toilers of other lands (China, India, Latin America), but the conditions of the blacks are more deplorable, thanks to the treacherous Jim Crow policy of the American Federation and of the Second and Amsterdam Internationals as well as the slimy hypocrisy of the British Independent Labour Party. All of these Negro bating organizations consciously sabotage the organization and struggles of the Negro workers, and as a result, the bosses are to-day exploiting the blacks even more ruthlessly than the white and other workers.
The working class is faced between two worlds, Capitalism and Socialism. On the one hand, the capitalist world is on the decline, while on the other, the Soviet Union, the first country where the working class has gained power, is building up a new society on the basis of socialist construction. It is very important for the Negro workers to get a clear understanding of what is going on in the Soviet Union, of the heroic sacrifices of the Russian Workers in the building up of socialism. This is very important to the emancipatory struggles of the black toilers in the United States, Africa and the West Indies, for freedom and self-determination.
3) The Russian Revolution and the National Question.
In 1917, the Russian workers in unity with the peasants made a revolution. They overthrew the capitalists and the landlords, took possession of the factories and land and set up their own working class government, known as the Dictatorship of the Proletariat. This revolution was led by the Bolsheviks, now known as the Communist Party. This party was under the leadership of Lenin. Lenin was not only the leader of the Russian toilers, but was the greatest champion and fighter for the freedom of all other oppressed peoples including the terribly exploited and oppressed Negroes. According to Lenin, on the national question, the Communists of America and all countries must carry out the policy of fighting for the liberation and emancipation of the Negro toilers from the yoke of imperialism. This is one of the first lessons from Lenin which Negroes and all other suppressed peoples must understand. It is only the Communists, the followers of Lenin, who mobilize and lead the working class and the colonial toilers of all races and colours in struggle for national freedom, and social emancipation.
Negro workers will ask, as they have every reason to do, what guarantees do they have that the Communists will really give them freedom, after they have come into power? This question is frequently asked by the Negro workers of America who have not forgotten the shameless way in which the Republican Party (at one time a revolutionary party representing the interests of the rising Northern bourgeoisie against the slave-holding landlords of the South), betrayed them after coming into power. With the result, that the Negro masses, were left at the mercy of a Southern oligarchy who have since then maintained domination over the blacks by mob law and terror. The American Communists have already made great achievements in struggling against white chauvinism by mobilizing the whites in support of the everyday struggles of the Negroes for full social, political and economic equality and the right to self-determination.
Recently a white Communist who showed race prejudice towards a Negro worker was publicly tried and expelled from the Party. This act shows the difference between a revolutionary party of the working class as compared with the Republican, Democrat and Socialist—all parties of capitalism. Furthermore, we can point out to them what has been done by the Communist Party of Russia with regards to the various nationalities and former oppressed races in the Soviet Union. This are concrete facts that must dispel the suspicions and distrusts which centuries of white capitalist oppression has created among the Negroes, even towards the most class conscious white workers of the oppressing nations. We must point out to them that one of the first acts of the Russian Communists after the overthrow of the government of the capitalists and landlords was to grant full freedom to all peoples and nationalities who were as oppressed under Tsarism as the Negroes are oppressed in America, Africa and elsewhere by the white imperialists to-day. Before the revolution the Jewish toiling masses were as badly off in Russia as the Negroes are at present in America. The Jews were segregated into ghettoes. They were denied the most elementary rights of human beings. They were not even permitted to send their children to school, and as for employment, no Jewish worker was permitted to hold a job in a factory. The Russian capitalists and landlords, in order to exploit both the Jews and the Russian workers, carried on the same policy of “divide and rule” as the American and South African capitalists do with the white and black workers. The Russian workers were encouraged to hate the Jews, just as the white workers in America and South Africa are incited against the Negroes.
