Excerpts from
Strategy for a Black Agenda
by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1973
"Racism is not a biological characteristic. It is a social phenomenon with a class origin and role. Racism has its source in a ruling class that, in modern times, has added the twin weapon of anti-Communism to keep the working class in the U.S. from waging a united class struggle against its monopolist enemy.
There is no way out for white workers without recognizing that their common class
interests with Black workers demand that they themselves take the initiative in the fight
to oust racism from the class struggle. And Black workers must also understand that they
cannot put an end to their triple oppression by going it alone.
There are no substitutes for the class unity of the working class as a whole. This requires
the equality of joint Black and white leadership of the working class, of Black workers in
the leadership of the Black liberation movement, and all components of the working class
leading all the oppressed and exploited against corporate monopoly." (Page 33)
"There are other consequences of cultural nationalism equally detrimental to the Black
struggle for equality. Throughout the 110 years since the Emancipation Proclamation, Afro-
Americans have struggled against segregation, recognizing it as a means of setting them
apart from the rest of the population, isolating them from the mainstream of developments,
and subjecting them to special forms of super-exploitation and oppression." (Page 42)
"Even the U.S. monopolists claim they are for ‘equitable distribution.' But when auto or
steel workers strike for higher wages, the bosses do everything in their power to defeat
them. ‘Equitable distribution' is impossible as long as the capitalist class controls the
means of production, thereby exercising the dictatorship of capital over the working class
and the people in general." (Page 67)
"...at a certain point in its development, the rising U.S. capitalist class required the
destruction of the slave system to make way for the supremacy of capital. But in order to
but a brake on the sharpening class struggle, the capitalists betrayed Reconstruction,
re-enslaving the Blacks with a U.S. variant of serfdom.
This laid the basis for perpetuating differentials in the status of Blacks as compared to
whites, thus representing a double advantage for capital: it provided a source for vast
super-profits, and also intensified racist ideology-postponing the day when a united Black
and non-Black working class would emerge to challenge monopoly.
U.S. capitalism still seeks to use the past against the future, against the working class
whose mission is not merely to change the form of oppression and exploitation-as in the
past, with the rise to power of new exploiting classes-but to put an end to oppression
and exploitation. This cannot be done on the basis of ‘traditional' economics. It can
be done only through united class and national liberation struggles moving toward the
establishment of socialism." (Page 73)
"There is an alternative to hunger, racism and oppression in this country.... The only
possible alternative for Blacks is within a program of Black unity that will not be dissipated
by separatist detours, but will play an independent role in forging a great movement
of Black and non-Black of all colors against the corporate 2% dominating 98% of the
population." (Page 75)
"As a region, the South remains the most decisive area for a liberation strategy. But
Blacks in the South-along with Blacks in other great population centers from New
York to Los Angeles-can move toward unified national power only by asserting their
strength within a broad anti-monopoly movement uniting Black and non-Black against the
common corporate enemy. To achieve this, the Black workers must become the main base
of leadership in a Black liberation strategy that recognizes the decisive role of the South,
but does not lose sight of the fact that the great strategic liberating battleground is national
in scope and direction." (Page 83)
"It is in such basic industries as steel, rubber and auto that the class unity of Black and
non-Black workers can become the main strength and develop the main leadership for
organizing the millions of unorganized Black and white Southern workers, and for a new
national political combination strong enough to defeat reaction and the danger of fascism."
(Page 83)
"Because the ‘great strategic ground' for smashing the last survivals of slavery, for ending
racism, poverty and inequality is national is scope, each regional struggle can be meaningful
only to the degree that it is linked with a national strategy. Struggle in the South ... must
be viewed ... as a unified Black struggle, a mighty tide of independent Black action within
a wider national challenge to monopoly's control of the total U.S. economy." (Page 84)
"There can be no doubt that monopoly aims at replacing ‘benign neglect' with the iron
boot. The threat of this ominous national strategy is so great as to overshadow the betrayal
of Reconstruction, the rise of the Klan, of lynch law and jim crow. As Lenin said of
this earlier betrayal, reaction in the U.S. today is prepared to ‘do everything possible and
impossible for the most shameful and despicable oppressions.'
