Click on the headline to link to a Private Bradley Manning website entry for the solidarity activities scheduled for the weekend of April 9-10, 2011.
Markin comment:
Free Bradley Manning Now!
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Friday, April 08, 2011
The Anti-War Protest Season Continues-New York City Anti-War Rally April 9
Markin comment:
During this February and March I have called for and placed a number posts in this space in support of a March 19th Veterans For Peace-led march and action in Washington, D.C. I also gave my reasons for such support in commentary in those posts. Mainly from a sense of solidarity with my fellow veterans and because they were ramping up their opposition to Obama's wars beylond yet another march. This march in New York on April 9th, while necessary as an action to oppose Obama's wars, is a more traditional one and while we will attend it does not have the dramatic impact and bonds of solidarity attached to it of the Veterans' march.
March and Rally: Bring the Troops Home Now!
When: Saturday, April 9, 2011, 12:00 pm
Where: Union Square • New York, NY
Start: 2011 Apr 9 - 12:00pm
Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City and San Francisco
(Union Sq. at noon) (Time and place to be announced)
Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
During this February and March I have called for and placed a number posts in this space in support of a March 19th Veterans For Peace-led march and action in Washington, D.C. I also gave my reasons for such support in commentary in those posts. Mainly from a sense of solidarity with my fellow veterans and because they were ramping up their opposition to Obama's wars beylond yet another march. This march in New York on April 9th, while necessary as an action to oppose Obama's wars, is a more traditional one and while we will attend it does not have the dramatic impact and bonds of solidarity attached to it of the Veterans' march.
March and Rally: Bring the Troops Home Now!
When: Saturday, April 9, 2011, 12:00 pm
Where: Union Square • New York, NY
Start: 2011 Apr 9 - 12:00pm
Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City and San Francisco
(Union Sq. at noon) (Time and place to be announced)
Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
From The Jan Laaman Blog- On Tunisia and Egypt- Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning The Last Of The Imprisoned Ohio Seven Now!
Click on headline to link to the Free Jan Laaman Blog - Free Jan Laaman and Tom Manning The Last Of The Imprisoned Ohio Seven Now!
From The Free Jaan Laaman Blog-On Libya-Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning The Last Of The Imprisoned Ohio Seven Now!
From The Free Jaan Laaman Blog- On Libya
Markin comment:
Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning The Last Of The Imprisoned Ohio Seven Now!
Markin comment:
Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning The Last Of The Imprisoned Ohio Seven Now!
The missing Malcolm -An Interview with Manning Marable -ISR Issue 63, January–February 2009
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The missing Malcolm
An Interview with Manning Marable
MANNING MARABLE is a professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York City, and the founder of the Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH) at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous works, including How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1983), Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), and Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006). His current works in progress include a new comprehensive biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2009).
Simon J. Black, a freelance writer and PhD student at York University in Toronto, interviewed Dr. Marable in New York City. You can find his writing at www.simonjblack.com.
DR. MARABLE, when we speak of W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King, we are not only speaking of great intellectuals and civil rights leaders, but of democratic socialists. Malcolm also moved to the left in his later life. Much of this has been suppressed or written out of mainstream civil rights history. What effect has that had on how African-Americans relate to the left and how the left, Black and white, relates to the African-American community?
AFRICAN-AMERICANS who identify themselves with socialism or left projects have been drawn to that body of politics based on their realization that racialized injustice is not simply a dynamic of color, but, rather, has something very directly to do with accumulated disadvantage driven by market economics and by the hegemony of capital over labor. Black people in the United States and the Americas who came here were brought here involuntarily due to the demand for labor and the unquenchable thirsts on the part of those who own capital and invested in means of production to find the cheapest way to develop a labor pool to exploit and to extract surplus value that is accrued to them through excess profits.
The engine that drove the trans-Atlantic slave trade was capital, as Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery pointed out fifty and sixty years ago. Malcolm, on Jan. 15, 1965, a month before he dies, does an interview in Canada, I believe in Toronto, where he says, “All my life, I believed that the fundamental struggle was Black versus white. Now I realize that it is the haves against the have-nots.” Malcolm came to the realization, King came to the realization, that the nature of the struggle was between those who have and those who are dispossessed. [Frantz] Fanon came to this same conclusion in Wretched of the Earth. So this led to what some scholars have written about as Black Marxism, the tradition of Black radicalism that comes organically from the critical reality of the super exploitation of Black labor worldwide and a response to that politically. That is, that we didn’t gravitate toward Marx simply because we liked his beard or we were seduced by his manipulation of prose, even though I loved the 18th Brumaire. Rather, we were attracted to Marx because it helped to illuminate and make clear the objective material circumstances of poverty, unemployment, and exploitation in Black people’s lives. Which is why we became socialists or Marxists, because we understood that there could not be a path toward Black liberation that was not simultaneously one that challenged the hegemony of capital over labor.
IN YOUR new biography of Malcolm, Malcolm X: A Life of the Invention, you discuss three missing chapters from Alex Haley’s collaboration with Malcolm, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. What’s happened to them? And what’s their importance to understanding Malcolm’s life?
THEY’RE IN the safe of an attorney named Gregory Reed. He’s in Detroit, Michigan. They’re in his safe. And, he has them and doesn’t show them to people. Now why does he have them? How did that happen? Well, in late 1992, I believe October, there was an auction of the Alex Haley estate and for $100,000, he bought these chapters that were discarded from the autobiography.
Alex Haley was the ghostwriter and co-author of the book. You have to remember that Haley went on to great fame as the author of Roots, one of the largest-selling books in American history and a docudrama on television that had a profound impact on race relations in the late 1970s. Haley was deeply hostile to Malcolm X’s politics. He was a Republican, he was opposed to Black nationalism, and he was an integrationist. He had been in the Coast Guard for twenty years. But, he also knew a good thing when he saw it.
A charismatic, handsome, articulate Black leader who had a controversial past as a hustler, a pimp, a drug addict, a numbers runner, “Detroit Red,” “Little Gangster,” “Little Bugsy Siegel,” who supposedly terrorized the Harlem community in the 1940s and went to jail and was given ten years in prison. He goes through a metamorphosis, he becomes a Black Muslim, he comes out, he explodes onto the scene. He creates seventy to eighty new mosques in less than ten years, turns a small sect of 400 people into fifty- to one hundred thousand by 1960–62. Then, he turns more overtly to politics, he breaks from the Nation of Islam (NOI), he builds two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated in March 1964 and the Organization of Afro-American Unity in May 1964. He goes to Africa and the Mideast. He is treated as the head of state. He is welcomed at the Fateh by the Saudi royal household. He sits down with Gamal, eats breakfast with Anwar Sadat in Egypt. He caucuses and meets and gets to know Che Guevara while he’s in Africa, as he alludes to in a talk in 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom. So Malcolm is this extraordinary figure, dies at the age of thirty-nine. It’s a hell of a story. Haley understood that. And so, it was on those terms he agreed to work with Malcolm to write the book. But, what Malcolm didn’t know was that Haley already was compromised and had basically been a purveyor of information—a kind of, not informant, but a client of the FBI in this disinformation campaign against the NOI. Haley had collaborated with the FBI. Malcolm never knew that. In the summer of sixty-four when Malcolm was in Egypt, Haley was taking the book manuscript and giving it to an attorney, William O’Dwyer, rewriting passages of the book trying to get it passed as Malcolm’s survey. Malcolm’s on the run, people are trying to kill him, they’re trying to poison him in Egypt. He’s not going to have time to look at the book carefully. Then, he dies.
Haley adds a seventy-nine-page appendix to the book where he has his own integrationist and liberal Republican interpretation. And then, they have M.S. Handler of the New York Times writing in the front of the book. I mean, you know Malcolm respected Handler. But this is not who you want to lead in to a Black revolutionary’s text. So Haley did a variety of things to reframe the book. And, toward the end of the book, there’s a lot of language in it that simply doesn’t sound like Malcolm. It doesn’t sound like him. There’s a lot of information that is just wrong in the book. They misspelled “As-Salamu Alaykum” several times. They give the story of Johnson Hinton. They have Hinton Johnson. They put the date of this very tragic beating of this brother who’s in the Nation, Brother Johnson, in 1959, rather than the year it actually occurred, which was April 1957. So there are simple mistakes in dates, of names, events that clearly show Malcolm did not have access to the final manuscript. He didn’t see it. And it was published nine months after Malcolm’s death. Betty Shabazz was in no shape to check and recheck facts. So all that says to me is you have to read the autobiography very, very carefully, very suspiciously. It’s a wonderful book. It is a great work of literature. But it is a work of literature. It is not an autobiography. It’s a memoir. And it’s gone through the prism of Haley who was a Republican, integrationist, and a defender of U.S. power. You should read the anticommunist articles he wrote for the Reader’s Guide in the mid-fifties on Hungary. This is the man you’re dealing with. So we must be very careful. I learned I had to deconstruct the autobiography to write the biography. If you go to www.malcolmxproject.net, you will see my biography, the architecture of that, and how I had to deconstruct the autobiography. That’s why we put up the Web site.
WHAT DO you suspect is contained in these missing three chapters?
WELL, I’VE seen them for about fifteen minutes. I met with Gregory. I’ve written about this in my book, Living Black History, which came out last year. Living Black History has a whole chapter on this. I couldn’t use it in the autobiography, but I had to tell the story to somebody. I talked with Gregory on the phone. He’s an attorney. He bought it for $100,000. He wanted to make money off of the material. So I phone him up, we talk. He says, “Fly out to Detroit. Meet with me. Come to my law office. There, I’ll show you the chapters.” As honesty suggests, I get to Detroit. He said, “Don’t come to my office. Are you downtown?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Meet me at this restaurant in an hour.” I go there. He’s about a half hour late. He eventually shows up. And he’s carrying a briefcase. And then he said, “I’ll let you see these for fifteen minutes.” I’ve flown from New York and I have fifteen minutes to read the text. “I’ll let you sit here and read them and I’ll leave and I’ll come back.”
I’m sitting here frantically reading these pages. But it only takes me a few minutes to recognize what they are. They were obviously written sometime between August 1963 to December 1963. There’s a presumption in the text that Malcolm is still in the Nation of Islam. So he hasn’t broken with the Nation yet. What they call for is the construction of an unprecedented Black united front, uniting all Black organizations, led by, get this, the Nation of Islam. So Malcolm is envisioning the Nation actively participating in antiracist struggles and building various types of capacities: economic strategies, housing strategies, health-care strategies with the NAACP, with the Urban League, with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). So he wanted to push this religious kind of semi-Islamic organization into Black civil society in an aggressive way. He wanted to open up the Nation. And, I strongly suspect that Malcolm’s drive and push to reach out to the civil rights community and SNCC and CORE is what got him into trouble inside of the NOI, because the bulk of the NOI had been thoroughly against Malcolm’s proselytization efforts that brought in tens of thousands of new members. The old guard felt threatened by that. Then on top of that, since April 1962, the turning point in Malcolm’s career was the murder of Ronald Stokes in the Nation of Islam’s mosque in Los Angeles. Malcolm flies out to LA and spends over a week there and he calls for a grand coalition, very much like the coalition he talked about in the deleted chapters, with CORE, the NAACP, with SNCC that would be anti-police violence against Black people. And, he was talking about the Nation of Islam participating in that coalition. Elijah Muhammad said “time out,” called Malcolm down and said “you better chill that out and get the hell out of Los Angeles.” Malcolm was deeply embarrassed and humiliated that they had to end the mobilization after they had a member murdered by the LAPD. Other men in the Nation in the mosque were dragged outside, strip-searched naked to humiliate them. And Malcolm had mobilized people and he had to back down.
Malcolm came back to New York and by July 1962 is speaking at a Local 1199 union protest. I have a photo of him speaking at a protest rally in July for the labor union, King’s favorite union, 1199, the largest union today in New York City. In Christmas time in 1962, two members of the Nation, who were selling Muhammad Speaks in Times Square, get arrested by the police. How does Malcolm respond? He puts 140 to 150 Fruit of Islam members—the paramilitary organization, the men in the NOI—demonstrating in Times Square on New Year’s Day. Elijah Muhammad called for no demonstrations, no overt political activity. That’s not what Malcolm’s doing. That’s exactly what he’s doing. And he starts doing that a year and a half before the silencing, before the break.
So you know what happens? The Nation of Islam’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks in late 1962 stops covering Malcolm X. If you go through methodically the last year from December 1962 through December 1963, guess what? You see Malcolm once in his own newspaper. And he’s the national spokesman. You see him more often in the New York Times. And this is like a year before the break. So you can already see where he’s going. It doesn’t take a mind reader to see that Elijah Muhammad only used the “chickens coming home to roost” statement [by Malcolm X, in response to John F. Kennedy’s November 1963 assassination] as an excuse to do what they wanted to do, which was to eliminate Malcolm’s influence, curb his politics. I think that they believed he would submit. Most of Malcolm’s closest followers within the Nation thought he would also submit. They weren’t prepared for a break. Malcolm contemplated a break. I think maybe he wasn’t prepared either. But he did anticipate a possibility of it.
He began, in early 1964, talking with a number of people outside of the Nation of Islam to develop the OAAU, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. When he left the Nation, very few members of the NOI went with him, perhaps maybe 100. The mosque in Harlem had as many as 7,000 members. Only 100–150 left. They became the Muslim Mosque Incorporated (MMI), and Sunni Muslims. But the OAAU was the secular organization with largely working-class and middle-class Blacks and many professionals, writers like Huey and Mayfield, historians like John Henrik Clark. The key organizer was Lynn Shifflet of NBC News, a producer, a young Black woman in her late twenties. There were real tensions between the OAAU and the MMI over ideology and their relationship to Malcolm, because Malcolm increasingly was moving toward the politics of the OAAU, away from the MMI, even though these were people who had put their lives on the line to leave the NOI out of personal loyalty to him. So there were tremendous tensions between these two groups, which I will document in the biography.
SO THE Organization of Afro-American Unity really is the culmination of, or the product of, the development of Malcolm’s thought that was written about by Haley in these last three chapters?
THE CHAPTERS that are missing are written prior to the split. Haley says that Malcolm changed his mind after he went to Mecca and decided to deep-six the chapters. Maybe that’s true. We’ll never know. What is true is that it would be nice to print the things that were deleted, put an addendum and appendix on the autobiography. It would be nice to see it. Well I’m not sure. Don’t hold your breath. I saw it for fifteen minutes. Maybe I’m the lucky one. But eventually they will appear. We will see them.
There has been an active suppression of Malcolm’s work and his intellectual legacy for more than forty years. And the suppression has been deliberate and for various reasons. First, many of the key people in his entourage in the Nation and in the OAAU had to go underground. I just interviewed this week James 67X Shabazz (Abdullah Razzaq) who went underground and lived in Guyana for nineteen years, because he was threatened with murder and also threatened by the FBI. So it’s only now in his mid-seventies that he’s returned to the United States several months a year. He lives in Brooklyn with his son. James 67X was Malcolm’s chief-of-staff and his secretary for many years. The others who were closest to Malcolm are now dead. There is Herman Ferguson who is the best eyewitness to the murder. I’ve interviewed him several times and I’m interviewing him once more next week, which will be fun. His eyewitness to the murder, his recount to me, which has partially been published in my journal Souls, is absolutely stunning and it raises many questions about the assassination.
We have, over the last seven years, worked very hard to develop a forensic accounting of the murder. And, we believe we have figured out how the murder took place. That is, the forensics of it. We think we know how that happened. We don’t know who gave the order. But I can tell you what our theory is. The murder took place on February 21, 1965, as a result of the culmination of three separate groups. There was no classic conspiracy, no direct collusion, but, rather, a convergence. Three things had to happen for the murder to take place, and they all did. Law enforcement, the FBI and the NYPD, and its Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), which was its red squad, actively wanted to do surveillance disruption of Malcolm X and possibly eliminate him; certainly the FBI, because their nightmare was seeing King and Malcolm embrace. That was their nightmare. And they realized much to their horror that they were far better off with Malcolm in the Nation of Islam than outside of it, because then he was being treated like a head of state in Africa. They had never anticipated that he would be a houseguest of a Saudi royal family, or that he would be speaking to parliaments from Kenya to Ghana to French Guinea. Malcolm goes to Alabama, three weeks before he’s murdered and reaches out to Dr. King. King is in prison after leading demonstrations. Malcolm goes to Coretta Scott King and he says, “I want you to convey to your husband my deepest respect for him and that I am not trying to undermine Dr. King’s work. My goal is to be to the left of Dr. King, to challenge institutional racism so that those in power can negotiate with King. That’s my role.” So Malcolm understood what his role was. This was the FBI’s nightmare. And so they actively wanted to curtail his influence, if not silence him permanently.
Then you have the Nation of Islam. But what people need to understand is that there were different points of view in the NOI about Malcolm. Some of the leadership, especially in Chicago, the national secretary John Ali, the national head of the Fruit of Islam Raymond Shareef, Elijah Muhammad’s son-in-law Herbert Muhammad, the sons of Elijah Muhammad, Jr., and several others wanted to silence Malcolm permanently. Joseph X, who was a captain of the Fruit of Islam and the Northeast regional security director at Mosque No. 7, formerly Malcolm’s associate and friend, as was John Ali—they actively sought to eliminate him, to blow him up with bombs, to kill him, or firebomb his home or whatever. But other members of the Nation of Islam were against the murder and it is questionable if Elijah Muhammad ever gave the order. It could have been a situation very much like Henry II and Thomas Becket where somebody’s ridding him of his priest. So he doesn’t have to give the order, but the deed is done. It’s understood what needs to be done. But he doesn’t technically give the order.
Then there’s a third group and that’s Malcolm’s own entourage. There were police informants in the group. Gene Roberts who tries to resuscitate Malcolm after he’s shot is an NYPD police officer. He’s a police officer who walks right directly out of the line of fire only seconds before the fuselage goes off—maybe by accident, maybe by design. What is true is that whenever Malcolm spoke, there were at least two dozen cops. There were only two police officers in the Audubon that day and they were assigned as far away in the distance as possible in the building. They were in the rows, in very small-rows in a ballroom adjacent to the large grand ballroom, but separated by a wall and then a vestibule. It was impossible for them to protect Malcolm. There was one police officer in a small park directly across the street from the entrance of the Audubon. No other police officers. They’d been pulled back to the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital four blocks away. No captain, and the guard is usually sitting in the second floor in a booth where they collect money that directly faces the ballroom. You have to walk right past it to get out of the building. No police in the building. Why?
Malcolm gets shot. The hospital, they try to get the ambulance. They can’t get an ambulance. It’s only four blocks away. So men run to the hospital’s emergency room, grab a gurney, and carry his body in a gurney in the street. Seems odd, doesn’t it? His own men, no one checks for weapons at the door. None of the guards are armed. I’ve gone through New York’s Municipal Archives, the police reports of all the guards that day, of every guard. We’ve gone through all that. We know who they were and their names and the changes of the guards. There were three changes of the guards. One around 2:00, one around 2:30, and one about 2:55. We know that several people who were guarding Malcolm that day were not generally part of the OAAU and were assigned to sensitive positions. Guards like William George, who normally guarded Malcolm on the roster were assigned to be as far away from him as possible that day at the front of the building, not next to Malcolm on the rush. The guards who were there rolled out of the way. And Malcolm was naked and alone on the stage.
There’s only one man who could have placed the guards there that way and that was Malcolm’s head of security, Reuben Francis. Francis is the one who does shoot Hayer, who did indeed shoot Malcolm. But Hayer is interviewed very briefly by the NYPD, he’s arrested briefly. They let him go on bond. Then he disappears off planet Earth. And the FBI said, “We can’t find him. We believe he’s in Mexico.” But prior to his disappearance, he’s not even called to the grand jury, even though he’s the only one who shot anybody who was an assassin.
The NYPD doesn’t even interview Capt. Joseph, the head of the Fruit of Islam, at Mosque No. 7, even though, to a room of over 120 people, he cold orders Malcolm’s death. There are witnesses to this. And the FBI doesn’t interview him? We found a folder that said Joseph X and it was empty. There were six men who killed Malcolm, not three. Two of the men who were incarcerated and given life sentences were innocent, Norman Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. They were innocent. They were sent to prison for life. Why? They weren’t even physically there. Johnson used to be Malcolm’s chauffeur. He used to stand out in the rain in front of Mosque No. 7 or in the snow, holding and reserving a parking space for Malcolm when he drove up. He used to phone him and tell him that he was coming before he arrived. Once a month, he went to go grocery shopping for Betty, Malcolm’s wife. You would know this guy if he came to kill you. Everybody would’ve known him if he had walked into the Audubon that day. He wasn’t there that day. Butler was an enforcer for Capt. Joseph. He was a notorious thug in the Nation. They would have known if they walked into the Audubon that day. The two men weren’t there that day and yet they were convicted of murdering Malcolm X. Why?
I believe the district attorney was protecting informants within Malcolm’s group and within the NOI. And perhaps some of those informants were collaborators and committed the crime. So they convicted the wrong people to cover and protect the anonymity of their own agents. That’s a theory. I can’t prove it, but I think we ought to explore it and we should reopen this case. And, hopefully my book will help reopen it. William Kunstler tried to reopen it back in 1977–78 and he failed because he didn’t have the evidence I have. Hopefully, we can reopen it again.
THE DOMINANT understanding of Malcolm’s life and meaning in mainstream American popular culture really comes from two sources: Haley and Spike Lee’s film. Spike Lee’s interpretation of the assassination shows a Malcolm, who seems to be prepared for his own martyrdom and orders his guards not to be armed on that day, in a way that King with his mountaintop speech also appears to be prepared for what he seems to think is his inevitable fate. Is that a damaging interpretation?
NO, IT’S not and it may be true. Malcolm clearly knew he was going to die. He didn’t know when and I strongly suspect that Malcolm was not going to run away from death and he had the courage to face death. Not that he wanted to die, he didn’t have a death wish. But he had the courage to face death. There is a story, a very influential legend within Shia Islam, about Ali and his grandson Husayn, both of whom perished in a kind of murder in the cathedral, in the case of Ali in the mosque, and in his grandson’s case at Karbala where he was killed in, I believe, 682 in common era. About four years later, women came to Karbala, in today’s Iraq, and began to beat themselves and lament that they had not protected the grandson of Ali. In Shia, Ali is the Shia that we have today. They still gather every year at Karbala. Now hundreds of thousands and maybe a million people lament the events of Karbala. There is nothing greater in Shia Islam than martyrdom, the embrace of death for a higher belief. And to some extent, I think that Malcolm embodied that at that moment. Not that he sought death, but that he did not fear it. That he saw in his martyrdom a way to transcend death that there would be a life after death. I’m sure he was familiar with the legend. Who knows? Perhaps that influenced his actions.
WHAT WILL your biography broadly do to assert a new Malcolm X, itself a reinvention of Malcolm X, as your book is titled, because he reinvented himself many times? What will it do to displace Haley and Spike Lee as the dominant understanding of Malcolm X’s life and meaning?
THERE ARE three core things in the book. The first is what I call a kind of a life of reinvention. Malcolm’s tale is a hero’s tale that’s not unlike Odysseus—a story of travel, of learning, of experience, of ordeals and tests, a classic kind of hero story. It’s a classic Greek story, which frequently or usually ends in death. But at the end, there’s a broader, richer, deeper, critical consciousness that’s achieved. The thing about that story is that Malcolm’s growth comes through a series of artful creative reinventions. He reinvents himself even to the point these reinventions have different names. He was “Jack Carlton” in the summer of 1944. When he was nineteen years old, he wanted to break into show biz and he was at Lobster Pond bar on Forty-Second Street in Midtown Manhattan working as a drummer and professional dancer for about three or four months. He doesn’t write about that in the autobiography. You just have to find out about that. He worked in a bar and grill in Harlem, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, alongside of the funniest dishwasher and server in Harlem, a guy who had red hair. Malcolm had red hair. So they called Malcolm “Detroit Red” cause nobody had ever heard of Lansing, Michigan, and they called the brother from Chicago “Chicago Red.” His last name was Sanford. We know him today better as Red Foxx, the comedian. So Malcolm and Red Foxx worked in the same restaurant in 1943 and early 1944. He does mention something of this in the autobiography. Malcolm in prison called himself at times Malachi Shabazz. He was Malcolm X. He was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He had many, many different names: “Detroit Red,” “Homeboy,” “Mascot,” “Satan” when he was in prison. Yet, through these transformations, he was able to navigate brilliantly a life of reinvention.
