BY BRIAN TAYLOR

There has been much hype in the media about the recent death of Tupac Amaru Shakur. The rap artist was fatally wounded in a September 7 drive-by shooting and died a week later. Conservative commentators have used his killing as an occasion to fire some more shots in what rightist politician Patrick Buchanan has termed the "culture war," by portraying rap music and Black youth who listen to it as the cause of crime. Others, including petty bourgeois leaders in the Black community, have tried to portray Shakur as some kind of revolutionary - another Malcolm X. Both are dead wrong.

Thomas Sowell, a conservative columnist who is Black wrote a piece in the September 20 New York Post, where he abhorred the "barbarism being celebrated and marketed to impressionable and immature minds." He said that "the poorest and least educated segment of the Black population," who listen to this sort of music, glorify "savage and self destructive behavior." He then argued, "The 1960s were a crucial decade, not only because it made Black cultural patterns sacrosanct, but also because it saw the burgeoning of a welfare state which subsidized behavior that would otherwise have had a much higher cost to those who engaged in it." A photo of the late artist accompanied the column with the caption "Tupac Shakur: A loser's culture."

An article in the September 17 Wall Street Journal described Shakur as a "thug rapper." It painted a picture of unruly, undisciplined, dangerous animals when speaking of Tupac Shakur, Biggie Smalls, Snoop Doggy Dogg, and other performers. "As the saying goes, if you lie down with Dogg, you get up with fleas." Then the article pointed fingers at the producers and business managers of various record labels, saying that Marion Knight of Death Row Records "recruits the talent, negotiates the deals, brainstorms the film projects and bails his stars out of jail," perpetuating this apparently unique phenomena.

Welfare and `gangsta-rap'
It is no accident that Sowell brings the question of welfare into this discussion. He, in effect, claims that the social safety net for those relegated to the ranks of the permanent army of the unemployed by capitalism breeds the "attitudes" of violence. It's the same culture war arguments Buchanan presents, only with a Black conservative twist.

What is at stake here?

The ruling class of the United States and the parties and newspapers that are chattel to them have a big problem: the bosses can't make profits any more at a satisfactory rate. They have "downsized" and shut down factories to the limit. Now they are undercutting basic democratic rights and slashing social services that workers won in struggle; rights that in the eyes of many come with being human. This will not pass without resistance. But since one of our biggest weapons as working people is unity of our class, the employers aim to keep us divided. Workers are forced to compete against each other for survival and blame each other in a system where better economic conditions for our class and a stable future are impossible.

The culture war, in a nutshell, is the ideological preparation by the bosses' class to make us think that certain layers of the working class are responsible for bringing the nation down due to lack of moral values. It is a bourgeois tool to soften labor resistance to capitalist austerity.

In this case it is "gangsta-rap" music, in another it is single mothers, or immigrants from Mexico, and the list goes on. The aim is the same. Make young Blacks look like criminals. Point to these "criminals" as the ones using welfare. Conclude that if it wasn't for the loads of money spent on public assistance America would be all right. These arguments may sound silly, but they can make sense, at least initially, to workers feeling the squeeze on their wages or who can't find a job and want to know why.

Shakur may have been involved in corruption and thuggery that many entertainment "stars" are engulfed in, in a society where art is nothing but a commodity. He may have been killed by competitors in the business. These values and modes of behavior come straight from the capitalist class and the policies of its government. One only has to look, just this last week, at the revelations of CIA drug-running in the Black community in Los Angeles, the Pentagon manuals instructing bribery and torture at a U.S. military school, the cop killing of Anthony Baez, and other examples of police brutality to pinpoint the source of the problem: the profit system and the bourgeois values it breeds put into action by the repressive apparatus of the capitalist class. Neither Shakur's lyrics, nor welfare, are the root cause of violence in the Black community.

The attempt to portray the corrupt behavior of music "celebrities" like Shakur as some fresh revelation is bogus. It's nothing new. Shakur's record label is worth over a $100 million. He was living the rich life. The description given about Knight bailing out the performers is no different that what United Fruit or other big businesses do when their crooked chief executives get caught doing their slime.

Tupac was no Malcolm X
On the other hand people like Rev. Herbert Daughtry, a national leader of National Black United Front, referred to Shakur as "revolutionary" and compared him to "Martin [Luther King] and Malcolm [X]." Nothing is further from the truth. p> No matter what Shakur said in his music, Malcolm X was a man who led a revolutionary movement of working people in action. Malcolm awakened Blacks involved in struggle to our dignity and self-worth. He became an internationalist and began pointing to capitalism and imperialism as the cause of racism. For these reasons he became a dangerous man to the powers that be and was assassinated - by thugs organized by the Nation of Islam with the knowledge and complicity of the police. "Member s of the Nation of Islam were involved in the assassination of Malcolm X," acknowledged Nation leader Louis Farrakhan at a public meeting in Harlem's Apollo Theater May 6, 1995. "We can't deny whatever our part was." The Nation of Islam organized a memorial meeting for Shakur in Harlem's Mosque no. 7 recently. p> Malcolm's political evolution and assassination have nothing analogous to Shakur's life and works. The attempt to portray Blacks who have made some money as supposed leaders of the struggle for Black freedom is bourgeois to the core. It comes directly from those who act as a brake and an obstacle to the proletarian masses of Black people leading the struggle against racism independent of the capitalist class and its twin political parties. p> Tupac Amaru Shakur was a musician who made money. Nothing more, nothing less. Music, and in this particular case rap music, is not inherently revolutionary or reactionary. It is a tool of expression that reflects the reality and culture of the class society we live in - bourgeois culture today. It is only through an uncompromising struggle to uproot the causes of racism and class exploitation - the capitalist profit system - that crime among the oppressed will diminish, and in the process human values will find their expression in songs and music.  
 
 
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