No hay sistema mejor aplastando sueños que el capitalismo de monopolio.

Cuando los padres de Claudia Jones emigraron a Estados Unidos desde Trinidad y Tobago en 1922, “esperaban encontrar sus fortunas en América donde el ‘oro podía encontrarse en las calles.’” (Historia Autobiográfica, Claudia Jones)

En cambio, encontraron pobreza, opresión Jim Crow, y desesperación.

Estos males desilusionaron a Claudia Jones y le mostraron la hipocresía del supuesto Sueño Americano. Ella se convertiría en una organizadora marxista-leninista, teórica y revolucionaria.

Después de unirse al Partido Comunista de los Estados Unidos de América (CPUSA), Jones nunca paró de luchar contra el imperialismo estadounidense. En su artículo “Acabar con la negligencia hacia los problemas de las mujeres negras” (1949), Jones analiza el estatus especial de las mujeres negras bajo el imperialismo estadounidense y le enseña a organizadores exactamente cómo luchar en contra.

La proletarización de las mujeres negras en los Estados Unidos

“Las mujeres negras – como obreras, como negras, y como mujeres – son el estrato más oprimido de toda la población. En 1940, dos de cada cinco mujeres negras, a diferencia de dos de cada ocho mujeres blancas, trabajaban para ganarse la vida. Por virtud de su estado mayoritario entre el pueblo negro, las mujeres negras no solo constituyen el mayor porcentaje de mujeres cabezas de familias pero además son las principales proveedoras de la familia negra.” (de “Acabar con la negligencia hacia los problemas de las mujeres negras”)

La superexplotación del capitalismo sobre los afroamericanos forzó a las mujeres negras a proletarizar y unirse a la clase obrera. Las mujeres negras obreras eran comúnmente forzadas a hacer trabajo doméstico, completando tareas del hogar para familias blancas y después regresando a sus hogares para completar más tareas para sus propias familias. La sindicalización y protecciones legales no se extendían para la mayoría de trabajadores domésticos.

No fue hasta la Segunda Guerra Mundial, cuando los EEUU necesitaban reclutar nuevos trabajadores para las industrias mientras cientos de miles de antiguos trabajadores fueron a luchar en la guerra, que las mujeres negras finalmente fueron permitidas hacer algunos trabajos cualificados y explorar otros campos debido a la necesidad de la industria de contratar nuevos trabajadores.

Estos obstáculos, incluyendo la represión política y legal, el linchamiento, la violación, y muchas otras capas de explotación, necesitan estar en la base de cualquier análisis serio de las condiciones de las mujeres negras en los EEUU.

No hay liberación de las mujeres sin liberación negra

A pesar de este hecho, las organizaciones políticas que luchan por las mujeres siguen ignorando la importancia de la clase y la necesidad de la liberación nacional. Jones critica la actitud de las sufragistas y las mujeres blancas pequeñoburguesas por ignorar la lucha afroamericana en su lucha por la liberación de las mujeres en el siglo 20.

Otra vez de “Acabar con la negligencia”, “fue la limitación histórica de las líderes por el sufragio femenino, principalmente tomadas como eran de la burguesía y la pequeña burguesía, que fallaron en vincular sus propias luchas con las luchas por los plenos derechos democráticos del pueblo negro después de la emancipación.”

Los progresistas en la lucha por la liberación de las mujeres ignoraron la realidad de que no hay liberación de las mujeres sin liberación nacional.

Estas mismas actitudes aparecen hoy en día, aunque con argumentos diferentes y con terminologías diferentes. La ideología posmodernista, popular entre revolucionarios pequeñoburgueses y en particular académicos, intenta convencer a los organizadores dentro del movimiento a ver las luchas por la liberación de las mujeres, la liberación de la clase obrera, y la liberación negra en competencia una con otras.

En el artículo de J. Sykes “Sobre el origen y desarrollo del posmodernismo,” él explica cómo la ideología posmoderna no puede reconocer el asunto principal alrededor de las luchas por la liberación y limita el pensamiento de las personas a los análisis subjetivos y unilaterales.

