(The paragraphs containing the excerpts on which Mr. Sourwine questioned the witness read as follows:)

The Stalin Interview-A Blow at the

Mr. SOURWINE. Mr. Hall, in that Political Affairs article were you seeking to disaffect American soldiers?

Mr. HALL. The same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. At page 21 you say in that article:

The soldiers sent by Wall Street ostensibly to "defend" the United States against an alleged threat to its shores from 3,000-mile-away Korea are not "sold" on the war propaganda.

What information did you have which led you to make that statement?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Were you in contact with American soldiers in Korea?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. In the December 1957 issue of Political Affairs at page 3, in an article entitled "The South's New Challenge," James E. Jackson, Jr., refers to the situation in the South as a "hope chest of southern working class struggle." Is that the Communist viewpoint today?

Mr. HALL. I claim privilege.

Mr. SOURWINE. Has there been, Mr. Hall, a recent important shift in the Communist Party, U.S.A., policy on the Negro question? Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. You have written, for instance:

You have before you, Comrades, a very important resolution on the Negro question. As you know, this is a very important shift in the basic and longrange approach of our party to this question.

Will you explain that for us?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Isn't it true, Mr. Hall, that this so-called basic change occurred after James E. Jackson of the secretariat of the National Committee of the Communist Party, U.S.A., visited Moscow in 1959?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Jackson is the Communist Party's secretary on southern and Negro affairs, isn't he?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Did you hear Jackson when he spoke on this subject before the 17th convention of the Communist Party.

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. You were there, were you not?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. In that speech Jackson said:

Our party takes great pride in the fact that it was able to be represented on the guest list of the 21st congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Do you know who so represented the American Communist Party? Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. It was Jackson himself, was it not?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Now, the Daily Worker of January 3, 1960, refers to Jackson as the Communist Party secretary on southern and Negro affairs. Is the Worker in error in that reference?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. Isn't it true that the revised Communist Party resolution on the Negro question calls for dropping the party's previous demand for self-determination for the Negro people in the black belt?

Mr. HALL. Same answer.

Mr. SOURWINE. This revised resolution appears in Political Affairs of January 1959 at pages 42 to 46.

I ask, Mr. Chairman, that this be inserted in the record as a part thereof.

Senator JOHNSTON. It will be inserted in the record.

(The resolution referred to was marked "Exhibit No. 5" and reads as follows:)

EXHIBIT No. 5

THEORETICAL ASPECTS OF THE NEGRO QUESTION (DRAFT RESOLUTION) (By National Committee, CPUSA)

PROPOSITION I

The United States is a historically derived, national formation; an amalgam of more or less well-differentiated nationalities. The Negro people are the most severely oppressed and all-sidedly exploited of all the peoples who make up the U.S. Nation.

The Negro people of the United States are not constituted as a separately developed nation. Rather, their characteristics are that of a racially distinctive people or nationality who are a historically determined component of the American Nation of the United States.

Though deprived of their just and equal rights and freedom to fully participate in all aspects of the affairs of the Nation, the Negro people nonetheless have contributed to and have an inseparable stake in (no less than the other nationality components) the American Nation's common territory, economic life, language, culture, and psychological makeup.

The Negro question in the United States is a national question; it is one of the many varieties of the national question embraced by Marxist science.

The oppressors of the American Negro people are the imperialist ruling circles of the United States, the monopoly capitalists who own the biggest industrial-financing institutions of our country, and through these control and direct its economic and political life. The "extra take" in superprofits, extracted by this class through the Negro-white inequality in wages alone, is estimated at $4 billion annually, a figure greater than U.S. imperialism's profits from its LatinAmerican investments.

"The struggles of the Negro people and the resultant significant advances inspire Negro Americans with a new quality of self-confidence. A profound spirit of national consciousness and pride in their racial identification permeates the Negro people of the United States today. It fires their determination to build ever closer their unity in order to wage the struggle even more militantly to break down all barriers to their exercise of any and all political, economic, and social rights enjoyed by any other citizens.

"Negroes unite not in order to separate themselves from the political, economic, or social life of our country. They unite to more effectively employ the strength of their own numbers and weight of their alliance with other parts of the population to level the barriers to their fullest integration into all aspects of the economic, political, and social life of the American people as a whole. They are forging an integral national unity to facilitate their struggle for full integration as free and equal American citizens." (Convention resolution, p. 44.)

PROPOSITION II

In applying the classic Leninist definition of the factors making up a nation, two such elements must be reexamined in the light of fundamental changes that continue to develop. First, the element of a stable community.

Capitalist development in the United States, particularly since 1930, assails the stability of communities. The U.S. population, taken as a whole, is the most mobile (i.e., the least stable) population in the world. This is especially true of the American Negro people, whose position in 1930 was essentially that of an oppressed, land-bound peasantry, and has today become essentially an oppressed urban working people. This has resulted in a major alteration in the geographical distribution of the Negro people.

As has been historically true, the laws of capitalist development in the United States continue to register profound transformations on the various class strata of the Negro people. As a consequence, the relative weight of the peasant class component of the Negro people has been decisively reduced and the relative weight of the working class strata decisively increased. The scientific conclu

sion to be drawn from this objective fact is: the Negro national question in the United States is no longer essentially a peasant question, the peasantry is no longer the basic class component of the Negro people, but today its basic class component is the working class.

