Essays and Interviews – Edited by David North and Thomas Mackaman
2021, Mehring Books
A critical review by Steven Halpern
About a year ago I read and wrote a review of a book edited by Nikole Hannah-Jones titled A New Origin Story – The 1619 Project. 1619 allegedly was the date that the first slaves were brought to what is now the United States. This book was financed and promoted by the New York Times. While I had some criticisms of this book, I found the general theme worth reading.
The book gives a history of racial discrimination in the United States. Clearly this book is different in its approach from traditional history books. It tells the story of the history of African Americans in this country by reporting on specific experiences that relate to many of the forms of discrimination. These reports were mixed with poems and black and white photos of the people who are the subjects of those stories.
The authors of the book The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History have different ideas of what this book is about. This is their argument:
“Despite the pretense of establishing the United States’ ‘true’ foundation, the 1619 Project is a politically motivated falsification of history. Its aim is to create a historical narrative that legitimizes the efforts of the Democratic Party to construct an electoral coalition based on prioritizing personal ‘identities’—i.e., gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and above all, race.”
The authors of this book also feel that the 1619 Project will aid the politics of the former republican President Donald Trump. In a chapter of the book that was a lecture by Joseph Kishore, he argued:
“The obsessive focus on race and racial division by the Times and the Democratic Party will only play into the hands of Donald Trump and his fascist advisers.”
So, for the authors of this book the so-called “identity politics” of the 1619 Project is analogous to the identity politics of Adolph Hitler. They argue that while Nikole Hannah-Jones identifies with Black people and the struggle against racism, Adolph Hitler identified with the Arian Race. Although this is not their argument, we might conclude from this critique that, in their opinion, the 1619 Project is the new version of Adolph Hitler’s book Mein Kompf.
The authors of this book identify with the World Socialist Web Sight (WSWS). I read the list of a literal army of authors who have praised this critique of the 1619 Project. I have read some of the books written by authors whose interviews are included in this book. When I read those books, I didn’t agree with all their arguments, but found those books worth reading. So, I couldn’t understand why there was this a deep hostility to the 1619 Project.
In order to explain why I feel the way I do; I will give a bit of my personal history. I was raised in Newark, New Jersey. I attended public schools in Newark, where I was one of a minority of students who were not Black. My initial introduction to politics was not through reading books, but from experience.
During those years, I saw the gross disparity in funding between the urban schools like the ones in Newark, and the funding of the suburban schools that were only a short distance away. This gross disparity in funding for education continues today.
Yet in those years, teachers asked the students to stand up, place our hands on our hearts and pledge allegiance to the flag they claimed represented “liberty and justice for all.” While I was reciting these words, the United States government was ordering the armed forces to murder millions of people in Southeast Asia.
Also in the year 1967, Black people living in Newark rebelled against the routine police brutality in the city. The Governor called out the National Guard. The Guard then murdered about twenty-four residents of the city. So, in those years the United States government conducted wars against Vietnam, Newark, Detroit, and the neighborhood in the Watts section of Los Angeles.
I concluded that the problems I faced were not the result of mistakes in judgement or a lack of sensitivity. No, these problems were about a fundamental problem with the political-economic system in the United States.
Shortly after graduating from high school, I joined the Young Socialist Alliance. A few years after that I joined the sister organization, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). I was a member or supporter of those organizations for about forty years. I no longer support the politics of the SWP.
During those years, I learned many things that allowed me to break away from what I call the pro-capitalist politics that I learned in high school. I learned that the way to make change was not by voting for a democrat or republican, but by organizing mass demonstrations protesting policies by the government.
This was the strategy that aided the people of Vietnam in freeing themselves from the invasion of their country by the armed forces of the United States. This was also the strategy used by the civil rights movement to force the government to end Jim Crow segregation. The recent international demonstrations protesting murders by the police in this country began to change the political climate. As a result, the police officer Derrick Chauvin was convicted of the murder of George Floyd.
In my opinion, none of these changes came about because of elections for progressive politicians. They were all about organizing massive numbers of people who demanded fundamental change.
