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Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist

by Harry Haywood

4.3 of 5 stars 4.30 · rating details · 33 ratings · 3 reviews

"On July 28, 1919, I literally stepped into a battle that was to last the rest of my life. Exactly three months after mustering out of the Army, I found myself in the middle of one of the bloodiest race riots in U.S. history."

Like thousands of other Black veterans in 1919, young Harry Haywood realized that, although the "war to end all wars" was over, the battle on the ho

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Paperback , 736 pages

Published January 1st 1978 by Univ Of Minnesota Press

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Jul 30, 2011 William West added it

Fascinating autobiography of Harry Haywood, an important activist in the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, when it truly was an influential force in the American Left. It was Haywood who first fully developed the notion of African-American self-determination- that Blacks in the U.S. constituted an independent, oppressed nation, like the minority groups within the "prison house of nations" of Tsarist Russia. Haywood felt that African-Americans were owed the option of real self-determination withi Fascinating autobiography of Harry Haywood, an important activist in the Communist Party USA in the 1930s, when it truly was an influential force in the American Left. It was Haywood who first fully developed the notion of African-American self-determination- that Blacks in the U.S. constituted an independent, oppressed nation, like the minority groups within the "prison house of nations" of Tsarist Russia. Haywood felt that African-Americans were owed the option of real self-determination within the geographic U.S- an independent Black nation in the Black Belt.

Haywood lived in an America where the African-American community was still very much centered in the “Black Belt” of the south-eastern states. This geographic and ethnic grouping had been, of course, systematically depressed by the oppressor-nation, the United States. A bourgeois revolution had almost taken place in the Reconstruction period, but had never been finished due to the betrayal and roll-back of Reconstruction. So, Haywood argued, the proletariat of the north, and the peasantry of the Black Belt, were natural allies against the white bourgeoisie of the United States, which sought to suppress a proletarian, socialist revolution in the North, and an agrarian bourgeois revolution in the South.

Haywood was also a life-long, self-described, "Stalinist". His unwavering support of Stalin, which continued after the Khrushchev revelations, is somewhat startling for a contemporary reader. However, given the historical epoch that Haywood lived and worked in, his defense of the Stalinist line in relation to Trotsky is somewhat understandable. Haywood argues convincingly that Lenin and Stalin understood better than Trotsky the significance for the communist movement of forming an alliance with the peasantry, not just within the former Russian "prison-house of nations," but with supporting the bourgeois-nationalist revolutions of developing nations, be they pre-revolutionary Estonia, the Black Belt, or contemporary Iran. These colonial nations were the natural allies of the revolutionary proletariat, even if their revolutions would not, initially have a socialist character.

However, the book also gives a fascinating account of the relationship of the CP USA to the Soviet leadership and (perhaps inadvertenty) offers a damning portrait (from a communist perspective) of the structure of the old Comminturn. Since the actions of Communist parties in the major capitalist countries had to meet with the "approval" of the Soviet leadership, then that same leadership would inevitably stifle revolutionary activity in the main capitalist countries in order to avoid provoking a war with the West that would have threatened and potentially destroyed the comfortable position of the Soviet leadership. The Comminturn model would never have led to revolution in the West, without which (as even the Soviet leadership acknowledged) the Socialist camp could not have hoped to survive in the long run.

In historical hind-sight, Trotsky's emphasis on inciting revolution in the West seems, from a communist perspective, once again relevant. The Comminturn model could never have been successful. From a communist perspective, it would seem most practical for revolutionary parties to develop independently within each nation, evaluating their particular nation's cultural conditions for themselves, while respecting and supporting foreign revolutionaries unconditionally. ...more

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Jan 06, 2008 Geoff rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: black-liberation , marxism , autobiography

This is one of the more useful and informative works I've run into on the history of the Communist Party USA. Haywood was a leading member of the Party and one of the folks who formulated the policy of upholding the Black Nation's right to self-determination. In this autobiography he takes us through his childood and youth, his experiences in World War 1, joining the Communist Party, living in the Soviet Union, fightingin the Spanish Civil War and other struggles against fascism and capital in t ...more

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Feb 22, 2009 Josh Sykes rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book had a tremendous affect on me. It changed the way I understand Black Liberation, national oppression, and racism in the United States. It also clearified my thinking on the history of the Marxist-Leninist movement in the U.S. This is probably the most important ML book to come out of the U.S. pretty much ever. I am re-reading it for the third time!

