Mythology of Love, A Womanhood and Manhood Poetic Rites of Passage by Marvin X

Tentative Order of Ritual

1. Welcome, Hunia Bradley
2. Libation, Rev. Mutima Imani
3. Pearls/For the Women, Mechele LaChaux, Marvin X
4. Phavia Kujichagulia, YoYoYo
5. Woman in the Box, Alona Clifton, dannce, Raynetta Rayzetta
6. Beautiful Flower, Destiny Muhammad, Tarika, Tacuma
7. Aries Jordan, Vagina Monologue
8. Ayodele Nzinga, Bathroom Graffitti Queen by Opal Palmer Adisa
9. Mechele LaChaux, Woman on the Cell Phone

15 Minute Intermission

10. Augusta Collins, song, M.A.N., Miles from Nowhere
11. Derrick Hughes, A Man's World
12. Marvin X, For the Men
13. Ptah Allah El, Aries Jordan, Confession of a Wife Beater, Testimony
14. O'Town Passions, Ten Commandments of Love


15. Parable of a Real Woman, Rev. Brandon Reems and Bishop Ernestine Reems
16. Mechelle LaChaux, Destiny Muhammad, Tacuma, Tarika, Nature Boy
17. Marvin X, In the Name of Love
18. Geoffrey Grier, Q and A

For the Women
For the women
Who bear children and nurture them with truth
Who cook and clean behind thankless men
For the women
Who love so hard so true so pure
For the women
With faith in God and men
For the women
Alone with beer and rum
Searching for a man
At the club college church party
For the women
Independent of men
Searching their souls
Who smoke crack and freak
Who love only women
Who play and run and never show
Who rise in revolt in hand with men
Who say never never, never again
For the women who suffer abuse and cry for justice
For the women happy and free of maternal madness
For the women who study and write
For the women who sell their love to starving men
For the women who love to make love and be loved by men
For the women of Afrika who work so hard
For the women of American who suffer the master
For the women who turn to God in prayer and patience
For the women who are mothers of children and mothers of men
For the women who suffer inflation recession abortion recession
For the women who understand the rituals of men and women
For the women who share
For the women who are greedy
For the women with power
For the women with nothing
For the women locked down
For the women down town
For the women who break horses
For the women in the fields
For the women who rob banks
For the women who kill
For the women of history
For the women of now
I salute you. A MAN.
--Marvin X
Circa 1981

Marvin X reads with Phavia Kujichagulia and Rashidah Sabreen
Videographer and editor, Mr. Ken Johnson

Parable of A Real Woman

There was a man who had many women in his life. They had come and gone, with himself at fault most of the time. But he wouldn't give up, he continued his self improvement and search for that special woman.

He talked with elder women about what he should do. One told him he'd never had a real woman! If so, she would still be with him, no matter what, through thick and thin, up times and down times. Well, he asked, how would he know when such a woman was in his presence. First, clean up your own act, she said. Scoop your own poop.


Rid yourself of defects of character. Make amendments to all those you have harmed in life. It takes humility to do this. Still, how will I know the real woman? The older woman answered, you will know because when she comes over your house and sees something amiss, she will take authority to correct the situation. If your house is dirty, she will immediately ask if she can clean it as a favor to you, as an act of love.

She will not want any money for her services. And she will clean your house as it has never been cleaned before because she knows what she is doing. Yes, she is a pro, not only with house cleaning but with everything she does, including her love making. She will make sure you are satisfied and herself as well. She will demand respect and will respect you.

She will demand freedom and give you freedom. She will speak in the language of love so smoothly that it will be like a razor cutting to the heart. You will be bleeding to death but not know you are cut. You will do what she suggests and do it willingly because it will not be a demand but a request said so subtly you won't recognize it for what it actually is: a demand.

And you will love doing what she requests. When you need space and time to yourself you won't need to explain, she will pick up the vibe. And you will do the same for her. She will not be jealous and envious of your talent and skills or how handsome you are to other women.

She knows she has you in her pocket because she is confident of herself, and not worried about some other woman taking her man. If you are taken by another woman, it must be the will of God that you go. She knows God will replace her emptiness with someone even better than you. But she will give you time to get a grip on yourself and find your way back home.

Just don't take too long and when you come home don't be asking about what she was doing while you were gone. A real woman will put her resources at your disposal if you are worthy of them, as the prophet Muhammad was treated by the wealthy trade woman Khadijah. There is no selfishness in love. All is for the beloved, but a wise woman ain't no fool. As the song says, the greatest thing you will ever do is love and be loved in return. The man thanked the elder woman for her wisdom and departed on his search.
--11 March 2010



You Don't Know Me

You don't know me

you had a chance to know me

before we made love

you had a chance to know my mind

understand my fears

learn about issues

help me heal some things

but you wanted to make love

so you don't know me

we made love

but you don't know me

don't have a clue

think I'm a good d

or some good tight p

but you don't know me

and never will now

because you wanted to make love

you wanted to get a nut

we didn't even talk much

a little bit leading up to sex

I went along

I was horny too

but you don't know me

and I don't know you

now we never will

we blew it forever

because we made love

too fast too quick too soon

now you think you own me

I can't breathe

can't talk on the phone to friends

because we made love

because I gave you some d

you gave me some p

now I'm no longer human

I'm your love slave

you my slave

we're in love but you don't know me

we gonna get married

but you don't know me

we're gonna have children

but you don't know me

you're gonna beat my ass

but you don't know me

you're going to jail

but you don't know me

we're getting a divorce

but you don't know me

now we're friends "Just Friends" Charlie Parker tune

But you don't know me and never will.

