This article is based on a talk given during a May 18 Workers World Party national discussion focused on “The decline of imperialism, the global class war today, the changing working class and the tasks of the party.” 

It is timely and appropriate to review heroic contributions made by Malcolm X that have stood the test of time on the centennial of his birth, May 19. His voice never became stagnant in exposing the conditions Black people faced under white supremacy. On the contrary, his charismatic talks reflected a dialectical process that led him to evolve as an internationalist towards a global class view in such a short life span. 

Malcolm X was a proponent of revolutionary Black nationalism. He preached that the only way that Black people would win national liberation was by any means necessary — be that armed self-defense, separation, etc. — and not any appeal to the “white power structure.” He was a proponent of the right to self-determination for Black people. 

He was heavily ostracized and demonized as advocating “violence” by the capitalist media, the mouthpiece of the ruling class. This demonization was an effort to pit two political currents of the Black Liberation Movement against each other — the armed, militant wing and the moderate, pacifist Civil Rights Movement wing. 

Malcolm gave a talk nine days before his assassination in Rochester, New York, at a Methodist church. The talk was entitled “Not just an American problem but a world problem.” He spoke about his trip to Mecca that occurred in 1964 when he visited various countries in West Asia (formerly called the Middle East), including refugee camps in Palestine, and also Africa. He met with several newly elected presidents representing the formerly colonized world, now the Global South. 

He also spoke on how he was not allowed to travel to Paris, where he was scheduled to speak to mainly the West Indies and North African communities there to explain the commonality of the struggles of Black people everywhere as internal colonies within imperialist countries like the U.S. and France. 

 What stood out in this talk were his comments about a historic conference in Indonesia that took place almost a decade before his murder. That conference was the Bandung Asian-African conference held in April 1955, which just commemorated its 70th anniversary. 

In attendance were leaders from China, India, Egypt, Liberia, Sudan, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), Jordan, Iran, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Nepal, Pakistan and the Philippines. Altogether there were 29 leaders of countries representing billions of oppressed and working peoples who currently reside there. (This conference was held ten years before a CIA-orchestrated, bloody, right-wing coup resulting in a massacre of about a million Indonesian communists and revolutionaries.) 

Significance of Bandung conference

Why bring up a historic gathering that took place 70 years ago? This conference gave birth to the Group of 77 or the G77 in 1964 and the Organization of African Unity in 1963, currently the African Union.

The roots of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) trade alliance as well as recent projects such as the BRICS Development Bank and the Bank of the South are important examples that can be traced back to the Bandung conference to break and weaken the economic dominance of Western imperialism to win independence.

Malcolm summed up the Bandung conference this way: “Back in 1955 in Indonesia, at Bandung, they had a conference of dark-skinned people. The people of Africa and Asia came together for the first time in centuries. They had no nuclear weapons, they had no air fleets, no navy. But they discussed their plight, and they found that there was one thing that all of us had in common — oppression, exploitation, suffering. And we had a common oppressor, a common exploiter.” (www.southcentre.int/)

So much has drastically changed over the past 70 years. Many of these same countries have their own armies, naval fleets and even nuclear weapons — all justifiably necessary to defend their sovereignty against imperialism. There was no Hamas, PFLP or DFLP 70 years ago, but today the Resistance against U.S.-backed Zionism is on the front lines of the struggle against imperialism, including white settler colonialism. 

Look at heroic Yemen, one of the poorest countries, armed with advanced weaponry and challenging the most powerful imperialist navy in the world — the U.S. — to show solidarity with the people of Gaza. And of course there are the growing anti-imperialist struggles in Africa, with Burkina Faso and the Sahel countries kicking out French imperialist forces. 

A vision to build anti-racist unity

What made Malcolm such a danger in the eyes of the bourgeois media and the ruling class was his expanding anti-imperialist influence towards world revolution against capitalism and imperialism and the leading role the Global South played at that time. 

Malcolm wanted to connect the Black struggle inside the U.S. to world revolution. He paved the way in showing his willingness to grow politically as the global class struggle intensified and spread like wildfire over the last decade of his life. 

Malcolm had a vision to establish an Organization of Afro-American Unity to bring demands to the United Nations to attract more global attention to Black people living under violent white supremacy no matter where they lived. 

To achieve this goal, Malcolm attempted to create a united front with the Civil Rights Movement, despite any political differences with its leaders like Dr. King, under the umbrella of the OAAU. And he did this without compromising his revolutionary principles. Malcolm X believed in revolution, not reformism or reform of the capitalist system but for the liberation not only of Black people but of all oppressed peoples.