Cultural Conflicts in the Covid-19 Era Cultural Conflicts are becoming more common during the coronavirus pandemic. However, in another research project, one of us found that students who switch to online schools experience substantial learning losses in reading and math during each of the three years after switching. Follow BI and the Hyper-Polarization Discussion on BI's New Substack Newsletter. Conflicts are arranged chronologically from the late modern period to contemporary history. It was absolutely necessary, in the interests of the unity of the working class, to oppose separatist movements that emerged or reemerged in the era of globalization. Furthermore, Lenin saw no legitimacy in the demand for the right of nations to self determination in countries where the bourgeois democratic revolution had been long completed, meaning Western Europe and the United States. Such an approach to politics, which dismisses the fundamental class character of society, benefits only the privileged upper-middle class and the ruling class, while dividing the working class. In the 1920s, the United States went through a period of extreme social change. The Socialist Workers Party, repudiating its Trotskyist heritage, responded to these developments by adapting to petty-bourgeois tendencies that dominated these movements. This perspective could be realized only on the basis of an irreconcilable struggle against the myriad petty-bourgeois radical tendencies, promoting various forms of racial, ethnic, sexual and gender identity politics, that flourished in the 1960s and early 1970s. One social issue of a class struggle is the social inequality. Rather than amalgamating the working class in a united organization, the nationalists call for separate organizations, separate unions. The appeal of the case to the Supreme Court ( Herndonv. There are a number of other developments that I can mention only briefly, but which were significant: the controversy over New York University endorsement of racially segregated dorms for black students; the cancellation of Adolph Reeds speech to the DSA because of his alleged class reductionism; the commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, which stripped one the worst racist pogroms in American history from its class context; the declaration of Juneteenth as a national holiday without any examination of the significance of the emancipation of the slaves and its revolutionary implications for the present; growing demands for racial quotas in art from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to Amazon and the Met Opera; and, most recently, the intense furor over critical race theory.. Class struggle in the USA Meeting of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) For decades, the mantra "Capitalism = good" and "Socialism = bad" was driven into our heads. Among the demands of this new Transitional Program were separate black schools from nursery school through college, all-black police forces, all-black juries for black defendants, black studies courses in high schools and colleges and the preferential hiring and advancement of blacks. Three explanations for racial and ethnic inequality in the United States are that (a) people of color are biologically inferior, now considered a racist explanation; (b) people of color have cultural deficiencies; and (c) people of color face many structural obstacles, lack of opportunity, and discriminatory practices. The SWPs espousal of Black nationalism, including the demand for a separate Black nation, reflected its dismissal of the American working class as a revolutionary force. Trotskys theory of permanent revolution confirms the dead end of all national and ethnic-basedand, for that matter, racialpolitics. Demands for the removal of Confederate monuments were turned into attacks on monuments of Lincoln, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Union commanders in the Civil War. While seeing their net worth grow substantially along with the inflation of their stock portfolios, these social layers jealously view the ultra-wealthy above them, the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent. In every single instance, black nationalism has served to divide the working class. Putting forward demands and rhetoric that did not provide a revolutionary perspective but adapted to bourgeois nationalism, following the line on Castro and Cuba, it marked the open rejection of the line Lenin had laid down on the national question which had guided the Bolsheviks in the fight for working class unity. Accepting the class conflict is not feasible at this point in modern society. Middle-class people work hard and live fairly comfortable lives. What the SWP has done is to raise the conception of an abstract, moral right above the class struggle and the needs of the working class and revolutionary party. Eight percent of Southerners believe relations between blacks and whites to be "very good," and 62% say . The question of black nationalism and racial separatism, and the struggle to lay out a clear working class perspective against it, was critical to the founding of the Workers League in the United Statesthe predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party. As Lenin said, cultural nationalism draws the working class closer to the bourgeoisie. Its opportunism found expression in its promotion of Black nationalism as an alternative to the struggle for the unity of the working class on the basis of a socialist program. Changes in the