The Russian workers and peasants used to be told that the Jews were the cause of their poverty and misery and that the only way for them to improve their conditions was to go and commit pogroms (lynchings) against them and burn down their homes. This is exactly the same thing which the capitalists and landlords tell the poor white workers and farmers in America and South Africa about the Negroes. By such methods they are able to divide up the ranks of the working class and prevent them from carrying on a united front struggle against their common oppressors and robbers. The Negro worker can thus see the similarity between his present condition and that of the Jews before the Revolution, and will see true friends and champions in the white Communists even though their skins happen to be a different colour from theirs.
4) Russian Toilers Defend Negro Worker.
In 1930, a Negro by the name of Robinson was employed as a mechanic in a tractor factory In Stalingrad. In the same factory were employed some foul hundred white American engineers and specialists. These white labour aristocrats accustomed to treat Negroes as dogs in the United States objected to Robinson’s presence in the dining-room of the factory and attempted to beat him up. The Russian workers immediately rushed to the defense of the Negro, held a meeting of all the workers in the factory and protested against the conduct of the white Americans. When the news was published in the Soviet newspapers, the entire working class held mass meetings throughout the country and demanded that the offenders be brought to public trial. These white men were found guilty of practicing white chauvinism (race prejudice) against the Negro and deported from the Soviet Union. The judges at the trial who were all working men then assured Robinson that although he is a Negro he was their class brother and that they will always defend Negro workers against the attempts of any white chauvinists who showed prejudice against them. They told the white Americans that the workers of the Soviet Union will never tolerate race prejudice which is the chief weapon used by capitalists in poisoning the minds of workers against each other. When we compare this public defence of the black worker with the treatment which Negroes receive in England, not to mention the U.S.A. and Africa, the Negro workers can at once see the difference in the attitude of the revolutionary workers of the Soviet Union with that of the capitalists and their social reformist agents within the ranks of the working class.
It is the duty of every Negro worker not only in the British colonies, but throughout the world to understand clearly the difference between this kind of treatment and that which black men and women enjoy in the and of the Russian Soviet Republics.
Before the Revolution, the Communists (Bolsheviks) taught the Russian workers not to be misled by the capitalists of their own nationality, but to support the struggles of the Jews and other oppressed races, with the result that when the October Revolution broke out the Russian workers fought side by side with the Jewish workers who are now a free people, enjoying equal rights and privileges as all other toilers in the Soviet Union. The same applies to the other nationalities, who were held in bondage by old religious beliefs, traditions and superstitions that were imposed upon them by priests and other religious fakers in order to help the capitalists and the landlords keep them in slavery. This action of the Russian Communist Party towards these former oppressed nations is one of the best guarantees which we can give to the Negro workers and peasants, that the Communists stand uncompromisingly behind the principle of equality in the fullest sense of the word, and self-determination. The national policy of the American and other Communist Parties is the same as that of the Russian Party, all of which are fighting for the same aims—the freedom of the working class and all oppressed peoples.
5) What is the Five-Year-Plan?
However, granting freedom to the various nationalities did not solve all the problems confronting the toiling masses of the Soviet Union. For years after power had been taken by the workers and peasants they had to fight desperately against the counter-revolutionary armies known as the White Guards, who were organized by the former ruling classes and their generals. The foreign imperialists also supported the counter-revolutionary forces. England, France, Japan and America sent soldiers to help overthrow the working class government and to put the capitalists and landlords back into power. France and England even used Negro soldiers in the counter-revolution.
The Red Army of the workers and peasants fought bravely and with the sympathetic support of the workers in the capitalist countries finally drove away the bandit armies from their country.
After this the first problem which the new workers government had to face was the reorganization of industry. Most of the factories, railroads and mines had been destroyed or badly damaged during the many years of war and struggle against counter-revolution.
Workers Build Socialism.
With energy and determination the workers set their shoulders to the wheel and began to reconstruct industry. After the country was put on a functioning basis, the Communist Party and the Government decided to undertake a systematic building up of the country on the basis of a planned and organized socialist system.
The workers turned their backs upon the old disorganized and chaotic methods of capitalism They were out to build a new world—a world free from exploitation and oppression, free from hunger, starvation and misery for the working class. A society in which all toilers, regardless of race, colour or sex find useful labour and are properly provided for.
