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