We can sum up our study as follows:
1) Neither Lenin nor Trotsky believed the Negro was a nation, and yet they unhesitatingly placed the Negro Question as part of the national question.
2) American Marxists have failed to understand that neither the Negro struggle for assimilation into the national culture nor the European national struggle for independence from the national culture of the oppressing nation invalidate the application of the principles of the Marxist approach to the National Question.
3) Marxists must meet the danger of petty bourgeois misleadership of the Negro movement against national oppression by recognizing not only its validity but its revolutionary character, leading the movement.
4) The roots of the Negro question lie not in the "plots" of the capitalists but in the economic remains of slavery, that is to say, share-cropping.
5) The maintenance of this system by reactionary capitalism not only governs the social and political structure of the South, but spreads its influence throughout the whole country.
6) The urbanization and proletarianization of the Negroes have not basically affected the economic roots of the Negro Question. They give the Negroes not only a better basis for joining in the general political struggle. They also sharpen his sense of oppression as a national minority and give him the opportunity to organize and struggle as such a minority with, however, the purpose of integrating himself into the society which still excludes him. This is the dual movement which is basic to an understanding of the Negro Question in the United States.
7) To free himself from his oppression, the Negroes will be compelled to struggle against capitalist society which cannot release him. His very oppression makes him potentially one of the bitterest enemies of the existing society, as is evident by his attitude toward the war. However, the unemployment inherent in the social crisis and the past history of the country make the proletariat most vulnerable on the very question of the assimilation of the Negro into its ranks. This will probably be the focal point of the fascist attempts to disrupt the proletariat. The proletariat must respond by recognizing not only the validity but the inevitability of mass Negro movements against Negro oppression and strive to lead this movement and harness its revolutionary potentialities for the struggle against capitalist society. This can only be done along the lines laid down in the Marxist thesis on the National Question.
We have emphasized the powerful national aspects of the Negro Question and its roots and ramifications in the economic and social relations of the country as a whole. That is what makes it a National Question. As the social crisis develops and the proletariat becomes more and more conscious of its role as the regenerating force in American capitalist society, it will not only of necessity be compelled to shoulder the solution of the Negro Question. It cannot at the same time avoid unleashing the aspirations of the Negroes to free themselves from the special oppression to which they are subject.
That the proletariat will ultimately solve this problem we have no doubt. the oppression which the bourgeoisie has so mercilessly placed upon the Negro has not only resulted in placing them in strategic industries but will give their developing class consciousness a hostility to the existing society and a determination to destroy it which must be the counterpart to the history of Negro people in this country. But for this very reason declining capitalist society aided by the historic traditions of the country will see in the Negro Question the focal point of attack in order to disrupt the proletariat. Under these conditions, on the one hand you have the question of seniority, closed shop, etc., and on the other hand you will again pose the Negro problem as a nationally oppressed minority inside the union. With unemployment as the basic question facing capitalist society in the post-war period the opportunity for creating disunion in the ranks of the proletariat will be substantially increased. Already the rioting that took place over the country gives unmistakable evidence that the bourgeoisie is aware of its opportunities. It is equally clear that the proletariat is also aware of the dangers. A fundamental point of the Marxist education of the proletarian vanguard must be as clear a grasp as possible of what is meant by the Leninist definition of the Negro question as part of the National Question, and the capacity to master the principle of approach and to apply it in the increasing complications which the Negro Question will present. The Texas primaries is the start, a small beginning.
-- F. Forest
June 18, 1944