Black nationalism and socialism : the national question and the black liberation struggle in the United States

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Black Nationalism § and eYate lie The

National

Question

the

and

Black Liberation Struggle Tat Melty: meet me)

George

Breitman

Malcolm

X,

Black Nationalism, and Socialism Le

NG errieTs

DM ETa

Tig

bor INTRODUCTION

CONTENTS Introduction

3

The National Question and the Black Liberation Struggle in the United States, by George Breitman Malcolm X, Black Nationalism and Socialism, by George Novack

MERIT

PUBLISHERS

873 Broadway New York, N. Y. 10003

First printing July, 1968

8

23

Since the two are not usually thought of together, it may strike some people as odd that black nationalism is coupled with socialism in this pamphlet. Relations of this kind, however, should be viewed in historical perspective. Black nationalism is more prominent than socialism on the American political scene today. Yet not so long ago, during the first period of the contemporary drive toward self-determination, nationalism was itself a minor and muted voice. When the civil-rights movement around Dr. Martin Luther King was launched with the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, it set as its goal integration into official white society through the removal of legal disabilities and discriminatory practices. Its leaders urged that black people be assimilated on an equal basis into the melting pot of a happily unified, homogeneous American nationality—as other ethnic groups had been before them. Black moderates, white liberals, and certain ‘‘radicals”’ all rejected the prospect that the black masses would come to regard their differences from other elements of the American population, and especially its ruling powers, as so deep and unbridgeable that they preferred to cherish and accentuate, rather than to deny and discard, them. Some even stigmatized black nationalism as a reprehensible “‘racism in reverse.” These critics and opponents fail to see that black nationalism is a natural outgrowth of the 350-year subject status of the Afro-Americans and a revolutionary response to the humiliations and injustices they suffer under the whitesupremacist domination of monopoly capitalism.

Printed in the United States of America

As

other

alternatives

have

been

shut

off,

nationalism,

pop-

ularized in the slogans of ‘“‘black power’ and “black control of the black community,” has opened out as the most effective channel through which Afro-Americans could assert their dignity as human beings and determine their own destiny. In this they take their place among the hundreds of millions of colonial masses struggling for self-determination against capitalist oppression. The more than twenty-two million black people who live in the United States have as legitimate a right to get rid of their oppressors “by any means necessary” as the three million inhabitants of the thirteen colonies who won their liberty in the eighteenth century War

5 of

Independence

against

Great

Britain,

or

as

the

Algerians,

namese, Congolese, Angolans, and Southern Africans today.

All variants

of black

nationalism

are united by the common

Viet-

as-

piration of self-determination. But they do not agree on how this desired goal is to be achieved. There are wide divergences amongst them on this crucial issue. Some hope to attain freedom within the framework of the capitalist system by building up black-owned businesses or cooperative enterprises. Separatists advocate the establishment of an independent territorial nation-state of an indeterminate economic nature. Others talk in vague terms of a distinctively new society rooted in “negritude,” also without specifying what sort of economic basis it might have. Finally, there are those militants who have learned from the postwar colonial revolutions and their studies that an uncompromising struggle against imperialism and capitalism must come to socialist conclusions in theory and in action. The problem of the relations between black nationalism and socialism is not limited to distant perspectives. Nor is it a mere matter of academic debate on basic programs. It is urgently posed by the situation of the black masses in present-day capitalist, America and involves the kind of fight they will have to wage in order to gain their demands. As a result of experiences over the past thirteen years, culminating in the murder of Martin Luther King, increasing numbers in the black community have become convinced that the rulers of this country are even less willing to grant the right of self-determination to Afro-Americans than to the Vietnamese or the Puerto Ricans. They see the necessity for a life-and-death combat to throw off racist oppression. They do not so clearly understand why, despite their pretensions of democracy, the possessors of wealth and power cannot treat black Americans like human beings. The obdurate resistance of the rich does not come from historical traditions or psychological prejudices alone; it has profound and powerful economic causes. The Afro-Americans in the crowded slums of the major cities make up the bottom layers of the industrial labor force and service trades. As unskilled, low-paid wageworkers, they perform indispensable functions in the operation of the profit system. Semi-employed or unemployed, they are available for the cheap labor market whenever the capitalists have to call on them. At all times they must take whatever jobs they can get at whatever the bosses are ready to pay them. They are not only victims of superexploitation; their presence also serves as a check upon the wage demands of the employed workers.

The argument is nowadays advanced that, with the spread of automation, the disadvantaged black workers are being squeezed out of job opportunities so fast that they will soon have no place in the economy. It is true that automation processes strike hardest at the untrained and uneducated. But the proponents of the theory of a totally expendable black labor force attach too little weight to the fact that the very existence of a reserve supply of cheap labor is an essential factor for the continuation of capitalist profit-making. A reduced demand for labor means, not that black workers will be completely eliminated, but that they will be more pitilessly ground down by overwork, insecurity, low pay, discrimination, and unemployment. This will remain true so long as the capitalist mode of production prevails. The black youth have been prey to another iniquity of capitalism ever since the U.S. imperialists set out to police the world after World War II. Disproportionate numbers of them are being taken into the armed forces through conscription or economically pressured enlistment. To the black man in uniform the federal government is willing to give food, clothing, shelter, and steady work (until he gets killed) and to dangle free technical training before him as deadly bait—all of which it refuses to guarantee him in civilian life. That type of discrimination has been glaringly evident in the Vietnam war. These are the major economic and military reasons why the capitalist masters of the United States are almost as reluctant to grant self-determination to black wage slaves as were the Southern planters to liberate the chattel slaves before them. As George Breitman points out in his article, the black liberation struggle in the United States has a twofold character. It combines demands which are nationalist and democratic with the grievances of superexploited wageworkers massed in the industrial and commercial centers of the country. These two aspects of the liberation movement cannot readily be distinguished from each other in the actual day-to-day struggle. The fight against discrimination and segregation goes hand in hand with the striving for jobs, housing, education, and other essentials of life. The effort to get any one or all of these necessities pits the black masses against the established capitalist state which, in turn, shows itself to be ever more hostile and repressive. Thus, as the black liberation movement becomes increasingly militant and insurrectionary in temper, it tends to acquire a sharper anticapitalist thrust which shapes its further development. The anticapitalist direction of the national liberation struggle has not yet been perceived by most of its participants, just as only a few foresaw the need for ‘‘black power’’ in the nineteen-fifties. But, as the rulers

of American

capitalism

keep

refusing

to right the wrongs

and

con-

tinue to make victims of the most courageous black leaders, this point

is bound to be impressed upon the awareness of more and more black rebels. Some farsighted black militants have already arrived at the conclusion that a consistent struggle for national liberation must proceed along anticapitalist lines. That proposition was projected by Malcolm X in the year before his assassination, as George Novack seeks to show in his article. It has also been acknowledged by some of his younger disciples. And it is the keystone of the convictions of the black Marxists in the Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialist Alliance. It will require a further series of experiences before considerable numbers of black militants come to see the close connection between their own aspirations and aims as an oppressed people and the program of socialism. Moreover, in the course of doing so, they will have to overcome certain prejudices they have unwittingly absorbed against the ideas of socialism and Marxism. All black revolutionists want to cleanse their minds of the lies implanted by the propaganda of the white racist oppressors. It is therefore ironic that many black nationalists do not understand that a scorn and suspicion of socialist ideas is not least among these distortions. Why do the guardians of American capitalist society hate and fear revolutionary socialism as well as militant black nationalism? They take the same hostile attitude toward both movements because they see an affinity between them in their uncompromising opposition to the existing order. And both movements will be the loser if the representatives of the racist rulers evaluate their real relations more accurately than the black militants. Contributing to the black nationalists’ mistrust of socialist ideas is their mistaken identification of Marxism with the aims of social-democracy and Stalinism, and especially the defaults of these two currents in regard to unqualified support of the black liberation movement. Black nationalism and genuine Marxism are most relevant to each other under the given conditions of the struggle in the United States, where neither the democratic and nationalist nor the working-class objectives of the black community can be realized without an orga-

nized mass revolutionary movement to overthrow the domination of

the monopolists,

militarists,

and white supremacists.