I also gained an appreciation for several revolutionary leaders in the world. The book Racist Falsification of History (RFH) contains several useful quotations by revolutionary leaders I admire. These include Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, Leon Trotsky, and James P. Cannon. In my opinion, the quotations or references to these revolutionaries in no way support conclusions made by the contributors of this book. Why do I feel this way?
Nikole Hannah-Jones argues that “Anti-Black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.” What is the problem with this statement?
Clearly, Hannah-Jones would have been absolutely correct if she argued that Anti-Black racist discrimination has existed throughout the history of this country. She would have been absolutely correct if she argued that racist attitudes have existed throughout the history of this country. However, when she argued that anti-Black racism runs in the DNA of this country, she ignores all the movements that protested against racism throughout the history of this country.
Malcolm X presented a similar history as the 1619 Project in a speech he gave on January 24, 1965, shortly before assassins took his life. Malcolm euphemistically referred to the United States government as “He,” and started this short history with the Civil War.
“Then in 1865 he came up with a trick, pretending that he was fighting a civil war to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. He came up with another trick, that he was issuing an emancipation proclamation to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. And then he also pretended that he was putting some amendments into the Constitution to set us free—which wasn’t to set us free. Later on, he came up with a Supreme Court decision which he said was to give us free access to better education—which wasn’t to do that. And then last year he came up with a bill that he called also to give us more freedom—which also wasn’t to do that.”
Nikole Hannah Jones gave the other side to this history in the following quotation: “The effort of Black Americans to seek freedom through resistance and rebellion against violations of their rights have always been one of this nation’s defining traditions.”
One of the themes of the book Racist Falsification of History is the argument that there have always been people who are considered “white” who were apart of the movements to end racial discrimination. Yes, this is true. However, it is also true that Black people have always been in the forefront of those movements.
Even in the abolitionist movement, when it was dangerous for Black people to participate. Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, and Sojourner Truth were some of the many Black leaders of the abolitionist movement.
An uneven and combined development
In my opinion, there has been a problem in explaining the history of this country that few historians have dealt with. How is it that slave owners, like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were also revolutionaries? In my opinion the Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky gave a theoretical explanation for why this happened.
Karl Marx felt that the first socialist revolutions would erupt in the advanced capitalist nations. If this happened, a socialist government would have the resources to organize for an immediate improvement in the standard of living. Clearly, there was a pre-revolutionary environment in Germany in the year 1918, but that revolution didn’t materialize.
However, a revolution did manage to bring a working-class party to power in tzarist Russia. Before the revolution, Russia was ruled by the tzar who had the power to disband the Russian parliament known as the Duma. While the large majority of the Russian population in those years lived on farms, there were also millions of workers who toiled in factories in the cities.
So, Leon Trotsky needed to explain why a socialist revolution erupted in a relatively underdeveloped nation and not in one of the advanced capitalist nations. Trotsky advanced the idea of an uneven and combined development.
Before the revolution, Russia was experiencing a profound crisis. Millions of soldiers lost their lives in the First World War. The Russian soldiers had inadequate supplies of clothing, food, and ammunition. Because of the war, there was famine in a nation that was a breadbasket for the entire region. This was the atmosphere that prompted the Russian working class to first overthrow the tzar, and then to topple the provisional government.
They put in power a coalition headed by the Bolsheviks who were determined to organize to give the people peace, bread, and land. In his unique and inspiring three volume History of the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky explained in detail the events that led to this groundbreaking revolution. Reading this book, we see how a revolutionary has a completely different approach to writing history, than professional historians who write from the ivory towers of universities.
The people who lived in the thirteen colonies were faced with a different dilemma. They were ruled by a king and his representatives. The main priority of the king was to use the colonies to enrich the affluent families in Britain. The colonists were ruled by a class of men known as gentlemen, whose power was established on their birth. As a result of increasing taxes, the colonists found it difficult to survive.
Slavery in the Western Hemisphere was different from the slavery that existed in the rest of the world. The chattel slavery in this part of the world was analogous to the slave systems in ancient empires of Greece and Rome. During the feudal epoch serfs farmed land for a lord. They had a right to farm that land and received a portion of the food they produced. However, they were not allowed to leave the manor. While the system of serfdom was clearly oppressive, it was different from chattel slavery, where slaves could be sold off and separated from their families.