Sykes nota que, “La base de la idea posmodernista [es] que la verdad no es objetiva, pero en cambio, que la verdad es construida socialmente… [los posmodernistas creen] que cualquier “discurso” dado debería “quedarse en su carril” ya que no es capaz de entender de dónde vienen otros. En otras palabras, no tenemos experiencias universales y compartidas. Esta mentalidad lleva a subjetivismo y relativismo, y una inhabilidad de unir estratégicamente diferentes luchas. Además, esto hace imposible nombrar cualquier lucha particular como la contradicción principal que impulsa el proceso, lo que podríamos aprovechar para maximizar nuestra eficacia a través de las luchas.”

El posmodernismo divide mientras que el marxismo-leninismo une. En vez de mostrar las conexiones históricas para probar que hay una base de unidad entre todas las mujeres obreras y enfocarse en el hecho de que la unidad de las luchas por liberación negra con las luchas obreras ha creado progreso y victorias reales por el movimiento popular en los Estados Unidos, el posmodernismo pone a las masas contra sí mismas.

El discurso está centrado alrededor de criticar a la gente blanca como una totalidad homogénea con los mismos intereses políticos y sociales o una consciencia compartida asumida. Este argumento abstracto y ecléctico se rehúsa a reconocer que la clase obrera multinacional en conjunto puede ser convencida de apoyar las luchas de los movimientos de liberación nacional, lo que significa que hay un interés material para todas las mujeres obreras cuando se trata de luchar contra la opresión nacional.

Solo la lucha por una sociedad socialista, donde la clase obrera tiene el poder y el interés propio de abolir la opresión en contra de todos los oprimidos y explotados, puede borrar las contradicciones en la raíz de los problemas que enfrentan las mujeres negras en EEUU.

Las mujeres negras avanzan la nación afroamericana

En los 1940, las mujeres obreras negras desempeñaban un gran rol no solo en organizaciones de masa, sino también en luchas obreras. Como obreras y esposas de obreras, la militancia y lucha de las mujeres negras ayudó a desarrollar la lucha contra las malas condiciones laborales, maltrato, y opresión nacional en la planta.

Al mismo tiempo, era inusual para las mujeres negras estar en posiciones de liderazgo dentro de sindicatos y organizaciones de masas. Claudia Jones usó sus escritos para combatir manifestaciones de chovinismo blanco y luchar contra la tendencia vista en el movimiento obrero de rechazar las capacidades de liderazgo de las mujeres obreras negras. Ella enfatizó que las mujeres negras avanzadas podían mover elementos intermedios de las masas afroamericanas para involucrarse en la lucha contra el imperialismo.

Jones escribió, “Las fuertes capacidades, militancia, y talento organizacional de las mujeres negras, pueden… ser una palanca poderosa para traer al frente obreros negros-hombres y mujeres-como las fuerzas al mando del movimiento por la liberación del pueblo negro… y para que el partido eche raíces entre las secciones más explotadas y oprimidas de la clase obrera y sus aliados.”

Para que un partido comunista evite posiciones oportunistas e interesadas y se mantenga dedicado a su rol como el partido de la clase obrera, es necesario reclutar líderes y aliados que tengan un antagonismo profundo contra el sistema capitalista que desarrolle la conciencia, determinación e impulso para terminarlo. Las mujeres negras a menudo enfrentan la mayor humillación, irrespeto y discriminación de la clase capitalista de monopolio. Este maltrato y opresión ayuda a crear revolucionarias motivadas y disciplinadas.

Más grande que un sueño

El capitalismo aplastó los sueños de una joven Claudia Jones.

Eso no detuvo a Jones de organizarse y luchar contra el sistema podrido que ella correctamente comprendió ser la mayor amenaza para la liberación nacional doméstica e internacionalmente. Incluso después de ser deportada de los EEUU por su militancia, se mantuvo un miembro del Partido Comunista de Gran Bretaña hasta su muerte en 1964.