However

much

their paths of development may differ, the liberation of the Afro-Amer-

icans and the cause of the emancipation of the working class through socialism are tied together. In this connection, the course of development in Cuba may be

pertinent. It was their uncompromising revolutionary nationalism which led Fidel Castro and Che Guevara to the socialist conclusions that enabled them successfully to realize their national-democratic rogram. Be

*

*

*

The two essays in this pamphlet discuss various aspects of the connections and contradictions between black nationalism and socialism at the present point of political development in the United States. The first article is by George Breitman, editor of Malcolm X Speaks and author of The Last Year of Malcolm X in addition to many other writings on the strategy of Afro-American liberation over the past three decades. His piece was a contribution to an anthology of articles by Marxists of many lands on the fiftieth anniversary of the October 1917 Revolution, entitled Fifty Years of World Revolution: 1917-1967. (It was written before Martin Luther King’s assassination in April 1968.) The other essay is by George Novack, American socialist scholar, who has written numerous works on philosophy, history, and politics. He is also co-author of Watts and Harlem and The Black Uprisings: 1967. It was originally delivered as a speech at the Militant Labor Forum

in San

Francisco

at which

the noted writer

Eldridge

Cleaver,

Minister of Information of the Black Panther Party, also spoke. Whether or not the analysis and conclusions of the writers are persuasive or acceptable, they deserve serious consideration by those concerned with the cause of black liberation. That movement is still in its preparatory stages and the path to its goal is not easy to map out. In the years ahead the struggle will take even more unanticipated turns than it has since 1955. Somewhere along that road the forces of black nationalism and those

revolutionary

socialists,

white

and

black,

who

are

ready,

will-

ing, and able to do their duty in combating and uprooting all the evils of class society, from racial oppression to economic exploitation, will make the blocs necessary to overthrow American capitalism.

8

THE NATIONAL QUESTION AND THE BLACK LIBERATION STRUGGLE IN THE UNITED STATES By George

Breitman

The Bolsheviks were enabled to conquer and hold power because, among other things, they had a well-grounded view of the national question and knew how to apply it under the specific circumstances of the Russian Revolution. The great value of this asset can be properly estimated when it is remembered that no other party of the prewar social democracy, from the right wing through the center to the left Polish tendency of Rosa Luxemburg, held a correct position in theory or practice on this crucial problem. The Leninist teachings on the national question have become an integral part of the theory of permanent revolution in the epoch of imperialism and the transition to socialism. Owing to the extremely uneven development of world society since the bourgeois revolutions completed their progressive work, there are very few thoroughly homogeneous states under capitalist rule. Most of them contain oppressed nationalities within their borders or under their domination which yearn to throw off their bondage to an alien power and achieve self-determination as a free and independent people. The national question, which first exhibited its irrepressible explosive force during World War I and the Russian Revolution, has since become of prime importance in the world revolutionary process. The urge of the colonial and semicolonial countries in the grip of the imperialist powers to assert their claims to independence has been intensified to the maximum by the liberation struggles in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America over the past two decades. Lenin most clearly and fully recognized the strategical significance of this question for the revolutionary socialist movement and its vanguard, and worked out a program to deal with its manifold aspects along lines previously projected by Marx and Engels. The principal points of Leninist policy in this field may be summarized as follows. 1) Every nationality has the democratic right to selfdetermination. 2) Its struggle for this right is just and progressive and must

be wholeheartedly supported against the power and privileges of the dominant nation. 3) The popular nationalist movement has every right to separation from the ruling nation and establishment of independent nationhood if it so chooses. 4) It retains this right even in relation to a workers’ state of which it may be a part. 5) In the interests of socialism and democracy, the representatives of the revolutionary proletariat are duty-bound to be exceedingly sensitive to the feelings and demands of a hereditarily oppressed people, to accord them every possibility of developing their own capacities in their own way and under their

own

direction,

and

to lean

over

backwards

in removing

any grounds for the perpetuation or revival of chauvinist or supremacist attitudes against them, so that genuine relations of equality and fraternity between the respective nations can be fostered and achieved. 6) At the same time, the Bolsheviks insisted upon the necessity for workers of different nationalities who must conduct the struggle against a centralized capitalist state to unite voluntarily in a single centralized party. These teachings on the progressive historical significance of the struggle of oppressed nationalities and the attitude to be taken toward them, which were first validated by the victory of the Russian Revolution, have since spread throughout the world. They have found fresh confirmation in the liberation struggles of the colonial and semicolonial countries that have featured the world revolution since the end of the second world war. Paradoxically, these national movements have not been confined to the underdeveloped peoples of the Third World. They have also sprung up within the most advanced industrialized states such as Belgium, Canada, and the United States, not to speak of the resistance of the workers’ states in Eastern Europe against domination by the Kremlin. The most momentous of these movements in the capitalist lands is the liberation struggle of the more than 22,000,000 Afro-Americans.

Although their movement for self-determination springs from the racism and disabilities they suffer under the white-supremacist monopolist regime in the United States, it has been fed and fostered by the example of the colonial revolutions, which have in turn found inspiration in the October Revolution. It is immediately and consciously connected with the ongoing efforts of the peoples on the African continent to cast off foreign dom-

11

10 ination and take charge of their own affairs. In this sense, the struggle of the black masses for emancipation and equality on North American soil today is linked with the revolutions of the oppressed nationalities arising from the October Revolution and the ideas of the Bolsheviks on this question, which have sunk so deeply into the minds of oppressed peoples everywhere over the past half century. We shall indicate later on how these ideas were transmitted to the American revolutionists and applied to the complex problems presented by the black liberation struggle. *

