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Speaking Truth to Marable
by Joe Auciello / March 2006 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
(this is an expanded version from the one in our print
edition)
Manning
Marable, “Living Black History”, (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2006),
266pp., $26.
Once
again the burning of Southern Baptist churches has broken into the national
news. Television reporters have been quick to assure their audiences that
in the fire this time, race was not a factor. After all, of the five burned
churches, four were white and only one was Black. (Another five Baptist churches in Alabama have since been
burned—four of
them
Black).
Absent
from the news reports was the simple—and unavoidable—realization that the
very existence of white and Black Baptist churches in 21st century America
means that race is not a matter of the distant past but continues to be a
defining factor in the present.
Thus,
the publication of Manning Marable’s newest book, Living Black History, is
timely. Its purpose is expressed in the book’s subtitle: “How Reimagining
the African-American Past Can Remake America’s Racial Future.”
Frustration
with the superficial treatment of the African-American experience, both in
the writing of history and in compiling the archival record, compelled
Marable to put together the speeches and essays that comprise this book. He
is especially concerned to provide an accurate and truthful assessment of
the work of W.E.B. DuBois, Malcolm X, and Robert
Carter,
general counsel to the NAACP during the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education
decision.
As
Marable explains in the preface, “Too often the study of history is an
exercise in nostalgia or political myth-making rather than an honest interaction
with the raw materials of the past” (p. xiv). His aim is to provide a
corrective by treating African-American history both honestly
and
critically.
Manning
Marable is well qualified to sift through Black American history of the
20th century, to explore the lives of prominent Black leaders, and direct
that study “to imagine new futures, and to use history as a critical force
for change” (p. xx).
Marable,
professor of History, Political Science and Public Policy at Columbia
University, is the founding director for the Institute for Research in
African-American Studies, author, editor, and coeditor of numerous books,
columnist (Along the Color Line), and media commentator.
Currently,
he is at work on a new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
scheduled for publication by Viking Penguin.
Marable
also has a long history as a political activist in Black and reform-oriented
socialist organizations. He has been a member of the New American Movement,
a member of the executive committee of the National Black Political
Assembly, an associate of the journal Socialist Review, national
vice-chairperson of the Democratic Socialists of America, a
leader
of the National Black Independent Political Party, and finally, co-chair of
the Committees of Correspondence.
Despite
the wide and varied knowledge Marable brings to this book, Living Black
History unfortunately fails to live up to its premise. The chapters are
thin on content, and the book reads like a rambling rehash of material
previously published elsewhere. The little that is new is fairly
unimportant. There was no compelling need to bring this collection to
print, and some of it does not deserve the light of day. A key flaw in Living Black History is Marable’s
inability to recognize that the political and historical problem, as he
explains it, is logically contradictory, and its solution remains
unarticulated and unresolved.
History
is vital, Marable asserts. Since study of the past is essential to
constructing a better future, materials for scholarly research must be
preserved and gathered. Yet, in the new era of globalization and color-blind
racism, the freedom struggles of the past are obsolete, or,
worse,
they unintentionally contribute to the very problems that constitute
oppression today.
Still,
he maintains, it is important to study that no-longer-relevant history to
envision a new tomorrow. Activists “must step outside of their preconceived
notions of group advocacy to reimagine another model of politics” (p. 61).
But how? In what way? Where exactly is the link
between
the semi-successful struggles for freedom of a bygone age and the world of
today, which has rendered these struggles out of date? Is such a link even possible? Why, in other
words, does history really matter? The mere assertion that it does fails to
resolve the question. Marable never
squares the circle.
Unfortunately,
this vagueness of thought is reflected in the vagueness of the writing.
Much of Marable’s prose remains mired in generalities and platitudes. Thus,
readers are told, “The process of frank reevaluation of a shared past of
suffering and struggle may prompt a rededication to enduring democratic
values and policies, which will bring at long last all elements of our
fragmented nation into a common civic project” (p. xxi).
