repressive apparatus which is employed by the American ruling class in an attempt to crush the emerging militant leadership of black people in the USA. At the same time they have served to illuminate the terrible social situation of black people in American society.
But above all they have demonstrated the invincible spirit of resistance which has built up in a powerful mass movement to end once and for all the legacy of black slavery which still scars American society.
This in turn has prompted a tremendous ideological ferment, both amongst the black workers themselves and the ranks of the socialist and Marxist currents in America. Which way for
the black people of the USA? Towards an alliance with the white working class or in a separatist direction? How important is the prison movement in this struggle? Can the white working class ever be detached from their allegiance to the Democratic and Republican parties? What role for the black working class in the struggle for a socialist America? These are some of the issues around which the debate is raging. Even some of those tendencies, which claim to adhere to the ideas of Leon Trotsky, have displayed the greatest confusion in relation to the likely perspectives for the struggle of the black masses and in particular Trotsky's writings on the issue.
One of the most striking developments of the post-war epoch has been the heightened struggle of the black working class of America. Trotsky had predicted in the 1930's that the colonial revolution was bound to exert an enormous influence on the black population in the USA, evoke their sympathy and at the same time act as spur to their own movements for liberation from racial and class oppression.
So it proved to be. It was no accident that the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP) developed as a powerful mass movement, with half million membership at its height, precisely at a time when the colonial revolution began to unfold, particularly in Africa.
From 1954 up till 1963 the movement revolved primarily around the issue of "civil rights" and against the lynch law which predominated in the South. Even at that stage the black working class connected the struggle for "civil rights" with the fight against unemployment, for better educational opportunities, housing etc. But these issues were pushed into the background by a whole panoply of middle class black leaders, from Martin Luther King of the NAACP to Whitney Young of the Urban League. Their orientation, through pacifist methods, was to exert pressure on the Democratic Party to grant full "civil rights".
However the post-war boom together with the mechanisation of southern agriculture resulted in a rapid process of urbanisation for the black population and a mass exodus from the South to the cities of the North. The areas into which they moved developed into prison house ghettoes; they faced rat infestation, endemic unemployment and indescribable slum and dilapidated housing conditions. A glimpse of the social conditions, which are the "norm" for a big section of the black population was given in 'an article in the London EVENING STANDARD ..
•••• (In Brownsville) Four out of every five families are on welfare ... 60% of the inhabitants are on heroin, some of them in a crouching stupor in the black carcases of abandoned homes" (6.6.71.).
Black Power
The accumulation of discontent at these conditions, particularly on the part of the youth, burst out after the beating of King in Birmingham in 1963. Television flashed out the thuggery of the Southern police and their dogs across the country. Riots followed the next day. The uprising in the black ghetto of Watts, in Los Angeles, followed in 1965 and a series of upheavals shook practically every one of the major cities of the US in the next three years. Some of the "Marxist" sects pictured them as a conscious step forward by the oppressed. On the contrary these upheavals reflected the blind despair on the black workers at the social conditions in the ghettos.
And when as a result of these upheavals the inchoate and confused demand for "Black Power" arose and was projected as the main goal of the blacks by a number of leaders such as Stokely Carmichael and Floyd McClissick, and eventually even Martin Luther King himself, this was uncritically supported by these same tendencies.
The black power movement undoubtedly represented a step forward in a number of senses; the break from King's pacifist and knightly courtesy, demands for a break from the Democratic Party, the idea that black people should defend themselves, with arms if necessary, from the white racists etc. At the same time its separatist overtones, its lack of a clear class programme, its nebulous concepts, which allowed every black opportunist politician to embrace it (e.g. Clayton Powell Congressman for Harlem), and not the least the possibility of it being used to entrench racial divisions all warranted criticism from the Marxists.
The Marxist tendency around MILITANT approached the movement in a friendly manner while criticising the deficiencies of the leadership and their programme.
The mistakes of those tendencies who uncritically supported the Black Power movement were rooted in a misinterpretation both of American working class history and particularly Trotsky's writings on the question of black nationalism. They have attempted to show that black people
have, in the main, had an underlying "nationalist" and separatist orientation.