What makes Malcolm different from every signature Black figure in American history is that he combines the two central characters of Black folk culture. He is both the trickster and the minister. He’s both. That’s “Detroit Red”—the hustler, the gambler, the outlaw. And, he is also the minister who saves souls, who redeems lives, who heals the sick, who raises the dead. He’s both. King is one. Jesse Jackson is one. Malcolm’s both and he understood the streets and the lumpen proletariat. I hate that phrase, but it comes from Marx. As well as, he saw himself as a minister and an Amun, a cleric. He was always this. And he embodied the cultural spirit of Black folk better than anyone else. When I asked one student about a decade ago, “What was the fundamental difference between Malcolm and Martin?” He said, “Dr. Marable, that’s easy. Martin Luther King, Jr., belongs to the entire world. Malcolm X belongs to us.” There is a tremendous degree of identification on the part of people of African descent, and globally on the part of Muslims, invested in the figure of Malcolm. The very first postage stamp honoring Malcolm X was issued not by the United States but by the Ayatollah Khomeini government of Iran, in 1982, by the Shia Muslims. Perhaps they knew something that everybody else didn’t know.
The second theme in the book is a spiritual journey and Malcolm’s growth in a spiritual sojourn from the periphery of Islam represented by the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam. There was a price in the journey because he also had to embrace Nasser’s definition of what Islam was in the Pan Arab world. So we have some excellent very interesting articles and speeches Malcolm gave in Cairo. The writings that he did, very critical of the state of Israel in the summer and September 1964, cast Malcolm in a very interesting kind of light as it relates to the Arab struggle and the Palestinian struggle, that heretofore, in the United States, we have rarely seen.
The third theme is betrayal. Malcolm had a capacity ethnographically to read an audience better than any public speaker of his generation. He knew people. He could walk into an audience, read it and give a brilliant address. He could debate at Harvard and Oxford, as well as on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue/Seventh Avenue. He was just a remarkable public speaker. But where his failure came was his consistent inability to make critical accurate judgments of the people closest to him who would betray him. And those included his two brothers Philbert and Wilfred Little who sided with Elijah Muhammad against Malcolm; his chief protégé Louis X/Louis Farrakhan who proclaimed Malcolm to be a man worthy of death, who led the jackal’s course leading to his murder. How do we explain Farrakhan? I sat down with Louis for nine hours in an interview a year and a half ago. We had a fascinating conversation about it. The question I ruminate over is, how much of it is true? Then we have Joseph X, the leader of the Fruit of Islam at Mosque No. 7, who Malcolm had promoted, pulled out of the gutter in Detroit in 1952–53, raised him up to be his chief right-hand person, who then would be betray and try to murder him. John Ali, who had been Malcolm’s secretary at Mosque No. 7, who he promoted to the national leadership, who then conspired to murder him. A variety of people. His closest personal friend Charles Kenyatta had been turned out by the police and was probably a police agent, Malcolm’s best friend, which I’ve only just discovered last week because I just got the file. We have some interesting info. So I think between this data and the other things, a big chunk of the book is about the forensic discussion of the murder and our theory of the murder. I think people will have more than enough information.
LET’S BRING this full circle. We’re now sitting in your office in 2007 in Bloom?berg’s New York. We’ve gone through a period of social cleansing that was Giuliani’s New York, characterized by police brutality, intense gentrification, privatization of public housing. And I was today at Friday Juma at the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem and the message today was one about homosexuality, as an abnormal and immoral practice. The other message was about self-help and the idea of the community needing to raise itself up and take care of its own problems. What does the Malcolm X of your book say to this current political economic conjuncture?
WELL, AN honest representation of Malcolm should show the whole person and his trajectory and his evolution. The trajectory of Malcolm was increasingly anti-corporate capitalist. He talked about the need not to appeal to the United States to redress grievances, but to take the criminal to court, that is, the court of world opinion at the United Nations. He called for what is today known as a South-South dialogue, that is, between the Caribbean, Blacks in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia that would span across continents that would be in part Arab and Muslim, and part Black and Brown. And, he envisioned a global kind of jihad of worlds against Western imperialism and a need for people who had experienced colonialism to take back the power through international bodies that built broad-based unity transnationally. That was what Malcolm’s politics were. It was not bootstrap capitalism, nor was it gentrification. Nevertheless, once you’re dead, your image is up for grabs. By 1972, Richard Nixon had invited, and Betty Shabazz had agreed to be on the dais of the re-elect Richard M. Nixon for president dinner party in Washington, D.C. This was only six or seven years after Malcolm X’s assassination. So once you’re murdered, you can’t control what people who had some sort of relationship to you—whether they’re married to you, or they’re political affiliates or associates—what choices they make. Sad but true. It is particularly sad that from the masjid or mosque, one hears a kind of message that’s more appropriate to Booker T. Washington than Malcolm X. But, nevertheless, the struggle continues.
The missing Malcolm
An Interview with Manning Marable
MANNING MARABLE is a professor of Public Affairs, Political Science, History and African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York City, and the founder of the Center for Contemporary Black History (CCBH) at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous works, including How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America (Boston: South End Press, 1983), Race, Reform and Rebellion: The Second Reconstruction in Black America, 1945–1990 (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1991), and Living Black History: How Reimagining the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006). His current works in progress include a new comprehensive biography of Malcolm X, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention (New York: Viking, 2009).
Simon J. Black, a freelance writer and PhD student at York University in Toronto, interviewed Dr. Marable in New York City. You can find his writing at www.simonjblack.com.
DR. MARABLE, when we speak of W.E.B. Du Bois, A. Phillip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Martin Luther King, we are not only speaking of great intellectuals and civil rights leaders, but of democratic socialists. Malcolm also moved to the left in his later life. Much of this has been suppressed or written out of mainstream civil rights history. What effect has that had on how African-Americans relate to the left and how the left, Black and white, relates to the African-American community?
AFRICAN-AMERICANS who identify themselves with socialism or left projects have been drawn to that body of politics based on their realization that racialized injustice is not simply a dynamic of color, but, rather, has something very directly to do with accumulated disadvantage driven by market economics and by the hegemony of capital over labor. Black people in the United States and the Americas who came here were brought here involuntarily due to the demand for labor and the unquenchable thirsts on the part of those who own capital and invested in means of production to find the cheapest way to develop a labor pool to exploit and to extract surplus value that is accrued to them through excess profits.
The engine that drove the trans-Atlantic slave trade was capital, as Eric Williams in Capitalism and Slavery pointed out fifty and sixty years ago. Malcolm, on Jan. 15, 1965, a month before he dies, does an interview in Canada, I believe in Toronto, where he says, “All my life, I believed that the fundamental struggle was Black versus white. Now I realize that it is the haves against the have-nots.” Malcolm came to the realization, King came to the realization, that the nature of the struggle was between those who have and those who are dispossessed. [Frantz] Fanon came to this same conclusion in Wretched of the Earth. So this led to what some scholars have written about as Black Marxism, the tradition of Black radicalism that comes organically from the critical reality of the super exploitation of Black labor worldwide and a response to that politically. That is, that we didn’t gravitate toward Marx simply because we liked his beard or we were seduced by his manipulation of prose, even though I loved the 18th Brumaire. Rather, we were attracted to Marx because it helped to illuminate and make clear the objective material circumstances of poverty, unemployment, and exploitation in Black people’s lives. Which is why we became socialists or Marxists, because we understood that there could not be a path toward Black liberation that was not simultaneously one that challenged the hegemony of capital over labor.
IN YOUR new biography of Malcolm, Malcolm X: A Life of the Invention, you discuss three missing chapters from Alex Haley’s collaboration with Malcolm, The Autobiography of Malcolm X. What’s happened to them? And what’s their importance to understanding Malcolm’s life?
THEY’RE IN the safe of an attorney named Gregory Reed. He’s in Detroit, Michigan. They’re in his safe. And, he has them and doesn’t show them to people. Now why does he have them? How did that happen? Well, in late 1992, I believe October, there was an auction of the Alex Haley estate and for $100,000, he bought these chapters that were discarded from the autobiography.
Alex Haley was the ghostwriter and co-author of the book. You have to remember that Haley went on to great fame as the author of Roots, one of the largest-selling books in American history and a docudrama on television that had a profound impact on race relations in the late 1970s. Haley was deeply hostile to Malcolm X’s politics. He was a Republican, he was opposed to Black nationalism, and he was an integrationist. He had been in the Coast Guard for twenty years. But, he also knew a good thing when he saw it.
A charismatic, handsome, articulate Black leader who had a controversial past as a hustler, a pimp, a drug addict, a numbers runner, “Detroit Red,” “Little Gangster,” “Little Bugsy Siegel,” who supposedly terrorized the Harlem community in the 1940s and went to jail and was given ten years in prison. He goes through a metamorphosis, he becomes a Black Muslim, he comes out, he explodes onto the scene. He creates seventy to eighty new mosques in less than ten years, turns a small sect of 400 people into fifty- to one hundred thousand by 1960–62. Then, he turns more overtly to politics, he breaks from the Nation of Islam (NOI), he builds two new organizations, the Muslim Mosque Incorporated in March 1964 and the Organization of Afro-American Unity in May 1964. He goes to Africa and the Mideast. He is treated as the head of state. He is welcomed at the Fateh by the Saudi royal household. He sits down with Gamal, eats breakfast with Anwar Sadat in Egypt. He caucuses and meets and gets to know Che Guevara while he’s in Africa, as he alludes to in a talk in 1964 at the Audubon Ballroom. So Malcolm is this extraordinary figure, dies at the age of thirty-nine. It’s a hell of a story. Haley understood that. And so, it was on those terms he agreed to work with Malcolm to write the book. But, what Malcolm didn’t know was that Haley already was compromised and had basically been a purveyor of information—a kind of, not informant, but a client of the FBI in this disinformation campaign against the NOI. Haley had collaborated with the FBI. Malcolm never knew that. In the summer of sixty-four when Malcolm was in Egypt, Haley was taking the book manuscript and giving it to an attorney, William O’Dwyer, rewriting passages of the book trying to get it passed as Malcolm’s survey. Malcolm’s on the run, people are trying to kill him, they’re trying to poison him in Egypt. He’s not going to have time to look at the book carefully. Then, he dies.
Haley adds a seventy-nine-page appendix to the book where he has his own integrationist and liberal Republican interpretation. And then, they have M.S. Handler of the New York Times writing in the front of the book. I mean, you know Malcolm respected Handler. But this is not who you want to lead in to a Black revolutionary’s text. So Haley did a variety of things to reframe the book. And, toward the end of the book, there’s a lot of language in it that simply doesn’t sound like Malcolm. It doesn’t sound like him. There’s a lot of information that is just wrong in the book. They misspelled “As-Salamu Alaykum” several times. They give the story of Johnson Hinton. They have Hinton Johnson. They put the date of this very tragic beating of this brother who’s in the Nation, Brother Johnson, in 1959, rather than the year it actually occurred, which was April 1957. So there are simple mistakes in dates, of names, events that clearly show Malcolm did not have access to the final manuscript. He didn’t see it. And it was published nine months after Malcolm’s death. Betty Shabazz was in no shape to check and recheck facts. So all that says to me is you have to read the autobiography very, very carefully, very suspiciously. It’s a wonderful book. It is a great work of literature. But it is a work of literature. It is not an autobiography. It’s a memoir. And it’s gone through the prism of Haley who was a Republican, integrationist, and a defender of U.S. power. You should read the anticommunist articles he wrote for the Reader’s Guide in the mid-fifties on Hungary. This is the man you’re dealing with. So we must be very careful. I learned I had to deconstruct the autobiography to write the biography. If you go to www.malcolmxproject.net, you will see my biography, the architecture of that, and how I had to deconstruct the autobiography. That’s why we put up the Web site.
WHAT DO you suspect is contained in these missing three chapters?
WELL, I’VE seen them for about fifteen minutes. I met with Gregory. I’ve written about this in my book, Living Black History, which came out last year. Living Black History has a whole chapter on this. I couldn’t use it in the autobiography, but I had to tell the story to somebody. I talked with Gregory on the phone. He’s an attorney. He bought it for $100,000. He wanted to make money off of the material. So I phone him up, we talk. He says, “Fly out to Detroit. Meet with me. Come to my law office. There, I’ll show you the chapters.” As honesty suggests, I get to Detroit. He said, “Don’t come to my office. Are you downtown?” I said, “Yes.” He said, “Meet me at this restaurant in an hour.” I go there. He’s about a half hour late. He eventually shows up. And he’s carrying a briefcase. And then he said, “I’ll let you see these for fifteen minutes.” I’ve flown from New York and I have fifteen minutes to read the text. “I’ll let you sit here and read them and I’ll leave and I’ll come back.”
I’m sitting here frantically reading these pages. But it only takes me a few minutes to recognize what they are. They were obviously written sometime between August 1963 to December 1963. There’s a presumption in the text that Malcolm is still in the Nation of Islam. So he hasn’t broken with the Nation yet. What they call for is the construction of an unprecedented Black united front, uniting all Black organizations, led by, get this, the Nation of Islam. So Malcolm is envisioning the Nation actively participating in antiracist struggles and building various types of capacities: economic strategies, housing strategies, health-care strategies with the NAACP, with the Urban League, with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). So he wanted to push this religious kind of semi-Islamic organization into Black civil society in an aggressive way. He wanted to open up the Nation. And, I strongly suspect that Malcolm’s drive and push to reach out to the civil rights community and SNCC and CORE is what got him into trouble inside of the NOI, because the bulk of the NOI had been thoroughly against Malcolm’s proselytization efforts that brought in tens of thousands of new members. The old guard felt threatened by that. Then on top of that, since April 1962, the turning point in Malcolm’s career was the murder of Ronald Stokes in the Nation of Islam’s mosque in Los Angeles. Malcolm flies out to LA and spends over a week there and he calls for a grand coalition, very much like the coalition he talked about in the deleted chapters, with CORE, the NAACP, with SNCC that would be anti-police violence against Black people. And, he was talking about the Nation of Islam participating in that coalition. Elijah Muhammad said “time out,” called Malcolm down and said “you better chill that out and get the hell out of Los Angeles.” Malcolm was deeply embarrassed and humiliated that they had to end the mobilization after they had a member murdered by the LAPD. Other men in the Nation in the mosque were dragged outside, strip-searched naked to humiliate them. And Malcolm had mobilized people and he had to back down.
Malcolm came back to New York and by July 1962 is speaking at a Local 1199 union protest. I have a photo of him speaking at a protest rally in July for the labor union, King’s favorite union, 1199, the largest union today in New York City. In Christmas time in 1962, two members of the Nation, who were selling Muhammad Speaks in Times Square, get arrested by the police. How does Malcolm respond? He puts 140 to 150 Fruit of Islam members—the paramilitary organization, the men in the NOI—demonstrating in Times Square on New Year’s Day. Elijah Muhammad called for no demonstrations, no overt political activity. That’s not what Malcolm’s doing. That’s exactly what he’s doing. And he starts doing that a year and a half before the silencing, before the break.
So you know what happens? The Nation of Islam’s newspaper Muhammad Speaks in late 1962 stops covering Malcolm X. If you go through methodically the last year from December 1962 through December 1963, guess what? You see Malcolm once in his own newspaper. And he’s the national spokesman. You see him more often in the New York Times. And this is like a year before the break. So you can already see where he’s going. It doesn’t take a mind reader to see that Elijah Muhammad only used the “chickens coming home to roost” statement [by Malcolm X, in response to John F. Kennedy’s November 1963 assassination] as an excuse to do what they wanted to do, which was to eliminate Malcolm’s influence, curb his politics. I think that they believed he would submit. Most of Malcolm’s closest followers within the Nation thought he would also submit. They weren’t prepared for a break. Malcolm contemplated a break. I think maybe he wasn’t prepared either. But he did anticipate a possibility of it.
He began, in early 1964, talking with a number of people outside of the Nation of Islam to develop the OAAU, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. When he left the Nation, very few members of the NOI went with him, perhaps maybe 100. The mosque in Harlem had as many as 7,000 members. Only 100–150 left. They became the Muslim Mosque Incorporated (MMI), and Sunni Muslims. But the OAAU was the secular organization with largely working-class and middle-class Blacks and many professionals, writers like Huey and Mayfield, historians like John Henrik Clark. The key organizer was Lynn Shifflet of NBC News, a producer, a young Black woman in her late twenties. There were real tensions between the OAAU and the MMI over ideology and their relationship to Malcolm, because Malcolm increasingly was moving toward the politics of the OAAU, away from the MMI, even though these were people who had put their lives on the line to leave the NOI out of personal loyalty to him. So there were tremendous tensions between these two groups, which I will document in the biography.
SO THE Organization of Afro-American Unity really is the culmination of, or the product of, the development of Malcolm’s thought that was written about by Haley in these last three chapters?
THE CHAPTERS that are missing are written prior to the split. Haley says that Malcolm changed his mind after he went to Mecca and decided to deep-six the chapters. Maybe that’s true. We’ll never know. What is true is that it would be nice to print the things that were deleted, put an addendum and appendix on the autobiography. It would be nice to see it. Well I’m not sure. Don’t hold your breath. I saw it for fifteen minutes. Maybe I’m the lucky one. But eventually they will appear. We will see them.
There has been an active suppression of Malcolm’s work and his intellectual legacy for more than forty years. And the suppression has been deliberate and for various reasons. First, many of the key people in his entourage in the Nation and in the OAAU had to go underground. I just interviewed this week James 67X Shabazz (Abdullah Razzaq) who went underground and lived in Guyana for nineteen years, because he was threatened with murder and also threatened by the FBI. So it’s only now in his mid-seventies that he’s returned to the United States several months a year. He lives in Brooklyn with his son. James 67X was Malcolm’s chief-of-staff and his secretary for many years. The others who were closest to Malcolm are now dead. There is Herman Ferguson who is the best eyewitness to the murder. I’ve interviewed him several times and I’m interviewing him once more next week, which will be fun. His eyewitness to the murder, his recount to me, which has partially been published in my journal Souls, is absolutely stunning and it raises many questions about the assassination.
We have, over the last seven years, worked very hard to develop a forensic accounting of the murder. And, we believe we have figured out how the murder took place. That is, the forensics of it. We think we know how that happened. We don’t know who gave the order. But I can tell you what our theory is. The murder took place on February 21, 1965, as a result of the culmination of three separate groups. There was no classic conspiracy, no direct collusion, but, rather, a convergence. Three things had to happen for the murder to take place, and they all did. Law enforcement, the FBI and the NYPD, and its Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), which was its red squad, actively wanted to do surveillance disruption of Malcolm X and possibly eliminate him; certainly the FBI, because their nightmare was seeing King and Malcolm embrace. That was their nightmare. And they realized much to their horror that they were far better off with Malcolm in the Nation of Islam than outside of it, because then he was being treated like a head of state in Africa. They had never anticipated that he would be a houseguest of a Saudi royal family, or that he would be speaking to parliaments from Kenya to Ghana to French Guinea. Malcolm goes to Alabama, three weeks before he’s murdered and reaches out to Dr. King. King is in prison after leading demonstrations. Malcolm goes to Coretta Scott King and he says, “I want you to convey to your husband my deepest respect for him and that I am not trying to undermine Dr. King’s work. My goal is to be to the left of Dr. King, to challenge institutional racism so that those in power can negotiate with King. That’s my role.” So Malcolm understood what his role was. This was the FBI’s nightmare. And so they actively wanted to curtail his influence, if not silence him permanently.
Then you have the Nation of Islam. But what people need to understand is that there were different points of view in the NOI about Malcolm. Some of the leadership, especially in Chicago, the national secretary John Ali, the national head of the Fruit of Islam Raymond Shareef, Elijah Muhammad’s son-in-law Herbert Muhammad, the sons of Elijah Muhammad, Jr., and several others wanted to silence Malcolm permanently. Joseph X, who was a captain of the Fruit of Islam and the Northeast regional security director at Mosque No. 7, formerly Malcolm’s associate and friend, as was John Ali—they actively sought to eliminate him, to blow him up with bombs, to kill him, or firebomb his home or whatever. But other members of the Nation of Islam were against the murder and it is questionable if Elijah Muhammad ever gave the order. It could have been a situation very much like Henry II and Thomas Becket where somebody’s ridding him of his priest. So he doesn’t have to give the order, but the deed is done. It’s understood what needs to be done. But he doesn’t technically give the order.
Then there’s a third group and that’s Malcolm’s own entourage. There were police informants in the group. Gene Roberts who tries to resuscitate Malcolm after he’s shot is an NYPD police officer. He’s a police officer who walks right directly out of the line of fire only seconds before the fuselage goes off—maybe by accident, maybe by design. What is true is that whenever Malcolm spoke, there were at least two dozen cops. There were only two police officers in the Audubon that day and they were assigned as far away in the distance as possible in the building. They were in the rows, in very small-rows in a ballroom adjacent to the large grand ballroom, but separated by a wall and then a vestibule. It was impossible for them to protect Malcolm. There was one police officer in a small park directly across the street from the entrance of the Audubon. No other police officers. They’d been pulled back to the Columbia Presbyterian Hospital four blocks away. No captain, and the guard is usually sitting in the second floor in a booth where they collect money that directly faces the ballroom. You have to walk right past it to get out of the building. No police in the building. Why?
Malcolm gets shot. The hospital, they try to get the ambulance. They can’t get an ambulance. It’s only four blocks away. So men run to the hospital’s emergency room, grab a gurney, and carry his body in a gurney in the street. Seems odd, doesn’t it? His own men, no one checks for weapons at the door. None of the guards are armed. I’ve gone through New York’s Municipal Archives, the police reports of all the guards that day, of every guard. We’ve gone through all that. We know who they were and their names and the changes of the guards. There were three changes of the guards. One around 2:00, one around 2:30, and one about 2:55. We know that several people who were guarding Malcolm that day were not generally part of the OAAU and were assigned to sensitive positions. Guards like William George, who normally guarded Malcolm on the roster were assigned to be as far away from him as possible that day at the front of the building, not next to Malcolm on the rush. The guards who were there rolled out of the way. And Malcolm was naked and alone on the stage.
There’s only one man who could have placed the guards there that way and that was Malcolm’s head of security, Reuben Francis. Francis is the one who does shoot Hayer, who did indeed shoot Malcolm. But Hayer is interviewed very briefly by the NYPD, he’s arrested briefly. They let him go on bond. Then he disappears off planet Earth. And the FBI said, “We can’t find him. We believe he’s in Mexico.” But prior to his disappearance, he’s not even called to the grand jury, even though he’s the only one who shot anybody who was an assassin.
The NYPD doesn’t even interview Capt. Joseph, the head of the Fruit of Islam, at Mosque No. 7, even though, to a room of over 120 people, he cold orders Malcolm’s death. There are witnesses to this. And the FBI doesn’t interview him? We found a folder that said Joseph X and it was empty. There were six men who killed Malcolm, not three. Two of the men who were incarcerated and given life sentences were innocent, Norman Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson. They were innocent. They were sent to prison for life. Why? They weren’t even physically there. Johnson used to be Malcolm’s chauffeur. He used to stand out in the rain in front of Mosque No. 7 or in the snow, holding and reserving a parking space for Malcolm when he drove up. He used to phone him and tell him that he was coming before he arrived. Once a month, he went to go grocery shopping for Betty, Malcolm’s wife. You would know this guy if he came to kill you. Everybody would’ve known him if he had walked into the Audubon that day. He wasn’t there that day. Butler was an enforcer for Capt. Joseph. He was a notorious thug in the Nation. They would have known if they walked into the Audubon that day. The two men weren’t there that day and yet they were convicted of murdering Malcolm X. Why?
I believe the district attorney was protecting informants within Malcolm’s group and within the NOI. And perhaps some of those informants were collaborators and committed the crime. So they convicted the wrong people to cover and protect the anonymity of their own agents. That’s a theory. I can’t prove it, but I think we ought to explore it and we should reopen this case. And, hopefully my book will help reopen it. William Kunstler tried to reopen it back in 1977–78 and he failed because he didn’t have the evidence I have. Hopefully, we can reopen it again.