With European colonization of the Western Hemisphere, there developed a need for labor. While Native Americans produced gold and silver in mines organized by the Spanish, Native Americans would not tolerate working in slave labor camps producing cash crops in north America. While Europeans became indentured servants, they also were not producing the kind of labor needed on the plantations.
We should understand that the slavery of the Western Hemisphere took place at a time when capitalism was in its infancy. Edward Baptiste wrote a book titled: Half Has Never Been Told – Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism. In this important book, Baptiste documented how there was a need for slave owners to continually increase the productivity of those who were enslaved. The slave owners routinely coerced the enslaved to increase production with torture.
This need of the enslavers to increase production was different from the slave empires of Greece and Rome. The Greeks and Romans only needed to provide for the society they lived in. However, with finance capitalism slave owners and corporations need to continually increase production because of the nature of the system.
Faced with these challenges, the slave owners of the thirteen colonies found themselves in the position of enslaving people, so they would become dept slaves to British bankers. Thomas Jefferson was open about why his support for the revolution was about freeing himself from his debts to British bankers. This is how Jefferson explained his position:
“A powerful engine for this purpose was the giving good prices and credit, till they got him more immersed in debt than he could pay, without selling his land or slaves. Then they reduced the prices given to him for his tobacco, so that let his shipments be ever so great, and his demand for necessaries ever so economical, they never permitted him to clear off his debt. These debts had become hereditary from father to son, for many generations, so that the planters were a species of property, annexed to certain mercantile houses in London.”
Thomas Jefferson would die while he was still in debt. The invention of the cotton gin was the thing that gave a boost to chattel slavery, not the American Revolution. Today, we see the process Jefferson talked about in the defaults of the economies of Detroit, Puerto Rico, Greece, and in many other locations around the world.
Shortly after the victory of the revolution of the thirteen colonies, six states abolished slavery. This reflected a division of the federalists who supported the capitalist interests of the North and the anti-federalists, who supported the slave owners.
Initially the federalists were dependent on the slave owners because of the banking and insurance interests that profited from slavery. Then beginning in 1830, manufacturing capitalists became more dominant in the north. These capitalists understood that wages laborers were much more productive than slaves whose primary concern was to be free.
While the northern capitalists ultimately wanted a nation free of chattel slavery, the southern enslavers wanted to dominate the newly formed western states like Kansas. In the 1850s a war broke out in Kansas and the state eventually established a government that was anti-slavery. However, Frederick Douglass protested the fact that the new government in Kansas didn’t allow Black people to vote.
Before the Civil War, politicians and jurists who supported slavery dominated all three branches of the federal government. The election of Abraham Lincoln for President finally convinced the power brokers of the slaveocracy that they could no longer remain in the Union. They made back-room deals and decided to secede.
Nikole Hannah-Jones labelled Abraham Lincoln as a racist. Hannah-Jones points to the fact that Lincoln advocated for sending Black people to Africa as evidence for her argument. Large sections of the book Racist Falsification of History present an argument that there was an evolution to the political thinking of Abraham Lincoln on the question of race.
One of the best ways to look at who Lincoln was is to look at his election campaign for President against General George B. McClellan. McClellan was a General in the Union Army that was victorious in the battle of Antietam. McClellan was a somewhat popular general who kept his army well supplied. However, he also saw the tenacity of the confederate army and didn’t feel the enormous human price of the war worth defeating the enemy. So, McClellan advocated for making peace with the confederacy. That peace would allow for the continuation of slavery and ultimately give slave owners the control of the federal government.
Abraham Lincoln was completely opposed to that strategy. He understood that the masses of people in the north were willing to risk their lives to defeat the confederate army. After winning the election, Lincoln gave control of the Union Army to the generals Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan. Those generals were determined to carry out a total war aimed at convincing the confederate soldiers that there was absolutely no chance that they could win the war.
These actions by Lincoln make it clear that while he may have had racist ideas, when it came to deciding to accommodate to the slave owners or advance a war aimed at eliminating slavery, Lincoln chose to smash the power of the slave owners.
This is why Karl Marx appreciated Lincoln. Marx grew up in a feudal environment was forced to leave his home country of Germany. This was because of the repressive actions of the government that responded to the rebellion of 1848.
