Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power

By: Jack Barnes

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Synopsis: “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 social and 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.” Quote from Jack Barnes. Jack Barnes is the National Secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. The foundations for the explosive rise of the Black liberation struggle in the mid-1950’s were laid by the massive migration of Blacks from the rural South to cities and factories across the continent, drawn by capital’s insatiable need for labor power—and cannon fodder for its wars. Malcolm X emerged from this rising struggle as its outstanding single leader. He insisted that colossal movement was part of a worldwide revolutionary battle for human rights. A clash “between those who want freedom, justice, and equality and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.” Drawing lessons from a century and a half of struggle, this book helps us understand why it is the revolutionary conquest of power by the working class that will make possible the final battle for Black freedom—and open the way to a world based not on exploitation, violence, and racism, but human solidarity. A socialist world.

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