Paul Robeson (1898-1976) Scientific Socialist
Research by Adrian Chan-Wyles (PhD)
‘From an early age I had come to accept and follow a certain protective tactic of Negro life in America, and I did not fully break with the pattern until many years later. Even while demonstrating that he is really an equal (and, strangely, the proof must be superior performance!) the Negro must never appear to be challenging white superiority.’
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand – Prologue – A Home in That Rock
Paul Robeson: Here I Stand – Prologue – A Home in That Rock
Author’s Note: In 1946, Paul Robeson was forced to publically state in the United States, that he was not a member of the Communist Party. After this date, and despite numerous requests to re-confirm this statement, Paul Robeson refused to do. Nelson Mandela, when also confronted by the injustice applied by racist, Eurocentric Courts in Apartheid South Africa, for obvious purposes of self-defence and self-preservation, also ‘denied’ being a member of the Communist Party, although history has proven that this great man was not only a member of the Communist Party, but because of this association, remained an avid opponent of the racism that is Israeli Zionism. Paul Robeson, however, quite rightly took the legal route of pointing-out to the White authorities opposing him in the 1950’s, that his political affiliations were a ‘private matter’, protected under the US Constitution, and never again affirmed or denied membership of the Communist Party. However, he did repeatedly state time and time again, that he fully supported Scientific Socialism (as formulated by Marx and Engels), and believed that the USSR and New China (as ‘Communist’ States), represented the most advanced, evolved and progressive forms of human organisation the world had known to date. His benchmark (supported by Black intellectuals far less radical than himself), was whether or not a society was directed or influenced by White racist attitudes, and oppressed its non-White citizens. Robeson, along with many others, after having visited the USSR, had seen with their own eyes that the Soviet Communist System had, in a matter of just 20 years, fully empowered its ethnic minorities, whilst simultaneously through education, eradicated all racist and prejudicial attitudes from the minds of its general citizens. This fact, in and of itself, may be considered an incredible accomplishment of humane and compassionate social engineering that replaced capitalist greed with Socialist compassion, insight and wisdom. Paul Robeson saw no need to fall into the trap of capitalist hypocrisy, and play the ‘acquisition-denial’ ritual. This demonstrates the bravery of the man, as well as his keen intelligence. Like the boxer Muhammed Ali (who visited the USSR in 1978, stating to the US media that it was a good and progressive place), Paul Robeson would not join-in the White US establishment’s condemning of the Communist Soviet Union. In 1949, Robeson stated at the Paris Peace conference, that it was only in the Soviet Union that he felt truly ‘free’ as a Black man. The US government responded by suspending Paul Robeson’s passport and right to travel in 1950, (as well as severely curtailing his right to work for a living), effectively grounding him in the US mainland. This was still the situation in 1958, when he published his masterpiece ‘Here I Stand’ through a Black publisher. This article draws heavily upon that book – which the author of this essay considers one of Paul Robeson’s finest works of literature.
ACW 6.8.2016
ACW 6.8.2016
The lies about the Soviet Union (perpetuated by the USA during the Cold War) have mainstreamed within Western academia, despite being at odds with all established historical fact. This creates the distinctly ‘un-academic’ situation, whereby those assumed to be contemporary scholars of the Western tradition (with its roots in ancient Greece), deliberately conspire to distort ‘fact’ and replace it with ‘fiction’. Although for many this is a subconscious continuation of an already well established paradigm, the fact remains that any academic worth his or her salt, should be able, without fuss and the minimum of effort, to clearly identify unreliable narratives, and in the spirit of logical research and the building of ‘truth’, expose the falsehoods that such narratives are designed to convey, and dismiss these narratives from mainstream academic discourse. Of course, such a process does occur (as with the excellent work of Professor Grover Furr), but its incidence remains few and far between. The reason for this is that Western, mainstream ‘bourgeois’ academia is tasked with advancing knowledge whilst not threatening or challenging the capitalist system, whilst Socialist or Communist academia, freed as it is from class oppression and the inverted bourgeois mentality, operates with impunity outside of the straitjacket of the capitalist system. The bourgeois academics are left to perpetuate ‘myth’ in the place of ‘logos’, and use ‘denial’ of what they are doing as a means to control (or hide) the inevitable sense of ‘paranoia’ (of being revealed as ‘liars’, and the peddlers of false facts) and schizophrenia (due to occupying a number of realities, only one of which is ‘real’ but prevented from manifesting). This situation demonstrates that bourgeois academia only adheres to objective fact if the research does not threaten the capitalist system. If the capitalist system is threatened, as in the case of Paul Robeson and his support for the USSR, then the very same bourgeois system enters a self-defence mode whereby all kinds of weird and not so wonderful paradigms are established, designed to keep the ordinary working class people from realising the truth. What is this truth? As Paul Robeson continuously stated, Socialism represents ‘freedom’ for the worker and ALL oppressed peoples around the world. If truth caught on and spread throughout the masses, the world capitalist system would collapse, never to arise again! This is why the bourgeois academic system lies about Paul Robeson and the history of the USSR.
Paul Robeson was undoubtedly a ‘Black’ man (he often referred to himself as a ‘negro’), he was, by the very definition of White America – an African-American – and the son of a former slave, but he was much more than all these limiting descriptions. As a genius Black man, he possessed the eloquence of speech, and the clarity of thought, to mentally free even oppressed White working class people with his advanced and progressive Socialist rhetoric. Although an African-American, Paul Robeson was a fully developed and progressive human being who refused to be beaten down or bullied into denying the relevance of the superiority of the Socialist System as he understood and experienced it. He was an exceptionally gifted human being of advanced evolutionary ability, despite the inherently White and racist society from which he was born within. The ruthless and predatory capitalism through which people of African origin had been reduced to labouring automatons, nevertheless created the psychological and physical conditions through which such an extraordinary individual could be born and developed. Although White racists control and run the US, this demonstrates that the operation of historical dialectics (through class antagonisms) is greater than any culturally contrived thought structure -such as White supremacy. The very oppressive structures designed to keep the Black population ‘down’ and ‘unconscious’, eventually created the exact opposite, a situation that confirms everything Karl Marx wrote in the 19th century. Although oppressed peoples can be hemmed in on every side, quite literally the process of history is on their side, and not the side of the oppressors. The message of Paul Robeson (as it was with Karl Marx) is to never give-up, but always seek to find new and ingenious methods to beat the system.
