Class-based revolution without an antiracist revolution would leave racial hierarchy intact

Evidence

Big business was certainly producing and reproducing racist policies and ideas to divide and conquer the working class, decrease its labor costs, and increase its political power. However, the CPUSA downplayed or ignored the ways in which White laborers and unions were discriminating against and degrading Black laborers to increase their own wages, improve their own working conditions, and bolster their own political power. And why would White labor not continue ruling Black labor if labor gained political and economic control over capital in the United States? The Communists did not address that; nor did they address their own racist ideas during these formative years, which were pointed out by the antiracist Blacks joining their ranks. In seeking to unify the working class, CPUSA leaders focused their early recruiting efforts on racist White laborers. They refused to update Karl Marx’s scriptures to account for their deeply racialized nation in 1919. CPUSA officials typically stayed silent on what it might mean for the future of racism if a Communist revolution took place that did not simultaneously support a revolution against racism. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 823

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: why ‘class first, race later’ leftism fails — the CPUSA’s refusal to update Marx for a racialized nation as the canonical example of assimilationist/class-reductionist blundering.