*

*

The massive uprisings of Afro-Americans in Newark, Detroit, and scores of other cities during the summer of 1967 have focused world attention upon the black liberation struggle in the United States. What is the nature of this movement, what are its principal problems and its prospects? Even though most of its leaders and participants do not yet think

in such

terms,

the black

revolts

should

be viewed

within

the dynamics of the unfolding socialist revolution in the United States. The strivings for equality and freedom by 22,000,000 black people directly oppressed by the foremost capitalist power are more than justified on their own account. But the fact that this part of the population almost all belongs to the working class and is largely located in the core of the country’s biggest cities, including its national capital, gives exceptional importance to its increasingly bitter and violent collisions with the American ruling class. As the uprisings certify, black people constitute the most combative and advanced section of the anticapitalist forces within the heartland of world imperialism. The vanguard role of the black liberation fighters in the United States is akin to the leading role of the insurgent colonial masses at this point in the progress of the world revolution. Their attacks upon the white capitalist power structure deal staggering blows to U.S. imperialism on its home grounds, just as the resistance of the Cuban, Vietnamese, and other freedom fighters is checking its aggressive designs on the international arena. These interlocking struggles reciprocally strengthen one another as they weaken the chief imperialist adversary. This interconnection is more and more explicitly recognized by the leading spokesmen and among the ranks of both sectors of the anti-imperialist camp. The black liberation struggle in the United States has a twosided character. Most liberals and many pseudo-Marxists go astray by failing to understand its duality. As the drive of an

oppressed racial minority bent on self-determination, freedom, and human rights, it is first of all a popular movement with a nationalist and democratic mainspring. But it is much more than that. The Afro-American struggle is not a peasant movement for agrarian reform in a backward country. It is the upheaval of superexploited workers crowded into city slums who are victims of intolerable conditions of life and labor in the richest and most advanced capitalism. They constitute the backbone of the industrial reserve army of U.S. monopoly capitalism. This combined character of their struggle, which is both national-democratic in its demands and proletarian-socialist in tendency, endows it with doubly explosive force. The black rebels are so many time bombs planted in the vital centers of the capitalist colossus. The struggle for emancipation has deep historical roots in the colonial slave system of the Americas, the Southern Cotton Kingdom,

the

Civil War

and

Reconstruction

of the nineteenth

century. The last formally emancipated the black chattels but did not give them elementary bourgeois rights on an equal footing with the rest of the American nation. The nationalist feelings and features of their struggle today have antecedents in Marcus Garvey’s movement during the nineteen-twenties. The modern phases of the struggle began with the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting segregation in the public schools and the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, the former capital of the Confederacy. This was the city-wide mass action that launched the civil-rights movement and propelled Reverend Martin Luther King into the spotlight. In the thirteen years since then, the struggle has gone through two main stages of development. The first period, from 1954 to 1965, was on an extremely elementary level, corresponding to the inexperience and illusions of the Afro-Americans newly entering upon the path of mass struggle. The movement was centered in the South, the most retarded section of the country, rather than in the metropolitan North and West. The avowed objective was integration into white society with full civil rights, which meant elimination of the more flagrant legal and social abuses inflicted by official racism. Court and legislative challenges, backed up by nonviolent civil disobedience to put pressure on the authorities, were the principal means of action .advocated and practiced by its moderate middle-class leadership (the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,

the Southern

Christian

Leadership

Conference, the Con-

12

13

gress of Racial Equality). Even the student youth from the Southern black campuses who launched the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960 and engaged insit-ins and other forms of direct action were partisans of this method and outlook. The high points of this phase were the massive August 1963 outpouring at Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. It succeeded in focusing national and international attention on the racial conflict in the United States, impelled the Kennedy and Johnson administrations to pay lip service to the complaints of the black population, and forced Congress to pass several civil-rights bills. Neither these measures nor Johnson’s trumpeted ‘‘war on poverty” removed or alleviated the most burning grievances; they did not end discrimination or police brutality or give jobs, adequate education, housing, and other essentials to the black community. The liberals’ policy of reliance upon pressuring capitalist politicians or pleading with them was stigmatized as “‘tokenism” and condemned by the more militant spokesmen for the race. The discrediting of this course and the widespread disillusionment with its meager results ushered in the second stage of the struggle. This was announced by the 1964 outburst in Harlem, followed by the explosions in Watts in 1965 and in Newark and Detroit in 1967. This increasingly aggressive phase of the black revolt has far from run its course. It is marked by growing rejection of the goal of assimilation into white capitalist society and its culture and equally vigorous assertion of the right to self-determination of Afro-Americans— a demand formulated in the slogan: Black control of black communities. Although these black-power trends are nationwide, embracing South,

North,

and

West,

they

are most

pronounced

and

pow-

erful in the Northern urban ghettos. The leadership comes largely from young people who are not simply militant but revolutionary in temper and outlook. These fiery rebels scoff at pacifist principles and consciously act according to the maxim popularized by Malcolm X: Freedom by any means necessary. The representative figures of these consecutive stages are Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Dr. King is the American Gandhi, a middle-class leader aspiring to achieve equality for black Americans through the acquisition of civil rights by peaceful, legal, and electoral means. While they are not averse to exerting limited forms of mass pressure, he and his associ-

ates plead tearfully with the powers-that-be to heed the just claims of the black minority and redress their grievances lest they push beyond the framework of the established order. As a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, King is honored by official white society as well as by many blacks. The Democratic administrations have turned to him at critical moments to restrain aroused black communities, just as he looks to them to relieve the conditions of the restless Afro-Americans. While King retains a measure of popularity and esteem among middle class elements, his influence has steadily waned as his tactics have failed to deliver the goods. Today he has largely forfeited whatever authority he had over the discontented urban masses.

These

ghetto

dwellers have instinctively absorbed and acted

upon many of the teachings of Malcolm X in the last and most productive year of his life. The key ideas he advanced include black leadership of black people, summarized in the slogan “‘black power”’; self-defense; black pride and solidarity; identification with Africa and the colonial liberation struggles; intransigent opposition to the white capitalist power structure and its twin parties; opposition to all imperialist interventions against colored peoples; collaboration after their own unification

with

those

militant

whites

who,

following

the example

of

John Brown, are ready to do more than talk about fighting racial injustice and social inequality. The martyred Malcolm is the ideological guide and inspirer of the black radicals. He is the hero of the youthful rebels who are in the forefront of the liberation ranks and spearhead the street actions in the cities and the demonstrations on the campuses. His autobiography and speeches are required reading for young radicals, black and white.

Malcolm was the herald of the black nationalist ferment in the black community. This nationalism is the product of the system of racism, segregation and discrimination which has been an integral part of American capitalist civilization from its birth and which, despite lavish promises, has not been essentially mitigated in recent decades. The growing consciousness among Afro-Americans of their status as a distinctive group with its own interests and objectives has been intensified by the independence struggles in Africa and the colonial revolution and sharpened by the glaring and growing contrast between their own conditions and those of white Americans. The ghettos serve to unite them physically, economically, psychologically, and culturally.

