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25 February 2012

Ancient Human Metropolis Found in Africa

Ancient Human Metropolis Found in Africa

24 February 2012

A Marxist View of Socialism: From the 19th to the 21st Century

A Marxist View of Socialism: From the 19th to the 21st Century


From a talk given by Workers World Managing Editor LeiLani Dowell at the Feb. 10 WW Forum in New York City.
In the first talk in this series, Richard Kossaly discussed the contradiction in capitalist society between the means of production, which are socialized in this society, and private, not social, accumulation. This inherent contradiction is the basis of society’s division into classes, into the rich and poor. It’s also the source of the crises of capitalism.

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ vision was that socialism would do away with this contradiction by doing away with private appropriation altogether. The idea was that in the capitalist countries where the level of production was high in comparison to the rest of world, the overthrow of capitalism in favor of a socialist society would improve the lot of the masses of people.

However, Marx and Engels both realized that you don’t just have a revolution one day, then wake up the next to a perfect socialist society. Even before revolutions began taking place, they were thinking and strategizing around the fact that in the beginning there would still be leftovers of bourgeois society.

Marx’s 1891 document, “The Critique of the Gotha Program,” challenged the proposed political program of the German Social Democratic Party at the time. In it Marx describes two stages of communism. In the first transitional stage, people would be compensated equally in relation to the amount of labor they do.

This sounds great compared to what we have now, right? Today, people are paid on some arbitrary pay scale that has more to do with what the capitalists think they can get away with paying workers — for the bosses, it’s the lower the better — than the actual time and effort a worker puts into the job.

Marx and Engels also envisioned the destruction of the arbitrary division between physical and mental labor. Think about it — is sanitation workers’ work any less taxing than the work a so-called “professional” puts in? Is it any less important to society? Yet sanitation workers are devalued in capitalist society and therefore paid less.

‘To each according to their work’

So the slogan envisioned for this first stage of socialist society — “From each according to their ability, to each according to their work” — is a big advance.

The idea of “equal rights,” however, is not the highest level of achievement possible. In capitalist society, it’s huge; it’s an advance against bigotry, against racism, against sexism, etc. And obviously we fight for equal rights all the time; I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. But Marx and Engels envisioned more.

Consider this: Not everyone has the ability to work as much as others do. Moreover, different people have different needs — say, there’s two workers, but one is raising a family while the other is only supporting herself. Paying these workers the same amount isn’t exactly equality, even if they put in the same amount of work.

Marx wrote, “What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society — after the deductions have been made [deductions needed to maintain equipment and provide for social welfare] — exactly what he gives to it. … Here … the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is the exchange of equal values.

“In spite of this advance,” Marx continues, “this equal right … tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. … To avoid all these defects, rights, instead of being equal, would have to be unequal.”

Because there is not yet complete abundance, the first stage of socialism will have to initially progress along those lines. However, once society reaches full abundance, Marx and Engels said, we won’t have to measure people against each other based on the amount of work they do.

Marx concludes, “In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: from each according to his [and her] ability, to each according to his [and her] needs!”

Dictatorship of the people needed to transform society

The other part of this equation in the first stage of socialism is that the dictatorship of the capitalists, of the ruling class, would be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat, of the workers and oppressed. Now, similar to the idea of equal pay, this would obviously be an advance — a state set up to be truly “for the people,” with the people’s interests in mind rather than profits. But just like Marx and Engels saw the concept of equal pay under socialism as transitory, so did they see the dictatorship of the proletariat as transitory.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to transform society — to organize society so that the productive forces are utilized to meet people’s needs most effectively and to combat the bourgeois culture that will still need to be challenged once the revolution takes place. It would also be needed to combat the forces of counterrevolution — because nobody thinks the capitalists will simply walk away once we take what they think is theirs.

But once the productive forces are set up enough so that everyone is provided for according to their needs, the idea is that the state itself would become unnecessary, obsolete and wither away. That would be the highest stage of communism.

In “Socialism, Utopian and Scientific,” Engels writes: “Whilst the capitalist mode of production more and more completely transforms the great majority of the population into proletarians, it creates the power which … is forced to accomplish this revolution. … The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production into State property.

“But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinction and class antagonisms, abolishes also the State as State. Society, thus far, based on class antagonisms, had need of the State. That is, of an organization of the particular class which was, pro tempore, the exploiting class, an organization for the purpose of preventing any interference from without with the existing conditions of production.

“When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production … are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. … State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not ‘abolished.’ It dies out.”

What Marx and Engels did not anticipate is how socialist revolutions have gone down until now. They envisioned that the socialist revolutions would occur in the most developed capitalist countries — most developed in terms of productive forces, the capability to produce. In fact, the socialist revolutions have occurred in the less developed countries.

20th-century revolutions

When the 1917 revolution occurred in Russia, the country was one of the most underdeveloped in the world, with a huge population, a huge portion of which was peasantry. China, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Afghanistan, the African countries — Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau — were all former colonies. All were saddled with a low level of productive forces. In fact colonialism had drained and stolen the countries’ resources. Once the revolutions happened, the former colonialists, the imperialists, of course wouldn’t leave them alone. This created incredible difficulties for the revolutions.