US Cold War rhetoric used race-hate, ignorance, oppression and suppression of the truth, as a means to keep its working class from uniting around the example of the Soviet Union, and through the auspices of Soviet Communism, over-throw capitalism in the West. As a consequence, everyone who understood Karl Marx, and admired the non-capitalist Soviet Union, were demonised and vilified (and in the case of the Rosenberg’s – executed). Paul Robeson came under this most stringent of State sponsored oppression in the US during the 1950’s, where the working establishment was warned-off by the US government from allowing Paul Robeson to make a living due to his openly expressed liking for the Soviet Union. The efficiency of this official policy can be seen by the fact that Robeson’s income dropped from $100,000 per year, to just $6,000. It was in 1958 that Paul Robeson published ‘Here I stand’, his biographical account that robustly re-affirmed his pro-Soviet and pro-Communist credentials. The 1950’s was a decade of immense and intense pressure for all Communists in the US, and particularly for Black people of the left. A number of African-Americans modified their previously Socialist attitudes, and instead changed their rhetoric so as to limit the extent of demanded reform. The Socialist-inspired Black Liberation Movements called for the liberation of Black (and oppressed) people everywhere through the over-throw of imperialism and the capitalist system. Following the McCarthyist era of the 1950’s, and the intensification of institutional racism toward Black people, many of that community abandoned these Internationalist Socialist ideals, and instead settled with collaborating with the capitalist system to initiate limited reform. Paul Robeson did not agree with this revisionist attitude, and saw such institutes as the NAACP (after WWII) as taking on the ‘middle class’ attitudes that oppressed ordinary working class Black people (and which panned Robeson’s ‘Here I Stand’, when it was published in 1958 – referring to his clearly stated Black liberation rhetoric as ‘confusing’ and ‘muddled’). This bourgeois attitude saw success not as ‘liberation’ from capitalism, but rather as ‘making it’ within the capitalist system, by acquiring middle class employment and income. Under this thoroughly bourgeois model, Black working class people were not oppressed by an unjust capitalist system, but instead suffered because they were ‘lazy’ and not prepared to ‘work’ their way out of their self-imposed poverty. Paul Robeson saw this as the Black adoption of White prejudicial attitudes and refused to follow suite. The point that Paul Robeson makes in ‘Here I stand’, is that the he has spent his entire life in educated self-cultivation as a means to understand, reveal and fight White racism, and that the US anti-Communist paradigm was nothing but a specific aspect of that racism. The more the racist White US system applied that racism to him personally, the more its behaviour ‘proved’ his point and ‘validated’ his support for Soviet Communism. Black people the world over are ‘freed’ through Socialism because of the racism inherent within capitalism, regardless of its intensity or relative benign nature. Walter White, writing in Ebony, stated that:
Paul Robeson was undoubtedly a ‘Black’ man (he often referred to himself as a ‘negro’), he was, by the very definition of White America – an African-American – and the son of a former slave, but he was much more than all these limiting descriptions. As a genius Black man, he possessed the eloquence of speech, and the clarity of thought, to mentally free even oppressed White working class people with his advanced and progressive Socialist rhetoric. Although an African-American, Paul Robeson was a fully developed and progressive human being who refused to be beaten down or bullied into denying the relevance of the superiority of the Socialist System as he understood and experienced it. He was an exceptionally gifted human being of advanced evolutionary ability, despite the inherently White and racist society from which he was born within. The ruthless and predatory capitalism through which people of African origin had been reduced to labouring automatons, nevertheless created the psychological and physical conditions through which such an extraordinary individual could be born and developed. Although White racists control and run the US, this demonstrates that the operation of historical dialectics (through class antagonisms) is greater than any culturally contrived thought structure -such as White supremacy. The very oppressive structures designed to keep the Black population ‘down’ and ‘unconscious’, eventually created the exact opposite, a situation that confirms everything Karl Marx wrote in the 19th century. Although oppressed peoples can be hemmed in on every side, quite literally the process of history is on their side, and not the side of the oppressors. The message of Paul Robeson (as it was with Karl Marx) is to never give-up, but always seek to find new and ingenious methods to beat the system.
US Cold War rhetoric used race-hate, ignorance, oppression and suppression of the truth, as a means to keep its working class from uniting around the example of the Soviet Union, and through the auspices of Soviet Communism, over-throw capitalism in the West. As a consequence, everyone who understood Karl Marx, and admired the non-capitalist Soviet Union, were demonised and vilified (and in the case of the Rosenberg’s – executed). Paul Robeson came under this most stringent of State sponsored oppression in the US during the 1950’s, where the working establishment was warned-off by the US government from allowing Paul Robeson to make a living due to his openly expressed liking for the Soviet Union. The efficiency of this official policy can be seen by the fact that Robeson’s income dropped from $100,000 per year, to just $6,000. It was in 1958 that Paul Robeson published ‘Here I stand’, his biographical account that robustly re-affirmed his pro-Soviet and pro-Communist credentials. The 1950’s was a decade of immense and intense pressure for all Communists in the US, and particularly for Black people of the left. A number of African-Americans modified their previously Socialist attitudes, and instead changed their rhetoric so as to limit the extent of demanded reform. The Socialist-inspired Black Liberation Movements called for the liberation of Black (and oppressed) people everywhere through the over-throw of imperialism and the capitalist system. Following the McCarthyist era of the 1950’s, and the intensification of institutional racism toward Black people, many of that community abandoned these Internationalist Socialist ideals, and instead settled with collaborating with the capitalist system to initiate limited reform. Paul Robeson did not agree with this revisionist attitude, and saw such institutes as the NAACP (after WWII) as taking on the ‘middle class’ attitudes that oppressed ordinary working class Black people (and which panned Robeson’s ‘Here I Stand’, when it was published in 1958 – referring to his clearly stated Black liberation rhetoric as ‘confusing’ and ‘muddled’). This bourgeois attitude saw success not as ‘liberation’ from capitalism, but rather as ‘making it’ within the capitalist system, by acquiring middle class employment and income. Under this thoroughly bourgeois model, Black working class people were not oppressed by an unjust capitalist system, but instead suffered because they were ‘lazy’ and not prepared to ‘work’ their way out of their self-imposed poverty. Paul Robeson saw this as the Black adoption of White prejudicial attitudes and refused to follow suite. The point that Paul Robeson makes in ‘Here I stand’, is that the he has spent his entire life in educated self-cultivation as a means to understand, reveal and fight White racism, and that the US anti-Communist paradigm was nothing but a specific aspect of that racism. The more the racist White US system applied that racism to him personally, the more its behaviour ‘proved’ his point and ‘validated’ his support for Soviet Communism. Black people the world over are ‘freed’ through Socialism because of the racism inherent within capitalism, regardless of its intensity or relative benign nature. Walter White, writing in Ebony, stated that:
‘No honest American, white or Negro, can sit in Judgement on a man like Robeson unless and until he has sacrificed time, talent and money and popularity in doing the utmost to root out the racial and economic evils which infuriate men like Robeson.’
