 Okay, so black oppression in the West, particularly in the US, has been an integral part of capitalism since its inception. In fact, the transatlantic slave trade, which really laid the basis for the development of capitalism, was instrumental in forming modern race relations in how they exist today. And from the times of slavery up until now, there has been a long and powerful history of black struggle in which black nationalism has played a big role at various times. But this is not a new discussion. It has been a part of the black struggle movement since its very early days. And I would say that the black nationalist movement has expressed itself in different ways over the last century. Black nationalism as a whole is quite an amorphous concept. It's not a fixed thing. I think various different people would have a different definition. It has included in different periods the demand for a separate nation state. It can encompass for some people the colonial revolutions that took place across Africa, and various other struggles for black liberation. Black nationalism in the US, I would say, is not the exact same thing as black nationalism, if you can call it that, in Africa or African countries. Although clearly many black nationalists, particularly in the West, identify strongly with the movements that took place, the anti-colonial revolutions that took place across Africa. So since the Black Lives Matter movement, there has been a searching for ideas. And many people are correctly looking at previous struggles to find answers to try and find a way forward. And so if you're interested in black liberation and you want to dedicate yourself to that cause, and you take the time correctly to look at history and look at the history of that struggle, then you're going to come across black nationalism. So what we are trying to answer today is how should we as Marxists, as communists, relate to this who are also dedicated to the cause of black liberation. And the first thing I want to say is that we don't take a moralistic or a sentimental view of history. Our job is to study the class struggle and draw certain conclusions on what has worked and also what hasn't worked. And if it hasn't worked, we need to understand why. What were the ideas? What was the strategy? And what was the form? So we have to deal in large part with the US, with the United States. The US is the biggest capitalist economy in the world. The movement of the masses there is of vital importance. And black workers have been a very important part of its history and the class struggle that takes place in America. And you had the slave trade, brutal conditions, and a revolutionary abolitionist movement followed by a period of migration and various different changes and circumstances. All of that period is what lays the basis, lays the foundations for the development of political ideas emerging from the black masses. So the first serious wave of black nationalism was expressed quite soon after the 20th century. Now, this wasn't the first example of black political life or even black self-organization. Instinctively, black workers would form self-defense committees where necessary to protect themselves against lynch mobs and other attacks that were commonplace in this time. So this was already in place. You also had black newspapers that were regularly writing and commenting on issues concerning black people. Martin Delaney is someone who's considered to be the originator of the phrase Africa for the Africans. And he wrote for a paper alongside Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass being the famous black abolitionist, that was aimed at the black population, aimed at the black masses to kind of raise their level and their interest in political issues. And Martin Delaney actually, in his pursuit of black liberation, he saw out foreign colonization opportunities. That was his idea. And this is in very early period. So this was around 1859, 1860. He led an exploration party across parts of West Africa, and they were trying to find different parts that they thought would be a good opportunity, a good place to settle. So you can see, even in its earliest forms, it had different and confused ideas that reflected different class positions and class outlooks. This is obviously Frederick Douglass, for example, a key abolitionist figure, but essentially saw a fairer capitalism as a way forward, as a way to liberate the black masses. And this isn't surprising for that period. The working class at this stage in America is incredibly small still. And so we can understand why working class politics still hasn't taken on a strong sense. So you have reconstruction, which is this period after slavery in which the free black population is trying to change their conditions. But what happens is the immediate implementation of Jim Crow laws, racist segregation, the KKK is founded, violence, lynchings, all of this is incredibly common, particularly in the South. So the point is this is a life of brutality, if you're black. So eventually we see a movement beginning to organize or develop on a wider basis. Of course, there's always different forms of fighting back also throughout slavery, you know, there's different slave movements. But after slavery, there's different forms. And eventually it starts to coalesce into a wider, into a wider movement, a wider basis. So we see a movement of the free black masses taking place. And in 1914, an organization is formed, the United Negro Improvement Association, which was headed by Marcus Garvey, also known as the Back to Africa movement, something that people probably have heard of. And this is probably the biggest black nationalist