--Marvin X

What is Love?

What is love only kisses hugs
what is love
only meetings of the minds
what about times when minds do not meet
is love not present in the air in the blood of loving souls
too ignorant to know the test of love
the many ways it strives to be and not be
yet is always
and forever
not always tender
sometimes rough and sharp
like a razor cutting to the heart
love is pain
we take to grow
be strong again
tears in the night
alone again
we find ourselves
wondering
if love was even real
yet it was
if we see
if we look
beyond romantic notions of everything is cool always with love
but we know the blues of love
when we miss the words from lips so tender in truth
but we miss them
in haste
to be the authority on love
yet love
has been around since eternity and will stay
when lovers have gone away
it will stay
in spite of all the tears
the fights
the verbal bouts
even the put outs
and come backs
and gimme my keys
and why don't you call
and don't you still care
and why did you go
and do you really lover her or really love him
after all the time we shared
how could you do this to me
after all I did for you in the night
what is love
sometimes we must enjoy the hurt the pain
to grow
be wise again
this time
with God
in the center of things
but try
for love is precious
time is short
life must be lived with joy
somehow
through it all
let joy arise
take control of love.
--Marvin X
from Land of My Daughters, poems, 2005,
Black Bird Press, Berkeley


A scene from Marvin X's 1981 classic play In the Name of Love,
starring Zahieb Mwongozi, Ayodele Nzinga and Doris Knight
video from the archives of Leon Teasley

Marvin X is the USA's Rumi!--Bob Holman

He's Plato teaching on the Streets of Oakland. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen.--Ishmael Reed

A symphony conductor in the manner of Sun Ra. One of America's great story tellers. Maybe second to Mark Twain. Of course I'd place Marvin X ahead of him even.--Rudolph Lewis

One of the founders and innovators of the revolutionary school of African writing.--Amiri Baraka

His writing is orgasmic. He reaches in and pulls from a life lived hard, deep, wide, high and low, i.e., a sacrifice in blood. At the root of sacrifice is sacred, which is of God and for God. He has lived and examined the lives of the proverbial 10,000 black men and women...and gives us the truth of that experience, lived and examined.--Fahizah Alim, writer emeritus, Sacramento Bee

Marvelous Marvin X!--Dr. Cornel West

Still the undisputed King of Black Consciousness!--Dr. Nathan Hare

Marvin X is a human earthquake! He's known for putting together extravaganzas that border on creative chaos! But there's a method to his madness!

--Kalamu ya Salaam

"Marvin X at his best, clarity of perception!" --Gerald Ali

Mythology of Love is Phenomenal!
--Bruce George

It empowered me. I didn't know I had that much power.--A young sister

It helped me up my game!--A young brother

We should have had something like this when we were 16. It would have saved us a lot of trouble with women. It would have saved them a lot of pain dealing with us.
--Elder Brother

Blues man
Augusta Collins





There are more African Americans under correctional control today--in prison or jail, on probation or parole--than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing under caste, not class, caste--a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education and public benefits--much as their grandparents and great-grandparents once were during the Jim Crow era.--Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow


I must have Destiny in Mythology of Love. She understands where I'm coming from artistically and spiritually. We just need funding to keep our artists spreading joy.
If you would like to help make this production happen, let me know ASAP:jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Destiny Muhammad
Harpist of the Hood

Tentative Cast for Mythology of Love
by Marvin X

Dancers/choreographers Linda Johnson Raynetta Rayzetta, and drummer Val Serant are expected to participate in Mythology of Love




And it hurts like brand new shoes.
Parable of the Woman in the Box
There was a woman who lived inside a box. Her whole life had been spent inside the little box, squeezed in from all sides. She never went outside the box. People brought her food to eat but she ate it inside the four walls of the box. She was cramped to the point of being crippled because she could never stand up inside the box. Not only her body but her brain and spirit were crippled from living inside the box.

Her thinking was confined to what she could imagine inside the box, and that was very little, no big grand thoughts, only micro imaginings. Even her God was a little god, one that fit into the box. She could not envision her God outside and that her God ruled the whole world, not just her little world inside the box.

Now and then she would beat on the walls of her box in a vain attempt to break them down and escape. But whenever she did, someone would come by and whisper to her to be quiet, she was making noise and disturbing other people.

