Socialists Against Racism

“I have said and say again that, properly speaking, there is no Negro question outside of the labor question—the working class struggle. Our position as Socialists and as a party is perfectly plain. We have simply to say: “The class struggle is colorless.” The capitalists, white, black and other shades, are on one side and the workers, white, black and all other colors, on the other side.” Eugene Debs, 1903, 

Racism is an evil that has subjected millions to degrading and humiliating discrimination. While a great deal of effort has been made to mitigate and alleviate the effects of racism, nothing -- absolutely nothing -- has been done to eliminate its cause. The basic cause of racism is not the racial myths conceived and spread by the white supremacists. Rather, the cause of racism is the competitive, strife-ridden, class-divided capitalist system of society under which we live, and under which we desperately attempt to survive. The truth is that capitalism, under which we have developed industrial and scientific forces that no previous epoch in human history could have even dreamed of, cannot solve the crises it has itself created. On the contrary, the very laws that are at the heart of the capitalist system, the incentives and motivations behind its economic activities, ensure that these crises will worsen.

Consider that under capitalism the means of production and all the necessities of life are owned and despotically controlled by a small minority, the capitalist class. The overwhelming majority of the people, black, brown and white, own nothing of their own. In order to live, they must sell their ability to work -- their manual and mental labour power -- as a commodity to the capitalist owners. The workers do all the socially useful work and produce everything. In return, they receive in wages the equivalent of only a fraction of the value of the goods they have produced. The rest is appropriated (legally stolen) by the capitalists. The less the capitalists have to pay the workers in wages, the greater the proportion of wealth they can appropriate for themselves. Accordingly, the capitalists, under competitive compulsions, constantly try to increase their share of the wealth produced by the workers. Contrariwise, the workers resist the capitalists' encroachments and strive to maintain or improve their living standards. The result is a class struggle that is waged continuously in a capitalist society. Obviously, it is in the capitalists' interests to prevent the working class from uniting. And racial prejudice is one of the most insidious and effective devices ever invented for blinding the workers to their class interests and keeping them divided and fighting each other, instead of forming a solid front against their exploiters.

The Socialist Party is fully conscious of the humiliation and sufferings of black and Asian workers. We fully share with them their yearnings for a better life. But candour and honesty compel us to point out that only the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of socialism can put an end to race prejudice, and establish the brotherhood of man on a sound material foundation. By making the means of production, distribution and social services the collective property of society, we shall be able to use our collective productive genius to create abundance and leisure for all in a sane, peaceful and democratic Socialist Cooperative Commonwealth. With all the sympathy that it is possible for a humane mankind to summon for the suffering, anguish, and despair of the victims of capitalism, understanding the anger and bitterness and complete agreement that their anger and bitterness are justified, the Socialist Party nevertheless urges all who are inclined to listen to the advocates of violence to reflect, and to reflect soberly. No one should doubt that an insurrection will bring on to the streets the tanks of the minions of capitalist law, many of whom are ready, willing and eager to wage war on those whom they fear and hate.

A revolution means a complete change, and it need not be accompanied by violence. For a successful revolution, there must be a constructive phase when new institutions are established to replace those that are dismantled. In an age of great technological and economic complexity such as the present one, when prolonged economic paralysis can have devastating consequences for great masses of people, especially to the masses crowded into the great urban centres, this constructive phase of the revolution must be carefully planned and prepared for. Of the all-important constructive phase so vital to the success of a revolution, advocates of violence are obviously oblivious. Destruction is for them the end-all and be-all of what they consider "revolution" -- that is, insurrection in fact.

Revolution is absolutely necessary if the horrible conditions of society are to be ended. But such a revolution can only be consummated by the working class, as a whole in solidarity, united. And they will do it, not with guns, but with the ballot. Our task is to organise for political and economic power -- not to demand mere amelioration but to demand the abolition of the capitalist system of wage slavery, and to effect an orderly socialist reconstruction of society. To establish socialism, the workers of all lands must organise politically in the Socialist Party to demand at the ballot box that all the means of life become the common property of all.