(Quoted by Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
(Quoted by Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
Many White people were of the opinion that Robeson was ‘ungrateful’ for the fame and fortune that had earned through his own efforts. As part of the bourgeois domination at the point of contact, many White people viewed Robeson’s success (as an outstanding sportsman, actor, orator, philosopher, and academic) not as being a product of his own hard labour as an ‘equal’ man, but rather the product of ‘White’ bestowal, as if no Black person possessed the potential or ability to make something of their own existence without White help. Paul Robeson (and many African-Americans) had proved this essentially racist assumption wrong time and again, but the fact remained that in a segregated and racist America, the White establishment held all the cards. The White communities across the US had proven time and again that should a Black man or woman over-step the ‘mark’ decreed by Eurocentric racism, the US legal system would turn a blind-eye whilst White mobs rampaged, raped and murdered their way through Black communities, sparing no one from their racially charged rage. In fact, so secure did the White racist communities feel, that many took photographs to record the many tortures, lynchings, burnings, degradation, and humiliations (even of the dead bodies of the victims). Many of these photographs were turned into postcards sent all around the world, typically depicting a clean-cut White mob standing in a jovial and carnival-like atmosphere, as Black bodies hung from trees. Often, the smiling faces of young White children can be seen, obviously enjoying the spectacle of torture and murder that has just been enacted by their parents, and other elder members of the White community.
Make no mistake about it, Paul Robeson’s radicalism stemmed fundamentally from the experiences of the African slaves on US soil (his father had been slave), and the abhorrent treatment of so-called ‘free’ Black people after the American Civil War (which is even today falsely presented in US academia as being fought by Whites for the freedom of Black people). In this respect, Robeson’s work is very much akin to that of other eminent African-American intellectuals such as Booker T Washington, WEB Du Bois, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and even the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. However, it was his father, the esteemed preacher Reverend William Robeson, who instilled in his son the attitude that personal development for the betterment of society and the world, was preferable to a life spent in the selfish accumulation of material possessions and money. Just as the suffering of the African-American people in the US was the broad canvas upon which Paul Robeson’s Socialism had its roots, it was his father’s ‘unbending’ attitude toward the retaining of personal dignity and truth in all circumstances, that gave Paul his iron-like will, and permanent moral direct. It was only when Paul Robeson spent time in England between 1927 – 1939, that he encountered the Socialism of Marx and Engels, and made his first visit to the Soviet Union. In 1934, Paul Robeson flew to the USSR, with a stop-over in Nazi Germany’s Berlin. It was here that he experienced the outright race-hate of Hitler’s regime, which was a stark contrast to the atmosphere of tolerance, freedom, equality and respect that he subsequently experienced in Russia. This is when he began to study Marxist-Leninism, and to appreciate that the Black struggle in the USA was inherently linked to the international struggle of all Africans living under the tyranny of European imperialism, and by implications, ALL the peoples of the world living under capitalist oppression. Robeson understood that racism has its roots in capitalism, and that the eradication of capitalism would only occur when it was transformed into Socialism through the working class seizing the means of production (i.e. when a Socialist or Communist revolution occurred.) By comparison, although there were Black Socialist groups in the US, the developing Black middle class (which many African-Americans had thought would use its influence and wealth to help the struggling Black working class), tended to follow the White middle class attitudes and became conservative in nature and exclusive in association. Paul Robeson was very much a part of that Black middle class, but he refused to adopt their ‘White’ originating, conservative attitudes. Instead he extended the Black struggle for liberation in the US, to the over-throwing of imperialism across the world. He was not bedazzled by wealth, but used it as a means to encourage and enhance education and awareness not only amongst Black Americans (the main subject of his activism), but also amongst non-Black people including Whites who were willing to listen. Of course, he met many White people in England who were Socialists and Communists, and who demonstrated by example that it was possible for White people to adopt another way, separate and distinct from the history of their ethnicity in the last five hundred years. Paul Robeson describes his political opinion as follows:
Make no mistake about it, Paul Robeson’s radicalism stemmed fundamentally from the experiences of the African slaves on US soil (his father had been slave), and the abhorrent treatment of so-called ‘free’ Black people after the American Civil War (which is even today falsely presented in US academia as being fought by Whites for the freedom of Black people). In this respect, Robeson’s work is very much akin to that of other eminent African-American intellectuals such as Booker T Washington, WEB Du Bois, John Brown, Frederick Douglass, and even the Haitian revolutionary leader Toussaint L'Ouverture. However, it was his father, the esteemed preacher Reverend William Robeson, who instilled in his son the attitude that personal development for the betterment of society and the world, was preferable to a life spent in the selfish accumulation of material possessions and money. Just as the suffering of the African-American people in the US was the broad canvas upon which Paul Robeson’s Socialism had its roots, it was his father’s ‘unbending’ attitude toward the retaining of personal dignity and truth in all circumstances, that gave Paul his iron-like will, and permanent moral direct. It was only when Paul Robeson spent time in England between 1927 – 1939, that he encountered the Socialism of Marx and Engels, and made his first visit to the Soviet Union. In 1934, Paul Robeson flew to the USSR, with a stop-over in Nazi Germany’s Berlin. It was here that he experienced the outright race-hate of Hitler’s regime, which was a stark contrast to the atmosphere of tolerance, freedom, equality and respect that he subsequently experienced in Russia. This is when he began to study Marxist-Leninism, and to appreciate that the Black struggle in the USA was inherently linked to the international struggle of all Africans living under the tyranny of European imperialism, and by implications, ALL the peoples of the world living under capitalist oppression. Robeson understood that racism has its roots in capitalism, and that the eradication of capitalism would only occur when it was transformed into Socialism through the working class seizing the means of production (i.e. when a Socialist or Communist revolution occurred.) By comparison, although there were Black Socialist groups in the US, the developing Black middle class (which many African-Americans had thought would use its influence and wealth to help the struggling Black working class), tended to follow the White middle class attitudes and became conservative in nature and exclusive in association. Paul Robeson was very much a part of that Black middle class, but he refused to adopt their ‘White’ originating, conservative attitudes. Instead he extended the Black struggle for liberation in the US, to the over-throwing of imperialism across the world. He was not bedazzled by wealth, but used it as a means to encourage and enhance education and awareness not only amongst Black Americans (the main subject of his activism), but also amongst non-Black people including Whites who were willing to listen. Of course, he met many White people in England who were Socialists and Communists, and who demonstrated by example that it was possible for White people to adopt another way, separate and distinct from the history of their ethnicity in the last five hundred years. Paul Robeson describes his political opinion as follows:
‘It has been largely forgotten, and perhaps not known at all to many younger people, that my basic views on world affairs are nothing new. More than twenty years have passed since I first visited the Soviet Union and voiced my friendly sentiments about the peoples of that land, and before that I had expressed a keen interest in the life and culture of the African peoples and a deep concern for their liberation. Indeed, before the “cold war” brought about a different atmosphere, those broader interests of mine were considered by many Negroes to be quite admirable; and when in 1944 I was honoured by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People with the Spingarn Medal, my activities in behalf of “freedom for all men” were said to be a special contribution that I had made. The same point was made in 1943 when I was awarded an honorary degree by Morehouse College of Atlanta, and no one on that occasion was at all disturbed when in my speech of acceptance I observed that “the tremendous strides of the various peoples in the Soviet Union have given greatest proof of the latent abilities, not only of so-called agricultural peoples presumably unfitted for intricate industrial techniques, but also of so-called backward peoples who have clearly demonstrated that they function like all others.”
We know, of course, how drastically the political climate of our country changed in the postwar years, but even in the worst period of McCarthyism – which, happily, now seems to be passing – I saw no reason why my convictions should change with the weather. I was not raised that way, and neither the promise of gain nor the threat of loss has ever moved me from my firm convictions. I recall that in 1936, when I was in London, John Hamilton, then national chairman of the Republican Party, visited me with a proposition that I return to America and campaign among Negroes for Alf Landon against President Roosevelt. My reward would be that as an actor I could write my own ticket in regard to future Hollywood contracts and starring productions, since the big film magnates were staunchly Republican and hated the man in the White House. I declined the offer and today I can smile at the thought that anyone could imagine me stumping the country, urging Negroes to turn against the New Deal and return the party of Herbert Hoover to power!’
(Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
We know, of course, how drastically the political climate of our country changed in the postwar years, but even in the worst period of McCarthyism – which, happily, now seems to be passing – I saw no reason why my convictions should change with the weather. I was not raised that way, and neither the promise of gain nor the threat of loss has ever moved me from my firm convictions. I recall that in 1936, when I was in London, John Hamilton, then national chairman of the Republican Party, visited me with a proposition that I return to America and campaign among Negroes for Alf Landon against President Roosevelt. My reward would be that as an actor I could write my own ticket in regard to future Hollywood contracts and starring productions, since the big film magnates were staunchly Republican and hated the man in the White House. I declined the offer and today I can smile at the thought that anyone could imagine me stumping the country, urging Negroes to turn against the New Deal and return the party of Herbert Hoover to power!’
(Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
Like Mahatma Gandhi before him, it is a peculiar fact that Paul Robeson found an acceptance in England – the centre of the ruthless, vicious and brutal British empire – an acceptance that was not prevalent throughout her many colonies around the world. Initially Paul Robeson was wined and dined throughout the British upper-middle class, who found his educational background inspiring and something to be respected. He also found the British to be appreciative of law and order, as well as high culture, and not so keen on large pay-cheques as were his fellow Americans. Eventually, however, Paul Robeson penetrated the British working class and developed a deeper appreciation for the British people. Whilst studying at university in London, Paul came into contact with many African people from the colonised countries of Africa, and it is through his long hours of conversation with these people that his appreciation and understanding of Africa took new dimensions of appreciation. As his respect for ancient African culture grew, he started writing his opinion in the British leftwing press, which resulted in him being visited by British Intelligence officers, enquiring as to whether he was advocating freedom and independence for Britain’s African colonies. Paul Robeson understood (through the study of Marxist-Leninism) that there could be individual White people who had personally transcended the racialised politics of their bourgeois countries, but that this fact, although important for revolutionary solidarity, still left the problem of the racist Eurocentric state operating a highly discriminatory policy towards its own workers, and toward non-Europeans abroad. Yes, the White working class was definitely oppressed by the bourgeois state, but racial prejudice and discrimination served as another and distinct layer of oppression aimed solely at people of colour. Furthermore, the bourgeois state, whilst undoubtedly oppressing its own workers, privileged its White population over that of its non-White population. A White working class man can be oppressed because he is a ‘worker’ but not because he is a ‘colour’, whereas a working class man who is Black or Asian, is oppressed because he is a ‘worker’ and because he is a ‘colour’. Colour-prejudice serves as the currency through which the bourgeois state controls and contains its own non-White population, and in the case of imperialism, retains White dominance and rule in colonised non-White countries, where a small, but heavily armed group of White imperialists, motivated as they are by greed, keep control of a non-White population that vastly out-numbers their presence, through the use of terror and the threat of murder (a threat carried-out many times throughout Britain’s colonies around world). What is also interesting is that even Black and Asian people who, (through their income, educational achievements, or political aspirations), penetrate the White middle or even upper classes, only remain in that elevated position as long as the bourgeois system allows or tolerates their presence. The defining point in such circumstances is racial prejudice, despite the apparent class privilege. Where a White member of the middle or upper class may act in a despicable manner, their ‘class’, as a matter of privileged birth, remains beyond question. However, this White privileged status is not extended to non-White members of the middle or upper class, whose status is entirely dependent upon White whim. Therefore, the presence of racism exists throughout the entirety of bourgeois society, with the White middle class encouraging the White working class to take-on and apply the strictures of White bourgeois racism against all non-White peoples. When this racism is coupled with the ideology that the poverty inflicted upon the workers by their middle class overlords, is entirely the fault of the workers, the White working class is riddled with fallacious contradictions and erroneous distinctions, preventing it from effectively uniting through Scientific Socialism, and collectively over-throwing the bourgeois state. Despite the peculiar tolerance and apparent acceptance of Paul Robeson by the British people, the fact remained that Black people in general, and Africans in particular, were definitely not accepted if they practised their indigenous cultures and spoke their own languages. As different as Britain was to the USA, the racism generated by its system remained more or less on a par with its American counter-part, with the only difference being one of presentation. This is the insight that prompted Paul Robeson to leave England and return to the US just prior to the outbreak of WWII, to continue the battle for African-American rights from a distinctly ‘internationalist’ perspective, gained from his time in the Soviet Union.
