The excerpt is taken from a discussion between Arne Swabeck, a leader of the Communist League of America, and Trotsky in February 1933 in Prinkipo, Turkey, where Trotsky had been exiled by the regime of Joseph Stalin. This and a subsequent 1939 discussion between Trotsky and leaders of the CLA’s successor, the Socialist Workers Party—both of which are printed in this book—helped reorient the communist movement in the United States and form a key part of the political basis of the SWP’s policy toward the struggle for Black liberation. The term “Negro” used below was common at that time. The terms “Black” or “Afro-American” have been established in recent decades as a result of the gains in the fight for Black freedom. Copyright © 1967 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.
 

The Negroes have not yet awakened, and they are not yet united with the white workers. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the American workers are chauvinists; in relation to the Negroes they are hangmen as they are also toward the Chinese, etc. It is necessary to make them understand that the American state is not their state and that they do not have to be the guardians of this state. Those American workers who say: “The Negroes should separate if they so desire, and we will defend them against our American police”—those are revolutionists, I have confidence in them.

The argument that the slogan for self-determination leads away from the class point of view is an adaptation to the ideology of the white workers. The Negro can be developed to a class point of view only when the white worker is educated. On the whole the question of the colonial people is in the first instance a question of the education of the metropolitan worker.

The American worker is indescribably reactionary. This can be seen now in the fact that he has not yet even been won to the idea of social insurance. Because of this the American Communists are obligated to advance reform demands.

If the Negroes do not at present demand self-determination it is of course for the same reason that the white workers do not yet advance the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat.^* The Negroes have not yet got it into their heads that they dare to carve out a piece of the great and mighty States for themselves. But the white workers must meet the Negroes halfway and say to them: “If you want to separate you will have our support.” The Czech workers as well came to Communism only through disillusionment with their own state.

I believe that because of the unprecedented political and theoretical backwardness and the unprecedented economic progressiveness in America, the awakening of the working class will proceed quite rapidly. The old ideological covering will burst, all questions will emerge at once, and since the country is so economically mature the adaptation of the political and theoretical to the economic level will be achieved very rapidly. It is then possible that the Negroes will become the most advanced section. We have already a similar example in Russia. The Russians were the European Negroes. It is very possible that the Negroes will proceed through self-determination to the proletarian dictatorship in a couple of gigantic strides, ahead of the great bloc of white workers. They will then be the vanguard. I am absolutely sure that they will in any case fight better than the white workers. That, however, can happen only provided the Communist Party carries on an uncompromising, merciless struggle not against the supposed national prepossessions of the Negroes but against the colossal prejudices of the white workers and makes no concession to them whatever.

SWABECK: It is then your opinion that the slogan for self-determination will be a means to set the Negroes into motion against American imperialism?

TROTSKY: Naturally, by carving their own state out of mighty America, and doing that with the support of the white workers, the Negroes’ self-confidence will develop enormously.

The reformists and the revisionists have written a great deal to the effect that capitalism is carrying on the work of civilization in Africa, and if the peoples of Africa are left to themselves they will be all the more exploited by businessmen, etc., much more than now where they at least have a certain measure of legal protection.

To a certain extent this argument can be correct. But in this case also it is foremost a question of the European workers: Without their liberation real colonial liberation is not possible. If the white worker performs the role of the oppressor he cannot liberate himself, much less the colonial peoples. The right of self-determination of the colonial peoples can in certain periods lead to different results; in the final instance, however, it will lead to the struggle against imperialism and to the liberation of the colonial peoples.

^*The Marxist term for the form of rule by the working class that follows rule by the capitalist class (dictatorship of the bourgeoisie). A modern equivalent is “workers state.”  
 
 
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