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NEWS & LETTERS, NOVEMBER 2003

New 40th anniversary edition: American Civilization on Trial, Black Masses as Vanguard

From the Archives of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Writings

American Civilization on Trial as basis for follow-up studies

Editor’s note

The following Political Letter, originally entitled “AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL as Statement of our Views and as Basis for Follow-up Studies and Articles” was written by Raya Dunayevskaya on April 15, 1963 on the occasion of the first publication of AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL. As part of our publication of a new fifth edition of this classic work in American Marxism, which was authored by Dunayevskaya in consultation with the National Editorial Board of News and Letters Committees, we reproduce the full text of this letter here. The challenge discussed in it is also directly addressed in our other new publication being published in conjunction with AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL, DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES: RACE, PHILOSOPHY, AND THE NEEDED AMERICAN REVOLUTION, by John Alan. To order these new works, see the literature ad.

* * *

It is seldom that any of our Political Letters deal with internal rather than external events. This one will do so for two basic reasons, which are of the utmost importance for our organizational growth: 1) it is imperative that each and every one of us internalize AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL so that we can, at a moment’s notice, make a comprehensive presentation of these views to outside groups and individuals; 2) it is equally important that we do not consider this pamphlet as a “finished work,” but that we constantly expand it, reinterpret it, and bring it up to date.

For example, on the day--Friday, April 12 [1963]--when I was to make a presentation of it to the Detroit Local [of News and Letters Committees], news dispatches announced that Switzerland had expelled one Erich Rajakovic, Adolph Eichmann’s right-hand man, who had been responsible for the murder of 110,000 Dutch Jews, including Anne Frank. Despite all the tears that had been shed over THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK as a book, as a play, as a movie--which may have equaled the tears shed over little Eva trying to escape over the ice as she was pursued by the hound dogs of Simon Legree--the Storm Trooper Rajakovic easily melted into the crowd at Munich and made good his escape; while, at the same time, in our South, the savage use of dogs against the Freedom Fighters of today made it impossible for any of them to escape that dragnet.

In a word, not only does the todayness of history make possible the presentation of AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL as a living document, but the one-worldedness of today allows for its application on an international scale.

Toward both these ends, I wish, first, to present the title and contents page of the pamphlet in its final form as it is now going to press:

100 Years After the Emancipation Proclamation:

AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL

The Negro As Touchstone of History

Introduction:

  1. Of Patriots, Scoundrels and Slave Masters
  2. Compelling Issues at Stake

Part I: From the First Through the Second American Revolution

  1. Abolitionism, First Phase: From “Moral Suasion” to Harpers Ferry
  2. Abolitionism, Second Phase: The Unfinished Revolution

Part II: The Still Unfinished Revolution

  1. Northern Labor Struggles to Break Capital’s Stranglehold, 1877-97
  2. One and a Half Million Forgotten Negro Populists
  3. Populism and Intellectual Ferment

Part III: Imperialism And Racism

  1. Rise of Monopoly Capital
  2. Racism and Plunge into Imperialism
  3. A New Awakening of Labor: The IWW

Part IV: Nationalism and Internationalism

  1. The Negro Moves North
  2. Garveyism
  3. Marxism

Part V: From the Depression Through World War II

  1. The CIO Changes the Face of the Nation and Makes a Break in Negro “Nationalism”
  2. The March on Washington
  3. The Communists Oppose Independent Negro Movements

Part VI: The Negro as Touchstone of History

  1. Urbanization of Negroes
  2. The Two-Way Road to African Revolutions

Part VII: Facing the Challenge, 1941-1963

  1. The Self-Determination of People and of Ideas
  2. The New Voices We Heard
  3. What We Stand For--Who We Are

Please note Part VI. Instead of being a sub-section under “What Now?” “The Negro as Touchstone” has not only become a full part, but it is no longer restricted to the American scene. That is to say, by including the section on the African Revolutions here, we are able to present the international role of the Negro. I hope many friends will wish to expand this section by various articles in NEWS & LETTERS.

The main points of expansion, however, will come on the American scene. In this respect, I would like to single out one of the additions I made in order to encourage others to take advantage of the condensed form of the pamphlet to elaborate on other phases of American development that we couldn’t possibly go into, in tracing the dialectic of history that has never before been traced from a Marxist-Humanist viewpoint. I am referring to Part II, “The Still Unfinished Revolution”--where it was necessary to take note both of the economic determinist view of the Civil War as an “economic revolution,” and to argue against the attitude that the Jefferson-Jackson-Lincoln tradition is fundamentally different from the “other” traditions.

The new phase of Northern capitalist development had, of course, been a motivating force for the Civil War. But the economic determinist view notwithstanding, it was not the propellant. The Second American Revolution was more than an “economic revolution.” Much as the industrialists wished to break the monopoly of commercial over industrial capital, of American slavishness to British textile manufacture, “cash and compromise” was too ingrained an element of American capitalism for the industrialists to venture forth into civil war. Only the most prodigious revolutionary exertions by slaves, Abolitionists, and, in many of its stages, labor, could tear apart the powerful link of cash and compromise that bound together cotton and textiles, cotton shippers and financiers.

“If Lincoln has grown,” wrote Wendell Phillips, “it is quite natural. We watered him!” Yet it was no accident that Lincoln chose Andrew Johnson as his running mate for the second term, in place of retaining the Vice-President, Hannibal Hamlin, who was a friend of the Abolitionists. The objective compulsion of capitalist industrialization won over the freedom forces. The Civil War brought to a climax and summed up the whole paradox of the Jefferson-Jackson-liberal tradition.

In office, Jefferson and the Jeffersonians were fulfilled Hamiltonians. In office, Jacksonian democracy turned out to be something very different than the rule of the farmer and the mechanic as against Eastern finance capital. In the same manner, Lincoln, in office, developed the “American System” more in line with the concept of the “Great Compromiser,” Henry Clay, than in the spirit of the Second American Revolution.

It would be excellent if someone could develop the differences between the Abolitionists--wholly devoted to an idea, the idea of freedom, without wanting anything for themselves--and the Populists who fought for limited rights and could produce so contradictory a character as Tom Watson. But, above all, where expansion is needed is in Part VII: “Facing the Challenge, 1943-1963,” especially the final section on “What We Stand For--Who We Are.”

In this way, AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL will bring to organizational consciousness the underlying philosophy of both the movement of history and its todayness.

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