Marx eventually settled in Britain which was the most advanced capitalist nation in those years. However, Marx was also aware of the book written by his friend Fredrick Engels who documented the horrendous conditions workers faced in the manufacturing center of Manchester. However, with capitalism the working class was born, as well as the potential for the working class to organize a political economic system that would end the exploitation of both feudalism and capitalism in the world.
So, for Marx slavery in the United States wasn’t just a barbaric institution, it was an obstacle to the advancement of the working class in the world. He also understood that the soldiers in the Union Army had a different consciousness than the soldiers who fought for the confederacy.
The Union soldiers had better supplies. Many of the confederate soldiers fought barefoot. Most of the Union soldiers were literate and were interested in the news of the war. Most confederate soldiers were illiterate. For those reasons Marx understood that ultimately the Union Army had real advantages. Even when the war was going poorly for the Union, Marx believed that the superior system of capitalism would vanquish the political economic system that was based on slavery. These were some of the reasons why Marx gave his full support to Lincoln.
Lincoln’s order to execute 38 Native Americans
In the book Racialist Falsification of History there is a chapter on Lincoln’s order to execute 38 Native Americans of the Santee nation in Minnesota. The Dakota-Santee people had a treaty with the U.S. government that was supposed to provide them with food. This was necessary because the traditional lands of the Santee were taken over by settlers.
When the leaders of the Santee informed a government agent that their people were starving and they wanted the food they were supposed to have, the answer was “eat grass.” That violation of the treaty was an act of war. The Santee were eventually defeated, and hundreds were sentenced to death. The government refused to recognize the defeated Santee as prisoners of war and considered them common criminals. President Lincoln reduced the number of those who would be executed to 38.
The title of this chapter is Lincoln and the Tragedy of the Dakota 38. In fact, the Dakota had every legitimate right to go to war against this country. The U.S. government violated its treaty, along with about 400 other treaties with Native Americans.
In her book An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz wrote about the legacy of the mistreatment of Native Americans who were held prisoner by the United States government. Today, prisoners are being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo, Cuba under horrendous conditions. The legal president for holding those prisoners comes from the mistreatment of Native American prisoners.
Here we see why the theory of uneven and combined development is important. Lincoln’s efforts to defeat the slaveocracy were necessary. His order to execute 38 Native Americans was criminal and not a tragedy. Lincoln’s generals who defeated the confederacy carried out a genocidal war against Native Americans after the war. This was just one chapter in the hundred-year war to rob Native Americans of their land and culture. This was one of the reasons why Karl Marx argued that capitalism comes into the world with blood and dirt oozing from every pore.
Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The book Racialist Falsification of History argues that there needed to be more mention of outstanding African American leaders in this country. This book criticizes the 1619 Project for not mentioning Frederick Douglass or Malcolm X’s anti-imperialist orientation. Here we need to briefly look at the politics of Frederick Douglass and Malcolm X. Then, I believe we will see how the politics of both these leaders, in some important ways coincided with the politics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.
Clearly, as Nikole Hannah Jones argues, the brutalization of the Black community began before the revolution of the thirteen colonies. In the year 1852 Frederick Douglass gave a speech about the significance of the Fourth of July and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Douglass gave this speech when slavery was legal in this country. This is what he had to say:
“For revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reins without a rival.”
Douglass clearly appreciated the fact that slavery, for the most part ,was abolished in this country. After the Civil War he became an Ambassador to Haiti, and he managed a bank.
However, by the 1880s Douglass began to see that Black people were losing all the rights they gained at the end of the Civil War. He gave several speeches where he protested against the atmosphere that led to thousands of Black people to be murdered by racist mobs.
One of the thousands of African Americans who was lynched was Malcolm X’s father Earl Little. The government effectively supported those lynchings by refusing to prosecute the murderers.
Malcolm’s mother and father were both supporters of Marcus Garvey, who organized the largest movement to liberate Black people in the history of this country. The politics of the Muslim leader Elijah Mohammed were similar to the politics of Marcus Garvey.
