The struggles of the oppressed nationalities within the U.S. are part of the national democratic revolutionary movements against imperialism taking place in the heartlands of capitalism and are a component part of the worldwide proletarian revolution. The national struggle is in essence a class struggle that can only be resolved through proletarian revolution. The movements of the nationally oppressed peoples in the U.S. constitute the main ally and a direct reserve of the U.S. working class.
The U.S. rose to become an imperialist superpower through ruthless plunder of oppressed nations and colonies. As a result of imperialist oppression, various peoples live here as oppressed national minorities, scattered in pockets across the U.S.
The overwhelming majority of the nationally oppressed peoples are workers and part of the multi-national proletariat. This provides a solid basis for a united assault with the rest of the working class on the common enemy, capitalism. The multi-national working class must play the leading role in building the strategic alliance and merger of the movements of the nationally oppressed peoples and the working class.
White chauvinism has been used by the bourgeoisie as an ideological bulwark of its rule, permeating every aspect of U.S. society. Within the labor movement, the capitalists use their agents–the labor aristocracy–to promote white chauvinism, aimed primarily at the white workers in an attempt to turn them against their class brothers and sisters. The widespread influence of white chauvinism has greatly weakened the fighting capacity of the working class.
In fighting for the unity of the U.S. workers, emphasis must be placed on the struggle against white chauvinism and for the equality and the emancipation of the oppressed nationalities. Our Party educates the workers in the spirit of internationalism, and in particular, stresses the education of the white workers about the histories, languages and cultures of the oppressed nationalities. The Party promotes multi-national unity in mass workers’ organziations and develops national forms of organization where necessary. Our Party has a special responsibility to train and promote minority cadre.
To advance multi-national unity, the workers of the oppressed nationalities must fight against the efforts of the bourgeois elements who promote reformism and narrow nationalism under the guise of fighting national oppression. The bourgeois elements do this by attacking white workers as the enemy, promoting “cultural autonomy,” and appealing to the minority workers to be led and exploited by their own bourgeoisie. While upholding the rights of nations and nationalities to self-determination and equality, and uniting with the national sentiments of the oppressed nationality masses aimed against imperialism, the working class and its Party must oppose all attempts by the bourgeoisie to sow divisions in the working class along national lines.
National oppression in the U.S. takes the form of segregation and discrimination in housing, language, education, employment and wages, to name a few. Brutal police repression, along with the courts and jails, are used to maintain the oppression of the minority nationalities. In the former slave areas of the Black Belt South and other areas of historic national oppression, such as the Southwest, remnants of semi-feudal, backward relations of production continue to exist. These relations take the form of share-cropping and tenant farming and reveal the intensity of the national oppression there.
Our Party resolutely mobilizes the whole working class to take up the day-to-day struggle against national oppression. It is in taking up this struggle that an iron-clad unity among the workers of all nationalities is built.
National oppression affects all the classes within an oppressed nationality, to a greater or lesser extent. The proletariat must build the broadest possible united front within the Afro-American and other national movements in accordance with the particularities of each. This united front must be built in the closest alliance with the multi-national workers’ movement. Within the united front, the proletariat must articulate the just demands of the people-concentrating their national sentiments into a fighting program against imperialism. The working class must wage a consistent struggle against the bourgeois elements who attempt to divert the national movements with reformism and divisiveness. Our Party must organize the nationally oppressed workers into the Party and other class organizations. It is the working class which is the main and leading force in the national movements.
The revisionist CPUSA advances a program for the national liberation movements that leaves the imperialist system intact. They put forward the perspective of “integration” under capitalism as the final aim of the national liberation movements. The revisionists deny the right of self-determination for the oppressed nations and tail the integrationist calls of the liberals. They substitute gradual reforms within the confines of capitalism in place of the revolutionary alliance of the workers’ and national movements for the overthrow of the imperialist system. Their program consists of a defensive struggle for “radical reforms” and support for every reformist scheme, relying on the liberal bourgeoisie to “reorder priorities.”
