“As B.F. Skinner so aptly implied in Beyond Freedom and Dignity, the safeguarding of human dignity and freedom for all Americans depends on the slave being conscious of his misery. The real threat to human dignity and freedom is not the slave revolt, but that system of slavery or oppression so well designed that it does not breed revolt. The happy slave or the satisfied oppressed people is a blasphemy against the freedom and dignity of all people, and particularly against the equality of the group to which he belongs. Again, Dr. Skinner rightly calls our attention to the futility, even on the individual level, of seeking equality by accepting oppression. . . . Jean Jacques Rousseau, in his celebrated work, Emile, caught the essence of what occurs when humans are successfully subjugated: ‘Let him believe that he is always in control, though it is always you who really controls. There is no subjugation so perfect as that which keeps the appearance of freedom, for in that way one captures volition (the will) itself. . . .”
- Y.N. Kly, Former Chairman, Canadian Branch of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (O.A.A.U.), The Black Book: The True Political Philosophy of Malcolm X
Perhaps the most famous words ever spoken by Malcolm X were, “By any means necessary!” By the end of his life, it was clear that Malcolm X had moved from a position of black nationalism to internationalism, and his command to struggle using any means necessary was meant in an international context in the struggle of the world’s oppressed against the foe of the international capitalist system. That system which has created the greatest level of of global inequality on earth since the time of the old kingdom in Egypt, has clearly been exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. If Malcolm X, and many others, are correct that it is the Befera - the international capitalists and imperialists and their SYSTEMS that is our greatest enemy - then any means available to shut down that system and overthrow it should be used against it. Until now, the world’s oppressed have proved ineffective in shutting down global capitalism. However, where the people have failed, the COVID-19 has proved successful. Were Malcolm X alive today, he would be exhorting African Americans and all the world’s oppressed, to weaponize the COVID-19 pandemic by refusing to return to work and refusing to feed the system of exploitation. Unfortunately, such visionary revolutionaries are completely absent from the global conversation concerning the pandemic. So one must ask, “Where are the revolutionaries?”
Excerpt from Maclom X: An International Man by Ruby M. and E.U. Essien-Udom
“On January 7, 1965, or abut forty-five days before his assassination, Malcolm X spoke in New York City on the topic ‘Prospects for Freedom in 1965.’ This address as well as others he made and his public activities in the period following his rupture with the Nation of Islam in March 1964 until the time of his assassination on February 21, 1965, clearly mark him out as ‘an international man,’ a leader and spokesman of the oppressed and exploited peoples of the world. In that address there was something of world leader about his survey of international affairs in 1964, something of an intellectual in his analysis of the prospects for freedom and peace in 1965, and something of a convinced and committed world revolutionary. For Malcolm 1964 was important because of the measure of progress he believed the oppressed people in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean had made. Comparing the progress made by the oppressed elsewhere in the world with that of Afro-Americans, he said 1964 was for the latter the ‘Year of Illusion and Delusion,’ although in official American circles it was regarded as the ‘Year of Promise” for them. In Africa, Zambia and Malawi had gained political independence and were admitted to membership of the United Nations, a revolution had swept out a reactionary, neocolonialist government in Zanzibar, and the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar - named the Republic of Tanzania - was a reality. He spoke of the treacherous repression and defeat of the revolution of the People’s Republic of the Congo at Stanleyville by Moise Tshombe aided by ‘hired killers from South Africa’ and the combined Belgium - United States paratroop assault of 1964. In spite of American military might, the oppressed of South Vietnam had continued their resistance to United States imperialism in 1964. He was especially delighted over the fact that the Chinese people who had been oppressed for many centuries, generally regarded as poor and backward, had made a scientific breakthrough with the explosion of the atomic bomb. Concluding this review of world affairs in 1964, he acknowledge that these were ‘tangible gains,’ and these gains, he said, were possible because the oppressed had realized that’power in defense of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression, because power, real power, comes from conviction which produces action, uncompromising action."‘
By the time of his untimely death Malcolm X had moved from black nationalism to internationalism, and had completely identified himself as well as the Afro-American struggle with the revolution of the ‘wretched of the earth’ - the exploited people of the Third World. He had become a foe of the international capitalist system and a staunch Pan-Africanist. . . . In the light of this analysis, Malcolm’s stature as an international man clearly emerges. . . . The break with Elijah Muhammad’s Muslim movement was the necessary precondition for this intellectual and ideological transformation because it released Malcolm from the constrictive doctrines of a religio-racial nationalistic mystique that had been a straitjacket to both his ideological growth and his nationalistic activities. . . . once he had made the break, Malcolm passed successively from a narrowly defined black nationalist outlook to a Pan-Africanism that merged into a Third World political perspective. And at the time of his death he was on the verge of becoming a revolutionary socialist.
At the Grass Roots Leadership Conference, Malcolm urged his Afro American audience to unite as the ’Nations of Bandung’ had done in 1955:
‘In Bandung back in, I think 1954, was the first unity meeting in centuries of black people. . . . At Bandung all the nations came together, the dark nations from Africa and Asia . . . despite their economic and political differences they came together. All of them were black, brown, red or yellow. . . . They realized all over the world where the dark man was being oppressed, he was being oppressed by the white man; where the dark man was being exploited, he was being exploited by the white man. So they got together on this basis - they had a common enemy.’
Five months later, in Cleveland after he severed relations with Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm explained to his audience who the participants of the Black Revolution were and what the objective of the Revolution was:
‘Now the black revolution has been taking place in Africa and Asia and Latin America: when I say black, I mean non-white - black, brown, red or yellow. Our brothers and sisters in Asia who were colonized by the Europeans, and in Latin America, the peasants who were colonized by the Europeans, have been involved in a struggle since 1945 to get the colonialist or the colonizing powers, the Europeans off their land, out of their country.’ . . .
