Vol. 75/No. 6      February 14, 2011

The following is a January 18 review, titled “Accomplishments of Malcolm X from the point of view of a socialist,” by the semiofficial Iran Book News Agency (IBNA). It reviews the first volume of the Farsi translation of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power by Jack Barnes. The book was published by Pathfinder Press in English in 2009, and in Spanish and French in early 2010. This opening volume of the Farsi translation includes the introduction plus part IV of the book, "Ending the Dictatorship of Capital, Ending Racism."

In recent months, IBNA has also featured reviews of Is Socialist Revolution in the U.S. Possible? by Mary-Alice Waters and Washington’s 50-Year Domestic Contra Operation by Larry Seigle. All three of the Farsi books are published by Talaye Porsoo.
 

January 18, 2011—The socialist author of the book Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power uses Malcolm X, Muslim leader of American Black fighters, as a pretext to authenticate socialism.

According to the Iran Book News Agency (IBNA), Jack Barnes, the author of the book, is the national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. In this book, above all, he relates the issues raised in an interview he conducted with Malcolm X in 1965 for the Young Socialist magazine.

This book is about the class struggle in the United States in the last century and half, from the Civil War and Radical Reconstruction until today.

Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power is a book about why the revolutionary conquest of state power by a politically class-conscious and organized vanguard of the working class, millions strong, is necessary and why and how the new state power provides the working class the mightiest weapon possible to wage the ongoing battle to end Black oppression and every form of exploitation and human degradation inherited from millennia of class-divided society.

The book actually takes up the last year of Malcolm X's life, and how he became the face and the authentic voice of the coming American revolution. Barnes, who entertains the hope of a great revolution in America, views Malcolm X with admiration. Because Malcolm X also spoke of transformation and revolution, especially in American society.

In fact the writer of the book and his comrades, like Steve Clark and Mary-Alice Waters, remain steadfast to the vision of a revolution taking place in America. They are socialists who interpret, to the extent possible, every topic or political event from a socialist point of view.

In a section of the introduction the author writes, "Drawing lessons from a century and 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."

Malcolm X, leader of the Black struggle in America who adopted the religion of Islam, also spoke of the necessity of revolution and transformation. He always assailed those possessing power and capital for violating the rights of Black people. So his goals were to some extent similar to those of socialists. But it remains to be seen whether the starting point for these goals are also similar or not.

Studying the views of the socialists reinforces this notion in the reader that, because of the relative defeat of this ideology in the past decades in the domain of action and domination of imperialism, they try to clutch at everything to authenticate their ideas.

The first edition of Malcolm X, Black Liberation, and the Road to Workers Power, translated by Afsheen Sadraie, has been published by Talaye Porsoo in 163 pages with a run of 1,000 copies. The price is 45,000 rials [US$4.50].  
 
 
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