Marable
asserts that a study of history and of self can help “racialized
populations reflect” and lead to greater knowledge. “That journey of discovery
can produce a desire to join with others to build initiatives that create
space, permitting the renewal or survival of a group, or a
celebration
of its continued existence despite the forces arrayed against it” (p. 36).
The
language here is simply the boilerplate rhetoric of any politician. Talk of a “common civic project,”
“celebration of continued existence,” etc., would not sound strange or unusual
coming from the mouth of George W. Bush. Just read or listen to his speech
at the funeral of Coretta Scott King.
The
quality of Marable’s prose, the literary equivalent of Sleepy-Time tea,
continues throughout the book. Partly, this results from the fact that his
political goals are so negligible. For instance, when Marable expresses the
hope that historical research and study will lead to political action, he
writes, “By documenting and preserving the past, and by promoting civic conversations
about the historical struggles to dismantle institutionalized injustice, we
build new possibilities for public dialogue about the real challenges that
all Americans face in this
brave
new world of ours” (p. 65).
Even
Marable’s call for “new possibilities” is not new—certainly not for him.
It’s just that he wrote so much better and more accurately in the past. In
his book, Black American Politics, published in 1985, Marable concluded:
“The next stage in the struggle to uproot racism, gender oppression, and
social class inequality, requires that Afro-Americans and other oppressed
sectors begin to think of politics in a new way, and perceive that the
power to transform capitalist society is already in their hands” ( p. 305).
But
in place of Blacks, the working class, and its allies transforming capitalist
society, much less overthrowing capitalism itself, Marable now serves up
mush-mouthed platitudes about “the real challenges that all Americans face
in this brave new world.” For a political analyst of
the
left, this transformation to respectability hardly represents progress.
Finally,
by the end of the book, Marable does venture some concrete political
proposals. Arguing for a strategy of Black liberation, Marable rightly
criticizes “integrationists” for their unwarranted “faith in the national
Democratic Party.” However, in place of faith, Marable argues for “an
‘inside-outside’ approach to power” in order “to pressure Democratic
administrations into greater accountability to blacks’ interests” (p. 213).
This
argument is coupled with Marable’s frequent assertion of the need to study
past political struggles: “An oppressed people without total recall of
their own history of exploitation and resistance cannot craft a new history
of liberation” (p. 213).
But
Marable’s injunction to make a “frank reevaluation” of the past apparently
does not extend to Marable’s own political schemas. What, exactly, have
been the fortunes of the “inside-outside” strategy? Hasn’t it led to
nothing because the corporate wealth and power of the Democratic Party (one
of the two major parties of corporate America) comprises a force too
powerful to allow the “insiders” to work “outside”?
That
is, having joined the Democrats, haven’t the “insiders” themselves been
influenced, even captured, by the party they naively sought to direct? No
discussion of this strategy and its outcome is presented or even referred
to in Living Black History.
Even
more troubling is Marable’s distorted account, in the chapters on W.E.B.
DuBois and Malcolm X, of the Trotskyist movement. Marable’s argument, quoted in full, proceeds as follows: “One
of DuBois’s harshest Cold War-era critics in the early sixties was Harold
Isaacs.
During the 1930s, Isaacs had been active in the deeply anticommunist Trotskyist
movement. In 1950, the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party ran a candidate,
Joseph Hansen, against DuBois during his unsuccessful campaign for the
United States Senate in New York. During the campaign, Hansen repeatedly
accused DuBois of ‘permitting the local agents of the Kremlin police regime
to exploit your good name and distinguished reputation for reactionary
ends.’ Although Isaacs had officially distanced himself from the Trotskyist
left by the early 1960s, its polemic views still influenced his general
interpretation of black American leaders like DuBois. Isaac’s 1963 book The New World of Negro
Americans, which received the Anisfield-Wolf Award given to the best book
on U.S. race relations, pilloried DuBois on a wide variety of grounds. For Isaacs, DuBois was simply a pompous
‘breakfast-table autocrat’ whose ‘half-digested Marxism’ and elitism had
culminated ‘in a close embrace – indeed a
marriage
– with totalitarian Communist world power” (p. 98).
