A Claude McKay Letter To Max Eastman

Essay, Research Paper

Moscow, April 3, 1923

Beloved Max:

The chapter which includes my experience with the Liberator group shall stay

as it is, for in your missive I can non happen any convincing ground for excluding it ; but, on

the contrary, there is every ground for printing it, if it will arouse exciting

statement and treatment, such as your missive reveals, on the Negro job in America.

There are, nevertheless, a few baffling points in your finely phrased missive which I have

picked out & # 8212 ; points insinuatingly oppugning my motivations and bear downing me with

dishonesty, which I will take up with you in order as they appeared.

You will understand that I do non mean to reason with you about my motivations and

honestness & # 8212 ; to turn out or confute anything, I am merely trying to edify you.

( 1 ) I had and have no purpose of allowing the public think I withdrew from the

executive editorship of the Liberator entirely because of a dissension over the

race inquiry. As my letters to you and yours to me will demo I was fixing to go forth the

work of active editorship of the Liberator months before I eventually gave up the occupation.

But I want to province decidedly, and to allow those who are interested in the affair

understand, that my co-worker on the executive editorship [ Michael Gold ] made the race

narrative in the June [ 1922 ] Liberator the footing of his onslaught on me, and his sentiment,

your letters and the creative person & # 8217 ; s [ Boardman Robinson? ] , and the treatments of the matter by

the Liberator group, revealed to me that the group did non hold a stratified

attitude on the job of the American Negro. I think it is really of import that this fact

should be published particularly if it will do for profitable treatment on the race

inquiry. The race affair was simply incidental to my discontinuing the executive work, but it

was most of import in that it disclosed the truth that the taking heads of the Liberator

group did non, to me, have a comprehensive appreciation of the Negro & # 8217 ; s topographic point in the

class-struggle.

( 2 ) You write severally in a individual paragraph: “ In your treatment of the

dissension which did be about the race inquiry, you distort wholly the

nature of that dissension ” ( 2nd italics mine ) and “ There was ne’er any

dissension between you and the editors of the Liberator, so far as I am cognizant

about the proper Communist policy towards the race inquiry in the United States. ” I

can non accommodate these sentences. You know really good that you were virtually the foreman of

the magazine and that you made me your helper and subsequently announced it to the

readers and the other editors. But, as is implied in your missive, you ne’er discussed the

Negro job as a policy of the Liberator with me. Nor did any of the other

editors. The Liberator group, hence, could non be in “ complete

agreement ” with me as you write about my policy on the race inquiry, when we ne’er

discussed it as a group. In fact as a group we ne’er even discussed the labour motion

earnestly. My place on the Liberator I discussed earnestly merely with the extremist

Negro group in New York. As I quite retrieve, I tried to discourse the Irish and Indian

inquiries with you one time or twice with a position of acquiring articles on them for the magazine,

but with small understanding you said that they were national issues. I ne’er one time thought you

grasped to the full the category battle significance of national and racial jobs, and small

cases indexed for me your attitude on the race job. It was ne’er hostile, ever

friendly, but ne’er by a long stretch revolutionist.

However, I remember one twenty-four hours when we could non happen a nice eating house to suit

us both on Sixth Avenue, and we eventually had to tiffin in a really soiled topographic point, that you

remarked, possibly jokingly, “ If I were a Negro I couldn & # 8217 ; t be anything but a

revolutionary! ” I don & # 8217 ; Ts know why, my beloved Max, but the ambiance of the Liberator

did non do for serious treatments on any of the existent jobs of Capitalist Society

much less the Negro.

( 3 ) But you write: “ You say that in fall ining the staff you were moved by a desire

to foster a solution of the Negro job in the revolution. I refuse to believe that you

were moved entirely by that consideration, because I know that you are non a more simple

individual than others ; instead you are more complex. ” You honor and flatter me by saying

that I am more complex than others. You ought to cognize for you are a erudite Freudian

stand outing in your judgement of human nature. However, I have non said anyplace that in

accepting the occupation you gave me on the Liberator I was moved entirely by a

desire to foster a solution of the Negro job in the Revolution. I can afford to be

Frank. My first necessity on returning from Europe in 1921 without any money was to acquire a

occupation so that I should be assured of shelter and nutrient. My occupation on the Liberator secured

me these. But my attitude was non really different from what it was in 1916 when I applied

for a occupation as a intern in a hotel in New Hampshire. The director told me that he could

merely prosecute me temporarily because all the other workers ( about 25 ) were white work forces and

adult females and possibly they would object to my working with them because I am a Negro. I went

into that hotel to work with the full cognition that I was non simply an ordinary worker,

but that I was besides a Negro, that I would non be judged on my virtues as a worker entirely.

but on my behaviour as a Negro. Up at that place in that small hostel, cuddling among the New

Hampshire hills, the Negro ( as in 1000s of other topographic points in America ) was on test non

as a worker but as a unusual species. And I went into that hotel to work for my staff of life and

bed and besides for my race. This state of affairs is forced upon every intelligent Negro in

America. In a few hebdomads I had won over the small hostile minority among the hotel

workers ; they all made demands on my company. For me to carry through that, my beloved Max, it

was necessary to be complex! And I am complex plenty to forgive your leer at my stating

that in fall ining the staff of the Liberator I was “ moved by a desire to foster

a solution of the Negro job in the revolution. ”

( 4 ) I must reiterate that you and I ne’er had any silent apprehension on the race job

as you assert. So you could non hold influenced me in any manner on the topic. But you

controlled the policy of the magazine as head editor, and the files of the magazine are

available to demo what you, as main editorial author, said about the job of the Negro

in the Revolution. Nothing at all. In the December issue of 1921 you had a serious thought on

the Negro of which you made a superb gag. You say that I introduced excessively much race

affair vitamin D

uring the months of my editorship. You say this would non do the readers think

about the Negro job, they would instead “ disregard ” it. Such is your sentiment,

which gives me a image of you as a nice self-seeker ever in hunt of the safe way

and ne’er striking out for the new if there are any marks of danger in front. I do non believe

you are a competent justice of my policy. The fact is that I received letters of

encouragement and grasp from propertyless leaders and Liberator readers as

shortly as I began publishing those articles. The article “ He Who Gets Slapped, ”

which appeared in the May Liberator [ 1922 ] was reprinted in portion in the New York World

and syndicated all over the United States even in some of the Southern States! It had

the practical consequence of ranging certain members of the Theater Guild against the

Management on the issue of racial favoritism.