It is true that the tendency towards a separatist movement has been manifested on a number of occasions in American history. Thus the Marcus Garvey "Go Back to Africa" movement developed in the aftermath of the First World War. The Movement for the 49th State took shape between 1929-1934. But equally powerful movements of black and white struggling together have developed. Black Southern Tenant Sharecroppers, 1¼ million strong, played the part of the extreme Left Wing in the Populist Movement towards the end of the nineteen century. During the CIO upsurge the black workers were an important component part of the American working class. To this day they represent a big percentage of the workers in steel, autos and other industries. Whenever a "nationalist" movement has developed it has always represented a symptom of a growing crisis which has eventually touched the white working class as well. Once the white working class began to move then the tendency has been for the black workers to merge their struggle with the working class as a whole.
Lenin and Trotsky on the National Question
In his discussions with his followers in the 1939's Trotsky drew on the rich theoretical heritage of Bolshevism on the national question. Lenin's teachings on the national question were of decisive importance for the success of the Bolshevik Party, before, during and after the October Revolution. Against Rosa Luxembourg and her supporters Lenin fought a relentless theoretical struggle in defence of Paragraph 9 of the Bolshevik programme which upheld the right of self determination for oppressed nationalities. It was impossible, asserted Lenin, to win the confidence of the oppressed nationalities without proclaiming this right. Socialism could not be built with the slightest hint of compulsion of oppressed nationalities. Inseparable from this demand was the right of state secession:
"..... settlement of the question of political self determination i.e. their state secession" (LENIN's "Critical Remarks on the National Question" P.12).
Lenin and the Bolsheviks consistently rejected the idea of "extra territorial" nationality. The objective basis of the nation rested in the final analysis in the practical possibility of it being realised in a territorial sense. But the defence of the right of self determination did not mean that the Bolshevik Party became the evangel of separation. At the same time as proclaiming the right, not the duty, of an oppressed nationality to separate from the oppressing nation it also conducted a struggle for the union of nations, or states, in a Socialist Federation.
Lenin particularly fought against any taint of nationalism within the workers movement:
"In contrast to the bickering among the different national bourgeois parties over questions of language etc., workers democracy puts forward the demand for absolute unity, complete amalgamation in all workers' organisations, trade unions, co-operatives, consumers, educational and every other to counter bourgeois nationalism
of every kind" (ibid P.13)
Part of this fight against the influence of bourgeois nationalism in the Russian worker's movement was that which Lenin waged against the BUND, the Jewish workers' organisation, and their programme of so-called "cultural autonomy". This had been borrowed by the BUND from
the programme of the opportunist Austrian Social Democracy. Adapting themselves to their own dominant national bourgeoisie the theoreticians of the Austrian Party opposed the slogan of the right of self determination. They advanced instead the slogan of "cultural autonomy", the grouping of dispersed "nationalities" around their so-called "common culture", the schools, the church, the theatre etc. Trotsky commented:
“... that programme was artificial and utopian in so far as it attempted to separate culture from territory and economy in a society torn by social contradictions"
(STALIN P.228).
Its net result would be to split up and divide the proletariat. The schools have alwaysbeen a means of poisoning the minds of working class youth, soaking them in the 'culture' of the ruling class, religion, distortions of history etc.
Trotsky in his discussions on perspectives for the American black people was at pains to correct his followers one sided approach towards the possibility of a movement for self determination and a separate black state in the USA arising at a certain stage. His American followers had opposed this demand when it was put forward by the American "Communist" Party. They counterposed to it the struggle for equal rights, black and white unity etc.To begin with the C.P. had put forward this demand for the black population of the whole of the USA. They subsequently changed this to apply to the South alone. Trotsky's position was to caution against dismissing the possibility of this demand gaining widespread support under certain conditions. It could not be discounted, he said, that at a certain stage, particularly with the development of a big fascist movement whose main target would be the blacks, the demand for a separate state might then arise. The C.P. were wrong to advance the slogan without it first being put forward by the black population. It could be interpreted on their part as a desire for the white population to get rid of them, as an attempt to reinforce segregation etc. But the possibility of such a movement could not be dismissed out of hand.
Conditions Change
Since then Trotsky has been accused on the one side of being somewhat "confused" on the issue. On the other hand, some "Marxists" have taken Trotsky's statements and applied them in a completely mechanical fashion. Trotsky's method of analysis was entirely valid.