This
account is untrue on several levels – falsehoods are wrapped around
falsehoods. To use Marable’s own words,
it is another instance of “mythmaking” rather than an “honest interaction
with the past.” It is necessary to set the record straight.
First,
the Trotskyist program had nothing in common with and offered no support to
the Cold War, either in its bourgeois liberal or conservative variant.
The
Trotskyist position was developed by James P. Cannon, who wrote, “[T]he
fight against Stalinism is part of the general anticapitalist struggle, not
separate from it nor in contradiction to it—the greatest and most menacing
enemy of the human race is the bipartisan imperialist
cabal
in Washington. We consider the fight against war and reaction in the United
States to be the first and main duty of American revolutionists. This is the necessary premise for cooperation
in the fight against Stalinism” (The Struggle for Socialism in the
‘American Century,’ p. 346). Having
themselves been victims of government witch hunts, the Trotskyists gave no
aid or comfort to Cold War attacks on members or sympathizers of the
Communist Party. To discuss Cold Warrior Harold Isaacs’ criticism of DuBois
in the same paragraph as Trotskyist Joseph Hansen’s criticism of DuBois is
to imply a political similarity, even identity, where none exists.
Indeed,
Marable says that it was the “polemic views” of “the deeply anticommunist
Trotskyist movement” that influenced Isaacs and explains why he “pilloried
DuBois on a wide variety of grounds.”
Actually,
a look back at Hansen’s own words (to the extent that it is possible;
Marable provides no source for his quotation), where he speaks of DuBois’s
“good name and distinguished reputation,” shows that Hansen had nothing in
common with Isaac’s assessment of DuBois, though, of course, Hansen was
critical of the Communist Party.
The
matter does not end there. The fact is that, though he does not say so,
Marable has shifted from an earlier assessment he had made of Isaacs. In
his book, W.E.B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat (1986), Marable attributed
Isaacs’ criticism of DuBois to a rather different source. Cited here are the relevant passages: “A
former Trotskyist, Isaacs
retained
a deep hostility towards communism, and his Cold War biases distorted his
treatment of DuBois in his book The New World of Negro Americans (1963).
DuBois was described sarcastically as a ‘breakfast-table autocrat,’ whose
‘half-digested Marxism’ and elitism had culminated ‘in a close
embrace—indeed, a marriage—with totalitarian Communist world power.’ Isaacs
declared DuBois had the potential for greatness but fell short of the mark.
… ‘In summary, DuBois is hardly to be classed as a world shaker or world
changer,’ Isaacs insisted. ‘Other Negroes have been far greater as leaders
and played much larger historic roles’” (p. 269).
In
1986, Marable says it was Isaacs’ “Cold War biases” that animated his
prejudiced criticism of DuBois. Twenty years later this passage was rewritten
to implicate the Trotskyists—who had the audacity to run their own Senate
campaign for New York State Senator! In Marable’s new version of history,
it was no longer the Cold War but the “polemic views” of the Trotskyists
that influenced Isaacs (some 30 years after he broke politically with the
Trotskyists) to attack DuBois.
Nowhere
in Living Black History does Marable explain this shift in his thinking; in
fact, nowhere does he even acknowledge his earlier statement from his 1986
work. Of course, a frank acknowledgement might have made it more difficult
to add an unjustifiable slander against the Trotskyists.
Nor
does Marable acknowledge what the Trotskyists actually wrote about DuBois
in a lengthy article in the May-June 1950 issue of their magazine, then
titled Fourth International. In this often laudatory article, the author,
William Gorman, begins by claiming, “As he approaches
eighty-two,
no higher tribute can be paid William Edward Burghardt DuBois than that it
is impossible to seriously consider the Negro in America without being
confronted by his name at every turn” (p. 80).