In this view the Black Nation is currently engaged in a world-wide revolution to overthrow an international political and economic system which enriches the white world of Europe and American and leaves the darker peoples underdeveloped and impoverished. Largely because Malcolm had already been predisposed to think in such terms, he regarded the Afro-American liberation movement as part and parcel of this Black Revolution or the Third World rebellion against colonialism. . . . .
Malcolm believed that the world was in the throes of a profound revolution: the colonized and newly independent nations were rebelling and were seeking a way out of their economic and political subordination to the Euro-American powers. He felt that the darker nations were losing their fear of the invincibility of the white man and were successfully engaging him in guerrilla warfare, as attested by the French defeat in both Indo-China and Algeria, and the indecisive military contests of America in Korea and South Vietnam. For Malcolm not only were the colonial powers threatened with losing all their colonies, but they were aware of being minorities in a world sharply divided between the haves and have-nots. In his view the European monopoly of power was not only being challenged, but the balance of power was shifting in favor of the numerically superior darker nations. In the light of the above analysis of the balance of forces in the world, Malcolm saw the necessity of linking up the Afro-American freedom struggle with those of the colonized and newly independent peoples of the world. He felt that the problem of the subordination of the Afro-American community to the dominant white majority could be resolved by linking it to this worldwide struggle. This shift in tactics was stressed in a speech entitled ‘The Ballot of the Bullet’ given under the auspices of CORE in Cleveland on April 3, 1964. In this speech Malcolm discussed the necessity for black Americans to reinterpret the nature of the civil rights struggle and to seek new allies. He believed that the civil rights struggle should be seen in the context of a worldwide human rights struggle. Accordingly he proposed that the race problem in America should be brought before the United Nations where
‘. . . our African brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Asian brothers can throw their weight on our side, where our Latin American brothers can throw their weight on our side. . . . ‘
Malcolm believed that by viewing the race problem in America in terms of the violation of human rights and by seeking understanding and support from countries of the Third World, the Afro-American would strengthen his relative position vis-a-vis the white majority in America. A broader human rights perspective wold enable black Americans to realize that they are part of a global majority. Thus their approach to the freedom struggle would be a demanding rather than a supplicating one. . . . As part of the global revolution, Malcolm believed that the Afro-American struggle would take on the same complexion as that manifesting itself in other parts of the world. He warned white America not to presume that the same guerrilla warfare tactics which have been successfully employed by peoples in the Third World were not a distinct possibility in the United States:
‘Just as guerrilla warfare is prevailing in Asia and in parts of Africa and in parts of Latin America, you’ve got to be mighty naive, or you’ve got to play the black man cheap, if you don’t think someday he’s going to wake up and find that it’s got to be the ballot or the bullet..’
When Malcolm left America in April 1964 he thought of himself as a black nationalist in an inclusive racial and political sense of being connected with the darker, underdeveloped world of Asia, Latin America, and particularly Africa. His international activities grew out of his identification with Africa as well as his conviction that any progress that Afro-Americans had made between World War II and 1964 had come about largely because of international pressures on the United States. . . .
Malcolm’s experiences in the Middle East and Africa strengthened his conviction about the necessity to internationalize the Afro-American problem, and underscored the possibility of getting African support at the United Nations for a charge of human rights violation against the United States. When Malcolm arrived at Kennedy Airport, he told a large press audience that it was no longer necessary to continue thinking about the struggle in America purely in domestic terms, and stressed that a precedent had already been established internationally by the cases involving violation of human rights against South Africa and Portugal. He saw no reason why America could not be charged similarly. . . . He said - and the Kerner Commission Report on the Riots in America has recently affirmed this - that the seeds of racism were so deep in America that few whites were free of it; those who were not conscious racists were subconsciously so. He said that he had nevertheless withdrawn the blanket indictment of white Americans and would in the future judge a man by his deeds, and expressed a willingness to cooperate with those few whites who did not fall into either of the two categories. Malcolm would later make the observation that those whites who seemed to be free of racist bias were usually socialist because it was impossible to be a capitalist without being a racist. Malcolm observed that the peoples of African heritage were presently in a state of disunity. . . . .
On May 29, 1964, Malcolm spoke at a symposium sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum on ‘The Harlem Hate Gang Scare.’ Malcolm’s speech on the ‘Hate Gang’ reflects a synthesis of the insights which he had gained abroad with his understanding of the American situation. His foreign experience had led him to see that the Afro-American problem is a part of a ‘system.’ both domestic and international, in which there is a vital relationship between capitalism, colorism, and racism. He became convinced that the capitalist system fosters racism and uses it as an instrument of economic exploitation and political subjugation.. The system establishes a colonial relationship between a dominant and subordinate group that is sustained by police brutality, calculated to keep the subjugated people terrified and psychologically castrated. . . .
Malcolm did not present himself as a convinced socialist at this time, but he did say he noticed when he was traveling that some of the formerly colonized countries were turning away from capitalism and moving toward socialism. He said he did not quite know what kind of political and economic system could cure America of her racism, but he did know that the Afro-American could not achieve freedom under the present economic and political arrangements in America, and clearly asserted that there is a close connection between capitalism and racism. Two months later when he went to Cairo to attend the summit meeting of the Organization of African Unity in (OU), he summed up his opinion on the ‘American system’ in an article published in the Egyptian Gazette:
‘The present American ‘system’ can never produce freedom for the black man. A chicken cannot lay a duck egg because the chicken’s ‘system’ is not designed or equipped to produce a duck egg. . . .The American ‘system’ (political, economic, and social) was produced from the enslavement of the black man, and this present ‘system’ is capable only of perpetuating that enslavement. In order for a chicken to produce a duck egg its system would have to undergo a drastic and painful revolutionary change. . . . or REVOLUTION. So be it with America’s enslaving system.’