She would comply with their request, trying to be nice, since she really was a nice person, she just didn't know how to escape the box. And she had to be nice to the person who brought her food because they might not return if she got angry and loud, started screaming, hollering and foaming at the mouth. Inside the box, she lived the life of a stunted woman, her mental growth stunted as well.

She could not imagine the finer things of life, or how she might expand her spiritual development. She did not know how she might be able to fend for herself, make her own money for food and other things she needed, even if she stayed inside the box, but she really wanted to get out. Somehow she gathered the energy to have a thought that went beyond the box, energy that would stop her from being a stunted woman, unable to stand tall and rise from her condition inside the box.

She began to figure a way out, a way to free herself, mind, body and soul. She had to do some hard thinking but she was determined to liberate herself. She saw nails in the walls and began to tinker with them, push them a little with her fingernails, then wiggled around and backed into one wall, then the
other. After a time, she could see a little break between the walls. She came up with a name for the nails that kept her down. One nail she called ignorance. She knocked and knocked until it loosened. Then she beat and pressured another nail in the box she called passivity. When she put counter pressure on that nail the box started shaking.

She tinkered with another nail she called lack of desire and will. Then she started talking to the walls, telling them to open up she was coming out. She
even told her little God to give her a hand. Her little God gave her a hand. Some people came by and seeing the walls shaking, tried to pound on the nails, but the woman commanded the nails to stop in their tracks and they did as she commanded. She continued her resistance until the walls of the box gave in and was able to gradually stand and eventually began to do a little dance.
--3/10/10
From The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Marvin X, BBP, 2010.


i

He's lost in the wilderness, lost in bitterness.

For the Men

For the men
Who father children
With time and money
For the men
Who abandon children
In ignorance and addictions
For the men on the street
And the men in suites
For the men in villas
And the men in alleys
For the men with wives
And the men alone
For the men who honor wives
And the men who abuse them
For the men who rap
And the men who are silent
For the men who win
And the men who sin
For the men who love God
And the men who hate
For the men who are brothers
And the men who are beasts
For the men with holy ghost
And the men without hope
For the men of revolution
And the men of reaction
O, men, listen to the wise
Good comes to good
And the bad receive their due
There is no escape
Fro the men of this world
Or men of the next.

CALLING ALL BLACK MEN

COME OUT THE CLOSET!
Mr. Black Xerox
Clorox
Mason
Christian
Muslim
Democrat
Pan-African-
Wino
Dope smoker-
Coke sniffer
Down low brother

Calling all black men
Mr. Black wife beater-
rapist
robber
murderer
Worker
father
husband
lover
COME OUT THE CLOSET
Mr. Black back to Africa
Mr. Black I-love-America
Calling all black men, come in, come in, come in....



Memorial Day

I am a veteran
Not of foreign battlefields
Like my father in World War I
My uncles in WWII
And Korea
Or my friends from Vietnam
And even the Congo “police action”
But veteran none the less
Exiled and jailed because I refused
To visit Vietnam as a running dog for imperialism
So I visited Canada, Mexico and Belize then Federal prison for a minute
But veteran I am of the war in the hood
The war of domestic colonialism and neo-colonialism
White supremacy in black face war
Fighting for black power that turned white
Or was always white as in the other white people
So war it was and is
Every day without end no RR no respite just war
For colors like kindergarten children war
For turf warriors don’t own and run when popo comes
War for drugs and guns and women
War for hatred jealousy
Dante got a scholarship but couldn’t get on the plane
The boyz in the hood met him on the block and jacked him
Relieved him of his gear shot him in the head because he could read
Play basketball had all the pretty girls a square
The boyz wanted him dead like themselves
Wanted him to have a shrine with liquor bottles and teddy bears
And candles
Wanted his mama and daddy to weep and mourn at the funeral
Like all the other moms and dads and uncle aunts cousins
Why should he make it out the war zone
The blood and broken bones of war in the hood
No veterans day no benefits no mental health sessions
No conversation who cares who wants to know about the dead
In the hood the warriors gone down in the ghetto night
We heard the Uzi at 3am and saw the body on the steps until 3 pm
When the coroner finally arrived as children passed from school
I am the veteran of ghetto wars of liberation that were aborted
And morphed into wars of self destruction
With drugs supplied from police vans
Guns diverted from the army base and sold 24/7 behind the Arab store.
Junior is 14 but the main arms merchant in the hood
He sells guns from his backpack
His daddy wants to know how he get all them guns
But Junior don’t tell cause he warrior
He’s lost more friends than I the elder
What can I tell him about death and blood and bones
He says he will get rich or die trying
But life is not money
And if he lives he will learn.
If he makes it out the war zone to another world
Where they murder in suits and suites
And golf courses and yachts
if he makes it even beyond this world
He will learn that love is better than money
For he was once on the auction block and sold as a thing
For money, yes, for the love of money but not for love
And so his memory is short and absent of truth
The war in the hood has tricked him into the slave past
Like a programmed monkey he acts out the slave auction
The sale of himself on the corner with his homeys
Trying to pose cool in the war zone
I will tell him the truth and maybe one day it will hit him like a bullet
In the head
It will hit him multiple times in the brain until he awakens to the real battle
In the turf of his mind.
And he will stand tall and deliver himself to the altar of truth to be a witness
Along with his homeys
They will take charge of their posts
They will indeed claim their turf and it will be theirs forever
Not for a moment in the night
But in the day and in the tomorrows
And the war will be over
No more sorrow no more blood and bones
No more shrines on the corner with liquor bottles
teddy bears candles.
--May 25, 2007 Brooklyn NY


