Predictably enough the it’s the shagging around and CV tampering that excite most comment about Manning Marable’s new biography of Malcolm X. But his life story does throw up many more interesting questions about his political evolution and his relationship with the far left.
For example, could socialists have a relationship with members of a cult who believe that white people are an inferior version of Black people, the result of a genetic experiment conducted 6000 years ago? Or have a constructive dialogue with someone who made public statements six months ago that inter-racial marriage is “evil”? Or invite prominent, recently expelled, members of such a cult to speak at their meetings and give interviews in their papers?
Socialists leave theological disputes to others. We do, though, try to understand what organisations represent and how they evolve when the real world imposes itself on them. From this point of view we have much to learn how revolutionary socialists in the United States developed their relationship with Malcolm X in the months before his murder in 1965. This too was at a time of imperialist war and a global radicalisation with a strong internationalist content.
Malcolm X joined the Nation of Islam while serving a sentence for burglary. He was a drug dealer and career criminal. It was a sect, isolated from mainstream Black politics and not recognised by the American Islamic community. It enforced a rigid discipline and sexual abstinence on its followers. It preached Black unity and Black separatism. Its attraction for Malcolm X in his cell was the message that he had sunk so low because of racist oppression. The Nation of Islam promised to restore his personal dignity and allow him to fight against racist American society.
He rose quickly to become number two to the cult’s leader Elijah Muhammad, a man who declared himself to be appointed by god. From 1952 until his expulsion from the Nation of Islam in 1964, Malcolm X worked as a full time organiser and speaker for the group.
Malcolm was suspended and then expelled from the Nation of Islam on the pretext of remarks that he had made about the assassination of President Kennedy. The real reason was that Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm were developing very different ways of relating to the civil rights demonstrations, marches and pickets that were starting all over the United States as Black Americans started fighting for their rights. Muhammad’s version of Black unity was that the other Black organisations would follow his instructions. Malcolm was prepared to work with other organisations in united fronts. So when Los Angeles police shot seven Black Muslims in April 1962, Malcolm went there and organised mass protest meetings, got TV coverage and was creating a mass defence campaign. Muhammad put a stop to this and Malcolm acquiesced.
But by March 1964 Malcolm was saying “I am prepared to co-operate in local civil rights actions in the South and elsewhere because every campaign can only heighten the political consciousness of the Negroes.” He was in touch with the communities that were organising and the youth who were fighting. He was by now following developments in the colonial revolutions and was quickly transcending the political and philosophical limitations of his Nation of Islam background.
The majority of the American left at the time was hostile. The Communist Party, for example, denounced Black Nationalism, siding with the more conservative civil rights figures against the more radical. Its paper wrote “The Muslim organization in general and Malcolm X in particular, are ultra-reactionary forces operating in the orbit of the Negro people’s movement with the strategic assignment to sow ideological confusion.”
Writing about these events Barry Sheppard who was a leading member of the US SWP (then the organisation of supporters of the Fourth International) says: “One of the things we came to understand was that the prejudice of some Blacks toward whites and the racism of most whites towards Blacks were not the same. The Nation of Islam, whom the media dubbed the Black Muslims, for example, had a theory about the origin of the white race, which they considered the spawn of Satan. Was this the same thing as white racist theories about the nature of Blacks? No, we said. Prejudice is wrong, whoever espouses it. But the prejudice of some Blacks toward whites is a distorted form of opposition to the oppression of Blacks by white society. White racism towards Blacks, however, is a false justification for the oppression of Blacks.”
This was a different way of approaching movements and politics. These socialists were interpreting what Malcolm X was saying and doing and appreciated that he was evolving because he was responding to the radicalisations that where taking place. They reported his speeches in their paper because they understood that the rise of Black Nationalism was an expression of opposition to racist oppression. They also understood that the religious language that people like Malcolm used was the vocabulary they had borrowed to explain the real world. Most importantly they knew that people’s ideas and language can change very quickly when big events like wars and rebellions are taking place.
This was made clear when Malcolm agreed to speak at a meeting organised by the SWP in New York. A few weeks later he again spoke at one of their meetings. His politics were becoming very different from the views he had held for a number of years. After splitting with the Nation of Islam he had gone to Africa where he met several participants in the colonial revolution. By the time he returned he had reached the view that a secular political organisation was needed. He was also passionately opposed to the Vietnam War and the assaults on Congo by the United States and Belgium.
It was evident that he was moving dramatically to the left. In a speech in December 1964 he said: “You can’t operate a capitalistic system unless you are vulturistic; you have to have someone else’s blood to suck to be a capitalist. You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker”
Speaking to a meeting organised by the revolutionary socialists in April 1964 Malcolm had predicted, “1964.will be a year of much racial violence and bloodshed.” In July it took the police three days to put down a rebellion by Harlem residents following the police murder of a 15-year-old boy. Malcolm had seen what was coming. The years that followed saw similar rebellions in several cities. At the same time new militant Black organisations were formed and Malcolm X was seen as the prophet and the symbol of this upsurge.