While these new oppressions would first be unleashed against Black people, they would
not end there. They threaten labor and the oppressed and exploited of all colors with
something worse even than a return to the days when it was a crime to organize. What is
involved now is the threat of the ‘despicable oppressions' of fascism." (Page 89)
"The degree of exploitation of Black workers is clearly much greater than that of white workers.
Nevertheless, the collective form of exploitation in the decisive mass production industries is suffered by all workers.
This creates the objective basis for solidarity, for their unity and leadership in the struggle against the monopolist ruling class.
At the same time, history has assigned a doubly significant role to Black workers-as the
leaders and backbone of the Black liberation movement, and as a decisive component of
the working class leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle as a whole.
It is the monopolists' fear of Black, white, Brown, Yellow, Red and working class unity,
which in turn can form the basis for still broader people's unity, that is behind racism and
anti-Communism, the main ideological weapons of the ruling class.
Leninism, the Marxism of the imperialist epoch, is the ideological weapon of the working
class. It is the scientific guide that enables the working class to combine its struggle with
national liberation movements against imperialism. No other theory has served to free a
single working class, a single people, from imperialism anywhere in the world. Beginning with the October revolution, only those guided by Marxism-Leninism have been able to free themselves from class and national oppression and take the road of socialist construction." (Page 216)
"Black Americans have a first and equal claim on the total economy of the country-
which they helped build with 400 years of slave and near-slave labor-for billions for
jobs, housing, medical care, education, etc. They want the total economy turned around
to meet the people's needs, instead of operating for the wars and the profits of a handful of
corporate monopolists." (Page 220)
"Black people are in a unique position. On top of more than 200 years of chattel slavery,
operated by the slave-owner partners if emergent capitalism, they have had over 100 years
of capitalist exploitation, racism, war and poverty." (Page 225)
"And it is particularly ironic that the ‘invitation' to Black people to become capitalists
should come from the very same corporate monopolists who have already destroyed most
of the nation's small businesses. Those that still remain, whether white- or Black-owned,
can operate only under the impossible conditions of monopoly domination.
Not only have the mass production industries come under the control of corporate monopoly.
Through their control of the banks, chains, franchising operations, insurance and real estate
companies, etc., these same monopolists dominate all sectors of the economy, including
that in the Black community.
Now in an effort to recruit a sector of Blacks to support the ruling class against their own
people, the monopolists have offered a tiny minority the illusion of Black capitalism. This
is another variation of the tokenism rejected by the Black masses." (Page 225)
"Strength cannot be ‘transferred' to the working class. Strength emerges only from the
unity and consciousness of the workers and all the oppressed in their struggle for a better
life. As the Program of the Communist Party states:
We Communists, motivated by the elemental human needs of our class and our people,
fight the evils of capitalism. Ours is the fate of our class and our people. The trials of their
existence are ours. We strive for improvement of their condition here and now. Often
this is a life-and-death question. At the same time, we are convinced that socialism, and
beyond it communism, offers the only fundamental, lasting solution to the problems of
exploitation and oppression, that it opens the only door to an immeasurable improvement
in the quality of man's life. Thus the struggle for revolution is the logical continuation of
the struggle for a better life." (Page 259)
"But ... self-unity will come about only as a part of the revolutionary process in which the
struggle for the racial and class unity of the oppressed and exploited is an aim and result of
every battle against the racist oppressor. Those who do not understand the role of coalition
in the people's fight to improve their condition fail the see the relationship between reforms
and revolution.
Long ago, Douglas answered those who persist in the illusion that the destiny of oppressed
Black people is separate and unrelated to the destiny of exploited whites. ‘We deem it a
settled point,' wrote Douglass, ‘that the destiny of the colored man is bound up with the
white people of this country...and the question ought to be...what principle should dictate
policy...' (The North Star, November 16, 1849.)" (p. 282.)