I Will Go into the CityI will go into the city
I will find work
I will find work
I will remember you, country woman
I will not forget you
Your laugh, your arguments
In order to learn
It is your way, let it be
How can I forget your lips
Your enchanting smile
I will not forget
The night we walked in the rain
Because it was free and we were free
For once we agree
The best of life is free
I will go into the city
I will find work
But you will be with me, country woman
When those city women come to devour me
With their sweet perfume
You will be there
Your spirit will protect me
I will never forget
How we sipped $1.00 margaritas
In the Mexican café in Chinatown
Our ride to the lake
Our picnic on the hill
The ranger spotted us with his binoculars
We did not care
We were filled
With the holy spirit of love
How can I forget
Hours in bed
We became children
Of the love spirit
Days, nights, mornings
Became one moment
Man and woman became one
Discovered their missing self
Eternal self
Self of love
Self of joy
Self of happiness realized

I will go into the city
I will find work
I will not forget you, country woman
I will return to claim you
In the name of love
I will claim you
Because you are woman
I will claim you
Because you are feeling and spirit
I will claim you
Because you are mind and beauty
I will claim you
Because you have given yourself to me so totally
I will claim you
In the name of Allah
I will claim you
For the glory of Allah
I will claim you.
--Marvin X From Selected Poems, 1979.

The Other Woman (from In the Name of Love)

Yes, I’m his other woman.
The invisible woman.
I love him
Just as much as she loves him
Maybe more
Cause I don’t know how much she loves him, anyway.
But I love him too!
She got papers on him
But papers don’t mean a damn thing to me
All I want is justice.
Nobody wants more than justice
And nobody wants less than justice
I want equality too.
I want equal time.
I told him to set up a schedule
And keep it.
I told him to be man enough
To tell his other woman
“Say, look, you are my woman
And she is my woman
I love both of you
It’s time we work together.”
He says he told her
He says he’s trying to break her in
Finessefully
I’m trying to be patient
Cause I ain’t going nowhere
Ain’t nowhere to go.
I’m sticking with my black man, my African man.
I been with this man off and on for 15 years
How long she been with him
What she know bout the man?
She damn sho don’t know much as I know
That’s the only reason I put up with him
Cause I know him so well.
But we should work together
Since we have the same interests and everything
Since we have so much in common
Don’t have me hating my sister
Don’t have my sister hating me
I’m bout progress
I’m willing to share him
Not because I just want to share somebody
But it just ain’t no men
You get with these men and they turn out to be punks.
Now what woman wants a punk?
Punk lookin for the same thing I’m looking for.
You know that’s a shame
So we lucky to have half a man these days
This must be the end of the world!
So like I say, I’m willing to share
We be sharing anyway
Tell the truth sisters
Your man is probably my man too!
Everything he do with you, to you and for you
He does with me, to me and for me
Let’s work together
Let’s help our men to be men
Especially those who want to be men.
That’s all I got to say.


Confession of a Polygamist

Yes, I have two wives
That’s right
Two mother-in-laws too!
Ain’t that a bitch!
And my wives love me
Even in my terribleness
They love me
Even though they hate each other
They love me
I just wish all that energy
They spend hating each other
I wish they would help me fight the devil
Help me make some money
I mean, I try to bring them in harmony
But what can you do with this
North American African woman?
All that ignorance, selfishness, possessiveness
They want you to lie and sneak around the alley
Well, I ain’t lying and I ain’t sneaking
You can call me nigguh, black, African, whatever
But I’m a man and I chart my course
I’m not following nobody’s agenda but mine
If these women want to get in harmony with me, fine
If they don’t, fine
But I’m not sneaking around like a dog
The Christian way is not my way.
To hell with monogamy!
One man one woman
That’s bullshit!
Now you tell me
What man only got one woman?
Does a man have one suit?
So many of our women don’t have no man
Now what if ten women were on an island
With one man
What would they do?
They would share him
Whether they liked it or not
And sister gonna have to do the same thing
Women don’t care if you married these days
They like it better if you are married
That’s what they’re lookin for
A married man!
But my hands are full
Two of these North American African women
Are enough for me
But women are so aggressive these days
They’ll rape you! That’s right
Sometimes I feel like the fireman
I go from house to house
Dashing flames, extinguishing passions and fears
There is no rest for me
Fire is everywhere.


