One of the reasons so many youth, especially black youth, like Malcolm X is
because he was so direct. "Do you know why the white man really hates
you?", Malcolm asked. "It's because every time he sees your face, he
sees the mirror of his crime, and his guilty conscience can't bear to face
it." For people in the black community, the problems are still real, and
they identify with that kind of statement.
Most blacks in the US are from urban areas, and Malcolm was a product of the
urban environment. Spike Lee's movie is very good at portraying the racism he
faced in that environment, which is another reason blacks identify with the
film.
Because of the popularity of Malcolm, different people try to claim him, and
a mythology develops. Even Bill Clinton goes jogging in a Malcolm X cap. John
Vanunu, who was Bush's chief of staff, on a TV talk show said, if Malcolm were
alive today, he'd be a Republican! And then there are liberals who want to make
him the same as Martin Luther King.
The reason Malcolm X is still so important is that, on a fundamental level,
things haven't changed. People know the problems haven't been solved; that's why
Malcolm is still popular.
The American Revolution of the 18th century was incomplete. Slavery, an
institution of pre-capitalist society, was not overthrown.
The Civil War, or second American Revolution, in 1861-65, led to the physical
and political demise of the slavocracy. The northern capitalists became rulers
of the entire United States.
Even this great victory did not lead to full equality. Because the bourgeois
revolution failed to accomplish its basic democratic task
- national unity based on
full equality of all citizens -
the right of blacks to self-determination became the central unfinished
task of the democratic revolution.
It is the central question on whether the US working class will be able to
lead a socialist revolution. A revolutionary leadership must have a policy of
unconditional support to black equality and self-determination. There are two
combined tasks: to resolve the national question and the class question.
Malcolm X combined the two questions. He was one of the country's most
outstanding black freedom fighters ever, and one of the world's most determined
revolutionaries in the 20th century. He spoke for the most oppressed black
nationality, and his evolution pointed toward revolution as the only way to end
oppression and exploitation.
There is a crisis of leadership in the US black community. There is no
independent black movement. The fight for black equality wasn't an issue in the
recent presidential election. Both Bill Clinton and George Bush avoided the
issue.
The leadership of the African American community historically has been in the
hands of liberals -
that is, people who oppose racism but support capitalism. There have been
few black socialists or revolutionary democrats of the Malcolm X calibre. Yet
there has always been an independent black-led civil rights movement. Legal
racism led black liberals to use mass action
- proletarian methods
- to fight for equality.
Black liberalism, however, cannot play a revolutionary role any more. Its
time has come and gone with the defeat of segregation. It now requires Malcolm
X-type leadership to lead a fight to end racism rooted in capitalism.
From the end of the 1870s to the 1960s, the battle for full equality was
focused on ending Jim Crow legal segregation. Every major black formation had a
one-point program: end Jim Crow and allow blacks to become full citizens.
Organisations like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People (NAACP) were formed to push for full equality. The issue wasn't
capitalism. It was racism. Blacks were told they could not be part of the profit
system, except as slaves and now as second-class, exploited labour.
During World War II a March on Washington Movement was organised. It was led
by A. Philip Randolph and others who supported US capitalism in the imperialist
war. But blacks were segregated in the army and could not get jobs in the war
industries. Blacks were told to close their mouths and suffer racism until
fascism was defeated. The civil rights leaders refused and planned a march on
Washington until the government backed down.
This small example of independent black political action indicates the
powerful dynamic of the democratic rights question.
The March on Washington development also made another point. Blacks would not
wait for organised labour or others before fighting for democratic rights. The
power of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and '60s came from the fact that
all blacks suffered discrimination. The black middle class
- professionals, small business people, etc
- had to live in the black
community. They weren't allowed to practise on Wall Street or hold top jobs at
GM or Chevron. Colin Powells and Jesse Jacksons were not allowed. Spike Lee
would not have been allowed into Hollywood to direct a movie on any topic, much
less a major movie on a black revolutionary like Malcolm X.
The contradiction of the civil rights movement is also seen in these changes.
The gains camouflage the reality that most blacks remain unemployed at twice the
level as whites, live in inferior housing and receive rotten education.
The liberal leaders all backed capitalism. But they weren't allowed to get a
piece of the pie. Black workers were always the base of the civil rights
movement, but not the leadership. Black workers had no independent policy. Black
workers and liberals agreed: the battle was to end Jim Crow. That was correct.
It would have been ultraleft to demand the civil rights movement fight to end
capitalism when blacks could not even vote in the south. The road to broader
class unity and a fighting labour movement required the defeat of Jim Crow
first.
Malcolm X was not a sectarian, as some try to claim today or is even implied
in Spike Lee's otherwise excellent film. He simply explained that legal equality
would not mean an end to racism. He wanted full human rights for blacks.
His criticism of King and the liberals was their false view that black
equality could be achieved under capitalism as it was practised. While Malcolm
never claimed to be a socialist, he indicted the imperialist system as
oppressive and exploitative. He told the truth.
The civil rights movement was powerful because it focused on a simple
democratic right. It became a mass movement that won the support of white
working people, although it never got the active support of the organised labour
movement because of racism in those bodies. It changed the consciousness of
millions of workers, black and white, and women, and other minorities.