In the memorandum which Malcolm submitted to the Summit Meeting . . . Malcolm ended his memorandum with the warning ‘Don’t escape from European colonialism only to become even more enslaved by deceitful, ‘friendly’ American dollarism’
When Malcolm returned to the United States after his eighteen weeks abroad, he saw his major task as educative. The Sunday evening talks at the Audubon Ballroom in New York were designed primarily to enlarge the consciousness of Afro-Americans and to reshape their sense of identity so that they would see themselves as an extension of the African peoples and part of the Black Revolution. . . . But Malcolm admits in his Autobiography that he ad to be honest and frank - he knew that Afro-Americans were not going to rush to take their problem before the United Nations. Two of the ‘big six’ civil rights leaders had already indicated in 1963 that Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s statement of support was not the kind of assistance they needed or were looking for. It was also clear from some of the comments of leaders and ordinary people who asked him about his program that the Afro-American community by and large did not see what could be gained by going to Africa and the Middle East instead of going into the ghetto and trying to forge some kind of program that would create better opportunities for jobs, housing, and education. Malcolm insisted that unless the Afro-Americans understood their problems in the context of the world struggle, they would not really understand the possibilities open to them. He believed that once a man really understood his problem, he will do whatever is necessary to solve it. Consequently, he spent a great deal of time trying to explain the broad political and economic picture as it affected oppressed people throughout the world, and tried to show the Afro-American the connections between his situation and the Third World struggle for decolonization. It would not be an exaggeration to say that Malcolm’s main effort was to transform the consciousness and identity of the Afro-American and to prepare him for a revolutionary struggle in America.
Malcolm was convinced that the Western imperialist system was faced with an ‘external’ rebellion in the colonial and ex-colonial areas that had affected and intensified the rebellion of the colonized peoples inside the imperialist nations. The effect of this rebellion was to intensify the Afro-American’s drive for his own freedom. What Malcolm envisioned was the linking up of the external and internal rebellions against the imperialists in as many places as possible to exert pressure both on the domestic and international scene. . . . .
‘The newly awakened people all over the world pose a problem for what is known as Western interests which are imperialism, colonialism, racism and all these other negative isms or vulturistic isms. Just as the external forces pose a grave threat, they can now see that the internal forces pose an even greater threat only when they have properly analysed the situation and know what the stakes really are.’
America, Malcolm felt, was the real bastion of international imperialism, and the Afro-American once he appreciated the overall global revolution and understood his relation to it would realize his strategic position in relation to the international power system. On this regard Malcolm was also concerned with the problem of method and insisted that Afro-Americans should employ whatever means were necessary to win freedom. The means Malcolm envisioned seem to have included violence, which he felt had proved effective abroad. . . . Malcolm rendered this advice . . . .
‘You may say, ‘Well, how in the hell are we going to stop them? A great big man like this?’ Brothers and sisters, always remember this. When you’re inside another man’s house, and the furniture is his, curtains, all those fine decorations, there isn’t too much action he can put down in there without messing up his furniture and windows and his house. And you let him know that when he puts his hands on you, it’s not only you he puts his hands on, it’s his whole house, you’ll burn it down. You’re in a position to - you have nothing to lose. Then the man will act right. . . . he will only act right when you let him know that you know that he has more to lose than you have. You haven’t got anything to lose but discrimination and segregation.’
In the summer of 1964 Malcolm predicted that the Afro-Americans would eventually be forced to resort to terroristic tactics as other colonized peoples had done to achieve their freedom. . . . By November 1964 he had become convinced that revolutionary struggle was the only alternative that Afro-Americans had in the face of the continued repression and resistance to their efforts to gain their rights within the established political system. The refusal of the Democratic Party leaders to seat the black representatives of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the Democratic Convention in August 1964 coupled with the brutalities inflicted on black people during and after the Mississippi elections, underscored the futility of trying to work with a corrupt and morally defunct political system. After listening to Fannie Lou Hamer’s account of her experience both in Mississippi and in Atlantic City with the leaders of the Democratic Party, Malcolm concluded that to communicate with white America, Afro-Americans needed to change to the language of force and brutality, and adopt methods such as those used by the Kenya freedom fighters:
‘ . . . .you and I can best learn how to get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya, and how Odinga helped him, and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau freedom fighters. In fact, that’s what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi we need a Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau Mau. I say it with no anger; I say it with careful forethought . . . . We need a Mau Mau.If they don’t want to deal with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, then we’ll give them something else to deal with; if they don’t want to deal with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee, then we have to give them an alternative.’
The most remarkable thing about Malcolm’s brilliant but short career of dedicated leadership was his capacity for constructive intellectual development. After his break with the Muslims Malcolm underwent an ideological transformation. He came to understand the latent implications of his basic concept of the Black Revolution. When Malcolm spoke of the Black Revolution prior to his visit to the Middle East and Africa he used the words in the framework of political independence or decolonization. At this time he was an advocate of black nationalism in a racially inconclusive sense of the black, yellow, brown and red peoples - the colonized of the earth. The shift from black nationalism occurred as a result of his African and Middle Eastern experience, which enabled him to see that the basic problem confronting the unindustrialized or colored world was not race but the disadvantageous economic effects of the international capitalist system. This insight strengthened Malcolm’s earlier conviction about the need for the people in the underdeveloped world to unite not only to destroy colonialism but capitalism as well. In August 1964 when Malcolm said that it would take REVOLUTION for the black man to achieve freedom in America, he meant the destruction of the capitalist system both domestically and internationally.
It was not a question of winning through the ballot anymore but of using the bullet to destroy an economic system that is nationally and internationally incompatible with freedom for the oppressed peoples of the world. . . .
But Malcolm was not thinking solely in racial terms toward the end of his life. He very clearly indicated that the oppressed might find allies both in America and in Europe that were opposed to the capitalist system. Several times he reiterated that he would be willing to cooperate with any person or group that was honestly willing to fight against the American system that oppressed its black citizens at home and other peoples abroad.