Las conclusiones a las que llega Jones en su artículo aún aplican a la lucha por la clase obrera multinacional y el movimiento de liberación nacional hoy. Los problemas únicos de las mujeres obreras negras no pueden ser entendidos como conceptos aislados y abstractos. Los revolucionarios deben continuar profundizando su entendimiento del estatus especial de la opresión de las mujeres negras y todas las mujeres oprimidas.

Sin importar las consecuencias, Claudia Jones nunca paró de luchar por la libertad. Sus escritos y su militancia continúan abriendo el camino hacia el socialismo, el único sistema que puede abolir la explotación nacional y la opresión por siempre.

Es la responsabilidad de los comunistas en EEUU borrar las ilusiones de todas las personas oprimidas en el vientre de la bestia y prepararlos para la lucha. La lucha por la liberación negra y la liberación de las mujeres es algo mucho más grande que un sueño: es una realidad, algo que puede hacerse y será hecho, especialmente si escuchamos las orientaciones de revolucionarios que vinieron antes de nosotros.

Delilah Pierre es un miembro del Equipo de Trabajo del Movimiento LGBTQ y de Mujeres de la Organización Socialista Camino de la Libertad.

#RevolutionaryTheory #ClaudiaJones #LGBTQ

There’s no system better at crushing dreams than monopoly capitalism.

When Claudia Jones' parents immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago in 1922, “they hoped to find their fortunes in America where ‘gold was to be found on the streets.’” (Autobiographical History, Claudia Jones).

Instead, they found poverty, Jim Crow oppression, and despair.

These evils disillusioned Claudia Jones and showed her the hypocrisy of the so-called American Dream. She would become a Marxist-Leninist organizer, theorist and revolutionary.

After joining the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), Jones never stopped fighting against U.S. imperialism. In her article “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women”(1949), Jones analysis analyzes the special status of Black women under U.S. imperialism and teaches organizers exactly how to fight back.

The proletarianization of Black women in the United States

“Negro women – as workers, as Negroes, and as women – are the most oppressed stratum of the whole population. In 1940, two out of every five Negro women, in contrast to two out of every eight white women, worked for a living. By virtue of their majority status among the Negro people, Negro women not only constitute the largest percentage of women heads of families but are the main breadwinners of the Negro family.” (from “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of Negro Women”)

Capitalism’s super-exploitation of African Americans forced Black women to proletarianize and join the working class. Black working women were often forced to do domestic work, completing household chores for white families and then coming back home to complete more chores for their own family. Unionization and legal protections did not extend to most domestic workers.

It wasn’t until World War II, where the U.S. needed to recruit new workers to the industries as hundreds of thousands of former workers went off to fight in the war, were Black women finally allowed to do some skilled work and explore other fields due to the necessity for industry to hire new workers.

These obstacles, including political and legal repression, lynching, rape, and many other layers of exploitation, need to be at the foundation of any serious analysis of the conditions of Black women in the U.S.

No women’s liberation without Black liberation

Despite this fact, political organizations that fight for women still ignore the importance of class and the necessity of national liberation. Jones criticizes the behavior of suffragettes and white petty-bourgeois women for ignoring the African American struggle in their fight for women's liberation in the 20th century.

Again from “An End to Neglect,” “it was the historic shortcoming of the women's suffrage leaders, predominantly drawn as they were from the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie, that they failed to link their own struggles to the struggles for the full democratic rights of the Negro people following emancipation.”

Progressives in the fight for women’s liberation ignored the reality that there is no women’s liberation without national liberation.

These same attitudes appear today, albeit under different arguments with different terminologies. Postmodernist ideology, popular among petty-bourgeois revolutionaries and academics in particular, attempts to convince organizers within the movement to view the struggles for women’s liberation, working class liberation, and Black liberation in competition with each other.