In the USSR, the Bolsheviks — the communist organization that carried out the revolution — never expected that the revolution could survive isolated from rest of the world. It was a time of revolutionary fervor, and it was assumed that revolutions would happen after World War I throughout Europe and that therefore the new socialist countries would have the resources and support of other socialist countries. But social democracy beat out revolutions in many places, and in the USSR, instead of receiving support from many socialist countries, it faced civil war and the destruction of industry.

We should note that Cuba, despite tremendous difficulties sustaining its own revolution, took this concept of internationalism to heart by sending thousands of soldiers to help fight in the uprisings for liberation throughout the African continent.

This idea makes it all the more important to fight for socialism and communism in the U.S. Just think of how the resources and productive forces in the U.S. could help successful socialist revolutions develop quickly — if such aid were requested.

As for the current socialist countries, we call them socialist out of solidarity with their struggles to build socialism and against all the attacks that have come down on them. But Engels and Marx make clear that until the productive forces develop sufficiently to promote life at a higher level than capitalism, then those countries are in a transitional period from capitalism to socialism. We sometimes also use the terms “workers’ state” or “dictatorship of the proletariat” to refer to them. But the basis for building developed socialist societies is to develop production so they can satisfy the needs of the entire population.

High tech means layoffs, low pay — under capitalism

Here’s a concrete example of the way in which the contradiction between socialized production (that is, production organized among many workers and sometimes across the globe) and private appropriation (that is, appropriation of all the products of the workers’ labor by the capitalists for their own profit) plays out in present-day capitalist countries. And how it could be vastly different under socialism and communism.

We’ve already discussed how the socialist revolutions of the 20th century took place where capitalism and imperialism were weakest and how they were all burdened by underdevelopment and colonial domination. Well, in the 21st century, the contradictions of the capitalist system have resulted in crises in the most advanced capitalist countries, as is apparent from their impact on our own lives.

The tremendous development of technology has dramatically raised the productivity of labor — that is, new machines and computerized systems have resulted in the use of fewer workers to produce more than ever before. However, under capitalism, this has resulted in the overproduction of goods that cannot be sold, and it’s resulted in mass layoffs.

The focus of the Occupy Wall Street movement — on rising inequality between the wealthy 1% and the 99%, representing the working class (both employed and unemployed) — is a popular expression of the conditions that Marx and Engels discussed when they described the growing poverty among the masses and the fabulous wealth of the capitalist class.

Driven by this constant revolution in the means of production, high-tech, present-day capitalism is characterized more and more by low-wage jobs and a permanent and growing reserve army of the unemployed. So, for example, when a factory puts in robots to do the work of many workers, or when retail stores buy software that track sales and inventory and every second of the workers’ time, these advances in technology are a threat to the working class. They result in layoffs of many workers and speed-up of those who remain.

But what if the means of production were owned collectively by the workers and run for the purposes of providing for human needs? Then these advances in technology would be a liberating force for humanity. Everyone could be relieved of back-breaking labor and repetitive jobs. Instead of working 40, 50 or 60 hours per week, everyone could work a greatly reduced schedule, with time for leisure, advanced education and cultural activities.

Human beings could put their minds to solving the great challenges facing the global population, not only to raise the standard of living for all, but also to rescue the planet from the environmental degradation that has been imposed by capitalism and the profit system.

We could imagine that digging for oil and gas or mining for coal — all the things that are dangerous and toxic to workers and the planet — could be eliminated by the true development of renewable energy sources. These are the kinds of possibilities that Marx and Engels predicted when they described the socialist future.

We also believe that when the capitalist class is eliminated as a class and class distinctions are a thing of the past, when there is no longer a struggle for the existence of the individual, the capitalist culture of racism, of divide and conquer, of promoting divisions by country, nationality, race, gender and sexuality could be eliminated as well. Generalized want promotes divisions, and of course, the capitalists use it to their advantage. When that want is eliminated, it will be all the more clear that we don’t need to fight among ourselves or allow ourselves to be divided into other categories.

Of course, promoting that kind of unity helps the struggle for socialism move forward. That’s why the capitalists hate it so much. And this is precisely why Marxism as an ideology has persisted for more than 150 years and has been taken up by the workers and oppressed in every corner of the globe, wherever people struggle for their liberation.
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“GARVEYISM, NOT CONTINENTALISM IS WHAT BLACK AFRICA NEEDS!!” BY CHINWEIZU

“GARVEYISM, NOT CONTINENTALISM IS WHAT BLACK AFRICA NEEDS!!” BY CHINWEIZU

Written by Chinweizu
Monday, 16 July 2007

Garveyism not Continentalism is what Black Africa Needs By Chinweizu

——————————————————————————–

1] The essence of Garveyism consisted of two projects:

A] Black Governments:

Here is Garvey’s conclusion, a century ago, after traveling in the Americas and Europe and informing himself on the situation, world wide, of Blacks [Negroes]:
I asked: “Where is the black man’s Government?” “Where is his King and his kingdom?” “Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?” I could not find them, and then I declared, “I will help to make them.” [P&O,II:126]

And he formed the UNIA to help do that.