Those on the left who have opposed collaboration with Muslim organisations in the anti-war movement or object to holding meetings in Islamic centres would have run a mile from Malcolm. We don’t know what his views on women’s or gay rights were in his Nation of Islam days but we can be sure they weren’t pretty. But what his example shows is that it is possible, if we are willing to look at ideas as things that can be changed, to have an influence on how people interpret the world and how they act politically. Barry Sheppard makes the point well when he writes: “our relationship to Malcolm X has almost nothing to do with his being a Muslim, but to him as a revolutionary Black fighter.”
I gotta comment here because I’m one of the people you must be referring to who has objected to working with (certain) Muslim groups in the anti-war movement or holding (certain) meetings in (certain) Islamic centres (my point with all the parentheses: I really doubt any one on the left has objected to working with any and all Muslim groups – it is particular groups with particular histories that should raise concern). I don’t think the case of Malcolm X can be put into service for this argument.
It is not merely the views on women or gays that gives well-informed people cause for concern about some prominent state-supported groups such as the MCB or IFE/ELM, it is their historical and ongoing association with reactionary political movements originating in South Asia and the Middle East, namely the Jamaat i Islami and Muslim Brotherhood . The Nation of Islam can hardly be compared to these political mass movements.
Insisting that it’s ok to remain ignorant about the relation between politics in the countries of origin and diaspora communities is curious. The fact that people are Muslim seems to mean that any other identification disappears for the white left. I often wonder if leftists would be so blithe about ignoring the political tensions within other immigrant groups – say, European groups.
As an aside, I have worked with the Nation of Islam here in Britain, in the campaign in support of Mumia Abu Jamal. Of course the issue of who you can work with came up among the (white) libertarian types that I was associated with. The cultural (and sartorial) differences between us and the Fruit of Islam were extreme, and it wouldn’t have been possible to enter into some sort of ongoing political engagement together, but it was completely possible to work together around this particular issue (this isn’t unusual: its perfectly possible to have a brilliant campaign around housing issues, then discover that you can go no further politically with your tenants and residents group).
An important difference was that no one was under any illusions that the NOI represented the ‘Muslim community’. They represented themselves. Some leftists have an entirely uncritical idea about ‘communities’ and relationship to ‘community leaders’. In the case of the ELM/IFE it’s ironic that the view of some leftists is indistinguishable from that of the British state when it comes to recognising particularly conservative groups as community leaders.
To finish, I’m curious about what influence if any you think the left has had on changing the ideas of transnational Islamic movements. The influence of the latter on parts of the left is apparent, but I see little evidence that you have indeed exercised any influence over these political movements. Or, a different but related question, has trying to engage with people as Muslims rather than say as workers, trade unionists, tenants, etc. been, on balance, successful in advancing progressive ideas?
Analogies are never perfect but there is something to be taken from the strand of history that Malcolm X represented.
Even by the standards of barmy objectionable cults the Nation of Islam was in a league of its own. It had the standard sexually predatory guru who had a greater interest in money than religion and who affected to believe that he had met god. God had assumed the persona of one Wallace Fard. So far so standard.
However not just did the NOI meet the Ku Klux Klan to discuss collaboration it had American Nazi Party members on the platforms of its rallies and publicly accepted financial donations from them. Just how much harder would they have to try to be thoroughly obnoxious? That’s before we get onto the cancer for white people and misogyny.
The point is that they did represent a current of opinion within black America at the time. The NAACP saw that and the split with Elijah Muhammad was caused by Malcolm’s experience of social struggles. If there had been a blogosphere in the 1960s it would have been filled with quotes and video clips showing what a thoroughly awful person he was. He even grassed up his accomplices in a robbery in the unsuccessful hope of getting some remission on his jail time.
As a method pointing to the awful things that individuals did 3 months or 5 years ago is not massively helpful. You can have it at the back of your mind and it might help you understand their motives but it’s what they do today where they are that counts.
It’s true that “some leftists have an entirely uncritical idea about ‘communities’ and relationship to ‘community leaders’” and it is a horrible thing to watch as they grovel to them. But just occasionally struggles throw up new generations of leaders from these communities who are much less deferential. That is one of the squandered opportunities of recent years.
As for the “influence if any you think the left has had on changing the ideas of transnational Islamic movements.” the answer at the moment has to be next to none. And the reason for that is pretty clear. Malcolm X identified immediately with the anti-colonial revolutions and, almost as much as what was happening in the US, they shifted his world view. There has been nothing comparable since the 1970s and the left has been on the back foot since the Reagan Thatcher years. But the revolutions in the Arab world may be the opening of a new situation.