1. Communists in the U.S. after WWII defined the question of African American liberation and the struggle for equality as:
a. A moral and ethical question;
b. Necessary to provide equality of opportunity under capitalism;
c. Central to the liberation of the working class as a whole and the establishment of socialism;
d. Something that would only alienate white workers.
2. Communists in the 1920s and 1930s sought to advance African American equality by:
a. Fighting to organize integrated trade unions and unions of African American sharecroppers and tenant farmers;
b. Fighting to enact a federal anti-lynching law and other civil rights legislation;
c. Helping to build groups like the National Negro Congress, the NAACP and the Southern Negro Youth Congress, forerunners of the post WWII Civil Rights movement;
d. All of the above.
3. Although most Americans are taught that the abolitionist movement was comprised mostly of whites with a few prominent African Americans, scholarship has shown that the organized abolitionist societies were made up of:
a. 20% free blacks and escaped slaves;
b. 33% free blacks and escaped slaves;
c. 50% free blacks and escaped slaves;
d. 80% free blacks and escaped slaves.
4. A principle that Communists sought to develop in both the Communist party and the larger working-class movement was that:
a. Blacks and whites should be separate but equal;
b. It was the duty of Communists to convince white workers to fight all manifestations of racism and that they had a self interest in doing so;
c. Racism would cease to exist once socialism was established;
d. Communists and the working class should pursue “color blind” policies.
5. The Communist Party applies the Leninist idea that racism under capitalism is functioning to:
a. Create extra profits for capitalists by both paying African American workers less and playing African-American workers off against white workers, thus reducing wage and salary rates;
b. Restricting the development of a free labor market which is bad for capitalist development;
c. A cultural phenomenon with no economic effects on capitalism;
d. Something that can only end with the “globalization” of capitalism.
Editor’s Note: This Marxist IQ is dedicated to Black History Month and the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party.
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The Communist Party USA is a working class organization founded in 1919 in Chicago, IL.
The Communist Party stands for the interests of the American working class and the American people. It stands for our interests in both the present and the future. Solidarity with workers of other countries is also part of our work. We work in coalition with the labor movement, the peace movement, the student movement, organizations fighting for equality and social justice, the environmental movement, immigrants rights groups and the health care for all campaign.
But to win a better life for working families, we believe that we must go further. We believe that the American people can replace capitalism with a system that puts people before profit — socialism.
We are rooted in our country's revolutionary history and its struggles for democracy. We call for "Bill of Rights" socialism, guaranteeing full individual freedoms.
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