In
this article criticisms were made of DuBois, including “his present sympathy
with Stalinism,” but the main criticism held that DuBois’ thinking could
develop only so far as “the modern proletariat—Negro and white”—had
advanced in his formative intellectual years. The younger militants would
have to build on DuBois’s achievements…. The present generation of Negro
intellectuals has one immense advantage of DuBois. The last generation of
social experience has been more permeated with the dynamics of class
struggle out of which the future will be created than all of DuBois’
eighty-two years. Yet his earlier sociological writings, his Black
Reconstruction, and even Souls of Black Folk are imperishable” (p. 86).
So
wrote the Trotskyists, those “deeply anticommunist” Trotskyists, with their
“polemic views,” in 1950. Admittedly, a 56-year-old article in an obscure
revolutionary socialist publication is hardly common knowledge, even for
scholars. Yet, Marable knows of the work; he cited it in the “Select
Bibliography” of his book on DuBois.
Oddly
enough, despite Marable’s slanderous comments about the Trotskyists, he
echoes the 1950 Trotskyist article and its criticism of DuBois when, in
Living Black History, Marable himself takes stock of DuBois’s political
weaknesses. At the conclusion of his chapter on DuBois, Marable says, “The
inadequacies and incomplete character of DuBoisian social
theory,
in the end, may have less to do with the shortcomings of DuBois as an
individual than with the objective conditions and level of ideological and
political development of the African-American people during the first half
of the twentieth century…. The social context in which
DuBois
had to construct his arguments never approximated the revolutionary
preconditions suggested by Lenin. DuBois could only go as far as history
could permit him to go” (pp. 118-119).
This
assessment merely duplicates what the Trotskyists said decades earlier,
that “despite the highly radical coloration of his later beliefs, he
[DuBois] remains fixed in the prejudices of the protest movement of small-farmer
Populism and urban middle class Progressivism between 1885 and 1915”
(Fourth International, May-June 1950, p. 85).
In
an effort to discredit the Trotskyists—falsely—Marable is compelled to deny
and distort himself, twice over. It is falsehood of almost Biblical
proportions.
What,
then, causes Marable to smear the Trotskyists when, in fact, he agrees with
the Trotskyists’ overall assessment of DuBois’s achievement? The answer may lie in that 1959 New York
Senate campaign in which the Trotskyists ran against DuBois. Although in
Living Black History Marable does not say so, DuBois was a candidate for
the American Labor Party (ALP) ticket.
According
to the Encyclopedia of the American Left, “The ALP did not fully operate as
an independent party. For the most part, it was a satellite party
proffering endorsements to candidates of the Democratic Party, and to
Republicans considered sufficiently progressive. When the major parties
forwarded unacceptable candidates, the ALP ran its own” (p. 24).
The
ALP embodied, in other words, the “inside-outside” strategy that Marable
continues to call for to this day. Naturally enough, the Trotskyists,
revolutionary socialists who favored real political independence of the
working class and its allies against both Democrats and
Republicans,
would oppose what the Encyclopedia of the American Left called the “left-leaning
nonsocialist program” of the ALP, a vehicle to hustle votes for the class
enemy.
Perhaps
the real issue, after all, is not hostility to DuBois but Marable’s own
hostility to the Trotskyist movement, its traditions and program.
Marable’s
ill-founded and antagonistic arguments against the Trotskyists continue in
the chapter on Malcolm X. Marable’s polemic—it cannot be called
“analysis”—is a combination of fact, distortion, innuendo, and hypocrisy
that, taken together, adds up not merely to poor scholarship but to
falsehood and slander.