15

14 At

the

present

point,

black

nationalism

is more

of a mood

than an organized force. It is highly diversified in its manifestations, which range all the way from advocacy of a separate nation to searches for the special values of ‘negritude,’’ from proponents of black business ownership to revolutionary disciples of the Malcolm X school and black Marxists. There are quite a few ‘Marxists’? in the United States and other countries who misjudge the nature of the nationalist sentiments among Afro-Americans and fail to grasp their highly progressive character and revolutionary thrust. The aspiration of

22,000,000

blacks

to

decide

their

own

destiny

is in itself

just and democratic. But there is more to the matter than that. Its assertion in practice keeps bringing them into headlong conflict with U.S. capitalist society and its state apparatus, which will not and cannot satisfy their economic, social, legal, political, and cultural demands. The irrepressible opposition of the insurgent black masses has objectively become the most upsetting and radicalizing factor in American life. This is recognized by the politicians and press when they speak of ‘“‘the racial issue” as the most important and urgent in the United States today. The other side of the dual nature of the freedom movement makes it all the more menacing to the capitalist regime. This rebellious social force, striving for equality and human rights, is at the same time an indispensable part of the working class reacting against excessive exploitation. Its black nationalism is indissolubly fused with its proletarian situation, no matter how little or how much this or that individual realizes the fact. Afro-American resistance and rebelliousness willy-nilly becomes the most violent and matured expression of anticapitalist opposition within the United States. Black nationalism is often confused with separatism, though the two are not identical. Separatism is only one facet, one trend, and as yet a minor one, in the broad and agitated stream of Afro-American nationalism. It is an ultimate option which has yet to be adopted by the black masses. Whether or not they will ever choose to exercise their right to territorial division and autonomy depends upon the further development of American history. At the present juncture most politically conscious radical black nationalists call for “black power,” interpreted as control over their own communities. Some go further. The Conference on Black Power, held at Newark immediately after the uprising there,

enthusiastically

adopted

a resolution

proposing

the ini-

tiation of ‘‘a national dialogue on the desirability of partitioning the United States into two separate and independent nations, one to be a homeland for white Americans and the other to be a homeland for black Americans.”’ As the mood of the ghetto dwellers hardens and hopes for solving their problems under the existing system dwindle, they can raise more determined cries for separatism than this mild proposal for discussion. The ghetto uprisings, which have extended from Birmingham, the principal industrial center of the South, in 1963 to scores of

cities

from

coast

to

coast

in

1967,

must

be

considered

as

the most aggressive manifestations of black nationalism to date. These revolts are rehearsals for further encounters that will be better prepared, on a larger scale, and not so quickly suppressed. The basic causes of the upheavals are racial segregation and injustice; rent-gouging; price extortion; substandard housing in dirty slums; inferior and racist education; bad or nonexistent health and recreational facilities; lack of job opportunities and widespread unemployment, especially among the youth; and a general alienation from a society whose ideology and culture are openly or subtly racist (which explains the beginnings of radicalization even among middle-class people, intellectuals and students who can escape the slums). In almost every instance they were touched off by acts of police harassment. The anger and frustration produced by these conditions have been inflamed by the Vietnam war, which has caused the slashing of antipoverty and welfare appropriations by the White House and Congress and the drafting of disproportionate numbers of Afro-Americans for military service. Despite the frantic and fruitless hunt for culprits and scapegoats on the part of the authorities and witch-hunters, these actions were not planned or directed by any organization. They were spontaneously provoked by the unrestrainable rage against their misery and mistreatment seething throughout all black communities. Their anger was vented in the first place against their most obvious oppressors, the agents of “law and order,’ and the merchants who fleece them in their neighborhoods. These counterattacks against the racist system and its armed defenders demonstrated a high degree of unity and solidarity in the black community. The ghetto dwellers were elated at the opportunity to strike back at their enemies and exploiters and retaliate for the countless indignities heaped upon them. One of the most noteworthy features of the actions was the leading role of the young people. Unlike their more conserva-

16

17

Its activities are spasmodic, uncentralized, and localized. They need to be unified, better coordinated, and more consciously

and systematically directed on a national scale. Unfortunately, the movement does not yet have any authoritative leadership with a program capable of welding militant cadres together and helping them organize the masses. The main defect of the liberation forces is the absence of an independent black political party, no matter what its name, which could mobilize and lead the people against the two capitalist parties, both on the electoral field and in mass actions against the evils of the system they uphold and administer. Ninety-five per cent of the black voters cast their ballots for Johnson in 1964, and the two black mayors first elected in the big American cities in 1967 ran as Democrats. Most of the moderate leaders seek to keep the black people shackled to the Democratic or Republican machines. But even the most defiant black-power spokesmen have yet to grasp or state the necessity for breaking completely and conclusively with capitalist politics and moving ahead to genuinely independent, all-black political organization and action. Many of them try to evade the crucial problems posed by politics on the grounds that electoral efforts are worthless or harmful diversions from more effective forms of direct action. These apolitical opponents of an independent black party do not yet understand the great benefits such an enterprise can bring in arousing, enlightening, educating, organizing and uniting the Afro-American masses and providing a vehicle for the

idealism

of

militant

black

youth.

It is,

indeed,

the best

available way to realize the popular slogan of black power they champion. They hesitate to advocate this proposal because, among other reasons, they envisage a new black political organization as

—_—>__

tive elders, these new-breed rebels have been brought up in the atmosphere of the colonial revolution, the resurgence of Africa, the awakening of the black masses and the freedom movement that has been advancing since 1954. They are imbued with a revolutionary ardor which makes them willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of black liberation. These street mobilizations, which assumed forms of armed warfare in numerous places, testify to the revolutionary propulsion behind the movement which has only begun to display its creative power. Despite its vast promise, the movement at its present stage is subjected to heavy handicaps which hold back its progress.

a duplicate of the existing vote-catching machines that they rightly despise and reject. They do not see that such a party can be—and under pressure from its constituents would have to become—the leader and organizer of mass actions as well as an electoral apparatus. It would not only seek to elect its own candidates to office but could participate in every area of struggle that affected the welfare of black people: rent strikes, boycotts, fights for jobs and control of schools, against police brutality and military interventions against their colonial brothers. It could inscribe on its banner Malcolm X’s motto: ‘freedom by any means necessary.” The establishment of such a party would not only add a powerful arm to the Afro-American struggle, enabling its members to speak in a single voice and make alliances on an equal basis with other oppositional forces. It could shake and break up the two-party system that has long ensured the stability of monopolist

domination

in the

United

States.

Such

a shattering

of the established political structure would immensely accelerate the regrouping of class forces on American soil. In the first flush of their drive toward self-determination, carried away by the surge of the urban uprisings and in justifiable revulsion against the institutions and practices of the white-supremacist system, some of the finest militants shy away from any type of political organization. They believe that it is totally incompatible with direct mass action. They hastily and uncritically transfer tactics and techniques which have proved

applicable

eration

struggles

combating

and

in

to

the

Chinese,

the far more

Cuban

and

complex

Vietnamese

circumstances

lib-

of

defeating the ruling class in the stronghold of

world capitalism. They categorically counterpose armed struggle, and more narrowly guerrilla warfare, in the cities to mass political organization as the sole indicated and effective mode of revolutionary action. They also proceed on the mistaken assumption that electoral and parliamentary action is outmoded or has been bypassed and believe that armed struggle alone is on the agenda. They overlook the meaning of the fact that in 1967, after the uprisings, black voters turned out in great numbers to nominate and elect black mayors in Gary and Cleveland, even on Democratic tickets. In certain electoral districts the black candidates received all the votes. Moreover, they offer the black communities no alternative to the Democratic or Republican candidates in the 1968 presidential campaign. In their exclusive preoccupation with armed struggle and