The revolutionary struggle in the world, as Malcolm saw it, revolved around power - power to control human material resources and to determine the rate and path of economic development so that the peoples in the underdeveloped areas (including all the Harlems in the United States) might extricate themselves from the impoverishing colonial economic relationship whereby they have remained suppliers of raw materials and have in turn served as markets for the finished products of the developed countries. . . . He frequently argued that unless Afro-Americans understood their relation to the Congo, they would not be able to deal effectively with their problem in Mississippi since the same domestic racist interests are linked up internationally with similar interest that combine to oppress the darker races. He tried to destroy the image of America’s invincibility in the minds of the Afro-Americans and make them realize that the American, French, British, and other European imperialist powers were being successfully challenged by formerly colonized peoples. He felt that as these newly independent states assumed control over their own resources they were weakening the international capitalist system. When he was asked in an interview what he thought about the struggle between capitalism and socialism, Malcolm remarked:
‘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 such 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.’
THE REAL REASON THEY KILLED MALCOM X
In Reflections of a Resolute Radical, Donald Freeman writes,
“The Afro-American Student Conference was held in Nashville, May 1 -May 3, 1964. It was the first time that northern and southern African American militants convened about Black nationalism. It commenced the ideological conversion of many activists from civil rights to Black Power (Black nationalism). . . . By its end, RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement) convinced the conference that young revolutionary nationalists were the vanguard of a Black revolution in the United States which embodied cultural revolution and promoted Pan African socialism. . . .
Then Max (Stanford, aka Muhammad Ahmad) and Roland Snellings met with John Lewis, Chairman of SNCC, in Atlanta. Lewis them work as part of SNCC’s field staff, although he disagreed with RAM ideology. So they went to Greenwood, Mississippi and started a freedom school . . . .
Their nationalist and armed self-defense advocacy disturbed the White SNCC staff and evoked an intense internal debate. Concurrently the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) perpetrated church bombings and harassment throughout Mississippi. Thus, Max emphasized the urgency for a major meeting in Detroit, prior to Memorial Day, 1964.
Our proceedings occurred at the home of James and Grace Boggs. Based on a thorough assessment of the state of the struggle for Black America’s liberation in the North and South, we instituted a national organization with the name Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Max Stanford was elected National Field Chairman, I as Executive Chairman, James Boggs, Ideological Chairman, Grace Boggs, Executive Secretary, and Milton Henry/Paul Brooks, Treasurer. RAM’s international representatives were El Hajj Malik Shabazz (Malcolm X), International Spokesman, and Robert F. Williams, International Chairman. . . .
In December, 1964 Doug Andrews, Paul Brooks, Tom Higginbotham, Max Stanford, and other members met in Cleveland to refine RAM’s 1965 priorities and strategy. . . . We discussed how to galvanize the energy of young urban African Americans, thereby enhancing the applicability of Rob Williams’ explosive advocacy in the United States and our coordination with El Hajj Malik Shabazz’s Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).
I was pleased with our youth and young adult penetration among college students stemming from the spring, 1964 Nashville conference and gangs, which was a byproduct of my work with others in Chicago during the summer. I hoped that this progress was the prelude to a significant conversation of young Black men and women to RAM’s ranks in 1965.
As January, 1965 began, Malik Shabazz was busy seeking the backing of Ghana, Algeria and more African government to bring about the condemnation of the United States’ oppression of Black America in the UN. Such internationalization of the African American liberation struggle as a human rights issue was a principal objective of the OAAU.
By that time Max Stanford had become one of Malik Shabbazz’s constant Harlem companions. Their communication was continuous. Hence RAM’s agenda was an integral part of his activities.
Then a series of ominous events beset El Hajj Malik Shabazz. In late November 1964 he had been invited to speak in France and Great Britain. February 8, 1965 he spoke again in London, but was not allowed to return to France the next day. On February 14th, his East Elmhurst, New York home was firebombed.
A further foreboding misfortune was the February 16th, 1965 New York City arrest of Walter Bowe, Robert Collier, Khaleel Sayyed, and Michelle Duclos, a French-Canadian woman, for allegedly plotting to bomb the Statue of Liberty.
What these menacing omens portended was actualized by the assassination of El Hajj Malik Shabazz at the Audubon Ballroom, on Sunday afternoon, February 21, 1965. The bourgeois (capitalist) mass media claimed that the Nation of Islam perpetuated that heinous crime. However, RAM asserted that its perpetrators were the CIA and FBI.
Decades later in ‘The 1960’s: From a Radical Perspective’, an article of mine published in Vibration, January 2000 – June 2000 Issue, I wrote ‘He (Malik Shabazz) was killed . . . . a few months before the major escalation of the United States’ military aggression in Vietnam during the spring of 1965.’
Such a sequence of events was probably not coincidental. The power elite of the American Empire did not want Malik Shabazz to still be around when they intensified the brutal imperialism in Indo-China. Therefore, they made sure that he was not on the scene to tell African American males not to go to Vietnam and die while carrying out the deadly orders of their oppressor.
El Hajj Malik Shabazz was the radical with the most mass media (television etc.) exposure and public appeal. Hence he was the political agitator with the potency to raise the consciousness of African Americans to the highest degree. His potential to radicalize Black America, especially youth and younger adults, made him an Ideological and political menace.
Such radicalization of Black Americans could have contributed to the emergence of a powerful liberation movement that would seriously destabilize the American Empire. That kind of turbulence could not be tolerated. His death precluded it.
The arrests of Walter Bowe, Robert Collier, Khaled Sayyed, and Michelle Duclos in the so-called bombing of the Statue of Liberty plot and the murder of Malik Shabbaz marked the prelude to the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of the FBI, which eventually engineered the liquidation of Fred Hampton, the head of the Black Panther Party (BPP) of Chicago.”