Malcolm X was serving time in prison, partly because of a racist ruling by a judge. During those years, his family introduced Malcolm to the writings of Elijah Mohammed. After he was released from prison, Malcolm would eventually become a central organizer for the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm argued that he wasn’t just for civil rights. He wanted to put the United States government on trial in the World Court on the charges of violating the human rights of millions of African Americans who live in this country.
Eventually Malcolm said that he was willing to work with white people who supported the African liberation struggle. On three occasions he spoke at forums sponsored by the socialist newspaper The Militant. However, Malcolm never openly supported the Russian Revolution. During his life, the Russian Revolution had been betrayed by Joseph Stalin. The Communist Party in this country was hostile to Malcolm’s ideas.
Although Malcolm was willing to work with people who were “white” he never believed that the entire working class of this country had the potential to transform the political economic system here. However, he did believe that Black people have the potential to gain control of their communities. Unlike the non-violent politics of Martin Luther King, Malcom X argued that the rights of Black people need to be defended “By any means necessary.”
Assassins murdered Malcolm X in 1965. Elizabeth Hinton wrote a recent book titled America on Fire. This book documented the many rebellions in the Black communities protesting police brutality and other forms of discrimination over a period of about twenty years. At the end of this book there is a list seventy pages long of all those rebellions.
The lives of both Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass underscore the argument that racist discrimination and the struggle against it have been constant features of the reality of the history of the United States.
In my opinion, although Malcolm X did not openly support the Russian Revolution, there are many parallels between his politics and the politics of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. On the eve of the Russian Revolution in 1917, Lenin wrote his pamphlet State and Revolution. In that pamphlet Lenin quoted Frederick Engels and argued that the state, as we know it, was invented for capitalism as a “special instrument of repression.”
Up until the last year of the life of Malcolm X, Jim Crow segregation was the law in the southern states. These laws effectively stripped African Americans of citizenship rights in this country. Those Jim Crow laws were always flagrant violations of the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Yet the federal government only abolished Jim Crow when they confronted the mass civil rights movement.
Malcolm X believed that the discrimination in the northers states was similar to the discrimination in the south. In the following quotation from Malcolm X, we see how his ideas were similar to Lenin’s statement that the state is a “special instrument of repression.”
“Stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.”
Tzarist Russia was known as a “prison-house of nations.” That label reflected the fact that there were numerous nations in Russia that experienced routine, and vicious discrimination. The tzar openly supported the terrorist organization known as the Black Hundreds. The Black hundreds carried out numerous pogroms where they murdered thousands of Jews. The Black Hundreds were in many ways analogous to the racist and terrorist organization of the Ku Klux Klan.
Lenin concluded from this state of affairs that his organization the Bolsheviks needed to be about doing away with all forms of discrimination against all those nationalities. Lenin clearly didn’t believe that this would in any way be an obstacle to the revolution. In fact, he felt that the demand of self-determination for all oppressed nationalities would be necessary if the revolution would succeed. The name that the revolutionary Russian government used after taking power was the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The recent invasion of Ukraine is a clear example of how Vladimir Putin has betrayed everything Lenin supported.
One of Malcolm X’s primary ideas was his demand for Black control of the Black community. Thousands of African Americans were inspired by this idea. Malcolm’s demand for Black control of the Black community, in my opinion was similar to Lenin’s demand for self-determination for oppressed nationalities.
Both Malcom X and Lenin argued that there were times when armed struggle was necessary. Lenin and the Bolsheviks organized an armed struggle to oust the Russian tzar, and then to oust the provisional government that refused to make the basic changes the people demanded.
Both Malcolm X and Lenin understood that they needed to advance the struggle to end the oppression of women. Malcolm X reported that on his visits to the nations in Africa, the most advanced nations had the most progressive attitudes towards women. After the Russian Revolution, the new government gave women the right to vote as well as the right to abortion.
When we look at the lives of these three leaders, we see that the capitalist system has always used the state as a “special instrument of repression.” This has especially been the case with the racist discrimination against the Black community in this country. That history coincides with Nikole Hannah-Jones statement that “Anti-Black racism runs in the very DNA of this country.”
Gordon S. Wood, James M. McPherson, and Clayborne Carson
Gordon S. Wood
The editors of the book Racialist Falsification of History interviewed several prominent historians and included those interviews in their book. I believe it is useful to look at who these historians, as well as the problem with their analysis.