The overthrow of Jim Crow, however, as Malcolm explained, could not end
racism. Racism is institutionalised in capitalism, because racism is used to
keep working people divided. It is acceptable to society that blacks are paid
less than whites. The battle for full equality means not only formal democracy
but real economic democracy. It means sharing the wealth. A new stage of
struggle for equality was opened in the mid-1960s with the end of legal
segregation. Because the new battle requires a fight against capitalism to end
racism, the black liberals who led previous fights can no longer lead the black
freedom struggle. They can only be won as allies, at best.
The new black middle class's material position makes them more conservative
than working blacks. Being does determine consciousness. The demographics of the
black nationality have changed significantly. The class divisions are deeper.
The victory of the civil rights movement opened a new stage of the black and
working class struggle.
We saw it during the Los Angeles rebellion last year. One of many lessons was
the role played by the black leadership who run the city. The mayor is black,
for example. He came down harder on the black gang youth than the cops who beat
Rodney King! Black youth don't identify with the liberal black leaders. They
wear Malcolm X T-shirts and are starting to read about Malcolm and what he said.
Politics for all working people is clearer today. In the first 200 years of
the United States all class conflicts were camouflaged by the way the black
question existed. But in the 1990s it will be impossible for a new union
movement to develop unless blacks are a central part of the leadership and the
fight against racism is a central plank of the left wing.
Class divisions in the black nationality are more pronounced. The politics of
black middle class elements and liberals are clearer. Liberalism has not brought
about equality in wages or equal housing or equal education. Legal equality has
not lessened the divisions in society. Only a handful of blacks have benefited.
The black liberals have the same politics as white liberals and middle class.
They don't have to live in all-black communities of workers. They can live in
Beverly Hills or Grosse Point, Michigan, where GM's executive live. Racism still
exists even for this layer. But it isn't the same suffocating racism of the
past.
The black middle class has grown significantly, and this layer identifies
with the system more than ever before. It was a goal to get in. Now they're in,
they don't want out.
Another result of the civil rights movement is the larger layer of black
workers in skilled and better paying jobs. This layer provides a potential
leadership for the black nationality. Most of these workers face being pushed
back down and do live in the black communities. Black workers, especially in
manufacturing jobs, are a higher percentage of the unions and work force than in
society as a whole. The most integrated institutions of US society are the
unions.
The offensive against labour over the last 20 years has sought to deepen
divisions using racism and sexism. The capitalists have no intention of paying
equal wages to blacks as a whole. This is the reason for the attacks on
affirmative action.
The aim, however, is not to drive blacks back to Jim Crow. The changing
demographics of the country make that impossible. White males are now a minority
of the work force. What the rulers want is a pariah section of the working
class. They want to use racism to get white workers who are unemployed or facing
unemployment to blame blacks and immigrants.
The middle class layers who made real gains over the last 25 years are
opposed to attacks on black rights, but are not ready to stand up and fight,
since they still live pretty well. Black workers provide the only hope for a
truly independent black movement. But black workers, like white workers,
currently have no alternative leadership. The labour bureaucracy, including
blacks, supports the system.
There are some positive signs of future African American leadership. Black
women workers, for example, are playing a role in the transformation of
leadership in the black community. More black women are in the working class
than ever before.
The question of a new black leadership is now more tied to the labour
movement. Because the rulers will try to use the race card more and more, black
workers will have to push the unions to fight racism, which will mean more
changes in the unions.
It doesn't mean the traditional liberal civil rights groups will not play a
role. As long as racism exists, there will be all types of black rights groups.
But the new leadership of blacks must come from workers, or the battle
against racism will be lost. It is for these reasons that a revolutionary party
must be rooted in the trade unions and black formations that actively oppose
racism.
Our central task is to help transform the unions into fighting instruments.
This means fighting to make them take up the issue of racism. Through those
combined battles, a new leadership of both will arise.
We seek to take Malcolm X's ideas to all youth, not just blacks. We seek a
central leadership role of blacks in the trade unions and in the social
movements.
In one of Malcolm's last interviews, he began to elaborate on his more
refined world view after his break with the sectarian politics of the Nation of
Islam. One of his points concerns nationalism. Malcolm stopped promoting black
nationalism as his philosophy. This had to do with alliances with others who are
oppressed but who are not black.
Nationalism of the oppressed is progressive only when it mobilises the
oppressed to fight for equality. It is not progressive when it urges blacks to
support capitalism.
Blacks will suffer, as the class as a whole suffers, as the bosses seek to
impose their crisis on working people. The most oppressed will get hit hardest.
The future leaders will come from these battles. New Malcolm Xs among blacks and
whites will take the leadership of the mass struggles for social change.
In an interview the Young Socialist magazine did with Malcolm on January 18,
1965, a month before his assassination, Malcolm was asked: "What is your
opinion of the worldwide struggle between capitalism and socialism?"
He answered: "It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck. Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but now it's more like a vulture. It used to be strong enough to go and suck anybody's blood whether they were strong or not. But now it has become more cowardly, like the vulture, and it can only suck the blood of the helpless. As the nations of the world free themselves, then capitalism has less victims, less to suck, and it becomes weaker and weaker. It's only a matter of time in my opinion before it will collapse completely."