But there is an entirely changed situation so far as the black population is concerned between the 1930's and the present period. As late as 1940 three quarters of the black population were concentrated in the South. Moreover in at least two states, Mississippi and Alabama, there were a majority of blacks. If a movement for self determination were to arise it would have assumed definite shape in these areas, where it could be objectively realised. Even at that stage Trotsky was careful to add:
"The Negroes are a race:- nations grow out of the racial material under definite conditions" (ON BLACK NATIONALISM).
An identity with Africa undoubtedly exists, particularly amongst the politically conscious sections of black students and workers. They look towards and support the struggles of the African masses in the same way as Irish workers in Britain and America (sometimes when they are second and third generation "Irishmen") indentify with the struggle in Ireland. But this in itself is not sufficient to characterise them as a nation. The social situation of the black population is increasingly that of the working class as a whole. A common territory, the vital attribute of any nation, no longer exists.
Theoretically it cannot be-ruled out that in the future the black population might express a desire for a separate state. While fighting the BUND's demands for the Jews (Lenin characterised them as an oppressed caste) Lenin at the same time pointed out:
"It is beyond doubt that in order to abolish all national oppression it is extremely important to create autonomous areas even of the smallest dimensions, each with an integral uniform national composition of population, towards which the members of the given nationality scattered in different parts of the country, or even of the world could "gravitate", and with which they could enter into relations and free associations of every kind" ("Critical Remarks on the National Question" p.6l).
Both Trotsky and Lenin even considered giving the anarchists a small portion of Russia for them to practically test out their utopian theories, but the civil war following the Revolution prevented this being carried out. Also Trotsky while ruthlessly combating the BUND's and the ZIONIST's plans for separating the Jewish proletariat from the working class as a whole at the same time pointed out that a World Socialist Federation:
" •••••• will have unimaginable resources in all domains. Human history has witnessed the epoch of great migrations on the basis of barbarism. Socialism will open up the possibility of great migrations on the basis of the most developed techniques and culture. It goes without saying that what is involved here is not compulsory displacements, that is, the creation of new ghettos for certain nationalities or parts of nationalities, but displacements freely consented to" ("On the Jewish Question" P.20).
Thus a victorious World proletariat would undoubtedly be prepared to concede a separate state to the American blacks, somewhere on the globe, if they so desired. However, any tendency in that direction would in all probability be manifested in a movement back to a Socialist Africa. But such would be the degree of class solidarity between black, brown and white workers in America necessary to achieve a Socialist America that it is highly unlikely that separatist sentiments on a large scale would take root amongst the black population.
At the present time with the migration of the black population to the North together with their increasing proletarianisation, even in the South, the movement in the direction of a separate state and a corresponding "national" consciousness, in a Marxist sense, has been undermined. Now a majority of black people are concentrated in the North and in 1966 over sixty five per cent lived in the urban areas. In some cities such as Newark and Washington they are in a majority. The problems of the black workers are the problems of the working class as a whole, only in a far more-acute form. They form a specially oppressed substratum of the proletariat.
The idea that the ghettoes of Harlem, Detroit and Los Angeles could separate themselves from the rest of American society is as ludicrous as it is reactionary. But this is the logical conclusion of the demand of "self-determination" as applied to this issue.
Self-determination includes the right of secession as demonstrated above. It would be greeted with the same scorn with which Lenin castigated the idea that Jews in Petrograd, Kiev, Moscow etc. would have been able to secede from the rest of Russia. The Leninist concept of the right of self-determination applies to nations not groups, scattered nations, races or individuals. Yet the quasi Marxist groups in America insisted on the "nationalist" sentiments of the black people precisely at a time when a section of the black youth from 1966 onwards began to grope towards a class position through the Black Panther Party. The Panthers totally rejected the "cultural nationalists", and stressed the unity of interests of black and white fighting together .... "the very small cults that sprout up every now and then in the black community have a basically black racist philosophy". (Bobby Seale "Seize the Time").
The literature emanating from this movement, despite its muddled programme, stands as a crushing indictment of those "Marxist" tendencies who have clung to a "nationalist"
perspective for black people.