Alone, or almost single-handedly, Malcolm sought to link the Afro-American liberation movement with the liberation movement of the Third World, or what he called the Black Revolution. In his effort to internationalize the Afro-American problem Malcolm added a new and powerful dimension to a worldwide struggle that could take on more meaning as the racial conflict in the United States intensifies. . . . In other words, he sought to foster a world-wide revolutionary fraternity that would grow in strength and size as the conflict between the haves and the have-nots intensifies. The radical wing of the Black Power advocates in the United States appears to be executing the ideas implicit in his geopolitical analysis of the Black Revolution. In May 1967, SNCC declared that it was no longer a civil rights organization but a human rights organization interested in human rights not only in the United States but throughout the world, and declared its support for liberation groups struggling to free people from racism and exploitation. In July 1967, Stokely Carmichael attended the Organization of Latin American Solidarity Conference in Havana. When Carmichael left Cuba, he visited Vietnam, Algeria, Syria, Egypt, Guinea, Tanzania, Scandinavia, and France. He talked with leaders in all these countries, including Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Sekou Toure, Kwame Nkrumah, and Julus Nyerere. In August 1967, James Forman and Harold Moore, Jr. represented SNCC at a seminar sponsored by the United Nations in Kitwe, Zambia, on ‘Apartheid, Racial Discrimination and Colonialism in Southern Africa.’ . . . .
A logical extension of Malcolm’s basic concept of the Black Revolution is revolutionary socialism. He believed that eventually the oppressed peoples of the world must come to grips with the cause of their exploitation. The only way out for the ‘haves and have-nots’ cycle is through a radical break by the latter with the colonial economic relationship. The disappointing results of the recent UNCTAD (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development) point up the far-reaching implications and visionary scope of Malcolm’s concept of the Black Revolution. After the conference Dr. Raul Prebish, Argentine general secretary predicted:
‘If we do not succeed in effective and vigorous economic development the alternatives are clear. The deteriorating situation in the have-not countries will demonstrate that the extremists are right. Black power - now merely a U.S. phenomenon - will become brown, yellow and black power on a global scale.’
BLACK AMERICA CHOSE THE BALLOT AND THAT STRATEGY FAILED
“It has taken a while to reach this conclusion, but upon reflection it is inescapable. Why, after over a half century of Black voting, and the election of more Black political leaders than at any time since Reconstruction, are the lives, fortunes, prospects , and hopes of Black people so grim? . . . One is forced to conclude that Black America suffers maladies similar to those faced by continental African nations: a segregated neocolonial system in which a political class gives the appearance of freedom and independence while perpetuating racial oppression and financial exploitation. . . . If Black politicians are to do the very same thing as their white colleagues, why have them at all? What’s the difference? Neocolonialism at home and abroad.”
- Mumia Abu-Jamal, “While Rage Bubbles In Black Hearts”, August 20, 2011 in Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?
THE BLACK BOOK: THE TRUE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF MALCOLM X
"The revolutionary individual does not come to be so because that individual chooses to accept or expound revolutionary ideology or actions but rather because certain keenly sensitive and intelligent individuals perceive societal injustices to such a point that they are trapped in a situation wherein their personal morality and rationality is threatened by having to accept the injustices perceived. The result is the Franz Fanon concept of mental contradictions arising within the individual to the point whereby the rationality-saving way is to 'act out' against oppression and injustices. The only way out of the dilemma then is national liberation or revolutionary change. The revolutionary individual thus is nothing more than the product of environmental factors. He or she is a natural outgrowth of a situation wherein the peoples' ideals and the societal written law differ too greatly. After attempting to straddle these contradictory laws (supported by hope of reform), the revolutionary individual then finds himself mentally unable to envision a reform that is adequate to bridge the gap between the societal law and structures that are out of step with the desires and needs of the people. He thus declares the former unjust and unjustified, and falls back on the ideals of the masses to sustain his humanity and rationality. In this way, he is an automatically-produced potential intellectual, statesman or soldier of the people. According to Franz Fanon, if such an individual refused to reject the oppressor's institutions, he is likely to suffer from an unresolved mental conflict, or from some form of serious psychosis. The essential understanding is that a revolutionary individual is the natural product of a situation wherein severe collective oppression dominates, which he cannot accept, and he has no choice other than to become revolutionary or mentally ill, whether he realizes it or not."
- Dr. Y. N. Kly
In the The Black Book, The True Political Philosophy of Malcolm X, Dr. Kly writes,
“We would like to thank all those individuals and former members and associates of the O.A.A.U. in New York’s Harlem, in Montreal, Quebec, and in Chicago whose cooperation makes this book possible. We call special attention to the cooperation and assistance given to us by Albert Jabera, Dr. Charles Knox, Dr. Yvonne King, Qasem Mahmoud, Ibn Sharieff and Diana Collier. . . .
At the beginning of the spring of 1961, shortly after completing the B.A. in Political Science and International Relations from the University of Iowa, I began to attend various Islamic and community meetings and conferences in which I had the opportunity to attempt to Bundestag the political nature of the philosophy that Malcolm X expounded. Between the years 1961 up to 1964, I, like thousands of other Americans, joined the fight against the apartheid system in the U.S. South which had forced many into the North or foreign exile. I posed a series of questions to Malcolm twice during private interviews, but most often in open meetings. Thus the responses which I received were not focused on me but rather were the message he wished to convey to everyone. In the fall of 1964, my recording and study of Malcolm’s responses and my understanding of their political meaning led me to enter the U.S. struggle by seeking and receiving the chairmanship of the Montreal International Branch of Malcolm X’s organization, the O.A.A.U. (Organization of Afro- American Unity). Recently in reviewing the 87 recorded questions that I had posed and Malcolm’s responses to same, i realized that many of the questions posed were for the most part essentially the same question asked in different ways to secure a fuller understanding, and thus could be logically reduced to approximately twenty questions and responses. The Black Book of Malcolm X is no more than the faithful combining of the 87 questions and responses received, and an abstraction of the political philosophy from the responses given.”
In my book, From Yale To Rastafari: Letter to My Mom, 1995-1998 I wrote,
“I met Hondo (member of the Spear & Shield Collective and publisher of their Crossroads underground newsletter) the last time I was in Chicago, back in 1995. He was the only dreadlocked brother at the Sunday afternoon National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) meetings. I remember vaguely him telling me about this radical community school that was trying to throw safe, weekly parties for the youth. On our way to the Dixon Correctional Center to visit political prisoner Atiba Sana, we talked about the challenges of community work smack in the middle of heavy gang-activity. . . . Crazy as I was, I was attracted to it. Having been one of a handful of black students in a rural Chicago suburb, and later at Yale University, I was after what Marcus Garvey calls a “racial re-education.” I saw it as a manifestation of God’s will when Hondo picked me up at Chicago’s Union Station and drove me to political education class (PE Class) at the Nkrumah Washington Community Learning Center (NWCLC). About the man who governs the center and would become my mentor, Hondo had only one thing to say – he’s intense!
