Lalcolm X: An UnYielding Revolutionary

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Lalcolm X: An UnYielding Revolutionary

 

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CubaNow - Jul 16, 2007

http://www.cubanow.net/global/loader.php?&secc=1&item=2976&cont=show.php

 

Malcolm X: An Unyielding Revolutionary

 

By Esteban Morales

 

Cubanow.- In September 1960, Malcolm X became one of those world

personalities linked to the Cuban Revolution, not only for his

revolutionary position, and his unyielding solidarity with Cuba, but

also by being linked very early with the top leader of the Cuban

Revolution, Fidel Castro, at the Theresa Hotel, in Harlem, New York.

 

Forty-two years have passed since February 21st, 1965, when one of the

brightest and most rational leaders of the 20th century was murdered.

 

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 25th, 1925 and christened as

Malcolm Little. His father was a Baptist pastor; follower of Marcus

Garveys ideals, and his mother was born on the Caribbean island of

Grenada.

 

He adopted his muslin name, Hajj Malik El Shabazz, after his pilgrimage

to Mecca but was known worldwide as Malcolm X.

 

His social struggle was extremely intense and hard; by different and

unconventional ways for his times, he reached a theoretical conception

and a strategy for the struggle of Black North Americans, thus emerging

as a leader in the world struggle against imperialism.

 

Malcolm X lived in Boston and New York, where he was arrested after

having participated in larceny, drugs, gambling, and other

misdemeanors. He was imprisoned in a Massachusetts jail until 1952.

 

During his prison stay he joined the Muslim organization, Nation of

Islam, and it was then he took the name by which he became universally

known: Malcolm X.

 

Prison had a positive influence on his youthful personality, a process

in which his activist Muslim comrades helped him. Released, still only

27, he decided to change the erratic course of his previous life.

 

One year after being released he was appointed a Minister of the Nation

of Islam organization.

 

By that time, the clearest idea of the meaning of religion for Malcolm

X, in the context of his political ideas, was eloquently expressed in

the following: If I must accept a religion which doesnt let me fight

for my people, to hell with it (See: Malcolm X speaks: speeches,

interviews and statements. Pathfinder Press, United States, 2002, p.

114, source of quotations used in this essay which are, however,

retranslated from the Spanish.)

 

In 1963, Malcolm X lived through a very hard period in his political

life, when he had to make the decision to leave the Nation of Islam,

the organization to which he owed so much and that had so heavily

influenced his initial training.

 

He made such a decision when he realized, from a private conversation,

that its head and spiritual father, Elijah Muhammad, whom he had

faithfully followed, exhibited morally inadequate personal behaviour.

For his part, he reached the deep conviction that inside the

organization the role of leaders was only to look after the interests,

frequently spurious, of its top leader and besides, he had experienced

its total lack of interest for political activity among North American

Black people.

 

In fact, the Nation of Islam was not consistent with the principles it

preached, in the midst of its top leaders abuse of power and

authority. This continually involved the organizations hierarchy in

covering up shameful actions to its economic benefit, coordinated

through the KKK and other racist and fascist-like organizations.

>From the moment Malcolm X left the organization, over such compromising

reasons, he became a danger, both for the organizations leadership as

well as for the organization itself.

 

In fact, the Nation of Islam, with its bourgeois nationalist tendency

and a leadership continually engaged in and committed to attaining

space within the economy of the US capitalist system, was quite the

opposite of what Malcolm X expected from any organization seeking to

struggle for Black liberation.

 

Malcolm X intended to overcome such mentioned faults when he founded

his two organizations: the Afro-American Unity Organization (AAUO),

initiated in New York, in 1964, and what was called the Muslim Mosque,

shortly afterwards. His intention was to cover both the religious and

political concerns of black communities.

 

Malcolm X has frequently been labelled racist and violent. Many of

those who dont know him, or those who know him very well, especially

these last, try to slander him, by comparing him with Martin Luther

King; considering Malcolm the red demon, and King the black angel.

A Manichean position widely used to introduce much confusion in

understanding the real role of both personalities and their place

within the Black struggle.