gender division of labor are leading to increasing tensions between the demands of employment and caring responsibilities (Hochschild 1997), and some have argued that gender conflicts are replacing class conflicts (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 1995). The Workers League pamphlet Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory, written by Tim Wohlforth, then the organizations national secretary, was published in 1969, a year after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and four years after the assassination of Malcolm X. Fred Hampton, head of the Black Panthers in Chicago, was assassinated the same year by the Chicago police, on December 4, 1969. A large majority of Americans (82%) say Muslims in the United States face discrimination - with 57% saying they face "a lot" of discrimination. Those who complain about the racial wealth gap are privileged members of the upper-middle class, the next nine percent below the richest 1 percent. Today every black capitalist and petty bourgeois has taken up the demand for black culture. N ote: The current British intervention in Iraq and Syria follows six years of war in Iraq from 2003-2009 when the UK joined with the United States in the Invasion of Iraq, followed by years of guerrilla warfare against Saddam loyalists, Shiite militants, and al-Qaida inspired Jihadists. There can be no compromise on this question. This was abruptly dropped in 1933 in line with the Communist Partys turn from the Third Period to the Popular Front and accommodation to liberalism and the Democratic Party. The application of this theory to the wilderness of North America produces the inevitable conclusion that the enchained Afro-American nation will achieve its complete liberation, i.e., self-determination, only through a socialist or anti-capitalist revolution. As is explained in Black Nationalism and Marxist Theory, the party does not tell an oppressed minority that it must secedein fact under certain circumstances it might agitate for them not to secede. This means, it stated, that black people must form and unify their own organizations of struggle, take control of the black communities and all the institutions within them, It called for the building of black fortresses which will be centers of black counterpower to the white power structure in the principal cities of the United States.. The class-domination theory developed in my books and discussed on this Web site is most compatible with Four Networks theory of power developed by sociologist Michael Mann.. The Militant, the newspaper of the SWP, favorably covered and republished the speeches of Malcolm X. These suits reflect broader ideological tensions over who deserves a well-funded, elite education and the governments responsibility to protect that access. Her staunchest defender is the Stalinist and academic fraud Gerald Horne. North Korea also committed to work toward the "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.". Video of the murder in broad daylight, in the midst of the initial surge of the COVID-19 pandemic, went viral online, sparking an eruption of protests against police violence and racism in Minneapolis which rapidly spread across the country and internationally. Critics, such as the School Diversity Advisory Group commissioned by former Mayor Bill de Blasio, argue that gifted programs segregate students by race, since research has shown that students of color are underrepresented in these programs. Because classes define opposing attitudes, they tend to produce opposing conflict-parties. The aim of focusing on reparations was to make race a central pillar in the 2020 presidential election campaign. That same year, the Black Panther Party (BPP) was founded by Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in Oakland, California. These unions secured protective measures such as virtual instruction, priority vaccine access for teachers, medical and personal leave related to COVID-19, explicit metrics to determine when schools would close, district-provided personal protective equipment for teachers and classroom air filtration systems. It is in this context that profoundly anti-Marxist, anti-scientific and anti-working class conceptions developed within academia and by the pseudo-left over the last five decades are being pumped into the countrys bloodstream, with the financial backing of tens of millions of dollars from major foundations and big business. Social class in the United States is a controversial issue, having many competing definitions, models, and even disagreements over its very existence. They deploy identity politics grievances in an effort to attain a greater share of the pie for themselves. Acceptance of black nationalism is thus deeply connected with a pragmatic retreat on the part of the revisionists from an international outlook and an acceptance, not of the crisis of international capital and the struggle of classes, the Workers League said, but the permanence of capitalism and its race divisions., In a line that brings to mind the works of Hannah-Jones and others who adopt a racialist perspective, the pamphlet noted that once the monstrous method of thinking in national and race terms creeps into ones outlook it takes total control and nothing, nothing can be seen in anything but racial terms., The position of the black nationalists, as with the petty-bourgeois racialists of today, was that America is a white racist society, meaning that all whites are racist and