I quickly found out exactly what he meant. After introducing me to Irish “El-Amin” Greene, I was invited to sit in PE Class. For the next four hours, El-Amin talked – fast, loud and hard. His voice is neither deep nor soft. It is full of a thousand clear and emancipated thoughts travelling at a thousand miles a second. . . . El-Amin offered me a place to stay. . . . I was especially excited to have access to their cases of books on black, African and world history. . . .If I was scared then, I was absolutely frightened by the prospect of the future – less jobs, less money, no welfare, more people, more prisons, more babies being raised without any adult guidance, more drugs, guns and homegrown militias and terrorists amid the backdrop of global imperialism and the threat of a nuclear Holocaust, all started by the genocide of African Americans by white supremacists in the U.S. and its government. There was little difference to me between the area around 51st Street and Ada and pictures I saw of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Zaire. I remember vividly as El-Amin walked me around the neighborhood pointing out lines of gang demarcation. He showed me houses in the area and introduced me to the families that lived in ratted out, broken down houses in the area and introduced me to the families that lived in them. . . . El Amin had begun to direct my studies towards the law. Taking me to its old location, El-Amin explained to me the history of the National Council of Black Lawyers Community College of Law and International Diplomacy where he used to work. He provided documents about its co-founders Dr. Charles Knox and Dr. Y.N. Kly, both distinguished experts in international law and diplomacy, and provided me with textbooks on the U.N. and its procedures. One book in particular would change my life the way the Autobiography of Malcolm X had done: International Law and the Black Minority in the U.S. by Dr. Y.N. Kly. Along with another of his books, The Black Book (which details Malcolm X’s program to internationalize our struggle through the Organization of Afro American Unity), I gained some clarity on what must be done and what I must do, in order to gain relief from genocide and win reparations. I thus began writing Ras Notes: Conceptualizing Our Case for the U.N. At this time, I established communication with Dr. Kly’s International Human Rights Association of American Minorities (IHRAAM) and UHRAAP. I then began researching U.N. resolutions through the internet at DePaul University, and obtaining articles, petitions, and reports from NGO’s concerning our case. From these I began drafting the Petition of the Nkrumah-Washington Community Learning Center on Behalf of their Members, Associates and Afro-American Population Whose Internationally Protected Human Rights Have Been Grossly and Systematically Violated By the Anglo-American Government of the United States of America and Its Varied Institutions.
Thus is my story of how I came into the direct lineage teachings of Malcolm X and inherited his legacy - From Malcolm X himself, to Dr. Kly to Dr. Knox, through IHRAAM to El Amin Greene to myself. Interestingly enough, like Malcolm who traveled to east Africa as the lone observer at the Second Summit of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), I too traveled to east Africa and attended the 1st Extra-Ordinary Summit of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa and began issuing reports to the African Diaspora via the internet. Thus, I share a unique relationship with Malcolm X, being the lone representative of the African American people at the seminal moment in the African liberation project to develop a United States of Africa. I returned with the same “educative” mission and responsibility as Malcolm. In this respect, I would like to return to some of Malcolm’s fundamental teachings as set forth in Dr. Kly’s The Black Book:
“‘We are living in an era of revolution, and the revolt of the American negro is part of the rebellion against the oppression and colonialism which has characterized this era… It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem…. The Negro revolution is not a racial revolt. We are interested in practicing brotherhood with anyone really interested in living according to it. But the white man (Anglo American) has long preached an empty doctrine of brotherhood which means little more than a passive acceptance of his fate by the Negro. (The Western Industrial Nations have been) deliberately subjugating the negro for economic reasons. . . .
Power in defense of freedom of freedom is greater than power in behalf of tyranny and oppression because power, real power, comes from conviction, which produces action, uncompromising action. It also produces insurrection against oppression. This is the only way you end oppression - with power. Power never takes a back step - only in the face of more power. Power doesn't back up in the face of a smile or in the face of a threat, or in the face of some kind of nonviolent loving action. It's not the nature of power to back up in the face of anything but more power - Malcolm X Speaks’
PROBLEM: Should the problem of the black minority in the U.S. Be limited to solutions suggested in the U.S. historical development, such as assimilation and the equality of all individuals before the law?
RESPONSE: No!. . . Malcolm thought of the black minority in the U.S. as a national minority or people (not a state) under the domination and oppression of the generally white Anglo-Americanized majority in the U.S.. Thus the problem of the black minority in the U.S. should be formulated in such a manner as to coincide with the universal problem of oppressed peoples or minorities or nations without states in multi-national states. . . . the U.N. General Assembly has recently seen fit or necessary to interpret the U.N. Charter as providing for the right of oppressed peoples or nations within multi-national states to employ force if required to obtain equality. . . . Above all, Malcolm’s fundamental teaching was that the problem of minority protection is primarily an international responsibility. . . .
PROBLEM: Why not just struggle to reform the civilization in which Afro-Americans are? Must they introduce another civilization?
RESPONSE: Yes. Although Afro-Americans are presently physically within western civilization, and in general subjectively feel completely a part of that civilization, there is every proof that the free peoples of this civilization have never accepted Afro-Americans as members of their civilization. Instead, history seems to confirm that they see Afro-Americans as belonging to them, like possessions or tools that provide useful services. In other words, neither Afro-Americans nor their true heritage play any conscious positive role in determining what the U.S. is or will be, but instead it is the social, political and material needs of the Anglo-American nation that determines the Afro-American. . . . What does this mean? For one thing,it means that the way Afro-Americans see themselves and the way the world, particularly the western world of which they purport to be a part, sees them, is not the same. Thus, living to a large degree in isolation (in the black community) from equal status contact with members of the Anglo-American community, it has been easy for Afro-Americans to create the delusion that they are a part of this civilization composed of people who never know slavery, because it was easy to feel a part of the isolated black community in which they lived. . . . The only way that Afro-America could become an equal status member of western civilization would be through the creation of a situation permitting it and the civilization it represents to enter into a social contract (equal status relationship) with other peoples of that civilization, and this could be done only through what Afro-Americans may consider ‘reform’ but which the other members of that civilization would see as national liberation or struggle for self-determination. . . . In the truest sense, national liberation or self-determination is the minimum reform necessary.