With this in view, the Five-Year-Plan was started in 1928. The purpose of this plan can be briefly stated as follows:
(1) Industrialization of the country especially the basic industries on a vast scale; (2) combining the small farms into large collective farms worked by tractors instead of old-time ploughs drawn by horses; (3) to completely abolish all remains of private capital; and (4) to abolish illiteracy by providing free compulsory education for all workers and peasants and their children.
At the same time when the Five-Year-Plan was started, the capitalists and the social-democrats, who are the chief agents of the capitalist in the ranks of the working class and the greatest enemies of the Soviet Union were the first to ridicule the idea of the Communists attempting to industrialize the Soviet Union in five years. The “wisest” of capitalist economic writers said that it was impossible for the Russian workers to carry out the task which they set, that it could not be transformed into a leading industrial nation. The Communists were looked upon as a set of fools, dumbells and fanatics.
The Russian workers paid no attention to these “wise men of the capitalists”. They simply went ahead in building new factories, opening up new mines and laying out new railroads and at the same time organizing gigantic collective farms among the poor and middle peasants success of the Five-Year-Plan.
Two and a half years have passed since the Five-Year-Plan has been started and already we can see a tremendous difference in the Soviet Union when compared with the capitalist world.
Starvation in Capitalist Countries.
There are over 35 millions unemployed workers in the capitalist countries of Europe and America and there are hundreds of millions of peasants and toilers starving in India, China, Africa, Latin America and other colonies.
Contrasted to this situation of poverty, starvation and misery for the workers under capitalism, the toilers of the Soviet Union are marching forward at a tremendous pace in building up their industries and operating their collective farms with the most modern and up-to-date agricultural methods.
Achievements for Workers in Five-Year-Plan.
Industrial production has doubled. In some branches of industry, for example, oil, the amount planned to be produced in five years has been completed in two and a half years. Half of the small farms have been turned into great collective farms and the agricultural production has greatly increased. The old hoe and plough have been replaced by the tractor and the combine. And as a result, peasants who have been bound hand and foot for centuries to the land as serfs are now freed men.
The wages of the industrial workers have increased from year to year. And their hours are being lowered. To-day the 7-hour day has been introduced in nearly every branch of industry. They have a five day week. That is the workers work for four days, then rest one.
Education, Recreation, etc.
Furthermore, every worker in the Soviet Union is guaranteed social insurance including full medical attention and sick benefit allowance, as well as a two week vacation every year and in case of very hard work four weeks with full pay and the right to occupy a place in the summer homes of the former nobility which have been converted into rest homes and clubs for the workers. The same conditions apply to the most backward nationalities. People who for centuries were kept in ignorance under tsarism who did not even know how to read and write their own languages are now receiving the fullest cultural training. New schools and other institutions for studying have been established for them—all part and parcel of the great Five-Year-Plan.
The workers of the Soviet Union have made tremendous achievements in building up their country during these two and a half years and will fulfil the Five-Year-Plan in four years instead of five. Because of this the contempt and ridicule which the capitalists and their lackeys expressed at one time has now turned into a bitter hatred and fear.
Capitalists Fear 5 Year Plan
The capitalist class in America and Europe realize that if the Soviet Union is given time to complete the fulfilment of the Five-Year-Plan; then capitalism which is already faced with a great crisis, will completely collapse. The workers under capitalism will be also inspired as never before to take power into their hands.
Because of this, the capitalists are making plans to start a war against the Soviet Union. Since that the workers have no common interests with the capitalists it is difficult to get them to line up with the exploiters on the basis of an appeal of “profits”, “interests” and “rent”. So the capitalists hope to win the support of the more backward sections of the white workers as well as the Negroes by appealing tc their lowest instincts.
Class War must be Answer.
For example, all of the capitalist newspapers have started a campaign of lies saying that there is “religious persecution” and “forced labour in the Soviet Union. In this, the capitalists are actively supported by priests and missionaries the same agents of the imperialists who were sent out to Africa and other colonies to help rob the natives of their lands in order to enrich the white European and American merchants, bankers and landlords.