"...it must be recognized that the main obstacle to Black and white unity against the common
enemy is the influence of racism on white workers. And it is the primary responsibility of
white revolutionaries to lead the fight against racist ideology and to mobilize white workers
in the struggle against racism and in support of Black liberation as indispensable to the
advance of their class interests.
The aim of monopoly is to force a reversal of every aspect of bourgeois democracy, limited
as it is, in order to open the way for fascism. The aim of the anti-monopoly program, as
advocated by the Communist Party, is to bring about a strategic breakthrough to a deeper
and wider degree of democracy, one that would powerfully accelerate the revolutionary
process, opening the way to Black liberation and socialism.
Once this anti-monopoly strategy succeeds in breaking the control of state monopoly
capital over Congress and the government, the forces exist, internally and internationally-
in contrast to the anti-slavery period-that can prevent the betrayal of the struggle. There
is such a perspective, and this is so, first of all, because the forces of class and national
liberation ... have changed the world balance of power." (Page 285)
"During every upsurge in the people's struggles, especially those of the mainly workingclass
Black people, there is a more extensive activation of counter-measures designed to
sustain disunity and block alliance between Black and white workers, together with the
Black people as a whole, against corporate monopoly." (Page 289)
"Black business has always been marginal even within the ghetto. And capitalism in its
present stage takes the form of giant conglomerates that increasingly devour all small
business. Any possible ‘enrichment' for Black business lies not within monopoly's strategy
of perpetuating the ghettos but within a broad all-encompassing people's strategy-an antimonopoly movement in which the primary force is the working class, Black, white, Brown,
Yellow and Red, together with the organized Black liberation movement as a whole."
(Page 304)
"When we talk about power, we are talking about political power-the shift of power
from one class to another. The Civil War resulted in the change of power from the slaveowners
to the rising capitalist class. Today the monopoly capitalist class controls the total
economy of the United States. Therefore, all talk of self-determination in the ghetto is a
fraud." (Page 307)
"Of course, the oppressed and exploited within the U.S. do not have the objective of even
becoming ‘partners' in a joint enterprise with U.S. imperialism! The task of the majority of the people of all races and backgrounds, under the leadership of Black and white workers,
is to break the power of monopoly over the government and the economy. It is this antimonopoly
struggle-which cannot be waged by the Black minority alone, but only in unity
with the non-Black majority-that alone can bring about joint power to the people and
control of the economy.
U.S. imperialism uses and has always used its economic and military power to oppose
self-determination in Puerto Rico, Vietnam, Chile and the other countries throughout
Asia, Africa and Latin America where the people have in some degree their own separate
economies. Ironically, it is this same U.S. imperialism that deliberately fosters every form
of separatist fantasy for Black people, including ‘self-determination' for a people who
have no common territory or separate economy but whose population on the contrary
is dispersed in more than 160 major urban ghettos around the country. The same U.S.
monopolists who propose ‘joint control' of Puerto Rico with the Puerto Ricans offer Black
people the trap of ‘self-determination' in ghettos where that is impossible...
Black liberation in the U.S. calls for a strategy the exact opposite of Puerto Rican and other
liberation movements outside the U.S. In colonial and dependent countries, the people's aim
is to break the links that artificially tie their economies to imperialism. A liberating strategy
for Black Americans does not involve a break with the U.S. economy, but instead must aim
at overcoming forcible exclusion of Black people from their rightful participation in the U.S.