Eternal Woman

I know the pain
Of love and hate
The happy hours
The long debates
Wanting to run
Wanting to stay
The lover’s kiss
And then to miss
The point of me
Rushing pass
To the point of you.

Eternal Man

What did you say?

Eternal Woman
You heard what I said.
Why didn’t you come home last night?

Eternal Man

Don’t be asking me why I didn’t come home. Matter of fact, don’t ask me shit. I’m a free man. I come and go as I please.

Eternal Woman

I’m tired of your shit.




Eternal Man
(slaps her to floor)

Shut up bitch!



Confession of a Wife BeaterI beat her because she loved me
I beat her
Gouged my fingers into her eyes
Stomped her on the floor
Because she loved my dirty drawers
I beat her
Put my hands on her throat and squeezed
Until her eyes looked like marbles
I beat her
Because she loved me
Because she gave me a child
That looked just like me
I beat her
Because I stood trembling
Watching the child ooze from her womb
I beat her
Because she wouldn’t give me some pussy
I tore her panties off and took the pussy
I beat her
Then said to her, “Baby, I love you so much.
You’re so precious to me, let me kiss you.”
And she let me
Then I beat her for letting me
Because I was drunk
Too much rum
I beat her
Too much weed
I beat her
Too much coke
I beat her
My you are so precious to me
I beat her
My I love you so much baby
I beat her
Because she was faithful
Because she was patient
I beat her
While my child stood terrified
I beat her
Kicked her
Sat on her
Punched her in the mouth
In my madness
Because she said the wrong word
Because she said nothing
Because she said the right word
Because she said too many words
Because she had a thought
Independent of mine
I beat her
Knocked her too the floor
Because she called the police
I beat her
How could she call the white man on me
As Black as I was
I beat her
Because she called her mama
I beat her
Because she called the operator
I beat her
Because she picked up the telephone
I beat her
Because she left me and I found her hiding in the closet
I beat her because I took her to Mexico and she wasn’t happy
I beat her because I took her to New York
And she didn’t smile
I beat her
Because I was sick
And she told me so.
I beat her.


Eternal Woman (I Shot Him)I shot him
Because he loved me
He loved me so much he came home smelling
Like his other bitch’s pussy
I shot him
I didn’t kill him
But I shot him
Because I got the phone bill
And saw he’d called his other bitch
On my birthday
I shot him
Cause I got papers on him
Yeah, I got papers on the motherfucker
To use his filthy language
I shot him
And I ain’t sharing him with nobody
I don’t care what the Muslims say
Bout a nigguh can have four wives
I don’t care what the Holy Qur’an say
I don’t care bout the African tradition of polygamy
I don’t care how many mo women it is for every man
I shot him
I don’t care if women are turning lesbian and bisexual
Cause they don’t want no man
I want my man. I love my man
But I shot him!




Testimony, a Love Song

Eternal Man
I remember when I met you, woman
The feeling has never left me
What is the magic of you, what is the mystery
Every day, you are there,
In my hair
In my skin
I hear you blowing in the wind

Eternal Woman

I remember when I first me you, man
You were strong then
Your hair was neat
Your fingernails were clean and cut
Your skin was glowing
Your ears were clean
You were confident, secure
Your voice was strong and commanding
I was proud to meet you
Had heard of you, heard your name
Knew you were a man of truth
You know I did everything to please you
Spoiled you, worshipped you above God
That was my sin
If the years have taught me anything
You are very much human
Sometimes less than human
When you beat me
Sometimes more than human
When you made love to me.

Eternal Man
I have learned to listen to you, woman
You been right many times
When I was wrong
You knew what to do from the beginning
I didn’t but pretended I did
You begged me for years
Do right, nigguh, do right
What did I say
Shut up, bitch!
And kicked your ass
Only a fool would hurt a flower
Only a fool would destroy a rose.

Eternal Woman

If you love me so much
Why you treat me like you do
If you love me so much
Why you treat me like you do?


Eternal Man

I make no excuses
Word is bond
If you cannot believe my words
We have no bond
I will keep trying til my words are truth
I went blind
No longer saw God
No longer cared for Him
Lost faith in myself, most of all
But look
The Spirit of God is upon me!

Eternal Woman

You act like the same nigguh to me
You don’t respect me as a woman
You don’t respect me as a human
It’s your way or no way
True, you haven’t beat me lately
But you act like you will
If I oppose you
Who can live like this?
I refuse to live in fear
I refuse
If you can’t make me feel secure
I will find someone else who can
If you cannot make me feel at peace
I will find someone else who can
If you cannot treat me with respect
I will find someone else who can!

Eternal Man

I understand
And I submit
To truth
I submit
To God.

Eternal Woman

I’m going to see, man
You’ve told me millions of words
I will see
I want to believe you, but it’s hard
I want to trust you
But it’s hard
You’ve lied so much
You’ve done such terrible things to me
You’re the worse person I know
What else is wrong with you?
You’re too aggressive
You’re too extreme
You drink too much
You fuck too much
You cuss too much
You shout too much!