Side by side with this war propaganda campaign against the Soviet Union, the imperialist nations are organizing so-called peace and disarmament conferences, but these are merely smoke screens behind which they are trying to deceive the working class. This is why every class-conscious Negro worker, as well as those of other races must do all in their power to struggle against the coming war.
However, if war breaks out, the Negroes must line up on the side of the revolutionary front and use the arms which their white oppressors put in their hands not to shoot down their brother workers in the Soviet Union, or those in other capitalist countries, but to rebel and seize the opportunity of turning the imperialist war into a civil war. In other words, instead of Negro workers giving their lives for the capitalists, landlords and the bankers as they were misled in doing in 1914 they must put an end to these parasites and over their dead bodies raise the revolutionary banner of freedom for their own working class and the downtrodden and enslaved colonial toilers.
6) Militarizing the Blacks.
In connection with the war preparation, the imperialists are spreading more and more hatred between the black and white workers in order to put them against each other and thereby divide up the unity of the working class, for the purpose of making it easier for the black workers to be used as soldiers against the Russian workers and peasants.
Race Hatred Instrument of War.
Everywhere this policy of racial hatred is on the increase. In South Africa, the capitalists are openly calling upon the white workers to shoot down the natives, while in the United States the bosses are actively participating in organizing bands of white hooligans, gangsters and gunmen, (Ku Klux Klan Caucasian Crusaders, Black Shirts), and inciting them to spread mob law, and terror among the Negro toilers.
In 1930, over 40 Negroes were lynched in America, while 17 lynchings have taken place already in the first few months of 1931. To-day 8 Negro boys are being railroad to the electric chair in Alabama on a frame-up charge.
Imperialist Prepare Black Armies.
While all of this is going on the capitalists are preparing reserve black armies. This is especially so in the colonies. The reason for this is obvious. The imperialists particularly the French, the leaders of the anti-Soviet intervention campaign are afraid that their European army, which is composed of white workers and peasants will refuse to carry out the orders of the capitalist officers to attack their comrades in the Soviet Union. So in order to guarantee the carrying out of their plans, the French imperialists and militarists are mobilizing a large army of Negroes in Africa which could be brought to Europe and used as shock troops when the war begins.
In order to transport these African troops, France is now building a railroad from Brazzville in the Congo to the Atlantic Ocean, and is making further plans to build another railroad from the port of Oran in Algeria in Northern Africa across the Sahara Desert to Lake Chad in Central Africa.
Blacks Massacred.
In order to build the railway the French engineers had to call upon the Government to conscript labour. Soldiers were sent from village to village compelling all able bodied men to go and work on the railway. In this way, hundreds of thousands of black men and boys were forced to work for no wages, except a cup of rice as their daily ration. In 1928 over 17,000 Negroes died from starvation and disease. A rebellion broke out the same year due to these terrible conditions, but it was suppressed by the machine guns and bayonets of the soldiers. Thousands of workers were massacred and hundreds of villages with women and children burnt to the ground because they refused to desert their men when the government troops invaded the villages.
France Plan Negroes as Cannon-Fodder.
The military designs of France in building this railway were openly expressed when the Minister for the Colonies said in the Chamber of Deputies that “the value of the Transsaharan is manifest if one considers only its political and military aspects.” “We have two armies in Africa which during the war gave effective assistance in defence of the national territory. The Algerian corps, reinforced by the Tunisian and Moroccan divisions; and the black army of West Africa. United by railway they will compose a military force almost without equal outside of Europe”, writes Andre Bertelot; while the Paris Temps says, “the new transsaharan railway will enable us to call upon African resources to make up for our population deficit.”
Militarist Plans of Belgium.
Belgium as a military ally of France has also decided to extend the TransSaharan railroad from Lake Chad through the Congo, so that the black troops could also be transported over the Continent instead of by way of the ocean which is more hazardous and costly, exposing them to the submarine attacks of the enemy.