 

Malcolm X did not judge anyone by the color of their skin. Even when he

spoke about Blacks, many times he was referring to non-white people

(saying: Blacks, Browns, Yellows Reds, etc) to give a

comprehensive view of the problem of white colonization of these

peoples, in some ways slaves in their own land; like the North American

Black, he never got tired of repeating, they didnt arrive on the

Mayflower. These concepts allowed him to expose the common enemy and

forge the alliance and solidarity which has to exist between all the

exploited of the world, Afro-Americans, Chinese, Indians, Latin

Americans, etc.

 

This concept set him apart from either from the black or white racism

affecting so many organizations at that time, and brought him closer to

a true concept of what the struggle against any sort of racism and

discrimination should be, including discrimination against women, an

aspect to which he also paid attention.

 

Although Malcolm X did not worship violence, he was always against

Blacks being called upon to be peaceful, when the most ruthless

violence was used openly and continually against them. So he said about

this: I myself would accept non-violence if it were consistent, if it

were intelligent, if everyone were non-violent, if we were always

non-violent. But Im never going to accept] any sort of non-violence,

unless the whole world is non-violent. (op cit. p. 142). Undoubtedly,

one would be a fool to agree to be non-violent within a society

overwhelmed by all sorts of violence against its Black and non-white

populations, as North American society is even today, to try to

inculcate an ethic which neither the police, nor the courts, and not

even the government itself, put into practice in the United States of

America.

 

He did not support violence, but he deeply understood that it was

unavoidable, to the extent that its origin came from the marked

intention of keeping Black people exploited at any cost, permanently

condemning them to being second and third rate citizens in their own

land. All the mechanisms, authorities and instruments of the North

American political system collaborated towards this aim.

 

So Malcolm X was neither racist nor violent. Its North American

society that day after day is more and more racist and violent. Despite

that, it cant be said that the Civil Rights struggle made no progress

at all.

>From the beginning, Malcolm X was linked not only to the personal

consequences of the Black struggle in the United States, but he also

paid careful attention to the struggle of other oppressed peoples

inside the U.S. and at world level. With his travels basically through

Asia and Africa, he kept on enriching this perspective.

 

Thats to say, Malcolm X, from his origins as a revolutionary leader,

also put forward in his training the strong internationalist component

which always characterized him. So within his thought as well as his

political action, the Black struggle in the United States was only part

of the whole revolutionary endeavour of the liberation struggle at

world level.

 

Even more, Malcolm X did not consider himself North American, but a

victim of North Americanism. In 1964, he said in Cleveland, Ohio, I

speak as victim of this North American system and I see the United

Sates through the victims eyes. I dont see an American dream. I see

an American nightmare.

 

For Malcolm X, the North American system was a rotten, corrupt,

exploiting one, which enlisted Blacks in the economic and political

mechanisms of exploitation, discrimination and moral degradation.

 

He never used the expression Our Government nor spoke about Our

Armed Forces, rather expressed himself Dont deal with Uncle Sam as

if he were your friend... if he were your friend you wouldnt be a

second-rate citizen... we have no friends in Washington.

 

Such starting points to qualify North American society make it very

clear that North American Black people are really a people exploited

and discriminated against within their own country, because the white

people have appropriated it, leaving the immense majority of North

American Blacks in a situation similar to Third World exploited

peoples. Such terms also served to make him an extremely dangerous

person, continually persecuted by the North American Special Services,

until his assassination on February 21st, 1965.

 

With the introduction of Black Capitalism during Lyndon B. Johnsons

administration, and the demands achieved, as a result of the Civil

Rights struggle, the situation would change; improvements in

recognition of economic, social and political rights for Blacks

arrived. The Civil Rights struggle hadnt been in vain but the changes

that took place were limited, within a capitalist and essentially

racist society.

 

With Blacks enlisting in capitalist dynamics and using Affirmative

Action, a new context emerged, inside of which a Black upper middle

class, subordinate to the white oligarchy, became a paradigm for the

huge majority of Black people. And the huge majority of Black people

would follow that carrot on the stick, and the final result is that

currently from 5% to 7 % (no more) of Black people enjoy a subordinate

class position, exploiting Blacks themselves and also enjoying

privileges of the system. Meanwhile, more than 90% of that population

remain under the same conditions of exploitation and discrimination

that havent substantially changed today.