Paul Robeson saw that people considered ‘Black’ living in east Russia, had been deemed racially inferior by the Czarist regime (following the European pseudo-science of Social Darwinism), and viewed as being inherently primitive and beyond any conventional help to develop their culture. In other words, the Russian Czarist regime, viewed its own ethnic minorities as being like ‘children’ and in need of a superior parental guidance, as a means of protecting themselves from their own apparent stupidity. This is the typical attitude of the European bourgeoisie, that sees its dominant place in the world as not being a matter of the theft of wealth over generations, but rather decreed by god. Therefore, all the impoverished peoples of the world, by theological definition, were either not ‘blessed’ in the same manner (proving not only their physical, but also ‘spiritual’ inferiority), or actually ‘damned’ by god to exist in the pitiful state that passes as their ‘culture’. At no time does the bourgeois state acknowledge the historical materialism of the situation, or admit that people live on the physical plane due to concrete historical events (initiated and enforced by the dominant class), and not because of the actions of any mythological or imagined theistic entity. People are impoverished around the world, and kept in that state of existence (because it makes them easier to control), by the bourgeoisie that is busy stealing wealth that does not belong to them. Here, Paul Robeson explains why the Socialist System of the USSR was superior to that of the capitalist bourgeoisie system existing in the West:
Paul Robeson saw that people considered ‘Black’ living in east Russia, had been deemed racially inferior by the Czarist regime (following the European pseudo-science of Social Darwinism), and viewed as being inherently primitive and beyond any conventional help to develop their culture. In other words, the Russian Czarist regime, viewed its own ethnic minorities as being like ‘children’ and in need of a superior parental guidance, as a means of protecting themselves from their own apparent stupidity. This is the typical attitude of the European bourgeoisie, that sees its dominant place in the world as not being a matter of the theft of wealth over generations, but rather decreed by god. Therefore, all the impoverished peoples of the world, by theological definition, were either not ‘blessed’ in the same manner (proving not only their physical, but also ‘spiritual’ inferiority), or actually ‘damned’ by god to exist in the pitiful state that passes as their ‘culture’. At no time does the bourgeois state acknowledge the historical materialism of the situation, or admit that people live on the physical plane due to concrete historical events (initiated and enforced by the dominant class), and not because of the actions of any mythological or imagined theistic entity. People are impoverished around the world, and kept in that state of existence (because it makes them easier to control), by the bourgeoisie that is busy stealing wealth that does not belong to them. Here, Paul Robeson explains why the Socialist System of the USSR was superior to that of the capitalist bourgeoisie system existing in the West:
‘It was an African who directed my interest in Africa to something he had observed in the Soviet Union. On a visit to that country he had travelled east and had seen the Yakuts, a people who had been classed as a “backward race” by the Czars. He had been struck by the resemblance between the tribal life of the Yakuts and his own people of East Africa. What would happen to a people like the Yakuts now that they had been freed from colonial oppression and were part of the construction of a socialist society?
Well, I went to see for myself and on my first visit to the Soviet Union in 1934 I saw how the Yakuts and the Uzbeks and all the other formerly oppressed nations were leaping ahead from tribalism to modern industrial economy, from illiteracy to the heights of knowledge. Their ancient cultures blooming in new and greater richness. Their young men and women mastering the sciences and arts. A thousand years? No. Less than twenty!
So, through my interest in Africa I came to visit and to study what was going on in the Soviet Union. I have told many times how pleased I was to find a place where coloured people walked secure and free as equals. Others had observed that fact before I did and others have seen it since. Not long ago I read in the Afro-American a report by Dr. William E Reed, dean of the school of agriculture at the Agricultural and Technical College in North Carolina, on his recent visit to the Soviet Union, in which he said:
“I saw no signs of racial discrimination. I think it is fair to say that racial discrimination is non-existent in the U.S.S.R… I saw no difference between the way coloured and white people live in the U.S.S.R. They are not segregated anywhere, those who attend church worship in the same churches; they attend the same schools.”
That’s how it is. I can’t imagine that any Negro would not be pleased to see it, and I certainly was. So I thought it would be a good thing to send my boy to school in the Soviet Union, and he did attend public school there for two years. Much has been made of that simple fact, but Paul Jr., who later went to high school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and graduated from Cornell in New York, says that the Moscow School was a wonderful experience, that he had good teachers and good playmates, that he learned the language well – and why should that disturb anybody? (Evidently it did disturb the State Department because that fact was cited as one of the reasons why I should be denied a passport!)
I came to believe that the experiences of the many peoples and races in the Soviet Union – a vast country which embraces one-sixth of the earth’s surface – would be of great value for other peoples of the East in catching up with the modern world. Today, with so many of these peoples in Asia and Africa gaining their freedom, there are many among them, including outstanding leaders, who say that they find in the Soviet achievements and those of the new China much that is of value. In a country like India, for example, there is a widespread opinion that socialism, in one form or another, must be considered as a possible solution of their problems.
