Reader criticizes Du Bois, praises Garvey Dear Comrade, I will start off by saying this. After reading the articles on W.E.B. DuBois in the MIM Notes, I was very bothered. DuBois was a hypocrite and was totally against self- determination, communism, socialism, and Pan-Africanism for the Kemites, AKA Afrikan descendants in the Western Hemisphere. Moreso, it should be Marcus Garvey getting the praises DuBois is getting. You see DuBois only embraced communism when it was forced upon him in his early 90's. After dealing with the united $nakes first hand and when he wasn't accepted in his efforts to integrate with the European working class of this imperialist country. Then he accepted the positions of communism, socialism, and Kemitic liberation from these imperialist parasites. Marcus Garvey is a true pioneering Kemitic leader, Pan-Africanist and socialist. His idealist thinking of self-determination was to establish our own economic system to establish the Kemites as a nation. But poor management, appointment of charlatans and DuBois' condemnation of Garvey's thinking by saying we need to integrate first then work towards liberation of our people, [all set back Garvey's plan. DuBois] was wrong by definition. Garvey was a theorist and a practitioner. He practiced what he preached and taught. However, don't get me wrong as far as integrating, I'm all for working together. A nationalist helps out everyone who's in need. I'm a nationalist to the heart. And all nationalists have the same conviction: to better their ethnic group out of the evil system of colonialism and imperialism enslavement by the petty bourgeoisie. The oppression spoke of during DuBois and Garvey's times in the united $nakes was combatted more by Garvey, who was almost successful if it weren't for DuBois and Hoover's divide and conquer tactics. DuBois' main opposition towards Garvey was that he fought for integration into the European working class that was subjugating his very essence. But that idealistic thinking is flawed, because of the poor European paranoia that Kemites and other oppressed nations would take over. History tells this story to the fullest. Garvey was betrayed in the very end by what kept the masses and Kemitic peoples apart. His people, along with Hoover, did him in. But DuBois' criticsim of self-empowerment did not help either, but only pushed the oppressed peoples farther apart. However, as time went on Dubois started to see what Garvey was doing wasn't such a bad idea. But the damage was done. Garvey was sent to prison for five years, got out two and a half years later and was then deported back to Jamaica. The united $nakes took all the money he made to give back to the people, in what was allegedly a fraud. But DuBois's criticism hurt the movement more than it did good. As long as the European capitalist has control it won't play out the way it should for whoever tries to teach self - determination. In the end DuBois was deported to Ghana with all the help he did for this country. In the end the united $nakes main objective was done; divide and conquer by the imperialist subjugation of the Lumpen nations, AKA disenfranchised by enslavement and new and old colonial thinking. Dr. DuBois only got revolutionary too late in the game. It's like that with three fourths of prophets that come with the ideals of eliminating imperialism of any kind. Yes I will forgive him for his ignorance in the beginning of his alleged struggle for trying to integrate into the Euro- working class, in which it would have disenfranchised us as it did. Moreso, he did acknowledge this before his death. Therefore, I will not forget what was done on both fronts. So it is only appropriate that you acknowledge Marcus Garvey too. He was for the Lumpen revolution and died doing just that as a disenfranchised, ridiculed, affronted, and Kemitic leader, as did Dr. DuBois even though, they both wanted nothing more than to better the living standards for the Lumpen as well as others. They wanted only to be treated as equals and to gain self-determination. In the struggle, a MA prisoner MC5 replies: The comrade is definitely right that Du Bois was politically mixed much of his life. In some phases, he spoke for integration and nationalism in the same months. On the other hand, he fought many various power struggles in the details, and found it useful to use the idea of integration when getting jobs for Blacks in academia and government. As the comrade said, Du Bois was trying his whole life to do something for the lumpen and everyone else who was oppressed. However, first just a comment on Garvey: we agree with the writer except that we find it difficult to credit those who celebrate oppressor nation nationalism, and this is one of the mistakes that Garvey made to bring respectability to his nationalism. Oppressor nation nationalism should never be celebrated as it prolongs the life of imperialism and brings about the possible end of the species. It is only the nationalism of the oppressed that is applied internationalism. Even then the nationalism of the oppressed can only be led to a progressive conclusion by a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist party. Otherwise, the nationalism of the oppressed may find its outlet in attacking the nationalism of other oppressed groups and fail to attack the real source of the problem. While Garvey initially may have broken with Du Bois for correct reasons, he swung back to outdo Du Bois on his acceptance of the oppressor nation. It is true that Garvey may have done this only because he and Du Bois never worked out unity. Still, we have to judge the man for himself. A temporary lack of support is no reason for a leader to give up important principles. The idea that Du Bois was too late, we certainly concur with as we agree with most of the writer's article. It turns out that all potential political leaders of the time were at least just a little too late, including Garvey, the Comintern, MIM-like critics of the Comintern and Du Bois. We also welcome further reviews and articles on Garvey's political development with regard to communism, imperialism and oppressor