The Black Panther Party developed in response to the monstrous conditions which prevail in the ghettos and in particular the brutality which the youth suffer from at the hands of the police. In one month in Chicago 80 black people were shot and killed by police! The bigger percentage of supporters of the Panthers have been drawn from the lumpen proletariat. These pariahs of capitalist society have been "re-habilitated" not through the prison programme, correctly described by the prisoners in revolt at Folsom jail California as "relative to the ancient stupidity of pouring water on a drowning man", but by the ideas of Socialism, Marxism and class solidarity. The example of the Panthers have found a wide echo in the first instance amongst the black prison population. A whole section of black youth have been propelled towards revolutionary politics because of the daily murders, tear gassing and searing racism of the mainly white prison guards and because of the general black upsurge in America. Trotsky once commented that the Tsarist prisons were the "universities of the revolution"; a similar situation now obtains in US prisons certainly so far as a section of black youth are concerned. Thus the heroic George Jackson, given a one year to life prison sentence at the age of 18 for a 70 dollar robbery, remarks in his "Prison Letters":
" .... I met Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Engels and Mao when I entered the prison and they redeemed me ... With the time and incentive that these brothers have to read, study, think, you will find no class or category more desperate or more dedicated to the ultimate remedy, revolution."
But one of the weaknesses of the Panthers has been its almost total reliance on drawing its forces from the lumpen proletariat. It is true that this section is capable of the most heroic deeds and sacrifice but only if it is allied to a party which has sunk deep roots amongst the working class and has built up a base amongst the proletariat proper. The lack of a sound basis amongst the working class is one factor resulting in the rapid turnover in membership, the violent upheavals, the schisms and the authoritarian internal regime which have characterised the Panthers from its inception. Added to this has been their theoretical confusion as to the present stage of development in American society,
and the lack of a programme to mobilise black and white together. In the past, in common with some of the white ultra left, mainly student groups, they have characterised America as “fascist".
This arose, on the one side, because of a misunderstanding as to the nature of fascism, on the other because of the vicious police persecution to which they have been subjected. Up to date there have occurred over 1,000 arrests and nineteen murders of the Black Panthers by the armed thugs of the American ruling class. Allied to this has been the savage sentences and brutal conditions in the prisons so graphically detailed by George Jackson and in Angela Davis' book "If they come in the morning".
But the false description of America as "fascist" has prompted the Eldridge Cleaver wing of the Black Panthers in despair to take the road of terrorism along with groups such as the "weathermen". There has been no clear refutation of their position by their opponents. Even Angela Davis and her co-thinkers from the American "Communist" Party believe that America is in a "pre-fascist stage". This is brought out by a number of contributions to her book. The leaders of the American CP along with their co-thinkers internationally have been incapable of explaining the causes and the conditions under which fascism can come to power. Angela Davis approvingly quotes Dimitrov at the Stalinist so-called International Congress in 1935 ..... “Whoever does not fight the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent victory of fascism etc....” This from a "leader" of an organisation which allowed the German proletariat to go down to defeat without a pane of glass being broken at a time when 3 million workers had arms and were ready to fight but were prevented from doing so by the Stalinist leaders of the German CP.
Fascism is only possible after a series of defeats of the workers' organisations. Only after the middle class has lost faith in the ability of the working class to change society will it turn to the fascists to be then used by them as a battering ram to smash the Trade Union and Labour Movement. Historical experience in Germany, Italy, Spain and other ountries in the inter-war period attests to this.
In the period opening up, rather than a swing towards the Right the USA is more likely to experience a decisive shift towards the Left. As vicious as the blows against the Panthers and other organisations have undoubtedly been, they are not as harsh as the repression against the black people and the Labour Movement in the past. Thus in the 1930's the hirelings of the American capitalists murdered over 100 working men and women. The student upheavals together with the widespread demoralisation in the American Army in Vietnam and the general collapse in the confidence of the ruling class to rule are the symptoms of an impending radicalisation of American society. This demoralisation has reached the very pinnacle of the Army; one general has compared the American army to Tsarist armies in 1917 just prior to the Russian Revolution and the German military machine just before the German Revolution in 1918!
The Huey Newton wing of the Panthers on the other hand began to sense the mistakes contained in their earlier position. But this has prompted them to opportunistically adapt themselves to the Church, in the manner of the NAACP, to engage in charity activity and to tone down their original programme which stressed the class issues. The Panthers are bound to face a decline unless they work out a clear Marxist programme. But their evolution in a class direction in the last five years is a harbinger of how the black working class as a whole will move in the future. And part of the responsibility for them arriving at their present position must lie with those Marxist tendencies who have taken up a position to the right of the Black Panthers. Thus the Socialist Workers Party, which claims to follow the teachings of Leon Trotsky, attacked the Black Panthers because of the latter’s attacks on the "cultural nationalists" and their racist propaganda...