I felt, too, that the rapidly growing power of the Soviet Union in world affairs would become an important factor in aiding the colonial liberation movement; and when, not long ago, the world saw how vigorously and effectively the Soviet Union to block Western imperialism from retaking the Suez Canal from emancipated Egypt, the truth of this vie seemed amply confirmed. Here in New York, at the United Nations, we have all been able to see with our eyes that on every issue that has come up the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have voted in support of the coloured peoples of the world. Some people say his is merely a matter of playing politics, but wouldn’t it be wonderful for coloured people everywhere if the U.S. delegation to the U.N. also played politics by voting that way?
Asia and Africa are looking at the world developments with their eyes wide open and they don’t miss a thing. As the influential newspaper West Africa Pilot put it in an editorial (June 30, 1953):
“We know no more about Communism than what its American and British detractors have pushed across to us as propaganda… But judging from what we see and experience from day to day, we feel that all this talk of the so-called ‘free world’ and ‘iron curtain’ is a camouflage to fool and bamboozle colonial peoples. It is part and parcel of power politics into which we refuse to be drawn until we are free to choose which ideology suits us best.
For the time being, we shall judge every nation strictly on the merits of the attitude of that nation towards our national aspirations. We have every cause to be grateful to the Communists for their active interest in the fate of colonial peoples and for their constant denunciation of the evils of imperialism. It is then left to the so-called ‘free’ nations to convince us that they are more concerned about our welfare than the Communists, and in the regard we believe more in action than in mere words.”’
(Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
Well, I went to see for myself and on my first visit to the Soviet Union in 1934 I saw how the Yakuts and the Uzbeks and all the other formerly oppressed nations were leaping ahead from tribalism to modern industrial economy, from illiteracy to the heights of knowledge. Their ancient cultures blooming in new and greater richness. Their young men and women mastering the sciences and arts. A thousand years? No. Less than twenty!
So, through my interest in Africa I came to visit and to study what was going on in the Soviet Union. I have told many times how pleased I was to find a place where coloured people walked secure and free as equals. Others had observed that fact before I did and others have seen it since. Not long ago I read in the Afro-American a report by Dr. William E Reed, dean of the school of agriculture at the Agricultural and Technical College in North Carolina, on his recent visit to the Soviet Union, in which he said:
“I saw no signs of racial discrimination. I think it is fair to say that racial discrimination is non-existent in the U.S.S.R… I saw no difference between the way coloured and white people live in the U.S.S.R. They are not segregated anywhere, those who attend church worship in the same churches; they attend the same schools.”
That’s how it is. I can’t imagine that any Negro would not be pleased to see it, and I certainly was. So I thought it would be a good thing to send my boy to school in the Soviet Union, and he did attend public school there for two years. Much has been made of that simple fact, but Paul Jr., who later went to high school in Springfield, Massachusetts, and graduated from Cornell in New York, says that the Moscow School was a wonderful experience, that he had good teachers and good playmates, that he learned the language well – and why should that disturb anybody? (Evidently it did disturb the State Department because that fact was cited as one of the reasons why I should be denied a passport!)
I came to believe that the experiences of the many peoples and races in the Soviet Union – a vast country which embraces one-sixth of the earth’s surface – would be of great value for other peoples of the East in catching up with the modern world. Today, with so many of these peoples in Asia and Africa gaining their freedom, there are many among them, including outstanding leaders, who say that they find in the Soviet achievements and those of the new China much that is of value. In a country like India, for example, there is a widespread opinion that socialism, in one form or another, must be considered as a possible solution of their problems.
I felt, too, that the rapidly growing power of the Soviet Union in world affairs would become an important factor in aiding the colonial liberation movement; and when, not long ago, the world saw how vigorously and effectively the Soviet Union to block Western imperialism from retaking the Suez Canal from emancipated Egypt, the truth of this vie seemed amply confirmed. Here in New York, at the United Nations, we have all been able to see with our eyes that on every issue that has come up the Soviet Union and other socialist countries have voted in support of the coloured peoples of the world. Some people say his is merely a matter of playing politics, but wouldn’t it be wonderful for coloured people everywhere if the U.S. delegation to the U.N. also played politics by voting that way?
Asia and Africa are looking at the world developments with their eyes wide open and they don’t miss a thing. As the influential newspaper West Africa Pilot put it in an editorial (June 30, 1953):
“We know no more about Communism than what its American and British detractors have pushed across to us as propaganda… But judging from what we see and experience from day to day, we feel that all this talk of the so-called ‘free world’ and ‘iron curtain’ is a camouflage to fool and bamboozle colonial peoples. It is part and parcel of power politics into which we refuse to be drawn until we are free to choose which ideology suits us best.
For the time being, we shall judge every nation strictly on the merits of the attitude of that nation towards our national aspirations. We have every cause to be grateful to the Communists for their active interest in the fate of colonial peoples and for their constant denunciation of the evils of imperialism. It is then left to the so-called ‘free’ nations to convince us that they are more concerned about our welfare than the Communists, and in the regard we believe more in action than in mere words.”’