THE DOMINANT understanding of Malcolm’s life and meaning in mainstream American popular culture really comes from two sources: Haley and Spike Lee’s film. Spike Lee’s interpretation of the assassination shows a Malcolm, who seems to be prepared for his own martyrdom and orders his guards not to be armed on that day, in a way that King with his mountaintop speech also appears to be prepared for what he seems to think is his inevitable fate. Is that a damaging interpretation?
NO, IT’S not and it may be true. Malcolm clearly knew he was going to die. He didn’t know when and I strongly suspect that Malcolm was not going to run away from death and he had the courage to face death. Not that he wanted to die, he didn’t have a death wish. But he had the courage to face death. There is a story, a very influential legend within Shia Islam, about Ali and his grandson Husayn, both of whom perished in a kind of murder in the cathedral, in the case of Ali in the mosque, and in his grandson’s case at Karbala where he was killed in, I believe, 682 in common era. About four years later, women came to Karbala, in today’s Iraq, and began to beat themselves and lament that they had not protected the grandson of Ali. In Shia, Ali is the Shia that we have today. They still gather every year at Karbala. Now hundreds of thousands and maybe a million people lament the events of Karbala. There is nothing greater in Shia Islam than martyrdom, the embrace of death for a higher belief. And to some extent, I think that Malcolm embodied that at that moment. Not that he sought death, but that he did not fear it. That he saw in his martyrdom a way to transcend death that there would be a life after death. I’m sure he was familiar with the legend. Who knows? Perhaps that influenced his actions.
WHAT WILL your biography broadly do to assert a new Malcolm X, itself a reinvention of Malcolm X, as your book is titled, because he reinvented himself many times? What will it do to displace Haley and Spike Lee as the dominant understanding of Malcolm X’s life and meaning?
THERE ARE three core things in the book. The first is what I call a kind of a life of reinvention. Malcolm’s tale is a hero’s tale that’s not unlike Odysseus—a story of travel, of learning, of experience, of ordeals and tests, a classic kind of hero story. It’s a classic Greek story, which frequently or usually ends in death. But at the end, there’s a broader, richer, deeper, critical consciousness that’s achieved. The thing about that story is that Malcolm’s growth comes through a series of artful creative reinventions. He reinvents himself even to the point these reinventions have different names. He was “Jack Carlton” in the summer of 1944. When he was nineteen years old, he wanted to break into show biz and he was at Lobster Pond bar on Forty-Second Street in Midtown Manhattan working as a drummer and professional dancer for about three or four months. He doesn’t write about that in the autobiography. You just have to find out about that. He worked in a bar and grill in Harlem, Jimmy’s Chicken Shack, alongside of the funniest dishwasher and server in Harlem, a guy who had red hair. Malcolm had red hair. So they called Malcolm “Detroit Red” cause nobody had ever heard of Lansing, Michigan, and they called the brother from Chicago “Chicago Red.” His last name was Sanford. We know him today better as Red Foxx, the comedian. So Malcolm and Red Foxx worked in the same restaurant in 1943 and early 1944. He does mention something of this in the autobiography. Malcolm in prison called himself at times Malachi Shabazz. He was Malcolm X. He was El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. He had many, many different names: “Detroit Red,” “Homeboy,” “Mascot,” “Satan” when he was in prison. Yet, through these transformations, he was able to navigate brilliantly a life of reinvention.
What makes Malcolm different from every signature Black figure in American history is that he combines the two central characters of Black folk culture. He is both the trickster and the minister. He’s both. That’s “Detroit Red”—the hustler, the gambler, the outlaw. And, he is also the minister who saves souls, who redeems lives, who heals the sick, who raises the dead. He’s both. King is one. Jesse Jackson is one. Malcolm’s both and he understood the streets and the lumpen proletariat. I hate that phrase, but it comes from Marx. As well as, he saw himself as a minister and an Amun, a cleric. He was always this. And he embodied the cultural spirit of Black folk better than anyone else. When I asked one student about a decade ago, “What was the fundamental difference between Malcolm and Martin?” He said, “Dr. Marable, that’s easy. Martin Luther King, Jr., belongs to the entire world. Malcolm X belongs to us.” There is a tremendous degree of identification on the part of people of African descent, and globally on the part of Muslims, invested in the figure of Malcolm. The very first postage stamp honoring Malcolm X was issued not by the United States but by the Ayatollah Khomeini government of Iran, in 1982, by the Shia Muslims. Perhaps they knew something that everybody else didn’t know.
The second theme in the book is a spiritual journey and Malcolm’s growth in a spiritual sojourn from the periphery of Islam represented by the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam. There was a price in the journey because he also had to embrace Nasser’s definition of what Islam was in the Pan Arab world. So we have some excellent very interesting articles and speeches Malcolm gave in Cairo. The writings that he did, very critical of the state of Israel in the summer and September 1964, cast Malcolm in a very interesting kind of light as it relates to the Arab struggle and the Palestinian struggle, that heretofore, in the United States, we have rarely seen.
The third theme is betrayal. Malcolm had a capacity ethnographically to read an audience better than any public speaker of his generation. He knew people. He could walk into an audience, read it and give a brilliant address. He could debate at Harvard and Oxford, as well as on 125th Street and Lenox Avenue/Seventh Avenue. He was just a remarkable public speaker. But where his failure came was his consistent inability to make critical accurate judgments of the people closest to him who would betray him. And those included his two brothers Philbert and Wilfred Little who sided with Elijah Muhammad against Malcolm; his chief protégé Louis X/Louis Farrakhan who proclaimed Malcolm to be a man worthy of death, who led the jackal’s course leading to his murder. How do we explain Farrakhan? I sat down with Louis for nine hours in an interview a year and a half ago. We had a fascinating conversation about it. The question I ruminate over is, how much of it is true? Then we have Joseph X, the leader of the Fruit of Islam at Mosque No. 7, who Malcolm had promoted, pulled out of the gutter in Detroit in 1952–53, raised him up to be his chief right-hand person, who then would be betray and try to murder him. John Ali, who had been Malcolm’s secretary at Mosque No. 7, who he promoted to the national leadership, who then conspired to murder him. A variety of people. His closest personal friend Charles Kenyatta had been turned out by the police and was probably a police agent, Malcolm’s best friend, which I’ve only just discovered last week because I just got the file. We have some interesting info. So I think between this data and the other things, a big chunk of the book is about the forensic discussion of the murder and our theory of the murder. I think people will have more than enough information.
LET’S BRING this full circle. We’re now sitting in your office in 2007 in Bloom?berg’s New York. We’ve gone through a period of social cleansing that was Giuliani’s New York, characterized by police brutality, intense gentrification, privatization of public housing. And I was today at Friday Juma at the Malcolm Shabazz Mosque in Harlem and the message today was one about homosexuality, as an abnormal and immoral practice. The other message was about self-help and the idea of the community needing to raise itself up and take care of its own problems. What does the Malcolm X of your book say to this current political economic conjuncture?
WELL, AN honest representation of Malcolm should show the whole person and his trajectory and his evolution. The trajectory of Malcolm was increasingly anti-corporate capitalist. He talked about the need not to appeal to the United States to redress grievances, but to take the criminal to court, that is, the court of world opinion at the United Nations. He called for what is today known as a South-South dialogue, that is, between the Caribbean, Blacks in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia that would span across continents that would be in part Arab and Muslim, and part Black and Brown. And, he envisioned a global kind of jihad of worlds against Western imperialism and a need for people who had experienced colonialism to take back the power through international bodies that built broad-based unity transnationally. That was what Malcolm’s politics were. It was not bootstrap capitalism, nor was it gentrification. Nevertheless, once you’re dead, your image is up for grabs. By 1972, Richard Nixon had invited, and Betty Shabazz had agreed to be on the dais of the re-elect Richard M. Nixon for president dinner party in Washington, D.C. This was only six or seven years after Malcolm X’s assassination. So once you’re murdered, you can’t control what people who had some sort of relationship to you—whether they’re married to you, or they’re political affiliates or associates—what choices they make. Sad but true. It is particularly sad that from the masjid or mosque, one hears a kind of message that’s more appropriate to Booker T. Washington than Malcolm X. But, nevertheless, the struggle continues.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Website- A List Of Solidartiy Actions For April 9th and 10th 2011- Free Bradley Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to a Private Bradley Manning website entry for the solidarity activities scheduled for the weekend of April 9-10, 2011.
Markin comment:
Free Bradley Manning Now!
Markin comment:
Free Bradley Manning Now!
Thursday, April 07, 2011
From The Free Jaan Laaman Blog- The April Actions
From The Free Jaan Laaman Blog- The April Actions
Markin comment:
Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning Now!
Markin comment:
Free Jaan Laaman and Tom Manning Now!
From The Renegade Eye Blog-The nature of the Gaddafi regime – historical background notes
The nature of the Gaddafi regime – historical background notes
Written by Fred Weston
Wednesday, 06 April 2011
We provide a brief historical outline of the development of the Gaddafi regime from the bourgeois Arab nationalism of the early days, to the period of so-called Islamic socialism, to the recent period of opening up to foreign investment, with major concessions to multinational corporations and the beginnings of widespread privatisations.
Gaddafi came to power in a young officers ´coup in 1969, which was clearly influenced by the panarabism of Nasser’s Egypt. Under the previous rule of King Idris, Libya had been totally under the thumb of imperialism. He became associated with the Free Officers' movement, a group of junior officers in the Libyan Army who had a deep sense of anger and shame at seeing the Arab armies defeated in the 1967 war with Israel. Gaddafi's aim was to modernise Libya and develop the economy. However, as he attempted to do this on a capitalist basis he came into conflict with the interests of the imperialists, for example taking over the property of former Italian colonisers or, as in 1971, nationalising the assets of British Petroleum. In the process he also expelled US bases from Libya.
Retaliatory measures by the British government contributed to pushing Gaddafi to seek economic help from the Soviet Union. This came in 1972 when the Soviet Union signed a deal with Libya to help develop its oil industry.
During the same period, however, Gaddafi was very clear in expressing his anti-Communism. In 1971, he sent a plane full of Sudanese Communists back to Sudan where they were executed by Nimeiry. In 1973 the regime published an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gaddafi’s rise to power, under the title “Holy War Against Communism” in which we read that, “the biggest threat facing man nowadays is the communist theory.”
The Nixon administration, in spite of Gaddafi having expelled US bases, saw him as a beneficial influence in the Arab world, precisely because of his anti-communism. This was expressed also on the international arena. Initially Gaddafi was not pleased at Egypt’s close relationship with the Soviet Union. In the Yemen he was for unification of the North and South, but on the basis that the South should abandon its pro-Moscow stance. He supported Pakistan against India in the 1971 war on the basis that India was aligned with the Soviet Union.
What produced a radical change in Gaddafi’s stance was the worldwide recession of 1974. This had deep repercussions within Libya, leading to growing social unrest. This in turn produced divisions within the regime, with some sections reflecting the interests of the weak capitalist elements within Libyan society, while Gaddafi himself proceeded to move against these elements.
The inability of the nascent Libyan bourgeois to develop the economy, led Gaddafi to shift from his earlier policy of attempting to develop indigenous Libyan capitalism to what was to become an economy dominated by state owned enterprises.
Some of the army officers involved in the initial 1969 coup against the monarchy that brought Gaddafi to power broke with him on this specific question and organised an attempted coup in 1975 to try and stop his programme of nationalisations.
Some of these are now playing a role in trying to overthrow Gaddafi today, such as Omar Mokhtar El-Hariri the newly appointed Minister of Military Affairs in the present Interim Government of the opposition.
Gaddafi successfully crushed the 1975 coup and proceeded subsequently with his programme. He ended up by taking over most of the economy and leaning towards the Soviet Union. By 1979 the private sector had been almost completely eliminated.
Gaddafi's Green BookTo provide some kind of ideological backing to what he was doing, he wrote the first part of his famous Green Book in 1975 and in 1977 he changed the official name of the country to the “Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”, Jamahiriya meaning the “state of the masses”. In his book he presents his version of “socialism”, an Islamic version that rather than viewing the class struggle as the key to moving society forward, sees the class struggle as a dangerous deviation. In effect his book was simply a cover for a regime that allowed no freedom of organisation or strike for the workers, but claimed to be building some kind of socialism, which of course it was not.
It was in this period that some groups on the left became open cheer-leaders for Gaddafi, uncritically supporting his regime. This ignored some not unimportant details. For example, in 1969 Gaddafi had banned independent trade unions and strikes were completely banned a few years later. Once real labour organisations had been banned, state-controlled “unions” were set up. What was thus created was a totalitarian regime, under the tight control of Gaddafi himself.
In spite of this brutal dictatorship, a combination of large oil reserves, and thus income, and a large public sector, allowed for the development of an extensive welfare state. In this we have to understand that Gaddafi was able to build a significant base of support for himself among the population. Some of that support has survived to this day as we can see in Tripoli and other areas of the country.
A layer of the population, particularly among the older generation, will remember what it was like under King Idris and will also recall how Libya developed subsequently under Gaddafi.
F-14 preparing for mission in 1986. Photo: PHAN David Casper, USNSince then, however, many important changes have taken place on a world scale that deeply affected Libya. A key element was the fall of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites that ushered in the return to capitalism in all these countries. These events had a major impact on the direction taken by China towards capitalism. How could a small country like Libya escape such a process?
It is in fact in 1993 that we see the first tentative steps of the regime to begin a process of “economic liberalisation” or “infitah” as it was known. Decree No.491 in 1993 allowed for the liberalization of the wholesale trade. This was followed later that year and in 1994 with legal guarantees to cover foreign capital investment as well as the convertibility of the Libyan Dinar.
However, it is also true to say that although the intention was there, in practice this led to very little movement in the direction of full-fledged privatisation. The main beneficiaries of the nationalised economy, the middle and senior managers, the officer caste, the technocrats who ran the oil industry as well as the state bureaucrats, had little interest in changing the status quo.
The relative independence that Libya enjoyed while the Soviet Union existed determined the conflict with imperialism that put Libya in the position of being classed as a “rogue state” together with other regimes such as that of the Ayatollahs in Iran or of Serbia under Milosevic. In 1986, Reagan ordered a bombing raid against Libya with the declared aim of killing Gaddafi. He survived, but the raid caused some 60 victims. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland also helped to provide the excuse for the sanctions that were imposed on the country. This, together with falling oil prices in the nineties and into the early 2000s, caused significant economic pain to the country. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by imperialism, leading to the death of Saddam Hussein and the overthrow of his regime served also as strong pressure towards abandoning any pretence of an anti-imperialist stance. The excuse for the invasion of Iraq had been the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction, something imperialist powers were also accusing Libya of. The combination of all these factors is what determined a radical shift in policy.
In June 2003 Shukri Ghanem, considered a “reformist”, i.e. a free marketer in favour of privatisations, was appointed as Prime Minister. In the same year Decision No.31 put forward the proposal for 360 state owned enterprises to be privatised over a period from January 2004 to December 2008. By the end of 2004, 41 enterprises had already been privatised. This was slower than expected, but the process had clearly begun. As part of this process in January 2007 the Libyan government announced plans to lay off 400,000 public sector workers, more than one-third of the overall government workforce.
In December 2003, Libya renounced its programme to develop “weapons of mass destruction”. This was just after the US had invaded Iraq. Gaddafi’s shift allowed Bush to present his policy in Iraq as one that was paying off, as a former “rogue regime” such as the Libyan was now being brought back into the fold. UN sanctions were thus lifted in 2003 and a year later the US lifted most of its sanctions also. Diplomatic relations were re-established in 2006.
As a result of all this Libya started attracting a lot of foreign direct investment, mainly in the energy sector, but also in civil engineering. Many contracts were signed giving concessions to western oil and gas companies, such as Italy’s AGIP, British Petroleum, Shell, Spain’s Repsol, France’s Total and GFD Suez, as well as US companies such as Conoco Phillips, Hess, and Occidental, Exxon and Chevron, as well as Canadian, Norwegian and other companies.
In this period the Gaddafi regime moved closer and closer to the imperialists. The press of recent years is full of stories about western businesspeople and politicians visiting Libya and making lucrative deals. An example is an article, “The Opening Of Libya”, that appeared in Business Week on March 12, 2007:
“Much of the progress [in opening up the Libyan economy] is due to an unusual partnership with Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness guru Michael E. Porter, who is advising the Libyans through Boston consultancy Monitor Group. For the past two years, more than a dozen Monitor consultants have been working in Libya, studying the economy and running a three-month leadership program intended to create a new pro-business elite (..)
“Porter was persuaded to take the job by Qaddafi's son, Saif al Islam. The former London School of Economics graduate student is a lean man who favors expensive European suits and Western-style economic reform. Since first meeting Saif at several dinners in London, Porter has traveled to Libya three times and met top government officials, including the elder Qaddafi.”
Saif al Islam, one of Gaddafi’s sons, is renowned for being in favour of “liberalising” the economy, and has been pushing for more and more “liberal” economic policies, i.e. greater privatisation! But as Business Week quoted, Saif explained that, "We need to change from a state economy to an open economy, but without it being out of control."
What Saif meant with these words was an opening up of Libya’s economy, with privatisation of state owned enterprises, but making sure that the Gaddafi family and its entourage gets the lion’s share of these enterprises in collaboration with western multinational corporations... and without renouncing the dictatorial powers of the regime itself.
Since Libya was taken off the list of “rogue states”, a whole swathe of western politicians have been to Libya, shaking hands and embracing Gaddafi... and signing excellent deals for their respective national companies.
In 2008 Berlusconi signed a deal to pay Libya US$5 billion in compensation for Italy’s colonisation of Libya in the past. Part of the deal also involved Libya policing the Mediterranean coast to stop African immigrants getting to Italy. The fact that Gaddafi used brutal means to achieve this seemed to be of no concern to western governments at the time.
This was followed by an official visit from the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice the same year, the first such visit since 1953. But it was Tony Blair who started the process when he visited Gaddafi back in 2004, establishing a “new relationship”... and bringing home some very lucrative oil contracts for Shell!
Thus we see how the aura of “anti-imperialism” that Gaddafi may have had in the past evaporated in the past decade. He has been collaborating fully with imperialism, de facto returning to the Gaddafi of the early 1970s. His regime has been based on making deals with imperialism and even helping them directly as the case of Italy demonstrates.
He was also helping them in their so-called “war on terror”, passing information to both the CIA and MI6 on suspected Islamic fundamentalists from Libya. A leaked cable from the US embassy in Tripoli from August 2009, described how “Libya has acted as a critical ally in US counter-terrorism efforts, and is considered one of our primary partners in combating the flow of foreign fighters”. The cable emphasised that the US-Libya “strategic partnership in this field has been highly... beneficial to both nations”. It is therefore clear that Gaddafi is not an anti-imperialist. He had become a useful collaborator of the imperialists in the recent period.
All this also explains his surprise at being attacked by NATO forces in the recent period. He felt he had done everything that he needed to do to avoid ending up like Saddam Hussein. However, because of his past, Gaddafi was never fully trusted; he was a bit of a wild card. He was collaborating yes, fully and willingly, but when the imperialist powers saw a chance of replacing him with someone even more subservient they did not hesitate in seizing the opportunity.
Written by Fred Weston
Wednesday, 06 April 2011
We provide a brief historical outline of the development of the Gaddafi regime from the bourgeois Arab nationalism of the early days, to the period of so-called Islamic socialism, to the recent period of opening up to foreign investment, with major concessions to multinational corporations and the beginnings of widespread privatisations.
Gaddafi came to power in a young officers ´coup in 1969, which was clearly influenced by the panarabism of Nasser’s Egypt. Under the previous rule of King Idris, Libya had been totally under the thumb of imperialism. He became associated with the Free Officers' movement, a group of junior officers in the Libyan Army who had a deep sense of anger and shame at seeing the Arab armies defeated in the 1967 war with Israel. Gaddafi's aim was to modernise Libya and develop the economy. However, as he attempted to do this on a capitalist basis he came into conflict with the interests of the imperialists, for example taking over the property of former Italian colonisers or, as in 1971, nationalising the assets of British Petroleum. In the process he also expelled US bases from Libya.
Retaliatory measures by the British government contributed to pushing Gaddafi to seek economic help from the Soviet Union. This came in 1972 when the Soviet Union signed a deal with Libya to help develop its oil industry.
During the same period, however, Gaddafi was very clear in expressing his anti-Communism. In 1971, he sent a plane full of Sudanese Communists back to Sudan where they were executed by Nimeiry. In 1973 the regime published an official document to commemorate the fourth anniversary of Gaddafi’s rise to power, under the title “Holy War Against Communism” in which we read that, “the biggest threat facing man nowadays is the communist theory.”
The Nixon administration, in spite of Gaddafi having expelled US bases, saw him as a beneficial influence in the Arab world, precisely because of his anti-communism. This was expressed also on the international arena. Initially Gaddafi was not pleased at Egypt’s close relationship with the Soviet Union. In the Yemen he was for unification of the North and South, but on the basis that the South should abandon its pro-Moscow stance. He supported Pakistan against India in the 1971 war on the basis that India was aligned with the Soviet Union.
What produced a radical change in Gaddafi’s stance was the worldwide recession of 1974. This had deep repercussions within Libya, leading to growing social unrest. This in turn produced divisions within the regime, with some sections reflecting the interests of the weak capitalist elements within Libyan society, while Gaddafi himself proceeded to move against these elements.
The inability of the nascent Libyan bourgeois to develop the economy, led Gaddafi to shift from his earlier policy of attempting to develop indigenous Libyan capitalism to what was to become an economy dominated by state owned enterprises.
Some of the army officers involved in the initial 1969 coup against the monarchy that brought Gaddafi to power broke with him on this specific question and organised an attempted coup in 1975 to try and stop his programme of nationalisations.
Some of these are now playing a role in trying to overthrow Gaddafi today, such as Omar Mokhtar El-Hariri the newly appointed Minister of Military Affairs in the present Interim Government of the opposition.
Gaddafi successfully crushed the 1975 coup and proceeded subsequently with his programme. He ended up by taking over most of the economy and leaning towards the Soviet Union. By 1979 the private sector had been almost completely eliminated.
Gaddafi's Green BookTo provide some kind of ideological backing to what he was doing, he wrote the first part of his famous Green Book in 1975 and in 1977 he changed the official name of the country to the “Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya”, Jamahiriya meaning the “state of the masses”. In his book he presents his version of “socialism”, an Islamic version that rather than viewing the class struggle as the key to moving society forward, sees the class struggle as a dangerous deviation. In effect his book was simply a cover for a regime that allowed no freedom of organisation or strike for the workers, but claimed to be building some kind of socialism, which of course it was not.
It was in this period that some groups on the left became open cheer-leaders for Gaddafi, uncritically supporting his regime. This ignored some not unimportant details. For example, in 1969 Gaddafi had banned independent trade unions and strikes were completely banned a few years later. Once real labour organisations had been banned, state-controlled “unions” were set up. What was thus created was a totalitarian regime, under the tight control of Gaddafi himself.
In spite of this brutal dictatorship, a combination of large oil reserves, and thus income, and a large public sector, allowed for the development of an extensive welfare state. In this we have to understand that Gaddafi was able to build a significant base of support for himself among the population. Some of that support has survived to this day as we can see in Tripoli and other areas of the country.
A layer of the population, particularly among the older generation, will remember what it was like under King Idris and will also recall how Libya developed subsequently under Gaddafi.
F-14 preparing for mission in 1986. Photo: PHAN David Casper, USNSince then, however, many important changes have taken place on a world scale that deeply affected Libya. A key element was the fall of the Soviet Union and its East European satellites that ushered in the return to capitalism in all these countries. These events had a major impact on the direction taken by China towards capitalism. How could a small country like Libya escape such a process?
It is in fact in 1993 that we see the first tentative steps of the regime to begin a process of “economic liberalisation” or “infitah” as it was known. Decree No.491 in 1993 allowed for the liberalization of the wholesale trade. This was followed later that year and in 1994 with legal guarantees to cover foreign capital investment as well as the convertibility of the Libyan Dinar.
However, it is also true to say that although the intention was there, in practice this led to very little movement in the direction of full-fledged privatisation. The main beneficiaries of the nationalised economy, the middle and senior managers, the officer caste, the technocrats who ran the oil industry as well as the state bureaucrats, had little interest in changing the status quo.