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About Harry Haywood

From Wikipedia:
Harry Haywood (February 6, 1898 - January 1985) was born in South Omaha, Nebraska to former slaves, Harriet and Haywood Hall. He was the youngest of three children. Named after his father at birth, Haywood Hall, "Harry Haywood" is a pseudonym adopted in 1925. Radicalized by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, he was a leading African American member of both the Communist Party of the Uni From Wikipedia:
Harry Haywood (February 6, 1898 - January 1985) was born in South Omaha, Nebraska to former slaves, Harriet and Haywood Hall. He was the youngest of three children. Named after his father at birth, Haywood Hall, "Harry Haywood" is a pseudonym adopted in 1925. Radicalized by the Chicago Race Riot of 1919, he was a leading African American member of both the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). He is best known for his significant theoretical contributions to the Marxist national question and as a founder of the Maoist New Communist Movement.

Harry Haywood began his revolutionary career by joining the African Blood Brotherhood in 1922 followed by the Young Communist League in 1923. Shortly thereafter, in 1925 he joined the Communist Party, USA. After joining the CPUSA Haywood went to Moscow to study, first to the Communist University of the Toilers of the East in 1925, then to the International Lenin School in 1927. He stayed until 1930 as a delegate to the Communist International (Comintern). There he worked on commissions dealing with the question of African Americans in the United States as well as the development of the "Native Republic Thesis" for the South African Communist Party. Haywood worked to draft the "Comintern Resolutions on the Negro Question" of 1928 and 1930, which put forward the line that African Americans in the Black Belt of the United States made up an oppressed nation, with the right to self-determination up to and including secession. He would continue to fight for this line throughout his life.

In the CPUSA, Haywood served on the Central Committee from 1927 to 1938 and on the Politburo from 1931 until 1938. He also participated in the major factional struggles internal to the CPUSA against Jay Lovestone and Earl Browder, regularly siding with William Z. Foster.

Following the death of Stalin in 1953 and Nikita Krushchev's rise to power, the CPUSA accompanied Moscow in Krushchev's policy of destalinization and "peaceful coexistence". Long an admirer of Mao Zedong, Harry Haywood was one of the pioneers of the anti-revisionist movement born out of the growing Sino-Soviet split. He was driven out of the CPUSA in the late 1950s along with many others who took firm anti-revisionist or pro-Stalin positions.

After being isolated and driven from the ranks of the CPUSA, Harry Haywood became one of the initiators of the New Communist Movement, the goal of which was to found a new vanguard Communist Party on an anti-revisionist basis, believing the CPUSA to have deviated irrevocably from Marxism-Leninism. He was one of the founders of the Provisional Organizing Committee for a Communist Party (POC), formed in New York in August, 1958 by eighty-three mostly Black and Puerto Rican delegates from the CPUSA. According to Haywood, the POC rapidly degenerated into an isolated, dogmatic, ultraleft sect, completely removed from any political practice.

He went from there to work in one of the newly formed Maoist groups of the New Communist Movement, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist). In the CP(M-L) Haywood served on the Central Committee and published, along with his other major works, his 700 page, critical autobiography, Black Bolshevik. This book became, because of its breadth and scope, an important document and through it and his other writings Haywood was able to provide ideological leadership to the New Communist Movement ...more

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For a Revolutionary Position on the Negro Question

Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood

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