Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

Besides, he continued, to be overly principled
would be meaningless since "rhe League is through. "With
a smile, he revealed that the UNC had been secretly dealing
with key Afrikan supporters of the League. As an example,
he said that at a plant of the Ford River Rouge complex
the UNC had convinced a League activist that if he
split with the League and took some of its base of support
with him, that together with the UNC's Euro-Amerikan
voting bloc they would have enough votes to make him the
next local union President! The UNC leader felt certain
that with such practical bribes, they would be able to
gradually win over enough Afrikan workers to undermine
the League. (12)*
It is interesting that the supporters of this radicalled,
"rank-and-file" workers caucus were busy arming
themselves against Afrikans - at the same time tactical
unity for union reform was being proposed. The most interesting
fact that emerges, however, is that this radical-led
settler caucus - organized to fight the established UAW
bureaucracy - was using the exact same tactic against
Afrikan revolutionaries as was the UAW bureaucracy!
Both were working to divide the ranks of Afrikan auto
workers, both promoting moderate Afrikan leaders who
accepted settler hegemony, in order to undercut the
threatened leadership of Afrikan revolutionaries. So where
was the real unity?
In earlier chapters we primarily focussed on the
larger picture of Euro-Amerikan workers in relation to the
expansion of the U.S. Empire and the development within
that of settlerism. Here we have examined the politics of
settler unionism in the workplace, in its tactical relations
with Third-World workers.
What is important about these case histories is that
they should push us to think, to question, to closely examine
many of the neo-colonial remnants in our minds.
"Working class unity" of oppressor and oppressed is both
theoretically good, and is immediately practical we are
told. It supposedly pays off in higher wages, stronger
unions and more organization. But did it?
Some Afrikan coal miners did indeed get higher
wages, better working conditions and so on from this unity.
But to pay for that most got driven out of their jobs.
Many Afrikan families who once mined coal now live in
exile and on welfare in the North. A part of the economic
foundation of New Afrika was taken over and occupied by
settler workers - acting as social troops of the U.S. Empire.
It was a national set-back. In all this the UMW, the
union organization, was guarding only the strategic interests
of U.S. Imperialism. Afrikan miners proved to be
without organization, merely prisoners within an organization
of their oppressors.
Was this just an isolated, untypical example? No.
Afrikan workers were gradually herded into the oldest,
least mechanized mines. Their exploitation helped provide
the capital for modernization and economic investment
elsewhere - and then they were laid off and the industry
was gradually de-Afrikanized. Sounds like Detroit, doesn't
it? What happened to the many thousands of Afrikan
workers who were once the majority force in the nowclosed
Chicago meat-packing industry?
The actual history disproves the thesis that in settler
Amerika "common working class interests" override
the imperialist contradictions of oppressor and oppressed
nations when it comes to tactical unity around economic
issues. The same applies to the thesis that supposed
ideological unity with the Euro-Amerikan "Left" also
overrides imperialist contradictions, and hence, even with
their admitted shortcomings, they are supposed allies of
the oppressed against U.S. Imperialism. Could it be the
other way around? That despite their tactical contradictions
with the bourgeoisie, that Euro-Amerikan workers
and revisionistic radicals have strategic unity with U.S. Imperialism?
Most importantly, how has imperialism been so
successful in using this tactical unity against the oppressed?
The thesis we have advanced about the settleristic
and non-proletarian nature of the U.S. oppressor nation is
a historic truth, and thereby a key to leading the concrete
struggles of today. Self-reliance and building mass institutions
and movements of a specific national character,
under the leadership of a communist party, are absolute
necessities for the oppressed. Without these there can be
no national liberation. This thesis is not "anti-white" or
"racialist" or "narrow nationalism." Rather, it is the advocates
of oppressor nation hegemony over all struggles of
the masses that are promoting the narrowest of nationalisms
- that of the U.S. settler nation. When we say
that the principal characteristic of imperialism is
parasitism, we are also saying that the principal
characteristic of settler trade-unionism is parasitism, and.
rhat the principal characteristic of settler radicalism is
parasirism.
Every nation and people has its own contribution
to make to the world revolution. This is true for all of us,
and obviously for Euro-Amerikans as well. But this is
another discussion, one that can only really take place ili
the context of breaking up the U.S. Empire and ending the
U.S. oppressor nation.
THE END
*The complex reasons for the League's demise and the outcome
of the various counter-insurgency tactics against it is
far beyond the scope of this paper. This case study does
not answer these questions.