The relative independence that Libya enjoyed while the Soviet Union existed determined the conflict with imperialism that put Libya in the position of being classed as a “rogue state” together with other regimes such as that of the Ayatollahs in Iran or of Serbia under Milosevic. In 1986, Reagan ordered a bombing raid against Libya with the declared aim of killing Gaddafi. He survived, but the raid caused some 60 victims. The 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Scotland also helped to provide the excuse for the sanctions that were imposed on the country. This, together with falling oil prices in the nineties and into the early 2000s, caused significant economic pain to the country. The 2003 invasion of Iraq by imperialism, leading to the death of Saddam Hussein and the overthrow of his regime served also as strong pressure towards abandoning any pretence of an anti-imperialist stance. The excuse for the invasion of Iraq had been the alleged presence of weapons of mass destruction, something imperialist powers were also accusing Libya of. The combination of all these factors is what determined a radical shift in policy.
In June 2003 Shukri Ghanem, considered a “reformist”, i.e. a free marketer in favour of privatisations, was appointed as Prime Minister. In the same year Decision No.31 put forward the proposal for 360 state owned enterprises to be privatised over a period from January 2004 to December 2008. By the end of 2004, 41 enterprises had already been privatised. This was slower than expected, but the process had clearly begun. As part of this process in January 2007 the Libyan government announced plans to lay off 400,000 public sector workers, more than one-third of the overall government workforce.
In December 2003, Libya renounced its programme to develop “weapons of mass destruction”. This was just after the US had invaded Iraq. Gaddafi’s shift allowed Bush to present his policy in Iraq as one that was paying off, as a former “rogue regime” such as the Libyan was now being brought back into the fold. UN sanctions were thus lifted in 2003 and a year later the US lifted most of its sanctions also. Diplomatic relations were re-established in 2006.
As a result of all this Libya started attracting a lot of foreign direct investment, mainly in the energy sector, but also in civil engineering. Many contracts were signed giving concessions to western oil and gas companies, such as Italy’s AGIP, British Petroleum, Shell, Spain’s Repsol, France’s Total and GFD Suez, as well as US companies such as Conoco Phillips, Hess, and Occidental, Exxon and Chevron, as well as Canadian, Norwegian and other companies.
In this period the Gaddafi regime moved closer and closer to the imperialists. The press of recent years is full of stories about western businesspeople and politicians visiting Libya and making lucrative deals. An example is an article, “The Opening Of Libya”, that appeared in Business Week on March 12, 2007:
“Much of the progress [in opening up the Libyan economy] is due to an unusual partnership with Harvard Business School professor and competitiveness guru Michael E. Porter, who is advising the Libyans through Boston consultancy Monitor Group. For the past two years, more than a dozen Monitor consultants have been working in Libya, studying the economy and running a three-month leadership program intended to create a new pro-business elite (..)
“Porter was persuaded to take the job by Qaddafi's son, Saif al Islam. The former London School of Economics graduate student is a lean man who favors expensive European suits and Western-style economic reform. Since first meeting Saif at several dinners in London, Porter has traveled to Libya three times and met top government officials, including the elder Qaddafi.”
Saif al Islam, one of Gaddafi’s sons, is renowned for being in favour of “liberalising” the economy, and has been pushing for more and more “liberal” economic policies, i.e. greater privatisation! But as Business Week quoted, Saif explained that, "We need to change from a state economy to an open economy, but without it being out of control."
What Saif meant with these words was an opening up of Libya’s economy, with privatisation of state owned enterprises, but making sure that the Gaddafi family and its entourage gets the lion’s share of these enterprises in collaboration with western multinational corporations... and without renouncing the dictatorial powers of the regime itself.
Since Libya was taken off the list of “rogue states”, a whole swathe of western politicians have been to Libya, shaking hands and embracing Gaddafi... and signing excellent deals for their respective national companies.
In 2008 Berlusconi signed a deal to pay Libya US$5 billion in compensation for Italy’s colonisation of Libya in the past. Part of the deal also involved Libya policing the Mediterranean coast to stop African immigrants getting to Italy. The fact that Gaddafi used brutal means to achieve this seemed to be of no concern to western governments at the time.
This was followed by an official visit from the then US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice the same year, the first such visit since 1953. But it was Tony Blair who started the process when he visited Gaddafi back in 2004, establishing a “new relationship”... and bringing home some very lucrative oil contracts for Shell!
Thus we see how the aura of “anti-imperialism” that Gaddafi may have had in the past evaporated in the past decade. He has been collaborating fully with imperialism, de facto returning to the Gaddafi of the early 1970s. His regime has been based on making deals with imperialism and even helping them directly as the case of Italy demonstrates.
He was also helping them in their so-called “war on terror”, passing information to both the CIA and MI6 on suspected Islamic fundamentalists from Libya. A leaked cable from the US embassy in Tripoli from August 2009, described how “Libya has acted as a critical ally in US counter-terrorism efforts, and is considered one of our primary partners in combating the flow of foreign fighters”. The cable emphasised that the US-Libya “strategic partnership in this field has been highly... beneficial to both nations”. It is therefore clear that Gaddafi is not an anti-imperialist. He had become a useful collaborator of the imperialists in the recent period.
All this also explains his surprise at being attacked by NATO forces in the recent period. He felt he had done everything that he needed to do to avoid ending up like Saddam Hussein. However, because of his past, Gaddafi was never fully trusted; he was a bit of a wild card. He was collaborating yes, fully and willingly, but when the imperialist powers saw a chance of replacing him with someone even more subservient they did not hesitate in seizing the opportunity.
Libya and the dilemma of humanitarian military interventions-By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
Libya and the dilemma of
humanitarian military interventions
By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
The debate over U.S. efforts to work with NATO in what has been described as an essentially humanitarian effort to prevent Moammar Gadhafi from killing more Libyans underscores problems with U.S. foreign policy. It’s true, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pointed out, that “we don’t have an exit plan, that (Obama) hasn’t articulated a grand strategy, that our objectives are fuzzy, that Islamists could gain strength.”
Some will argue that we don’t have a consistent foreign policy. After all, we refused to intervene in the slaughter in Darfur, the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. We did intervene in Kosovo 12 years ago and the outcome seemed to serve humanitarian goals, though our involvement was slow in coming. Ronald Reagan sent troops to Grenada on a mostly foolish humanitarian mission (with ridiculous cold war aspects), and George H. W. Bush prevented Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Kuwait a few years later.
What distinguished these interventions from those we passed on is that they were of limited scope and duration. Militarily, their goals and objectives were possible, and relatively easy to obtain. Sending American troops to Rwanda or the Ivory Coast would bog us down in a military situation that would likely result in as great a loss of life as we would have sought to prevent. Worse still, the involvement would likely not end for decades, as has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So Obama’s calculation seems to be that we will intervene if we have lots of help from other countries and alliances, if the possibility of a short-duration intervention is realistic, and if the chances of success appear great. No matter how compelling the suffering in other locales, we will not commit military might if these criteria are not met.
I don’t like the policy and I don’t like the alternatives. But the world is not an orderly place, where all problems are solvable. Sometimes there are nonmilitary steps that can be taken in various trouble spots around the globe if we have the will, which we do not have, for instance, in the case of preventing Israel from taking more land from Palestinians, which continues unabated by humanitarian concerns.
University of Colorado-Boulder law professor Paul Campos offered this analysis of the Libyan military campaign:
Perhaps it's desirable, or even morally imperative, for Western nations in general, and America in particular, to enter another civil war in the Middle East. But the framers of the Constitution had very good reasons for making it difficult for America to go to war. They knew that even wars that begin with the best of intentions often end up being driven by the worst ones.
They also knew that while war is almost never in the interest of a nation's people, it is often in the interest of a nation's rulers, who reap the political and economic benefits of war while bearing little or none of its costs. That's why they designed a system of barriers to action -- which is, after all, what the rule of law is supposed to be -- before politicians could send others off to kill and be killed in the name of the noble national goal of the moment.
While I take the constitutional requirements discussed by Professor Campos seriously and believe that the Congress should have a vigorous debate before the U.S. ever embarks on making war for whatever reasons, no matter how good those reasons seem to the executive or to me, I realize that the Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority with respect to war-making.
Since World War II, the Congress has not ever declared war, yet the U.S. has embarked on military campaigns in over 70 countries by executive fiat. Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress has the sole power "to declare war [and] grant letters of marque and reprisal." And Article II, Section 2, provides that "The president shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."
While it seems clear, from the history of the Constitutional Convention and the views of most of the drafters of the Constitution, that they intended for Congress alone to declare war, presidents nevertheless often act unilaterally, or after some minimal consultations or discussions with members of Congress.
These arguably competing provisions in Article I and Article II have created a constitutional conundrum that will always be used by presidents to engage in war unless we find a way to reconcile the two positions.
After tiring of war by Executive fiat, in 1973 Congress passed the War Powers Act in response to the prosecution of the Vietnam War by both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, a war that had proceeded without a congressional declaration for at least eight years with devastating consequences for both American soldiers and Vietnam fighters and civilians.
Under the War Powers Act, the president is supposed to obtain congressional approval of military action within 90 days after introducing troops into hostilities. Presidents have generally ignored the War Powers Act, using Article II, Section 2 as their constitutionally-mandated authority to send troops into combat. While a few Congressional voices have been raised periodically against such Constitutional abuses by the Executive, Congress as a whole has failed to resolve this Constitutional dilemma.
But candidate Barack Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2007, said, “the president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Apparently, he has changed his mind.
The author William Blum identifies the following purposes used by presidents to take military actions. They do not include humanitarian concerns:
making the world safe for American corporations to do business;
enhancing the financial status of U.S. defense contractors who have contributed generously to members of congress;
preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the American capitalist model;
extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power" -- a sort of exceptionalist argument that gives the U.S. license to do as it pleases.
While I believe that there is a humanitarian impulse that guides some U.S. foreign policy, I always look for other reasons, as well. Usually, I find another rationale from Blum’s list that is in play when we use our military might anywhere in the world.
In the case of Libya, Sen. Bernie Sanders has revealed in the last few days that Gadhafi’s Central Bank of Libya owns a 59% stake in the Arab Banking Corporation (ABC), which is based in Bahrain and has two branches in New York City. The ABC received at least 45 emergency, low-interest loans (0.25%) from the Federal Reserve between December, 2007 and March, 2010.
The U.S. Treasury Department has exempted the ABC from economic sanctions that have been applied to Gadhafi’s regime. Such contradictory relations with Libya make Obama’s military actions even more perplexing and suggest that Blum’s fourth reason for war may be in play.
The more we understand about our relations with Libya and other countries, the more difficult it is to accept Obama’s humanitarian rationale. As syndicated columnist David Sirota has pointed out, U.S. foreign policy had mostly ignored the humanitarian crises in Egypt before the recent fall of Mubarak, a dictator that we warmly supported financially and militarily for over 30 years.
We consider the totalitarian Saudi royal family a friend and ally, and our government continues to praise Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, as a reformer even as he slaughters his own people. Sirota sees the Libya war-making as related to oil, defense contracts, and the “Pentagon’s brand-new Africa Command establishing its first foothold on the resource-rich continent, ... but it is not primarily about saving lives.”
Given these contradictions and the seemingly unassailable facts of U.S. interventions for nearly 65 years and the inability of the Congress to assert itself to limit the Executive’s war-making powers, the most palatable policy to me is one that involves cooperative international efforts to protect the helpless from slaughter or death.
Building and strengthening these international cooperative humanitarian efforts needs more attention and, if done properly, at least will not subject the U.S. to hatred and retribution for imposing our will in the pursuit of our own geopolitical objectives.
While I am not sanguine about what we are doing in Libya, it is a far less destructive policy than were the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is faint praise, but until Congress begins to care more about foreign affairs than it does about its domestic agenda, we cannot expect fealty to Constitutional principles.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]
humanitarian military interventions
By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
The debate over U.S. efforts to work with NATO in what has been described as an essentially humanitarian effort to prevent Moammar Gadhafi from killing more Libyans underscores problems with U.S. foreign policy. It’s true, as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has pointed out, that “we don’t have an exit plan, that (Obama) hasn’t articulated a grand strategy, that our objectives are fuzzy, that Islamists could gain strength.”
Some will argue that we don’t have a consistent foreign policy. After all, we refused to intervene in the slaughter in Darfur, the Ivory Coast, Rwanda, Yemen, Syria, and Bahrain. We did intervene in Kosovo 12 years ago and the outcome seemed to serve humanitarian goals, though our involvement was slow in coming. Ronald Reagan sent troops to Grenada on a mostly foolish humanitarian mission (with ridiculous cold war aspects), and George H. W. Bush prevented Saddam Hussein’s takeover of Kuwait a few years later.
What distinguished these interventions from those we passed on is that they were of limited scope and duration. Militarily, their goals and objectives were possible, and relatively easy to obtain. Sending American troops to Rwanda or the Ivory Coast would bog us down in a military situation that would likely result in as great a loss of life as we would have sought to prevent. Worse still, the involvement would likely not end for decades, as has happened in Afghanistan and Iraq.
So Obama’s calculation seems to be that we will intervene if we have lots of help from other countries and alliances, if the possibility of a short-duration intervention is realistic, and if the chances of success appear great. No matter how compelling the suffering in other locales, we will not commit military might if these criteria are not met.
I don’t like the policy and I don’t like the alternatives. But the world is not an orderly place, where all problems are solvable. Sometimes there are nonmilitary steps that can be taken in various trouble spots around the globe if we have the will, which we do not have, for instance, in the case of preventing Israel from taking more land from Palestinians, which continues unabated by humanitarian concerns.
University of Colorado-Boulder law professor Paul Campos offered this analysis of the Libyan military campaign:
Perhaps it's desirable, or even morally imperative, for Western nations in general, and America in particular, to enter another civil war in the Middle East. But the framers of the Constitution had very good reasons for making it difficult for America to go to war. They knew that even wars that begin with the best of intentions often end up being driven by the worst ones.
They also knew that while war is almost never in the interest of a nation's people, it is often in the interest of a nation's rulers, who reap the political and economic benefits of war while bearing little or none of its costs. That's why they designed a system of barriers to action -- which is, after all, what the rule of law is supposed to be -- before politicians could send others off to kill and be killed in the name of the noble national goal of the moment.
While I take the constitutional requirements discussed by Professor Campos seriously and believe that the Congress should have a vigorous debate before the U.S. ever embarks on making war for whatever reasons, no matter how good those reasons seem to the executive or to me, I realize that the Congress has abdicated its constitutional authority with respect to war-making.
Since World War II, the Congress has not ever declared war, yet the U.S. has embarked on military campaigns in over 70 countries by executive fiat. Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution provides that Congress has the sole power "to declare war [and] grant letters of marque and reprisal." And Article II, Section 2, provides that "The president shall be Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States."
While it seems clear, from the history of the Constitutional Convention and the views of most of the drafters of the Constitution, that they intended for Congress alone to declare war, presidents nevertheless often act unilaterally, or after some minimal consultations or discussions with members of Congress.
These arguably competing provisions in Article I and Article II have created a constitutional conundrum that will always be used by presidents to engage in war unless we find a way to reconcile the two positions.
After tiring of war by Executive fiat, in 1973 Congress passed the War Powers Act in response to the prosecution of the Vietnam War by both Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, a war that had proceeded without a congressional declaration for at least eight years with devastating consequences for both American soldiers and Vietnam fighters and civilians.
Under the War Powers Act, the president is supposed to obtain congressional approval of military action within 90 days after introducing troops into hostilities. Presidents have generally ignored the War Powers Act, using Article II, Section 2 as their constitutionally-mandated authority to send troops into combat. While a few Congressional voices have been raised periodically against such Constitutional abuses by the Executive, Congress as a whole has failed to resolve this Constitutional dilemma.
But candidate Barack Obama, as a U.S. senator in 2007, said, “the president does not have the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.” Apparently, he has changed his mind.
The author William Blum identifies the following purposes used by presidents to take military actions. They do not include humanitarian concerns:
making the world safe for American corporations to do business;
enhancing the financial status of U.S. defense contractors who have contributed generously to members of congress;
preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the American capitalist model;
extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power" -- a sort of exceptionalist argument that gives the U.S. license to do as it pleases.
While I believe that there is a humanitarian impulse that guides some U.S. foreign policy, I always look for other reasons, as well. Usually, I find another rationale from Blum’s list that is in play when we use our military might anywhere in the world.
In the case of Libya, Sen. Bernie Sanders has revealed in the last few days that Gadhafi’s Central Bank of Libya owns a 59% stake in the Arab Banking Corporation (ABC), which is based in Bahrain and has two branches in New York City. The ABC received at least 45 emergency, low-interest loans (0.25%) from the Federal Reserve between December, 2007 and March, 2010.
The U.S. Treasury Department has exempted the ABC from economic sanctions that have been applied to Gadhafi’s regime. Such contradictory relations with Libya make Obama’s military actions even more perplexing and suggest that Blum’s fourth reason for war may be in play.
The more we understand about our relations with Libya and other countries, the more difficult it is to accept Obama’s humanitarian rationale. As syndicated columnist David Sirota has pointed out, U.S. foreign policy had mostly ignored the humanitarian crises in Egypt before the recent fall of Mubarak, a dictator that we warmly supported financially and militarily for over 30 years.
We consider the totalitarian Saudi royal family a friend and ally, and our government continues to praise Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, as a reformer even as he slaughters his own people. Sirota sees the Libya war-making as related to oil, defense contracts, and the “Pentagon’s brand-new Africa Command establishing its first foothold on the resource-rich continent, ... but it is not primarily about saving lives.”
Given these contradictions and the seemingly unassailable facts of U.S. interventions for nearly 65 years and the inability of the Congress to assert itself to limit the Executive’s war-making powers, the most palatable policy to me is one that involves cooperative international efforts to protect the helpless from slaughter or death.
Building and strengthening these international cooperative humanitarian efforts needs more attention and, if done properly, at least will not subject the U.S. to hatred and retribution for imposing our will in the pursuit of our own geopolitical objectives.
While I am not sanguine about what we are doing in Libya, it is a far less destructive policy than were the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. That is faint praise, but until Congress begins to care more about foreign affairs than it does about its domestic agenda, we cannot expect fealty to Constitutional principles.
[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins.]
For Manning Marable-By John McMillian / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
John McMillian : For Manning Marable
Manning Marable. Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images.
Renowned African-American scholar, Dr. Manning Marable, 60, died April 1 of complications from pneumonia, three days before the publication of his long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, a book he had been working on for the last 15 years.
Marable was founding director of the Department of African American Studies at Columbia University. Since 2002 he had directed Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Black History.
According to National Public Radio, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, “introduces new information that could reshape the widely accepted narrative" of Malcolm's life.
For Manning Marable
By John McMillian / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
In hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit, but here goes. When I first met Manning Marable in 1996, at age 26, I was nervous. Partly I was on edge because I was trying to make a big decision: Should I pursue a Ph.D. in African-American history at either Rutgers or Michigan, where I’d been offered full funding? Or, should I go to Columbia (my first choice), with no money upfront, but with some vague possibility of securing a teaching fellowship down the line?
Months before, Manning had already written me to say that if I were admitted to Columbia, he’d be keen to take me on as one of his graduate students. (That was a thrill unto itself!) Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder (and this is the embarrassing part): did he know I was white? And if so, would he have any doubts about my commitment to Black Studies, or my intellectual authority to work in the field?
Keep in mind, by then I’d read virtually all of Manning’s major works, including the earlier, more polemical stuff, like How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, where he declared, “Progressive white Americans must succeed in overturning their own racism.”
No problem there, I chuckled. I’d long made a point of challenging racism in others, and I’ve always tried (to the best of my ability) never to tolerate it in myself. But then, he added this:
“Nothing short of a commitment to racial equality and Black freedom such as that exhibited by the militant white abolitionist John Brown will be sufficient.”
Oh.
There was only one way to gauge Manning’s attitude, and that was to show up at his office. I made the haul all the way from mid-Michigan to New York City in my Chevy pickup truck. At that point in my life, I’d never been anywhere near an Ivy League campus. My first memory of the area around Columbia comes from driving up and down Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and perhaps a dozen cross streets in-between, again and again, trying to find a parking space.
As soon as I met Manning, though, all of my anxiety melted away. As anyone who knew him would agree, one of his most striking qualities was his affability. And although I probably would not have said this in print while he was still alive, the plain fact is, he really did look a lot like a teddy bear.
One thing I remember from that day is how vigorously he stressed the fact that he saw himself as both a scholar, and an activist. For him, the two vocations were inseparable. What’s more, he wanted me to know that when he became the founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) a few years earlier, he’d envisioned it as fundamentally a community resource.
And by “community,” he pointed out, “I don’t mean just Columbia, or even Morningside Heights.” He gestured toward the window of his sixth floor office, which afforded views to the north and the east. “We’re not in Morningside Heights. We’re in Harlem!”
To this end, he had a remarkable capacity for making time for virtually anyone who wanted something from him, even including the conspiratorial-minded guy with the rusty stains on his shirt (or was it blood?) who would occasionally show up unannounced at Manning’s door, asking to bend his ear.
Then there was this other fellow: he was never around, except for on the periodic occasions when the Institute would lay out a very nice buffet in honor of some distinguished guest speaker, in which case he would always be there, first in line, testing the capacity of his Styrofoam plates with enormous mounds of chicken wings, mini-quiches, cocktail shrimp, and whatever else. (Okay, I’ll confess: I once watched as Manning observed this guy from the corner of the room in silent disbelief, before finally sighing and rolling his eyes.)
Manning also seemed like one of the hardest workers in all of academia. In the mid-to-late 1990s, you might recall, a contingent of “black public intellectuals” was suddenly gaining more exposure than they’d probably ever dreamed of. After a long period during which black scholars were more likely to toil away in obscurity, with their contributions being slighted or overlooked, now at least a few of them -- through a combination of intelligence, charisma, and moxie -- seemed to be everywhere.
And while some celebrated the new visibility of people like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson, others sensed a certain entrepreneurialism in their approach. Sure, they could all talk a very good game, people used to grouse. Hell, put them in range of a microphone, and they’ll talk about anything! But when it came to scholarship, what did they actually do?
That was never quite my own view, but regardless: nobody ever credibly said such a thing about Manning. True, he made TV appearances and gave paid lectures (oh, how he must have loved Black History Month). But he was also an author of god-knows-how-many books and articles, the great bulk of which showcased his immersion in fields as diverse as history, sociology, political science, economics, and even literature.
His new, nearly 600 page opus, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, is already being celebrated as an exhaustively researched tome, one that will completely upend our understanding of that fabled leader.
What an incredible exercise in self-restraint it must have been to keep plugging away on that biography for 15-odd years, all the while sitting on so many explosive revelations. I remember him excitedly making a few vague allusions to the discoveries he was making, way back in the day. Now we all know just what he was onto..
The past few days, I’ve been sad about the fact that I didn’t stay in better touch with Manning in recent years, though I can take some solace from the fact that about six weeks ago, I sent him a warmly inscribed copy of my first monograph. I have so many fond memories from the three-year period that I worked for him, but I’ll always treasure that first meeting the best. After listening to my concerns, putting me at ease, and making me laugh, he said something I did not expect: “I might be able to help you out.”
Five months later, I’d relocated to Manhattan, and I was meeting a considerable portion of my grad school expenses by working as his research assistant. (We collaborated on two books.) Without him, I’m not sure I’d have mustered the courage to go to Columbia, something that later turned out -- without question -- to be one of the great blessings of my life.
And yet whenever I tried to thank Manning for anything -- whether for helping to pay for my education, or for buying me a sandwich (as he sometimes did), I always got the same response. He’d shrug, smile impishly, and say, “Hey, what do you expect? I’m a socialist!”
[John McMillian is Assistant Professor of history at Georgia State University. His most recent book is Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford, 2011).] A version of this article was published at The Atlantic.]
Manning Marable. Photo by Mario Tama / Getty Images.
Renowned African-American scholar, Dr. Manning Marable, 60, died April 1 of complications from pneumonia, three days before the publication of his long-awaited biography of Malcolm X, a book he had been working on for the last 15 years.
Marable was founding director of the Department of African American Studies at Columbia University. Since 2002 he had directed Columbia’s Center for Contemporary Black History.
According to National Public Radio, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, “introduces new information that could reshape the widely accepted narrative" of Malcolm's life.