enemies of blacks. The position of Lenin and the Bolsheviks was to uphold the right of a nation to secede, but not to fight for its secession. A list of demands presented by DRUM to UAW Local 3 in July 1968 called for the hiring of African Americans at every level, from plant security to plant manager, and also a position on the Chrysler board of directors. Furthermore, as was shown by the experience of the breakup of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the slogan of national self determination could be used to cover over the most reactionary socioeconomic and political perspectives. A black worker has more in common with a white worker than he or she does with the black elite. In 2022, expect conflicts over virtual school offerings to intensify, especially as the omicron variant surges and as some states push toward vaccine mandates for all students. The Manifesto of the Communist Party by Marx and Engels famously begins with: "The history of all hither existing societies is the history of class struggles." The United States is no. The . The public believes that class conflict is rising. But majorities also say that gays and lesbians (76%), blacks (76%), Hispanics (70%) and women (60%) face at least some discrimination. Class struggle in the USA For millions of people around the world, the United States represents the ultimate citadel of reaction: Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton, the CIA, imperialism, sanctions, war, drones, anti-communism, discrimination, and exploitation. Class conflict refers to the struggle of different sections of a society regarding the economic status of its people. In some situations, it can be destructive for some groups and act as a cohesive force for others. The CP organized their legal defense through the International Labor Defense and made it an international issue. Only then will students be able to select advanced math courses, such as calculus or statistics. Against the proponents of racial conflict and division, the working class must respond with the methods of class war and socialist revolution. Based on news reports or personal experiences, identify an example of class conflict. And it's the number one cause of hunger in the world, tearing families, communities, infrastructure, food systems and entire regions apart. ), Negro nationalism is progressive because it contributes to the creation of such an independent Negro movement, Revolutionary socialists welcome the growth of such Negro nationalism and give its participants whole hearted collaboration in the fight against our common enemies. Gifted programs offer accelerated learning opportunities for students who score at the top of their class on standardized tests. In The negro, nation and Marxist theory, in December 1968, Lucy St. John, editor of the Bulletin, the newspaper of the Workers League, noted that the SWP was relying on limited discussions with Trotsky on the Negro questionas it was then knownwhich focused on the question of the right of nations to self determination and its possible application to African Americans, in order to justify its rush to support black nationalism and betray the working class: Their method and their conclusions have absolutely nothing to do with Marxism, with Trotskyism. Even former Georgia gubernatorial candidate and vice presidential hopeful Stacey Abrams, a proponent of identity politics who has argued that blacks and whites have intrinsic racial differences, covered for Bloomberg and his billions. Two-thirds of Americans say there are strong conflicts between the rich and the poor in America, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. Virtual education In 2022, expect conflicts over virtual school offerings to intensify,. Objective class divisions cut across every grouping. The past few weeks have exposed just how much a person's risk of infection hinges on class. Between April 1964 and January 1965, Malcolm X spoke three times at meetings of the Militant Labor Forum organized by the SWP. In 2022, look to teachers unions to continue to assert themselves in the face of ongoing efforts by parent and advocacy groups to limit their power. As researchers who study conflicts in education, we see clashes like these continuing into 2022. The threat posed to the ruling order by a combination of black and white farmers in the agricultural South and workers in the industrial Northexpressed most clearly in the Populist movement of the 1890sgave rise to the promotion of racial prejudice and legal Jim Crow segregation in the former slave states, along with de facto segregation in the cities. This perspective expressed the influence of the New Left, which derived much of its theoretical inspiration from the anti-Marxist conceptions of Herbert Marcuse, a leading representative of the Frankfurt School, who characterized the working class as a proto-fascist element in American society. The party adopted a resolution at its Third National Convention in 1940 calling for black members to work with other militant blacks to form such a mass organization as a means of developing work among the black masses and recruiting the best elements to the Fourth International. In his discussion with the SWP leadership on the issue of how to reach African American workers, Trotsky upheld the right of nations to self determination as an essential component of the Marxist program and held open the possibility that blacks could become a nation, but did not endorse black nationalism or separatism.