Thousands of young able-bodied natives are taken away from their homes every year and forced to serve in the army for three years. Whole villages are depopulated, for many of the African soldiers are stationed in France where they die off in large numbers, because of the winters which they are unable to stand. Those who survive are demobilized after three years and sent back to their African villages, broken up by all kinds of diseases. This is how the French imperialists are using the Africans for their military purposes.
All of the other imperialist powers are also training black soldiers for future wars. This applies especially to the United States, Great Britain and Belgium.
U.S.A. Militarize Negroes.
There is no compulsory military service in the United States, the Negro workers are nevertheless made to go and take military training by their employers in what is known as Citizens Military Training Camps. Those who failed to undergo this training are dismissed from their jobs. Through this method of industrial terrorism thousands of young workers are being prepared as cannon-fodder During this period of economic crisis, the capitalists are already attempting to solve the unemployment problem by appealing to the young workers to join the army. Besides these reserve soldiers which are being trained, the United States government also maintains a few Jim Crow Negro regiments. Although the U.S. Government refuses to train Negro officers at its training camps, it recruits black officers from the ranks of the Negro petty-bourgeoisie.
Congress makes an annual grant of thousands of dollars to Howard University in Washington D.C. and Hampton College in Virginia to provide military training for their Negro students. Instructors are supplied by the United States War Department. All students are compelled to study military science for two years. Those who refuse, are either expelled or denied the right of receiving their diplomas. Throughout the States, thousands of boys are being stuffed with “loyalty” and militaristic ideas through the Boys Scout and Y.M.C.A. movement.
Great Britain.
Great Britain also used several regiments of Negro soldiers in her African campaigns during the last war. The West Indies supplied a regiment of several thousand black soldiers under white officers. These troops were used together with the Australians under the command of General Allanby for the capture of Palestine.
At the present time, British imperialism maintains two standing black armies in Africa—the Royal West African Frontier Force and the King’s African Rifles. Several volunteer reserve corps are also being trained in the British West Indian colonies and the British Guiana. The youth is also being militarized through the cadet corps, in the colleges; and Church Lad’s Brigades and Boy Scouts in the public schools.
Belgium also maintains an army of over 20,000 native soldiers under 198 European officers and 228 non- commission officers in the Congo. The Congo natives are forced to reserve in army for seven years. The government also maintains an armed territorial police force of over 10,000 men.
The same can be said of Portugal, which has a large black army in Mozambique and Angola.
Italy.
Italy is also making desperate efforts to create a military basis in Africa, Mussolini has not only instituted a blood and machine gun policy of ruthless^ suppressing every manifestation of native freedom in Tripoli and Cyrenaica, but has decided to build a railway across the Sahara from Tripoli to Lake Chad which lies along the north-eastern border of Nigeria in West Central Africa. This line will run parallel with the French line at a distance of about 800 kilometers east of the French. From this we see the sharp rivalry between France and Italy which reflects itself in the Franco-Italian conflict over naval armament. Both powers realize that the new war will find them faced with the necessity of transporting black armies across Africa to Europe, and superior naval strength in the Mediterranean will be a deciding factor in the safe convey of their troops across. In whatever direction we turn, we see the designs of the imperialist powers upon Africa and the Negro toiling masses.
7) Betrayal of Negro “Leaders”.
The Negro petty-bourgeois politics and national reformist “leaders” are today taken an more and more active part in betraying the struggles of Negro workers and peasants than ever before.
All of this is part and parcel of the war plans of the imperialists, who are trying to make sure that when the war breaks out, the Negro workers will not seize the opportunity to revolt and strike a blow for their own freedom.
The Negro Lackey—Diagne.
The white imperialists of France have recently appointed Blaise Diagne, under Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Diagne is a Singalese Negro who was commissioned by Clemenceau during the last war to recruit 200,000 Negro workers and peasants in French West and Equatorial Africa for the army and labour battalions. Diagne being a black man was better fitted to make the appeal to the toilers of his race than a white colonial official. Before Diagne reached Africa the Governor General and his military staff had attempted to recruit Negroes into the army, but the workers and peasants revolted. However, as soon as Diagne landed he was able to mislead his countrymen by making them all kinds of promises in the name of France. He went from village to village telling the workers and peasants that France was in a great danger, and that if they fought for her safety, they would be granted their independence. But everybody knows what happened after the war. Whole villages have been depopulated as the result of this policy of the French imperialists with the aid of native lackeys such as Diagne, who is looked upon by the African toilers as one of the biggest traitors of the Negro race.