18

19

associated forms be,

the

ultraleft

of direct action, however legitimate that may militants

fail

to

come

to grips

with

the most

pressing problem of the present hour in the struggle for emancipation. That is the barely begun task of organizing, unifying into a cohesive force, and educating the millions of blacks who must shoulder the colossal assignment of overturning white supremacy and radically transforming capitalist America. This prolonged and difficult job cannot be impatiently waved aside or skipped over by those who aspire to lead the black revolution. The most agonizing contradiction in the present situation is the readiness of the black masses for the most vigorous actions against their oppression by the racist capitalist system and the inertia and apathy of the white workers. The deep prejudices among the white workers and the alienation between them and the black communities is the baneful heritage of four centuries of white supremacy and racism; of a consistent policy of dissension and disunity between black and white, inculeated and enforced by the possessors of power, property, and propaganda; of a corrupt and conservatized union bureaucracy which shamefully discriminates against black workers; and of the materially privileged position and general political and ideological backwardness of the more favored elements of the working class. These adverse circumstances compel the black resistance fighters to combat the plutocracy single-handed without support, and even with a certain measure of hostility, from the main body of the working class. Common action between the black masses and the white workers is indispensable for any successful long-term effort to abolish American capitalism. But that requires prior organization of the black masses on the one hand and a resurgence of labor militancy on the other. Neither of these prerequisites for cooperation against their joint exploiters has yet come into existence. This is not surprising or unprecedented. The various forces called upon to make a social revolution rarely move onto the field

of

battle

all

at

once,

or

at

an

even

rate.

In the

United

States today the blacks are far out in front while the white workers lag very far in the rear. This irregular development of the anticapitalist struggle creates excruciating problems for both black and white revolutionists. Their difficulties are great. But they are more than matched by the perplexing problems facing the monopolist rulers of the United States in dealing with the black liberation movement. For a decade the deluded decision-makers at Washington

thought they could dispose of the demands of black people by big promises and small concessions. This has not worked and the moderate leaders they counted on to hold the insurgency in check have been used up. The revolts in the cities multiply, grow in intensity and ferocity, and become ever harder to bring under control. What are the rulers of America to do in so serious a social crisis? Although their previous policy is manifestly bankrupt, they have still to elaborate and adopt a different line of policy to handle the new situation. They have not shrunk from using police, state troops, and federal paratroopers to put down the uprisings with savage vindictiveness. At the same time neither Congress nor the President is able or willing to take the steps required to wipe out the injustices that provoked the uprisings. The high and mighty possessors of power are obviously uncertain how to proceed. They are caught in a tortuous dilemma. They need social peace and stability at home to pursue their imperialist adventures abroad unimpeded and to present an attractive image to the rest of “the free world.” Yet they have been no more successful in pacifying the Afro-Americans than they have in breaking the will of the Vietnamese to be free. They can either continue the course of conciliation and concessions interspersed with punitive measures, which has proved ineffective over the past decade, or embark upon outright repression. Neither alternative is satisfactory or workable. If the richest capitalist country on earth could not remove or even alleviate the grievances of 22,000,000 Afro-Americans during six years of the biggest boom in its history, can it muster the means to do so under less propitious economic circumstances in the years ahead? There remain the ‘‘extreme solutions” of apartheid on the South African model or genocide. Many Afro-Americans anticipate and dread this eventuality, which spurs them to fight all the more uncompromisingly for their rights and lives. The imperialists who dropped atom bombs on Japan, and napalm and antipersonnel bombs on women and children in Vietnam, are fully capable of the worst atrocities. But for the time being they are restrained from resorting to the most extreme measures by powerful considerations of international diplomacy and public opinion and by fear of dangerous domestic consequences. It would be risky and costly to try and crush the determined resistance to such a Hitlerite course that is bound to be put up by the millions of blacks concentrated in the major population centers of the country. Such a cruel and bloody racial

21

20 and civil war would entail the abolition of democracy and the attempted clamping of some form of military dictatorship on the whole American nation. A counterrevolutionary move along such lines would arouse resistance from other sections of the people and have incalculable consequences. No matter from what angle it is approached, the confrontation between the black insurgents and the white-supremacist capitalist regime is fraught with immense revolutionary perspectives.

In an article published in Pravda on the fiftieth anniversary of the October Revolution, President Ho Chi Minh stated that “complete victory can be won by the national liberation revolution only when it develops into socialist revolution.” This theorem of the permanent revolution applies with full force to the black liberation struggle in the United States because of the proletarian composition of the black population, their economic role under monopoly capitalism, and the impact of the lessons absorbed from the colonial revolutions. Up to now the movement has unfolded along nationalistdemocratic

lines.

But,

like

the

Chinese,

Cuban,

Vietnamese,

and similar revolutions, it has an inherent and irresistible tendency to break through the narrow confines of pure and simple nationalism and acquire a more and more pronounced anticapitalist and anti-imperialist cutting edge. The fundamental problems of jobs, housing, education, and foreign policy confronting the movement are social, economic, and political in character and require a transformation of class relations for their solution. This logic of revolutionary and progressive nationalism in the imperialist era has already manifested itself in the black liberation movement. Its most advanced leaders and conscious fighters have begun to embrace the internationalist spirit and class-struggle concepts of Marxian socialism. Malcolm X was the great pioneer who initiated a process of evolution from black nationalism toward socialism and internationalism. His ideas have been taken up since his death and carried forward by certain SNCC and CORE leaders, among others. The speeches of Stokely Carmichael at the OLAS Conference at Havana and his subsequent tour of the capitals of the Third World betoken a rapprochement between the adherents of the most combative black nationalism and the positions of revolutionary socialism. This alignment is bound to becomecloser asthe struggle against **Uncle Sham”’ intensifies on all fronts. The Socialist Workers Party was the first radical tendency in

the United States to recognize the full import of the black liberation movement and the revolutionary implications of black nationalism. It has been among their sturdiest and most consistent, though not uncritical, supporters at all stages of their development. This was acknowledged by Malcolm X and evidenced in his friendly attitude toward the Socialist Workers Party, which has been most instrumental in popularizing his views. The Socialist Workers Party seeks to reinforce collaboration on all levels between black militants and revolutionary socialists in order to further the aims of the black liberation struggle and prepare the vanguards of both the black masses and

white

workers

for

united

action,

in

combat

to the end,

against the racist profiteers. The Socialist Workers Party has derived its understanding and orientation on this key problem of the American revolution from the teachings of Lenin and Trotsky. In the ideologically primitive period before World War I and the Russian Revolution,

even

those

American

socialists

who

had

shaken

off racial prejudice did not recognize the special place and great importance of the doubly exploited black people in the revolutionary process. They submerged the distinctive claims of the blacks in a single undifferentiated struggle of the working class as a whole against the capitalist system. The thinking of the pioneer American Communists on this matter was profoundly transformed when they learned about the Leninist ideas on the revolutionary-democratic dynamism of the national question and the Bolshevik strategy for liberation of the oppressed nationalities. Their understanding was enhanced as they later assimilated the theory of the permanent revolution. During his last exile, from 1929 to 1940, Trotsky, the creator

of that theory, transmitted to his American followers a deeper understanding of the progressive nature of the black struggle for self-determination. His program called for its unconditional support from all genuine revolutionists. He perspicaciously forecast that black Americans, as the most dynamic segment of the working class and the most capable of revolutionary courage and sacrifice, were destined to become its vanguard. This method of approach has guided the subsequent major resolutions of the Socialist Workers Party which have analyzed the dominant features of the successive stages of the struggle from 1939 to 1967. The publications containing their conclusions have had a broad circulation and considerable influence upon black and white radicals over the past decade.