movement in the history of the US. The organization itself had hundreds of thousands, potentially even millions of black Americans enrolled in kind of part of this movement, this organization. It was a huge operation. It ran businesses and employed thousands of people. They would hold huge rallies aimed at raising the cultural level, instilling black pride amongst the masses. And these would be huge affairs, big parades that would take place through the streets. And they also, of course, put forward this idea of a black state run by black people for black people in Africa. But that movement came to failure. It came to failure with entirely reactionary consequences and conclusions, the kind of attempt to create an alternative black ruling class in a different country. And the reason it came to a failure is because the movement, the leadership of the movement was thoroughly petty bourgeois in its, in its outlook. In fact, Marcus Garvey saw communism and Marxism as an enemy to black people and a danger to black workers. And he made speeches to that effect. But what was this? What did that movement represent? Trotsky described the nationalism of the oppressed as the outer shell of an immature Bolshevism, which means that there can be a progressive element to nationalism. And so what you had with, with Marcus Garvey, with this back to Africa movement, was the mass politicization suddenly of one of the most oppressed layers in American society being swept into politics for the first time, directly challenging the state. And this did represent an important step forward. We can describe Garvey, Garveyism as a, as a kind of radical rejection of a society that is rejecting themselves. That is how we can understand it. This unleashing of black pride and cultural level, which was an important part of it. In Garvey's extreme, it was a kind of reactionary racial purity, which is what he stood for. But for the masses, it's a different thing. It's a, it's a general awakening and step forward in the process. So this organization, the UNIA, was massive and did have a big, a big base. But there were other elements that developed in this period too. When you have a mass politicization of a wide base of society, it doesn't just all go in one specific direction. So there was another organization that formed at this time, a much smaller one in 1919 called the African Blood Brotherhood. And the African Blood Brotherhood were born out of radical thinkers in Harlem, black thinkers, people like Cyril Briggs, Claude McKay, Harry Hayward. These people went on to form the core leadership of the African Blood Brotherhood. And they were a much smaller organization. They were focused underground, it was a bit secret. There's various different reports on how many members they actually had a few thousand here and there. And in their writings, also at the start, they also talk about the demand for a black nation state. And this is understandable. Again, we have to take the context of the period in which these people were living and writing and fighting where there was daily threats, physical threats against their safety. But within a few years, following the impact of the Russian Revolution in particular, you see these layers moving decisively towards socialism and towards the communist international as a whole. Part of what inspired these people these young black radical thinkers coming out of Harlem was the Bolsheviks and their fight against antisemitism, which they saw as comparable to the situation that black people were facing in America. And they saw what the Bolsheviks did in fighting against it in this mighty worker state that then comes to power, which had prominent Jewish leaders within it. And they were inspired by that. And they wanted the same thing to take place in America. So you have these different groups, these different ideas that are erupting at this time, the UNIA with Marcus Garvey on one side and also the African blood brotherhood on the other, which as I said was still small. And they kind of start off these two different organizations with somewhat friendly criticisms towards each other. You know, they kind of, I think even the African blood brotherhood, Claude McKay specifically said at one point that he still supported what Garvey was doing because it was politicizing the black masses on an important level. But as time goes on, a clearer class distinction develops between these organizations, a clearer class outlook in terms of what do they base themselves on. And as that distinction becomes clearer, the criticisms become less friendly. Garvey becomes much more anti-communist. I think Marcus Garvey actually accused Cyril Briggs of being secretly white at one point to really he's really stoking up the tensions because the African blood brotherhood did win over certain sections, certain people from that movement. But I would say this, as I said, this wasn't a theoretical dispute. It was the black nationalism and there was black nationalism, of course, the African blood brotherhood, there's black nationalism there. But I would say that the black nationalism of the African blood brotherhood had a different class content to what you saw with the Marcus Garvey organization. And they showed that they proved that they had a different class content because they all went on to join the Communist Party. They were internationalists inspired by the Russian Revolution and the Comintern and what the Comintern, the Communist International was trying to build across the world. And I would say that their internationalism came precisely from the fact that they had a much more proletarian base and consciously, they were concentrated on the proletariat