Random Poster 15 hours ago Removed

The negative response to this review should come as no surprise. It relates directly to WSWS.org‘s unexplained break from Marxism over the issue of national independence and the rights of nations to self determination. The Bolsheviks, Lenin and Trotsky included, defended the rights of nations to separate governments. This included the right of black Americans. Trotsky referred to it, in Ch. 39 of Volume 3, of his history of the Russian Revolution, [as] “that famous paragraph 9 of the old party programme which formulated the right of nations to self-determination.” [Or more simply “that famous paragraph 9 of the old party programme.”] The paragraph which contains that quote and [the paragraph that follows] bear rereading.

The WSWS takes a different approach, which might stem from confusion about the topic. The opposition to separation did exist in their time, and they did support [the opposition to seperation and chauvinism]. However, and this point is important, this was only for the revolutionary party and the Communist International. They supported referendums for the people to decide their own fate. If a majority of black people, whose average net worth is only 10% of white people[‘s] in the United States, voted in a referendum for separate governments, a revolutionary party would support this process of seperation. As of now, only the Democratic Power faction of the ICFI supports this position within the ICFI.

What does this have to do with Nas’s new album? His approach may not resemble the anti-racist approach of an international revolutionary party of the working class, but it does represent the real grievances of the African diaspora, the group of people forced from their homes as slaves, killed by the millions, and often erased from history when they put forward great individuals. While these issues may seem divisive for the revolutionary movement, the revolutionary party can overcome these differences not by ignoring them but by generalizing them.

The story of African Americans resembles the stories of various peoples forced from their homes and treated like slaves. These examples exist in the modern day, if you look at underpaid Mexican and other South American immigrant workers in various industries, such as agriculture, restaurants, and cleaning services, as well as domestic workers, and others. Also, we had the situation of Japanese Americans in internment camps. In Europe, various Eastern European and Southern European workers earn a tenth of what Western European workers do. The revolutionary party may overcome these differences only through consciousness of the importance of their unified higher tasks, mainly to end the rule of the bourgeoisie in their own countries while building an international organization to unite the efforts of the working class internationally. Overcoming these differences may be difficult, but the payoff can be exponential.

This leads to the last point: the socialist movement need not accept the positions of asceticism and opposition to opulence. These represent only one side of the synthesis that forms dialectical materialism. Encased within a seemingly useless but very valuable object, we have an abstract but real substance. That real substance comes from the work carried out with the intent [in mind] of raising [or producing] its value in mind [sic]. To bring the ownership of such items into the movement does not diminish but raise the capacity of the movement to achieve its aims.

The pursuit of such ownership, obviously, based on exploitation or family feuds for inheritances, produce the opposite effect. Exploitation of the acquisitor occurs at the moment of exchange, and therefore exchange, not ownership itself, must raise suspicions. If you are imagining a famous rapper within the revolutionary movement, you should not judge them for their wealth but for the way they use it to shift opinions (or prevent any shifts) in exchange for money.