 

In Malcolm Xs speeches, interviews and statements, its quite clear

that he didnt share the strategy of the Civil Rights struggle. He

considered this kind of struggle was not the correct one. But, did this

mean that Martin Luther King wasnt right? In reality, its a very hard

question to answer. So we prefer to focus on the drawbacks that both

forms of struggle presented and the problems stemming from the national

and international context in which such battles had to be fought.

 

Undoubtedly, Malcolm X was a more radical leader with a broader vision

than King; but based only on this is it possible to affirm that the

former was right? Not always in politics does radicalism equal the

triumph of the strategy for struggle based on it. Neither, if a

strategy for struggle failed, does it mean it was wrong. There are too

many circumstances converging in a process of political struggle to be

able to arrive at conclusions so easily.

 

Notwithstanding, the truth is that both strategies of struggle had

their drawbacks.

 

What were those strategies? Well look briefly.

 

For Martin Luther King, the Black struggle should have concentrated

on claiming from North American society the civil rights corresponding

to being part of the North American nation. Among these rights, as the

fundamental one: to be treated as equals. This struggle was understood

as strictly within U.S. territory, although not excluding the

possibility of receiving international solidarity even though the form

of struggle didnt facilitate it. The method of struggle should be

completely peaceful.

 

For Malcolm X, the Black struggle didnt exclude claiming their civil

rights, but it should basically be concentrated on strengthening their

communities, their political and religious organizations, in order to

demand the rightful place of Blacks within North American society. This

struggle was focused on the basis of what Malcolm called Black

Nationalism; that is, considering Black people as a subjugated nation

within its own country and the existing capitalist system as its enemy.

Because of this, his struggle was part of the struggle of all the

exploited of the world. The struggle should be peaceful, but not

exclude the use of violence, if imposed by the exploiters.

 

Malcolm X considered that the United States, as well as Black people,

had a very serious problem: Blacks were undesirable and the tendency

was to treat them as second and third class citizens.

 

For Malcolm X, neither the Democratic or Republican parties represented

an alternative in the search for support for the struggle within North

American society.

 

The foregoing was expressed as: ...Every time you see yourself in the

mirror, whether youre black, brown, red or yellow, youre seeing a

person whos a serious problem for the United States, because they do

not want you here.

 

So for him all these people should unite. But not only within the

United States, rather with all their kind all over the world, and raise

a great movement of vindication that he called Black Revolution.

 

This revolution had a common enemy. This enemy was the white colonizer,

always European: Spaniards in America, British in Africa, French,

Belgians, Portuguese, Germans; all whites, who had moved all over the

world with their colonial enterprises, exploiting all the American,

Asian and African peoples. These were the imperialist colonizers who

did the same to everybody, including North American Blacks, those who

didnt arrive on the Mayflower, but on slave ships.

 

Conceiving of the North American Black population as it really was: a

mass that hadnt overcome its condition of slavery, unequally exploited

in relation to the rest of the population, white workers, and

discriminated against in the context of social life, Malcolm X was able

to reach another very important conclusion: in reality it was a people

suffering under a situation that didnt differ at all from that of the

exploited in the Third World, in Asia, Africa and Latin America, only

that for North American Blacks this was happening shamefully inside the

richest society of the world capitalist system, and of the whole known

social universe.

 

At the same time, Malcolm X takes on pointing out the strong link

existing between Blacks in the U.S. and Blacks in Africa, the continent

from which the slaves were brought to North America. This underlined a

close relationship between the ways the Blacks in Africa and in the

United States were treated.

 

Because of this, according to Malcolm X, civil rights werent an

adequate or real platform for the struggle of U.S. Blacks to win their

demands, since they were limited to the national plane. This implied

that the natural allies of North American Blacks stayed on the margins;

something very convenient for the North American white exploiting

elites.

 

Because of this, Malcolm X considered that the struggle of North

American Blacks should be focused on the basis of human rights, because

these had a more universal character, as well as the advantage of

connecting the United States Black struggle with that of all the

exploited at the world level. Thus it also offered a platform that

permitted projecting internal battles into the debates on international

stages like the United Nations Organization. While Civil Rights

confined the struggle to the national plane, that is, inside the

framework of North American sovereignty, reducing everything to an

internal scenario where the North American oligarchy could get out of

an international debate on exploitation and discrimination, besides

controlling and limiting it to a purely domestic question. Like the

Democratic Party always tried to do.