For Manning Marable
By John McMillian / The Rag Blog / April 7, 2011
In hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit, but here goes. When I first met Manning Marable in 1996, at age 26, I was nervous. Partly I was on edge because I was trying to make a big decision: Should I pursue a Ph.D. in African-American history at either Rutgers or Michigan, where I’d been offered full funding? Or, should I go to Columbia (my first choice), with no money upfront, but with some vague possibility of securing a teaching fellowship down the line?
Months before, Manning had already written me to say that if I were admitted to Columbia, he’d be keen to take me on as one of his graduate students. (That was a thrill unto itself!) Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but wonder (and this is the embarrassing part): did he know I was white? And if so, would he have any doubts about my commitment to Black Studies, or my intellectual authority to work in the field?
Keep in mind, by then I’d read virtually all of Manning’s major works, including the earlier, more polemical stuff, like How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, where he declared, “Progressive white Americans must succeed in overturning their own racism.”
No problem there, I chuckled. I’d long made a point of challenging racism in others, and I’ve always tried (to the best of my ability) never to tolerate it in myself. But then, he added this:
“Nothing short of a commitment to racial equality and Black freedom such as that exhibited by the militant white abolitionist John Brown will be sufficient.”
Oh.
There was only one way to gauge Manning’s attitude, and that was to show up at his office. I made the haul all the way from mid-Michigan to New York City in my Chevy pickup truck. At that point in my life, I’d never been anywhere near an Ivy League campus. My first memory of the area around Columbia comes from driving up and down Broadway, Amsterdam Avenue, and perhaps a dozen cross streets in-between, again and again, trying to find a parking space.
As soon as I met Manning, though, all of my anxiety melted away. As anyone who knew him would agree, one of his most striking qualities was his affability. And although I probably would not have said this in print while he was still alive, the plain fact is, he really did look a lot like a teddy bear.
One thing I remember from that day is how vigorously he stressed the fact that he saw himself as both a scholar, and an activist. For him, the two vocations were inseparable. What’s more, he wanted me to know that when he became the founding director of the Institute for Research in African American Studies (IRAAS) a few years earlier, he’d envisioned it as fundamentally a community resource.
And by “community,” he pointed out, “I don’t mean just Columbia, or even Morningside Heights.” He gestured toward the window of his sixth floor office, which afforded views to the north and the east. “We’re not in Morningside Heights. We’re in Harlem!”
To this end, he had a remarkable capacity for making time for virtually anyone who wanted something from him, even including the conspiratorial-minded guy with the rusty stains on his shirt (or was it blood?) who would occasionally show up unannounced at Manning’s door, asking to bend his ear.
Then there was this other fellow: he was never around, except for on the periodic occasions when the Institute would lay out a very nice buffet in honor of some distinguished guest speaker, in which case he would always be there, first in line, testing the capacity of his Styrofoam plates with enormous mounds of chicken wings, mini-quiches, cocktail shrimp, and whatever else. (Okay, I’ll confess: I once watched as Manning observed this guy from the corner of the room in silent disbelief, before finally sighing and rolling his eyes.)
Manning also seemed like one of the hardest workers in all of academia. In the mid-to-late 1990s, you might recall, a contingent of “black public intellectuals” was suddenly gaining more exposure than they’d probably ever dreamed of. After a long period during which black scholars were more likely to toil away in obscurity, with their contributions being slighted or overlooked, now at least a few of them -- through a combination of intelligence, charisma, and moxie -- seemed to be everywhere.
And while some celebrated the new visibility of people like Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Cornel West, and Michael Eric Dyson, others sensed a certain entrepreneurialism in their approach. Sure, they could all talk a very good game, people used to grouse. Hell, put them in range of a microphone, and they’ll talk about anything! But when it came to scholarship, what did they actually do?
That was never quite my own view, but regardless: nobody ever credibly said such a thing about Manning. True, he made TV appearances and gave paid lectures (oh, how he must have loved Black History Month). But he was also an author of god-knows-how-many books and articles, the great bulk of which showcased his immersion in fields as diverse as history, sociology, political science, economics, and even literature.
His new, nearly 600 page opus, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, is already being celebrated as an exhaustively researched tome, one that will completely upend our understanding of that fabled leader.
What an incredible exercise in self-restraint it must have been to keep plugging away on that biography for 15-odd years, all the while sitting on so many explosive revelations. I remember him excitedly making a few vague allusions to the discoveries he was making, way back in the day. Now we all know just what he was onto..
The past few days, I’ve been sad about the fact that I didn’t stay in better touch with Manning in recent years, though I can take some solace from the fact that about six weeks ago, I sent him a warmly inscribed copy of my first monograph. I have so many fond memories from the three-year period that I worked for him, but I’ll always treasure that first meeting the best. After listening to my concerns, putting me at ease, and making me laugh, he said something I did not expect: “I might be able to help you out.”
Five months later, I’d relocated to Manhattan, and I was meeting a considerable portion of my grad school expenses by working as his research assistant. (We collaborated on two books.) Without him, I’m not sure I’d have mustered the courage to go to Columbia, something that later turned out -- without question -- to be one of the great blessings of my life.
And yet whenever I tried to thank Manning for anything -- whether for helping to pay for my education, or for buying me a sandwich (as he sometimes did), I always got the same response. He’d shrug, smile impishly, and say, “Hey, what do you expect? I’m a socialist!”
[John McMillian is Assistant Professor of history at Georgia State University. His most recent book is Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford, 2011).] A version of this article was published at The Atlantic.]
In The Time Of The Be-Bop Baby Boom Jail Break-Out- “The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era- The ‘50s: Rave On”- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Eddie Cochran performing Somethin' Else.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. The former is the case here although the cover art is simplicity itself- the rear view of an aerodynamically-contoured rear fin (yes, fin) of a “boss” (yes, boss) 1950s automobile of unknown provenance (but we can guess, right?)
Yes, and that slight description is all that is needed here for those of us who came of age in the “golden age of the automobile” in the speed and thrills-craving aftermath of World War II when restless Americans, young and old, more young as it turned out, went into spasms over the latest “boss” (yes, boss) vehicle coming out of Detroit, the motor capital of the world then. Of course the cars kind of sorted themselves out- you wouldn’t, if you were young, dream of driving something that your father drove. So if you got his hand-me-down after he decided that he needed, just absolutely needed, that much more power in his automobile in order to keep up with the Joneses, you would move might and main in order to transform that old clunky dad car into a respectable too. A rocket-like tool to fit the age, to ride and to ride with some sweet honey at your side, on those hot sticky, sultry summer nights down by the seaside, or at the drive-in, movie or for food, your choice.
Yes, and this is why even a mainly no car boy, from a mainly no car family, could (and maybe still could) stare his eyes out over some boss of the bosses ’57 Chevy charging down the be-bop night boulevard, or a lanky turbo-driven long-line Lincoln, or a rebuilt Cadillac or a tear-up Thunderbird. Relics from a high cubic volume engine age when your twenty-nine cents a gallon gas took you about three feet per gallon. But still, come on now, they looked nice.
Oh, yes, and of course you needed to amp up that boss wagon car radio, booming out the latest hits about cars, especially West Coast car legends and their chicken runs, girls (east coast or west coast, hell, even the Mid-West), girls and boys in trouble, in love, out of love (ditto on that geography thing), chasing that sunset ocean-flecked dream. But mainly, when the dust settled, you had to worry about how and who was going to front that dough to get that new back chrome fender you just needed, absolutely needed, needed like crazy to keep up with the Jones’ son.
And on that boss car radio you were likely, very likely, to be cruising to many of the tunes here. Stick-outs on this CD include: For Your Love, Ed Townsend; Silhouettes, The Diamonds; Somethin’ Else, Eddie Cochran (totally underrated in the classic rock scheme of things after he died in a car accident, naturally, especially his classic Summertime Blues that was a rite of passage each summer vacation); and, as always when you talk 1950s rock, the serious stuff, the serious riffing guitar stuff from the place where rock met the blues, Chuck Berry on Almost Grown, not his number one, A-list material but good in this company.
CD Review
The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era: The ‘50s: Rave On, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1990
I have recently been on a tear in reviewing individual CDs in this extensive Time-Life Rock ‘n’ Roll series. A lot of these reviews have been driven by the artwork which graces the covers of each item, both to stir ancient memories and reflect that precise moment in time, the youth time of the now very, very mature (nice sliding over the age issue, right?) baby-boomer generation who lived and died by the music. And who fit in, or did not fit in as the case may be, to the themes of those artwork scenes. The former is the case here although the cover art is simplicity itself- the rear view of an aerodynamically-contoured rear fin (yes, fin) of a “boss” (yes, boss) 1950s automobile of unknown provenance (but we can guess, right?)
Yes, and that slight description is all that is needed here for those of us who came of age in the “golden age of the automobile” in the speed and thrills-craving aftermath of World War II when restless Americans, young and old, more young as it turned out, went into spasms over the latest “boss” (yes, boss) vehicle coming out of Detroit, the motor capital of the world then. Of course the cars kind of sorted themselves out- you wouldn’t, if you were young, dream of driving something that your father drove. So if you got his hand-me-down after he decided that he needed, just absolutely needed, that much more power in his automobile in order to keep up with the Joneses, you would move might and main in order to transform that old clunky dad car into a respectable too. A rocket-like tool to fit the age, to ride and to ride with some sweet honey at your side, on those hot sticky, sultry summer nights down by the seaside, or at the drive-in, movie or for food, your choice.
Yes, and this is why even a mainly no car boy, from a mainly no car family, could (and maybe still could) stare his eyes out over some boss of the bosses ’57 Chevy charging down the be-bop night boulevard, or a lanky turbo-driven long-line Lincoln, or a rebuilt Cadillac or a tear-up Thunderbird. Relics from a high cubic volume engine age when your twenty-nine cents a gallon gas took you about three feet per gallon. But still, come on now, they looked nice.
Oh, yes, and of course you needed to amp up that boss wagon car radio, booming out the latest hits about cars, especially West Coast car legends and their chicken runs, girls (east coast or west coast, hell, even the Mid-West), girls and boys in trouble, in love, out of love (ditto on that geography thing), chasing that sunset ocean-flecked dream. But mainly, when the dust settled, you had to worry about how and who was going to front that dough to get that new back chrome fender you just needed, absolutely needed, needed like crazy to keep up with the Jones’ son.
And on that boss car radio you were likely, very likely, to be cruising to many of the tunes here. Stick-outs on this CD include: For Your Love, Ed Townsend; Silhouettes, The Diamonds; Somethin’ Else, Eddie Cochran (totally underrated in the classic rock scheme of things after he died in a car accident, naturally, especially his classic Summertime Blues that was a rite of passage each summer vacation); and, as always when you talk 1950s rock, the serious stuff, the serious riffing guitar stuff from the place where rock met the blues, Chuck Berry on Almost Grown, not his number one, A-list material but good in this company.
The Anti-War Protest Season Continues-New York City Anti-War Rally April 9
The Anti-War Protest Season Continues-New York City Anti-War Rally April 9
Markin comment:
During this February and March I have called for and placed a number posts in this space in support of a March 19th Veterans For Peace-led march and action in Washington, D.C. I also gave my reasons for such support in commentary in those posts. Mainly from a sense of solidarity with my fellow veterans and because they were ramping up their opposition to Obama's wars beylond yet another march. This march in New York on April 9th, while necessary as an action to oppose Obama's wars, is a more traditional one and while we will attend it does not have the dramatic impact and bonds of solidarity attached to it of the Veterans' march.
March and Rally: Bring the Troops Home Now!
When: Saturday, April 9, 2011, 12:00 pm
Where: Union Square • New York, NY
Start: 2011 Apr 9 - 12:00pm
Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City and San Francisco
(Union Sq. at noon) (Time and place to be announced)
Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
Markin comment:
During this February and March I have called for and placed a number posts in this space in support of a March 19th Veterans For Peace-led march and action in Washington, D.C. I also gave my reasons for such support in commentary in those posts. Mainly from a sense of solidarity with my fellow veterans and because they were ramping up their opposition to Obama's wars beylond yet another march. This march in New York on April 9th, while necessary as an action to oppose Obama's wars, is a more traditional one and while we will attend it does not have the dramatic impact and bonds of solidarity attached to it of the Veterans' march.
March and Rally: Bring the Troops Home Now!
When: Saturday, April 9, 2011, 12:00 pm
Where: Union Square • New York, NY
Start: 2011 Apr 9 - 12:00pm
Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City and San Francisco
(Union Sq. at noon) (Time and place to be announced)
Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Website- A List Of Solidartiy Actions For April 9th and 10th 2011- Free Bradley Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to a Private Bradley Manning website entry for the solidarity activities scheduled for the weekend of April 9-10, 2011.
Markin comment:
Free Bradley Manning Now!
Markin comment:
Free Bradley Manning Now!
The Latest From The Justice For Lynne Stewart Defense Committee Website- The Latest Legal Brief War Filing
Click on the headline to link to the Lynne Stewart Defense Commitee website for the latest information on her case.
From The Bob Feldman 1968 Blog- Mark Rudd Opposed ROTC In 2009 `Toward Freedom' Interview
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Mark Rudd Opposed ROTC In 2009 `Toward Freedom' Interview
Mark Rudd was the chairman of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt; and Rudd’s autobiography, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen was finally published in March 2009.
In a 2009 email interview for the Toward Freedom anti-war website, Rudd responded to some questions about how U.S. pacifists might consider responding to the role U.S. universities play in the current historical era of “permanent war abroad and economic depression at home” and about his new book. And he also indicated, at that time, that he still opposed the training of U.S. military officers on U.S. university campuses.
(1) In 2009, some U.S. pacifists seem to regard elite universities like Columbia as institutions that have, both historically and currently, opposed war and opposed racism—since they hire both anti-war and African-American professors and administrators, implement affirmative action hiring programs, set up “peace studies” and “African-American studies” departments, steer foundation grants and scholarship money in the direction of students from historically oppressed communities and to local community groups, and provide free or low-rent meeting room space for anti-war students and off-campus pacifist groups.
Yet in the preface to your book, you write that between 1965 and 1968 you were “a member of SDS at Columbia University” and “made as much noise and trouble as possible to protest the university’s pro-war and racist policies.” In what ways were Columbia University’s policies “pro-war and racist” in 1968 and in what ways are the policies of Columbia University and other elite U.S. universities “pro-war and racist” in 2009?
Mark Rudd [MR]: The specific demands we raised leading up to the spring of 1968--training and recruitment of military officers for the war in Vietnam, weapons research for the war, the building of a gym in public park land--were only the tip of the iceberg of Columbia's policies. Within months of the strike, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) produced a book entitled "Who Rules Columbia," in which they detailed the military, State Dept., and CIA contracts and connections with the School of International Affairs, the various geographical "area studies," such as the East Asia Institute, as well as the revolving door between Columbia and the government; also Columbia's expansion into the surrounding community at the expense of non-white residents. Most of these connections and policies are still in place; almost all major research universities are still major war contractors. The point is that student activists have their work cut out for them to research and expose what's correctly called the military-industrial-academic complex.
(2) In chapter 1 of your book, titled “A Good German,” you recall that when you first met the then-chairman of Columbia’s Independent Committee on Vietnam (ICV) anti-war student group--current U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert—in early 1966, Gilbert mentioned that in May 1965 his group had “held an antiwar protest at the Naval ROTC graduation ceremony” at Columbia. And later in the “A Good German” chapter you mention that in March 1967 you had “taken part in a sit-in at a Naval ROTC class” at Columbia.
Why did you oppose Naval ROTC at Columbia in the 1960s? And do you think U.S. pacifists should consider opposing ROTC on U.S. university campuses in 2009?
MR: The issue is fundamentally moral. Is the training of people to wage war against other countries, carrying out a criminally aggressive military policy, appropriate in an institution that pretends to seek the truth? Our answer to this question was NO, because we believed in the necessity to oppose U.S. violence as a moral value. Remember, too, that the time we lived in was essentially post-World War II, and the problem of values in society was still being debated in the aftermath of Nazism. I have no doubt that contemporary students will be taking this up again in the near future.
(3) In chapter 2 of your book, you mention that anti-war students at Columbia protested against recruitment on campus by external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines. Why did you think that it was morally wrong for Columbia University to allow external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus in 1967? And do you think U.S. pacifists in 2009 should also protest against U.S. universities that allow the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus while the Pentagon’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues?
MR: Same response as #2 above. Whether recruitment is "external" (e.g., Marine recruiters) or "internal" (Military Science Dept. training future naval officers), it amounts to the same thing. The resources of the university are being used to help wage war.
( 4) In chapter 3 of your book, titled “Action Faction,” you write that on March 27, 1968 “SDS had fifteen hundred names on a petition calling for the severing of “ Columbia University’s “ties with the Pentagon think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA);” and “IDA…became the shorthand symbol for Columbia’s huge network of complicity with the war.”
In 2009, IDA still exists. Do you think that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that IDA be finally shut down by the Democratic Obama Administration and that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that U.S. universities like Columbia, MIT and Harvard stop performing war research for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] in 2009?
MR: I believe that the entire US military budget should be cut back and the money used for social needs both in this country and around the world. Security would be much better served by the development of true international law, not more nuclear weapons. If that doesn't happen in the 21st century, we're doomed. All war research should immediately stop everywhere and the money be put into peace, diplomacy, law, and sustainable energy development. To do less now is not only suicidal, it's downright dumb.
(5) In your book, you mention that you and Abbie Hoffman were both arrested at a November 1967 anti-war protest in Midtown Manhattan against the Foreign Policy Association giving an award to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
April 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Abbie’s death. How would you characterize the role that Abbie Hoffman played in U.S. anti-war movement history and his historical relationship to U.S. pacifists and non-violent anti-war activists like Dave Dellinger?
MR: Abbie was essentially a comedian and an organizer. He was not at all violent; he always encouraged mass organizing, though often in the form of provocative guerilla theater, like the Yippies nominating a pig for president in 1968. I forget how he and Dave Dellinger got along in Chicago, both in 1968 and during the conspiracy trial the next year. My guess is that they respected each other. Perhaps you know more specifics.
(6) Speaking of Abbie Hoffman, how would you respond to Professor Jonah Raskin’s assertion in his review of your book which was posted on The Rag Blog that “like Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd wasn’t suited for the underground life—he needed attention, and attention is, of course, the last thing that any fugitive wants;” and “Underground suggests, implies, and shows that Rudd is up there, along with Abbie, near the top of the list of 1960s radicals who wanted attention, and who received far more attention than they needed…It undid Abbie, and it also helped to undo Rudd.”?
MR: I wonder if Jonah actually read my book.
(7) Why do you think the right-wing media monitoring pressure group” Accuracy In Media” [A.I.M.] apparently attempted to pressure Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing firm to not promote your book, according to the” Accuracy In Media” web site?
MR: Just another way for the far right to try get at Obama, but it's so indirect that it makes zero sense to anybody else. There was a tiny connection between Obama and Bill Ayers, but that fact gained no votes for John McCain. These people are so stupid that they're still pursuing a tactic that's already failed. I find that a rather comforting fact.
(8) Do you think it’s likely that Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board will decide to give you a Pulitzer Prize for writing Underground—after Columbia University’s current president--a current board member of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate named Lee Bollinger—reads what you’ve written about Columbia University?
MR: I'm a shoe-in.
Mark Rudd Opposed ROTC In 2009 `Toward Freedom' Interview
Mark Rudd was the chairman of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society [SDS] at the time of the 1968 Columbia Student Revolt; and Rudd’s autobiography, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen was finally published in March 2009.
In a 2009 email interview for the Toward Freedom anti-war website, Rudd responded to some questions about how U.S. pacifists might consider responding to the role U.S. universities play in the current historical era of “permanent war abroad and economic depression at home” and about his new book. And he also indicated, at that time, that he still opposed the training of U.S. military officers on U.S. university campuses.
(1) In 2009, some U.S. pacifists seem to regard elite universities like Columbia as institutions that have, both historically and currently, opposed war and opposed racism—since they hire both anti-war and African-American professors and administrators, implement affirmative action hiring programs, set up “peace studies” and “African-American studies” departments, steer foundation grants and scholarship money in the direction of students from historically oppressed communities and to local community groups, and provide free or low-rent meeting room space for anti-war students and off-campus pacifist groups.
Yet in the preface to your book, you write that between 1965 and 1968 you were “a member of SDS at Columbia University” and “made as much noise and trouble as possible to protest the university’s pro-war and racist policies.” In what ways were Columbia University’s policies “pro-war and racist” in 1968 and in what ways are the policies of Columbia University and other elite U.S. universities “pro-war and racist” in 2009?
Mark Rudd [MR]: The specific demands we raised leading up to the spring of 1968--training and recruitment of military officers for the war in Vietnam, weapons research for the war, the building of a gym in public park land--were only the tip of the iceberg of Columbia's policies. Within months of the strike, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) produced a book entitled "Who Rules Columbia," in which they detailed the military, State Dept., and CIA contracts and connections with the School of International Affairs, the various geographical "area studies," such as the East Asia Institute, as well as the revolving door between Columbia and the government; also Columbia's expansion into the surrounding community at the expense of non-white residents. Most of these connections and policies are still in place; almost all major research universities are still major war contractors. The point is that student activists have their work cut out for them to research and expose what's correctly called the military-industrial-academic complex.
(2) In chapter 1 of your book, titled “A Good German,” you recall that when you first met the then-chairman of Columbia’s Independent Committee on Vietnam (ICV) anti-war student group--current U.S. political prisoner David Gilbert—in early 1966, Gilbert mentioned that in May 1965 his group had “held an antiwar protest at the Naval ROTC graduation ceremony” at Columbia. And later in the “A Good German” chapter you mention that in March 1967 you had “taken part in a sit-in at a Naval ROTC class” at Columbia.
Why did you oppose Naval ROTC at Columbia in the 1960s? And do you think U.S. pacifists should consider opposing ROTC on U.S. university campuses in 2009?
MR: The issue is fundamentally moral. Is the training of people to wage war against other countries, carrying out a criminally aggressive military policy, appropriate in an institution that pretends to seek the truth? Our answer to this question was NO, because we believed in the necessity to oppose U.S. violence as a moral value. Remember, too, that the time we lived in was essentially post-World War II, and the problem of values in society was still being debated in the aftermath of Nazism. I have no doubt that contemporary students will be taking this up again in the near future.
(3) In chapter 2 of your book, you mention that anti-war students at Columbia protested against recruitment on campus by external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines. Why did you think that it was morally wrong for Columbia University to allow external organizations like the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus in 1967? And do you think U.S. pacifists in 2009 should also protest against U.S. universities that allow the CIA and the U.S. Marines to recruit on campus while the Pentagon’s war in Iraq and Afghanistan continues?
MR: Same response as #2 above. Whether recruitment is "external" (e.g., Marine recruiters) or "internal" (Military Science Dept. training future naval officers), it amounts to the same thing. The resources of the university are being used to help wage war.
( 4) In chapter 3 of your book, titled “Action Faction,” you write that on March 27, 1968 “SDS had fifteen hundred names on a petition calling for the severing of “ Columbia University’s “ties with the Pentagon think-tank, the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA);” and “IDA…became the shorthand symbol for Columbia’s huge network of complicity with the war.”
In 2009, IDA still exists. Do you think that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that IDA be finally shut down by the Democratic Obama Administration and that U.S. pacifists should consider demanding that U.S. universities like Columbia, MIT and Harvard stop performing war research for the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA] in 2009?
MR: I believe that the entire US military budget should be cut back and the money used for social needs both in this country and around the world. Security would be much better served by the development of true international law, not more nuclear weapons. If that doesn't happen in the 21st century, we're doomed. All war research should immediately stop everywhere and the money be put into peace, diplomacy, law, and sustainable energy development. To do less now is not only suicidal, it's downright dumb.
(5) In your book, you mention that you and Abbie Hoffman were both arrested at a November 1967 anti-war protest in Midtown Manhattan against the Foreign Policy Association giving an award to then-Secretary of State Dean Rusk.
April 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Abbie’s death. How would you characterize the role that Abbie Hoffman played in U.S. anti-war movement history and his historical relationship to U.S. pacifists and non-violent anti-war activists like Dave Dellinger?