Again,
for the sake of fairness and clarity, the paragraph is quoted in full:
“Texts of the actual transcripts of the majority of his speeches went
unpublished for decades and many still remain unpublished. The major edited
collections of Malcolm X’s speeches, including Malcolm X Speaks and By Any
Means Necessary, were published by Pathfinder Press and
Merit
Publications, which are affiliated with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers
Party (SWP). The SWP, following the
Marxist theories of Leon Trotsky, believed that the “revolutionary black
nationalism” of militants like Malcolm X was a necessary precursor to the
staging of a socialist revolution in the United States. The Trotskyists
went out of their way to court and promote Malcolm X after his break from
the Nation of Islam, and in many respects interpreted his ideas and goals
as part of an “evolution” towards a revolutionary Marxist position. It is unclear whether the SWP
intentionally edited Malcolm X’s speeches to emphasize those particular
views that conformed most favorably to their own dogmatic perspectives.
What is indisputable, however, is that George Breitman, the Trotskyists’
chief interpreter of Malcolm X, never actually met Malcolm himself, and
even the most famous and memorable speeches that Malcolm delivered, such as
his ‘Message to the Grassroots’ in Detroit on November 10, 1963, have only
appeared in print in heavily edited versions, with major passages severely
altered or completely deleted. The
audio recording of ‘Message to the Grassroots’ that was released on a sixteen-inch
record has many obvious sound gaps. Some of these omissions have been
attributed to Malcolm X himself, who asked for the deletion of all the
favorable references to Elijah Muhammad that he made during the original
address. Consequently, millions of activists who read and quote from the
writings of Malcolm X are really unfamiliar with what the man actually
said” (pp. 163, 164; emphasis in original).
The
opening sentences of Marable’s polemic confuse the time frame and suggest
malevolent intentions where none exist. Marable implies that the Trotskyists
held back publication of Malcolm X’s speeches when Malcolm X Speaks was
published. Such an implication is not true.
Then
SWP member George Breitman, editor of the Pathfinder books of Malcolm X,
said this book “contains everything from his last year that was available
at the time it was published at the end of 1965” (from “Myths About Malcolm
X,” included in Breitman, Porter, and Smith, eds., The Assassination of
Malcolm X, p. 129).
As
other material became available, additional books were published, two
edited by Breitman: Malcolm X on Afro-American History (1967) and By Any
Means Necessary (1970).
Marable
accuses the SWP, (meaning Breitman) of editing Malcolm in order to cast him
in the Trotskyists’ own image, “to emphasize those particular views that
conformed most favorably to their own dogmatic perspectives.” What evidence
is there for this accusation? Marable presents none.In Malcolm X Speaks,
Breitman asserts the opposite intention. “The aim of this book is to
present, in his own words, the major ideas Malcolm X expounded and defended
during his last year” (p. v). Further, “In editing, we have made only such
changes as any speaker would make in preparing his speeches for print, and
such as we believe Malcolm would have made himself” (p. vi).
In
1967 Breitman explicitly refuted the kind of accusation Marable raises
today, an accusation unaccompanied by fact. In “Myths About Malcolm X,”
Breitman said, “I say Malcolm is both the Malcolm of the period before the
split and the Malcolm of the year after the split, and I want to see and
understand the whole man. I want to see the whole man.… That is why in
editing his speeches, I included everything available, not just the parts I
agree with. That is why in the book about his evolution [George Breitman,
The Last Year of Malcolm X: The Evolution of a Revolutionary] I was just as
concerned in presenting his positions that
diverge
from my own as I was in exploring those that resemble or approach mine”
(The Assassination of Malcolm X, pp. 119-120).
In
the question and answer period to his speech, Breitman reiterated, “I
stress ‘everything’ because I want to make the point that the material was
not picked over to present only things that Marxists like and agree with—it
includes what Malcolm liked and agreed with, and that was the sole and
overriding criterion that was used in preparing Malcolm X Speaks.”
