US History – The Multiracial Unity Blog

March on May Day for Working Class Liberation, 2024

By Karyn Pomerantz, 4-14-2024

May Day is the most important day for workers everywhere. It is commemorated on May 1^st throughout the world when millions march to smash capitalism, abolish wages, and take power.

Maybe you never heard of it. There are no May Day greeting cards or TV ads. The US ruling class doesn’t want us to celebrate it and know that the struggle for the 8 hour day in Chicago in 1887 inspired it. The media, therefore, hides this important holiday and separates US workers from our brothers and sisters by turning May 1 into “Law Day” and creating Labor Day in September. The time has come to end this division and join the millions of workers throughout the world in demonstrations, marches, and social gatherings. As WWIII threatens and millions of workers live in squalor, it is more important than ever to build this movement! It is critical to support workers in Palestine, Sudan, Ukraine, and many others under attack by capitalist powers who want to control resources and dominate other countries.

Anti-Racism as Communism, a Book Review

by Ellen Isaacs

March 16, 2024

Retired philosophy professor and communist Paul Gomberg has written a truly revolutionary book about racism. By this I do not mean just that he believes the revolutionary destruction of capitalism is necessary to destroy racism, but that the breadth and depth of his presentation is truly unique. Gomberg not only describes the historical development of racism, but shows how capitalism cannot survive without it. He focuses primarily on anti-black racism as the dominant paradigm in US history, but the analysis carries over to other marginalized groups and nations.

US Supreme Court Recertifies Capitalism’s Need for Racism

by Ellen Isaacs

July 2, 2023

Three days ago, the US Supreme Court struck down affirmative action at colleges, except for military ones. Justice Sotomayor says it’s “arbitrary” that affirmative action can continue only at military academies; Justice Gorsuch chastised the continued tolerance for “preferences for the children of donors, alumni, and faculty….” But there is nothing new or shocking about this ruling. It is simply the latest blatant reaffirmation of the basic principles on which the US was founded: the protection of rights of white men with property and the super-exploitation of black and immigrant workers in order to maximize profits. As many articles on this blog have reiterated, as is our underlying premise, US capitalism cannot survive without racism, whose ideas and practices need to be periodically reinforced. (see specifically https://multiracialunity.org/2020/10/16/the-racist-history-of-the-u-s-supreme-court-part-1/ and –part-2/)

As the US became wealthier and more powerful in the mid-20^th century, it was possible to begin to ameliorate some of its great injustices. Indeed, the mass organizing of the 1930s, the anti-Vietnam war protests and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s necessitated some concessions. Not too many, but a few. The absurd contradiction of fighting fascism in Europe while maintaining a segregated military necessitated the end of that practice. Then came the ability to vote for black citizens, the right to choose between various representatives of the capitalist class; the right to attend integrated (but actually largely segregated) schools; the right to sit anywhere on the bus. That was the beginning of the impetus to empower black politicians – fool us good. Parts of the trade union movement became more integrated and the stronger for it. The mass anti-racist student movement led to demands for affirmative action. Nonetheless, financial disadvantage and poor secondary schools led to a maximum of 14% black and Latin enrollment at Harvard, which is now predicted to fall by more than half (https://www.chalkbeat.org/2023/6/29/23778335/supreme-court-affirmative-action-case-college-admissions-student-effects).

US Capitalists Supported Nazis to Stop Communism and Earn Millions

By an antiracist educator, 5-9-2023

(This article adds more examples of US collaboration with the Nazis to those cited in Fighting Fascism, https://multiracialunity.org/2023/04/24/fighting-fascism-from-the-past-to-the-future/).

The book, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler (2002) by Anthony C. Sutton, documents the collaboration of US industrialists and bankers who bankrolled Germany from the 1920’s through the post-WWI period and then proceeded to assist the Nazis re-arm themselves and prepare for WWII, despite the specific prohibition against re-armament in the Versailles Treaty ending WWI in 1919. The US government did not officially support Hitler and declared war on Germany in December 1941. However, a large number of Wall Street bankers and industrialists did support Hitler in ways that were critical to Germany’s ability to prosecute the war:

Fighting Fascism: from the Past to the Future

by Karyn Pomerantz, 4-24-2023

This blog article offers a definition and description of the signs of fascism, how it developed in several countries in the 1930s and 1940s, the ways people fought back, and the lessons they teach us. We will explore the Popular Front and anarchist responses compared to a revolutionary strategy.