The revisionists uphold the Soviet Union, which has once again become a prisonhouse of oppressed nationalities, as a model and a “reliable ally” of the national liberation movements.
By denying the revolutionary thrust of the national liberation movements, the revisionists focus exclusively on the “racist ideas” of the white workers, reducing the struggle for working class unity to a liberal appeal to conscience and morality.
Our Party fully supports the struggle of the oppressed nationalities for integration and democratic rights. But the struggle for these reforms alone cannot end national oppression. National oppression is an inherent feature of imperialism and can only be eliminated with the imperialist system’s destruction. Under socialism, national inequality will be eliminated.
Socialism, in addition to ending the economic exploitation of the nationally oppressed peoples, will abolish all forms of discrimination and segregation by law. The socialist system will eliminate the racist ideas and remnants of the old society and educate the masses in the spirit of class unity.
The essential elements in the solution of the national question can be summed up as follows:
1. To establish a socialist state, end all national privileges, guarantee equality and full democratic rights. This includes recognizing the equality of languages, national culture and customs.
2. To uphold the right of self-determination for oppressed nations within and outside the borders of the U.S.
3. To practice regional autonomy or federation within a multi-national state for nations which do not secede and practice regional autonomy for national minorities in areas of concentration.
4. To ensure the building of the Party as a single, indivisible, multi-national Party representative of the workers of all nationalities.
Large numbers of nationally oppressed peoples live under the domination of U.S. imperialism. Each nationality has its own particular history of national development.
In the Western hemisphere, in particular, where the U.S. has dominated for so long, immigrants have come by the thousands from every Latin American and Caribbean country, many as political exiles. There is also a growing number of Asian, Arab and African national minorities.
The CP(M-L) fights for full democratic rights and regional autonomy for all national minority peoples and firmly opposes the attacks on third world and immigrant workers.
In addition to the oppressed nationalities within the borders of the continental U.S., there are the oppressed peoples who were brought under U.S. imperialist domination through annexation and colonization. These include the native peoples of Alaska and the Aleutian Islands, Hawaii and many Pacific islands, and the Virgin Islands.
The CP(M-L) supports the struggles of these peoples for full national rights.
The following nationalities compose a significant section of the U.S. working class and historically have played a major role in the development of U.S. imperialism and the working class movement.
Chained to the land for hundreds of years by the most brutal slavery, and later by the semi-feudal sharecropping system, the Afro-American people were bound together in common struggle against the exploitation and oppression of the white ruling class. From 1860-1865, the Afro-American people fought in the U.S. Civil War tor the abolition of slavery, the forced suppression of the Southern planters, and redistribution of the land. Although the North triumphed and slavery was formally abolished, the rising Northern industrial bourgeoisie feared the growing revolutionary unity and struggle of the toiling masses in the South. They conspired with the defeated Southern planters to betray the bourgeois democratic revolution of Afro-Americans. This betrayal of Reconstruction resulted in the consolidation of the development of the Afro-American people as an oppressed nation in their historic homeland, the Black Belt South.
The Afro-American people, who number over 24 million, suffer national oppression under the rule of monopoly capitalism both as an oppressed nation in the Black Belt South and as an oppressed national minority throughout the rest of the country. Unable to escape the shadow of the plantation, they face brutal oppression and discrimination, largely concentrated in the dirtiest, lowest paying jobs and suffering a high rate of unemployment.
But the Afro-American people have never ceased their struggle against imperialist oppression. The civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1950s and ’60s projected into the heart of U.S. society their aspirations for equality and national liberation. These movements drew inspiration from the liberation struggles of the third world, particularly the African nations, reflecting the historic ties between the Afro-American and African peoples.
The struggle of the Afro-American people, which has intensified under imperialist exploitation, is for full democratic rights up to and including the right of self-determination, that is, the right to secede in their historic homeland in the Black Belt South. The CP(M-L) wholeheartedly supports this struggle and defends the right of self-determination with all its might.
