All those who oppose imperialism and its assaults on working people today--from Washington's war in Afghanistan and the one it is preparing against Iraq, to police killings of Black youth and attacks on the social wage at home--will welcome the uncompromising revolutionary course advocated by Malcolm X.

Nearly four decades after his assassination, ever-greater numbers of young people, workers, and farmers around the world want to read what he had to say. Through their own experiences, many will come to agree with his opposition to both the Democrats and Republicans, the twin parties of the racist ruling class. Working people not only gain knowledge and clarity from his speeches and writings, but a firmer conviction of our own capacities, together with others, to organize and take on the most powerful imperialist government on the face of the earth.

The Militant was the main place you could find Malcolm's speeches in print from 1963 until his assassination in 1965. Like Pathfinder Press, which has worked to keep Malcolm's speeches and writings in print for nearly four decades since then, the Militant was always scrupulous in maintaining the integrity of his words as he said them and wrote them. That's why we strongly support Malcolm's daughter, the Schomburg Center, and others who are calling for the wealth of documents now in the profiteering hands of the eBay auction house to be kept together and given to an institution that will organize them, preserve them, and make them accessible.

While there's every reason to believe there will be no surprises or revelations, the material in eBay's hands will reinforce understanding and knowledge of Malcolm's views and political evolution as known by many from reading the speeches already in print.

This includes internationalizing the struggle against racism, as he put it, and championing socialist revolutions in Cuba and China that broke the chains of imperialist domination. Malcolm welcomed the defeat of Washington by toilers fighting for their liberation around the world. "I'm not an American," he said, "[I'm] one of the victims of Americanism."

During the last year of his life Malcolm explained his political evolution, including why the term Black nationalism was no longer adequate to describe his political course and increasingly prosocialist views. As Malcolm changed his views about Black nationalism, he strengthened his uncompromising stance against the U.S. capitalist rulers and their twin parties of colonialism and racism.

Malcolm's speeches, interviews, and statements are steeled by incorruptible honesty and revolutionary integrity--qualities that nobody can put a price on. Placing his revolutionary political legacy in a public institution that makes it available to whoever wants to use it would be an appropriate tribute to his life. The material belongs to the workers movement and to fighters against Black oppression who will put it to use--not on an auction block such as those where his forebears were once sold into capitalist slavery.
 
 
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eBay withdraws Malcolm X documents from auction block  
 
 
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