(Paul Robeson in ‘Here I Stand: Chapter 1 – I Take My Stand)
Paul Robeson ascribes a special place for England in his emancipation narrative, after-all, this is the place that granted asylum to Karl Marx and his family following the wave of revolutionary action across Europe in 1848. This was an extraordinary act of tolerance and understanding on the part of the British government, at a time when the Pope and European heads of state were calling for his arrest, imprisonment, or worse. Although Paul Robeson is clear that the British administration apparatus abroad was responsible for one of the most vicious of imperialist systems, which had in effect, created the institution of trans-Atlantic slavery (operating between Britain, Africa and the Americas – the so-called ‘Golden Triangle’ by the White capitalists), nevertheless, he and a number of other African-Americans had experienced an entirely different attitude and positive approach to their ‘Blackness’ from the ordinary British people living within the British Isles. In fact, considering the racism that is known to exist in modern Britain today against ‘foreign’ (White) Europeans, and Chinese, Asian and African people, it is astonishing that such African-Americans did not report any significant prejudice during their time in the UK. Robeson builds a narrative, not uncommon amongst African-Americans, that Britain was an enlightened land of tolerance, that did not possess as part of its culture, the vicious racism found in the US. It is extraordinary to consider that the African-American intellectual (and freedom fighter) Frederick Douglass (1819-1895) - who was a contemporary of Karl Marx – visited Ireland and Britain in the 1840’s and was so popular amongst the British people, that he was asked to stay in the UK (with his family), and never return to the ‘racist’ United States. He was offered a house and employment as part of the invitation, which also included full British citizenship for himself and his family. Although extremely grateful (and a little over-whelmed), he said that he had to return to the US exactly because it was ‘racist’, as he needed to assist all African-Americans in breaking ‘free’. Another example of this British ‘inclusiveness’ can be found in the experiences of Ira Aldridge (1807-1867) – the world famous African-American Shakespearean actor. There is a statue of this great man in Torre Abbey, situated in Torquay, in the county of Devon, UK. Paul Robeson felt a particular affinity with Ira Aldridge, as he was educated in Scotland, and played Othello in 1830, just as Robeson played Othello in 1930 – both in the UK! It was also in the UK that Paul Robeson encountered ‘White’ Socialists who ascribed to the International Communist Movement (inspired by Vladimir Lenin), and rejected White supremacy (and all other forms of racism), as being a product of bourgeois excess, greed, hatred and inverted thinking. For the first time in his life, Paul Robeson encountered White Europeans who did not derogatorily treat him as ‘Black’, or tried to culturally dominate him psychologically or physically at the point of contact – and yet Britain remained a ‘racist’ country nonetheless, and this racism is still prevalent today. Despite the good treatment he received in progressive London (and apparently in different places in Britain), Paul Robeson may not have been aware of the racial issues that did exist within British society (such as the general dislike of the English [due to their prejudicial attitudes] by the Celtic [or ‘Gaelic’] peoples of the British Isles, such as the Irish, Scots, Welsh and Cornish, or the general sense of intolerance by British White people toward non-White people). Of course, Paul Robeson was probably unaware that in the 20th century, British governments twice ‘ethnically cleansed’ the UK’s Chinese populations, to general agreement and applause across the White population. The first time occurred in 1919, where 20,000 Chinese people were rounded-up by the British Army at bayonet-point, and placed on ships sailing to China. This action was initiated by the rightwing press as part of the nationalist hysteria and bigotry that followed Britain’s victory in WWI. The irony is that thousands of Chinese men served in the British Army’s unarmed ‘Labour Corps’ in the trenches of France and Belgium, and yet the British White population still responded in this manner. Extraordinarily, the next round-up of Chinese people was initiated by the Labour Party in 1945, when around 1,200 Chinese people were ‘arrested’ in the early hours (mostly as they were going to work), in the Lime House area of East London. They, too were placed on boats and deported to China (leaving their relatives in the UK). This action effectively put an end to Britain’s ‘Chinatown’ existing in Lime House (it would later be ‘re-invented’ in Gerrard Street, just off of Leicester Square with a new wave of Chinese migrants from Hong Kong in the 1950’s).
The racism of the British empire in the world, definitely had its roots in British society and culture at home, a point which Paul Robeson fully acknowledges, but the point he appears to be making is that Scientific Socialism (which had taken root in the UK ever since Marx and Engels relocated there in 1949), offered a way for White people to ‘throw-off’ their historically conditioned racial prejudice, and engage non-White people, not as an inferior colour, but rather as an ‘equal’ human being free of the taint of race-hate. In this regard, Paul Robeson disagreed with the prominent Black Intellectuals Booker T Washington (1856-1915), and Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), both of whom acknowledged as an inevitable fact that ‘White’ people not only rule the world, but will continue to ‘dominate’ Black people at the point of contact, interacting through a continuous paradigm of racial superiority, inflicted on any group (or individual) deemed ‘racially’ inferior. It is without doubt that this is exactly and precisely how ‘White’ racism functions throughout the world, but Paul Robeson, through the strictures of Scientific Socialism, saw a means whereby White people could cease being ‘White’ in the dominating racialised sense, and Black people could correspondingly cease being ‘Black’ in an ‘inferiorised’ racialised sense. Therefore, for Paul Robeson, although it was true that White supremacy permeated the world, it was not inevitable because, being a product of observable historical conditioning, it was definitely able to be ‘unconditioned’ and rendered non-functional in a Socialist or Communist society (as well as ‘freeing’ individual Scientific Socialists still living within capitalist societies). Perhaps, more importantly, as the racist White establishment controlled, withheld or granted a biased education system, Scientific Socialism offered a profound philosophical method of psychological development and emancipation from all bourgeois conditionalities of the past, automatically offering Black, Asian, Chinese (and other) groupings that had been the victims of historical racism, a direct method of self-education, and self-emancipation here and now. Scientific Socialism did not require ‘White’ consent to be either effective or applied. This is because White racism has its roots within the bourgeois capitalist system and is simply the extension of the division of labour concept, which is designed to disempower the worker as much as possible, whilst correspondingly enhancing the stolen profit from his or her labour. A slave, of course, works for no monetary recompense, and is given only the barest of food and shelter to sustain the ability to reproduce ‘free’ labour. This is the maximisation of monetary profit for the owner, who reduces the status of his slaves to that of ‘unfeeling’ and ‘unthinking’ automatons, viewing them as little more than a trained animal. Slaves, by definition, are denied the status of ‘human being’, as such a status would imply the very legal and lawful ‘rights’ within a modern society that serve to prevent individuals being reduced to the status of a ‘slave’. The transition from ‘de-humanised’ slave, to that of the ‘exploited’ worker within a capitalist society, had been a slow and difficult affair in the US. The slavery of ‘chains’ eventually gave way to the slavery of ‘wages’, as one form of economic exploitation transitioned into another. The slave occupied a bizarre status within the exploitative US economy, that was one of total and permanent exclusion from the very capitalist system of producing wealth, that he or she remained a fundamental and crucial element of. Without ‘free’ slave labour at the base, there would be no maximised profit for the slaveholders, and no knock-on economic stimulation for all the other businesses that permeated out from this African-American source of labour power. With the abolition of slavery, the Black man and woman were theoretically elevated to the position of ‘worker’ to be exploited by the capitalist system for a ‘wage’ that in no way represented the true nature of the ‘profit’ that their labour actually generated – this should have brought African-Americans in-line with equally exploited White workers, but conditions on the ground were very different. The White workers, by and large were poorly educated and used to viewing themselves as being ‘racially’ superior to those who formerly toiled in the fields for no wages. This attitude was not created by the White workers themselves, but was instilled in their minds from above, in the form of the bourgeois system they inhabited. This is despite the fact that many White workers lived terrible lives in near slave-like conditions. Whereas many Black thinkers perceived ‘freedom’ in terms of possessing the economic ‘right’ to make monetary profit from their labour, Paul Robeson suggested that in fact true freedom lay not in making profit for the individual disconnected from the collective, but rather in the entire emancipation of the Black mind and body from the White bourgeois system of capitalism it had been forced to inhabit. He understood that the Soviet Union and New China (amongst other Socialist countries), represented examples of a fundamental break with historical capitalism, that freed Black and White equally. Not only this, but Scientific Socialism offered a path of technological and scientific progression through group effort, that was not motivated by the greed of monetary profit, but rather from the notion that it was ‘correct’ to develop humanity’s potential to the full, free of class division, and the need for one group to destructively dominate all others. Despite the despicable treatment of Paul Robeson, his book – Here I Stand – is remarkably positive and uplifting. The reader receives the continuous impression that he or she is in the presence of greatness, as Paul Robeson contentedly mentions the re-assuring ‘bleep bleep’ of Sputnik 1.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.