23 22 The 1967 uprisings were a milestone in the black liberation struggle. They unmistakably marked its transition from reformism to revolutionism, from petitioning, praying and relying upon the promises of glib capitalist politicians to the most aggressive and advanced forms of direct action. There will be no turning back along this road. The

black

liberation

struggle

but

also

in the basic

industries,

MALCOLM

in America has likewise become

a component part of the world revolution and is bound to become an ever more powerful factor in its development because of its presence in the entrails of the imperialist monster. It acts as a mighty and unmanageable force, upsetting the equilibrium of monopoly capitalism, challenging its domination at home, and setting examples which can prod other oppositional elements of American society into action. What are its prospects of victory? Liberals and skeptics of all varieties insistently point out that the minority status of the Afro-Americans, who compose only one-ninth of the population, dooms to defeat any far-reaching revolutionary objectives. The odds against them are overwhelming, they say. These fainthearts overlook a number of considerations. First of all, the 22,000,000 blacks are a unique minority. They comprise the largest, most compact and influential sector of the urban population. They are already more than half the residents of the national capital and by 1970 ten of the biggest Northern cities are expected to have black majorities. They are not only rooted in the heart of the metropolitan centers transportation,

and the service

trades. In the second place, they have powerful allies abroad in the colonial lands, the workers’ states, and among progressiveminded people the world over, who sympathize with their strivings for equality and emancipation. They also have domestic supporters among the rebel youth. Finally, their isolation on the home front can be overcome once a sizable segment of white workers shakes off its lethargy and moves in an anticapitalist direction. The Afro-American resisters have embarked upon the most formidable revolutionary undertaking of our time: a mortal contest with the world’s strongest capitalist regime in its own citadel. That victory will not come easily or immediately. A costly, bloody, and prolonged conflict, which will hold many surprising twists and turns, looms ahead. The American Marxists are committed to do all in their power to aid and speed that victory as an inseparable part of the socialist revolution in their country.

X, BLACK AND

SOCIALISM

By George

When

Malcolm

X

that his memory women

who

was

shot

down

Novack

in

February

1965,

it was

clear

would be cherished by the millions of black men

mourned

the movement or the ideas

NATIONALISM

their martyred

leader.

and

It was not so certain

that

he initiated after his departure from the Nation of Islam he was elaborating and broadcasting during his last

year would survive and gain ground.

The gunmen still

had

had silenced a personality in the midst of change who

a great

deal

to learn

for himself

as well

as to teach

and

tell

others. Their bullets removed an exceptionally able commander from the battlefield before he was given time to train the officers and assemble the troops for an army of Afro-American emancipation. When

I

wrote

an

obituary

article

death

at that time

I thought

heroic

legend

unbreakable

as an

on

it likely

the

meaning

of his life and

that Malcolm would become

defier of white

supremacy

and

a

enter

into the folk memory of the oppressed yearning for freedom, like Patrice Lumumba or Joe Hill. The image of "our shining black prince" evoked by Ossie Davis at the funeral service pointed in that direction and tended for a while to veil the more prosaic but potent political views and perspectives that Malcolm had projected in the most creative months of his career. These were further dimmed when the movement he had just launched and barely begun to build, the Organization of Afro-American Unity, became fragmented and, passing under a different sort of leadership, veered farther and farther from the new course he had charted. This unfortunate development cannot be held against Malcolm himself. He was

compelled

to

start

out

on

his

own

in the spring

of 1964

under

24

25

extremely

heavy

handicaps.

He

had

considerable

national

notoriety

and international prominence and a large following. But this following was amorphous and remained to be welded together and re-educated along somewhat different lines. Malcolm

lacked

the means

to create a base of organization

that was

broad and strong enough to implement the aims he had set for the movement. These were big objectives and demanded extensive resources and mighty forces for their promotion and realization. It would have taken no little time and effort that time was taken away from

to acquire and assemble these— and the thirty-nine-year-old revolutionary

along with the breath of life.

Arena of Influence

Japanese. A play about his life has just been produced to great acclaim in England. The main reasons for his reknown are to be found in the integrity and

courage

among

However, if Malcolm's organization faltered potential as a rallying center for black unity

and and

failed to fulfill its militancy, his ex-

ample and ideas have had a happier destiny. In the two years since his death these have penetrated into the hearts and minds of the ghetto population from North to South, from Harlem to Watts. His argu-

of the man,

the capacities

for growth

and

leadership

he

exhibited, the rightness and relevance of his positions, and above all the gravity and importance of the cause of Afro-American liberation he represented. But if Malcolm's message has taken wings and traveled so far and so fast through the printed page as it has, no little credit must go to the devoted industry of George Breitman. He was one of the first, certainly among white radicals, to discern the real stature and significance of Malcolm as the most responsive champion of black nationalism since Marcus Garvey. He undertook to defend him against his detractors and defamers. He explained and propagated his views white

and

black

militants

and

then,

when

Malcolm

could

no

longer speak for himself, collected and edited the materials to be found in Malcolm X Speaks. Shortly before Malcolm's death I talked with the very tired leader and his lieutenant James Hotel Theresa in Harlem

Shabazz at the OAAU about the publication

headquarters at the of his speeches. He

ments, his pungent, witty sayings, and his telling points are repeated on many occasions by Afro-American spokesmen and woven into their

was agreeable to the proposal but it was not to be carried through under his direction. His movement was thrown into such disarray following his murder that their appearance would have been indefinitely delayed, and black militants would have been deprived of these

debates

orient the black

treasures

whose

ative

power

and

discussions

movement

that

over

won

radio

over

and

SNCC

TV. and

They CORE

members

are spreading the gospel to broader circles. The Sunday N. Y. Times Book Review recently reported that Malcolm's autobiography and collected speeches communities.

stand

high

among

the

favorite

reading

rural

roads.

Malcolm's

words

are passed

on

in classrooms

and

schoolyards, on street corners and tenement stoops, and burgeon like seeds on rich tropical soil because they match the deepest feelings, the inarticulate

aspirations,

and

life experiences

of rebellious

black youth.

His ideas have becomie a precious, inalienable part of the cultural and political heritage of Afro-America, nourishing the black nationalism which bubbles and boils in the giant cauldrons of the ghettos. Malcolm's

and Africa

placed

influence does not stop at America's

alongside

to the other.

Lumumba

This

is not

shores.

He

is honored

by freedom fighters from one tip of

surprising.

