By Richard Mellor in California
“I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”
Malcom X, Speech to Barnard College and Columbia University February 18th 1965
I remember reading Malcom X’s speeches and how as he developed his political thinking, influenced by the colonial revolutions in Africa and meeting with Nyere, Kenyatta, Nkrumah and other African leaders. He had been sent by Elijah Muhammad to meet with the Klan in December of 1960 as the Nation of Islam (NOI) was in the process of making deals with the KKK for land in the South. It disgusted him, and Malcolm X was never sent back there by the NOI. “I have never gone along with no Ku Klux Klan” he said.
As a young kid growing up in England, I have to say I was not drawn to Malcolm X in any way. Why would I be? In his early years, he would never have considered working class unity, workers of all colours, nationality, races etc, joining together in struggle against capitalism and the filth that goes with it.
Plus, my thinking was tarred by the conditions I found myself in and my mind was not fully open to such politics either. I recall being influenced to a certain degree by the racist politics of Enoch Powell for a brief moment. He was a very clever, racist intellectual. But as I always tell young workers getting involved in politics today, Malcolm X is an example of how people can change and how objective conditions and world events can transform us.
Malcolm X’s father murdered
Over a short period of time since his early childhood and experiencing the horror and brutality of racism, including the murder of his own father, he became a pimp, got involved in drug dealing and other unsavoury activity. He then found in a religious cult a theoretical explanation that at the time made some sense of what was happening to him and all black people.
Later on, his travels and the colonial revolutions in Africa had a huge influence on his thinking, broadened his horizons and he became one of the 20th centuries greatest and most influential revolutionary leaders. The black revolt in the US, the colonial revolutions in Africa, as nation after nation drove out the direct rule of European colonialism; these were the events that were taking place around him.
white racist capitalist class
Malcom X’s influence has been so powerful that the white racist capitalist class cannot ignore him. But, as they do with Martin Luther King, they create a carnival-like atmosphere around these figures as a means of obscuring their ideas; it’s just about blackness. How they thought, their differences and how they saw society and what could be done to change the world around them is shoved to the background.
This is particularly the case with Malcolm X: how his thinking was rapidly shifting and that toward the end of his life was clearly moving towards a socialist view of the world. When asked by Pierre Breton in January 1965, “But you no longer believe in a black state?”, he replied, “No, I believe in a society in which people can live like human beings on the basis of equality.”
Interviewed by Young Socialist Newspaper
Five weeks before his assassination, he gave an interview to the Young Socialist Newspaper and was asked to define Black Nationalism. His answer was:
“I used to define black nationalism as the idea that the black man should control the economy of his community, the politics of his community, and so forth.
“But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word (and has his credentials as such for having carried on a successful revolution against oppression in his country). When I told him that my political, social and economic philosophy was black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances he was a white man. And he said if I define my objective as the victory of black nationalism, where does that leave him?
“Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries, dedicated to overthrowing the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.
The problems confronting our people
“So, I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition of black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as black nationalism? And if you noticed, I haven’t been using the expression for several months. But I still would be hard pressed to give a specific definition of the overall philosophy which I think is necessary for the liberation of the black people in this country.
Malcolm X was also speaking to the organized working class. He spoke to members of 1199 supporting their 59-day strike in 1962. He was clearly moving more towards a position of working-class unity, of the unity of all oppressed people against the oppressor. Malcolm X was not serving the interests of the US ruling class, albeit unintentionally as in the past, when his separatist views and lumping of all white people in one basket were useful to them as a means of weakening and dividing the working class as a whole.
Portraying all black leaders as having the same views was also useful.
Clearly, Louis Farrahkhan, the present leader of the Nation of Islam does not have the same world view as Malcolm X. Farrakhan, apart from being a cultish religious figure, is an extremely wealthy man and supports black capitalism. His struggle is for the freedom of black capitalism to exploit workers like their more powerful white counterparts; he knows he cannot be part of the white racists ruling class. It is useful to the white capitalist class to put these two figures with opposing political views in the same basket where their actual ideas can be obscured.
working class unity threatens capitalism
There is a tendency for the black petty bourgeois today, those who claim black capitalism as the solution to racism, to do the same. They will often quote Malcolm X but they rarely if ever quote his statement that, “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” The reason this class avoids this statement is that the conclusion one must draw from it is that we have to overthrow capitalism and we cannot overthrow capitalism without working class unity.
Working class unity threatens the very existence of capitalism and the white racist capitalists know it; so do the white petty-bourgeois layers and so do the black petty-bourgeois. It means class suicide for these layers in society but particularly so for the black capitalist class.
Hundreds of years of isolation and exclusion from “normal” society which also meant an inability to accumulate and have access to capital, suppressed the growth of such a class and it is socially weaker than its white counterparts who have much closer connections to the rulers of society.
revolutionary potential of black working class
The heroic struggle of the black workers and youth during the 50s and 60s forced the white racist bosses’ to open some doors, to help strengthen the black middle class as a buffer between them and the revolutionary potential of the black working class and as a counter to working class unity. In times of increased opposition to racism and oppression in all its forms, they can be dragged out to warn that “you can make it, look at us, but you have to work within the system.”
How can anyone not look and listen to Malcolm X in this video and not be moved by this person, drawn to him? He is human; you can see it. His home had been bombed, he knew his life was in danger from the state and from the Nation of Islam. That is another thing, how may white workers have read about him, read that autobiography by Haley, read his speeches? Of course, he says things that are not pleasant; I don’t agree with them, never did, but you will notice his evolution. But I suggest that if you can’t understand his history (the terror of the Klan and the apathy of millions to that terror) and look at him and people like him with that in mind, the problem is yours to solve.
But most of all, he is an example of how a person can learn and change if they are willing. He admits his failings, he admits he simply aped what he was told by a cult figure.He was a beautiful human being.
This is a re-post from the US socialist website Facts for Working People, the original here.
May 20, 2020