MR: Abbie was essentially a comedian and an organizer. He was not at all violent; he always encouraged mass organizing, though often in the form of provocative guerilla theater, like the Yippies nominating a pig for president in 1968. I forget how he and Dave Dellinger got along in Chicago, both in 1968 and during the conspiracy trial the next year. My guess is that they respected each other. Perhaps you know more specifics.
(6) Speaking of Abbie Hoffman, how would you respond to Professor Jonah Raskin’s assertion in his review of your book which was posted on The Rag Blog that “like Abbie Hoffman, Mark Rudd wasn’t suited for the underground life—he needed attention, and attention is, of course, the last thing that any fugitive wants;” and “Underground suggests, implies, and shows that Rudd is up there, along with Abbie, near the top of the list of 1960s radicals who wanted attention, and who received far more attention than they needed…It undid Abbie, and it also helped to undo Rudd.”?
MR: I wonder if Jonah actually read my book.
(7) Why do you think the right-wing media monitoring pressure group” Accuracy In Media” [A.I.M.] apparently attempted to pressure Rupert Murdoch’s HarperCollins publishing firm to not promote your book, according to the” Accuracy In Media” web site?
MR: Just another way for the far right to try get at Obama, but it's so indirect that it makes zero sense to anybody else. There was a tiny connection between Obama and Bill Ayers, but that fact gained no votes for John McCain. These people are so stupid that they're still pursuing a tactic that's already failed. I find that a rather comforting fact.
(8) Do you think it’s likely that Columbia University’s Pulitzer Prize Board will decide to give you a Pulitzer Prize for writing Underground—after Columbia University’s current president--a current board member of the Washington Post Company/Newsweek media conglomerate named Lee Bollinger—reads what you’ve written about Columbia University?
MR: I'm a shoe-in.
From The Partisan Defense Committee- A Report On The 25th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners
25th Annual Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners
The Partisan Defense Committee held its 25th annual Holiday Appeal to raise money for its stipend program for class-war prisoners and their families. Benefits were held in Chicago, New York and Toronto, and funds also were raised in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Nearly $10,000 was collected, after expenses. All proceeds from the Holiday Appeals go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist oppression and imperialist depredation. The Holiday Appeals’ stipend program revives a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the Communist Party and the ILD’s first secretary (1925-28). Over the last 25 years, the PDC has provided stipends to over 30 prisoners, including eight union militants, on three continents.
This year’s meetings again highlighted the case of America’s foremost class-war prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was falsely convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981 and sentenced to death for his political beliefs. Though his frame-up conviction was upheld, Mumia’s death sentence was overturned in 2001. In the latest threat to his life, the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia last November heard oral arguments on whether or not to reinstate the death penalty; it has yet to rule on the case (see “Federal Appeals Court: D.A. Demands Mumia’s Execution” WV No. 969, 19 November 2010).
Along with Mumia, the PDC benefits honored 16 other class-war prisoners: Jamal Hart, Mumia’s son, who was targeted for his prominent activism in the campaign to free his father and sentenced in 1998 to 15 1/2 years without parole on bogus firearms possession charges; American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier, who has spent more than 35 years in prison for his activism on behalf of this country’s oppressed native peoples; eight MOVE members (Chuck, Michael, Debbie, Janet, Janine, Delbert, Eddie and Phil Africa) who are in their 33rd year of prison for the “crime” of surviving a massive cop assault on their Philadelphia home in 1978; Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning, the last of the anti-imperialist activists still in prison from the Ohio 7, which took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism in the late 1970s and early ’80s; former Black Panther Party supporters Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa, victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation against the Panthers, framed up and languishing behind bars for 40 years; and Hugo Pinell, a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing.
In 2010, the PDC added to the list of stipend recipients 71-year-old leftist lawyer Lynne Stewart, who is serving ten years in prison for the “crime” of vigorously representing her client (see article below). At the New York Holiday Appeal, Ralph Poynter, her husband, spoke on her behalf and described the ordeal she is going through.
The benefits heard greetings from Mumia, who noted that “the PDC is on the right side of history.” He also thanked the PDC for being there “for all of us,” including his son. Greetings were also received from other stipend recipients, including Michael Africa, who wrote that “to have sustained this type of support for 25 years is a testament to the commitment of The Partisan Defense Committee to those who stand up against the government agents of repression.”
We urge WV readers to support the work of the PDC. Become a sustaining contributor to help drive the work of the PDC forward. Contributions can be sent to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013.
* * *
(reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 975, 4 March 2011)
Workers Vanguard is the newspaper of the Spartacist League with which the Partisan Defense Committee is affiliated.
From The Partisan Defense Committee- Salute Heroic Japanese Nuclear Workers
Salute Heroic Japanese Nuclear Workers
(in Japanese)
19 March 2011
The Federation of Electric Power Related Industry Worker’s Unions of Japan
(Denryoku Soren)
3F TDS Mita
7-13 Mita 2-chome
Minato-ku Tokyo Japan 108-0073
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Partisan Defense Committee (PDC) salutes the heroic members of your union who are risking their lives in an effort to control the dangerous situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant following the earthquake and tsunami. The PDC is a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S., which, along with the Spartacist Group Japan, are sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).
The valor and dedication of the Fukushima Dai-ichi workers stand in sharp contrast to the parasitism and greed of the owners and managers of TEPCO and their unofficial spokesmen in the government. They have endangered the population with their obfuscation and mismanagement. For the capitalists in every country and every industry, the overriding concern is their profits and not the safety of the workers or the interests of society as a whole.
All of this underlines the urgent need for trade-union control over safety and all working conditions at every level. If the labor of those who toil is to serve the interests of society and not the bottom line of the bosses, it is necessary for the working class to take power and rule on the basis of a collectivized planned economy.
We intend to circulate this message to organizations within the workers movement internationally and encourage them to likewise extend their support.
Fraternally,
Kevin Gilroy
(in Japanese)
19 March 2011
The Federation of Electric Power Related Industry Worker’s Unions of Japan
(Denryoku Soren)
3F TDS Mita
7-13 Mita 2-chome
Minato-ku Tokyo Japan 108-0073
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
The Partisan Defense Committee (PDC) salutes the heroic members of your union who are risking their lives in an effort to control the dangerous situation at the Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant following the earthquake and tsunami. The PDC is a class-struggle legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League/U.S., which, along with the Spartacist Group Japan, are sections of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).
The valor and dedication of the Fukushima Dai-ichi workers stand in sharp contrast to the parasitism and greed of the owners and managers of TEPCO and their unofficial spokesmen in the government. They have endangered the population with their obfuscation and mismanagement. For the capitalists in every country and every industry, the overriding concern is their profits and not the safety of the workers or the interests of society as a whole.
All of this underlines the urgent need for trade-union control over safety and all working conditions at every level. If the labor of those who toil is to serve the interests of society and not the bottom line of the bosses, it is necessary for the working class to take power and rule on the basis of a collectivized planned economy.
We intend to circulate this message to organizations within the workers movement internationally and encourage them to likewise extend their support.
Fraternally,
Kevin Gilroy
Photos/Video-April 4 Labor Rally,Boston, On Anniv. Of Martin Luther King's Assassination
Click on the headline to link to Photos/Video-April 4 Labor Rally,Boston, On Anniv. Of Martin Luther King's Assassination by Michael Borkson
From The Blogosphere-June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marie Mason and Eric McDavid -Imprisoned Environmental Activists
Markin comment:
In the rush of activity to desperately defend heavy-weight and well-known class-war political prisoners like Lynne Stewart, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and lately, Private Bradley Manning, the lesser known cases like those of Eric McDavid and Marie Mason do not get enough attention. Read about these cases because when you think about it “an injury to one is an injury to all” in the struggle to keep this a more fit planet for the mass of humanity to live on (and other species as well).
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June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marie Mason and Eric McDavid
by june11.org
(No verified email address) 05 Apr 2011
International Day of Solidarity for Marie Mason and Eric McDavid!
June 11th began as an international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoner Jeff "Free" Luers in 2004. At the time, Jeff was serving 22+ years. Infuriated by the environmental devastation he saw occurring on a global scale, Free torched three SUVs at a car dealership in Eugene, OR. The sentence imposed on him was meant to send a clear message to others who were angered by capitalism's continued war on the Earth's ecosystems – and to those who were willing to take action to put a stop to it. Free is, after all, not alone in his concerns about climate change, fossil fuels, pollution and genetically modified organisms.
After years of struggle, Jeff and his legal team won a reduction in his sentence and he was released from prison in December 2009. But in the years intervening Jeff's arrest and release, the FBI had carried out a series of indictments and arrests in an attempt to devastate the radical environmental and anarchist communities. Two of the people caught up in this maelstrom of repression were Eric McDavid and Marie Mason.
Eric McDavid was arrested in January 2006 after being entrapped by a paid government informant - "Anna" - and was charged with a single count of conspiracy. Eric – who never carried out any actions and was accused of what amounts to “thought crime” - refused to cooperate with the state and took his case to trial. After a trial fraught with errors, the jury convicted Eric. He was subsequently sentenced to almost 20 years in prison. More information on Eric's case can be found at www.supporteric.org
Marie Mason was arrested in March 2008 after her former partner – Frank Ambrose - turned informant for the FBI. Facing a life sentence if she went to trial, Marie accepted a plea bargain in September 2008, admitting her involvement in the burning of an office connected to GMO research and the destruction of a piece of logging equipment. At her sentencing in February the following year, she received a sentence of almost 22 years. More information on Marie's case can be found at www.supportmariemason.org
Marie and Eric now share the unfortunate distinction of having the longest standing sentences of any environmental prisoners in the United States.
Please join us in an International Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners Marie Mason and Eric McDavid on June 11th. This is a time to remember our friends who are in prison – who are continuing their struggles on the inside. This is a time to continue and strengthen the very work for which Eric and Marie are now serving so much time - to struggle against capitalism, ecological devastation, and the ever more diffuse forms of control in this prison society.
Free Marie and Eric!
Free all prisoners!
www.june11.org
For more information or to let us know if you are hosting an event, please contact: june11thsolidarity[at]gmail[dot]com
In the rush of activity to desperately defend heavy-weight and well-known class-war political prisoners like Lynne Stewart, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and lately, Private Bradley Manning, the lesser known cases like those of Eric McDavid and Marie Mason do not get enough attention. Read about these cases because when you think about it “an injury to one is an injury to all” in the struggle to keep this a more fit planet for the mass of humanity to live on (and other species as well).
*********
June 11th International Day of Solidarity with Marie Mason and Eric McDavid
by june11.org
(No verified email address) 05 Apr 2011
International Day of Solidarity for Marie Mason and Eric McDavid!
June 11th began as an international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoner Jeff "Free" Luers in 2004. At the time, Jeff was serving 22+ years. Infuriated by the environmental devastation he saw occurring on a global scale, Free torched three SUVs at a car dealership in Eugene, OR. The sentence imposed on him was meant to send a clear message to others who were angered by capitalism's continued war on the Earth's ecosystems – and to those who were willing to take action to put a stop to it. Free is, after all, not alone in his concerns about climate change, fossil fuels, pollution and genetically modified organisms.
After years of struggle, Jeff and his legal team won a reduction in his sentence and he was released from prison in December 2009. But in the years intervening Jeff's arrest and release, the FBI had carried out a series of indictments and arrests in an attempt to devastate the radical environmental and anarchist communities. Two of the people caught up in this maelstrom of repression were Eric McDavid and Marie Mason.
Eric McDavid was arrested in January 2006 after being entrapped by a paid government informant - "Anna" - and was charged with a single count of conspiracy. Eric – who never carried out any actions and was accused of what amounts to “thought crime” - refused to cooperate with the state and took his case to trial. After a trial fraught with errors, the jury convicted Eric. He was subsequently sentenced to almost 20 years in prison. More information on Eric's case can be found at www.supporteric.org
Marie Mason was arrested in March 2008 after her former partner – Frank Ambrose - turned informant for the FBI. Facing a life sentence if she went to trial, Marie accepted a plea bargain in September 2008, admitting her involvement in the burning of an office connected to GMO research and the destruction of a piece of logging equipment. At her sentencing in February the following year, she received a sentence of almost 22 years. More information on Marie's case can be found at www.supportmariemason.org
Marie and Eric now share the unfortunate distinction of having the longest standing sentences of any environmental prisoners in the United States.
Please join us in an International Day of Solidarity with Long-Term Anarchist Prisoners Marie Mason and Eric McDavid on June 11th. This is a time to remember our friends who are in prison – who are continuing their struggles on the inside. This is a time to continue and strengthen the very work for which Eric and Marie are now serving so much time - to struggle against capitalism, ecological devastation, and the ever more diffuse forms of control in this prison society.
Free Marie and Eric!
Free all prisoners!
www.june11.org
For more information or to let us know if you are hosting an event, please contact: june11thsolidarity[at]gmail[dot]com
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
From The Renegade Eye Blog-The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Three: The Revolution is not finished
The Arab Revolution - Manifesto of the International Marxist Tendency. Part Three: The Revolution is not finished
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Thursday, 17 March 2011
To say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, much less that victory is assured. It is a struggle of living forces. Revolution is not a one-act drama. It is a complicated process with many ebbs and flows. The overthrow of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gannouchi marks the end of the first stages, but the Revolution has not yet succeeded in completely overthrowing the old regime, while the latter has not yet succeeded in re-establishing control.
In Russia in 1917 the Revolution lasted for nine months, from February to October, when the workers finally took power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. However, the Russian Revolution was not a straight line and proceeded through all kinds of vicissitudes and contradictions. There was a period of open reaction in July and August. Lenin had to flee to Finland and the Bolshevik Party was virtually illegalised. But this merely prepared the way for a new advance of the Revolution, culminating in the October insurrection.
In Spain we saw a similar process, starting with the fall of the monarchy in 1931, followed by a big upsurge of the class struggle. But the defeat of the Asturian Commune in October 1934 led to a period of reaction, the Biennio Negro, or two black years in 1935-6. But this proved to be only the prelude to a new upsurge of the Revolution, starting with the victory of the Popular Front in the elections of 1936, leading to the Civil War and ending in defeat and fascism.
After the fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian Revolution is like a big carnival. But the masses are fighting for things no bourgeois government can give them. Like the Russian workers in February 1917, the workers of Egypt have succeeded in overthrowing a tyrant but they have not won their main objectives. The real struggle is still ahead. What has been solved by Mubarak's overthrow? What was achieved by Ben Ali fleeing to Saudi Arabia? Nothing fundamental has been solved. The workers are fighting for bread, jobs and houses, not for some kind of charade of formal bourgeois democracy in which everything changes so that everything can remain the same.
Through painful experience the masses are learning some serious lessons. Sooner or later they will draw the conclusion that the working class must take power. There will be an extended learning process, a process of inner differentiation. This has already begun. In the revolutionary committees the more moderate elements who led the movement in its early stages, and who have illusions in the army, are being challenged by new layers of workers and youth who are opposed to compromise. They fear that what they have conquered with their blood can be taken away from them by subterfuge. This suspicion is well founded.
With the fall of Mubarak the Egyptian Revolution won its first great victory. But none of the fundamental problems of Egyptian society have been solved. Prices continue to rise, homeless people sleep in cemeteries and about 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed according to official statistics, though the real figure is much higher.
There is a burning anger against inequality and the all-pervading corruption that is the chief characteristic of the old regime. Billions of dollars of public money have gone missing. The amounts looted by the Mubarak family alone are estimated at between $40 billion and $80 billion. This has provoked anger and disgust, in a country where 40 percent of the people are living below the poverty line.
It is impossible to say for sure what will follow. However, we can say that the Revolution will be protracted in time and will experience all manner of ups and downs. At the present time, the masses are intoxicated with the idea of democracy. The feeling of euphoria affects even the most advanced and revolutionary elements. This period of democratic and constitutional illusions is an inevitable phase but it will not last. The Revolution stirs society to the bottom. It awakens new, previously inert and “backward” layers to political life. They are demanding their rights. When these people say "thawra hatta'l nasr" (revolution until victory), they mean it.
All attempts to restore the political equilibrium will come to nothing because the crisis of capitalism does not permit any solution to the most basic needs of the population. There will be a series of unstable bourgeois regimes. One unstable ministry after another will fall. This presents a danger. When the class struggle reaches the point of deadlock, the state tends to rise above society and acquire a relative independence. The result is an unstable military regime, or, to give it its correct name, a Bonapartist regime. The very fact of the existence of such a regime indicates that the Revolution that began on 25 January is not finished. It will experience many new turns before the final denouement can be written.
Despite all the appeals for “national unity”, Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarized. The Revolution still has considerable reserves of support in the population. Students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders. The strike of the Egyptian oil workers won all their demands, including the resignation of the oil minister, in just three days. This shows where the real power lies.
The military regime in Egypt cannot maintain itself for long. All the attempts to restore “order” (that is, the rule of the rich and powerful) have failed. The army has tried to stop strikes, but the strikes continue. Far from subsiding, the movement of the workers is increasing. What can the generals do? If they were unable to use their tanks to crush the insurrection, still less can they use them to crush strikes in what is supposed to be a democratic regime.
The generals will have to pass power to a civilian (i.e. bourgeois) government. This will be counterrevolution in a democratic disguise. But it will not be easy for to the counterrevolution to restore stability. For the workers, democracy is not an empty word. If it does not lead to an improvement in living standards, jobs and houses, what was the point of fighting in the first place?
If all this had happened ten years ago, they might have been able to consolidate some form of bourgeois democratic regimes. The boom in world capitalism would have given them some margin for manoeuvre. But now there is a profound crisis on a world scale. This is both the reason for the revolutionary ferment and the reason why it cannot easily be brought to an end. The capitalist system cannot offer anything to the masses. It can't even provide jobs and a decent living standard in the USA and Europe. How can they hope to do it in Egypt?
The actions of the workers striking, occupying the factories and kicking out the managers are of tremendous importance. They mean that the Revolution is entering the factories and workplaces. They signify that the workers of Egypt are proceeding from the struggle for democracy in society to the struggle for economic democracy in the workplace. It means that the Egyptian working class is beginning to participate in the Revolution under its own banner, fighting for its own class demands. This is a decisive factor for the future of the Revolution.
The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries. They are rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up revolutionary committees to run factories and other workplaces. That is the correct line to take.
Bourgeois commentators have emphasized that many of these strikes are of an economic nature. Of course! The working class is pressing its immediate demands. That is to say, they see the Revolution as a means of fighting not just for formal democracy but for better wages, for better working conditions – for a better life. They are fighting for their own class demands. And this struggle cannot cease just because Hosni Mubarak is no longer sitting in the Presidential Palace.
For a workers’ democracy!
In Suez, the state collapsed completely for four or five days. Like in Tunisia earlier, revolutionary committees and armed checkpoints were established to defend the people. These facts demonstrate beyond question that soviets (i.e. workers’ councils) are not an arbitrary invention of the Marxists but emerge spontaneously in any genuine revolution.
This poses the central question, that of the state. The old state power has been brought to its knees by the Revolution. It must be replaced with a new power. There is a power in society that is stronger than any state. That power is the revolutionary people. But it must be organized. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are elements of dual power in the revolutionary committees. Entire cities and regions were taken over by these committees.
In Tunisia, the revolutionary organisation of the people went even further than in Egypt. These bodies, in many cases organised around the local structures of the UGTT trade unions, took over the running of all aspects of society in towns and cities and even in whole regions, after expelling the old, RCD regime, authorities. For all the talk of "chaos" and "lack of security" on the part of the ruling class, the fact is that working people organised themselves to guarantee order and safety, but this was a different type of order, a revolutionary order.
In Egypt, following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks to inspect cars that were coming in and out. In some areas, the popular committees virtually took over the running of the town, even organizing the traffic. Here we have the embryo of a people’s militia – of an alternative state power.
And just as the people set up committees to protect their areas from criminal elements when the police were taken off the streets in order to cause chaos and disorder, now in order to organize the Revolution in the most effective manner, the same idea must be taken up and generalized. In order to defend and extend the Revolution, we must form defence committees everywhere!
Elected Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which already exist in some areas, should be established in every factory, street and village. The revolutionary committees should link up on a local, regional and national level. This would be the starting point for a future democratic workers’ and peasants’ government – a real alternative to the rotten dictatorial regime.
The IMT demands:
•A complete purge and democratization of the army
•For the setting up of soldiers- committees and committees of revolutionary-minded lower ranking officers
•Out with the corrupt and reactionary generals
•Immediate disbandment of all repressive bodies
•All those guilty of acts of terror against the people must be put on trial and punished
•The general arming of the people
•The establishment of a people’s militia
•For a workers’ and peasants’ government!
Revolution knows no frontiers
The international character of the revolution has been clear from the very beginnings. Other Arab countries face many similar problems to those in Tunisia and Egypt: rising food prices, sharply deteriorating economic conditions, unemployment and rampant official corruption. Many millions of people are struggling to exist. And in society as in nature, similar conditions produce similar results. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt can happen in many other countries, and not only in the Arab world.
The imperialists have been trying to console themselves with the thought that there is no domino effect. But the dominoes are already beginning to fall: Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, Djibouti, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman – all are entering the revolutionary maelstrom. As in Tunisia and Egypt, the people of Algeria, Jordan and Yemen were living in poverty under dictatorial ruling elites which lived a luxurious life by plundering the nation.
In the case of Iraq, the Revolution is linked to the struggle against imperialism and foreign domination and the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people. At the same time, one characteristic of the protest movement in Iraq is that it has cut across the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis, between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, which has been the basis for the domination of reactionary politicians.
Among the main issues raised by the protesters are rising living costs, partly caused by the government’s withdrawal of subsidies for petrol and sugar—an explosive issue across the Arab world. The leaders of Jordan, Algeria and Libya all reduced taxes on imported food or lowered the prices of staples in an attempt to avoid unrest. In Algeria the regime has made concessions in an attempt to prevent an explosion that would be even bigger than the insurrection in the Berber areas in 2001.
Even the oil-rich monarchs of the Gulf are worried. Kuwait has distributed £4,000 (€4600 or US$4600) to all its citizens to keep the population quiet. But such measures can at best succeed only in postponing the inevitable revolutionary upsurge.
The Western media shamelessly portrayed the movement in Bahrain as a religious-sectarian struggle of the Shiite majority and the Sunnis. That is a lie. The Bahrainis are fighting against corruption, for free elections, against discrimination and for rights for immigrants and women, for equitable distribution of wealth and against unemployment. Everywhere we see the same courage of the masses in face of fire. In Bahrain the army was forced to withdraw from Pearl Square. Once again, the role of the working class was crucial, as it was the threat of a general strike on the part of the Bahraini trade unions which forced the regime to make some concessions
In all the Gulf Sates there is brutal exploitation of labour, largely immigrant labour. There are 1.1 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia alone. A similar situation exists throughout the Gulf. There have been strikes and uprisings there in the past that have not been reported, such as the strike of 8,000 building workers in Dubai.
The Saudi regime itself, that bastion of reaction in the Middle East, resembles a pressure cooker without a safety valve. In such a regime, when the explosion comes, it will occur without warning and with extreme violence. The Saudi royal family is corrupt, degenerate and rotten to the core. It is split over the succession and there is growing resentment and discontent in the population. When the moment comes, all the oil in the kingdom will not save them. It is significant that now even the Wahhabi clergy is turning against them.
The Arab Revolution has revived the revolutionary movement in Iran, where officers in the Revolutionary Guard have said they are not prepared to fire on the people and warned the Basij to leave their truncheons at home. Rifts in the state apparatus reveal the deep crisis of the regime which is split from top to bottom.
Because each case is somewhat different, it is hard to say what kinds of regimes will emerge in each case. What kinds of political tendencies and regimes will emerge depends on many factors and will differ from one country to another. The processes in Tunisia and Egypt were almost identical. But in Libya the situation is different. The regime had more of a base, particularly around Tripoli. The uprising was largely confined to the eastern part and the Revolution has been transformed into a civil war, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Gaddafi doesn’t care if the whole country goes down with him. Having lost control of the whole of the east including the second biggest city, Benghazi, he decided to fight to the last, plunging Libya into a bloody conflict. There have been wide ranging defections in the Libyan army, even at the top level. But it did not have the same effect as in Egypt because of the different nature of the army and the regime.