This transformation in the absolute and relative weight of the basic class forces of the Negro people's movement is no more reversible than are the objective laws of development of the system which created these transformations. Secondly, the element of common psychological makeup:

Taking into full account all that is distinctive in this feature of the nationlike development of the Negro people, nevertheless this is not determinative for either the solution or representation of the Negro question in the United States. The main currents of Negro thought and leadership in the struggle for advancement and freedom, historically, and universally at the present time, have projected their programs from the premise that Negroes individually and as a people are no less Americans than any other claimants. Only in describing the dimensions of their oppression have the Negro people represented themselves as a people apart from the American Nation.

PROPOSITION III

These variants in the essential prerequisite features of nationhood (as described in proposition II) compel the conclusion: the oppressed Negro people are not a nation and, therefore, the strategic concept expressed in the slogan: "The right to self-determination," which applies only to nations, is not a valid, workable, scientific slogan for the emancipation of the Negro people in the United States.

The Negro question in the United States remains a national question by definition as stated in proposition I.

The Negro question in the United States remains a special question, commanding the attention of the working class and all forward-looking sections of the American population, because "the Negro people are the most severely oppressed and all-sidedly exploited of all the peoples who make up the American Nation," and because the basic material conditions for their emancipation, and for the social emancipation of the American working class, has been prepared by the continuing massive urbanization of the oppressed Negro people. It is also a special question because there can be no further basic advance for the working people of our country as a whole without the elimination from U.S. political life of the traditional Dixiecrat enemies of Negro freedom.

PROPOSITION IV

The reappraisal of the self-determination concept and slogan requires its replacement by a strategic concept and slogan which expresses a more accurate, workable solution to the Negro national question in the United States. Such a strategic objective and slogan must answer (as the self-determination slogan attempted to do) the very real problem of governmental power for the oppressed Negro majority population, coupled with radical agrarian reform, in what remains of the traditional areas of most backward agrarian relations, intense poverty, and brutal landlord rule, in what is referred to as the "black belt" in the South.

The Communist Party program for the revitalization of southern agriculture and radical alterations of production relations in the "black belt" remains sound. The programmatic outlook of the Communist Party on the Negro question has heretofore been expressed in summary form as:

"The Communist Party stands for the full economic, political, social, and cultural equality for the Negro people, including the right to self-determination in the "black belt."

It is recommended that in the future the Communist Party popularizes its position in the following summary form:

"The Communist Party of the United States stands for the full equality of the Negro people; their inalienable right to a fully integrated participation in the political, economic, social, and cultural life of America, including the right to the guarantee of genuinely representative government in the South, with proportional representation in the areas of Negro majority population."

PROPOSITION V

The Negro people's movement is today a standard bearer in the struggle to open up the now restricted areas of democracy. It is the decisive strategic ally of the working class in the current struggles for liberty and livelihood and in all stages that lead to the subsequent achievement of the necessary fundamental transformation of American society from the present capitalist exploitative system to that of socialism.

Now to cement the labor-Negro alliance, through powerful mass struggles for Negro rights, is to lay the cornerstone for that broad antimonopoly coalition of labor and the people's forces on which the progressive future of our country depends.

This is the main uncompleted democratic task of our country, and its fulfillment will enormously advance the goals of the working class and our entire nation. (Excerpt from 16th National Convention resolution, pp. 44–45.)

The fact that the scene of the Negro people's struggle unfolds within the bosom of American imperialism, and in direct and intimate association with the working class and popular struggles and is directed against the common class oppressor, feeds into the general stream of the historic working class cause of our time a powerful current which raises the torrential power of the whole cause of social advance for the people of our country. The question of Negro freedom, then, is the crucial domestic issue of the day, and is a factor of growing international consequence.

PROPOSITION VI

The struggle against racism (white chauvinism) is in the first instance the struggle against its institutionalized forms, as represented in the all-sided system of segregation in the South, and its northern extension in housing, jobs, etc. In the course of unfolding broad popular struggles in support of the Negro freedom movement, against the segregation system, the harsh realities of this racist system in the South must become a knowledgeable part of the ideology of the American people as a whole, and in particular of the working class of our country.

The democracy-loving forces of the U.S. people can only come to fully appreciate the significance of the Negro freedom movement to them by gaining an increasingly deeper understanding of what segregation is: of its scope and depth of practice.

Politically, the segregationist leaders are the native Hitlers in the political life of our country; segregation imposes on the Negro family an economic standard of living that is 48 percent below that of the average white family, and upon the Negro children of America the penalty of dying 8 years sooner than a white child born the same day; segregation is the daily experience of insults and humiliation, the disrespect to the dignity of manhood and womanhood; segregation is the torture of the police-prison system; segregation, as the institutionalized form of racism, poisons the cultural wellsprings of our national life; it is the lies, distortions, and gross omissions which permeate the written history of our country; segregation threatens the physical destruction of the public school system in one whole region of our country; segregation retards the unity of the toiling population of our country required for the promotion of the general welfare of the American people.

Mass educational and explanatory work, developed in the course of struggle for concrete objectives in the desegregation battle, is made even more urgent, today, in the face of the flood of racist propaganda the Citizens Council groups are spreading nationally.

More and more, the nationwide offensive against white chauvinism must find its reflection in the halls of the U.S. Congress and in the concrete actions of the executive department of the Federal Government. The honor and the democratic social progress of the American Nation are at stake.

PROPOSITION VII

The Communist Party, the party of Negro-white unity, must continue to build upon its accumulated credits among the people of our country, by boldly implementing the programmatic line which flows from our party's estimate of Negro freedom struggles as "the crucial domestic issue of the day, and a factor of growing international consequence" (16th convention resolution).