economy: The goal here is for full equality within the total economy." (Pages 312-313)
"However, the reality of the matter is that the shift of national power from the monopoly
oppressors to the people calls for a wider strategy in which the self-action of the Black
minority becomes a vital, independent part of the total struggle in alliance with the non-
Black majority against the common enemy." (Page 317)
Excerpts from
Class, Race and Black
Liberation by Henry Winston
International Publishers, 1977
"By picturing the Black condition of inequality as arising within the Black ‘family structure,'
[the Moynihan Report] identified the results of oppression as the cause of oppression. Thus,
it runs head on into the fact that Black family life-despite the ‘distortions' caused by 200
years on the auction blocks of Northern slave traders and Southern slave owners, followed
by more than 100 years of racist economic, social and political pressures of genocidal
proportions-has shown a matchless capacity for survival through struggle!" (Page 3)
"[Robert Lubar] cites the following statement from an interview in the same issue [of
Fortune Magazine] with the President [Gerald Ford]: ‘...by the year 2000, 50 percent of
the people will be living off the other 50 percent.' In this remark Ford asserts that, on one
hand, monopoly will have no jobs for 50 percent of the people while, on the other, it aims
at drastically cutting back on social services." (Page 7)
"It is ironic that he [Daniel Moynihan] equates ‘productive economies' with capitalism at
a time when even the most obviously conservative ideologues of U.S. monopoly have long
since retired the phrase ‘people's capitalism.'
What kind of ‘productive' and ‘creative' prospect is Moynihan holding out for the ‘third
world' nations when he tells them to ties their future to capitalism? How ‘productive' is a
system that in the United States, even in its ascendant stage, could develop its productive
capacity only by reinforcing wage labor with chattel slavery?
And how ‘creative' is this system in its present stage of decline? What do its multinational
corporations ‘create' except ever greater inequality and poverty for the majority of the
earth's population?
How productive for ‘third world' countries is a system whose multinational corporations
have never operated at anywhere near productive capacity except in war time? What
‘creative' solution does U.S. imperialism offer the ‘third world' when at home its economy
is geared to the non-productive pile-up of armaments and profits for monopoly, and
oppression, unemployment and inflation for the people?" (Page 23)
"'Ethnicity' has, of course, two hands. Its ‘left' hand tells Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Chicanos,
Asian Americans and Native American Indians that the ‘militant' approach is for each
group to ‘go-it-alone.' In this way ‘ethnicity' lures the oppressed away from asserting their
special claims alongside of and as part of the working class as a whole.
At the same time ‘ethnicity's' right hand makes the traditional racist appeal to the white
majority-telling them that the oppressed minorities have no special needs and are not
their allies but their competitors.
According to the ‘ethnicity' concept, if separate groups ‘assert claims,' they will ‘elicit a
very satisfactory response' from the ruling class. But if claims are advanced as part of a
united working-class struggle, ‘the benefits are necessarily diffuse and often evanescent,'-
and everyone will be left ‘about as he was.'
How this strategy operates was effectively demonstrated in the recent period by the
government's handling of the ‘anti-poverty' programs. The ‘ethnicity' spokesmen told
Blacks that the Puerto Ricans were getting ‘too much,' while Puerto Ricans were told
‘everything' was going to the Blacks. At the same time, white ‘ethnics' were informed
nothing much was left for them because it all went to the Blacks and Puerto Ricans. This
strategy helped ‘disaggregate' the working class and its allies to the point where job
training programs, adult education programs, child care and senior citizens' centers are
‘bottoming out' for everyone. And the ‘racism in reverse' concept which denied the need
for affirmative action for jobs and education for the oppressed minorities ‘disaggregated'
the masses to the point where educational opportunities for all low- and middle-income
people are being slashed away. ‘Ethnicity' is particularly destructive to the oppressed
minorities, but it also does increasing violence to the needs of the white masses.