Eternal Man

Why you let me love you again and again
If I’m so terrible
King Kong
I want to take you serious
But sometimes
You are full of hot air and gibberish!



Eternal Woman

You’re right
There is some good in you
We have good times together
Sometimes
You’re really a good person
But you always negate the good
With some terrible stuff
Sometimes you make me nervous
Sometimes I can’t relax with you
Sometimes I don’t’ feel safe and secure with you
Get yourself together
Don’t blow up every minute
I’m trying to control myself
I’m not perfect either
I have my faults
You know them better than anyone
I’m working on myself
Work on yourself
Take care of your business
And come at me right!
Where is your faith in Allah
You profess to the world
Keep your word, demonstrate your word
By your actions
And I’ll be your friend forever
I’ll be your very best friend.


Moment in Paradise
Now that we are in heaven
Will the scars of hell ever heal?
Let’s take a midnight swim
Don’t be afraid, my beloved
The tide will return soon
Let us talk until then
We have not talked in so long
We have not been our true selves
In so long
I don’t even know who you are
Isn’t that strange
To be with a person
To love a person
Yet you do not know their worth
That is why we came to this land
We left the wilderness
To see who we really are
My beloved, look, the tide is in
Come, let’s take that midnight swim.

II

When the sun comes up, we are up
She is making mind tea with lemon and honey
Raul’s yellow boat still parked in the water
Maybe his nets have caught another shark
If so he will ask me to drive him to town
So he can sell it for 50 pesos
My beloved washing dishes on the shore
A gayle on her head
Just think, I have never told her how beautiful she is to me
Hell put chains on our hearts
Nothing is more painful
Than loving someone
Yet ignorance separates you
My beloved
One day I shall know who you are
And love you a thousand times more
For now, let us enjoy this moment in paradise
Come, massage me
Here in the shade
Rub around my neck and shoulders
Around my waist
Then I’ll massage you.
--from Selected Poems, and In The Name of Love,
Marvin X, Laney College Theatre production, 1981.



Poet Ptah Mitchell



Minister of Ceremony Hunia Bradley








Poet, Musician
Phavia Kujichagulia




















Actress, poet, director
Ayodele Nzinga













Actress, poet
Aries Jordan

Producer/poet Marvin X and Violinist Tarika Lewis

Vocalist/Actress Mechelle LaChaux
Video link to Mechelle reading Parable of the Cell Phone
(caution--Contains adult language):
http://www.facebook.com/n/?video%2Fvideo.php&v=386672567980&comments&mid=357fa34G458d6d2eG23f926fG3b&n_m=jmarvinx%40yahoo.com


For his Mythology of Love, a poetic manhood and womanhood rites of passage, Marvin X has chosen Nature Boy and Beautiful Flower as essential songs.The ritual will be performed by members of the First Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists. Date and place to be announced. Invited artists include singer Mechelle LaChaux, violinist Tarika Lewis, harpist Destiny Muhammad, percussionist Tacuma King, guitarist Augusta Collins, O'Town Passions singing group, poets Phavia Kujichagulia, Ayodele Nzinga, Aries Jordan, Ptah Allah El and Paradise; choreographers Linda Johnson and Raynetta Rayzetta. Actors Geoffrey Grier, Eugene Allen and Jermaine Marsh. Libations by Rev. Mutima Imani, Minister of Ceremony Hunia Bradley. Scene designer Renaldo Ricketts.




Associate Producer
Geoffrey Grier

Producers include Center of Hope Church, Post Newspaper Group, Lower Bottom Playaz, San Francisco Recovery Theatre and Conway Jones, Jr. If you or your organization would like to be a sponsor, please contact Marvin X: jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Happy Birthday Sun Ra

"America, the Devil don't even want you--you not even suitable for hell!"--Sun Ra






Happy Birthday Sun Ra

Herman Poole Blount was born on May 22, 1914 in Birmingham, Alabama, Planet Earth. Sun Ra was interested in music from an early age and by the time he was eleven he was able to sight read and compose music on piano. Growing up in Birmingham allowed him to catch famous Jazz musicians traveling through including Flecther Henderson, Duke Ellington and Fats Waller.

In his teens Sun Ra was able to listen to a big band perform and go home and write full transcriptions of the performance by ear and also began playing professionally as a teen. At the age of ten Sun Ra joined the Knights of Pythias and would remain with the group through high school.

This Masonic Lodge provided him to unlimited access to books and their books on Freemasonry and other subjects of the like influenced him heavily. In high school Ra studied with music teacher John T "Fess" Whatley who had a reputation for producing many great musicians. In 1934 Sun Ra began playing professionally full time with a former teacher named Ethel Harper and after she left the group Sun took over and called it the Sonny Blount Orchestra.

In 1936 Ra was awarded a scholarship to attend Alabama Agriculture and Mechanical University and studied music for one year before having an experience that would change the course of his life.


