pecting the formation of such a state in the future. At the same time, however, separatism became only one nationalist current amongst others, as can be seen in the evolution of Malcolm X. avowed partisan for racial separation and the buikling of a black state during his period of activity at the heart of the Nation of Islam. After his break with them, he renounced the cenaratist road. He shows that whilst all black separatism is separatist.
The other particular feature of black nationalism is its social composition. The overwhelming majority of blacks belong to the working class. Black capitalists are an insignificant layer. This gives the black question a definite social nature. It gives black nationalism a class base and a much stronger socialist dynamic than the nationalisms of other oppressed pooples.
Black nationalism signifies the decision by certain blacks, followed in reality to not leave the destiny of their race in the hands of white society but to unite to decide their collective destiny and to organise with the aim of achieving this acsuny. black nabonaism, a common with all nationalisms of oppressed people has nothing to do with the nationalism of oppressor nations.
As the American supporters of the Fourth International explained in 1963,'black Americans find themselves in a umque situation in several ways They constitute an oppressed minority without a clearly defined goographical, linguistic or cultural base to differentiate themselves from their oppressors.
In this situation black nationalism is a broad means of "self-identification', a subject to racial oppression by its oppressors ane onlocological and organisatona unity neoessary to free themselves from this oppression. Black Nationalism has for black poople in this country a similar function, in many ways, to that of class consciousness in relation to the working Nationalism expresses the desire of black people to decide their own future and, among other matters, to resolve the question of a separate nation. The first task of the struggle of blacks is to mobilise and unite the black masses into an independent movement channelled to wards the fight for equality - an indispensable condition for an eventual revolutionary alliance of the working class and black people. Black nationaltowards the creation of an independent black movement. I wil arways roman progressive as long as it fulfils this function, irrespective of whether the struggle develops on integrationist or separatist lines. Back nationalism and revolution. complementary forces which noed to be intimately linked at the level of ideas and of action. The common sympathy and support for the colonial revolution, as tion, forms an important link between the black nationalists can have a lot of wrong ideas and the most bizarre illusions. But instead of fighting nationalism under the pretext that it contains such ideas and flusions black socialists should add anti-capitalist ideas and the socialist programme to black nationalism.
For the Trotskyists the rise of the Nation of islam reflected the general rise of the mass black movement for civil rights led by the traditional organisations the Truggle towards the black working of the North, and its growing tendency towards political independence and With the exception of supporters of the Fourth International, virtually all the American left saw the Nation of Islam as a retrograde movement -'inverted racism - 1l nor downright reactionary. Our attitude was as unique in the US chen as had been that of Trotsky in relation to the wave of black nationalism led by Garvey.
At the time of the new rise of black nationalism, in the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s, the Nation of Islam became its main standard bearer. Nevertheless, its backward ideology and bureaucratic structure, formed during the 1930s when it was only a marginalised sect, increasingly distorted and weighed down on the not in nationalist conscious ness of the black masses. In order to turn towards mass acton, which ine Mustm bureaucracy rejected, to modernise, to open itself up and develop, black nationalism needed to break from this yoke. This is exactly what Malcolm X did during the last year of his life.
He proceed to revise, in a more and more radical fashion, the form of black nationalism expressed by the Nation of Islam. He purged it of its irrational, religious, exclusivist and oppressive aspects.
His abandonment of the bizarre religious beliefs developed by Elijah Muhammad in favour of Sunni orthodoxy during a pilgrimage to Mecca was followed by a clear separation between religion and politics and the founding of a political, secular organisation. The Nation of Islam only organised those blacks converted to its religion, considering that they alone constituted black nationalist Malcolm rejected this sectarian and elitist notion.
Black nationalists like Malcolm X abandoned the idea that the white race as a whole was a hereditary enemy of so called 'people of colour". His conception of the black revolution no longer had a racial connotation but became part of his general concept about the abolition of oppression and the ending of exploitaof inter-racial marriage.All this was only ine ocginning or tae nuge changes brought about by Malcolm on black naAlthough many of these ideas remained incomplete at the time of his untimely and violent death, it is still possible to trace the general line of Malcolm's croluton. Marcolm outinco it in the following thesis: the structure of white power in the US and on the international level is founded on capitalism. There can be no capitalism without racism. The abolition of racial and national oppression is impossible within the socio-economic and political frame work of capitalism: a chicken can't lay a duck
rets SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No.41. May 1, 1993. Page 12