Vol. 74/No. 13      April 5, 2010

BY JACK BARNES  
The Militant was the paper of record for Malcolm’s speeches, including during the final period when he was still in the Nation of Islam. (Muhammad Speaks had ceased printing them.) Our movement and our press were known for having recognized the revolutionary political logic of Malcolm X’s course in early 1963. Already at that time, Malcolm would sometimes demonstratively buy the Militant on his way into a meeting where he was speaking… .

Malcolm spoke at Militant Labor Forums three times between April 1964 and January 1965. Major excerpts from all three talks are reprinted in Malcolm X Speaks, published by Pathfinder just months after the assassination in 1965. And portions of the question-and-answer period from the first forum appear in By Any Means Necessary. This was unusual for Malcolm. Because although he had spoken to numerous campus audiences around the United States and elsewhere, including while he was still in the Nation, these three forums were the only times he had agreed to be on the platform at a meeting of a revolutionary political organization outside Harlem, “downtown,” as Malcolm said. (He appeared with Progressive Labor Party leader Bill Epton once or twice at PL-sponsored meetings in Harlem.) …

Malcolm spoke at the third Militant Labor Forum, also held at Palm Gardens, in early January 1965, not long after returning from his most recent Africa trip and a couple weeks before the YS [Young Socialist] interview. “It’s the third time that I’ve had the opportunity to be a guest of the Militant Labor Forum,” he said. “I always feel that it is an honor and every time that they open the door for me to do so, I will be right here. The Militant newspaper is one of the best in New York City. In fact, it is one of the best anywhere you go today,” adding that he had seen copies in Paris and various parts of Africa. “I don’t know how it gets there,” he said. “But if you put the right things in it, what you put in will see that it gets around.”…

When you read Malcolm’s talks and interviews from this period, you’ll also find the evidence there to clear up numerous myths about him. First and foremost, by reading and studying Malcolm you’ll understand the inaccuracy of those who argue that despite the value of the written record of his work, it pales in comparison to his spoken word—to his effectiveness as a public speaker… .

We wouldn’t have preferred to produce records—or today CDs—of Malcolm instead of the books. Yes, Malcolm was an unusually effective speaker. But our efforts over the past forty years to publish Malcolm X in his own words—efforts that have so far borne fruit in eight books, six in English and two in Spanish, as well as two pamphlets—are hardly “the next best thing.” Unlike the recordings, they are essential to making Malcolm’s ideas and example accessible for study to new generations. And to those around the world (the great majority) whose first language is not English.

Nobody can seriously “study” a recording. It’s much more difficult to go back to refresh your memory, or to look something up. This is important, since as Malcolm’s political evolution seemed to accelerate more and more over the last months, the “wit and wisdom” aspect of his talks receded. What came to the fore instead, translatable into any language, were his efforts to think out and then explain the biggest political questions and challenges before revolutionary-minded working people and youth the world over. The written record of that work is and will remain the long-term test of Malcolm’s political “relevance” to the future. That’s where we find the continuity, the cumulative political conquests that advance program and strategy.  
 
Need revolutionary ideas in writing
The same is true of other outstanding revolutionary leaders of our class—Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Leon Trotsky, James P. Cannon, Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop, Thomas Sankara, to name just a few. Each of them worked hard as speakers to present revolutionary ideas to working people as clearly and effectively as possible. Some of them, as we know either from our own experience or published accounts, were powerful speakers. Where tapes are available, they’re useful and fun to listen to—once or twice. But it is impossible to seriously study and absorb working-class program and strategy just by listening to a recording. You need to have them before you in black and white, on paper. Either the ideas stand up in print, in any language and without an audience, or they don’t. Malcolm’s do! And there’s still plenty of wit, plenty of pure humanness.

There’s another myth about Malcolm that can be exploded by a careful reading of what he said and what he did—both of which can be found in some detail in the books of Malcolm’s speeches. That’s the notion that while Malcolm was a great propagandist, a great explainer of what so many people wanted to say about themselves and what they are capable of accomplishing, that Malcolm was never an organizer—or, at least, he never had a chance to become an organizer. But just from his own words alone, you’ll see that’s not true. Malcolm was all of the above, but he was simultaneously a skilled revolutionary organizer. What was cut short was the possibility of his putting those skills to further and broader work. The enemies of the proletariat understood that fact better than “pro-Malcolm X radicals,” both when he was alive and today.

During the final months of his life, Malcolm moved away from using religious phrases and stances, even religious examples, in political activity, too. He explained in the clearest language possible exactly what he was doing, what he was seeing, what he was coming to understand and to believe.

Malcolm was on the road to becoming a communist. Why would we conclude anything else? …

Malcolm insisted he had stopped calling himself a Black nationalist because Black nationalism was inadequate to explain what experience had taught him needed to be done to transform the world, a world that had in many ways in the imperialist epoch become a “white world.” But Malcolm knew that Black men and women were inextricably connected to that world, and stitched into it, by a million threads. The world was unimaginable without that interaction. Once you stopped hunkering down, there were no separate white and Black worlds in any way, whether in place or in time. Most importantly, there was—and remains—a single capitalist state that must be overthrown in each country.
 
 
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