B] A Black Superpower in Africa:

In the 1920s, Garvey diagnosed the global prospect of the Blacks and prescribed the remedy when he said:

The Negro is dying out . . . There is only one thing to save the Negro, and that is an immediate realization of his own responsibilities. Unfortunately we are the most careless and indifferent people in the world! We are shiftless and irresponsible . . . It is strange to hear a Negro leader speak in this strain, as the usual course is flattery, but I would not flatter you to save my own life and that of my own family. There is no value in flattery. . . . Must I flatter you when I find all other peoples preparing themselves for the struggle to survive, and you still smiling, eating, dancing, drinking and sleeping away your time, as if yesterday were the beginning of the age of pleasure? I would rather be dead than be a member of your race without thought of the morrow, for it portends evil to him that thinketh not. Because I cannot flatter you I am here to tell, emphatically, that if we do not seriously reorganize ourselves as a people and face the world with a program of African [Negro] nationalism our days in civilization are numbered, and it will be only a question of time when the Negro will be as completely and complacently dead as the North American Indian, or the Australian Bushman. [P&O, II:101-102]

This is the danger point. What will become of the Negro in another five hundred years if he does not organize now to develop and to protect himself? The answer is that he will be exterminated for the purpose of making room for the other races . . . [P&O, I:66]

[T]he Negro peoples of the world should concentrate upon the object of building up for themselves a great nation in Africa. . . .[ P&O, I:68]

We [in the UNIA] are determined to solve our own problem, by redeeming our Motherland Africa from the hands of alien exploiters and . . .[by] the creating for ourselves [there] of a political superstate . . . a government, a nation of our own, strong enough to lend protection to the members of our race scattered all over the world, and to compel the respect of the nations and races of the earth. . . . [P&O, I:52; II:16; I:52]

Go ahead, Negroes, and organize yourselves! You are serving your race and guaranteeing to posterity of our own an existence which otherwise will be denied them. Ignore the traps of persuasion, advice and alien leadership. No one can be as true to you as you can be to yourself. To suggest that there is no need for Negro racial organization in a well-planned and arranged civilization like that of the twentieth century is but to, by the game of deception, lay the trap for the destruction of a people whose knowledge of life is incomplete, owing to their misunderstanding of man’s purpose in creation. [P&O, II:16]

2] Continentalism

Continentalism is the doctrine and project of uniting the entire continent of Africa, uniting all the races that now live on it, black and white, Negro and Arab, preferably under one government that will rule the entire continent. This project has been going on since the 1958 Conference of Independent African States that was held in Accra, Ghana. It produced the Afro-Arab OAU, then the present Afro-Arab AU [Africa Unmanned/Arabist Underwear], which is on the brink of transforming into an Afro-Arab USofAfrica.

By the end of the 20th century, with the rise of black-ruled countries in Africa and the diaspora, Garvey’s first project was realized, but only partly so, since these black comprador governments remain fronts and agents for white supremacy and White power and none has become a Government of black people, by black people, and for black people.

Moreover, none of these black-mask governments of White Supremacy has dared to embark on the second and vitally urgent Garvey project of creating a Black superpower that would be in the same power rank as China and the G-8.

The dangers which Garvey pointed out in the 1920s are still with the black race. If anything, they have been intensified and augmented by such disasters as the AIDSbombing of Black Africa by the USA and the WHO; Arab expansionism and colonialism in the Afro-Arab conflict zone that stretches from Mauritania to Somalia, including the Afro-Arab war theatres in Chad, Darfur and South Sudan; UN Imperialism which, through the IMF, World Bank and WTO, has inflicted Debt Trap Peonage, economic maldevelopment, and deepening poverty on the Black countries of the world. Black powerlessness continues without letup. And the black extinction that Garvey alerted us to is already underway.

Whereas Garveyism correctly focuses on our developing the Black Power we need to defeat these dangers and protect ourselves from all dangers; Continentalism says nothing at all about Power, let alone about Black Power. It doesn’t even offer to create Black Unity. Its focus is on unification of the entire continent, which translates into Afro-Arab unification. Since the Arabs have, for nearly two thousand years, been White invaders, exploiters and enslavers of Black Africa, Afro-Arab unification is like a unification of black lambs with white lions that eat lambs—a unification whereby the lambs end up in the stomach of the lions! The Arabs would naturally love, welcome and eagerly promote such unification. But isn’t it suicidal for the Black Africans to agree to it, let alone campaign eagerly for it—as some have done for the last 50 years?

For that basic reason, Continentalism, with all its projects –OAU/AU, USofAfrica, is the mortal enemy of Black Africans.

Those Blacks who are deluded into thinking that Afro-Arab unification would be good for Black Africans would do well to find out just how rosy life has been for those blacks who have lived under Arab colonialism since the 1950s, and especially in Darfur and South Sudan, where the blacks have taken up armed struggle to escape Arab colonialism and racism.

3] The Garveyite Black Survival Project

We do not need to politically integrate or federate all the 53 Arab and Black African neo-colonial states on the African continent to produce a Black African superstate that can protect all Black Africans wherever they are on earth.

To implement the Garvey idea, what we need, above all, is just one Black African country, big and industrialized enough, and therefore powerful enough to be of G-8 rank, a country that could serve as the core state– protector and leader—of Global Black Africa.

