There is no need to lay out all the components of today’s growing social and economic crises nor detail the symptoms of growing racism and repression.
We are all aware of the problems.
What we need to do is to develop a vision of how we can not only strengthen our fight against the continued assault on our rights and our well being but build a movement that will ultimately succeed in accomplishing fundamental social change, which in turn means establishing people’s power, the rule of the working people and the oppressed.
In order to chart our way, we must look at our track record during the past several decades, must take a frank look at our weaknesses and mistakes and ask ourselves whether we have measured up to the requirements of our movement.
This type of analysis cannot be the work of one or even several individuals. It will require a collective effort from a good many activists. And it cannot be done in one meeting or several meetings, in one forum or several forums. It will be a fairly protracted process. And differences of opinion will probably not be completely resolved by debate but rather by the successful practice of those who most correctly absorb the lessons of our past struggles.
We need to begin by admitting that our movement today is not in very good shape. Despite the enormous problems in our society, despite the hard circumstances in which so many people find themselves, despite the anger and disillusionment of millions of our people, the progressive forces find themselves pretty much “on the outside,” a tiny and fragmented collection, overwhelmed, overburdened, without a plan or a vision — impotent.
We would here simply mention a number of problems with which the progressive movement must come to grips if it is going to become an effective force:
- A lack of understanding of the central place of racism in maintaining this oppressive system. And conversely, the central place of anti-racist struggle in every issue involving political, economic and social advancement.
- A single-issue approach to struggle, failing to link up all the issues to one another and to the need for complete social renovation. Thus there is the idea that it is possible to make substantial progress in one area of struggle housing, jobs, education, a democratic foreign policy, peace — without reference to the total struggle for progressive change. The truth is, however, that a real breakthrough on any of these fronts can only be achieved by a general political breakthrough, a real shift in power between the people and their oppressors.
- A lack of understanding of the need for independent politics, which means a lack of understanding of the need to cut one ties to the Democratic Party. A large segment of the Left continues to harbor illusions in that party, in the ability of the masses to either take it over or force it to become a vehicle for-the people’s needs. This includes those who speak of the so-called in-and-out strategy. All of this is related to the tactics of coalescing with liberals on the liberals’ political terms in order to be broad and not isolated.
- A sectarian style of work among the more militant wing of the progressive movement involving an unwillingness or inability tb link up issues of imperialist intervention or racist violence or political prisoners, by way of example, with the people’s survival needs — jobs, education, health and housing. This wing also displays an inability to speak to people in a popular language, to communicate to people in ways that relate to people’s daily experience.
- Creating a never-ending proliferation of organizations, basically small circles competing for meager resources with all the other groups, happy to be a big fish in a small pond, not willing to take “orders from above.”
This list could be considerably extended. But the point is that there are serious issues of our practice that require careful scrutiny.
In addition to exploring our shortcomings, we need to learn from the positive experiences which many of us have acquired in the course of our struggles. In the past we have lacked vehicles for exchanging such experience, operating in our tight little compartments as we have. So we must create such vehicles.
Over the last several years, progressives have come to feel more and more keenly the need to combine forces. Coalitions are formed now with regularity around specific issues, usually when mass mobilizations are called. But clearly we must find ways of working together on a day-to-day basis. Our joint work must become routine.
Everyone talks of the need for unity. But unity cannot simply be decreed. Nor is it useful in all circumstances. A false unity can actually set the movement back.
Different political tasks and different political goals will call forth different conditions, different prerequisites for unity. What those prerequisites are, for working together in separate organizations and for coming together in the same organization, will have to be thought out and discussed together.
Finally, the progressive forces must identify the key forces that will be in the forefront of the struggle for a truly humane society. It seems obvious that it is they who have suffered most from the present system and who have the least to lose in taking on the powers-thatbe. We are speaking, of course, of the people of color, and first and foremost the African-American people.
And we are speaking of the lower strata of the working people.
That African-American people will be playing a key leadership role would seem to be obvious. Unfortunately this simple idea is one that many white progressives have great difficulty with. And let us be frank: racism lies at the heart of this difficulty, white arrogance. So if there is to be any real unity on the highest levels, white progressives will have to struggle with this.
In the end I am confident that what is necessary for us to do will be done. Not because we are all so smart but because life is forcing us to deepen our understandings and shed our mistaken ways.