PROBLEM: if Afro-Americans followed Malcolm, then it would necessitate a political or perhaps political and military struggle, which in either case would cause great suffering. Why not do like many of their fore-parents did, and accept the status quo while pushing for better treatment rather than equal status or functional equality?
RESPONSE: Afro-Americans must struggle because even to guarantee the maintenance of the relational status quo and better treatment requires the Afro-American community or nation to increase its centralization of political power over the resources and people in its own nation or community. . . . In order to achieve this greater centralization of political power, the community must demand a significant degree of political autonomy or independence from the Anglo-American community. The demand for this greater degree of political autonomy or independence would be resisted, and of course require struggle. Therefore, even to guarantee the maintenance of the status quo and better ‘treatment’, the Afro-American must engage or continue to engage in struggle. Otherwise the relational status quo and treatment will change according to the needs and whims of the Anglo American community as has historically been the case. . . . For nothing good can come from the willing acceptance of oppression and enslavement. It can be demonstrated that more than twice the number of Africans died because of their acceptance of slavery than would have died in a struggle against enslavement. Also, the oppressor did not become a better people or nation due to African non-violent acceptance of enslavement and inequality, but instead the U.S. became one of the most insensitive nations in the world to the needs and plight of non-European and non-Anglo peoples. As Malcolm would say, the acceptance of evil begets greater evil. Thus the Afro-American acceptance of inequality and enslavement has not only served as the human capital and original resource through which was brought into existence the world’s greatest military, technological and social world power, but it is also a chief cause of the U.S. being a nation that insists on the feasibility of using its power for the worldwide benefit of maintaining the Anglo-American ideology of ‘white racism,’ oppression and exploitation of the non-European and non-Anglo-American world at a point in history when such notions are clearly passe. . . .
PROBLEM: Is there a difference between revolution and national liberation?
RESPONSE: Yes. Revolution involves the entire society in question, and always means rapid institutional, social, political and economic change, while national liberation usually involves only a group or nation within the entire society involved, and may or may not involve rapid social and economic change. For example, when Algerians were considered as French citizens, the Algerian national liberation movement successfully demanded the total political independence of the so-called Algerian French from the other French. They succeeded without bringing about a revolution in France. This has been the case with almost every Asian and African people claiming the right to statehood at the conclusion of the classical colonial period. . . . However, for a people to demand national liberation, it usually means that rapid or slow revolutionary change has taken place within the ranks of the people asking for national liberation. This is true although the revolutionary orientation may have been compromised, delayed or defeated in the struggle to obtain self-determination or political independence. Thus, a revolution must occur in the political institutions of the oppressed in order to effectively effect self-determination through national liberation or political independence. This simply means that the responsible leadership of people in need of self-determination must unite and replace the irresponsible leadership opposing self-determination by all means necessary. . . . We have often heard the word revolution, and when we reflect on the historical usage of the word, we immediately realize that no one revolution has succeeded in bringing about the ideal system or set of conditions. Instead, history demonstrates that revolutions are followed by more revolutions. Why? Revolutions have resulted from the efforts of the people to realize their ideal, as understood through their prophets, current moral convictions and religions. In the most fundamental sense, it is the continuing effort of the people to fulfill the mission of their continuously changing material and spiritual needs, culture, and ideals that causes revolution. . . .
EPILOGUE
What happens when a nation or people are effectively suppressed, yet their objective existence is neither absorbed nor eliminated? When the oppressor’s system is believed by him and by the world to be everlasting and, on the whole, successful, and given all (save the oppressed) favorable to human progress? When the oppressor is able to successfully prevent the oppressed from organizing a legitimate intellectual or armed resistance? When the God-given collective human right to exist of the oppressed cannot be expressed because of the overwhelming domestic and international character of the wealth, influence and power possessed by the oppressor, which allows him to orchestrate the orientation of minds in such a manner as to make a central mass leader such as [Malcolm X] appear insignificant, to make the legitimate and human aspirations of the oppressed appear illogical or universally undesirable? When this has occurred, has the oppression achieved ultimate victory? The current norms of western world thought in relation to such areas as Palestine or South Africa leave us with the impression that a political ‘fait acoompli’ against the right of a people to exist means that the oppressor has won and that the people whose existence in oppression nevertheless remains an objective fact, must and will accept the imposed political ‘reality’ in perpetuity. . . . Malcolm knew that this period is a truly difficult period for Afro-American liberation organizations. However, he believed that as the U.S. capitalist elite loses its military, social and political hold on the minds of the majority of Americans and the world, each day becomes better. Tomorrow, he told us, would see turbulent environmental changes in the international system, and it is there that Afro-Americans, other oppressed minorities, and the Anglo-American working class must and can act to free themselves. . . . “
THE SYSTEM MUST BE DESTROYED!
Let us pray that COVID -19 wipes out and completely destroys the Plutonomies. Clearly the People are unable or unwilling to revolt. COVID-19 is the revolution!
“In October 16, 2005, Citigroup came out with a brochure for investors called “Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances” urging investors to put money into a ‘Plutonomy Basket”.
Here is an excerpt from Citigroup’s report:
“The World is dividing into two blocs – the Plutonomy and the rest. The U.S., UK, and Canada are the key Plutonomies – economies powered by the wealthy. Continental Europe (ex-Italy) and Japan are in the egalitarian bloc.