We also need a Black African League that shall be the collective security organization of Global Black Africa, our equivalent of NATO and the defunct Warsaw Pact. These are the two things we need in this 21st century to implement the Garvey requirement for Black African survival.

For building a Black African superpower, as urged by Garvey, an ECOWAS or SADC Federation, or some equivalent in East or Central Africa is more than enough. Just one of them, if integrated and industrialized by 2060, would meet the need. ECOWAS or SADC is big enough in territorial size, population and resource endowment to become an industrialized world power provided its neo-colonial character is eliminated.

Let us look at the numbers:

Country AREA in sq. km Population in 1993

ECOWAS 6.5m 185m

SADC 7m 130m

Brazil 8.5m 156m

USA 9.5m 256m

Russia 17.1m 148m

India 3.3m 900m

China 9.6m 1.2b

EU 2.4m 350m

ECOWAS, with 16 states, 6.5m sq. km and nearly 200m population; or SADC, with 11states, 7m sq km and some 130m population–would be a country of sub-continental size, and in the megastate league, in territory and population and resources, to which belong the USA—with 9m sq. km and some 260m people; Brazil—with 8.5m sq. km. and 156m people; and Russia, India etc. ECOWAS or SADC, if properly integrated, industrialized, and thoroughly decolonized, would be a megastate of the type Black Africa needs. So why don’t we get on with the task of building each into a power of G-8 rank? Why set off on the false, diversionary and dangerous mission of Arab-Black African state integration of the impotent neo-colonialist OAU/AU/USAfrica type?

Of course, ending their neo-colonial character is anathema to the Black colonialists who now misrule the Black African countries. These compradors would rather set off on the quest for an unjustified USofAfrica that would still have the neo-colonial character that suits the comprador interest and temperament.

The second component of the Garvey project is to replace the OAU/AU with a proper collective security organization for Global Black Africa, an organization to which the Black African Diaspora countries and communities will rightfully belong. It is one of the blemishes of Continentalist Pan-Africanism that it is embodied, at the interstate level, in an OAU/AU from which the Diaspora originators of Pan Africanism have long been excluded whereas the Arab enemies of Black Africa are, not only members, but the dominant bloc. The Black African Diaspora are only now being brought into the OAU/AU structures as an afterthought and as no more than second-class members. That is not how it should be.

The history of Black Africans demands that we replace the Arab-castrated OAU/AU with a blacks-only collective security organization, and not with yet another Arab-castrated outfit called the USofAfrica.
Unless the members of a group are keen for their group to survive, the group will most probably not survive; for its members will fail to do what must be done for their group to survive. And any such group does not deserve to survive.

If Black Africans wish to survive, they must profoundly change their priorities: Not slothful consumerism here on earth, not paradise for their souls in the hereafter, but collective security here on earth must become their ruling passion.

Those Black Africans who are keen for the Black African people to survive in the 21st century and beyond will have to ensure that the Garvey Black survival project is accomplished in the shortest possible time, starting yesterday. They have two paramount tasks to accomplish simultaneously: (1) They must, by all means necessary, politically integrate, and complete the abandoned decolonization of, ECOWAS and SADC, and effect their exit from maldevelopment by industrializing them into powers of G-8 rank. (2) They must build a Black African League that will organize the collective security of the Black African World.
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About the author:

Chinweizu is an institutionally unaffiliated Afrocentric scholar. A historian and cultural critic, his books include The West and the Rest of Us (1975), Second, enlarged edition (1987); Invocations and Admonitions (1986); Decolonising the African Mind (1987); Voices from Twentieth-century Africa (1988); Anatomy of Female Power (1990). He is also a co-author of Towards the Decolonization of African Literature (1980). His pamphlets include The Black World and the Nobel (1987); and Recolonization or Reparation? (1994) He lives in Lagos, Nigeria

RANDOM THOUGHTS ON COUNTER-VAILING AFRIKAN POWER

Capitalism, Enslavement, Afrikan Political & Economic Co-optation, Genocide, Murder, Drugs & Addiction, Teen Pregnancy, Violence Against The Afrikan Woman, Afrikan on Afrikan Violence, Afrikan Civil War, kwk... All of these things are symptoms of the Central Afrikan Problem of the 20th & 21rst Centuries: Our Lack of POWER! Following the military conquest of Afrika by the Europeans by the early 1900s, the back of Afrikan Military and Politico-Economic power was shattered. Meaning the ability to amass standing armies for offensive and defensive purposes and the ability to provide cultural definition, and politico-economic guidance and support. Since that time with the exception of cursory guerilla defensive activities, we have been at the mercy of the Wretched Asiatics [Europeans, Arabs, kwk.] with no real means of Defense/Offense. Since the Conquest as a result of Mis-Education through European & Arab "Education" institutions we have been seeking Assimilation into Alien Structures for the most part; and have been inculturated with alien ideologies we set us against ourselves.

