IF YOU'RE NOT PART OF THE SOLUTION THEN YOU'RE PART OF THE PROBLEM!
There are two things one could say about the recently republished Post Prison Writings of Eldridge Cleaver-and the bourgeoisie have said both of them. Firstly, you could say it is "the most seductive prose as any being written anywhere in the world" (New Society), ie. you could blur and conceal the fact that Cleaver is a black revolutionary artist by praising him as much as possible as an Artist. Secondly, you could say, well yes he's a great revolutionary but he's writing about America, nothing to do with us here. REPRESSION OF BLACKS IN BRITAIN However for British revolutionaries the most relevant point about Cleaver, just as the most relevant point about Bobby Seale, Angela Davis, George Jackson, is that the racism they are writing about and fighting against is just the same sort of racism (yes, in its intensity as well) as exists here in Britain. It is a racism which a decaying capitalism uses systematically to terrorise and brutalise one section of the working class in order to divide and weaken the class as a whole. If you can't understand the way blacks are being harassed by the police on the streets; if you can't understand the way racism works in schools; if you can't understand the way half the police force in the Southern coastal towns seem to be involved in nothing else but capturing "illegal" immigrants-then you can't understand the importance of racism here. It's no coincidence that Cleaver's writings have just been republished at a time when the Mang sove Nine have been dragged through the courts with one of the brothers being immediately re-arrested on his release; at a time when the black youth from the Metro Club are about to come on trial after the police broke into their club; at a time when figures just produced show that 30 per cent of all students in Educational Sub Normal schools in London am black; and at a time when the Immigration Act has gone through with virtually no opposition from the white working class.
FIGHT BACK!
What most frightens the bourgeoisie about Cleaver and other black militants is that they are fighting back-both in the States and (to a lesser extent) here. Blacks just aren't taking it any more. The main message from Cleaver's writings and actions is that all oppressed people, black or white, are doomed to their oppression unless they organise to fight back against the system. Moreover, there is no middle way. You are either on the side of the oppressed or of the oppressors-and by not doing anything and remaining passive you are Dear Comrades, At last one revolutionary at least has made a serious attempt to analyse racist education -and in particular the way bourgeois ideology operates in the schools to divide the future working class. The article by Dick Mole in The Red Mole 35 was a breakthrough. However, I'd like to raise some criticisms which I hope will be taken up at a future date.
To refer, as this article did, to blacks as "immigrants" is in any context a reflection of that bourgeois ideology which the article is attacking. Not only is it empirically incorrect to refer to all blacks as immigrants" (a large number were born here): more importantly.
bound to be on the side of the oppressors. As Cleaver says, "if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem". This is precisely why the International Marxist Group calls for support for the IRA. We support the IRA, and call for its victory, notwithstanding the fact that we recognise that the IRA is not a 'perfect" Bolshevik organisation -far from it. Unfortunately there are not many of these around anywhere. We support the IRA because it happens to be leading a struggle against the British bourgeoisie in trying to kick them out of Ireland. This again is why we give unconditional support to all black militants who are fighting back-even though we have many and considerable disag reements with their precise ideas and tactics.
Thus it is certainly possible to disagree with many of the ideas of Cleaver-for instance, that blacks can get "justice' in a bourgeois court of law even with an all-black jury, or that blacks can have control of black com munities within a capitalist State. However, you either support blacks fighting back-sup port their demonstrations, picket the courts where they are on trial, take to the streets to delend them-or else you support the bourgeoisie. As Lenin said, "Communists support every revolutionary movement", EVER INCREASING OPPRESSION OF EVERYONE Of course blacks are not the only group of workers who ate oppressed under capitalism. Every worker is oppressed-precisely because capitalism by its very nature is oppressive. The difference is that blacks are doubly oppressed, both as workers and as blacks. However, in a period of capitalist decay the repression of all workers increases in all its aspects. The role of the army in Ireland is an obvious example of this. The smashing of the "welfare state" here in Britain by the last Labour goverment and the present Tory goverment is another. Now it is precisely because the capitalist ruling class needs to divide the working class by setting one group of workers against another (e.g. whites against blacks, meh against women, British against Irish) that a defeat for one of these groups is a defeat for all. This is why the deliberate failure of the TUC even to attempt to rally the mass of white trade unionists against the Immigration Act was a defeat for the entire working class, white as well as black; for in a very concrete way the aim of the Act is to create a terrorised group of potential black scabs too frightened to go on strike with their white brothers. Obviously the TUC leadership is not part of the solution -it's part of the problem. You're either for the bourgeoisie or for the it is also politically incorrect in that it is the bourgeoisie which deliberately uses 'immigrant terminology to spread the mystification that blacks are 'outsiders' who have no "right' to be here. 2. In dealing with the question of dispersal, the article accepts at their face value the arguments going on between bourgeois educationalists. Thus some bourgeois educationalists are in favour of taking black students out of the ghettos in order to prevent ghettoisation in the schools. Conversely, other educationalists are in favour of blacks being left together as much as possible because they hold back' the education of white students and because they themselves can progress better at their own pace. However. what all this shows is that the whole dispersal, non-dispersal debate is itself nothing other than a mystification that the problems' of racism can somehow be reformed away. The main task for revolutionaries is precisely to show that under capitalism, under a system which is ideologically committed working class revolution, there is no third way.