and the working class. And so what you had was the entire core of the African blood brotherhood joins the Communist Party. And as I said, they're inspired by the Comintern. The fact that they joined the Communist Party is almost secondary. They saw what Lenin and the Bolsheviks were doing and they said, I want to be a part of that. Okay, so I've got to join the American Communist Party. This is the way forward. There's an essay by Cyril Briggs, one of the key leaders of the African blood brotherhood, where he's kind of responding to the western propaganda that was being put out, you know, damaging the Bolsheviks, saying they were evil people who are against democracy. And in this essay, you know, Cyril Briggs talks about, you know, the kind of the nonsense that is born of our democracy, the wars, the poverty. And he says, is this the democracy to which the spread of Bolshevism is a menace? Then may God advance the spread of Bolshevism throughout Europe, Asia and Africa, and in every country where oppression stalks. So that just gives you a flavor of the way in which these people influenced and the move and the move in which they were they were going. So the African blood brotherhood, they joined the Communist Party. But the Communist Party wasn't necessary. The Communist Party still had a I would say it had a bad position when it came to to black liberation when it came to racism, they had the wrong position at this time. The Communist Party in America had come out of a split with the Socialist Party, which under its previous leadership had taken a neutral stance on racism. It was this idea that they didn't need to do anything special to to advance the cause of black liberation. Socialism will deal with it once the revolution has has taken place. And this is wrong, that is not the way to approach the the liberation of any oppressed group. So the Communist Party initially did not take up in a significant way the black struggle and the struggle of the black masses. It is only after Lenin actually he directs the Communist Party in America to do so that we see a shift. In fact Lenin writes to the Communist Party in 1921 and he asks why do their reports not include anything to do with the black workers and the black masses? And he's asking them why is this not isn't this an important question for the class struggle in America? And he puts that question to them and encourages them says you need to consider this work. And in the next year there's a theses that's adopted on the Negro question on at the fourth Congress at the fourth Congress, which states very clearly this in 1922, the international struggle of the black race is a struggle against capitalism and imperialism. And the international black movement must be organized on that basis. It goes on the fourth Congress considers it essential to support every form of the black movement that either undermines or weakens capitalism or places barriers in the path of its further expansion. The Communist International will utilize all the means available to it to compel the trade unions to take black workers into their rights or whether I already exist in form to make special efforts to recruit blacks into the trade unions. And if this proves to be impossible the Communist International will organize blacks in their own trade unions and make special use of the United Front tactic in order to force the general unions to admit them. And this is very significant. This is the this is very advanced as well in terms of the struggle for for black liberation. And we have to understand what they're getting at the end there with this idea of black unions. We look when oppressed people or people from oppressed backgrounds enter into politics, they may well do so first through their own organizations, especially if and when the official labor movement is obstructing them, which in the case of America in the labor movement at that time it was doing so. And we are not opposed to that of course it would be entirely ridiculous to oppose black workers trying to organize and say you have to just you know passively wait for the labor movement to sort itself out that it's not the the position that you take in that situation. But the point is you have to look at what's happening on the ground and we have to look at the concrete conditions. What we are opposed to is taking specific examples of where it has been necessary and making a principle out of it and applying it to everything that's come afterwards. In fact it clearly states in that theses at the end if we are to organize black only unions it should be used as a tactic to force the general unions to admit them. And why is that? It's because it is not possible if you are a minority to form your own union to take on the bosses. Any more than the Bolsheviks would have been able to overthrow capitalism in Russia if they had based themselves on only one minority group at that time. And this is what the African blood brotherhood recognized and what I'm hopefully going to come on to show many black radical thinkers have recognized in the course of the struggle. Cyril Briggs said it himself he said the Negro population is just too small to fight by themselves. So kind of black only organization overthrow capitalism in America I think the answer is no. But we want to go on to kind of see how these ideas developed across the history of the black struggle in America and other places. Because at a certain point this idea this kind of embryonic idea that was always sort of there for a separate black nation state in a lot of the early ideas of black nationalism in America. At a certain point this idea becomes a key question for the communist movement. And