Since the late 1950s we have seen "Independence Movements" with the birth of Visionary Leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Patrice Lumumba, Julius Nyerere, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Toure, Amilcar Cabral, Robert Mugabe, kwk., each recognized what had actually occurred [See Jaramogi Ajuma, Oginga Odinga's book Not Yet Uhuru.] that what had been attained was not Uhuru, but that more had to be done. But just as the Christian/Judea Myth says that it was not for King David to build the temple for his role was to be that of the establisher of the nation and his decendant son Solomon had that duty; so it is with us. It was not for them to complete the task of Afrikan Re-Construction, they through their words and actions have set us on the path of the WAY, Our Way.
It is for us this Generation to continue the task. We can not leave the Political Apparatus that we now have in the 54 Afrikan Countries in the hands of Neo-Colonialists, Afrikan Sychophants and the like. We can not turn our backs and say it is corrupt, it is the white mans creation, kwk. We have to engage in Grassroots Community Organization & Development and begin the Second Chimurenga of our Liberatory Victory. WE MUST TAKE WHAT WE HAVE TO MAKE WHAT WE WANT In this case through the Democratic Process which is in place throughout much of Sub-Saharan Afrika. No it will not be EASY. Yes it will involve Struggle. And EVENMORE SO, YES IT MUST BE DONE.
We must Fully Engage in the Continuing Development of AFRIKAN COUNTERVAILING POWER! Through Political-Economic Engagement in the Communities of the Diaspora [See Amos Wilsons, Blue Print For Black Power] & in the Nations of Afrika.

The End of Western Financial Dominance

"Africa is extremely rich in many resources, from agriculture to oil, minerals, and a huge variety of other resources used all around the world. If African nations were able to develop their own economies, use their own resources, and create their own industries and businesses, they could become self-sufficient at first, and then may become a force of great competition for the established industries and elites around the world. After all, Europe does not have much to offer in terms of resources, as the continent's wealth has largely come from plundering the resources of regions like Africa, and in becoming captains of monetary manipulation. A revitalized, vibrant, economically independent and successful Africa could spell the end of Western financial dominance. "

Andrew Gavin Marshall

"The Negro Should Not Enter the Army" Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. May 1, 1899

"The Negro Should Not Enter the Army" Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. May 1, 1899


"The Negro Should Not Enter the Army"

Missionary Department of the Atlanta, Georgia, A.M.E. Church Voice of Missions 7 (May 1, 1899).

It is about time for the ministers of the A. M. E. Church, who, in the aggregate, are the most
progressive, enlightened and racial of the Africanite ministry of the world,
with the highest regard for all other denominations, to begin to tell the young
men of our race to stay out of the United States army. If it is a white man's
government, and we grant it is, let him take care of it.

The Negro has no flag to defend. There is not a star in the flag of this nation, out of the forty
odd, that the colored race can claim, nor is there any symbol signalized in the
colors of the flag that he can presume to call his, unless it would be the
stripes, and the stripes are now too good for him. He is only regarded as
entitled to powder and lead and the burning fagots. He has no civil, social,
political, judicial or existing rights any longer. He may exist, be or live till
the lynchers say he must die, and when they get ready to demand his life, the
nation, from President McKinley down, down and down to the most contemptible
white riff-raff, says well done! If not in words, they say it by their silence;
and those who did enlist some months ago, were abused, misrepresented and
vilified when they even passed through the country, worse than brutes would have
been. If they came out of the cars and walked about the depot, they were charged
with trying to kill men, women and children, and fire the cities and villages.
If they sat in the cars and failed to get out, the newspapers branded them with
cowardice, and said they were afraid, they knew what would follow, while one
town would telegraph to the next that Negro soldiers would pass through. "Have
your armed police at the railroad station, armed to the teeth and ready to shoot
them down upon the slightest provocation." Yet the same towns and villages were
ready to supply them with all the rot-gut whiskey they were able to purchase, to
transform them into maniacs and human devils, if these soldiers were low enough
to drink the infernal drug.

We now ask, in the face of these facts, and they
are not half told, what does the Negro want to enlist lay his life upon the
alter of the nation and die for? What is to be gained? Where is the credit? Who
will accord it to him? In what particular will the race be benefited? Suppose
the Negro should enlist in great numbers and go to the Spanish islands and help
to subjugate the territory now in dispute, and subordinate it to the dictatorial
whim of the United States. What right, what privilege, what immunity, what
enjoyment, what possession will he be the recipient of?

A Cuban from Havana who was compelled to ride with us in a jim-crow car a week ago,
and who was as mad as vengeance at this restriction of his manhood, told us
that the diabolical prejudice of the United States was being exhibited there, and his curse-words
were sulphuretic vengeance itself. He said "This valuing a man by his color was
unknown in Cuba until the scoundrels and villains of this country went there."
He showed us papers which represented him as a great business man, dealing in
the finest tobacco and cigars, yet he was compelled to ride in the jim-crow car
or be mobbed at every station, and this Cuban was not a black man. We ask the
young men of the Negro race if you have got any life to throw away for such a
country as this? If you have a spare life on hand, that you wish to dispose of
by sacrifice, for mercy's sake, for honor's sake, for manhood's sake, and for
common sense sake throw it away for a better purpose, in a nobler act, in doing
something that will perpetuate your memory, to say the least. While we are the
first Africanite Chaplain in the history of the nation, and have once been proud
of the flag of this nation as it waved and flaunted in the air, as a Negro we
regard it a worthless rag. It is the symbol of liberty, of manhood sovereignty
and of national independence to the white man, we grant, and he should justly be
proud of it, but to the colored man, that has any sense, any honor, and is not a
scullionized fool, it is a miserable dirty rag.