One thing is clear: everything has been thrown into the melting pot. Not one of these regimes will survive in the end. There are different possibilities, depending on the class balance of forces and a whole series of internal and external factors that are impossible to foresee. But one thing is clear: no matter what regime is installed, it will not be able to satisfy even the most minimal demands of the masses.
Impotence of imperialism
The imperialists are worried about where all this will go, and how far it will spread. They did not expect these events and do not know how to react. Obama did not dare call on Mubarak publicly to resign because of the effects in these other states. He was obliged to speak in carefully calculated code. The very words “democracy” and “human rights” in the mouth of Obama and his European counterparts stink of hypocrisy.
The cynicism of Western governments stands exposed in all its crudity. After decades of backing the vicious dictatorship in Tunisia, suddenly they are all in favour of democracy and human rights. Yet Sarkozy had praised Ben Ali as a friend of democracy and human rights even when he was torturing his opponents in the prisons. And Washington covered up the barbarous acts of all the other pro-western dictators. Now they are getting their just reward.
Politics affects the economy and vice-versa. Oil prices have climbed on fears the unrest could spread to other Arab states including oil giant Saudi Arabia or interfere with oil supplies from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. Brent crude surpassed the $120 a barrel mark and is still hovering over the $110 mark. This threatens to undermine the weak and fragile recovery of the world economy.
For economic, political and military reasons the imperialists need stability in the Middle East. But how are they to get it? That is the question! From the beginning the US has been struggling to find a coherent response to events that are changing by the day, even by the hour. In reality the strongest power in the world has been reduced to the role of a helpless onlooker. An article in The Independent by their correspondent in Washington, Rupert Cornwell, carried the interesting title: Washington's strong words underline US impotence. That expresses the real position.
Some “clever” people, however, think that the Arab Revolution is all part of an imperialist conspiracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bourgeoisie was taken completely by surprise by all this. These revolutions are completely destabilizing one of their most important regions. This is far from welcome to them. And it has repercussions far beyond the Arab world.
The Middle East is a key area for the imperialists. The Americans have spent four decades establishing their position there. Egypt was a key piece in their calculations. Now all this has been swept away before their eyes in a few weeks. The richest and most powerful state on earth was completely paralyzed. Obama could not intervene, and even found it difficult to say anything about it for fear of offending their Saudi allies.
Eight percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal, and the Americans were terrified that would be closed, but they could do nothing about it. All that Obama could say was that it was the Egyptian people's choice. The Americans did not say that when it came to Iraq or Afghanistan, where US imperialism did not think twice about invading.
US warships were in fact sent to Suez but did nothing. This was intended to reveal the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. But in reality it was an empty gesture. The US burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt would have provoked a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not have been a single US embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow
The USA has a special interest in Bahrain because of its important strategic position next door to Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the base of the Fifth Fleet, the most important US naval base in the whole region. Yet they were powerless to intervene against the revolutionary movement in Bahrain. If this was all part of an imperialist plan, nobody told Obama about it!
[Edited 29 March 2011:]
In the case of Libya they did not hesitate to denounce Gaddafi and call for his overthrow – which they signally failed to do in the case of Mubarak. This is yet another example of their duplicity, cynicism and double standards. Although initially they hinted that military action was not ruled out, they hesitated to act. Hilary Clinton said that a no-fly zone would have to be approved by the UN. This is a complete contrast to the conduct of the USA in Iraq, when they completely by-passed the UN.
In the end, under pressure from the French and the British, the USA agreed to a no-fly zone. We now have open imperialist aggression in Libya. This has nothing to do with defending the people of Libya and even less with defending the revolution. The opposite is the case. Their aim is to get a foothold in the region in order to strangle the revolutions that have begun.
We oppose this imperialist bullying. The task of overthrowing Gaddafi belongs to the Libyan people. The truth is that the initial revolutionary impetus that began in the east has been sidetracked and taken over by counter-revolutionary elements on the Interim Council who have now handed over the fate of the Libyan people to western imperialism.
The IMT says:
•No to foreign intervention!
•End the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!
•Stop the bombing of Libya!
•Down with imperialism!
•Hands off the Arab Revolution!
Israel and the Palestinians
Nowhere has the Arab Revolution caused greater panic than in Israel. The strongest military force in the region was paralysed in the face of the events in Egypt. The Israeli ruling clique even had to be careful about what they said about the situation in Egypt. Binyamin Netanyahu ordered ministers not to talk about it in public. Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak. Jerusalem tried desperately to convince its allies that it was in the West's interest to back Mubarak in order to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. This flew in the face of the efforts of the United States and European Union to remove him so that they could guarantee an “orderly transition” and avoid a revolutionary overthrow.
Marx pointed out that no people could ever be free if it enslaved another people. Israel rules over a large and disaffected population of Palestinians who are learning on their televisions how to overthrow tyranny. On the West Bank the Palestinians are held down with the help of the Palestinian Authority’s police. But it is open to question whether Palestinian police units, or Israeli security forces, would be able to crush a mass democracy movement, after Egypt’s powerful army refused to fire on the people.
The separate peace signed by Israel and Egypt in 1979 was a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and is deeply unpopular in most of the Arab world. The backing of Egypt has been an important element in helping the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967.
The Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 was a new betrayal. The so-called Palestinian territories are nothing more than a version of the South African Bantustans. It was a cruel mockery of a homeland and none of the basic demands of the Palestinians were conceded. Israel continued to rule the roost. Since then things have gone from bad to worse.
Now the fall of Israel’s most powerful regional ally has radically altered the whole equation. It has shaken the Israeli government and called into question the deep-seated belief that the occupation of the Palestinian territories can be sustained indefinitely. Overnight the carefully prepared plans of the imperialists are in ruins.
Decades of so-called armed struggle and negotiations have led nowhere. But the revolutionary movement poses the Palestinian question in a completely different light. The ruling clique in Israel is not at all worried about Hamas’ rockets and suicide bombers. On the contrary, every rocket that falls on an Israeli village serves to push Israeli public opinion behind the government. But a Palestinian Intifada, combined with the Arab Revolution in Egypt and Jordan, is another matter altogether.
As a military power, Israel may be unbeatable. In the event of a war with Egypt, Israel would probably win again. But could it win against masses of protesters in town squares across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel too, demanding political rights for Palestinians? This is a question that must keep the Israeli generals and politicians awake at night.
The fall of Mubarak has very serious implications for Israel. In the best case, Israel’s defence spending will have to rise still further, as its rulers contemplate the threat of a war in the south. This will put further strains on an economy that was already in crisis. New cuts and attacks on living standards will be the result, putting an intensification of the class struggle on the order of the day in Israel.
Netanyahu imagined that his country was an island of stability and democracy that could not be affected by revolution. But basically, Israel is just another Middle Eastern country that is threatened by the revolutionary wave emanating from Tunisia and Egypt. There are new contradictions inside Israel. The increase in fuel and water has made Israel one of the most expensive countries to live in the world. The Histadrut (Israeli trade unions) leadership has been playing with the idea of a national strike.
The events in Tunisia and Egypt will have profound consequences for the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been betrayed by everyone they put their trust in, beginning with the supposedly friendly Arab regimes and ending with their own leaders. The latest revelations by Wikileaks had exposed the scandalous collusion of Abbas with the Israelis and Americans. This will have a big effect on the psychology of the Palestinian masses.
For forty years, the PLO leadership has betrayed the Palestinian cause. The PLO could have taken power in Jordan in 1970. Then the whole history of the region would have been different. But the petty bourgeois nationalist leadership refused to attack their "Arab brothers". So the Jordanian monarch mobilized the Bedouins who (with the help of the Pakistani Army) slaughtered thousands of Palestinians. It is a fact that many more Palestinians have been killed by Arab "brothers" than by the Israelis.
The same Bedouins who attacked the Palestinians in 1970 are now protesting against the King. Former army officers are warning the regime that unless it makes concessions it will face the same fate as that of Ben Ali and Mubarak. This shows that the Hashemite monarchy is fast losing its base and is hanging by a thread. The movement has spread from the Bedouin areas to Amman and the Palestinians, who make up the majority of the population of Jordan.
It is time to reassess the tactics and strategy of the Palestinian struggle. The Wikileaks revelations have exposed the Palestinian leaders as little more than Israeli stooges. The mood of the Palestinians is angry and bitter. There have been a number of attempts to organise mobilisations both against Abbas in the West Bank and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have been met with heavy repression. Even demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions have been banned by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Now a united movement against the current leadership of the Palestinian movement, against Israeli occupation and for the unity of the Palestinian struggle has been set up, attracting the support of tens of thousands on Facebook and calling for demonstrations and protests. For Palestinians, an Intifada in Egypt was part of their dreams for decades. Now it is a reality. The overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes by the masses will deal a serious blow against Israel and US imperialism and transform the whole situation. Now for the first time the Palestinians can see who are their only real friends: the workers and peasants of the whole Arab world.
This represents a fundamental turning point. The Palestinians have seen how it is possible to fight against the oppressors, not with bombs and rockets, but by revolutionary mass action. The whole mood will be different now. There will be new stirrings in the youth, movements against Hamas in Gaza, and against the PLO leaders in the West Bank. There is growing pressure for something different than what has existed heretofore. The idea of a new Intifada will rapidly gain ground among the Palestinians. This would change everything.
For a Socialist Federation!
After the First World War the so-called Arab nation states were created artificially by imperialism. This division was not based on any natural or historical criterion but purely on the interests of imperialism. The Sykes-Picot agreement divided Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan between Britain and France. Under the Balfour Declaration in 1918, the British gave permission for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In the Gulf, small states with huge reserves of oil were established so they could be controlled by imperialism easily, for access to resources. The Saudi monarchy consisted of desert bandits, raised to power by the British agent Wilson Cox. Imperialism has divided the living body of the Great Arab Nation.
The Arab Revolution can never succeed until it has put an end to the shameful Balkanization of the Arab world. The only way to break the chains forged by imperialism is to place on our banner the slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Arab world. This would create a mighty Socialist Commonwealth, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates.
On the basis of a nationalized planned economy, unemployment would be immediately abolished. A vast reservoir of unused labour power would be mobilized to solve the problems of housing, health, education and the infrastructure. By pooling the huge resources of all these countries on the basis of a common plan of production, deserts could be made to bloom and a new cultural revolution would put all the gains of the past in the shade.
A Socialist Federation, with full autonomy for all the peoples, is the only way to solve the national and religious strife that has poisoned the lives of the peoples for decades, leading to one war after another. Muslims and Copts, Sunnis and Shiites, Palestinians and Jews, Arabs, Amazigh (Berbers), Maronites, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians, Druzes – all will find a place in a Federation based on the principle of absolute equality.
The IMT says:
•Defend the rights of the Palestinian people and all oppressed nationalities to self-determination!
•Down with the imperialist and Israeli aggressors! End the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine!
•Drive out the collaborators! For the revolutionary overthrow of all the Arab puppets of imperialism!
•Expropriate the property of the imperialists and their Arab stooges! The wealth of the Arab lands must be returned to the people!
•For the revolutionary unity of the peoples! For the Socialist Federation of the Middle East and North Africa, on the basis of a free, equal and fraternal union, with full autonomy to every nationality!
Leaps in consciousness
The Egyptian Revolution is the final answer to all those sceptics and intellectual snobs who constantly harp on the alleged “low level of consciousness” of the masses. Those western “experts” who talked contemptuously of the Egyptians as “apathetic” and “passive” and “indifferent to politics” must eat their words.
Marxists understand that human consciousness in general is not progressive or revolutionary but profoundly conservative. Resistance to change is deeply rooted in the human mind as part of a survival mechanism that comes from the remote past of our species. As a general rule, therefore, consciousness lags behind events. It does not change gradually, today more revolutionary than yesterday and tomorrow more than today, any more than water that is cooled from 100 to 0 degrees first becomes a paste, then a jelly and finally a solid.
This view of consciousness is metaphysical and mechanical, not materialist and dialectical. Dialectics teaches us that things change into their opposite, and that small, apparently insignificant changes can at a certain point, known in physics as a critical point, produce explosive transformations on a gigantic scale. The change in consciousness happens suddenly, when it is compelled by great events to change. When this occurs, consciousness is swiftly brought into line with reality. This leap of consciousness is precisely what a revolution is.
The masses, whether in Egypt, Iran, Britain or the USA, do not learn from books but from experience. In a revolution, they learn much faster than in other circumstances. The Egyptian workers and youth have learnt more in a few days of struggle than in thirty years of “normal” existence. On the streets the masses developed a sense of their own power. They lost the deadening fear of the uniformed riot police backed up by water cannons and thousands of plain-clothes thugs, who they pushed back and defeated.
In a revolution the learning process is enormously speeded up. We see exactly the same process in Egypt and Tunisia. Here is a vast laboratory where the different vague, competing lists of demands issued by different organisers are put to the test. On the streets the masses decide which slogans are appropriate and which are not. We will see the same process repeated time and time again, and not just in the Middle East and North Africa but everywhere.
From Cairo to Madison
In 1917 it took about a week for people in India to learn that there had been a Revolution in Russia. Today everyone can see the revolution live on their television screens. The situation in the Middle East is having a tremendous effect around the world. In India, for the first time in 32 years, the unions and left parties recently organised a general strike over wages and prices. There was a march of 200,000 on the streets in New Delhi, over food price rises. Although India is growing at an annual rate of nine percent, this increases inequality by concentrating wealth at the top.
In Tunisia and Egypt the capitalist system is beginning to break at its weakest links. The bourgeois will tell us that such things cannot happen in the advanced capitalist countries, that the situation is different and so on and so forth. Yes, the situation is different, but only in degree. Everywhere the working class and the youth will be faced with the same alternative: either we accept the systematic destruction of our living standards and rights – or we fight.
The argument “it cannot happen here” is without any scientific or rational basis. The same thing was said of Tunisia only a couple of months ago, when that country was considered to be the most stable in North Africa. And the same argument was repeated in relation to Egypt even after Ben Ali was overthrown. Just a few weeks were sufficient to expose the hollowness of those words. Such is the speed of events in our epoch. Sooner or later the same question will be posed in every country in Europe, in Japan, in Canada, and also in the United States.
Inflation is rising. Food prices are rising. This will have the most serious effects everywhere, particularly in poor countries. According to the World Bank, 44 million more people will be thrust into extreme poverty in the coming period, pushing the figure to over one billion worldwide. Millions of people are fighting for food, jobs and housing – that is, for the most basic conditions of a semi-civilized existence. These conditions ought to be freely available to everybody in the first decade of the twenty-first century. But the decrepit capitalist system is no longer able to guarantee these things even in Europe and North America. This is why there are riots and uprisings. It is a life and death question.
The present crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis of capitalism. The recovery also is not normal. The capitalists are trying to squeeze the workers more than ever in an attempt to re-establish the economic equilibrium: to pay off their debts, reduce cost of labour, etc. But by so doing, they destabilize the entire situation. This partly explains both the Arab revolution and the upsurge of the class struggle in Europe
Every country in the world has been affected. It is no accident that China added its voice to the chorus calling for a return to “order “in Egypt. In part it is a question of economic interest. The Chinese regime is interested in global economic stability because it wants to continue to earn a lot of money from exports. But above all, Beijing is afraid of anything that could provide an impetus for strikes and protests in China itself. They have clamped down on all protest and blocked any reference to Egypt on the Internet.
By contrast, every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at the marvellous movement of the workers and youth in Tunisia and Egypt. The psychological effects of this cannot be underestimated. For many, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, the idea of revolution appeared as something abstract and remote. Now the events that have unfolded before their eyes on television show that revolution is not just possible but necessary.
In Europe and the USA there is a seething hatred of the bankers and fat cats who are rewarding themselves obscene bonuses while the rest of society suffers continuous attacks on their living standards. This fact is strikingly reflected in the dramatic events in Wisconsin. It is no accident that the workers of Madison, Wisconsin chanted things like “fight like an Egyptian”. This is the effect of the vicious policies being imposed on the working class during an economic recovery in the US.
Suddenly the world has woken up to the fact that there has been an explosion of the class struggle in Wisconsin, with 100,000 people on the streets. We see images of workers holding placards calling the governor Hosni Walker and chanting: "Wisconsin Dictator Must Go". Egyptian workers even sent solidarity messages to the Wisconsin workers. There have been student walkouts, campouts at the state Capitol and spontaneous rallies. The police who were sent to disperse the demonstrators went over to the people, joined the occupation wearing jackets that carried slogans like “cops for labour”. This is an extremely important development.
In Europe we have seen big movements of the workers and youth: eight general strikes in Greece in the last twelve months; a huge strike movement in France bringing three and a half million workers out onto the streets; the movement of the British students; a general strike in Spain; in Italy the movement of the metal workers. Recently there was the biggest general strike in Portugal since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. Even in the Netherlands there were 15,000 students protesting at the Hague. In Eastern Europe as well we have seen big movements in Albania and Romania. In Bulgaria, even the police have been out on strike.
Twenty years ago, the bourgeoisie was overjoyed at the overthrow of “communism”. But their rejoicing was premature. In retrospect the fall of Stalinism will be seen as only the prelude to a far more dramatic development: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Everywhere, including the United States, the system is in crisis. Everywhere the ruling class is trying to place the full burden of the crisis of its system on the shoulders of the poorest layers of society.
These movements have striking similarities to the mass movements that led to the overthrow of the regimes in Eastern Europe. On paper these governments had a powerful state apparatus, big armies, police, and secret police. But that did not save them. Nor will all the money, police and armies in the world save the rulers of Europe and the United States once the workers move to change society.
The masses have shown again and again determination and willingness to struggle. In order to achieve victory they need to be armed with a clear programme and leadership. The ideas of Marxism are the only ones that can provide it. The future is ours.
•Long live the Arab Revolution!
•Workers of the world unite!
•Long live socialism, the only hope for the future of humankind!
•Thawra hatta'l nasr!
London, March 14, 2011
Written by International Marxist Tendency
Thursday, 17 March 2011
To say that a revolution has begun is not to say that it has been completed, much less that victory is assured. It is a struggle of living forces. Revolution is not a one-act drama. It is a complicated process with many ebbs and flows. The overthrow of Mubarak, Ben Ali and Gannouchi marks the end of the first stages, but the Revolution has not yet succeeded in completely overthrowing the old regime, while the latter has not yet succeeded in re-establishing control.
In Russia in 1917 the Revolution lasted for nine months, from February to October, when the workers finally took power under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party. However, the Russian Revolution was not a straight line and proceeded through all kinds of vicissitudes and contradictions. There was a period of open reaction in July and August. Lenin had to flee to Finland and the Bolshevik Party was virtually illegalised. But this merely prepared the way for a new advance of the Revolution, culminating in the October insurrection.
In Spain we saw a similar process, starting with the fall of the monarchy in 1931, followed by a big upsurge of the class struggle. But the defeat of the Asturian Commune in October 1934 led to a period of reaction, the Biennio Negro, or two black years in 1935-6. But this proved to be only the prelude to a new upsurge of the Revolution, starting with the victory of the Popular Front in the elections of 1936, leading to the Civil War and ending in defeat and fascism.
After the fall of Mubarak, the Egyptian Revolution is like a big carnival. But the masses are fighting for things no bourgeois government can give them. Like the Russian workers in February 1917, the workers of Egypt have succeeded in overthrowing a tyrant but they have not won their main objectives. The real struggle is still ahead. What has been solved by Mubarak's overthrow? What was achieved by Ben Ali fleeing to Saudi Arabia? Nothing fundamental has been solved. The workers are fighting for bread, jobs and houses, not for some kind of charade of formal bourgeois democracy in which everything changes so that everything can remain the same.
Through painful experience the masses are learning some serious lessons. Sooner or later they will draw the conclusion that the working class must take power. There will be an extended learning process, a process of inner differentiation. This has already begun. In the revolutionary committees the more moderate elements who led the movement in its early stages, and who have illusions in the army, are being challenged by new layers of workers and youth who are opposed to compromise. They fear that what they have conquered with their blood can be taken away from them by subterfuge. This suspicion is well founded.
With the fall of Mubarak the Egyptian Revolution won its first great victory. But none of the fundamental problems of Egyptian society have been solved. Prices continue to rise, homeless people sleep in cemeteries and about 10 percent of the workforce is unemployed according to official statistics, though the real figure is much higher.
There is a burning anger against inequality and the all-pervading corruption that is the chief characteristic of the old regime. Billions of dollars of public money have gone missing. The amounts looted by the Mubarak family alone are estimated at between $40 billion and $80 billion. This has provoked anger and disgust, in a country where 40 percent of the people are living below the poverty line.
It is impossible to say for sure what will follow. However, we can say that the Revolution will be protracted in time and will experience all manner of ups and downs. At the present time, the masses are intoxicated with the idea of democracy. The feeling of euphoria affects even the most advanced and revolutionary elements. This period of democratic and constitutional illusions is an inevitable phase but it will not last. The Revolution stirs society to the bottom. It awakens new, previously inert and “backward” layers to political life. They are demanding their rights. When these people say "thawra hatta'l nasr" (revolution until victory), they mean it.
All attempts to restore the political equilibrium will come to nothing because the crisis of capitalism does not permit any solution to the most basic needs of the population. There will be a series of unstable bourgeois regimes. One unstable ministry after another will fall. This presents a danger. When the class struggle reaches the point of deadlock, the state tends to rise above society and acquire a relative independence. The result is an unstable military regime, or, to give it its correct name, a Bonapartist regime. The very fact of the existence of such a regime indicates that the Revolution that began on 25 January is not finished. It will experience many new turns before the final denouement can be written.
Despite all the appeals for “national unity”, Egyptian society is becoming sharply polarized. The Revolution still has considerable reserves of support in the population. Students are agitating on the campuses. Workers are staging strikes and factory occupations, driving out hated managers and corrupt trade union leaders. The strike of the Egyptian oil workers won all their demands, including the resignation of the oil minister, in just three days. This shows where the real power lies.
The military regime in Egypt cannot maintain itself for long. All the attempts to restore “order” (that is, the rule of the rich and powerful) have failed. The army has tried to stop strikes, but the strikes continue. Far from subsiding, the movement of the workers is increasing. What can the generals do? If they were unable to use their tanks to crush the insurrection, still less can they use them to crush strikes in what is supposed to be a democratic regime.
The generals will have to pass power to a civilian (i.e. bourgeois) government. This will be counterrevolution in a democratic disguise. But it will not be easy for to the counterrevolution to restore stability. For the workers, democracy is not an empty word. If it does not lead to an improvement in living standards, jobs and houses, what was the point of fighting in the first place?
If all this had happened ten years ago, they might have been able to consolidate some form of bourgeois democratic regimes. The boom in world capitalism would have given them some margin for manoeuvre. But now there is a profound crisis on a world scale. This is both the reason for the revolutionary ferment and the reason why it cannot easily be brought to an end. The capitalist system cannot offer anything to the masses. It can't even provide jobs and a decent living standard in the USA and Europe. How can they hope to do it in Egypt?
The actions of the workers striking, occupying the factories and kicking out the managers are of tremendous importance. They mean that the Revolution is entering the factories and workplaces. They signify that the workers of Egypt are proceeding from the struggle for democracy in society to the struggle for economic democracy in the workplace. It means that the Egyptian working class is beginning to participate in the Revolution under its own banner, fighting for its own class demands. This is a decisive factor for the future of the Revolution.
The workers are protesting against corruption and low salaries. They are rebelling against state-appointed managements and setting up revolutionary committees to run factories and other workplaces. That is the correct line to take.
Bourgeois commentators have emphasized that many of these strikes are of an economic nature. Of course! The working class is pressing its immediate demands. That is to say, they see the Revolution as a means of fighting not just for formal democracy but for better wages, for better working conditions – for a better life. They are fighting for their own class demands. And this struggle cannot cease just because Hosni Mubarak is no longer sitting in the Presidential Palace.
For a workers’ democracy!
In Suez, the state collapsed completely for four or five days. Like in Tunisia earlier, revolutionary committees and armed checkpoints were established to defend the people. These facts demonstrate beyond question that soviets (i.e. workers’ councils) are not an arbitrary invention of the Marxists but emerge spontaneously in any genuine revolution.
This poses the central question, that of the state. The old state power has been brought to its knees by the Revolution. It must be replaced with a new power. There is a power in society that is stronger than any state. That power is the revolutionary people. But it must be organized. In both Egypt and Tunisia there are elements of dual power in the revolutionary committees. Entire cities and regions were taken over by these committees.