It is more

longer,

them

from

if George

Breitman had not taken

the initi-

different quarters and push them through

the press.

in black

The main channels of communication in these communities are not literary but verbal. So the ideas of Malcolm are transmitted through the spoken word he himself mastered by those who have read or heard about them from various sources. Growing boys and girls, afflicted by the brutal realities of poverty and racism, as Malcolm was, absorb his insights as readily as they inhale the dust of big city streets and

for much

to gather

remarkable

that

his autobiography and speeches have been published abroad and translated into a number of languages: French, German, Italian and

Interpretation of Malcolm's Direction

After that he felt that something more was urgently needed than simply making the text of the speeches available. Malcolm's statements had to be knit together and accurately interpreted, not only in view of the

many

distorters

of his

positions,

but

also because

Malcolm's

outlook had evolved so radically and rapidly after he left the Black Muslims that even many of his followers and admirers could not keep up with the pace of his theoretical and political development and remained unaware of its full import and applications. f The prime purpose of Breitman's latest book is to show in just what respects Malcolm changed during the last year of his life* Breitman analyzes Malcolm, the agitator, in agitated transition. What did Malcolm move from and what was he heading toward? *The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution George Breitman. Merit Publishers, $1.95 paper.

ofa Revolutionary

by

26

27

In a symposium on this book at the Militant Labor Forum in New York April 14 one of the participants who was, like Malcolm X, a former Muslim minister, stated that in essence he never changed. This view sweeps aside and fails to do justice to the differential features in the successive stages of Malcolm's growth. From the moment he was made acutely aware of his own degradation

and

the

entrapment

of his people

in the cages

of white capitalist

For a held the ficed for political

long time he firmly and fervently believed that Muhammad keys to the kingdom of salvation and that his wisdom sufthe direction of the movement. In religious as well as radical circles there is nothing unusual in such a deferential master-

disciple millions

relationship and the discipline attached to it. Think of the who have adopted a comparable attitude of blind faith and

obedience

volutionary fire was never quenched in him.

after he had recovered from the surprise and shock of his rupture with Muhammad and proceeded to review and revise his past thinking.

His first modes of resistance and rebellion were individualistic. He sought relief and release from the white-dominated hell called America by "making it" in whatever ways, legal or illicit, ghetto life left open to first

big

turn

came

when

he

had

time

to read

and

reflect

inside prison walls and saw that this reckless course led to a dead end or an end in premature and purposeless death. His conversion to the Nation of Islam was not only a personal redemption and racial reawakening but a tremendous step forward for him and thousands of others who entered the ranks of the Black Muslims in the postwar period.

It represented the passage from individual evasion of a terribly oppressive and cruelly depressive environment into collective organization

and

action.

To

be sure,

the national

and

social

defects

huge

gulps.

For

him

theoretical

in inspiration

but presum-

ably actuated by the critical-minded philosophy of materialism. Malcolm

asserted

his

full

capacities

for

self-reliant leadership

only

of

the

Muslim

sisted in going from the wholesale rejection to the deliberated revolutionizing of American society. Such a task required the development of a political program to guide the action of the black masses and the building of an organization capable of leading them out of bondage. The

include

key

ideas

black

he advanced

leadership

generalizations

in his own charter

of black

nationalism

of black people on all levels summarized

movement,

and social inequality. These results of Malcolm's

reappraisals

have since spread far and

ublishers

5 East 3rd Street New

York,

N.Y.

10003

the

pamphlets

on

Afro-American struggle

did not precede

but flowed from his own experiences of struggle. For example, he had to knock his head against the constrictions of the Muslim movement before he could be convinced of their incorrectness and inadequacy.

in

the idea of black power; self-defense; racial pride and solidarity in the face of the enemy; identification with Africa and the colonial liberation struggle; intransigent opposition to the white capitalist power structure and its twin parties; independent black political action; opposition to all imperialist interventions against the colonial peoples; collaboration on a basis of equality between militant blacks and those militant whites who are ready to do more than just talk about fighting racial injustice

twelve years he served in it was an inescapable, indispensable and valuable factor in the making of the revolutionary Malcolm X. He could not have been educated and his special talents of leadership brought out in any other available way. By temperament and training he was a man of action who had to test ideas in practice to see what they were worth. He thirsted for knowledge of all kinds and assimilated it in

are not religious

revolutionary

impulses which flowed through the congregation of this religious sect had yet to find their proper channel. Nevertheless, the Nation of Islam provided an elementary, albeit inadequate, expression of racial solidarity and emergent national consciousness, a cohesion born of the burning need to fight the devilish white masters as a united band of brothers and sisters. Despite the insurmountable

which

Breitman delineates and documents the successive steps in this second period of transformation in his outlook. That change essentially con-

From Individualism to Organization

The

movements

Tse-tung—and

this

him.

in

toward the declarations of a Stalin or a Mao

society Malcolm was imbued with an unfaltering singleness of purpose. That was to oppose, combat and outwit the system that impoverished, crushed and humiliated twenty-two million blacks. That blazing re-

send for a free catalog

the

29

28 wide he

through

was

the black

embarked

upon

community.

But

a

third state of transition

new

and

when

his life was cut short which

has

written

about

the

subject

elsewhere,

notably

in Marxism

and

the Negro Struggle. Malcolm was on the way to becoming something more than a pure and simple black nationalist and a revolutionary advocate of black power; he was beginning to embrace some of the ideas of socialism, especially the conscious conviction that U.S. capitalism and its vulturistic

imperialism

had

to

be

overthrown

and

abolished

if the Afro-

Americans and the exploited and oppressed in the rest of the world were to be freed. These conclusions have an immense bearing on both the problems of black liberation and the prospects for a socialist America. There

are many

misunderstandings

about

the real relations between

progressive militant nationalism and revolutionary socialism. It is often contended that nationalism and socialism have nothing whatsoever in common, that they are irreconcilable opposites. This is a onesided judgment.

It is true that the nation-state

istic product of bourgeois that

Marxists

are

has

been

the character-

society and capitalist political development;

internationalists;

and

that one

of the principal

This

is

not so well or widely known. In this book Breitman deals only in passing with this incompleted phase of Malcolm's thought, although he

the forces of repression.

ob-

jectives of socialism is to do away with the national frontiers that straitjacket economic activity and the national animosities that divide peoples and enable reactionary forces to hurl them against one another.

is

socialism

alignment

not

confined

against

all

forms

of imperialist

reaction

and

of the two separate social and political movements to

the

international

arena;

it can

also

be operative

within the imperialist strongholds themselves. That is the case in the United States today where the nationalist sentiments expressed in the black power crusade, and the revolutionary socialist movement are alike pitted against the capitalist regime.

Uneven Development of Workers

Unfortunately,

oppositional

movements

but are often out of step with one days when the Negro masses are the power structure as the most life while most white workers are

do

not

another. That is far out in front, rebellious social conservatized and

march

in

unison

certainly so nowaready to challenge force in American apathetic. Just as

the colonial areas are the scene of the most intense revolutionary activity on a world scale, so the black resistance movement takes pre-

cedence regular

in the anti-capitalist struggles in the United States. This irdevelopment creates many agonizingly difficult problems for

revolutionists, both black and white, who a winning opposition to the status quo.

