revolutionary action movement (ram) - Michael Schwartz Library

15 3
RAM's Analysis of Black America
RAM's analysis of the
historical development of African-American people
and its vision of their destiny is crucial if one is to understand the
organization's program .
RAM's major theoreticians felt that black people
were a captive and colonized nation within the boundaries of the United
States, that is, a nation within a nation . The colonial relationship of
African-Americans to
the white state was a source of their domestic exploitation
and oppression . One of the key aspects of the colonial structure
under U .S . imperialism was the ideology of racism which had been used historically
to divide black and white workers .
This historical process had
developed to the point where white workers had abandoned their class allegiance
and saw their interests as the same as that of the ruling class . 15
Although the colonial model is presented in 'the majority of the documents,
the papers from 1964 to 1967 offered the most thorough treatment .
In Nation Within a Nation (1965),
RAM stated that there had been a con
sistent line of protest in the black struggle characterized by Northern
blacks supporting the struggle of Southern blacks,. The oppression in the
South had been for land and self-rule . The Reconstruction period, which
had the potential to secure land for black peasants, had been defeated .
The economic and social position of blacks in the South was the same as
agrarian peasantries in other countries . The task for present day revolutionaries
was to raise the issue of land and self--determination . The North
would continue to play a supporting role in the struggle for nationhood in
the South .
The interjection of these issues into the black movement would,
according to RAM, transform the movement . 16
15 World Black Revolution, December, 1966, p . 5 .
16 Nation Wit hin a Nation , 1965, p . 1 .