The history of this country proves that the ‘ethnicity' strategy-adjusted by Moynihan
and his colleagues to meet monopoly's even sharper requirements in the present period of
general crisis and decline of capitalism-produces results not for the exploited but for the
exploiters. This strategy has a long record of leaving everyone not ‘about where he was'
but behind ‘where he was.' The Black people, for example, find themselves today not
‘about' where they were ten years ago, but worse off. The Black economic gains of the
sixties encompassed only a small minority of the Black people, and yet even these gains
proved ‘evanescent.'" (Pages 60-61)
"To be anti-capitalist in the Marxist-Leninist sense is to understand that the oppressed
and exploited strengthen their unity, and progress toward more advanced goals, through
step-by-step struggles. Policies and demands must be based on the issues confronting the
masses, their level of consciousness and degree of readiness to unite around a particular
issue. Slogans must be geared to mobilizing the people. Slogans that fail to involve them in
struggle around their crucial needs are worse than meaningless, since they leave the masses
disunited in the face of monopoly's onslaughts." (Page 96)
"To speak of a ‘white society' fits in with the ‘two societies' concept projected in the
sixties. This idea was promoted from both a ‘radical' and a ‘liberal' (via the ‘Kerner
Report') standpoint, which portrayed Blacks as forming an internal colony in the United
States. But Black people are discriminated against and suffer de facto segregation within
the single U. S. capitalist economy. Both Black and white are locked into one society
dominated by corporate monopoly. To imply the division of this country into two societies
obscures its real division into two basic classes, the white monopolist minority and the
multi-racial working class." (Page 102)
"Of course, U.S. capitalism through all stages of its development has perpetuated
inequality between Black and white masses. But in order to do so it has had to perpetuate
the illusion, from slavery to the present, that the white exploited have a ‘material stake'
in Black oppression. And the survivals of racist ‘advantages,'-originating in the slave
system-still lend credibility to the racist-fostered illusion that white workers on the
assembly lines and in the unemployed lines have a ‘material stake' in the different degree
to which monopoly exploits them as compared to Black workers.
In reality, white as well as Black workers have a ‘material stake' in eradicating racism.
To assert that white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism is to profoundly exaggerate
monopoly's ability to sustain this illusion-particularly in the face of the deepening
general crisis of capitalism. Such a concept is based on an overestimation of the strength of
imperialism, and consequently an underestimation-in fact, a denial-of the intensifying
contradiction between monopoly and the working class as a whole-Black, white, Chicano,
Puerto Rican, Asian and Native American Indian.
To argue that whites have a ‘material stake' in racism is to say that 180 million whites, the
overwhelming majority, have no ‘material stake' in economic and social progress, which
would mean there is no perspective for fundamental change.
The Black minority alone could not defeat the slave power. That was achieved via a
strategy combining the interests of those forces and classes with a stake in victory over the
slavocracy. And today the Black minority cannot by itself defeat the monopoly oppressors.
What is required is not a go-it-alone policy for Blacks but an independent strategy for
Black liberation as part of a wider anti-monopoly strategy-combining all those with
a stake in the defeat of corporate monopoly into a great people's coalition. And in the
perspective for such a coalition, one cannot overlook the revolutionary implications of the
proletarianization of the majority of the multi-racial masses." (Pages 104-105)
"What is required to achieve class unity is a fight to wipe out every form of material and social
inequality. And white workers have a heavy, special responsibility in this struggle because it is
they who have been infected by racism and are consequently its ‘bearers' within the multi-racial
working class. Marxism-Leninism is a guide to, not a substitute for, the anti-racist struggle
and therefore a guide also to the ‘fraternity' of the working class. And as this struggle for class
unity advances, ‘enlightenment' begins to replace racism in the minds of those who have been
its ‘bearers.' Further, the Communist Party is the only organization requiring, as a condition of
membership, that whites accept and act in accordance with the Marxist-Leninist principle of the
special responsibility of white workers in the anti-racist struggle." (Page 105)
"The United States was born in anti-colonial struggle, and its present course of development
is today in sharper contrast than ever to that of its birth. Today's racism and inequality
mock this country's birth cries of ‘liberty' and ‘equality.'" (Page 108)
"Of course, it is true that behavior can be ‘shaped' by society. But scientific social
analysis-Marxism-Leninism-shows that racist ‘behavior' is not ‘shaped' by ‘classless'
psychological factors but by the monopoly ruling class." (Page 108)
"Under capitalism, the dominant culture does not originate with the class operating the
means of production. This dominant culture is determined by the class that owns the
means of production, and it is generated by the superstructure through which this class
controls the state and its agencies, and the mass media.
Today, when racism is widely recognized as institutional, it seems strangely out-of-date to
attribute to it either an independent existence or assert that it can be perpetuated outside of
the rule of monopoly-controlled institutions." (Page 109)
"Those who say white workers have a ‘material stake' in racism draw this conclusion from
the premise that the interests of white capitalists and the white workers are identical.