In Tunisia, the revolutionary organisation of the people went even further than in Egypt. These bodies, in many cases organised around the local structures of the UGTT trade unions, took over the running of all aspects of society in towns and cities and even in whole regions, after expelling the old, RCD regime, authorities. For all the talk of "chaos" and "lack of security" on the part of the ruling class, the fact is that working people organised themselves to guarantee order and safety, but this was a different type of order, a revolutionary order.
In Egypt, following the collapse of the police force on January 28th, people stepped in to protect their neighbourhoods. They set up checkpoints, armed with knives, swords, machetes and sticks to inspect cars that were coming in and out. In some areas, the popular committees virtually took over the running of the town, even organizing the traffic. Here we have the embryo of a people’s militia – of an alternative state power.
And just as the people set up committees to protect their areas from criminal elements when the police were taken off the streets in order to cause chaos and disorder, now in order to organize the Revolution in the most effective manner, the same idea must be taken up and generalized. In order to defend and extend the Revolution, we must form defence committees everywhere!
Elected Committees for the Defence of the Revolution, which already exist in some areas, should be established in every factory, street and village. The revolutionary committees should link up on a local, regional and national level. This would be the starting point for a future democratic workers’ and peasants’ government – a real alternative to the rotten dictatorial regime.
The IMT demands:
•A complete purge and democratization of the army
•For the setting up of soldiers- committees and committees of revolutionary-minded lower ranking officers
•Out with the corrupt and reactionary generals
•Immediate disbandment of all repressive bodies
•All those guilty of acts of terror against the people must be put on trial and punished
•The general arming of the people
•The establishment of a people’s militia
•For a workers’ and peasants’ government!
Revolution knows no frontiers
The international character of the revolution has been clear from the very beginnings. Other Arab countries face many similar problems to those in Tunisia and Egypt: rising food prices, sharply deteriorating economic conditions, unemployment and rampant official corruption. Many millions of people are struggling to exist. And in society as in nature, similar conditions produce similar results. What has happened in Tunisia and Egypt can happen in many other countries, and not only in the Arab world.
The imperialists have been trying to console themselves with the thought that there is no domino effect. But the dominoes are already beginning to fall: Libya, Morocco, Sudan, Iraq, Djibouti, Yemen, Bahrain and Oman – all are entering the revolutionary maelstrom. As in Tunisia and Egypt, the people of Algeria, Jordan and Yemen were living in poverty under dictatorial ruling elites which lived a luxurious life by plundering the nation.
In the case of Iraq, the Revolution is linked to the struggle against imperialism and foreign domination and the right to self-determination of the Kurdish people. At the same time, one characteristic of the protest movement in Iraq is that it has cut across the sectarian divide between Shiites and Sunnis, between Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens, which has been the basis for the domination of reactionary politicians.
Among the main issues raised by the protesters are rising living costs, partly caused by the government’s withdrawal of subsidies for petrol and sugar—an explosive issue across the Arab world. The leaders of Jordan, Algeria and Libya all reduced taxes on imported food or lowered the prices of staples in an attempt to avoid unrest. In Algeria the regime has made concessions in an attempt to prevent an explosion that would be even bigger than the insurrection in the Berber areas in 2001.
Even the oil-rich monarchs of the Gulf are worried. Kuwait has distributed £4,000 (€4600 or US$4600) to all its citizens to keep the population quiet. But such measures can at best succeed only in postponing the inevitable revolutionary upsurge.
The Western media shamelessly portrayed the movement in Bahrain as a religious-sectarian struggle of the Shiite majority and the Sunnis. That is a lie. The Bahrainis are fighting against corruption, for free elections, against discrimination and for rights for immigrants and women, for equitable distribution of wealth and against unemployment. Everywhere we see the same courage of the masses in face of fire. In Bahrain the army was forced to withdraw from Pearl Square. Once again, the role of the working class was crucial, as it was the threat of a general strike on the part of the Bahraini trade unions which forced the regime to make some concessions
In all the Gulf Sates there is brutal exploitation of labour, largely immigrant labour. There are 1.1 million Pakistanis working in Saudi Arabia alone. A similar situation exists throughout the Gulf. There have been strikes and uprisings there in the past that have not been reported, such as the strike of 8,000 building workers in Dubai.
The Saudi regime itself, that bastion of reaction in the Middle East, resembles a pressure cooker without a safety valve. In such a regime, when the explosion comes, it will occur without warning and with extreme violence. The Saudi royal family is corrupt, degenerate and rotten to the core. It is split over the succession and there is growing resentment and discontent in the population. When the moment comes, all the oil in the kingdom will not save them. It is significant that now even the Wahhabi clergy is turning against them.
The Arab Revolution has revived the revolutionary movement in Iran, where officers in the Revolutionary Guard have said they are not prepared to fire on the people and warned the Basij to leave their truncheons at home. Rifts in the state apparatus reveal the deep crisis of the regime which is split from top to bottom.
Because each case is somewhat different, it is hard to say what kinds of regimes will emerge in each case. What kinds of political tendencies and regimes will emerge depends on many factors and will differ from one country to another. The processes in Tunisia and Egypt were almost identical. But in Libya the situation is different. The regime had more of a base, particularly around Tripoli. The uprising was largely confined to the eastern part and the Revolution has been transformed into a civil war, the outcome of which is still uncertain.
Gaddafi doesn’t care if the whole country goes down with him. Having lost control of the whole of the east including the second biggest city, Benghazi, he decided to fight to the last, plunging Libya into a bloody conflict. There have been wide ranging defections in the Libyan army, even at the top level. But it did not have the same effect as in Egypt because of the different nature of the army and the regime.
One thing is clear: everything has been thrown into the melting pot. Not one of these regimes will survive in the end. There are different possibilities, depending on the class balance of forces and a whole series of internal and external factors that are impossible to foresee. But one thing is clear: no matter what regime is installed, it will not be able to satisfy even the most minimal demands of the masses.
Impotence of imperialism
The imperialists are worried about where all this will go, and how far it will spread. They did not expect these events and do not know how to react. Obama did not dare call on Mubarak publicly to resign because of the effects in these other states. He was obliged to speak in carefully calculated code. The very words “democracy” and “human rights” in the mouth of Obama and his European counterparts stink of hypocrisy.
The cynicism of Western governments stands exposed in all its crudity. After decades of backing the vicious dictatorship in Tunisia, suddenly they are all in favour of democracy and human rights. Yet Sarkozy had praised Ben Ali as a friend of democracy and human rights even when he was torturing his opponents in the prisons. And Washington covered up the barbarous acts of all the other pro-western dictators. Now they are getting their just reward.
Politics affects the economy and vice-versa. Oil prices have climbed on fears the unrest could spread to other Arab states including oil giant Saudi Arabia or interfere with oil supplies from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean through the Suez Canal. Brent crude surpassed the $120 a barrel mark and is still hovering over the $110 mark. This threatens to undermine the weak and fragile recovery of the world economy.
For economic, political and military reasons the imperialists need stability in the Middle East. But how are they to get it? That is the question! From the beginning the US has been struggling to find a coherent response to events that are changing by the day, even by the hour. In reality the strongest power in the world has been reduced to the role of a helpless onlooker. An article in The Independent by their correspondent in Washington, Rupert Cornwell, carried the interesting title: Washington's strong words underline US impotence. That expresses the real position.
Some “clever” people, however, think that the Arab Revolution is all part of an imperialist conspiracy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The bourgeoisie was taken completely by surprise by all this. These revolutions are completely destabilizing one of their most important regions. This is far from welcome to them. And it has repercussions far beyond the Arab world.
The Middle East is a key area for the imperialists. The Americans have spent four decades establishing their position there. Egypt was a key piece in their calculations. Now all this has been swept away before their eyes in a few weeks. The richest and most powerful state on earth was completely paralyzed. Obama could not intervene, and even found it difficult to say anything about it for fear of offending their Saudi allies.
Eight percent of world trade passes through the Suez Canal, and the Americans were terrified that would be closed, but they could do nothing about it. All that Obama could say was that it was the Egyptian people's choice. The Americans did not say that when it came to Iraq or Afghanistan, where US imperialism did not think twice about invading.
US warships were in fact sent to Suez but did nothing. This was intended to reveal the mailed fist that is concealed within the velvet glove of Obama’s “democracy”. But in reality it was an empty gesture. The US burned its fingers in Iraq. A new military adventure in Egypt would have provoked a storm in the USA and on a world scale. There would not have been a single US embassy left standing in the Middle East and all the other pro-US Arab regimes would be faced with overthrow
The USA has a special interest in Bahrain because of its important strategic position next door to Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the base of the Fifth Fleet, the most important US naval base in the whole region. Yet they were powerless to intervene against the revolutionary movement in Bahrain. If this was all part of an imperialist plan, nobody told Obama about it!
[Edited 29 March 2011:]
In the case of Libya they did not hesitate to denounce Gaddafi and call for his overthrow – which they signally failed to do in the case of Mubarak. This is yet another example of their duplicity, cynicism and double standards. Although initially they hinted that military action was not ruled out, they hesitated to act. Hilary Clinton said that a no-fly zone would have to be approved by the UN. This is a complete contrast to the conduct of the USA in Iraq, when they completely by-passed the UN.
In the end, under pressure from the French and the British, the USA agreed to a no-fly zone. We now have open imperialist aggression in Libya. This has nothing to do with defending the people of Libya and even less with defending the revolution. The opposite is the case. Their aim is to get a foothold in the region in order to strangle the revolutions that have begun.
We oppose this imperialist bullying. The task of overthrowing Gaddafi belongs to the Libyan people. The truth is that the initial revolutionary impetus that began in the east has been sidetracked and taken over by counter-revolutionary elements on the Interim Council who have now handed over the fate of the Libyan people to western imperialism.
The IMT says:
•No to foreign intervention!
•End the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan!
•Stop the bombing of Libya!
•Down with imperialism!
•Hands off the Arab Revolution!
Israel and the Palestinians
Nowhere has the Arab Revolution caused greater panic than in Israel. The strongest military force in the region was paralysed in the face of the events in Egypt. The Israeli ruling clique even had to be careful about what they said about the situation in Egypt. Binyamin Netanyahu ordered ministers not to talk about it in public. Israel called on the United States and a number of European countries to curb their criticism of President Hosni Mubarak. Jerusalem tried desperately to convince its allies that it was in the West's interest to back Mubarak in order to maintain the stability of the Egyptian regime. This flew in the face of the efforts of the United States and European Union to remove him so that they could guarantee an “orderly transition” and avoid a revolutionary overthrow.
Marx pointed out that no people could ever be free if it enslaved another people. Israel rules over a large and disaffected population of Palestinians who are learning on their televisions how to overthrow tyranny. On the West Bank the Palestinians are held down with the help of the Palestinian Authority’s police. But it is open to question whether Palestinian police units, or Israeli security forces, would be able to crush a mass democracy movement, after Egypt’s powerful army refused to fire on the people.
The separate peace signed by Israel and Egypt in 1979 was a betrayal of the Palestinian cause and is deeply unpopular in most of the Arab world. The backing of Egypt has been an important element in helping the continuing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories conquered in 1967.
The Oslo agreement between Israel and the Palestinians in 1993 was a new betrayal. The so-called Palestinian territories are nothing more than a version of the South African Bantustans. It was a cruel mockery of a homeland and none of the basic demands of the Palestinians were conceded. Israel continued to rule the roost. Since then things have gone from bad to worse.
Now the fall of Israel’s most powerful regional ally has radically altered the whole equation. It has shaken the Israeli government and called into question the deep-seated belief that the occupation of the Palestinian territories can be sustained indefinitely. Overnight the carefully prepared plans of the imperialists are in ruins.
Decades of so-called armed struggle and negotiations have led nowhere. But the revolutionary movement poses the Palestinian question in a completely different light. The ruling clique in Israel is not at all worried about Hamas’ rockets and suicide bombers. On the contrary, every rocket that falls on an Israeli village serves to push Israeli public opinion behind the government. But a Palestinian Intifada, combined with the Arab Revolution in Egypt and Jordan, is another matter altogether.
As a military power, Israel may be unbeatable. In the event of a war with Egypt, Israel would probably win again. But could it win against masses of protesters in town squares across the West Bank, Gaza and Israel too, demanding political rights for Palestinians? This is a question that must keep the Israeli generals and politicians awake at night.
The fall of Mubarak has very serious implications for Israel. In the best case, Israel’s defence spending will have to rise still further, as its rulers contemplate the threat of a war in the south. This will put further strains on an economy that was already in crisis. New cuts and attacks on living standards will be the result, putting an intensification of the class struggle on the order of the day in Israel.
Netanyahu imagined that his country was an island of stability and democracy that could not be affected by revolution. But basically, Israel is just another Middle Eastern country that is threatened by the revolutionary wave emanating from Tunisia and Egypt. There are new contradictions inside Israel. The increase in fuel and water has made Israel one of the most expensive countries to live in the world. The Histadrut (Israeli trade unions) leadership has been playing with the idea of a national strike.
The events in Tunisia and Egypt will have profound consequences for the Palestinians. The Palestinians have been betrayed by everyone they put their trust in, beginning with the supposedly friendly Arab regimes and ending with their own leaders. The latest revelations by Wikileaks had exposed the scandalous collusion of Abbas with the Israelis and Americans. This will have a big effect on the psychology of the Palestinian masses.
For forty years, the PLO leadership has betrayed the Palestinian cause. The PLO could have taken power in Jordan in 1970. Then the whole history of the region would have been different. But the petty bourgeois nationalist leadership refused to attack their "Arab brothers". So the Jordanian monarch mobilized the Bedouins who (with the help of the Pakistani Army) slaughtered thousands of Palestinians. It is a fact that many more Palestinians have been killed by Arab "brothers" than by the Israelis.
The same Bedouins who attacked the Palestinians in 1970 are now protesting against the King. Former army officers are warning the regime that unless it makes concessions it will face the same fate as that of Ben Ali and Mubarak. This shows that the Hashemite monarchy is fast losing its base and is hanging by a thread. The movement has spread from the Bedouin areas to Amman and the Palestinians, who make up the majority of the population of Jordan.
It is time to reassess the tactics and strategy of the Palestinian struggle. The Wikileaks revelations have exposed the Palestinian leaders as little more than Israeli stooges. The mood of the Palestinians is angry and bitter. There have been a number of attempts to organise mobilisations both against Abbas in the West Bank and against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which have been met with heavy repression. Even demonstrations in solidarity with the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions have been banned by both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.
Now a united movement against the current leadership of the Palestinian movement, against Israeli occupation and for the unity of the Palestinian struggle has been set up, attracting the support of tens of thousands on Facebook and calling for demonstrations and protests. For Palestinians, an Intifada in Egypt was part of their dreams for decades. Now it is a reality. The overthrow of the reactionary Arab regimes by the masses will deal a serious blow against Israel and US imperialism and transform the whole situation. Now for the first time the Palestinians can see who are their only real friends: the workers and peasants of the whole Arab world.
This represents a fundamental turning point. The Palestinians have seen how it is possible to fight against the oppressors, not with bombs and rockets, but by revolutionary mass action. The whole mood will be different now. There will be new stirrings in the youth, movements against Hamas in Gaza, and against the PLO leaders in the West Bank. There is growing pressure for something different than what has existed heretofore. The idea of a new Intifada will rapidly gain ground among the Palestinians. This would change everything.
For a Socialist Federation!
After the First World War the so-called Arab nation states were created artificially by imperialism. This division was not based on any natural or historical criterion but purely on the interests of imperialism. The Sykes-Picot agreement divided Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan between Britain and France. Under the Balfour Declaration in 1918, the British gave permission for the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine.
In the Gulf, small states with huge reserves of oil were established so they could be controlled by imperialism easily, for access to resources. The Saudi monarchy consisted of desert bandits, raised to power by the British agent Wilson Cox. Imperialism has divided the living body of the Great Arab Nation.
The Arab Revolution can never succeed until it has put an end to the shameful Balkanization of the Arab world. The only way to break the chains forged by imperialism is to place on our banner the slogan of a Socialist Federation of the Arab world. This would create a mighty Socialist Commonwealth, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Euphrates.
On the basis of a nationalized planned economy, unemployment would be immediately abolished. A vast reservoir of unused labour power would be mobilized to solve the problems of housing, health, education and the infrastructure. By pooling the huge resources of all these countries on the basis of a common plan of production, deserts could be made to bloom and a new cultural revolution would put all the gains of the past in the shade.
A Socialist Federation, with full autonomy for all the peoples, is the only way to solve the national and religious strife that has poisoned the lives of the peoples for decades, leading to one war after another. Muslims and Copts, Sunnis and Shiites, Palestinians and Jews, Arabs, Amazigh (Berbers), Maronites, Kurds, Turkmens, Armenians, Druzes – all will find a place in a Federation based on the principle of absolute equality.
The IMT says:
•Defend the rights of the Palestinian people and all oppressed nationalities to self-determination!
•Down with the imperialist and Israeli aggressors! End the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine!
•Drive out the collaborators! For the revolutionary overthrow of all the Arab puppets of imperialism!
•Expropriate the property of the imperialists and their Arab stooges! The wealth of the Arab lands must be returned to the people!
•For the revolutionary unity of the peoples! For the Socialist Federation of the Middle East and North Africa, on the basis of a free, equal and fraternal union, with full autonomy to every nationality!
Leaps in consciousness
The Egyptian Revolution is the final answer to all those sceptics and intellectual snobs who constantly harp on the alleged “low level of consciousness” of the masses. Those western “experts” who talked contemptuously of the Egyptians as “apathetic” and “passive” and “indifferent to politics” must eat their words.
Marxists understand that human consciousness in general is not progressive or revolutionary but profoundly conservative. Resistance to change is deeply rooted in the human mind as part of a survival mechanism that comes from the remote past of our species. As a general rule, therefore, consciousness lags behind events. It does not change gradually, today more revolutionary than yesterday and tomorrow more than today, any more than water that is cooled from 100 to 0 degrees first becomes a paste, then a jelly and finally a solid.
This view of consciousness is metaphysical and mechanical, not materialist and dialectical. Dialectics teaches us that things change into their opposite, and that small, apparently insignificant changes can at a certain point, known in physics as a critical point, produce explosive transformations on a gigantic scale. The change in consciousness happens suddenly, when it is compelled by great events to change. When this occurs, consciousness is swiftly brought into line with reality. This leap of consciousness is precisely what a revolution is.
The masses, whether in Egypt, Iran, Britain or the USA, do not learn from books but from experience. In a revolution, they learn much faster than in other circumstances. The Egyptian workers and youth have learnt more in a few days of struggle than in thirty years of “normal” existence. On the streets the masses developed a sense of their own power. They lost the deadening fear of the uniformed riot police backed up by water cannons and thousands of plain-clothes thugs, who they pushed back and defeated.
In a revolution the learning process is enormously speeded up. We see exactly the same process in Egypt and Tunisia. Here is a vast laboratory where the different vague, competing lists of demands issued by different organisers are put to the test. On the streets the masses decide which slogans are appropriate and which are not. We will see the same process repeated time and time again, and not just in the Middle East and North Africa but everywhere.
From Cairo to Madison
In 1917 it took about a week for people in India to learn that there had been a Revolution in Russia. Today everyone can see the revolution live on their television screens. The situation in the Middle East is having a tremendous effect around the world. In India, for the first time in 32 years, the unions and left parties recently organised a general strike over wages and prices. There was a march of 200,000 on the streets in New Delhi, over food price rises. Although India is growing at an annual rate of nine percent, this increases inequality by concentrating wealth at the top.
In Tunisia and Egypt the capitalist system is beginning to break at its weakest links. The bourgeois will tell us that such things cannot happen in the advanced capitalist countries, that the situation is different and so on and so forth. Yes, the situation is different, but only in degree. Everywhere the working class and the youth will be faced with the same alternative: either we accept the systematic destruction of our living standards and rights – or we fight.
The argument “it cannot happen here” is without any scientific or rational basis. The same thing was said of Tunisia only a couple of months ago, when that country was considered to be the most stable in North Africa. And the same argument was repeated in relation to Egypt even after Ben Ali was overthrown. Just a few weeks were sufficient to expose the hollowness of those words. Such is the speed of events in our epoch. Sooner or later the same question will be posed in every country in Europe, in Japan, in Canada, and also in the United States.
Inflation is rising. Food prices are rising. This will have the most serious effects everywhere, particularly in poor countries. According to the World Bank, 44 million more people will be thrust into extreme poverty in the coming period, pushing the figure to over one billion worldwide. Millions of people are fighting for food, jobs and housing – that is, for the most basic conditions of a semi-civilized existence. These conditions ought to be freely available to everybody in the first decade of the twenty-first century. But the decrepit capitalist system is no longer able to guarantee these things even in Europe and North America. This is why there are riots and uprisings. It is a life and death question.
The present crisis is not a normal cyclical crisis of capitalism. The recovery also is not normal. The capitalists are trying to squeeze the workers more than ever in an attempt to re-establish the economic equilibrium: to pay off their debts, reduce cost of labour, etc. But by so doing, they destabilize the entire situation. This partly explains both the Arab revolution and the upsurge of the class struggle in Europe
Every country in the world has been affected. It is no accident that China added its voice to the chorus calling for a return to “order “in Egypt. In part it is a question of economic interest. The Chinese regime is interested in global economic stability because it wants to continue to earn a lot of money from exports. But above all, Beijing is afraid of anything that could provide an impetus for strikes and protests in China itself. They have clamped down on all protest and blocked any reference to Egypt on the Internet.
By contrast, every class conscious worker in the world will rejoice at the marvellous movement of the workers and youth in Tunisia and Egypt. The psychological effects of this cannot be underestimated. For many, especially in the advanced capitalist countries, the idea of revolution appeared as something abstract and remote. Now the events that have unfolded before their eyes on television show that revolution is not just possible but necessary.
In Europe and the USA there is a seething hatred of the bankers and fat cats who are rewarding themselves obscene bonuses while the rest of society suffers continuous attacks on their living standards. This fact is strikingly reflected in the dramatic events in Wisconsin. It is no accident that the workers of Madison, Wisconsin chanted things like “fight like an Egyptian”. This is the effect of the vicious policies being imposed on the working class during an economic recovery in the US.
Suddenly the world has woken up to the fact that there has been an explosion of the class struggle in Wisconsin, with 100,000 people on the streets. We see images of workers holding placards calling the governor Hosni Walker and chanting: "Wisconsin Dictator Must Go". Egyptian workers even sent solidarity messages to the Wisconsin workers. There have been student walkouts, campouts at the state Capitol and spontaneous rallies. The police who were sent to disperse the demonstrators went over to the people, joined the occupation wearing jackets that carried slogans like “cops for labour”. This is an extremely important development.
In Europe we have seen big movements of the workers and youth: eight general strikes in Greece in the last twelve months; a huge strike movement in France bringing three and a half million workers out onto the streets; the movement of the British students; a general strike in Spain; in Italy the movement of the metal workers. Recently there was the biggest general strike in Portugal since the fall of the dictatorship in 1974. Even in the Netherlands there were 15,000 students protesting at the Hague. In Eastern Europe as well we have seen big movements in Albania and Romania. In Bulgaria, even the police have been out on strike.
Twenty years ago, the bourgeoisie was overjoyed at the overthrow of “communism”. But their rejoicing was premature. In retrospect the fall of Stalinism will be seen as only the prelude to a far more dramatic development: the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism. Everywhere, including the United States, the system is in crisis. Everywhere the ruling class is trying to place the full burden of the crisis of its system on the shoulders of the poorest layers of society.
These movements have striking similarities to the mass movements that led to the overthrow of the regimes in Eastern Europe. On paper these governments had a powerful state apparatus, big armies, police, and secret police. But that did not save them. Nor will all the money, police and armies in the world save the rulers of Europe and the United States once the workers move to change society.
The masses have shown again and again determination and willingness to struggle. In order to achieve victory they need to be armed with a clear programme and leadership. The ideas of Marxism are the only ones that can provide it. The future is ours.
•Long live the Arab Revolution!
•Workers of the world unite!
•Long live socialism, the only hope for the future of humankind!
•Thawra hatta'l nasr!
London, March 14, 2011
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