after initially taking a weak approach a bad approach to the question of black workers in in 1928 the communist party in America they kind of transform and they go in the complete other direction and they adopt a policy of self-determination for the black belt. I'm going to go on to explain what they meant by this. The first thing is that the communist party when they changed their policy on black workers they didn't suddenly become a black nationalist organization. They were trying to in a kind of distorted way apply in some respects the method of Lenin. A lot of a lot of people take small writings small footnotes that Lenin has in different in different writings on different issues where he talks about black people in America as potentially being an oppressed nation and they take these small inklings and then exaggerate it to force a certain policy through. So they change their kind of position and they apply this this policy I would say in a formalistic and one-sided manner. Lenin dies in 1924 so this is a few years after after Lenin. And in 1928 they advocate that the black people constitute an oppressed nation within the nation and therefore the right self-determination applies. And it's not all down to Stalin. This is also when Stalin is kind of taking control of the common turn although he pushes you know the general opportunism throughout all of these parties. Other things Harry Hayward we can't detract from these people were key proponents in trying to push the party to adopt the black belt thesis. I think it's actually Hayward who puts it forward at the the common turn meeting which was actually opposed by some of the other black delegates but nevertheless it goes through and that's the policy that they adopt. So we can't retrospectively declare or project onto the masses right. Was there a demand for a mass demand for a nation state at that time? There probably was demand some small demand in different layers for some kind of nation state as I said these ideas were percolating around and clearly Marcus Garvey in a general sense and his organization did have a significant base. As I said earlier that movement Garvey's movement ended in in totally reactionary consequences. Very few people went to Africa under Garvey's movement and actually a lot of workers at that point were more interested in fighting for democratic rights within America rather than uprooting their lives and moving to somewhere far away in Africa. So what was wrong with the black belt thesis? Why is it formalistic? Why was it one-sided? The Communist Party went too far because they try to then specifically locate exactly where the black nation could be and say then to millions of black workers no this is where you must go. In fact I think they ended up having a different policy for the north and the south. It becomes completely detached from what was actually possible and what was necessary and progressive for the struggle at that moment conflating the right self-determination with immediate separation. So they kind of adopt this formalistic policy but at the same time they're obviously they've turned to the black workers in a significant way and so they do make inroads and a lot of black workers turn to the Communist Party and join them in this time. The Soviet Union at this period was a beacon of light to oppressed people all over the world and the Communist Party in America if you will kind of just rode that wave in a significant manner and that is how a lot of these people joined. However the Communist Party does not maintain this space in fact it completely loses it. The Communist Party again under the direction of Stalin it begins to move in a right-wing direction. From 1919 to 1934 the Communist Party in America had never supported the Republicans or the Democrats but then this begins to change and you see support for Roosevelt and the Democrats for the majority of his presidency. The Communist Party actually for a brief period dissolves itself and becomes a political association, a kind of a pressure group for the Democrats effectively. That gives you a mindset of the way in which the Communist Party had started to move. They reconstituted themselves two years later but it shows that their kind of tail-ending of the Democrats started a very long time ago and so many black communists left the party in complete disgust at the opportunism and the reformism that was developing amongst amongst them and so I think we can say that we can place part of the resurgence of black nationalism in the opportunism and the prejudices that existed within the Communist Party and the rot that existed in the Communist Party. Black-only organization or the desire for a black-only organization is partly the result of the labor movement and the so-called communist movement selling out black workers in a disgusting manner. There's a reason why, I think Stokely Carmichael talks about black power and says yeah we can work with other you know radical white allies but we can't let them into the movement because there had been a whole host of people who had betrayed so-called white radical allies so we can understand where that desire then comes from. Now that was the position of the Communist Party, they kind of zigzag in an opportunist manner and then they eventually they take away the black belt thesis from their program and I want to say that Trotsky had a different approach at this time, he had a different approach to the Stalinist and the writings we have from Trotsky in this period from the early 1930s based on a discussion that he is having with some some followers of Trotsky's, the Trotskyists who are trying to counter pose the the communists, the Stalinists