" •••• The concept that it is possible for black people to be racists is one which the nationalist movement has had to fight ever since the first awakening of black consciousness" (The American Militant 15.8.70.)
The only conclusion to be drawn is that it is impossible for black people in general to display a racist outlook! How then to explain Stokely Carmichael's disgraceful and practical demonstration of "black racism" in British Guyana? He was "invited into the country to address the students at Georgetown University. Under questioning he specifically excluded the Guyanese workers of Indian descent from his concept of "Black Power".
He thus amply served the Burnham Government in its policy of reinforcing divisions between the Indian and black workers to the benefit of American and British Imperialism. The road to hell is paved with good intentions but the SWP by their unequivocal and uncritical support of first of all the "black power" movement and now the "cultural nationalists" assists in the aim of perpetuating racial differences amongst the working class.
These same "cultural nationalists" have played a pernicious role in maintaining these differences. In their intervention in a number of New York teachers' struggles the SWP have discarded bag and baggage the teachings of Marxism. One glaring example was 'the dispute over "community control" of education in the Ocean Brownsville area of New York in 1968.
The SWP found themselves during this dispute in concert with every stripe of black nationalist, Rap Brown, Floyd McClissick and Lindsay together with the capitalist news media in fighting the teacher's union.
The appointment of a black administrator, as a step towards "community control", on a salary of 30,000 dollars a year, with money provided by the Ford Foundation, led to the white teachers being sacked. These were the Union representatives in the locality. When the rest of the teachers walked out, they were transferred and the teachers’ union called a strike. Black teachers were brought in as replacements and this act of strikebreaking was supported by the SWP in its coverage of the strike!
During the course of the dispute Fred Halstead, the SWP's Presidential candidate, in a reply to a letter, openly confessed to blacklegging....
"You are right that I voted with other parents to open PS.33, the school which my ten year old daughter attends. I did this because I believe that the present teachers' strike in New York is a reactionary strike directed against the blacks and Puerto Rican communities." (Militant 1.11.68.).
The writer of the letter demanded to know .... .
"As a socialist, a worker, a union member, how do you explain a vote against another union which is now on strike? •••• This is to inform you that this action on your part lost you my vote in November, as well as votes of others like me, who were considering voting for you as a protest against the candidates of the two, or is it three now, major parties." (ibid.)
The SWP's whole position flew in the face of everything that Trotsky ever said on the issue of elementary class solidarity during a strike struggle. Trotsky remarked once that even if a strike against the employment of black labour were to take place, while opposing it and fighting for black and white unity and a return to work, a revolutionary would still have to go on strike with the workers. To cross the class lines would mean the loss of any opportunity to influence those workers again. This cardinal principle of Marxism was broken by the SWP during this dispute.
The net result was to inflame racial passions both on the side of the black population and from the teachers themselves. Because the teachers came predominantly from Jewish backgrounds, the "nationalist" sects whipped up a wave of anti-semitism amongst the black population. The teachers' union bureaucracy, on the other hand, had done nothing to involve the teachers with the black workers in a struggle to combat the worsening educational position or the monstrous social conditions in the ghettos. An attitude of haughtiness and contempt towards the black population, and the terrible squalor surrounding them, undoubtedly exists amongst a section of white teachers. But these attitudes were only hardened by the racial overtones displayed towards them and their union, by the black nationalists. Instead of a struggle against Lindsay, the Mayor of New York, Rockefeller, the Governor of the State and their supporters, and the whole rotten capitalist system, vicious infighting between the working class opened up. The "racism" of the black nationalists has in turn been one of the contributory factors in the organisation of the racist "Defence" organisations amongst the Jewish population e.g. Kahn's reactionary "Jewish Defence League".