What is Fascism? Is the US a Fascist State?

Fascism is a stage of capitalism run by the same class of people as under “democratic” (liberal) capitalism. It is not a new or different system. It develops when the ruling class cannot govern as “usual” and requires brute force to control workers to accomplish its goals (https://multiracialunity.org/2020/08/17/updating-fascism-usa/).

People often believe that fascism requires politicians like Trump or DeSantis who spread a vicious discourse on racism and inspire white nationalists. Fears that either may gain the presidency have pushed liberal voters into the Democratic Party camp or into total despair and inaction.

However, fascism serves the interests of the same political and economic ruling class as under liberal democrats. It is easier for this class to keep its power peacefully by convincing workers to accept oppression rather than resorting to a more violent, disruptive fascist agenda.

Liberal democrats like Biden and former Democratic Party administrations give lip service to democracy in many countries. When US corporations need to steal resources, markets, and cheap labor overseas, the government will install fascist regimes, such as in Chile, Argentina, Israel, and Saudi Arabia.

While their practices have elements of fascism, such as breaking strikes and deporting people, they do not signify that we have a fascist form of capitalism. If a liberal government can rule and milk the working class without sparking massive disruption, there is no need to use extreme force and repression to govern.

Stolen: Native American Children and Lands

by Karyn Pomerantz, 1-14-2023

Stolen indigenous lands, stolen and enslaved people, stolen resources, and stolen elections mark US domestic and global history. Democratic and Republican Administrations have conducted wars and assassinations to annex foreign territories (Hawaii and Puerto Rico among others), oppose imperial competitors (Germany, Russia, and China), and remove pro-socialist governments (Congo and Chile among many others). Beneath its patriotic and racist calls to arms is a rapacious grab for for profits (https://multiracialunity.org/2018/02/02/as-u-s-imperialism-declines-we-must-fight-racism-and-nationalism/).

The US ruling class unleashed one of the worst genocides against the Indigenous inhabitants of the US territories beginning in the 16^th Century. When the settler colonialists arrived, there were 5-15 million Native Americans; by the late 19th Century, only 238,000 remained. Because of 1,500 wars, massacres, the Indian Removal Act that pushed 60,000 people on the Trail of Tears into reservations, 230 treaties that seized Native land, and diseases like smallpox left untreated, rich white landowners and their government grabbed 99% of tribal lands to build their wealth.

I’ve Been Striking on the Railroad

By Karyn Pomerantz, 11-20-2022

UPDATE: US workers just rejected the contract offer. 11-21-2022

There’s an old song, “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” that goes like this:

I’ve been working on the railroad

All the live-long day.

I’ve been working on the railroad

Just to pass the time away.

Can’t you hear the whistle blowing, rise up so early in the morn…

Written in 1894, this famous song depicts the back-breaking work of railroad workers. Built in the 19^th Century, largely by black and Chinese workers, the railway system played an integral part in building capitalism in the United States, carrying oil, steel, and other critical products to western markets. The “robber baron” industrialists, such as John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, made a killing in these industries by cheating and violently attacking workers to create massive wealth.

Today, railroad workers are on the rise. This article will describe potential, current, and previous railway strikes. Because these militant multiracial actions disrupt business, they can improve the lives of workers much more substantially than any electoral strategies. Mass struggles teach us how to work together, identify our enemies and allies, and how to make changes.

Looking Back at Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy

by Glenn Kissack

September 2, 2022

Not only do tens of millions of people around the world hate capitalism and want to see it replaced with a society run by and for workers, but they have felt that way for many generations. 125 years ago, Edward Bellamy wrote the novel Looking Backward, a powerful and intelligent critique of capitalism, a system that Bellamy considered cruel and wasteful. It was written at a time of great inequality and great workers’ struggles and also soon after Karl Marx had published his searing analysis of capitalism in the Communist Manifesto. Marx also raised ideas about how a post-capitalist communist society would work, most profoundly from each worker according to ability and to each according to need. Looking Backward is Bellamy’s vivid description of the egalitarian society that he saw replacing capitalism.