and the American Trotskyists they say to him, they write to him, they're pointing out, isn't there like opportunism evident in the Communist Party's position, isn't this wrong, we shouldn't be advocating for the separate nation-state aren't we internationalists where Marxists were against barriers you know shouldn't we be arguing in a different way. But Trotsky says like hold on a minute right, he says very clearly that the right to self-determination is a is a democratic demand and if it is the will of the black masses then we must actually fight against imperialism decisively so they can be free but he says if he says it's a question of their consciousness and he also says I know very little about the situation on the ground but what can we get from those writings is how Trotsky's trying to approach the situation first and foremost he's saying what is in the consciousness of the masses that is what we have to base ourselves on. So I think there are some people who they take those writings from Trotsky and they misunderstand a kind of a tentative idea based on extremely limited information and then take a mechanical view that we can just copy and paste well if Trotsky said in the 30s that a separate nation-state is possible then then we should still continue that today I don't think that's the case we take the method that he was using to understand what is the most progressive way what's the most revolutionary way to take things forward and that is the method that we take today when looking at the struggle for black workers and for black liberation but then coming into the 60s and 70s you have the civil rights movement in America which is credited with the removal obviously of formal racial barriers and the first thing to say is this era produced some of the most well known and respected fighters for black liberation but the civil rights movement was not an isolated struggle it didn't just appear out of the black masses alone there was a global struggle taking place in this period the 60s and 70s saw heightened class struggle as the capitalist boom ended and class struggle is firmly on the agenda in May 68 in Mexico the Troubles and to Vietnam the civil rights movement and the movement of the black masses in America is the exact is this is part of that entire process so we can't talk about black nationalism in the US and what it produced without paying special attention to Malcolm X now I think we can say Malcolm X in his time represented the most advanced element of the struggle for black liberation he was uncompromising unapologetic and a fighter and as a result he resonated with huge swathes of the black population you know he famously wanted to fight racism by any means necessary which was different to the middle class approach of certain black leaders who who wanted a kind of more softly softly way to do it but Malcolm X undoubtedly he was a he was a black nationalist for a large part of his life as a leader within the nation of Islam group he says at some point something along the lines of if you're afraid of black nationalism you're afraid of revolution that is how he saw it was a driving force for a huge part of his early years and I would say even at that point that black nationalism is not the same as the the black nationalism of Marcus Garvey it's still reflecting a different a different class in a different process because Malcolm X based his nationalism on the poor urban black population in in Harlem places like this he had no time for the for the black middle class and then eventually he splits with the nation of Islam over hypocrisy and corruption and various other things a lot happens but I want to concentrate very specifically on the last year of his life which is important for us to understand and study as Marxists because in the last year of his life he tours different African countries and it's in that in that movement in that process we see him move away from nationalism to an internationalist outlook and he says this is a man who you know spoke a lot about the white devil and fighting the whites in a very you know aggressive clear way which resonated with all the violence that's taking place but then towards the end of his life he says is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white or as purely an American problem we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor the exploited against the exploiters there's another there's another even better quote in an interview with a socialist magazine again in the last year of his life who when he was asked about his tour of African countries and by the way it's when he's touring his African countries he meets a he meets a revolutionary I can't remember which country it's a country in North Africa who he describes as white and he says I'm kind of faced with this white revolution in thinking but this guy's also fighting for revolution and it starts to make him think in a slightly different way and he says I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my definition of black nationalism he says can we sum up the solution to the problems confronting our people as black nationalism then he leaves it open and then he says and if you've noticed I haven't been using the expression for several months so consciously he starts to not even use the term black nationalism he forms a different organization when he comes back from Africa in America in 1964 it was called the Organization for Afro-American Unity and at the opening rally of that organization he says I haven't changed I just see things on a broader scale we nationalists used to think we were militant we were just dogmatic it didn't bring us anything now I know it's smarter to say you're