Gordon S. Wood was one of those historians and I read his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution. I found the first part of this book to be useful in explaining the issues that provoked the colonists to take up arms, and risk their lives, so they might win independence from the tyrannical rule of the ruling powers of Britain.
In this country, academics, editors of the so-called news media, as well as politicians all argue that armed struggle is never justified to resolve political problems. Well, Gordon S. Wood explained why the settlers in the thirteen colonies felt that it was absolutely necessary to engage in armed struggle.
However, the final section of this book has the title Democracy. In the final chapter of this book Wood argues: “By the early nineteenth century this newly enlarged and democratized public opinion had become the ‘vital principal’ underlying American government, society, and culture.”
Wood concluded this paragraph with the words: “In no country in the world did public opinion become more awesome and powerful than it did in democratic America.”
Perhaps Frederick Douglass might have disagreed with that statement in his 1852 speech where he argued that “for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reins without a rival.”
Perhaps Malcolm X would also take issue with Wood’s statement when he argued: “stop talking about the South. If you’re south of Canada, you’re in the South.
Daniel Shays might also have taken issue with Wood’s statement. Shays was a veteran of the revolution of the thirteen colonies. After the revolution, many veterans like Shays were starving because the new government favored the interests of the affluent over the interests of workers and farmers. Shays responded to this by organizing an armed protest demanding relief for those who were in need.
The new government responded to this rebellion by calling out the military and repressing the uprising with armed force. In my opinion, the repression of Shays Rebellion was not an example of how the new government was practicing “democracy.”
In fact, that organizers of the first government in this country might have developed divisions over slavery, but they were united in their support of the interests of the affluent. They understood that the interests of the affluent and the interests of workers and farmers were antagonistic. This was why they initially only allowed men who were property owners to vote.
James M. McPherson
James M. McPherson is a historian who has concentrated his writing on the Civil War. To put his writings in context, we might look at a statement made by another Civil War so-called historian by the name of Shelby Foote, who wrote a three-volume history of the Civil War.
Ken Burns interviewed Foote for his documentary on the Civil War. In that interview Foote argued that the war against Vietnam was not the first war the United States lost. The late Shelby Foote argued that he considered himself to be a “Southerner” and the South lost the Civil War.
Today, Juneteenth commemorated on June 19th is a federal holiday. Juneteenth memorializes the celebration by former slaves in Galveston, Texas when they learned that they were no longer slaves after the Civil War. I would imagine that those slaves, who lived in the South didn’t feel that they lost the Civil War.
I read James M. McPherson’s book Battle Cry Freedom. I liked this book because in about 200 of the book’s 862 pages, McPherson explained why soldiers in the Union Army were motivated to take up arms and risk their lives to defeat the confederacy.
As in Gordon Wood’s book on the American Revolution, McPherson explained why it was absolutely necessary to militarily defeat the armed forces that had been organized by slave owners.
However, in McPherson’s interview for this book, he argued that the Civil War “abolished slavery.” This is a common misconception that McPherson is well aware of. These are the words to the 13th Amendment to the Constitution:
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
So, the 13th Amendment clearly states that slavery was abolished only for people who are not living in prison. We might think about what the words “shall have been duly convicted” mean.
Today, over 90% of the people who live in prison are there because of “plea bargains.” District Attorneys threaten people who are accused of crimes with long prison sentences. To avoid those sentences many of the accused “cop a plea” and accept a lesser sentence. When someone does this, they effectively lose many of the citizenship rights in this country. These include the ability to get a job, the right to vote, as well as the ability to sustain themselves. This state of affairs causes many violate the law, and to return to prison for even longer sentences.
Michelle Alexander is one of the authors of the 1619 Project. Alexander wrote a best-selling book titled The New Jim Crow – Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. We might think about the fact that when politicians take an oath to defend the Constitution, they are taking an oath to defend the institution of slavery with respect to the two-million people who live in the dungeons of this country. Michelle Alexander’s book documented how Black people are grossly over-represented in the prison population. Today there are about six-million people who are in prison, parole, or probation.