The miniscule white corporate minority controlling the social means of production cannot
compete with a unified working class. In this period of the general crisis and decline of
capitalism, monopoly's power is only as great as the divisions in the working class-the
result of racism and anti-Communism." (Page 110)
"But Marx, Engels and Lenin revealed that the workers of an oppressor nation can win their
liberation only if they recognize their stake in supporting the liberation struggles of every
people oppressed by their ‘own' ruling class. This is why Marxist-Leninists recognize the
struggle against opportunism-and racism and anti-Communism are its sharpest forms-
as the pre-condition for the unity of the multi-racial U.S. working class and its allies at
home and internationally.
Once when Lenin was asked what he would ‘add' to Marx, he replied that in the context of
the imperialist stage of capitalism, he would apply the essence of Marxism in Marx's slogan
‘Workers of the World Unite' and the resulting slogan would then proclaim, ‘Workers and
Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite.' Unite against what? Lenin urges unity against
imperialism. Therefore Lenin asserts that it is not the workers but the imperialists who
have a stake in oppression." (Pages 111-112)
"Reaction, of course, realized only too well that ‘labor in a white skin' had to be prevented
from learning it could ‘never be free so long as labor in a black skin is branded.' In 1877
reactionary forces, North and South, defeated Reconstruction. And in the 1890's, during
the period of emerging imperialism, these forces ‘legalized' the restoration of institutional
racism-doing everything possible to enforce the separation of white from Black in order
to prevent labor in a white skin and labor in a black skin from emerging as a national force.
The Marxist principle of Black and white labor unity has always been at the core of
Communist Party policy. In the 1930's, this unswerving approach helped create the
greatest degree of white and Black unity in the history of U.S. Labor, and consequently,
the greatest advances for both Black and white workers. The class struggle policies of the
thirties-which led to the organization of the great mass production industries and the rise
of the CIO-gained momentum only to the extent this principle was fought for.
It was to break this advancing unity of the multi-racial working class that monopoly
intensified anti-Communism, institutionalizing it alongside of racism. It was the massive
linking of anti-Communism with racism that enabled monopoly to set back the advances of
the thirties..." (Page 116)
"The only independent policy for Black liberation is the facing up to the fact that the
transformation accompanying urbanization and proletarianization of the Black condition carried
with it an unchallengeable demand: an equal share for Black people in the control of the total
U.S. economy, built with so many centuries of Black chattel and wage slavery." (Page 122)
"It is of course true that Black people, after being ‘ripped from their homeland,' were
oppressed by the social organization in the land to which they were forcibly brought. But
that oppression was not and is not the result of ‘the social organization of white America':
Black people were first oppressed by the tiny white slave-owning class; now that they have
been ‘ripped from' the land in the South, they are oppressed by the tiny white monopoly
capitalist class. Today they are part of a single multi-racial working class which suffers
varying levels of exploitation by a single monopoly-controlled economy." (Page 123)
"If the possibility ever existed for a separate economy in this country for Black people, it
was before the transformation of Southern agriculture into large-scale capitalist agriculture.
Such a possibility vanished with monopoly's massive penetration of the entire south. The
area in the south that formerly held a Black majority became an inseparable part of the total
national economy-with Wall Street, not cotton, as king.
In the decades between the betrayal of Reconstruction and the end of World War II,
the majority of former slaves were sharecroppers and tenant farmers-a serflike status
somewhere between chattel slavery and wage labor. At that time the South's economy was
undergoing a process of dual development: Although it was coming increasingly within
the national economy's orbit, the South-particularly in the area of continuing Black
majority-still retained features differentiating it from the rest of the country's economy.