We repeat that the A. M. E. ministry, yes, and the Negro ministry of the country should fight the enlistment of colored men in the United States army, as they would liquor brothels,
thievery, breaking the Sabbath, or any crime even in the catalogue of villainy.
The Negro minister of the gospel who would encourage enlistment in the United
States army, in the conditions things are now, encourages murder and the
shedding of innocent blood for nothing, as the foolish young men do not know
what steps they are taking.

Moreover, the bulk of the white people do not
want colored soldiers. Our own governor disapproves of it. The majority of the
white press is against it. They regard the black soldiers as monstrosities, and
we regard them monstrosities also. Again we say to the colored men, stay out of
the United States army. Take no oath to protect any flag that offers no
protection to its sable defenders.

If we had the voice of seven thunders, we
would sound a protest against Negro enlistment till the very ground shook below our feet.

THE EAST ST. LOUIS MASSACRE

THE EAST ST. LOUIS MASSACRE

Marcus Garvey

July 8, 1917


The East St. Louis Riot, or rather massacre, of Monday
[July] 2nd, will go down in history as one of the bloodiest outrages against
mankind for which any class of people could be held guilty. (Hear! hear.) This
is no time for fine words, but a time to lift one's voice against the savagery
of a people who claim to be the dispensers of democracy. (cheers) I do not know
what special meaning the people who slaughtered the Negroes of East. St. Louis
have for democracy of which they are the custodians, but I do know that it has
no literal meaning for me as used and applied by these same lawless people.
(hear! hear!). America, that has been ringing the bells of the world,
proclaiming to the nations and the peoples thereof that she has democracy to
give to all and sundry, America that has denounced Germany for the deportations
of the Belgians into Germany, America that has arraigned Turkey at the bar of
public opinion and public justice against the massacres of the Armenians, has
herself no satisfaction to give 12,000,000 of her own citizens except the
satisfaction of a farcical inquiry that will end where it begun, over the
brutal murder of men, women and children for no other reason than that they are
black people seeking an industrial chance in a country that they have laboured
for three hundred years to make great. (cheers) For three hundred years the
Negroes of America have given their life blood to make the Republic the first
among the nations of the world, and all along this time there has never been
even one year of justice but on the contrary a continuous round of oppression.
At one time it was slavery, at another time lynching and burning, and up to
date it is wholesome [wholesale?] butchering. This is a crime against the laws
of humanity; it is a crime against the laws of the nation, it is a crime
against Nature, and a crime against the God of all mankind. (cheers)


Somewhere in the book of life we are told that "God
created of one blood all nations of men to dwell on the face of the
earth," and after mankind, in scattered groups, had for thousands of years
lived in their own spheres without trouble or molestation, promoting in their
own way the course of peace and happiness, the white race, a party of this group, went out to enslave, conquer and rob the rights of the Peaceful. Through that system of enslavement, conquest and robbery, the black man was taken into this country where he was forced against his will to labor for the enrichment of the white man. Millions of our people in the early days of slavery gave their lives
that America might live. From the labours of these people the country grew in
power, until her wealth to-day is computed above that of any two nations. With
all the service that the Negro gave he is still a despised creature in the eye
of the white people, for if he were not to them despised, the 900,000,000 of
whites of this country would never allow such outrages as the East St. Louis
massacre to perpetuate themselves without enforcing the law which provides
justice for every man be he black or white.


The black man has always trusted the white man. He has
always clung to him as a brother man, ever willing to do service for him, to
help him, to succor him, yet with all this the white man has never found it
convenient to live up to the principles of brotherhood which he himself teaches
to all mankind. (hear! hear!) From the time of Livingstone to the present day
the black man has always been kind to the white man. When there was no white
man in Africa to help the sickly and dying Livingstone, the black man, ever
true, even as Simon the Cyrenian was true, in bearing the cross of the despised
Jesus, came to the rescue of the suffering Englishman, and when he was dead,
faithful as they were, they bore his body for hundreds of miles across the
desert and plains of Africa until they deposited his remains at a place where
other white men could reach him to convey him to England and inter his bones in
the Cathedral of Westminster Abbey. The Negro in American history from the time of Crispus Attucks at Boston, the 10th Cavalry at San Juan Hill which saved the day for Roosevelt, up to the time when they stuck to Boyd at Carrizal, has
demonstrated to the American Nation that he is as true as steel. (cheers) Yet
for all his services he receives the reward of lynching, burning and wholesale
slaughter (hear, hear). It is even strange to see how the real American white
people, the people who are direct de[s]cendants from the Pilgrim Fathers, allow
the alien German, the Italian and other Europeans who came here but yesterday
to lead them in bloody onslaught against the Negroes who have lived here for
over three hundred years. When I say that the Aliens are leading the
descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers against the Negroes in this country I mean
to support it with as much facts as possible.


Mayor Mollman of East [S]t. Louis, if [no]t himself a
German, descendant of German immigrants, he is the man to be blamed for the
recent riots in East St. Louis. I say so because I am convinced that he
fostered a well arranged conspiracy to prevent black men migrating from the
South much the loss of Southern Farmers who for months have been moving heaven it seems to prevent the exodus of the labor serfs of the South into the North.


