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'No shortcuts'
DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES: RACE, PHILOSOPHY AND THE NEEDED
AMERICAN REVOLUTION by John Alan,
Chicago: News & Letters, 2003. 103 pp.
DIALECTICS OF BLACK FREEDOM STRUGGLES is a clear and
vigorous statement of a Marxist-humanist understanding of the Black struggle for
freedom throughout the history of the USA. It consists of five chapters: the
first on the notion of the continuing challenge of the U.S. Black masses as
vanguard in the American revolution which is needed; the second on the struggle
of civil rights and the limits of political emancipation; the third on the new
challenges posed by globalized capital; the fourth in which prisoners of color
speak out for themselves; and the concluding chapter which is concerned with
finding a new unity of theory and practice in the African-American struggle for
freedom.
There is a preface by the National Editorial Board of
News and Letters Committees, which states that this book has been published to
mark the 40th anniversary of AMERICAN CIVILIZATION ON TRIAL: BALCK MASSES AS
VANGUARD, “published at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963” (p.
1). It stresses the need for a philosophic understanding, but one that is
integral to the concrete reality of the society: “African Americans are
revealing that the Idea of freedom cannot be relegated simply to overcoming
terrorism and religious fundamentalism, of which we have a version here... with
the Christian Right... the idea of freedom has to be worked out and deepened
from within this racist, alienating society” (p. 2).
Also included is an appendix by Raya Dunayevskaya on the
horror of “Grenada: Revolution and Counter-Revolution.” It too stresses the
organic link between theory and practice and practice and theory: “What we see
when the philosophy of revolution is separated from actual, social revolution is
the attempt to force the concept of revolution through the barrel of a gun”
(p. 96).
The opening chapter eloquently states the issue: “The
increasingly alienated nature” of U.S. society, “which promises permanent
war overseas and decaying conditions of life and labor… and mounting racism at
home”--and the leading role of the revolt of the disenfranchised
African-American masses in the struggle to create “a liberating alternative”
(pp. 5-6).
The most recent history is engraved with the “two-fold
disaster” dating from September 11, 2001: first, “the terrorist attack
itself’ and second, “the Bush administration’s response to it by declaring
a “state of war” and engaging in total militarization, at home and abroad”
(p. 8), while actually “the fundamental issue is… everyday human
relationships” (pp. 10-11). Hence the importance of Marxist-Humanism: Marxism
needs to be understood as “a philosophy of liberation rooted in the ongoing
struggles of the oppressed” (p. 14)--in other words in the process of the
self-development of the Black masses, this idea being developed in chapter two.
A political solution is not sufficient. There is a “need to go beyond civil
rights, to create a ‘new humanism,’... a new society” (p. 29). Thus, the
final chapter develops the distinction drawn by Marx between political
emancipation and human emancipation: as important as the former is, it is not
sufficient.
These are the key ideas that this book develops in
reference to facts and figures relating to the disenfranchised African-American
masses and their other brothers and sisters of color and their struggles for
freedom--ideas that deserve constant critical development. As ever, however,
there is a danger that the inherent fallibility of reason, even in the practice
of the dispossessed masses struggling for liberation, is forgotten. There are no
shortcuts, no substitute for constant critical questioning.
--Prof. Peter Figueroa
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