Equity risk premium embedded in “global imbalances” are unwarranted. In plutonomies the rich absorb a disproportionate chunk of the economy and have a massive impact on reported aggregate numbers like savings rates, current account deficits, consumption levels, etc. This imbalance in inequality expresses itself in the standard scary “global imbalances”. We worry less.
We project that the plutonomies (the U.S., UK, and Canada) will likely see even more income inequality, disproportionately feeding off a further rise in the profit share in their economies, capitalist-friendly governments, more technology-driven productivity, and globalization.
In a plutonomy there is no such animal as “the U.S. consumer” or “the UK consumer”, or indeed the “Russian consumer”. There are rich consumers, few in number, but disproportionate in the gigantic slice of income and consumption they take. There are the rest, the “non-rich”, the multitudinous many, but only accounting for surprisingly small bites of the national pie.
To continue with the U.S., the top 1% of households also account for 33% of net worth, greater than the bottom 90% of households put together. It gets better (or worse, depending on your political stripe) – the top 1% of households account for 40% of financial net worth, more than the bottom 95% of households put together. This is data for 2000, from the Survey of Consumer Finances (and adjusted by academic Edward Wolff).
Most “Global Imbalances” (high current account deficits and low savings rates, high consumer debt levels in the Anglo-Saxon world, etc) that continue to (unprofitably) preoccupy the world’s intelligentsia look a lot less threatening when examined through the prism of plutonomy.
The reasons why some societies generate plutonomies and others don’t are somewhat opaque, and we’ll let the sociologists and economists continue debating this one. Kevin Phillips in his masterly “Wealth and Democracy” argues that a few common factors seem to support “wealth waves” – a fascination with technology (an Anglo-Saxon thing according to him), the role of creative finance, a cooperative government, an international dimension of immigrants and overseas conquests invigorating wealth creation, the rule of law, and patenting inventions. Often these wealth waves involve great complexity.
Society and governments need to be amenable to disproportionately allow/encourage the few to retain that fatter profit share. The Managerial Aristocracy, like in the Gilded Age, the Roaring Twenties, and the thriving nineties, needs to commandeer a vast chunk of that rising profit share, either through capital income, or simply paying itself a lot.
We have all heard the lament. A bearish guru, somber and serious, spelling out that the end is near if something is not done urgently about those really huge, nasty “Global Imbalances”.
Almost all the smart folks we know – our investors, our colleagues, our friends in academia, politicians believe in some variant of these two stories. There are very few exceptions who consider these “Global Imbalances” not scary but perfectly natural and rather harmless.
To summarize so far, plutonomies see the rich absorb a disproportionate chunk of the economy, their decision to lower their savings rate, often corresponding to the asset booms that often accompany plutonomy, has a massive negative impact on reported aggregate numbers like savings rates, current account deficits, consumption levels, etc. We believe the key global imbalance is that some large economies have become plutonomies, and others have not — this imbalance in inequality expresses itself in the standard scary “global imbalances” that so worry the bears and most observers. They do not worry us much. In addition, the emerging market entrepreneur/plutocrats (Russian oligarchs, Chinese real estate/manufacturing tycoons, Indian software moguls, Latin American oil/agriculture barons), benefiting disproportionately from globalization are logically diversifying into the asset markets of the developed plutonomies. They are attracted by the facets that facilitated the re-emergence of plutonomies in the U.S., UK, and Canada – technology, internationalism, the rule of law, financial innovation and capitalist-friendly cooperative governments. This further inflates the asset markets in these plutonomies, enabling the rich there to lower their savings rates further, and worsening their current account balances further. Just as misery loves company, we posit that the “plutos” like to hang out together.
At the heart of plutonomy, is income inequality. Societies that are willing to tolerate/endorse income inequality, are willing to tolerate/endorse plutonomy.
Corporate tax rates could rise, choking off returns to the private sector, and personal taxation rates could rise – dividend, capital-gains, and inheritance tax rises would hurt the plutonomy.
Indeed, in the U.S., the current administration’s attempts to change the estate tax code and make permanent dividend tax cuts, plays directly into the hands of the plutonomy.
Protectionism or regulation. Here, we believe lies a cornerstone of the current wave of plutonomy, and with it, the potential for capitalists around the world to profit. The wave of globalization that the world is currently surfing, is clearly to the benefit of global capitalists, as we have highlighted. But it is also to the disadvantage of developed market labor, especially at the lower end of the food-chain.
A third threat comes from the potential social backlash. To use Rawls-ian analysis, the invisible hand stops working. Perhaps one reason that societies allow plutonomy, is because enough of the electorate believe they have a chance of becoming a Plutoparticipant. Why kill it off, if you can join it? In a sense this is the embodiment of the “American dream”. But if voters feel they cannot participate, they are more likely to divide up the wealth pie, rather than aspire to being truly rich.
Could the plutonomies die because the dream is dead, because enough of society does not believe they can participate? The answer is of course yes. But we suspect this is a threat more clearly felt during recessions, and periods of falling wealth, than when average citizens feel that they are better off. There are signs around the world that society is unhappy with plutonomy – judging by how tight electoral races are. But as yet, there seems little political fight being born out on this battleground.
Our overall conclusion is that a backlash against plutonomy is probable at some point. However, that point is not now. So long as economies continue to grow, and enough of the electorates feel that they are benefiting and getting rich in absolute terms, even if they are less well off in relative terms, there is little threat to Plutonomy in the U.S., UK, etc.
If we are right, that the rise of income inequality, the rise of the rich, the rise of plutonomy, is largely to blame for these “perplexing” global imbalances. Surely, then, it is the collapse of plutonomy, rather than the collapse of the U.S. dollar that we should worry about to bring an end to imbalances. In other words, we are fretting unnecessarily about global imbalances.
There are rich consumers, and there are the rest.”
JUBILEE DEBT RELIEF FOR COVID 19
Calling ALL people. This needs to be a massive movement NOW.
Listen to the explanation from Michael Hudson, author of “… and forgive them their debts” and “Killing the Host,” and president of the Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends and is distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. Read the article or listen to the interview on NPR.
