Black nationalism's revolutionary potential

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"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." (Malcolm X-born May 19, 1925;

assassinated Feb. 21, 1965)

This assessment by Malcolm X of the nature of capitalism and its bleak future prospects—a viewpoint long held by revolutionary socialists—is daily being confirmed by events. It marked Malcolm X's evolution from a narrow Black nationalism toward a more rounded understanding of the worldwide conflict between rich and poor.

Malcolm X was one of the most outstanding revolutionary leaders to have been produced by the Black liberation struggle in the history of the United States. Murdered after a short but volcanic eruption to national attention, his remarkable potential for altering the course of history was never fully realized.

It is appropriate to honor his birthday this month with a review of the possible roads forward for Black liberation which Malcolm X was sorting out in the final months of his life.

Malcolm X on Black nationalism Just about a month before his death, Malcolm X was asked to define Black nationalism in an interview he gave to the Young Socialist magazine. He gave this response:

"I used to define Black nationalism as the idea that the Black man should control the economy of his community, the politics of his community, and so forth.

"But when I was in Africa in May, in Ghana, I was speaking with the Algerian ambassador who is extremely militant and is a revolutionary in the true sense of the word (and has his credentials as such for having carried on a successful revolution against oppression in his country).

"When I told him that my political, social, and economic philosophy was Black nationalism, he asked me very frankly, well, where did that leave him? Because he was white. He was an African, but he was Algerian, and to all appearances, he was a white man.

"And he said if I define my objective as the victory of Black nationalism, where does that leave him? Where does that leave revolutionaries in Morocco, Egypt, Iraq, Mauritania? So he showed me where I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any means necessary.

"So, I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition of Black nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as Black nationalism? And if you notice, I haven't been using the expression for several months. But I still would be hard pressed to give a specific definition of the overall philosophy which I think is necessary for the liberation of the Black people in this country."

Thus Malcolm X, who is still probably the best-known historical figure associated with Black nationalism, articulated his own unsettled views in his final days and his determination to clarify them.

We can do no less. We will begin with a look at the forms of Black nationalism and other approaches to Black liberation, as well as the material conditions giving rise to them.

What is Black nationalism?

Black nationalism—the idea that Blacks as a people are exploited and oppressed by whites as a people and that it's more like motivated by an honest abhorrence of injustice, the capitalists as a class were not acting—in the slightest out of altruism.

Capitalism in America was being cramped and stifled by the system of slavery, which was dominant in the Southern states. The slaveowners refused to peacefully acquiesce to the demands of the Republican majority representing Northern capitalism.

Lincoln, at first, merely demanded that the slaveowners subordinate the needs of the South's slave system to the needs of expanding capitalism. But soon the Union was faced with an armed rebellion of the slave states, which had seceded and established a counterrevolutionary government: the Confederacy.

Lincoln vacillated, taking no decisive action against slavery for two years into the Civil War. Eventually, Lincoln realized that the capitalist class needed the military assistance of the slaves to defeat the Confederacy. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued Jan. 1, 1863. It consolidated a firm alliance between the slaves and the capitalist class.

The promise of freedom opened the flood gates, and waves of Blacks deserted the slave plantations and enlisted in the Union Army to fight for the victory of the Union and their own liberation. The slaves who remained on the plantations sabotaged their slavemasters and gave every aid and comfort to the liberating Union Army.

The emancipated slaves were the decisive force leading to the Union victory.

Anti-slavery revolution betrayed

The alliance between the freed slaves and the Northern capitalists continued long enough after the Civil War for the newly dominant class to consolidate its rule over the reunified country. But a pattern of oppression, replacing that of the old slave system, immediately began to grow up in the South.

The former slaveowners still owned the plantations. Shorn of their old power based on slavery, they devised new methods of enslavement based on their control of the essentially agrarian economy.

The plantation owners also threatened to recapture control of the federal government by prohibiting freedmen from voting-both through terror and through their control over the state and local governments. It wasn't until 1867 that the first series of Radical Reconstruction Acts were passed by Congress to oppose the counterrevolutionary violence of the plantocracy.

Declaring that no legal government existed in the late Confederacy, Congress divided these 10 southern states into five military districts under military control.

It wasn't until 1870 that the Fifteenth Amendment was passed giving Black men the vote. The radical Republicans' most pressing motive for Black enfranchisement, however, was not concern for Black rights. They acted out of fear that the former slaveowners, defeated militarily, would regain control of the federal government through the electoral process.

The former slaveowners had been able to make a shockingly swift comeback. This was because the victorious Northern industrialists and bankers failed to decisively break the economic power of their former enemies. This could have been easily done by the simple and patently just measure of confiscating the plantations and distributing this land to the landless slaves. This would have been small compensation for centuries of bondage.

There was plenty of land, moreover, to distribute to poor whites as well. This would have united the Black and white poor against the old slavemasters. It would have dealt a mortal blow to the former slaveowners from which they would never have recovered.

This dereliction by the Northern capitalists was not done out of ignorance or incompetence. They were completely aware, for instance, of the instructive chapter from U.S. history in which the revolutionary founders of the Republic confiscated and nationalized the great landed estates of the King's loyalists after they realized that military victory over Great Britain was not sufficient to guarantee independence. This broke the King's power forever in the colonies.

They were also aware of the example of the French Revolution of 1789, which destroyed the landed (continued on page 10, in “"Capitalism used to be like an eagle, but”)

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