Two months ago I was in New Orleans completing a lecture
tour of the United States, and on the 26th of April Mayor Fred W. Moflman
arrived in the city on a trip from St. Louis. In New Orleans he was met by
Mayor Behrman and the New Orleans Board of Trade. For months the Farmers of
Louisiana were frightened out of their wits over the everyday migration of
Negroes from great farming centers of the State. They wrote to the papers, they
appealed to the Governor, the Mayor and the Legislature and the Board of Trade
to stop the Negroes going away, but up to the 26th of April nothing was done to
stop the people excepting the Railway Companies promising to use certain
restraint on the rush of people obtaining passages on the trains by Railway
orders sent to them from the North. At this time Mayor Mollman arrived and the
Farmers and Board of Trade met him and asked his help in discouraging the
Negroes from going North and especially to East St. Louis. In an interview
given out to the New Orleans press he said that the Negroes from the South were
reaching St. Louis at the rate of 2,000 per week, and that they were creating a
problem there. He said that some of the largest industries in the country were
established in East St. Louis and there were strikes for the last few months.
He believed the labor conditions in East St. Louis were responsible for the
number of Negro laborers going to that city. When the strikes started, he said,
United States District Judge Wright issued an injunction restraining the
strikers from intimidating the laborers who took their places. This order
prevented uprisings and riots. "Conditions are very bad in East St.
Louis," he said, "because many plants are suffering for the want of
labor. However, our city is growing and we have a population of 85,000 persons.
During 1916 we gained 1,600 in population." His interview did not make
pleasant reading for the Farmers and others interested in labor in New Orleans
and Louisiana so that the very next day he appeared at the Board of Trade where
he met the Farmers and others and in discussing the labor exodus with them, he
promised that he would do all he could to discourage Negroes from Louisiana
going into East St. Louis as the city did not want them. His interview on the
first day was an encouragement to the Negroes to go to East St. Louis, as there
was work for them, owing to the inability of the various plants to get labor.
On the second day when he was approached he said East St. Louis did not want
the Negroes, and he then promised to do all in his power to prevent them going
there. His remarks to the people whom he met were published under big headlines in the News papers, so that the Negroes could read that they were not wanted in East St. Louis, but that did not deter the blackmen of Louisiana who were looking for better opportunities in the land of their birth going about the
country looking for better conditions than the South offered with lynching and
Jim Crowism. The Negroes still continued their migration North. The Mayor of
East St. Louis returned to the city after making his promise to the Farmers,
Board of Trade and others who were interested in Negro labor.


On the 5th of May the New Orleans Board of Trade elected Mr.
M. J. Sanders its president, and Mr. W. P. Ross as delegates to attend a transportation conference at St. Louis to be held on May 8-9. You will remember that Ma[y]or Mollman appeared before the Board of Trade on Friday the 27th of April where he made his statement of promise. The transportation conference was held at St. Louis on the 8th and 9th of May at which several prominent men interested in the labor condition of the South were present as also Messrs. Sanders and Ross, from New Orleans. It isn't for me to suggest that Mayor Mollman met these gentlemen again; it is for you to imagine what further transpired while these gentlemen from the South who were so deeply interested in keeping the Negro below the Mason and Dixon line said and did among themselves while in that vicinity where Mayor Mollman held sway so much so as to be able to make a promise to keep out citizens of the United States who were not born in Germany, but in the Southland. One thing I do no[w?] know; the first riot started on May 28 after a conference of labor leaders with Mayor Mollman. On that day, May 28, crowds of white men after leaving the City Council stopped street cars and dragged Negroes off and beat them. Then the night following three Negroes and two white men were shot. An investigation of the affair resulted in the finding that labor agents had induced Negroes to come from the South. I can hardly see the relevance of such a report with the dragging of men from cars and shooting them. The City authorities did nothing to demonstrate to the unreasonable labor leaders that they would be firmly dealt with should they maltreat and kill black men. No threat was offered to these men because Mayor Mollman himself had promised to do all he could to drive the Negroes out of East St. Louis, and to instill fear in the hearts of the people in the South so as to prevent them coming North. On the 29th of May, a day after the first disturbance, and when three Negro men had been killed, Mayor Mollman sent a dispatch to Governor Pleasant of Louisiana advising the Negroes of Louisiana to remain away from East St. Louis. This news item from the "Call" of May 31 which I will
read will speak for itself.







Negroes Asked To Stay Away.


["]Baton Rouge, La., May 30. An order advising all
Louisiana Negroes to remain away from East. St. Louis, Ill., was issued to-day
by Governor Pleasant, following a request from Mayor Mollman of the Illinois
city."


I have not seen the Louisiana papers that published that
order but you, can imagine for yourselves how the papers made prominent news of it so as to bring home to the Negroes of the State the very discouraging
situation which the Mayor of East St. Louis helped to create. Because nothing
was done to crush the originators and leaders of the first riot the Negro
haters of East St. Louis took fresh courage and made their final attack on our
defenseless men, women and children on Monday July 2nd and which resulted in
the wholesale massacre of our people. When we read in the white press a report
like what I will read to you, we can conjure to our own minds the horror of the
whole affair.