 

Such political clarity in Malcolm Xs approach concerning the framework

in which to develop the Black struggle raised it to the stage of the

anti-imperialist struggle, because it was solidly linked to the

struggle of all the worlds exploited peoples, as well as to the

complex aspect of understanding the existence of a common enemy, only

differentiated by the different national masks it wears..

 

This was also to take the struggle to the level of necessary

international solidarity between those directly exploited by their

native oligarchies, which are nothing but subordinate classes of the

international-trans-national oligarchy, inside of which the U.S.

bourgeois monopoly class is the most powerful, best articulated and

connected at world level. From this perspective, the exploitation and

discrimination suffered by Blacks in the United States comes as an

indirect result of U.S. imperialist action.

 

As well, such an approach offered the objective, practical and

theoretical basis that allowed responding to the essence of a struggle

that, all in all, must be global, although it takes place at a national

level.

 

These ideas convert Malcolm X into a world leader of the

anti-imperialist struggle. So he cant be labelled only a leader of

North American Black people. The truth is Malcolm perceived very early

that keeping the Black struggle within the Civil Rights framework could

only benefit North American white exploiting elites, who had early

devised and put into practice a model of assimilation of the Black

struggle into the dynamics of U.S. capitalism. Just as theyre doing

now, faced with the reality that Hispanics are becoming the largest

minority in North America.

 

These reasons allow us to affirm as well that the demands achieved by

Blacks, as a result of their struggle for civil rights - neither few,

nor unimportant " cant be deeply understood if theyre not also seen

as the high price the white elite was forced to pay in order to calm

down Blacks and succeed in involving them in the economic and

political machinery of capitalism in the United States.

 

When analyzing the matter of current poverty within that society we see

clear evidence that the Civil Rights struggle did not mean a

significant, essential change in the situation of Blacks in the U.S.

 

The United States is the richest society in the world, although the one

having the most concentration of wealth and, as a consequence, the

worst distribution.

 

Thus, the wealthiest 10% of the North American population owns 81.8% of

real estate wealth, 81.2% of stock shares, and 88.0% of bonds. (Legt

Business Observer, No. 72,,USA, April 1996, p.5 ).

 

But the situation becomes even worse when we know that only 1% of the

U.S. population owns 60% of the shares and 40% of the total wealth.

(The Ecology of Commerce, New York, Harper Business, 1993 ).

 

Then lets look at some considerations, more particularly and closely

related to the topic of race.

 

More than in any other developed capitalist society, poverty in the

United States is clearly identified with a power structure, supported

by various pillars of social, cultural and racial stratification formed

from colonial times up to the definitive establishment of capitalism

within North American society, and that have not been able to be

overcome. In North American society there is a social structure in

which, in general terms, race, class, social status and level of

poverty are structurally linked:

 

Theoretically, it is possible for everyone to rise up the social scale,

but, in practice, belonging to an ethnic group tends to equal social

class.

 

We dont want to expand on this, but there are statistics showing that

beyond the problems of employment, health and education, other

indicators going from levels of access to education, health, home

ownership and justice enforcement, just to mention a few, work

completely against the great mass of North American Blacks.

 

More recently, George Bushs (son) administration has given eloquent

examples of the measure in which the black population might be among

its priorities. Just to mention three aspects:

 

The total oblivion for the racial program, Only One America for the

21st Century, launched by William Clinton:

 

Hurricane Katrina, that mainly devastated New Orleans, has left an

insurmountable mark amid the lack of attention paid by the Bush

administration.

 

The Katrina tragedy, the most dramatic event lived by North American

society in the latest 60 years, is not even mentioned in the 2006 State

of the Nation Report.