Servile Negro Press U.S.A.
Nevertheless, the servile and boot-licking Negro petty bourgeois newspapers, in America, such as the “Chicago Defender”, the “Pittsburgh Courier”, and the Afro-American sing praise to Diagne and see in him the greatest achievement of Negro leadership.
France Prepares War against the Soviet Union.
Now that France is preparing to make war against the Soviet Union, the white capitalists and militarists have again selected Diagne as their chief agent to again help them mobilize the black toilers in Africa. France as the chief imperialist nation in Europe and the leader of the anti-Soviet bloc is dependent upon her colonials in order to strengthen her fighting forces for her own white man power has been so depleted since the war that she has to rely upon the toiling masses of Africa and Indo-China, who are being held as military reserves This is the reason why the French imperialists are forced to make a gesture that they are more “liberal” than other colonizing powers by appointing a black man a cabinet minister. But this is merely a maneouvre in order to win the alliance and support of the black petty bourgeoisie and intellectuals in the colonies.
Fraternity, Equality, Lie.
In Paris these people are allowed full social equality, but on the other hand the millions of black workers and peasants in the colonies are treated worse than slaves. This shows the Negro workers that their problem is fundamentally a class problem. That the black bourgeoisie will always unite with the white bourgeoisie in safeguarding their common imperialist class interests.
Negro “Uncle Toms” Support U.S.A. “Democracy” Lie.
The American imperialists are doing the same thing as the French whenever it suits their purpose. During the last war the so-called Negro leaders like Du Bois, Kelly Miller, Moton, Emmett Scott, together with other “uncle Tom” Negro politicians, newspaper editors and preachers appealed to the toilers of their race to help the capitalists, and the bankers and the landlords to win the war. Like their French bedfellow Diagne, they went around the country assuring the Negro workers and peasants that after the war everything will be all right. They lied to them that they are going to fight for “democracy” and “liberty”.
Now they cannot even get the crumbs from the overladen tables of the white millionaire overlords.
Recently, General Pershing, the leader of the United States Military Forces in the war, writing in the capitalist press the “New York Times” openly insulted and abused the Negro soldiers who served under him, while his bosses, President Hoover and the Secretary of War, Adams, shipped a number of “gold star” mothers of Negro soldiers in “Jim Crow” ships to visit the graves of their dead sons in France.
Condition of Negroes in Colonies.
The conditions of the black toilers in the colonies since the war is a thousand times worse than even before. Everybody knows how the bandit States headed by Great Britain and France got together at Versailles and divided up the African colonies stolen from Germany among themselves. Although the Negroes were induced to fight under the slogan of “democracy” and “self-determination” they were not consulted as to their wishes in the re-division of the colonies. The Cameroons, Togoland, Tanganyika, and South West Africa were divided up between England, France, Belgium and the Union of South Africa as mandates. The Negro population protested but they were quieted by the machine guns and battleships of their new masters.
We would like to ask the question: do the Negro misleaders who appealed to the toilers of their race to go to fight in 1917 know these abuses? Of course they do. Yet none of them (have the courage to stand up as men and expose the hypocrisy and deception of the imperialists. Like real Judases, they have been rewarded by the white oppressors with good jobs and minor political favours and that is all the interests they have an their race.
Not satisfied with their past acts of treachery these fakirs are again offering their services to the white overlords in order to help them keep the black workers and peasants both in America and the colonies in subjection. Since the appointment of Diagne, the American Negro misleaders are all crawling on their bellies licking the boots of President Hoover and the white capitalists beseeching them to do like the French imperialists in giving them more and more opportunities to show how they too can serve their Yankee masters.