The racism of the British empire in the world, definitely had its roots in British society and culture at home, a point which Paul Robeson fully acknowledges, but the point he appears to be making is that Scientific Socialism (which had taken root in the UK ever since Marx and Engels relocated there in 1949), offered a way for White people to ‘throw-off’ their historically conditioned racial prejudice, and engage non-White people, not as an inferior colour, but rather as an ‘equal’ human being free of the taint of race-hate. In this regard, Paul Robeson disagreed with the prominent Black Intellectuals Booker T Washington (1856-1915), and Marcus Garvey (1887-1940), both of whom acknowledged as an inevitable fact that ‘White’ people not only rule the world, but will continue to ‘dominate’ Black people at the point of contact, interacting through a continuous paradigm of racial superiority, inflicted on any group (or individual) deemed ‘racially’ inferior. It is without doubt that this is exactly and precisely how ‘White’ racism functions throughout the world, but Paul Robeson, through the strictures of Scientific Socialism, saw a means whereby White people could cease being ‘White’ in the dominating racialised sense, and Black people could correspondingly cease being ‘Black’ in an ‘inferiorised’ racialised sense. Therefore, for Paul Robeson, although it was true that White supremacy permeated the world, it was not inevitable because, being a product of observable historical conditioning, it was definitely able to be ‘unconditioned’ and rendered non-functional in a Socialist or Communist society (as well as ‘freeing’ individual Scientific Socialists still living within capitalist societies). Perhaps, more importantly, as the racist White establishment controlled, withheld or granted a biased education system, Scientific Socialism offered a profound philosophical method of psychological development and emancipation from all bourgeois conditionalities of the past, automatically offering Black, Asian, Chinese (and other) groupings that had been the victims of historical racism, a direct method of self-education, and self-emancipation here and now. Scientific Socialism did not require ‘White’ consent to be either effective or applied. This is because White racism has its roots within the bourgeois capitalist system and is simply the extension of the division of labour concept, which is designed to disempower the worker as much as possible, whilst correspondingly enhancing the stolen profit from his or her labour. A slave, of course, works for no monetary recompense, and is given only the barest of food and shelter to sustain the ability to reproduce ‘free’ labour. This is the maximisation of monetary profit for the owner, who reduces the status of his slaves to that of ‘unfeeling’ and ‘unthinking’ automatons, viewing them as little more than a trained animal. Slaves, by definition, are denied the status of ‘human being’, as such a status would imply the very legal and lawful ‘rights’ within a modern society that serve to prevent individuals being reduced to the status of a ‘slave’. The transition from ‘de-humanised’ slave, to that of the ‘exploited’ worker within a capitalist society, had been a slow and difficult affair in the US. The slavery of ‘chains’ eventually gave way to the slavery of ‘wages’, as one form of economic exploitation transitioned into another. The slave occupied a bizarre status within the exploitative US economy, that was one of total and permanent exclusion from the very capitalist system of producing wealth, that he or she remained a fundamental and crucial element of. Without ‘free’ slave labour at the base, there would be no maximised profit for the slaveholders, and no knock-on economic stimulation for all the other businesses that permeated out from this African-American source of labour power. With the abolition of slavery, the Black man and woman were theoretically elevated to the position of ‘worker’ to be exploited by the capitalist system for a ‘wage’ that in no way represented the true nature of the ‘profit’ that their labour actually generated – this should have brought African-Americans in-line with equally exploited White workers, but conditions on the ground were very different. The White workers, by and large were poorly educated and used to viewing themselves as being ‘racially’ superior to those who formerly toiled in the fields for no wages. This attitude was not created by the White workers themselves, but was instilled in their minds from above, in the form of the bourgeois system they inhabited. This is despite the fact that many White workers lived terrible lives in near slave-like conditions. Whereas many Black thinkers perceived ‘freedom’ in terms of possessing the economic ‘right’ to make monetary profit from their labour, Paul Robeson suggested that in fact true freedom lay not in making profit for the individual disconnected from the collective, but rather in the entire emancipation of the Black mind and body from the White bourgeois system of capitalism it had been forced to inhabit. He understood that the Soviet Union and New China (amongst other Socialist countries), represented examples of a fundamental break with historical capitalism, that freed Black and White equally. Not only this, but Scientific Socialism offered a path of technological and scientific progression through group effort, that was not motivated by the greed of monetary profit, but rather from the notion that it was ‘correct’ to develop humanity’s potential to the full, free of class division, and the need for one group to destructively dominate all others. Despite the despicable treatment of Paul Robeson, his book – Here I Stand – is remarkably positive and uplifting. The reader receives the continuous impression that he or she is in the presence of greatness, as Paul Robeson contentedly mentions the re-assuring ‘bleep bleep’ of Sputnik 1.
©opyright: Adrian Chan-Wyles (ShiDaDao) 2016.