The Comintern adopted self-determination to pre-empt a resurgence of Black nationalism.

Evidence

As I pursued this logic, a totally new thought occurred to me, and for me it was the clincher. The Garvey movement is dead, I reasoned, but not Black nationalism. Nationalism, which Garvey diverted under the slogan of Back to Africa, was an authentic trend, likely to flare up again in periods of crisis and stress. Such a movement might again fall under the leadership of utopian visionaries who would seek to divert it from the struggle against the main enemy, U.S. imperialism, and on to a reactionary separatist path. The only way such a diversion of the struggle could be forestalled was by presenting a revolutionary alternative to Blacks. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1054

Categorization

• SEED: Essay angle: how a Leninist strategic calculation — outflanking nationalism to win Black workers — shaped the Communist Party’s entire program and later influence on civil rights.
• XREF: connects to: Black nationalist self-help rhetoric surges when civil rights declines — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 244