The fundamental error of these "Marxists" is their incapacity to understand that the heroic, magnificent and powerful movement of the American black population stems from the same causes which will guarantee a similar movement of the white working class at a later stage. It has been primarily the class issues which have acted as the impulse for their movement in the last twenty years. Even at the height of the boom unemployment was a way of life for a whole section of black workers. In 1948 unemployment among "non-white" teenagers was 7.6%. In 1965 the percentage of unemployed had increased to 22.6% in the same age group. In June 1971 the unemployment rate for this same group was 33%. But it is no longer the scourge of the black population alone; the overall unemployment rate for teenagers is 17.6%. There are 5¼ million unemployed, 6.2% of the labour force, at
the present time. The net result has been to spark off demands within the unions for action to combat the rise in the jobless rate as there has been in Britain. The Automobile workers have come out for a campaign and Conferences have been held with plans for unemployed marches on Washington.
They have inundated Leonard Woodcock and the other AWU leaders with demands for a national strike in opposition to Nixon's "freeze and squeeze". Even George Meaney, the arch conservative chief of the American Federation of Labour has been forced to respond to the calls from ranks of the unions for action, some demanding a General Strike, in opposition to the Government's measures.
At the same time it is revealed in the capitalist press just how much has been demanded of the American working class in order to achieve their much vaunted "prosperity". Time magazine recently revealed that there were over 14,000 fatal accidents in American factories in 1969, more Americans killed than in Vietnam! Even the highest paid workers have paid for their increase in living standards with sweat and not a little blood. And now they find this being eaten away by the worst inflation since the Korean war. More and more the workers are demanding action from the union tops .... “the younger leadership is not satisfied. I don't understand what they really want, what it would take to satisfy them" (union official to Time magazine reporter 9.11.70.)
The privileged and formerly sheltered sections, the "professional" workers, white collar grades etc., have felt the icy blast of the slowing down of the US economy. A Government report has shown that there was a 57% increase in unemployment amongst professional and technical workers in 1970. At the same time one section after another has taken to the road of industrial struggle in order to maintain their living standards in the face of the spiralling cost of living. A mighty explosion of the American working class is being prepared by these events. All the cobwebs of the last three decades will be blown away in the storms which are being prepared by the endemic crisis affecting the American economy. A break from both the Democratic and Republican parties by the unions towards a mass Labour Party is inevitable at a certain stage.
The first movement towards a Labour Party in Britain came in the latter part of the 19th century, when British Imperialism was no longer able to grant concessions to the upper strata of the working class.
US Imperialism has been the new colossus which has dominated the post-war world but at the cost of building into its foundations all the explosive material of world capitalism. The enormous burdens it has been forced to bear - the loss of over £12,000 million a year in Vietnam being one example - has begun to undermine the possibility of maintaining the standards of its own working class.
The formation of the Alliance for Labour Action (which split away from the AFL/CIO in 1964) is an indication of how events will unfold. The main reason why it never developed into a decisive break from the two main capitalist parties is because of the temporary economic revival from 1964 to 1970. But the growing revolt within the ranks of the unions will force the union tops to move "Left". The Mid Term Congressional Elections saw a big section of workers registering their protest against the rise in unemployment in the votes recorded in the solid industrial areas against the Nixon Government.
Once the powerful American working class begins to awaken from its winter sleep then the movement of the black workers, the Chicanos, the Indians will dovetail with it. All the best traditions of the American proletariat will be rekindled by the shock of great events. The example of Eugene Debs, who got almost 1 million votes, standing for the Presidency in 1912, the titanic events surrounding the formation of the CIO, will be taken up and used by the American working class. The only difference will be that they will develop on a far wider scale than in the past.
The black working class is destined to play a key role in the future of America. They are oppressed both in a racial and class sense. All the indignities and the cruelties of a diseased capitalist society bears down on them with special intensity. The tenacity, courage and tremendous spirit of self-sacrifice which has characterised the supporters of the Black Panthers, George Jackson and thousands of other black workers will be a gigantic plus for the American Revolution. From their ranks will come some of the best fighters and champions of Marxism in the USA. They will fulfil an important role as one of the best detachments of the working class. And their present struggles are only a dress rehearsal for mighty explosions in the future. Part of the process of furthering the struggle for a socialist America is to counter those false theories which endeavour to direct the energies of black workers towards fruitless and the largely mythical "nationalist" struggle instead of struggle in common with their white brown, red and Chicano brothers as a step towards the achievement of their own liberation.
No comments:
Post a Comment