nation nationalism. The fact that Du Bois made self-criticism for his previous errors makes him a credible figure of which we can be proud, even while we wish someone would have hit the nail on the head much earlier. Much of our criticism of Du Bois's political life had to be cut in the initial review of Lewis's book for lack of space in MIM Notes 225, Jan 1, 2001. We print it below. Review of David Levering Lewis's biography continued Pragmatism Because Du Bois was a student of pragmatist philospher William James, much is made of Du Bois's own pragmatism. In his last autobiography, Du Bois himself makes a big deal of pragmatism's hold on him as a young man. In this context, pragmatism refers to a kind of gradualism and disdain for theory and dialectics. What we materialists like about pragmatists is their inclination to make real world choices without regard for religion or other metaphysical ideas. When Du Bois sided with one imperialist against another in World War I he was guilty of pragmatism. He saw a lesser evil of having U.$. Blacks fight and get credit or not fighting and having the war still go on. Reed tries to take Du Bois's philosophical background one step further and refers to Du Bois as an outright Fabian, at one time espousing liberalism, at other times communism and Pan- Africanism. His willingness to move amongst these philosophies might reflect an underlying pragmatism or the actuality of the similarity of these philosophies relative to religious mysticism in terms of their support of the concepts of science and progress. According to Reed [in ITAL W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line END], because Du Bois had a very deep philosophy underlying his public expressions, all these ideas were more or less similar in his mind. In fact, Du Bois did move amongst people in the British Fabian society,(Lewis, p. 514) but he also rubbed elbows with countless leaders from various ideologies, especially because he tried so much of liberalism, social-democracy and finally communism. On the whole, we conclude that Reed's book title is an opportunist attempt to sell Du Bois in the tepid climate of academia. We prefer to take Du Bois's explanations of his changes of opinion at face-value and we accept Du Bois's conclusions of later life that Marxism was the correct path because liberalism was a failure. MIM would have to admit that the pragmatism of much of Du Bois's life is what we disagree with most. Du Bois did not arrive at communism by deduction, but rather after a lifetime of what he believed to be more moderate but failed struggles. An example of Du Bois's pragmatism is the fact that he referred to degrees of racism. To him, there was a fairly big difference between racism in colonialist France (e.g., Lewis, pp. 41, 45, 562) and racism in the United $tates. Du Bois was also inclined to call many leaders and countries socialist, (Reed, p. 89) even while he held the most hope for the Soviet Union and Mao's China. It's not that he did not draw distinctions, but that Du Bois tended to downplay dialectical advances, stages and breaks in his early life. After his failure in World War I, we are sorry to say that Du Bois lurched toward another failure in World War II. While for the most part he supported the Soviet Union and opposed the imperialists, he made an exception for Japan and advised the Chinese in 1936 to submit to Japanese occupation in order to better drive out the Europeans; although he admitted his opinions ventured on this point were hasty and reckless.(Lewis, pp. 415-6; pp. 461-2) Du Bois extolled Japan as a country run by colored people in a world of white-dominated colonies yet to free themselves.(Lewis, p. 417) It was left to Mao at the time to see the dialectical potential of the Chinese people such that they could drive out both the European and Japanese imperialists, one at a time, but in quick succession, and thereby prove Du Bois's lesser evil thesis about Japanese imperialism wrong. The fact that pragmatist Du Bois was so wrong about China and Japan is a lesson to all those pragmatists today telling MIM to vote for Democrats or militarist Greens because they are "lesser evils." Like the Chinese people, most of the world's people have an interest in overthrowing imperialism and its symptom of war. That is what makes real change possible. There is no need to vote for people who do not oppose the rights of capitalists to starve and pollute others to death for profit. We must at minimum insist on the absolute humyn rights of survival and not compromise with people who think survival rights are subordinate to property rights or "free speech." People like Al Gore essentially believe they have the right to man political systems unnecessarily starving people to death. We seek to repress people with Al Gore's beliefs and we reject the pragmatists who say we should have supported him as a "lesser evil." The fight against pragmatism is a very difficult one, especially for the English and Amerikan peoples. MIM would like to persuade readers that pragmatism's emphasis on real-world choices only works in reference to the past. Thus, we can now say that Mao's choice was better than Du Bois's when it came to Japan. Furthermore, revolutions that have occurred and eliminated starvation, homelessness and war have occurred in the tradition of Lenin and Stalin, not Trotsky and other Mensheviks. We will accept responsibility for the reality of advance in the USSR, Albania and China amongst other places in the past and we can see that with all the revolutions in the 20th century, that it is wrong to say revolution is impossible. When it comes to the future, dialectical leadership is at a premium everywhere in the world. It is not possible to choose amongst real-world choices of the future in so straight-forward a way as we can choose the best of the past. What has yet to happen involves choices made here and now, but the "lesser evil" approach cannot work with reference to creating change in the future. Creating the best future requires a scientific effort at predicting what is possible -- what Mao did better than Du Bois in China in 1936.