Additionally,
Breitman pointed out, “Malcolm’s three Militant Labor Forum speeches were
all printed in The Militant while he was alive, not later. He didn’t think
they were inaccurate in any way. If he had thought so, you can be sure he
would have said it, and he wouldn’t have had a bundle of The Militant on
sale in his office” (“Myths About Malcolm X,” pp. 28-29).
How
does Marable respond to Breitman’s explanation? In a word—he doesn’t. He
simply pretends that Breitman’s comments do not exist. Marable claims, and
there is no reason to doubt him on this point, that he “plowed through”
hundreds of books and articles about Malcolm X. Breitman’s books and
pamphlets are well known, and it is reasonable to assume
Marable
read them in the process of his research. At any rate, Marable read Breitman’s
editorial introduction to Malcolm X Speaks.
A
scholar less polemical and factional than Marable, one perhaps less tied to
his own “dogmatic perspectives,” would have attempted to develop a reply to
Breitman. Instead, Marable simply ignores what he wrote and dredges up old
criticisms as if they were new and as if Breitman had not already refuted
them years before. Marable’s arguments might possess some measure of
credibility if he offered new information or new evidence to show where
Breitman was wrong, but Marable attempts nothing of the sort.
What
Marable does attempt, though, is malicious insinuation. He refers to the
fact that George Breitman never met Malcolm personally and italicizes it
for emphasis—but Marable never says what point he intends to emphasize.
It’s not an accidental omission. Marable does not want to be directly
responsible for the idea he hopes to plant in his readers’ minds, hence, he
makes no clear, direct statement. So, a reader might well assume that
Marable has discovered some significant and new information, which would be
precisely the wrong conclusion. In a speech given in March, 1965 Breitman
himself says that he had never met or seen Malcolm in person. This speech
was printed in The Militant newspaper and reprinted in a pamphlet. Two
years later Breitman repeated this information, and it can be found on the
first page of the introduction to his book, The Last Year of Malcolm X.
This
is how Marable can present the fact as “indisputable”—Breitman wrote it
down more than 40 years ago. The problem for Marable is that it just does
not sound as damning if you tell the truth plainly and say, “as Breitman
explained.” Hence, Marable insinuates instead, as if that somehow makes him
less responsible for misleading his readers.
Marable’s
implication is clear. He implies that Breitman was unfit for the job of
editing Malcolm’s speeches, not only for his alleged “dogmatic
perspectives,” which, as a Trotskyist, Breitman must have held, but also
because Breitman lacked personal knowledge of his subject. The logical
conclusion of this implication, which Marable does not and can not bring
himself to state overtly, is that only those who know their subjects
personally, or who at least have met them, are capable of writing about
them properly.
When
Marable’s implication is fully spelled out, it is revealed as nonsense and
hypocrisy. Nonsense because many editors, biographers, and scholars never
met the individuals whose works they edit and whose lives they chronicle.
Nonsense because other criteria—understanding, objectivity, fairness—are
far more significant than personal contact.
How
can a reader know that Marable believes criteria other than personal
acquaintance are significant? Marable himself says so in his criticism of
Alex Haley, who met Malcolm continually for two years in order to compose
Malcolm’s autobiography. “The individual most responsible for removing the
radical and revolutionary context from the image of Malcolm
X
was Alex Haley,” Marable states. Haley, the celebrated author of Roots and
coauthor of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, was a Republican most of his
life and was a committed advocate of racial integration” (p. 148).
Obviously, personal collaboration is not a sufficient guarantee of good
analysis.
The
hypocrisy in Marable’s accusation is evident from the facts of his own
career. Marable wrote a book on W.E.B. DuBois though Marable never actually
met DuBois himself. Furthermore, Marable is now at work on a biography of
Malcolm X, though it is indisputable that Marable never actually met
Malcolm himself. If Marable was consistent enough to apply
his
foolish standard to his own work, he would have to stop writing. But there is no need of such self-censorship.