In J. Syke’s article “On the Origin and Development of Postmodernism,” he explains how postmodern ideology cannot recognize the principal issue around struggles for liberation and limits people’s thinking to subjective and one-sided analyses.

Sykes notes, “The basis of the postmodern idea [is] that truth isn’t objective, but rather, that truth is socially constructed… [postmodernists believe] that any given “discourse” should “stay in its lane” since it isn’t capable of understanding where the others are coming from. In other words, we have no universal, shared experience. This mentality leads to subjectivism and relativism, and an inability to strategically unite different struggles. Further, it makes it impossible to name any particular struggle as the principal contradiction that drives the process, which we could leverage to maximize our effectiveness across struggles.”

Postmodernism divides while Marxism-Leninism unites. Instead of showing the historical connections that prove there is a basis for unity among all working-class women and focusing on the fact that Black liberation struggles’ unity with working class struggles have created progress and real victories for the people’s movement in the United States, postmodernism pits the masses against each other.

Discourse is centered around criticizing white people as a homogenous whole with the same political and social interests or an assumed shared consciousness. This abstract, eclectic argument refuses to acknowledge that the multinational working class as a whole can be won to support the national liberation movements’ struggles, meaning there is a material interest for all working-class women when it comes to fighting against national oppression.

Only the struggle for a socialist society, where the working class has the power and self-interest to abolish oppression against all exploited and oppressed people, can erase the contradictions at the root of the problems Black women in the U.S. face.

Black women bring the Black Belt Nation forward

In the 1940s, Black working-class women played a huge role not only in mass organizations, but in labor struggles as well. As both workers and wives of workers, Black women’s militancy and struggle helped develop the struggle against poor working conditions, mistreatment, and national oppression on the shop floor.

At the same time, it was still unusual for Black women to be in positions of leadership within unions and mass organizations. Claudia Jones used her writing to combat manifestations of white chauvinism and fight against the tendency seen in the labor movement to dismiss the leadership capabilities of Black working-class women. She stressed that the advanced Black women could pull intermediate elements of the African American masses to engage in the fight against imperialism.

Jones wrote, “The strong capacities, militancy, and organizational talents of Negro women, can… be a powerful lever for bringing forward Negro workers-men and women-as the leading forces of the Negro people's liberation movement… and for rooting the Party among the most exploited and oppressed sections of the working class and its allies.”

For a communist party to avoid opportunist and self-serving positions and remain dedicated to its role as the party of the working class, it's necessary to recruit leaders and allies who have a deep antagonism against the capitalist system that develops the consciousness, determination and drive to end it. Black women often face the greatest humiliation, disrespect and discrimination from the monopoly capitalist class. This mistreatment and oppression helps to create driven and disciplined revolutionaries.

Greater than a dream

Capitalism crushed the dreams of a young Claudia Jones.

That didn’t stop Jones from organizing and fighting back against the rotten system she correctly understood as the greatest threat to national liberation domestically and internationally. Even after she was deported from the U.S. for her organizing, she remained a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain until her death in 1964.

The conclusions Jones reaches in her article still apply to the struggle for the multinational working class and the national liberation movement today. Black working-class women’s unique issues cannot be understood as isolated, abstract concepts. Revolutionaries must continue to deepen their understanding of the special status of oppression of Black women and all oppressed women.

No matter the consequences, Claudia Jones never stopped fighting for freedom. Her writing and organizing continue to pave the road for socialism, the only system that can abolish national exploitation and oppression forever.

It is the responsibility of communists in the U.S. to erase the illusions of all oppressed people in the belly of the beast and prepare them for struggle. The struggle for Black liberation and women’s liberation is something far greater than a dream: it’s a reality, something that can be done and will be done, especially if we listen to the guidance of the revolutionaries that came before us.

