The Militant (logo)  

Vol. 78/No. 11      March 24, 2014

 
Students in Lebanon discuss
book on class struggle in US
‘Malcolm X, Black Liberation,
and Road to Workers Power’ in Arabic
  
BY GEORGES MEHRABIAN  
NABATIYEH, Lebanon — “This book is about the dictatorship of capital and the road to the dictatorship of the proletariat. A book about the last century and a half of the class struggle in the United States,” said Omari Musa, a member of the Socialist Workers Party from the U.S. Musa was speaking to 80 students at the Lebanese International University in Sidon Feb. 26, the first of three campus events in southern Lebanon launching the Arabic edition of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes.

Sixty-five students attended the presentation at the LIU campus in the agricultural center here the next day, followed by a meeting of 50 in Tyre. All these events were organized by instructors Rawad Kansoun and Makram Haj Hassan and were hosted by the LIU administration.

“These discussions are invaluable today, as the worldwide crisis of capitalist production and trade is devastating hundreds of millions of working people worldwide,” said Natasha Terlexi, president of Diethnes Vima, a publisher in Greece mostly of Greek translations of books on revolutionary working-class politics by Pathfinder Press.

“Malcolm X was once asked, ‘did he seek to awaken African-Americans to their oppression?’” said Tony Hunt, a leader of the Communist League in the United Kingdom. “‘No,’ Malcolm replied, ‘to their humanity, to their own worth.’ That’s the discussion we seek to have with working people in the U.K. Working people can rise to the level of running society in the interests of the toiling majority of humanity.”

“Socialist workers in the U.S. use this book and many others on communist politics together with the Militant newspaper in discussions with workers we meet knocking on doors and participating in protests, picket lines, events to build support for the fight to free the Cuban Five and other political activity,” Musa said.

“Our reality is different than what you describe,” said one student in Sidon during a discussion period after the presentations. “Our society here is divided into religious sects, financially, militarily and otherwise. How can we adapt these lessons to our divided streets?”

“You all have to figure that out yourselves based on your reality,” said Musa, who talked about his experience as part of the proletarian battles in the 1960s that overthrew Jim Crow racial segregation and created new possibilities for united action among working people of all backgrounds.

“The uprising in Tunisia began through the action of a worker,” said one participant at the meeting in Nabatiyeh. “But as the Arab Spring escalated the beast of the world hijacked it. We no longer have an Arab Spring but an autumn.”

“The popular protests that led to the toppling of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak and Morsi in Egypt was the opening of a new period of struggle in the Middle East that will have ups and downs,” said Musa. “Workers and farmers will go through important experiences over the coming decades. They are not defeated. I think that we are not at the autumn, but very early in the spring.”

Other questions included: Do you think that whites are capable of understanding Malcolm X’s words? Is a revolution in the U.S possible? Why did Malcolm X focus on the role of women?

A total of 19 copies of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power — 11 in Arabic and eight in English — were sold during the trip. Four copies of the new book Voices from Prison: The Cuban Five and three copies of I Will Die the Way I’ve Lived, both on the Cuban Five, were purchased. An additional five other titles were picked up, along with two subscriptions to the Militant.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home