With the growth and development of imperialism, Afro-Americans have been driven from their Black Belt homeland by depressed economic conditions and outright terror, creating large concentrations of Blacks in the urban centers throughout the country. In these areas, the Party supports a policy of regional autonomy which will enable Black people to exercise a high degree of self-government and build equality and multi-national unity under the proletarian dictatorship.
The right to self-determination is the working class program for guaranteeing complete equality for the Afro-American people. The exercising of this right is bound up with the working class struggle to overthrow the imperialist system.
Recognition of the right to self-determination does not mean that our Party advocates or supports separation as the solution to the Afro-American national question, nor does it mean that it will give its support to every bourgeois secessionist movement. The Party of the working class takes as its starting point the unity of the workers of all nationalities. The CP(M-L) supports only those national demands which weaken imperialism and enhance the unity and fighting ability of the class.
The Chicanos, or Mexican-American people, were formed out of the robbery of the northern lands of Mexico during the colonial Mexican War in 1848 and as a result of the massive migrations of Mexicans to the U.S. since the turn of the century. The more than 10 million Chicanos are an oppressed Mexican national minority, and at the same time, the majority of Chicanos are part of the oppressed and exploited U.S. proletariat.
Concentrated mainly in the southwestern states, the Chicano people face poverty, joblessness, and discrimination in housing, education, and health care. Many Chicanos have migrated to major cities in the Midwest, concentrating in large barrios where they experience intense oppression.
Chicanos face specific forms of national oppression. In violation of the guarantees of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo, the U.S. has stolen lands from the Mexican people in New Mexico and elsewhere in the Southwest, and refused to accord full democratic rights to all Mexican people living in U.S. territory. They are deprived of their right to learn and use their Spanish language. To maintain their national oppression, the bourgeoisie has set up special bodies such as the Texas Rangers to suppress and terrorize the Chicano people.
Especially during times of crisis, the imperialists carry out massive deportations of Mexican workers. These attacks divide the working class and represent an all-out attack on Chicanos, Mexicanos, and all workers. Mexican immigrant workers are deprived of their basic democratic rights, including the right to organize into unions.
The Chicano people have historically resisted imperialist oppression. Chicano workers have played leading roles in organizing drives in the Southwest, such as the militant farmworkers movement for union recognition. Composed largely of Chicano and Mexicano workers, this movement has strongly resisted vicious attacks by the growers and the labor aristocrats.
Our Party gives resolute support to the Chicano national minority in its struggle against imperialism. We support full democratic rights for the Chicano people, including the right to regional autonomy in the Southwest and other areas of high Chicano concentration. Under socialism, a program of regional autonomy will guarantee the rights and political power of the Chicano people.
Since the imperialist Spanish-American war of 1898, Puerto Rico has been a direct colonial possession of the United States. Imperialist domination of Puerto Rico has meant decades of plunder, using a large section of the land for military bases, driving the masses of Puerto Rican people off fertile agricultural land so that a pool of cheap industrial labor would exist for U.S. imperialism’s large petrochemical plants and thousands of sweat shops. Millions of dollars of superprofits are regularly robbed from the island’s labor force.
Token “U.S. citizenship” granted to the Puerto Rican people has meant nothing more than the “right” to fight and die in U.S. imperialism’s wars of aggression, while being denied basic democratic rights, such as the right to vote in U.S. elections.
The militant independence movement built by the Puerto Rican people in response to U.S. domination has been viciously attacked. Nationalists and independence fighters have been killed and jailed at the hands of the U.S. colonialists and their puppet regime.
Today Puerto Rico is a hotbed for superpower contention as the Soviet social-imperialists step up their efforts to gain a foothold on the island. While today the U.S. is the main imperialist power in Puerto Rico, the Soviet Union is trying to move in the back door while the U.S. is being kicked out the front. Our Party demands the complete independence of Puerto Rico. We oppose the imperialist schemes of commonwealth and statehood which are nothing more than covers for the continued colonial domination of the island.
