It should now be well-known to all claiming to be communist that Stalin personally intervened to see to the creation of a theory of a Black-Belt nation within U.S. borders. Unfortunately, many comrades internationally are not aware that it was also Stalin who instructed the CPUSA to speak of the "white working class" in order to clarify the question of "white chauvinism." Some phony Maoists on the "Marxism List" on the INTERNET went so far as to mock MIM's language adopted straight from Stalin. The teachings of Stalin are so dead to these phonies that like the Trotskyites they think MIM invented this concept in order to tail bourgeois nationalism as expressed by the likes of Farrakhan.

Long ago, Harry Haywood himself explained Lenin's and Stalin's idea that superprofits are a material basis for national contradiction.(44 ) Likewise, he refuted even then the idea that Blacks were not a nation because they did not have a distinct language. According to Stalin in his famous essay on the national question there had to be a common language, but the common language did not have to be unique.(45 ) Otherwise, England and Australia would be counted as the same nation.

Likewise, at the time, Haywood said there was not much of a Black industrial bourgeoisie to speak of, but Stalin had already refuted the idea that there had to be a progressive national bourgeoisie for there to be a stage of national liberation. In fact, in the Stalin article on the question, Stalin said it was the oppression of the "basic masses" that made for the national question and he even distinguished that from oppression of peasants which he did see as foremost in the national question at the time.

If there is no Black national question anymore, it is not for the reasons that the MIM critics give. It would be more along the lines that the Black Panthers put forward themselves from time to time: maybe the Black nation people are bought-off too. If the Black nation is getting too much in superprofits, then it too is a parasite. For this reason, the Black Panthers wondered often, and Eldridge Cleaver in particular, if the lumpenproletariat were the only class with potential within U.S. borders.

Today, on the political level, we can see that the imperialists still use the national question to whip up the majority of oppressor nation workers into a pro-imperialist frenzy. Attacks on immigration, languages other than English (or other dominant nation native tongues in other imperialist countries), crime and welfare are all conceivable only as national oppression. Through these means the imperialists also hope to gain support for their agenda in the Third World. In this sense, even if the internal semi-colonies have become partners in exploitation of the Third World, they will continue to stand in as symbols of what the imperialists ally with the labor aristocracy against. Malcolm X drew the distinction between house slaves and field slaves, because house slaves are more loyal to the master.

The citizens of the imperialist countries such as the Blacks may be the modern-day equivalent of house-slaves. On the other hand, the Black Panthers proved it is still possible to mobilize a plurality of the Black nation for revolution.

In Stalin's day, the official line of the communists was to excoriate those who believed in racial theories as opposed to national theories. In a subsection titled, "How the Communist 'Theoreticians' of Race Turn Lenin Into a Bourgeois Liberal," Haywood said, "It is quite clear from the foregoing that the mistakes of the Communist exponents of 'race theories' are inseparably bound up with and arise out of an anti-Marxist and essentially liberal approach to the national question in general."(46 ) Many of our lazy and extremely muddled critics(47 ) believe MIM is adopting racial theories, because we have adopted Stalin's language to criticize the white working class. Nothing could be further from the truth. Race as a category though still important is not as important as nation. If we thought race were important, we wouldn't have said that Albanian and Russian workers are exploited and super-exploited. Nor would we speak of the ongoing process to buy-out the Irish proletariat in the occupied Six Counties. It is in fact our critics who have adopted racial theories, because they are the ones who believe that socialism will entail integration, because previous oppression was not national oppression but racial oppression according to them. Those of us who principally see national oppression believe in national liberation whereas others see racial oppression and a struggle for integration.

While in general the words from Haywood read freshly today, there are two points we need to emphasize. One is that the role of the peasantry has obviously decreased to zero. There is no Black peasantry.(48) However, the bourgeoisified workers discussed at the time have increased their role and continue to actively deny oppressed nation people real civil rights and thus make a mockery of the idea of a truly amalgamated nation. At the time, while crediting Stalin and while undertaking correct work himself, Earl Browder said, "It is correct to speak of the labor aristocracy as the special bearers of white chauvinist influence among the workers, because this aristocracy finds a material interest in Negro subjection."(49 ) Browder went on to explain that because of false consciousness even regular workers also took up white chauvinism. By today though, the role of the labor aristocracy has increased to the vast majority and hardened. Thus it is that superprofits and the labor aristocracy play a larger role in the national question than fifty years ago, and as we showed in MT10 there were those in the COMINTERN who believed like MIM today that the proletariat had already been bought-off in the majority even back then. Even fifty years ago, the scientific Marxists had already defined the question. MIM is only applying those definitions and theories for our time. If Harry Haywood and early Earl Browder applied their own definitions of their day to today, they would agree with MIM's conclusions, because the method and definitions remain the same while the conditions change with time.

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