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PAUL
FELDMAN
as well. The Jewish businessman's rise was mainly on the backs of
Jewish workers. The ghetto sweatshops may be a
dim
and unpleasant
memory for those whose ownership of them facilitated their movement
to the suburbs. But not apparently to some Negro entrepreneurs who
want to get there too.
There is talk in these circles of a separate black capitalist system
or nation within the U.S. This would mean, as Tom Kahn has pointed
out, the replacement of a "colonial economy" (to use the terms of the
black power movement) dominated by whites with a neocolonial
system overseen by some blacks but still dominated by white capitalists.
One aspect of this idea is grounded in reality, an exploitative one. Some
sections of corporate finance might
be
willing to provide capital invest–
ment to placate a part of the Negro community which would be used
to pacify the rest. This alliance of Negro businessmen and white cor–
poration heads, not a separatist economy, is the serious alternative to
the strategy of coalition with organized labor proposed by Rustin.
It is not surprising that aspiring Negro entrepreneurs are marching
under the Black Nationalist banner. This is one of the reasons so few
black workers can be found in the ranks: all "national" or "ethnic"
bourgeoisie have a history of superexploitation of their own people. This,
in fact, is how such strata get assimilated into the mainstream.
"Black power's" Left Wing has just as little to offer the Negro work–
ing class and underclass. It preaches a kind of socialism in one ghetto that
is as utopian as it is irrelevant to the needs of the Negro poor. For,
as Marx pointed out and Stalin proved., social equality cannot
be
built
on foundations of economic scarcity. This is exactly what a separatist
black socialist movement would be attempting.
Those who propose it are not even serious about the idea. Stokely
Carmichael's call for a "United Black Front" would have to include,
and does, black slumlords and black tenants, black businessmen and
black workers. Civil rights activist Norman Hill came across such a
phenomenon while organizing rent strikes in Chicago's Negro ghetto
under the auspices of UAW community unions. Negro landlords unsuc–
cessfully appealed in the name of "black power" to Negro tenants, some
of whom were nationalists, to reject the rent strike of the "honky"
union, which they said was attempting to divide the black community.
This confrontation was a vivid demonstration of the oft repeated remark
that "black power" means different things to different people.
While black powerists make alliances with Negro entrepreneurs,
many of whom have a stake in exploitation and segregation, their attack
often is directed at a more progressive section of the Negro middle class