going to shoot a man for what he is doing to you than because he is white now this is a clear departure and a clear transformation in the way in which he's approaching the question and and what happened Malcolm X's ideas evolved on the basis of viewing the struggle from an internationalist perspective and how did he reach that internationalism is because he was already based in a much more proletarian outlook the two things are connected and I think now we can return to what the communist international theses said in 1922 they said it's the task of the communist international to show blacks that they are not the only people that suffer the oppression of imperialism and capitalism the workers and peasants of Europe Asia and America are also victims of imperialist exploiters in India and China in Iran and Turkey and Egypt and Morocco the oppressed colored people are mounting a heroic defense against the imperialist exploiters these people are rising up against the same outrages that drive blacks to fury racial oppression social and economic inequality intensive exploitation in industry these people are fighting for the same goals as blacks for political economic and social liberation and equality and that is what Malcolm X was beginning to understand I can't stand hearing tell you that Malcolm X was a was a committed Marxist or anything like this that would be wrong all I can do is use his words and his life to show that a process was taking place where he was moving towards a class outlook a proletarian outlook and an internationalist one which is different from nationalism and and he's obviously he's assassinated then and that's not a coincidence that a lot of these thinkers that the more radical they become they are assassinated and one year after Malcolm X is assassinated the Black Panther Party for self-defense is set up Malcolm X had unleashed a revolutionary kind of desire amongst the Black youth in particular I think we can say the Black Panther Party took up the the the baton if you want in the best traditions of Malcolm X the Black Panthers were also uncompromising and they knew the seriousness of their struggle it wasn't a kind of an easy thing that they were doing on the side Huey Newton in his autobiography this book which is called revolutionary suicide and it's called that because they recognize that you might die if you take up this struggle but they were willing to give everything they had to do so and I think just as a side the current Black Lives Matter's leaders if we can even identify them as leaders pale in comparison to what that period had produced and the attitude and the seriousness of which they approached it so I've said Malcolm X in one man his journey from nationalism to internationalism we saw that take place but we also see the same process amongst the Black Panthers and their approach and their position in fact I would say you can see that process even from the earliest days in terms of the logic of what they were trying to fight for you can see that process in the 10 point program that the Black Panther Party produced the Black Panther Party's program it starts saying you know we want freedom we want power to determine the destiny of our Black and oppressed communities it starts off by saying we want jobs we want control for our community for Black people specifically but then as you move on through point one two three four it starts to widen out to more oppressed people and they say we want completely free healthcare for all Black and oppressed people we want an immediate end to police brutality and murder of Black people other people of color all oppressed people in the United States which includes the poor whites we want an immediate end to all wars of aggression that's not even just to do with America and it goes on and on and on and the final point point number 10 they say we want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, peace and people's community control of modern technology so in the space of one single program there's a movement from democratic demands to the desire for a planned economy effectively and people's control a socialist planned economy even the embryonic idea that's within that people's control over clothes, housing, bread, education, infrastructure, industry we're seeing a logical process develop within that program and this is a key feature of a lot of Black nationalist movements and nationalist movements in general in the way that they progress what makes the nationalism of the oppressed of oppressed people in society what makes the nationalism of the oppressed progressive is the class content because there is a reactionary side to nationalism a reactionary side to nationalism which comes from a nationalism that just looks at all classes in society as one big block and that's not how we look at it but the best elements within nationalist movements have also recognised that Fred Hampton recognised that the Black vanguard needs to be united with the rest of the working class and there will be a Black vanguard that develops and was developing Trotsky as early as the 20s and the 30s he says and he's writing to Claude McKay, Claude McKay by the way who also left the Communist Party in America in complete disgust at Stalinism he goes on to departure Marxism entirely but actually a lot of Black radicals do this on the basis of the betrayals of Stalinism and Claude McKay asked Trotsky if they could form a Black section in the Red Army and Trotsky responds and says okay you know let's see what can take place but Trotsky when writing to Claude McKay says is of the utmost importance today immediately to have a number of enlightened young self-sacrificing Negroes