 

The fact that Malcolm Xs strategy was crushed by his assassination has

had disastrous consequences for Blacks in the U.S. The opportunity was

lost, and today there are not Black leaders able to change the

situation. The Black population has been definitely absorbed by the

dynamics of capitalism, and there exists very little or almost nothing

allowing a return to Malcolm Xs clear idea that the North American

Black population could strengthen itself as an integrated community, to

struggle for its place within North American society, achieving

something more than being absorbed and becoming an instrument for

Black capitalism, fragmented by the crumbs of social participation

that Blacks have achieved through Affirmative Action, itself strongly

questioned in recent years under attack as reverse racism.

 

Blacks have lost their strength as community; they have been used as

one more sector dancing to the rhythm of music played and directed by

the white trans-national oligarchy. Their only chance now would be to

join a context of struggle, where many are unaware of the specific

aspects of the structural inferiority Blacks are kept in within U.S.

capitalist society.

 

Inside a society with a political system hegemonically ruled by two

parties, fragmented trade unions, and left parties without real

possibilities of taking part in the electoral game, Blacks, as a social

sector, in the huge majority, have no chance to increase their place

within the North American social structure.

 

Malcolm Xs assassination was the result of a group of situations

acting as a system, to eliminate a person who had become a real danger

for the ruling white oligarchys interests from public life in North

American society. The specific reasons justifying his physical

liquidation are linked to the following aspects:

 

Only 42 when he was murdered, he had become an unquestionable Black

leader, both in the United States as well as at world level.

 

His black nationalism strategy constituted a platform which

independently mobilized the North American Black community, relying on

their own forces, and not letting themselves be towed by capitalism

dynamics.

 

The international approach and solidarity with the revolutionary

movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which stamped the strategy,

made North American Black people a working unit in the anti-imperialist

struggle at world level.

 

He had broken with the Nation of Islam - not only over political, but

ethical disagreements, which seriously affected the action and

leadership of that organization. Then he founded organizations that

turned out to be very efficient in the objectives they pursued: the

Muslim Mosque and the OAAU, which represented a competition weighing

heavily against the Nation of Islam.

 

He advocated that the United States should be understood as a

corrupt, exploiting, immoral society, which maintained an economic and

political system that always ranked Black people as second and third

rate citizens.

 

The truth is that Malcolm X was a much more dangerous leader than

Martin Luther King. The latter, despite his honesty, his true

dedication to the Civil Rights cause and his desire to benefit Blacks,

had remained enrolled in the mechanics of the system, and in the end

became exploited by purposes that werent those that had originally

inspired him, although this didnt save his life. Martin Luther King

was a person too honest to betray his ideals, he was a honest and

unyielding fighter for his peoples rights, but he wasnt a

revolutionary leader as such.

 

The 1954 Bandung Conference and the founding of the OAU (Organization

of African Unity), the latter without doubt the most prestigious

international organization of the African continent, strongly inspired

Malcolm X.

 

But, as Malcolm X expressed, the most important thing is ]the motto of

Afro-American Unity is by any means necessary. We dont believe in

fighting a battle in which... our oppressors are going to make the

rules. We dont believe we can win a battle where those who exploit us

dictate the rules. We dont believe we can keep on struggling trying to

win the affection of those who have been oppressing and exploiting us

for so long. (p. 200).

>From being almost non citizens, because Blacks had no right to vote,

were not admitted to universities, they couldnt join the Army, they

were scarcely hired in industry, they moved forward to second rate

citizens.

 

As a result of all this, the truth is today there is not a Black

movement in the United States even similar to that of the 1960s.

Neither does there exist a Black political leadership able to attract

Blacks nationwide to a broad struggle for their demands. Almost all the

current black leaders are cogs in the North American political system.

 

Notwithstanding, other considerations aside, the plain true is that

Malcolm X, both by his political clarity and his theoretical

consistence, as well as for the justice of his actions and aspirations,

more than as a leader of the Black struggle in the United States, has

been acknowledged as one of the strategists of the revolutionary

struggle against imperialism at the world level. So his ideas and the

battles he fought are still a considerable source of experience for the

Black struggle in the United States, and for all the worlds exploited

peoples.

 

[Dr. Esteban Morales Domnguez, is a scholar with the Centro de

Estudios sobre los Estados Unidos (CESEU) [Centre of Studies of the

United States of America (CESEU)] at the University of Havana ]