REVOLUTIONARY VIOLENCE The other positive feature of Cleaver is the way he unambiguously declares his belief in the need for violence to overthrow the forces of capitalism, i.e. to overthrow bourgeois violence. Moreover the reality of proletarian violence does not only frighten the bourgeoisie-it also frightens many so-called revolutionaries; and this is one of the reasons why the majority of the Left has failed to come out in clear support of the IRA. Certainly Lenin was correct in arguing that violence in itself won't make the revolutionwhat is required is violence plus political ideas, precisely in order to explain the need for a violent revolution. Certainly it is true that many of the Black Panthers in the States saw violence as an answer in itself, and that they overestimated their support precisely because they underestimated the importance of political ideas. Certainly it is true that the black uprisings in American cities three years ago were tactically premature and provoked a tremendous backlash on the Panthers from the State which they were unable to resist and from which they have not recovered.
However, here again in such a situation the job of revolutionaries is not to sit back passively, try to be 'neutral", do nothing but constantly moan that the uprisings were premature, and dissociate themselves from the struggle.
The job of white revolutionaries in such a situation should have been to come out and defend the blacks against the backlash. By failing to do so in any significant numbers in the States they showed themselves to be effectively on the side of the bourgeoisie. One can't be neutral; and this is particularly true with regard to racism since it is precisely the failure of the white left in the past to fight racism that has left militant blacks exposed whenever they fight back.
CLEAVER AND THE ROLE OF WHITE REVOLUTIONARIES It is part of the rotten politics of many so-called revolutionaries to describe as "black racists" militants like Cleaver who try to form black organisations. However the logic of this argument is that any oppressed group which fights back is an oppressor in reverse-i.e., the logic of scabs. This sort of reasoning also conveniently avoids the Marxist analysis of racism, i.e., that it is the result of imperialism and imperialist exploitation of the colonies. In what part of the world are blacks oppressing in a colonial, imperialist relationship? Moreover, it is a gross slander on Cleaver and other leaders of the Black Panthers that they reject outright any working relationship with white revolutionaries. Indeed a very close relationship did exist for a time in the States to perpetuating racism, there can be no solution to racism or any of its manifestations. Indeed, for revolutionaries the whole dispersal, non-dispersal debate is only relevant inasmuch as it is necessary for us to exploit the way the bourgeoisie squirms within the contradiction it has created for itself-i.e., the contradiction between its need to perpetuate racism and its fear of the consequences of racism in terms of wastage of black labour and potential black militancy. Thus it is only by analysing this contradiction (as opposed to taking one side within it) and exposing it in concrete ways that revolutionaries can agitate in the schools.
3. The article seems to be based on a utopian conception of what education is all about. Thus it criticises the present system for not'educating blacks according to their "needs. However, what is meant by 'needs"? What are the criteria? The point is that there are only two sorts of needs, for students and everyone else, in this society. One is the in the Peace and Freedom Party, which was a coalition of black and white militants, including the Panthers. Moreover, Cleaver perhaps more than anyone else in the Panther leadership saw the impossibility of overthrow ing American capitalism by black revolutionaries alone. As he says: "We recognise that the Black Panther Party can't do it by itself, black people can't do it by themselves. It's going to take white people to stand up as wel However, the sort of unity Cleaver sought and seeks has nothing to do with the slogan of *Black and white unite and fight' so long peddled by liberals and Stalinists. The Red Mole has previously argued that this slogan is an attempt to take away the independence of blac organisations by telling them, at best, to quit the struggle until the white left has caught up with them (and continue to be victimised in the meantime) or else, at worst, it is telling them to unite with white workers many of whom are actively racist.
In place of all this rubbish the position of Cleaver and the rest of the Panthers was and is very clear-namely, that although unity in the abstract is desirable yet it will remain an abstraction until white revolutionaries and white workers are prepared to take up actively the struggle against racism. Until that time blacks will be forced to go it alone-come what may. As Cleaver says: "The niggers have been waiting for you for 400 years. And they're in a position where they can't really wait for you to come. They've got to move on." As Trotsky said about the defeated Spar tacus uprising in Germany, "better to have died a Spartacist than not to have fought at all". Let those who have never made any cons cious active attack on racism remain silent in their criticisms of militants such as Cleaver as "adventurists" and "terrorists'. If the white left in America and Britain is really serious about these charges of adventurism then there is only one thing they can dothat is to win the confidence of black militants and the black population as a whole by coming out consistently and actively against racism. Thus, as Cleaver makes clear, whites can not simply come and ask for unity as a matter of some principle. Instead such unity can come only in struggle with whites showing themselves to be serious in their attitude towards racism. As Cleaver says of white workers. "by what they do, we will get to know who they are"
Immediately there are two things we can do in Britain as part of this process: (a) Be out on the picket on February 10th at 10.30 a.m. at Marylebone Magistrates Court in support of Rhodan Gordon of the Mangrove Nine; (b) All out in solidarity with the Metro youth when their frame-up comes to court.
S. C.
need for the bourgeoisie to carry on its exploitation of the working class. The other is the need for that class to smash its exploitation through revolution. Thus there can be no politically neutral education catering for students' abstract "needs" self-development, etc.
The problem again, of course, is how revolutionaries pose this concretely in the schools situation. This requires an examination not only of racism but of education generally. One way not to pose the question, though, is that attempted by the National Union of Students in its proposal to set up a National Union of School Students-namely on the basis of a fight for democratic' rights, consultative councils, long hair, etc. There is no possibility of achieving such 'rights' under this system. Instead schools-like every other institution -have to be won openly for the revolutionary struggle or else they remain a weapon of the bourgeoisie.