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stratum. As a labor aristocracy it had, instead of a proletarian,
revolutionary consciousness, a petit-bourgeois
consciousness that was unable to rise above reformism.
This period is important for us to analyze, because
here for the first time we start to see the modern political
form of the Euro-Amerikan masses emerge. Here, at the
very start of industrial capitalism, are trade-unions, labor
electoral campaigns, "Marxist" organizations, nationwide
struggles by white workers against the capitalists, major
proposals for "White and Negro" labor alliance.
What we find is that this new class of white
workers was indeed angry and militant, but so completely
dominated by petit-bourgeois consciousness that they
always ended up as the pawns of various bourgeois
political factions. Because they clung to and hungered
after the petty privileges derived from the loot of empire,
they as a stratum became rabid and reactionary supporters
of conquest and the annexation of oppressed nations. The
"trade-union unity" deemed so important by Euro-
Amerikan radicals (then and now) kept falling apart and
was doomed to failure. Not because white workers were
racist (although they were), but because this alleged
"trade-union unity" was just a ruse to divide, confuse and
stall the oppressed until new genocidal attacks could be
launched against us, and completely drive us out of their
way.
This new stratum, far from possessing a revolutionary
potential, was unable to even take part in the
democratic struggles of the 19th century. When we go back
and trace the Euro-Amerikan workers' movements from
their early stages in the pre-industrial period up thru the
end of the 19th Century, this point is very striking.
In the 1820's-30's, before white workers had even
developed into a class, they still played a major role in the
political struggles of "Jacksonian Democracy". At that
time the "United States" was a classic bourgeois
democracy-that is, direct "democracy" for a handful of
capitalists. Even among settlers, high property qualifications,
residency laws and sex discrimination limited the
vote to a very small minority. So popular movements, based
among angry small farmers and urban workingmen,
arose in state after state to strike down these limitations-and
thus force settler government to better share
the spoils of empire.
reform movements of the settler masses. The reason is easy
to grasp: Everywhere in the North, the pre-Civil War
popular struggles to enlarge the political powers of the settler
masses also had the program of taking away civil rights
from Afrikans. These movements had the public aim of
driving all Afrikans out of the North. The 1821 New York
"Reform Convention" gave all white workingmen the
vote, while simultaneously raising property qualifications
for Afrikan men so high that it effectively disenfranchised
the entire community. By 1835 it was estimated that only
75 Afrikans out of 15,000 in that state had voting rights.(6)
This unconcealed attack on Afrikans was in point
of fact a compromise, with Van Buren restraining the
white majority which hated even the few, remaining shreds
of civil rights left for well-to-do Afrikans. Van Buren paid
for this in his later years, when opposing politicians (such
as Abraham Lincoln) attacked him for letting any
Afrikans vote at all. For that matter, this new, expanded
settler electorate in New York turned down bills to let
Afrikans vote for many years thereafter. In the 1860 elections
while Lincoln and the G.O.P. were winning New
York by a 32,000 vote majority, only 1,600 votes supported
a bill for Afrikan suffrage. Frederick Douglass
pointed out that civil rights for Afrikans was supported by
"neither Republicans nor abolitionists".(7)
These earlier popular movements of settler workingmen
found significant expression in the Presidency of
Andrew Jackson, the central figure of "Jacksonian
Democracy". This phrase is used by historians to designate
the rabble-rousing, anti-elite reformism he helped introduce
into settler politics. His role in the early political
stirrings of the white workers was so large that even today
some Euro-Amerikan "Communist" labor historians
proudly refer to "the national struggle for economic and
political democracy led by Andrew Jackson."(8)
Jackson did indeed lead a "national struggle" to
enrich not only his own class (the planter bourgeoisie) but
his entire settler nation of oppressors. He stood at a critical
point in the great expansion into Empire. During his two
administrations he personally led the campaigns to abolish
the National Bank (which was seen by many settlers as protecting
the monopolistic power of the very few top
capitalists and their British and French backers) and to ensure
settler prosperity by annexing new territory into the
Empire. In both he was successful.
In New York State, for example, one liberal land- The boom in slave cotton and the parallel rise in
mark was the "Reform Convention" of 1821, where the immigrant European labor was tied to the removal of the
supporters of Martin Van Buren swept away the high pro- Indian nations from the land. After all, the expensive
perty qualifications that had previously barred white work- growth of railroads, canals, mills and workshops was only
ingmen from voting. This was a significant victory for possible with economic expansion-an expansion that
them. Historian Leon Litwack has pointed out that the could only come from the literal expansion of Amerika
1821 Convention "has come to symbolize the expanded through new conquests. And the fruits of new conquests
democracy which made possible the triumph of Andrew were very popular with settlers of all strata, North and
Jackson seven years later." Van Buren became the hero of South. The much-needed expansion of cash export crops
the white workers, and was later to follow Jackson into the (primarily cotton) and trade was being blocked as the settl-
White House.(S)
ed land areas ran up against the Indian-U.S. Empire
borders. In particular, the so-called "Five Civilized Na-
Did this national trend "for the extension and not tions" (Creeks, Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and
the restriction of popular rights" (to quote the voting Seminoles), Indian nations that had already been recognizrights
committee of the Convention) involve the unity of ed as sovereign territorial entities in U.S. treaties, held
Euro-Amerikan and Afrikan workers? No. In fact, the much of the South: Northern Georgia, Western North
free Afrikan communities in the North opposed these l5 Carolina, Southern Tennessee, much of Alabama and two-