Until recently, in fact, the pattern of economic development in the area of former Black
majority was neither completely separate nor identical with the total economy." (Page 126)
"Today, with the U.S. economy fully unified under the control of monopoly capital, the
central, all-pervasive fact of the Black condition is triple oppression: racial oppression,
oppression as workers, and oppression as a people. This is the reality, a reality that did not
evolve within a separate or even potentially detachable ‘colonial appendage'-but within
a historic process which has locked Black people, along with the white masses, into the
single society of U.S. state monopoly capitalism." (Page 137)
"Here in the United States, abolition took the fugitive slave law off the books, and the
Civil Rights struggles brought an end to legal segregation, making legal movement for
Black people possible in certain previously forbidden areas. Nevertheless, control of the
Black population's movements still continues, with the job primarily done by the laws of
capitalist economics buttressed by the all-pervasive racist practices of this country... In
the United States police violence is carried out illegally-but in ‘the name of the law,' with
the sanction of the racist government and judicial agencies-against the inhabitants of the
ghettos and barrios." (Page 147)
"To determine their destiny, it is essential for Black people to control every possible
instrumentality and institution for self-organization in the ghetto, and to fight for change
through trade unions and every other possible type of organization outside the ghetto to
‘redistribute power proportionally and to redefine the social relationship' between Blacks
and non-Blacks. This ghetto-based power of Black people must simultaneously be used to
exert maximum pressure at every level or government, industry, politics, education, etc.,
and to engage in joint action with allies at every point of mutual interest." (Pages 155-156)
"Even during the period when U.S. economic and political power was divided and shared
between the slave owners and the rising capitalist class, two separate independent societies
did not exist. The slavocracy could not survive as a separate society, but only so long as
chattel slavery served the accumulation and expansion of capital in non-slave areas of the
economy. The economy in the chattel slavery areas and that in the ‘free' labor areas were
never fully separate; on the contrary, they were interconnected and interdependent, each
evolving with an interrelated process of capital accumulation based on the unpaid labor of
Black slaves and cheap labor of white workers.
Today, when the U.S. economy continues to be ever more completely consolidated under the
control of state monopoly capital, it becomes increasingly apparent that the triple oppression
of Black people has not evolved within a separate, detachable ‘internal colony'-but that the
reality of an historic process has locked Black people and the oppressed minorities, along with
the white masses, into the single society of state monopoly capitalism." (Pages 198-199)
"When workers take on even one major corporation, they are met with the collective power
of monopoly-backed up by government-against their demands. This is the reality of state
monopoly capitalism whose consolidated power is decisive in the lives of the working masses,
whatever their color or origin. If no stratum of the workers-not even the white majority-
can effectively challenge even one corporate monopoly, how can the Black minority take on
the collective power of all the monopolists, state monopoly capitalism?" (Page 200)
"It is certainly necessary to ‘realistically project the possibilities' of ‘electoral struggles and
victories' at a particular point in time. But to simultaneously project ‘limitations' on the
outcome of future struggles in either the electoral or non-electoral arena weakens the fight
around urgent immediate issues while in no way clarifying the form or content of future
struggles." (Page 206)
"Certainly, most of those who sell their labor power of hand or brain have common interests
in opposing the monopolist exploiters. But this is only one of the many material and social
factors relevant to a strategy for waging the class struggle.
Class consciousness must be expanded from its minimum form-the recognition of
the common interest of the majority who sell their labor power-to a higher level: the
recognition that all who have a common interest in fighting monopoly do not have a
common place within the capitalist system from which to carry on that fight. Only by
identifying the specific differences within the ‘diversity of positions' of wage workers
is it possible to transform ‘diversity' under monopoly to unity against monopoly. Too
many radicals fail to understand the interrelation between the struggle for unity within the
working class and the working class's mission of uniting and leading its allies." (Page 231)
Editors' Note --
Henry Winston wrote in the two books of the strategy of the Communist Party, namely to
defeat the whole of the monopoly capitalists through an anti-monopoly coalition. In 1980
the CPUSA concluded that there was another stage of struggle that needed to be completed
before that of the general anti-monopoly stage. That was the need to defeat the ultra right,
headed by the most reactionary sector of monopoly capital through the building of an all
people's front against it. Henry Winston contributed to reaching this conclusion and he
strongly supported it the rest of his life.