Another problem with McPherson’s criticism of the 1619 Project was his view of the status of Black people with respect to their struggle for freedom and liberation. McPherson uses a metaphor arguing that we need to consider if the glass is half full or half empty. Here he implies that while gains have been made with respect to Black rights, more needs to be done to advance that struggle.
Something that wasn’t mentioned in the book Racist Falsification of History is that McPherson signed a petition sent to President Barack Obama, protesting Obama’s decision to lay a wreath at the confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. This petition made the following argument about the confederate memorial: “This implies that the humanity of Africans and African Americans is of no significance.” President Obama ignored this petition and sent a wreath to the confederate memorial.
Saying that, when we think of the revolution of the thirteen colonies and the Civil War, the soldiers who fought in those wars weren’t thinking about how so-called advances made by their enemies consisted of a glass being half full or half empty. No, the goals of those wars were to defeat the enemy because the continued rule of the British and the slaveocracy had become intolerable.
McPherson, like many other historians argue that the measures to abolish slavery, freed the slaves. Yet today workers understand that employers require us to follow their commands for every minute that we are on the job. So, how is this freedom?
Karl Marx argued that the costs of capitalist production consist of constant capital, variable capital, and surplus capital. Constant capital is the cost of machinery, materials, and buildings required for production. Variable capital consists of wages paid to workers. Surplus capital consists of profits, interest, insurance, rents etc. Marx believed that in a socialist society most of the costs associated with surplus capital would not be necessary.
Marx felt that wages paid to workers were variable capital for several reasons. Unlike constant capital, a worker can be laid off. Today, worker’s wages are effectively being cut because of inflation. Employers are continually driven to get workers to produce more. When this happens labor costs effectively go down.
Mother Jones who was an organizer for the Miners Union spoke about the contrast between slavery and wage labor with respect to the child labor of her day. She argued that they used to sell children on the “auction block.” In Mother Jones’ day, they sold children on the “installment plan.” While the abolition of most forms of slavery was a clear advance, capitalists continue to view human labor as a commodity.
Clayborne Carson
Clayborne Carson is another historian who was interviewed for Racialist Reconstruction of History. Unlike the other historians, Carson was an activist in the civil rights movement as well as an active member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Carson also contributed to the documentary film Eyes on the Prize. I read the book Eyes on the Prize by Juan Williams.
Clearly, this is an important history of the civil rights movement. The one problem I found with this book is that it portrayed this movement as strictly one of nonviolence.
The problem with this perspective is that it ignores the book by Timothy B. Tyson titled Radio Free Dixie – Robert F. Williams & the Birth of Black Power. This book is about how Robert F. Williams organized an armed self-defense of the Black community of Monroe, North Carolina. When we look at the long history of struggle by the Black community, armed struggle has always been a part of that struggle.
Ida Wells dedicated her life to fighting against lynchings and the routine vicious discrimination in this country. She argued that Black people needed to reserve a special place in their homes for a Winchester rifle because the government was indifferent or even hostile to the idea of defending their rights.
We might also argue that during the same years as the civil rights movement, Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were engaged in an armed struggle against the apartheid government of South Africa. At his trial for treason Mandela argued that there comes a time in the history of every nation where people either take up arms or they cease to be a nation. As we know, Mandela eventually became President of South Africa. None of this was mentioned in Williams’ book Eyes on the Prize.
Hurricane Katrina and the Cuban Revolution
Adolph Reed is another history professor and author who was interviewed by WSWS. Reed was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana and spoke about what happened during Hurricane Katrina when over 3,000 people died. Reed argued that both Black and white residents were affected in the areas that were flooded. My opinion is that Reed missed an important point when he spoke about the effects of the Hurricane.
After the hurricane the Cuban government mobilized about 1,500 doctors to aid in treating the many residents of the area who needed medical attention. The United States not only refused to accept this aid, but they also refused to acknowledge that the aid was ever offered. Why did that happen?
Cuba is not that far from New Orleans and gets the same kinds of hurricanes as Louisiana. Meteorologists can predict the time and path of hurricanes about three days in advance. When the Cubans learn that a hurricane is coming, they organize a mass evacuation of the area that will be affected. There have been times when about one million people were evacuated. Even chickens, cows, and dogs are evacuated. Because of these measures, Cuba has only a tiny number of fatalities compared to the effects of hurricanes in other nations.