"East St. Louis, July 2nd. Negroes are being shot down
like rabbits and strung up to telegraph poles."


"The official police estimate at 9 o'clock put the
number of dead at 100. They reach this total partly through reports that many
victims have been pursued into creeks and shot, burned in buildings or murdered
and thrown into the Mississippi. The exact number of dead will probably never
be known. Six Negroes were hanged to telegraph poles in the south end of the
town. A reliable white man reports having counted nineteen Negro corpses on a
side street.


"A reign of terror prevails. The police and the tow
companies of the National Guard are powerless. The companies of soldiers were
powerless as they had orders not to shoot. The whites took their rifles from
them telling them they might hurt someone whilst these very whites took the
rifles and shot Negroes." The whole thing my friends is a bloody farce, and
that the police and soldiers did nothing to stem the murder thirst of the mob
is a conclusive proof of conspiracy on the part of the civil authorities to
condone the acts of the white mob against Negroes. (hear! Hear!) In this report
we further read that as the flames of fire would drive a Negro man, wom[a]n or
child from a dwelling, their clothes burning, the mob would set up a great
shout and rifles and pistols would be fired. So far no Negro was known to
escape as the whites had a merciless net about the Negroes, and the cry was
"kill 'em all." Negro faces were seen at frames of windows and when
they say what happened to those who flew from the burning structures, they
dropped back into the fire rather than tempt a similar fate. (deep groan) An
example of what the guardsmen encountered, and themselves enjoyed, was the
beating of colored women by white girls. This sort of thing was common. It
resulted in the death of several Negro women. Six girls, according to the
report pursued a colored girl around the main railway station. A mob formed
behind the girls who were screaming frantic epithets at the terrified black
girl. "Send them back to Africa." "Kill them all."
"Lynch them," shouted the young amazons. Suddenly the crowd swept
from the trail of the girl. A yell then arose. "There is one." It was
a Negro walking on the railroad track. Before he realized his peril he was
killed. Half a dozen pistols cracked and the man dropped without a chance to
run. (groans) Two white girls, neither more than 17 years old, the report said,
were cheered when they dragged a colored girl from a street car, removed her
slippers and beat senseless with the sharp wooden heels. Some reports said
black women were stripped by white women for the amusement of the crowd. (Cries of shame!)


The mob and entire white populace [o]f East St. Louis had a
Roman holiday. They feasted on the blood of the Negro, encouraged as they were
by the German American Mayor who two months ago went to New Orleans and
promised to keep the Negroes out of East St. Louis. That this man did
absolutely nothing to let the people know that the law would be enforced to
preserve order and ensure the peaceful lives of the black people is amply
demonstrated by a report which comes from East. St. Louis, and was published in
the "New York Tribune" of Saturday, July 7. Under the caption:
"Citizens Blame Long Reign of Lawlessness for Riots" the paper
published this bit of news.


"East St. Louis, Ill., July, 6. Resignation of Chief of
Police Payne of East. St. Louis and of Cornelius Hickey Night Chief of Police
or of radical reforms will be demanded of Mayor Mollam by the citizens'
committee of the Chamber of Commerce. This determination is a result of the
race riots here Monday in which thirty-seven persons lost their lives. Maurice
Joyce, vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce, declared to-day the rioting
was the direct result of the long reign of lawlessness in East St. Louis. We
have a police department that is incompetent and inefficient if not worse. Not
only was the word sent out that law would not be rigidly enforced but the
impression was allowed to spread that law violations would be winked at."
This gallant vice-chairman of the Chamber of Commerce who knew this even before one Negro was shot, never said a word and did nothing to bring the delinquent Mayor who rules the city to a realization of these facts until great property damage was done to the Southern Railway Company, when their warehouse of over 100 car loads of merchandise was consumed by the flames causing a loss to the company of over $500,000, and a white theatre of over $100,000 was destroyed.

It was not until property was destroyed in which the Chamber of Commerce was
most interested, that the officers of the body let the Mayor know that he must
do his duty. It was not through over-population or through scarc[i]ty of work
why East. St. Louis did not want Negroes. It was simply because they were black
men. For Mayor Mollman himself said months ago that East St. Louis was badly
off for laborers as many of the plants could not get hands to operate them.


I can hardly see why black men should be debarred from going
where they choose in the land of their birth. I can not see wherefrom Mayor
Mollman got the authority to discourage black men going into East St. Louis,
when there was work for them, except he got that authority from mob sentiment
and mob law. It was because he knew that he could gain a following and support
on the issue of race why he was bold enough to promise the white people of
Louisiana he would keep Negroes out of East. St. Louis. He has succeeded in
driving fully 10,000 in one day out of the city, and the South has gone wild
over the splendid performance in so much so that the very next day after the
massacre the Legislature of Georgia sent out the message that their good
Negroes must come home as they will treat them better than East St. Louis did.
Can you wonder at the conspiracy of the whole affair? White people are taking
advantage of black men to-day because black men all over the world are
disunited. (Loud and prolonged cheers)


(This bit of news was published in the New York Globe, July
11th, which goes to prove the state of affairs in Louisiana.)


Excerpts from Robert A. Hill, ed. The Marcus Garvey and Universal Negro Improvement Association Papers, Volume I, 1826 - August 1919.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983.