Inseparably linked to the struggle for independence of Puerto Rico is the fight for full democratic rights for Puerto Ricans in the U.S. As a direct result of U.S. imperialism on the island, large numbers of Puerto Ricans have been forced to migrate to the U.S. in search of a livelihood, to escape misery and repression. They are concentrated in the cities along the East Coast and in the Midwest and more recently have settled in large numbers in urban centers on the West Coast.
The Puerto Rican people in the U.S. form an oppressed national minority. While maintaining ties of language and culture with the island, they have developed characteristics and ties particular to life in the U.S. Here they have been deprived of the right to learn and use their language, discriminated against in housing, education, health care and victimized by one of the highest national unemployment rates. We support regional autonomy for the Puerto Rican national minority in areas of concentration.
Like the struggle for independence for Puerto Rico, the struggle for full democratic rights and regional autonomy for the Puerto Rican national minority is a component part of the fight for proletarian revolution.
The Native American Indians were the first victims of capitalism in the United States. Once numbering more than 35 million people, they have been victims of the genocidal attacks of the ruling classes for more than three centuries, which has hindered the national development of the various Native American peoples.
Mass murder has been combined with plunder of Indian lands, a trail of broken treaties, trampling Indian culture underfoot and severe all-round national oppression as U.S. capitalism developed into imperialism.
Today these attacks have only grown sharper. The Native American population has been reduced to less than a million with over 50% living in the five states of Arizona, California, New Mexico, North Carolina and Oklahoma. While half of the Native Americans live in the cities and are mostly workers, more than one-fourth live on the major reservations in the worst poverty and destitution. Native Americans both on and off the reservations face massive unemployment and terrible housing conditions.
The U.S. government carries out the oppression of the Native American people largely through the Bureau of Indian Affairs which, in police-like fashion, aims to suppress and subvert the resistance of the Native Americans. The Native American movement has been fiercely attacked by the government and many Indian leaders jailed and killed.
But the Native Americans have never ceased their resistance to oppression by imperialism. On many occasions, such as the occupation of Wounded Knee in South Dakota, Indians have risen up in armed struggle.
Our Party firmly supports the struggle of the Native American Indians for full democratic rights, including the rightto regional autonomy.
Imperialist oppression in Asia has forced large numbers of Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Southeast Asian, South Asian and Oceanic peoples into the United States. The rapid capitalist development of the western U.S. was made possible to a significant degree through the exploitation of Chinese, Japanese and Filipino labor which built the railroads and worked the mines and fields, amassing tremendous profits for the capitalists. Today Asian-Americans constitute a significant group of oppressed national minorities; they number several million and are primarily concentrated in U.S. urban centers.
The population of the Asian-American national minorities continues to grow as a result of imperialist domination of the Philippines, fascist repression in South Korea and Taiwan, aggression in Southeast Asia and social-imperialist expansion in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The struggle for democratic rights for the Asian-American national minorities is inseparably tied to the struggle against imperialist and social-imperialist penetration, domination and aggression against the Asian countries. Large communities of Asian nationals living in the U.S. are a significant force in this movement. In particular, Chinese nationals with strong ties to the socialist mainland are a major force in the movement for normalization of relations between socialist China and the United States.
Asian-Americans have a long history of national oppression in the U.S. They are victims of racist immigration laws and are deprived of the right to learn and use their own languages. They also face discrimination in employment and income, housing, education, health and social services and cultural development. Asian-American workers have been forced into the lowest paying jobs in service and in the garment sweatshops. They have been the target of a vicious cultural assault by the bourgeoisie, including racist stereotyping.
We support regional autonomy for the Asian-American minorities in areas of concentration. The fight of the Asian-American minorities for regional autonomy and democratic rights is a component part of the struggle against the entire system of imperialism.
The CP(M-L) further demands: an end to segregation in housing, jobs, schools and all areas of society; an end to the plantation system in the Black Belt South; honor the treaty rights of the Native Americans and put an end to the BIA; honor the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo; end discrimination in hiring, promotion, and job classification; stop deportations of immigrant workers; full democratic rights for all foreign born workers; equality for all languages and no official language.