Marxist IQ for African-American History Month by Norman Markowitz

by: Wednesday 4 February 2015

 

Here is our Marxist IQ in honor of African American History Month

`1. Marxist-Leninists (Communists) in the U.S after WWI defined the question of African-American Liberation (then called ‘Negro Liberation”) as

a.       a moral and ethical question

b.      necessary to provide equality of opportunity under capitalism

c.       central to the liberation of the working class as a whole and the establishment of socialism

d.      something that would only alienate the “white" working class

2.    Marxist-Leninists(Communists) in the 1920s and 1930s sought to advance African-American liberation by

 a. fighting to organize both integrated trade unions and unions of African American sharecroppers

 b. fighting to enact a federal anti-lynching law and other civil rights legislation

c. working  to build groups like the National Negro Congress and the Southern Negro Youth Congress, forerunners of the post WWII Civil Rights movement

d.all of the above

3.  Although most Americans are taught that the abolitionist movement was comprised mostly of whites with a few prominent African-American figures, scholarship has shown that the organized abolitionist societies were made up of

a. 20% free blacks and escaped slaves

b. 33% free blacks and escaped slaves

c.50% free blacks and escaped slaves

d. 80% free blacks and escaped slaves

 

4. A principle that Marxist-Leninists (Communists) sought to develop in both the Communist party and the larger working class movement was that

a. blacks and whites should be separate but equal

b. It was the duty of white Communists to fight all manifestations of racism in the CPUSA and of white workers to fight all manifestations of racism in the ranks of the working class

c. racism would cease to exist once socialism was established

d. Communists and the working class should pursue “color blind” policies.

 

5. Marxist-Leninists (Communists) see racism under capitalism as functioning to

a. create extra profits for capitalists  by both paying African-American workers less and playing African-American workers off against white workers, thus reducing wage and salary rates

b. restricting the development of a free labor market which is bad for capitalist development

c. a cultural phenomenon with no economic effects on capitalism

d. something that can only end with the “globalization of capitalism

Below are the correct answers  to last month's IQ 

1.a

2.c

3.d

4.d

5.c

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  • Thank you, so much, for your accurate correction, and elaboration on the great John Brown, slave rebellion, liberation rebellion, and historic context, brother Markowitz.
    The magnificent work of the then Communists, Herbert Aptheker and wife, unsung hero of African American history, Fay Aptheker (one of my heroes, the dual like a Marx and Engels and close friends of Du Bois), on U. S. slave rebellions is extremely important to understanding U. S. history and African American history.
    The Apthekers' Master's thesis, and book, American Negro Slave Revolts, in many ways a classic, and will remain, for some time to come.
    Moreover, the unearthing of this kind of Black and white unity in revolt to oppression protects accuracy about the history of the United States of America-and also the healthy, happy future of the Americas.

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 02/17/2015 10:07am (10 years ago)

  • Thanks E.E. W. Clay. You are right on all except the number(it was 50% not 80%, although of the militant and armed groups, 80% was much closer to the real number. Your comments on Dubois and John Brown especially are of the great importance. Of those who raided jails to free fugitive slaves, faced the attacks of racist mobs, free Blacks and escaped slaves were about 75% Karl Marx also understood what John Brown was about, that is a great slave rebellion, in effect an early expression of a war of liberation, using he hoped many of the tactics later developed in wars of liberation. Brown was condemned widely, including by anti-slavery politicians like Lincoln, who brushed him off with the argument that while his ends were perhaps noble, his means were horrible. He was also in polite circles proclaimed a "mad man." The answer to that at the time and forever after was and is, "If Brown was mad, then who was sane"(the soldiers led by Robert E. Lee, later confederate General who suppressed the raid, the President James Buchanan, who turned him over to Virginia to be hanged, even though he had led the attack on a federal arsenal, the slaveholders whose system with all of its horror he sought to destroy, John Wilkes Booth, who attended the hanging as an admirer of the slave holders as "freedom fighters" and five years later murdered Lincoln. Those who sang "John Brown's body," which Julia Ward Howe turned into the Battle Hymn of the Republic, in many ways the greatest revolutionary anthem of the American people, captured the real John Brown
    Norman Markowitz

    Posted by norman markowitz, 02/11/2015 6:48pm (10 years ago)

  • The present writer would like to dedicate these answers to maybe the greatest intellectual the U. S. has produced-the Communist Party's W. E. B. Du Bois-whose birthday falls in this month, Black History Month, is 23 February. Also, dedicating it to the often unsung, stellar, abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.

    1. c
    2. d
    3. d
    4. b
    5. a

    Question 3., with its American styled abolitionism, seems interesting, bringing to mind Du Bois again, and his seminal book John Brown.
    Du Bois is not the only John Brown biographer. However, John Brown by Du Bois sets itself apart because as Du Bois explains in the book, he wanted to put Brown, the man, with his Negro friends and co-abolitionists-to capture his immense spirituality, his dignity and singular purpose-his strong connection with humanity. These African American abolitionists, known not only for their dedication and integrity for freedom, but also their internationalism, fighting from almost every national angle, which the current work of Communist historian Gerald Horne is revealing.
    The future woman Union soldier, Harriet Tubman, would probably have been with her friend, John Brown, had she not been ill in this period, when he with his friends, these 22 souls, in October 1859, (in their strong African American representation) attacked at Harper's Ferry for freedom.
    It was Frederic Douglas himself who noted the strong spirituality of John Brown when he visited Brown.
    Moreover, Du Bois's work on John Brown shows how forcibly the African American, through its dedicated abolitionist friends, (and not only its Quaker Friends like Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Rush, Moses Brown and John Woolman) fought for freedom.
    We were all enriched by this fight-as we are enriched by the unity of Black and white-the united working class. In the modern day abolitionism of the United Nations, in its 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this enrichment continues, in Article 4, "No one shall be held in slavery or servitude, slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms."

    Posted by E.E.W. Clay, 02/05/2015 12:35pm (10 years ago)

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