The Slogan Of A Freedom / Workers Party In 2012- A Note From The Archives (2009)

From The American Left History blog-

The following note, although written on December 20, 2009, belongs with the entry for this date on Cynthia McKinney’s speech (she had been of the bourgeois Green Party presidential candidate in 2008) because a point I made in that entry is the focus of the comment here. Thanks, Internet blogger technology for this one.

Markin comment:

Note: December 20, 2009-Someone whom I shared this entry with on another blog I belong to questioned me on the formulation of a “freedom/workers party” when I called on Cynthia McKinney to break from all bourgeois parties and come over and work with us. He noted that on all previous occasions when I had evoked the “workers party fighting for a workers government” slogan there was not “freedom” used as part of the slogan. The comrade had a good point and I want to expand on it here.

Frankly, part of the use of the concept “freedom” in addition to the tradition fighting slogan was a somewhat sloppy and cryptic way on my part to express a concept that I think is worth thinking about for the future in fighting for a class-struggle workers party, the struggle for socialist revolution and the goal of a classless international society. As I have repeatedly emphasized in this space a black working class-led, trans-class black liberation struggle will be an important component in the fight for the coming American socialist revolution. That strategic perspective still holds true today.

Nevertheless some of the factors that underlined that premise have eroded somewhat over the past few decades since the civil rights days when the slogan first saw the light of day, mainly the hellish effects that the deindustrialization (and de-unionization, which has gone hand and hand with it) of the American economy has had on the black and other minority populations. By almost every statistic from unemployment rate, net worth, educational opportunities, foreclosure rates and prison incarcerations rates (always a sure way to tell the real status of blacks, especially young black males) the black population has taken it on the chin. Although those conditions have been addressed in general propaganda previously I think we need to think about bringing in an additional concept (again, see below) that reflects that social reality.


The formulation of a special emphasis on the black question has a rather rich, if somewhat spotty, history in the American communist movement. Some of it centered on the black struggle in the South in the 1920s and 1930s when, despite the erroneous “third period” Stalinist Communist International policy of calling for
self-determination for blacks in some mythical “black belt”, the American Communist Party was in the vanguard of the black liberation struggle. My sense of the use of the slogan does not go back that far, however. I am thinking more of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, when being led (or rather misled) by the black preachers and other middle class black elements (supported by, mainly, Northern white liberals, including me) there was a total political reliance on the good offices of the racist Democratic Party, a party dependent for its national majorities on the hard segregationist South.

The most graphic example of this reliance came at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City where Lyndon Johnson sought to be crowned the party’s presidential candidate in his own right. The most burning question of the convention, however, was the seating of the traditional racist Mississippi Democratic Party. The heroic civil rights militant Fannie Lou Hamer-led Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was pieced off there by the national Democratic Party in the interests of… winning in 1964 against the arch-villain Senator Barry Goldwater. With that turmoil, given the still pressing and unresolved civil rights questions of the day, it was a natural spot to call for a “Freedom/Workers Party”, putting class and race together in a very algebraic way.

And that brings us to the present.

Obviously, the exact conditions and questions do not prevail as then. However, I would argue that with the economic and social conditions in the black communities today (think, most graphically of New Orleans, Los Angeles and, tragically, Detroit) that this slogan is due for a 21st century reincarnation. As an effective propaganda tool when confronting the first black elected president of the American imperium who has gone out of his way to avoid the burning issues of the black communities I do not think I was being outlandish. As for the call for Cynthia McKinney to break with the bourgeois parties. That was something of a conveniently named ruse. If she, personally, came over on our programmatic basis fine. If not- we still stand for a “freedom/workers party”. What do you think?