however small their number filled with enthusiasm for raising the material and moral level of the great mass of Negroes and at the same time mentally capable of grasping the identity of interests and the destiny of the Negro masses with those of the masses of the whole world and in the first place with the destiny of the European working class that is the approach that we have to take so as I said at the start Black nationalist in in the US have also strongly identified with the colonial revolutions and when you talk about Black nationalism there can be a lot of overlap and sometimes confusion I would say on what you were speaking about but we can't conflate it all into one thing I think Black I think we can say Black nationalism is quite specifically a US phenomenon in terms of where it came from and how it's developed and the colonial revolution were different nonetheless these Black radicals were drawn to the struggles if you're a young Black person in America and you want to fight against capitalism and you see wars of independence in Angola and Algeria and all these countries of course you identify with that struggle and want to be a part of it because the colonial revolutions had an enormous impact not just as an inspiration for what a movement could be but inspiration for what a different society could look like all together millions of people were involved in throwing off the shackles of imperialism these movements shook the foundations of imperialism and therefore capitalism within Africa and in some countries what came out of this was different parties different leaders who kind of took up this banner in various ways and the masses learned through the struggle there was a first round of decolonization after World War II where colonial administrations were replaced with kind of pro-imperialist governments bourgeois governments and this drove the anti-colonial movement further to the left highlighting that formal independence was not synonymous with genuine emancipation in Ethiopia in Somalia in Burkina Faso they abolished capitalism these movements were moving to the left very very quickly and you have certain leaders that came out of this obviously in Krumah, in Ghana, Turei, in Guinea, French Guinea, Lumumba, in Congo all of these kind of anti-imperialist figures who who were moving towards the left and in some places were even nationalizing huge swathes of industry what happened was in the fight against colonialism the struggle for what were democratic reforms became a struggle against capitalism and the imperialists were very concerned about this they were worried that national liberation struggles could mutate into fully anti-capitalist socialist revolutions they were they were conscious of that and some figures even had that as their aim and they were trying to move in that direction on the on the independence side I mean but they weren't sure how to get then I just want to highlight one example which was the experience of Amil Kharkabral who was a independence leader in Guinea-Bissau he kind of went on this journey and his organization called for the nationalization of all major enterprises the establishment of a planned economy fighting for socialism and he very clearly understood the need and the role of the working class the working class at this stage in this country were were tiny very very very small the peasantry were a much larger force as was the case in many other African countries at that time and Kharkabral says himself the peasantry are not a revolutionary force he said they're not revolutionary but they're a physical force and we have to use them in his writings he says you might be surprised that I'm saying they're not revolutionary given that we've based a large part of our struggle on the peasantry that we need them but he says quite clearly from a political point of view they aren't a revolutionary force but a physical one and he knew that there needed to be a working class that could lead a process in in the country in order to actually solve the problems of capitalism solve the problems of imperialism those contradictions the task of solving the these issues falls on the shoulders of the working class agrarian national and political emancipation that can only take place through the socialist revolution and Khabral also with this understanding of the working class and this proletarian outlook is what also leads into his genuinely internationalist approach to the struggle and and to fight in colonialism he said we have always clearly proclaimed that we never confuse the people of Portugal with Portuguese colonialism and this thinking was very dangerous to the imperialists because he even directly appealed to the Portuguese soldiers that were placed in Guinea-Bissau to try and turn them against Portugal he said to them he wrote Portuguese soldiers NCOs and officers you know that your people who must struggle for freedom and democracy in their own land need your help your families who mostly belong to the poor classes of Portugal are longing for your return in order to ensure their future and the future of your father's mother's sister's bride's sons and daughters it is essential to act he says give up serving as tools of imperialism refuse to take up arms against the freedom and independence of a peaceful people bravely refuse to fight against our people and he goes on and on with various other things and he says long live the peace friendship and cooperation between all peoples this is obviously very dangerous for the imperialists and that thinking and he was successful and he was correct in taking that approach in April 1974 Khabral is unfortunately also assassinated there's a common theme