The maligned George Breitman long ago outlined a fair and reasonable
standard of criticism and scholarliness: “[W]e Marxists have interpreted
the raw material—again, not by distorting what Malcolm said, only by giving
our analysis and opinion about what he said and did. That is everybody’s
privilege, that is the duty of anybody who considers himself a radical, and
we hope that all tendencies will work out and present their interpretations,
as we have done, so that all interpretations can confront each other openly
and provide a sound basis for what will be the historical judgment and tradition”
(The Assassination of Malcolm X, pp. 129-130).
What
exactly, according to Marable, is the proper historical judgment of Malcolm
X? How have the “dogmatic perspectives” of the Trotskyists misinterpreted
and misedited Malcolm so that “millions of activists who read and quote
from the writings of Malcolm X are really unfamiliar with what the man
actually said”? What correction in interpretation does Marable provide?
The
answer—and, given all of Marable’s accusations and insinuations, the
startling answer—is that Marable’s view of Malcolm X is similar to, and may
even derive from… George Breitman.
In
The Last Year of Malcolm X, Breitman traces the evolution of Malcolm’s
thinking through a scrupulous examination of his speeches, letters, public
statements, etc. Breitman divides the last 50 weeks of Malcolm’s life into
two parts, a transition period and a final period. He also
points
out that Malcolm’s thinking was never completed but instead “was halted by
the assassins’ bullets.”
It
is not possible here to summarize all that Breitman wrote—the book is in
print and well repays careful study— but some themes stand out:
(1)
Malcolm X was neither a violent hatemonger nor a mild integrationist.
(2)
“The Autobiography, even with Haley’s long epilogue, is politically incomplete,
and in some ways ambiguous or misleading.”
(3)
Malcolm created religious and political organizations but at the same time
looked to forge alliances internationally, especially with Africa,
nationally with moderate Black civil rights organizations, and, when
possible, with militant whites.
(4)
Malcolm X was still evolving politically at the time of his death, and “he
was on the way to a synthesis of black nationalism and socialism that would
be fitting for the American scene and acceptable to the masses in the black
ghetto” (p. 69). Yet, though “Malcolm was pro-socialist in the last year of
his life, [he was] not yet a Marxist” (pp. 50-51).
Marable,
in his chapter on Malcolm X in Living Black History, stresses the same
political points. He, too, dismisses the false media images, and, based on
a reading of the unpublished chapters of the Autobiography, points out
Malcolm’s efforts to create “an unprecedented African-American united
front” (p. 57).
Marable’s
overall assessment of Malcolm’s final year echoes Breitman on another
important and controversial point: Malcolm’s relation to socialism. Marable
criticizes “the Shabazz family’s interest in isolating Malcolm X from both
his black nationalist phase and from his later connection with
revolutionary socialism” (p. 132), and faults Alex Haley for misrepresenting
in the “Autobiography” “Malcolm’s political pan-Africanism, his growing
attraction to socialism” (p. 161).
These
results of Marable’s research merely confirm the truth of what Breitman had
already established, yet, when listing “the best previous scholarly studies
of Malcolm X,” Breitman’s work is notably neglected. Marable’s treatment of Breitman cannot
be attributed to incomplete knowledge or lack of comprehension. The fault,
instead, lies in a blind factionalism or crippling sectarianism that
prevents Marable from arguing conscientiously and fairly with the Trotskyists
or even discussing the Trotskyists’ political positions accurately.
Life
is short; there are many books to read, and not a few to reread. But not
this one. Despite its admirable purpose, Living Black History is a vapid failure
marred by a poisonous dose of crude Stalinism. Marable is more than capable
of writing better books in the future, but whether or not he will do so
remains to be seen.
Meanwhile,
readers would be better served by seeking out Malcolm X and the Third
American Revolution: The Writings of George Breitman, which will be
reviewed in a forthcoming issue.
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