I still maintain that a radical magazine in recommending, the issues of the category

battle in America should manage the Negro job in the category battle in proportion to

the Negro population and its place in the labour universe. And more, I hold to this point

of position because the strategic place of Negro labour in the category battle in America is

by far greater and of more importance than the proportion of the 12 1000000s of inkinesss to

the 100 1000000s of Whites. This obvious truth you would cognize, had you been in the least

acquainted with the manner in which the large capitalists have been utilizing Negroes to interrupt the

great work stoppages in the basic industries during the last decennary. Furthermore, I am rather

willing to put this problematic point before a jury of internationally stratified

heads, but I surely could non accept your sentiment merely as trustworthy.

Tom Paine was of his clip and so is Lenin. To me there is no comparing. During the age

of the Gallic Revolution, Paine performed powerful undertakings in England, France and America

and if you had in your whole organic structure an ounce of the verve that Paine had in his small

finger, you with your fantastic chances, would non hold missed the opportunities for great

leading in the category battle that were yours in America.

( 5 ) Again you intentionally falsify the truth when you say that [ Boardman ] Robinson said

the Negro job “ will vanish with the disappearing of the economic

categories. ” Robinson used no such scientific phrase as economic categories, but the poetic

phrase “ with the victory of Labor ” & # 8212 ; intending the regulation of Labor. Hence your

paragraph about the Workers & # 8217 ; Government of Russia and the Judaic pogroms is farcical and

indefensible. First, because economic categories have non disappeared in Russia. What we have

here is a absolutism of proletarian regulation under which the middle class are disfranchised

and shorn of political power exactly as the Negro workers of the South are barred from

political relations by the white middle class. I have shown your paragraph about the pogroms to a

figure of companions and my transcriber [ P. Ochremenko ] and they have all characterized it as

phrase-mongering. You write “ The commander-in-chief told me merely two hebdomads ago that

at that place ne’er has been an impulse to a pogrom, even under the Czar, which was non instigated

by the imperial Government. Everybody knows that the pogroms disappeared automatically with

the constitution of the working-class regulation. ” First, I barely think the War

Commissar would hold used that loose word “ impulse. ” On reading your sentence,

Comrade Ochremenko who lived in the Ukraine ( where there are great multitudes of Jews ) before

and through the Revolution, remarked: that the figure of Judaic dead from the pogroms

since the 1917 Revolution is greater than all that of all time occurred under the reign of the

Czars. Again the “ Imperial ” system in Russia ended with the Revolution. Even the

advanced middle class were against that system. All secret plans against the Soviet Government

since so are the intrigues of the counter-revolutionary middle class against the

Soviets. These operations involve the abetment of pogroms against Jews, the inciting of

the nescient peasantry to undermine, rebellions in distant territories against the Communists,

development of national differences, etc. The pogroms like the seeable activities of the

Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries in Russia have “ disappeared automatically with

the constitution of the working-class regulation ” because the Communists possess automatic

machine guns and military control. If you would acquire out of your studio to see the

strenuous hectic work of the Russian workers in competition against the NEP middle class,

to analyze the work of the G.P.U. [ Gosudarstvennoe Politicheskoe Upravlenie, the province

constabularies apparatus ] , the Department of National Minorities and the countless political

commissars & # 8212 ; the Communists qui vive against the “ impulse ” to

counter-revolutionary inclinations & # 8212 ; you would lose your romantic feeling about the

Communist Dictatorship and acquire down to its world.

You have read merely one chapter of my book, but you assert that in it I say that the

Negro job is the main job of the Revolution in America. When you come to read my

book you will happen that I have said no such thing. What I say is that the Negro inquiry

is an built-in portion and one of the main jobs of the category battle in America, and I

base by that declaration.

If I am possessed of any “ vague emotion of bitterness ” it is simply that of

printing the truth as it appears to me. If what I write about the Liberator will

“ alienate from me every one of them ” it would merely demo that, like you, they all

hold a personal instead than a societal position of work forces and personal businesss. I am unwilling to believe

with you that Robert Minor, Charles W. Wood and even Boardman Robinson himself would be of

those alienated.

I can non happen in your letters that I have by me the paragraph which you quote and

charge that I intentionally left out because it conflicted with my sentiment. It may be in

one of those left in America, but I don & # 8217 ; t see where it helps you in any manner. It instead

puts you in a weak and vacillant place. However, and eventually, though I could non

go forth out the chapter, I am rather willing to print your missive to me and my reply as an

appendix if you want that ; if non I can non assure that if at any clip after the

publication of my book, a contention should originate affecting you and me, I shall non

print this exchange of letters.

Fraternally yours,

CLAUDE MCKAY

from The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose, 1912-1948.

Ed. Wayne F. Cooper. New York: Schocken Books, 1973. Copyright? 1973 by Wayne F. Cooper

and Hope McKay Virtue.