in a lot of these revolutions in Africa the imperialists are kind of somewhat involved but also other kind of political enemies and a year after Khabral is killed a left-wing army officers stage an uprising in Portugal which starts the Carnation Revolution and that revolution in Portugal is what ends the colonial war and the wars that were taking place and ensures the independence of Portuguese colonies the officers uprising directly drew inspiration from the struggle that was already taking place in Guinea-Bissau and directly from his approach and the approach that his organization took at that time and this is why we say revolution in the west is of vital importance to these struggles internationalism on a proletarian on a proletarian basis Khabral even says quite clearly we think there is something wrong with the simple interpretation of the national liberation movement as a revolutionary trend and it's because he could see and was predicting the problems that could take place after the colonial revolutions he explains that the objective of the imperialists is to create a new bourgeoisie within these countries and if they don't take that problem seriously then we will see the restoration of capitalism these countries in Africa they used to be dominated by just one colonial power whether it was Britain or Portugal or France and now they are jointly exploited by world trade as a whole you could say that they are even more enslaved than they were before because of the whole forces of world imperialism capitalism are there ready at their doorstep so these incredible revolutions could only go so far on their own not because there was a problem with the black masses or there was no desire to fight it's the same in the case of many other revolutions that have taken place that have ultimately ended isolated in the case of Russia and various other other countries the finest Marxist leadership cannot just save you from the material conditions that are forced in front of you in those in those countries so we say revolution has to be international not just in a symbolic way not just a kind of feeble African leaders today all talk about pan-Africanism it's a meaningless term to them it's nonsense and they use it as a cover for their policies they use it as a cover for being shells of imperialism you can kick imperialism formally out of your country but it's not enough to do it on just that basis this is exactly what happened in Congo with Lumumba they got rid of Belgium Belgium tries to kind of cause more problems in Congo by funding and and helping a kind of secessionist group who are trying to destabilize the new independent government and Lumumba called on the UN to help the UN an emblem of world imperialism did the UN help no the UN didn't help they took control of communications they blocked Soviet aid they helped the people trying to destabilize the government it's not enough to just get rid of formal independence so what what do we do about world imperialism or US imperialism or Belgium imperialism how do we overthrow that well we need the workers in those countries to up to to to get rid of their own ruling classes the two things are entirely connected this brings us back full circle what is the most reactionary force on the planet it's probably US imperialism and what can stop it it has to be the American working class and what does that require it requires the utmost unity of the American working class i need to come to an end because i've gone over time but i want to say i want to repeat something that was said yesterday that the purpose of Marxism is to make conscious the unconscious striving of the working class for power racism racism is a poison that is consciously used by the ruling class to divide workers Marx said very clearly in 1868 and sorry 1868 1866 he said labor in the white skin cannot emancipate itself where in the black skin it is branded that is how we understand it we need to be united to take things forward however it is true that the segregation the division the chauvinism of the labor movement and the communist movement has forced black workers to organize in many cases on their own terms first and black nationalism came out of that process but every time the black proletariat has made an organization of its own without Marxist telling it to do so it has turned to the rest of the working class because the working class as a whole strives towards unity and the best layers have always understood that the best layers of nationalist movements have gone explicitly or implicitly towards Marxism and what we're saying is make that explicit make that explicit black nationalism has played a role in the history of black struggle but it has not yet succeeded many people take up the banner of black nationalism today including the black bourgeoisie which makes the class question even more paramount and even more important and we say let's take the best elements we don't have to take everything with us if the most revolutionary elements of black nationalism have been those who base themselves on the proletariat and turn outwards then it is the job of Marxist to continue that process what should we be saying to radicalized young black people today is it to set up exclusive black only organizations even though they have never been capable of taking the masses forward in a significant way in the way that real really causes material change it has to be to build a revolutionary party that unites the best layers the vanguard has always moved towards class independence and class unity and that is the tradition that we stand on that is the tradition the tradition of Lenin and that has been confirmed over the last 100 years