Delilah Pierre is a member of the LGBTQ and Women's Movement Work Team of Freedom Road Socialist Organization

#RevolutionaryTheory #ClaudiaJones #WomensMovement #AfricanAmerican #OppressedNationalities #CPUSA #Featured

Washington, DC – On Sunday, July 28, over 200 community members gathered at Freedom Plaza in downtown DC to hold a vigil for Sonya Massey. The vigil, organized jointly by the DC Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (DC Alliance) and community activists, featured prayers, stories, speeches and chants condemning the murder of Sonya Massey and other police violence.

The DC Alliance stated its purpose was to “join together in remembrance and demand justice for Sonya Massey and every other victim of racist police.” The press release listed several demands, including a call to convict Deputy Sheriff Sean Grayson, the officer who shot Sonya Massey in the eye after she called the police for help; that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) investigate and fire all killer cops; and the demand for a Civilian Police Accountability Review Board with the power to control the police.

The DC Alliance, SPEAR, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO DC), Communist Party of the District of Columbia (CPUSA), and Claudia Jones School for Political Education (Claudia Jones) endorsed these demands.

The vigil began by recounting the details of the murder of Sonya Massey, followed by a reading of her obituary and a moment of silence in remembrance of all victims of racist police. Then, in a call and response with the vigil attendees, the organizers read the names of 60 victims of police violence, including 18 victims who were murdered by police in Washington, DC. After the reading, community members, local activists, poets and representatives of other groups, such as from Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Anakbayan DC, and Pan-African Community Action relayed personal stories and spoke on the history and condition of policing in Black communities.

Tino Venable, a DC native and organizer for the DC Alliance, spoke on his personal experience with police violence. “With deep sadness comes my emotional honesty, the honesty of which I have been to so many funerals, so many vigils in this city that I found trouble forming the words to bear my soul here,”

Venable continued, “Sonya Massey was a beloved mother, a young Black woman, and a person in need. She called for help, and in return was met with evil.”

“All these kids are my kids,” said Terra Martin, the mother of 17-year-old Dalaneo Martin, young Black man who was murdered by U.S. Park Police on March 18, 2023. “We shouldn’t come together when someone gets killed, we should come together every day to see how we can stop this.”

“The U.S. policing system was created to catch and punish slaves who were escaping to freedom,” said Paige White, of counsel attorney at Ben Crump Law. “At its foundation, policing is a tool to enslave Black and brown people and maintain a status quo of racism.”

Other speakers talked about the connections between the murder of Sonya Massey as an example of genocide and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. “It is important we continue to describe this as genocide, because as we see in Gaza, the ruling class’s policy is to not only murder citizens of another nation, but to murder their own,” Dante O’Hara from Claudia Jones said. “Genocide is part and parcel of the U.S. capitalist project.”

“The Arabic word for martyr also means ‘witness.’ Sonya Massey is a martyr,” said Anyssa Dhaouadi of PYM. “She was a witness to injustice. She was a witness to the struggle. And it is our duty to bear witness to the injustice done to her. Over 186,000 martyrs [in Palestine] and the [Zionist entity] have not won. Thousands of Black martyrs across Turtle Island and they have not won. They have only strengthened our unity!”

Between speakers, chants of “Indict. Convict. Send these killer cops to jail!” and “MPD, KKK, IOF, they’re all the same!” rang out in the square. Signs included “Community, not cops!” and “Black women’s lives matter!”

“I’m sickened by the murder of Sonya Massey, Dalaneo Martin, and countless others whose precious lives were cut short because of a racist and cruel policing system,” said Jon Abraham, a member of FRSO DC. “We in FRSO understand the national character of these killings. It is the result of the national oppression of Black people in this country, of which only benefits the imperialist ruling class.”

The vigil concluded with closing prayers and a call to action, urging attendees to join the DC Alliance and the fight for community control of the police.

“We are here to put America on notice,” said Victoria Ponnell, a community activist who co-organized the vigil. “We have to stand against human rights violations in America, in Palestine, and in [the Democratic Republic of] Congo, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere!”

#WashingtonDC #PoliceCrimes #DCAARPR #FRSODC #SPEAR #CPUSADC #ClaudiaJones #AnakbayanDC #PYM #PACA