![]() But this has been interpreted in the past-and by some very good socialists too-in the following sense: The proletariat, as we know, must lead the struggles of all the oppressed and all those who are persecuted by capitalism. We can compare what we have to say that is new, in that sense, by comparing it to previous positions on the Negro question in the socialist movement. But nevertheless it has not appeared in such consistent and rounded and finished form as we propose to do in this Resolution. It has appeared in many discussions by Trotsky and in various articles and speeches. ![]() Now what is it that we have to say that is new? In one sense-and I quote-“nothing is new.” What we say in this Resolution has been “implicit,” it has been an “underlying conception” of our activity in the past. It is not only a guide to the actions of the party its mere presentation to the public will mean that the policies of genuine Bolshevism are now ready to compete fully armed in the tremendous battle that is raging over the Negro question in the United States. That is the first significance of this Resolution. It is into this battle that we now propose to enter, in a more rounded, more consistent, and more militant form than we have entered in the past. The Communist Party is doing its hardest in the same field and has declared at one of its recent plenums that the test and touchstone of the work of the party, of its maturity in the United States, is the work it has done and does on the Negro question. President Truman has made his literary and theoretical declaration in the report of the Civil Rights Committee, and he has also made his political declaration in his recommendations to Congress to accept the proposals of that committee. When books on such a controversial question as the Negro question reach the stage of selling half a million copies it means that they have left the sphere of literature and have now reached the sphere of politics. The Negro petty bourgeoisie, radical and concerned with communism, has also made its bid in the person of Richard Wright, whose books have sold over a million copies. That has produced some very strange fruit, which however has resulted in a book which has sold some half a million copies over the last year or two. During the last few years certain sections of the bourgeoisie, recognizing the importance of this question, have made a powerful theoretical demonstration of their position, which has appeared in The American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal, a publication that took a quarter of a million dollars to produce.Ĭertain sections of the sentimental petty bourgeoisie have produced their spokesmen, one of whom is Lillian Smith. ![]() The decay of capitalism on a world scale, the rise of the CIO in the United States, and the struggle of the Negro people, have precipitated a tremendous battle for the minds of the Negro people and for the minds of the population in the US as a whole over the Negro question. Comrades, our party, with this resolution, is preparing to make a powerful entry into a section of the class struggle that is now raging in the United States.
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