In 1937 during deep meditation Sun Ra briefly left this planet and traveled to Saturn and received important information about his path. In his own words, "… my whole body changed into something else. I could see through myself. And I went up … I wasn't in human form … I landed on a planet that I identified as Saturn … they teleported me and I was down on [a] stage with them.

They wanted to talk with me. They had one little antenna on each ear. A little antenna over each eye. They talked to me. They told me to stop [attending college] because there was going to be great trouble in schools … the world was going into complete chaos … I would speak [through music], and the world would listen. That's what they told me." Following this experience Sun Ra returned to Birmingham and worked frantically within music and reformed the Sonny Blount Orchestra which was well received in the area.

In the early 1940s Sun Ra was drafted in U.S. Military but was very much against war and killing which led to him being placed in jail for his beliefs. After being released in 1943 Ra returned home before moving north to Chicago.

In Chicago Ra began working with singer Wynonie Harris and made his recording debut in 1946 on the singles 'Dig This Boogie/Lightning Struck the Poorhouse' and 'My Baby's Barrelhouse/Drinking By Myself'. In 1946 Ra was hired by Fletcher Henderson to play piano and arrange music for the band and in 1948 performed in a trio with Coleman Hawkins and Stuff Smith.

Living in Chicago also influenced Ra and he was very interested in the city's many Egyptian style buildings and continued educating himself with books like "Stolen Legacy" written by George G.M. James. In 1952 Sun Ra formed the Space Trio with Tommy Hunter and Pat Patrick and also legally changed him name to Le Sony'r Ra. Soon John Gilmore and Marshall Allen would join the band and some other members during this period in Chicago would include James Spaulding, Von Freeman and Julian Priester.

Also in the 1950s Ra met Alton Abraham who would become his good friend, business manager and shared similar interests and beliefs as Ra. Sun Ra and Abraham also printed pamphlets and would hand them on the street about their beliefs and many of these can be read in the book "The Wisdom of Sun Ra: Sun Ra's Polemical Broadsheets and Streetcorner Leaflets" published in 2006.

Some of the Arkestra's recordings from the 1950s include 'Sound Sun Pleasure', 'Sun Song', 'Sound of Joy', 'Angels and Demons at Play' and 'We Travel the Spaceways'.


In 1961 the Arkestra moved to New York City and was able to find a regular gig at Slug's Saloon. This helped spread Sun Ra's popularity and for the most part he was well received. Though Ra would still experience hecklers from time but did receive support and encouragement from some very notable Jazz musicians including Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk. The building the band lived in New York was sold in 1968 and a result they relocated to the Germantown section of Philadelphia and that would be their home base till the end and were known as very good neighbors due to their friendliness and drug free living. Sun Ra was a major influence on the Black Arts Movement and worked with Amiri Baraka's Black Arts Repertory Theatre in Harlem.

Marvin X performed with him in Harlem and later in Philly. Marvin became a disciple after interviewing Sun Ra for five hours at his Morton Street home.

Also in '68 Sun Ra toured the West Coast for the first time and even followers of the Greatful Dead would have altering experiences listening to Sun Ra. This tour led to Ra being featured on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine in 1969. The Arkestra began touring Europe in 1970 and was very well received and in 1971 Ra fulfilled one of his dreams by performing with his band at the pyramids in Egypt.

Also in 1971 Sun Ra was became the artist-in-residence at University of California, Berkeley and taught a course called "The Black Man In the Cosmos." Some of the required reading for this course included the Book of the Dead, Alexander Hislop's The Two Babylons and The Book of Oahspe and the works of Madame Blavatsky and Henry Dumas.

During his tenure at UC Berkeley, Sun Ra worked at Marvin X's Your Black Educational Theatre in San Francisco's Fillmore District. Sun Ra arranged music for Marvin X's Take Care of Business, the musical version of his first play Flowers for the Trashman. They performed a five hour concert (no intermission) at San Francisco's Harding Theatre, a fifty person production with Choreographers Ellendar Barnes and Raymond Sawyer dance troups. Marvin was in disbelief when Sun Ra told him he would be lecturing in Black Studies at UC Berkeley, especially since Gov. Ronald Reagan had banned him from teaching at Fresno State University in 1969, the same year he banned Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA. Marvin X was hired to teach journalism and theatre, producing a myth-ritual dance drama entitled Resurrection of the Dead.

In the mid and late '70s the Arkestra would perform locally in Philadelphia giving free concerts in a local park on the weekends and also had a stint as the house band at the Squat Theater in New York City in 1979.

Sun Ra and his Arkestra continued playing and recording in the 1980s and 1990s and Ra was well known as a part of Philadelphia by this time. He would often be a guest on local radio and give lectures locally as well. In 1990 Ra suffered a stroke but still continued to compose and perform until leaving this planet in 1993. Sun Ra leaves a legacy on this planet as a visionary artist dedicated beyond all else to convince mankind to face the fact they need to change their destructive and greedy ways as well as repair the self worth of African-Americans after the unimaginable abuse they have been through. Musically, Ra pushed any boundaries into oblivion as his musical imagination could not fit into any type of category or box. Sun Ra was one of the first in Jazz to use electronics and introduce the idea of collective free form improvisation. Ra's music and mythology has inspired so many people to not only develop themselves mentally and physically, but to explore the unknown and evolve spiritually.

