The Real Class Struggle Is Not Between The Workers and Bosses Within The Oppressor Nation, But Between The Oppressor and Oppressed Nations.

What Is "African Internationalism"?

"African Internationalism is a scientifically falsifiable theory as can be seen in this question: Would capitalism and the resultant European wealth and African impoverishment have occurred without the European attack on Africa, its division, African slavery and dispersal, colonialism and neocolonialism? The answer is No! No! No! and a thousand times, No! Karl Marx said no, although its significance obviously escaped him. The answer to this question exposes the other shallow theories put forward to explain the advent of capitalism and the comparative conditions of existence separating Europe from the rest of the world.


As African Internationalists, we understand that capitalism is inherently parasitic and that its emergence coincides with the beginning of a world economy based on the dialectic of oppressor and oppressed nations. We understand that all whites, regardless of their class position and station of life, enjoy the parasitic advantages of the oppressor nation. While it is true that within the oppressor nation there are inherent contradictions peculiar to its internal dynamics, all whites occupy an oppressor nation status. This is true of white men and women, workers and bosses, and heterosexuals and homosexuals.


Because of the structure of a world economy, built on a pedestal of the brutal exploitation of Africans and other oppressed nation subjects, the locus of the real class struggle is not between the workers and bosses within the oppressor nation, but between the oppressor and oppressed nations.

On July 19, 1920, V.I. Lenin, leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, made a presentation to the Second Congress of the Third Communist International that reflected the impact the Garvey movement and other struggles for national liberation was having on the consciousness of Europeans who had previously disregarded our significance.


Faced with the growing clamor and actions of the world’s peoples to escape imperialist domination, Lenin was forced to conclude:


“World imperialism shall fall when the revolutionary onslaught of the exploited and oppressed workers in each country, overcoming resistance from petty bourgeois elements and the influence of the small upper crust of labor aristocrats, merges with the revolutionary onslaught of hundreds of millions of people who have hitherto stood beyond the pale of history, and have been regarded merely as the object of history.”


The fact that Lenin was wrong in his estimation of the significance of the workers from the industrialized capitalist countries in the ultimate defeat of imperialism is not as important as the fact that he and others were forced by the growth and power of our movement to acknowledge that our re-entry into history is a precondition for the defeat of imperialism." - Omali Yeshitela.

More from the Report to the 5th Party Congress of the African Peoples Socialist Party here.