Whenever the question of class against class is involved, the Negro politicians will always be on the side of the white ruling class, against the interests of the workers and peasants. These men are too closely bound up with the whole corrupt system of capitalism, without which they would not be able to mislead and betray the toiling masses of their race.
The British imperialists do not intend to be out done by their French and American class brothers. They too are beginning to adopt the policy of utilizing more and more petty-bourgeoisie and intellectuals from the colonies in keeping the workers and peasants in Africa and the West Indies in subjection.
Since the last war, great changes are taking place within the Empire. The Dominions as demonstrated at the last imperial Conference in 1930 are thinking more and more of the national interests of their own bourgeoisie than about Empire security.
The English ruling class will be forced to use more and more Negro and Indian troops in the next war, especially in the event of an armed attack upon the Soviet Union. That is the reason why England will never surrender her military domination over India, while at the same time she is intensifying her military strength by training coloured armies in Africa and the West Indies.
As a general rule, military service among these black colonial slaves does not meet with much favour. Therefore, in order to carry out their policy of preparing the workers and peasants for cannon fodder, the British imperialists have been forced to resort to the use of native petty-bourgeois lackeys and chiefs in Africa and other colonies to preach loyalty to the Empire and to get at the head of the revolutionary struggle in order to control and to use it in the interests of imperialism.
The treachery, corruption, and betrayal of all these black politicians woo proclaim themselves self-appointed leaders of the Negro toiling masses of the United States, Africa and the West Indies, can hardly be equalled much less surpassed by those of other oppressed peoples.
They are all a bunch of unbridled fakirs who are out to exploit the racial consciousness of the Negro toiling masses in order to advance their own selfish interests and to cash in as much as possible before selling them out to the highest bidder.
We already see the shameful way in which Ghandi has betrayed the national liberation struggles of the Indian workers and peasants. Marcus Garvey, the Negro national reformist leader has also sold out the struggle of his oppressed people, and has brazenly announced his intention to go over to the side of the British imperialists.
The year 1931 is one which no worker and oppressed toiler can ever forget. For in this year, the two most outstanding misleaders of the most oppressed peoples under British imperialism—the Indian and Negro toiling masses—have turned traitors and made peace with the white imperialist exploiters and robbers.
It should now be clear to every honest worker and peasant that in spite of the high-sounding phrases behind which Garvey masquaraded for all these years, his action today shows that he never intended to lead the Negro masses in their struggle against the exploiters and oppressors. Garvey was merely out to get as much money as possible out of the sweat and toil of the working class. Now that the whole capitalist world is in a crisis, and the Negro workers have no more jobs and therefore cannot give him any more money, Garvey has given up the game. He recently announced that he intends to sell out the newspaper “Black Man” and the other properties of the UNIA, bought by the dollars of the Negro working class. After pocketing the money he will sail for London in order to be closer to the British imperialists who will utilise him just as the French are using Diagne in order to mislead the black workers and peasants in the African and West Indian colonies and mobilize them for “King and country”.
International Solidarity.
Therefore, it is the duty of every honest Negro worker to denounce Garvey and the other bourgeois nationalist leaders and break away from their influence, which means the continuation of lynching, segregation, forced labour, slavery, low wages, long hours, unemployment, etc.
It is only by supporting the militant struggles of the working class under the leadership of the Communist International and the revolutionary trade unions of the Red International of Labour Unions will the Negro workers be able to successfully march forward in freeing themselves from the yoke of capitalism as their comrades in the Soviet Union pointed the way 13 years ago.
First called The International Negro Workers’ Review and published in 1928, it was renamed The Negro Worker in 1931. Sponsored by the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW), a part of the Red International of Labor Unions and of the Communist International, its first editor was American Communist James W. Ford and included writers from Africa, the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and South America. Later, Trinidadian George Padmore was editor until his expulsion from the Party in 1934. The Negro Worker ceased publication in 1938. The journal is an important record of Black and Pan-African thought and debate from the 1930s. American writers Claude McKay, Harry Haywood, Langston Hughes, and others contributed.
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