Vol. 77/No. 40      November 11, 2013

Below is a translation of an Oct. 15 review by the semiofficial Iran Book News Agency of Malcolm X: Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class, translated and published in Iran by Talaye Porsoo. The book is the second volume in a three-part Farsi edition of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party, published in 2009 by Pathfinder Press.

Malcolm X: Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class presents the political legacy of Malcolm X for political activists.

Malcolm X: Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class by Jack Barnes, with an overview of the life of Malcolm X, describes the political practice of this revolutionary leader in the social and political struggles of the proletariat in the United States of America.

According to the report by the Iran Book News Agency, what established the foundation of the explosive rise of the Black liberation struggles in the United States in the 1950s was the mass migration of people of color from the rural south to cities and factories across the continent. What prompted this migration was the insatiable need of capital for labor power and cannon fodder for its wars. Malcolm X emerged from these struggles as an unrivaled leader.

Jack Barnes explains in this work that Malcolm X insisted that the explosive movement was part of a global revolutionary struggle for human rights.

Malcolm X: Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class, on the basis of the experiences of a century and a half of struggle, helps us to learn why the revolutionary conquest for power by the working class is the final battle that makes the emancipation of Blacks possible and opens the road to a world built, not on the basis of exploitation, violence and racism, but on the basis of human solidarity.

As the publisher notes in its preface, in this book the reader becomes acquainted with Malcolm’s youth and his family, within the framework of social relations dominant in the United States in that period. The book tells the story that Malcolm’s father was a Black man who did not accept that the place of Blacks is what is dictated to them, did not accept, like many others, to be threatened and assaulted by white racist organizations.

Malcolm X was the outstanding example of a revolutionary leader who rose up in the second half of the 20th century in America and converged with other revolutionaries around the world. Barnes writes, “Don’t start with Blacks as an oppressed nationality. Start with the vanguard place and weight of workers who are Black in broad proletarian-led political struggles in the United States. From the Civil War to today, the record is mind-boggling. It’s the strength and resilience, not the oppression, that bowls you over.”

The contents of the book are in three parts: He Spoke the Truth to Our Generation of Revolutionists: In Tribute to Malcolm X; The Young Socialist interview with Malcolm X; Malcolm X, Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class.

Talaye Porsoo Publications has brought out the first edition of Malcolm X: Revolutionary Leader of the Working Class, with a run of 1,000 copies, 199 pages, 9,000 Tomans [$3].
 
 
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