However, militants

are

concerned with

building

the experiences of the colonial revolutions with which black

feel such close kinship have many lessons to teach

those who,

ploitation of the globe has resulted in the subjugation and oppression

like Malcolm, want to think through their problems in order to wage the most effective fight. Among these are the need for unity in struggle, uncompromising hostility to the men of money, and distrust of all their agents, conservative or liberal, open or disguised. Two such lessons which Malcolm came to learn are of great and even decisive importance. One is the usefulness of having allies when you are beset by a formidable foe. To beat back and defeat the assaults of imperialism, the colonial insurgents need all the help they can get from any quarter, and not least from discontented residents in the homelands of their oppressors. We see a fresh example of this in the

of

boost

Anti-Imperialist National Independence

All this makes up one part of the socialist program. But there is more to its position than that, especially at this point in history. Marxists recognize that the imperialist conquest, division and exmany

peoples.

Their

strivings

to throw

off economic,

political

and

cultural domination by the great capitalist powers and win national independence and unity are not only irrepressible but wholly legitimate. These

struggles

are entitled to support

genuine supporter of democracy. There are further reasons why help and

the national liberation Latin America at all

on

their own

: revolutionary

merits

from

any

socialists

hail

and

struggles in Asia, Africa, the Middle East stages. These anti-imperialist movements

deliver sledgehammer blows to the capitalist rulers who are the main enemies of the world working class and opponents of socialism and thereby alter the balance of class forces in favor of the anti-capitalist camp. Thus the insurgent nationalities are in objective alliance with

to

the

Washington

morale

of

the

Vietnamese

and

the dissension

sown

in

by the antiwar mobilizations which have called forth such

frenzied attacks from Johnson, Westmoreland, Lodge and Nixon. So black freedom fighters here, as Malcolm came to realize, can benefit from alliances with fraternal forces at home, provided these

alignments do not obstruct their own unity and independence or discourage and deter their own revolutionary action. What counts in alliances,

as

Breitman

affiliation

of

the

emphasizes,

participants,

but

is

not

the skin color or national

the nature

and

partnership in struggle. Another truth which has been brought home to many

the goal of their colonial

rebels,

31

30 sometimes to their astonishment and dismay, is that a national struggle which stops halfway cannot fulfill the deepest needs and social aspirations of their peoples. The struggle for emancipation must

be carried

through to its logical conclusion. It is not enough to win political sovereignty under capitalism. National independence can become fictitious and turn into a snare and a delusion if popular power, yellow, black

of

or white,

life

and

control

the

is not buttressed

labor. major

So

long

national

by

public

as foreign resources,

ownership

over

the means

or native propertied interests

the demands

of the masses

will

remain unsatisfied and the country can again easily fall into economic subservience to imperialism. The reinstatement of neo-colonialism under formally independent black regimes is being enforced in many newly liberated African nations today.

From

Nationalism to Socialism

This development is not toreordained. It can be averted and the highroad to progress be taken if the national revolution becomes combined with a deeper and broader revolution along socialist lines through which a government of workers and peasants takes over the productive facilities of the country and operates a planned economy in a democratic manner. That is why the anti-imperialist national liberation movements in the undeveloped lands irresistibly tend to pass over from

purely nationalist grounds to socialist aims and measures, often in rhetoric but sometimes in reality. This redirection of a democratic nationalist revolution into socialist channels, which is lodged in the very dynamics of a powerful mass upsurge, took place in Cuba after China and Vietnam. Starting as armed national liberation struggles, these consciously socialist movements through

direct

confrontations

and

collisions

with

revolutions grew over into conclusions derived from

the imperialists

and

their

servitors.

What application do these developments of the colonial revolution have to the Afro-American struggle for equality and emancipation? There are three diverse components at work in the black freedom movement:

its working

class

social

composition, its black nationalism,

and its submerged and latent socialism. The interrelation and interaction of these elements are seldom clearly seen, and are often denied

missed,

because

they

and

do not come forward evenly and mature

dis-

at the

same rate. It is obvious to almost every black American, whether nationalist or not, that he has to work for a living (if he can get a job), and that the whole existence of his people is disfigured by the color bar. These conditions generate fierce and explosive revolt. But the anti-capitalist,

and therewith pro-socialist, dynamics

and direction of his struggle are

not so evident, especially when he is not yet acquainted with authentic socialist thought, when the labor movement is passive and indifferent

to

his

plight,

and

when

the

nantly white and weak. Under such circumstances

avowed there

socialist

are

elements are predomi-

dangers

in an outlook,

which

is prejudiced in principle against socialism or Marxism, is politically unclear, and disregards the anti-capitalism implicit in the working class character of the black revolt. It runs the risk of lagging behind the

needs

and

checking

the

forward

march

of

the movement

itself.

The millions of ghetto dwellers are not only imprisoned by racial segregation; they are daily confronted with social, economic, political and

educational

problems

which

cannot be alleviated, let alone

solved,

within the framework of the existing economic and political system or without the aid of socialist ideas. The outstanding significance of Malcolm's evolution from black nationalism toward socialism on a national and international scale was that, from his observations of the colonial world and his analysis of modern history, he had begun to grasp the necessity for the coalescence of these two movements and seek a synthesis of the revolutionary nationalist and socialist aspects of the freedom struggle. This step in his evolution was neither accidental nor strictly individual; it was a logical political conclusion from his entire experience as a revolutionary. In this respect he anticipated the future of the movement

as well as embodying the best of its current stage. His evolution was incomplete—or rather, incompleted. or

was

ever,

not yet,

some

as

of his

Breitman

disciples

is careful

today,

can

and

ought

to

be

friends

ends.

and

out,

He was not,

a Marxist.

How-

inspired by Malcolm's vision and

his gift for growth, are also beginning and revolutionary socialism need not together for common

to point

to see that black nationalism be adversaries or rivals but

allies whose

adherents

can work

BOOKS

AND PAMPHLETS ON THE AFRO-AMERICAN STRUGGLE

By Malcolm X Autobiography of Malcolm X Malcolm X Speaks Malcolm X on Afro-American History Malcolm X Talks to Young People Two Speeches by Malcolm X

i

By George Breitman

Cloth

The Last

Year of Malcolm

X, The

X, The Man

1.25 95 50 35 25 Paper

Evolution

of a Revolutionary Malcolm

7.50 5.95

4.50 and

1.95

His Ideas

20

How a Minority Can Change Society Myths About Malcolm X by Rev. Cleage and George Breitman Marxism and the Negro Struggle, Harold Cruse, C. DeBerry, George Breitman Black Nationalism and Socialism by George Breitman and George Novack

25

39 50 50

By W.E.B. DuBois Black Reconstruction in America John Brown The World and Africa Souls of Black Folk

~ 3.45 2.45 1.95 .60

Other Works on the Afro-American Struggle The Case for a Black Party, Introduction Ey Pau! Boutelle The Black Uprisings, Newark, Detroit 1967 Introduction by Paul Boutelle The Black Ghetto by Robert Vernon Why Watts Exploded by Della Rossa Should the U.S. Be Partitioned: Into Two Separate and Independent Nations— One a Homeland for White Americans and the Other a Homeland for Black Americans? A Symposium by Robert S. Browne and Robert Vernon Harlem Stirs by Fred Halstead Freedom Now: New Stage in the Struggle for Negro

Emancipation,

1963 SWP Resolution

Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver Black Nationalism and Self Determination

erit

25 .50 as

.50 2.50 25

98

ublishers

873 Broadway New York, N.Y.

5.95 by Leon Trotsky

25

10003

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