Cuba had a socialist revolution and established a government where the human needs of Cubans take priority over the profits of corporations. So, shortly after the revolution the government organized a literacy drive where the goal was to teach everyone how to read.
One of the effects of this literacy drive has been that Cuba was able to organize to create an environment where Cuba now has more doctors per capita than any other nation in the world. Today Cuba has twice the number of doctors per capita as the United States.
The United States spends more money per capita than any other nation in the world on health care. However, Cuba today has a longer average life expectancy and lower infant mortality rates than the United States.
Cuba also sends its doctors to nations all over the world to treat some of the poorest patients on the planet. The Cuban doctors who had been organized to treat patients affected by Hurricane Katrina instead went to Pakistan to treat patients who were affected by an earthquake in that country. I wrote a review of a book titled Red Zone about Cuban doctors who went to Africa and treated patients with Ebola in seemingly impossible conditions. That effort was successful in stopping the spread of the virus.
Clearly the Cuban government has made mistakes and they are the first to admit their mistakes. After the revolution, the goal was to improve the standard of living for everyone. However, there were homophobic attitudes in Cuba in the first years after the revolution. Today the Cuban government acknowledges that they made serious errors during this period and people who were gay weren’t treated very well.
However, the persistence of the revolution allowed Cuba to organize to rectify those errors. Recently the HBO network televised a documentary that shows how the Cuban government went on a national campaign to talk to people about how the government needs to support the rights of people who are gay. The organizer of this campaign was Mariela Castro who is the daughter of the former President of Cuba Raul Castro.
The Cuban government has also recognized that there was a history of racist discrimination on the island. The government responded to this by organizing to reverse that discrimination and to make it clear that all Cubans have the full support of the government.
These measures by the Cuban government, as well as the measures taken by the revolutionary government in the Soviet Union demonstrate that the idea of “identity politics” is not necessarily counterposed to the interests of the working class. The basic idea is that unless workers governments organize to abolish all forms of discrimination, socialism can not succeed.
Conclusion
Clearly Nikole Hannah-Jones doesn’t claim to be a revolutionary. She is a journalist who works for the New York Times. In the book she edits, the 1619 Project, she tells the stories of Black people during the entire history of this country. Looking at that history, Hannah-Jones as well as other contributors, have made conclusions.
I don’t agree with all those conclusions. I disagree with the argument made in the 1619 Project as to why radical reconstruction was defeated around the year 1877. I gave my reasons for that disagreement in my review of Peter Camejo’s book Racism, Reaction, Revolution, 1861-1877.
However, my opinion is that most of the criticisms included in the book Racialist Falsification of history were totally uncalled for. My opinion is that the basis for those criticisms are centered on the idea that the authors believe we live in some kind of “democracy.” They apparently find the idea advanced by Lenin that the state is a “special instrument of repression” to be repugnant. Nikole Hannah Jones makes a similar argument when she argues that, “anti-Black racism is in the DNA of this country.”
For me, there is a clear difference between democracy and democratic rights. Many democratic rights were achieved because of the revolution, the Civil War, the labor movement, the civil rights and women’s movement, as well as the movement against the war in Vietnam. However, after workers won those rights, the government worked diligently to compromise rights to advance the corporate drive for profits.
This was made crystal clear when federal and state governments effectively reversed the 14th and 15th Amendments and stripped African Americans of citizenship rights with the Jim Crow laws.
The title of James McPherson’s book is Battle Cry Freedom. One of the songs of the civil rights movement was, “I woke up this morning with my mind set on freedom.” Then, the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derrick Chauvin. I ask the question, What kind of freedom is that?
The history of African Americans was never included in history courses in this country for decades. Then, a movement erupted demanding that we have Black History courses in the schools. Then, when Nikole Hannah-Jones makes an honest effort to report that history, she is accused of falsifying that history.
I study the history of the world to give me a better perspective on current events today. The conclusion I draw from that history is that we need a political economic system that makes human needs a priority over profits. That system will only come about if we work to eliminate all forms of racist and sexist discrimination.