"It's better to deal with the people who have intuition now. You see, they don't know what they're doing. The ones who do know what they're doing, haven't proven anything."
"Because everything that's unknown is part of the myth. And I'm sure that the myth can do more for humanity than anything they ever dreamed possible." - Sun Ra

The Differences

Sometimes in the amazing ignorance
I hear things and see things
I never knew I saw and heard before
Sometimes in the ignorance
I feel the meaning
Invincible invisible wisdom,
And I commune with intuitive instinct
With the force that made life be
And since it made life be
It is greater than life
And since it let extinction be
It is greater than extinction.
I commune with feelings more than
prayer
For there is nothing else to ask for
That companionship is
And it is superior to any other is.
Sometimes in my amazing ignorance
Others see me only as they care to see
I am to them as they think
According the standard I should not be
And that is the difference between I and them
Because I see them as they are to is
And not the seeming isness of the was.
--Sun Ra

Marvin X on Sun Ra



Happy earth day, Sun Ra, no matter where you are in the spirit world of the universe.You are the Supreme Prophet of our First Poet's Church. RA! RA! RA! We forever love you and praise you for teaching us how to submit to leadership or what is also known as discipline. This is the most crucial lesson for North American Africans, learning to submit and thus respect leadership. But of course the leader must be highly disciplined himself, above his carnal nature and focused on his/her spiritual mission, in service of the Creator God.

All artists, poets, writers, musicians, theatre persons, must learn the Sun Ra method of creative discipline, a holistic approach to life in the arts, how to bring all the genres together into a whole mythological order through creative ritual. And this includes a melting of art and audience, what we called Ritual Theatre. Sun Ra taught us all how to ritualize theatre by breaking down that wall and destroying the comfort of the audience, yet making them one with the myth/ritual moment in time and space.

Sun Ra demonstrated the eternity of time, beyond the finite into the everlastingness of it all. And so we are indeed the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists, updating our ancestors for the present time and eternity.--Marvin XPrime MinisterFirst Poet's Church of the Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists5/22/11http://www.firstpoetschurch.blogspot.com/

The Psycholinguistics of White Supremacy

George Orwell, "Politics and the English Language," 1946

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent and our language -- so the argument runs -- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism, like preferring candles to electric light or hansom cabs to aeroplanes. Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes.

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. The point is that the process is reversible. Modern English, especially written English, is full of bad habits which spread by imitation and which can be avoided if one is willing to take the necessary trouble. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: so that the fight against bad English is not frivolous and is not the exclusive concern of professional writers. I will come back to this presently, and I hope that by that time the meaning of what I have said here will have become clearer. Meanwhile, here are five specimens of the English language as it is now habitually written.

These five passages have not been picked out because they are especially bad -- I could have quoted far worse if I had chosen -- but because they illustrate various of the mental vices from which we now suffer. They are a little below the average, but are fairly representative examples. I number them so that I can refer back to them when necessary:

1. I am not, indeed, sure whether it is not true to say that the Milton who once seemed not unlike a seventeenth-century Shelley had not become, out of an experience ever more bitter in each year, more alien [sic] to the founder of that Jesuit sect which nothing could induce him to tolerate.

Professor Harold Laski (Essay in Freedom of Expression)

2. Above all, we cannot play ducks and drakes with a native battery of idioms which prescribes egregious collocations of vocables as the Basic put up with for tolerate, or put at a loss for bewilder .

Professor Lancelot Hogben (Interglossa)

3. On the one side we have the free personality: by definition it is not neurotic, for it has neither conflict nor dream. Its desires, such as they are, are transparent, for they are just what institutional approval keeps in the forefront of consciousness; another institutional pattern would alter their number and intensity; there is little in them that is natural, irreducible, or culturally dangerous. But on the other side, the social bond itself is nothing but the mutual reflection of these self-secure integrities. Recall the definition of love. Is not this the very picture of a small academic? Where is there a place in this hall of mirrors for either personality or fraternity?

Essay on psychology in Politics (New York)

4. All the "best people" from the gentlemen's clubs, and all the frantic fascist captains, united in common hatred of Socialism and bestial horror at the rising tide of the mass revolutionary movement, have turned to acts of provocation, to foul incendiarism, to medieval legends of poisoned wells, to legalize their own destruction of proletarian organizations, and rouse the agitated petty-bourgeoise to chauvinistic fervor on behalf of the fight against the revolutionary way out of the crisis.

Communist pamphlet

5. If a new spirit is to be infused into this old country, there is one thorny and contentious reform which must be tackled, and that is the humanization and galvanization of the B.B.C. Timidity here will bespeak canker and atrophy of the soul. The heart of Britain may be sound and of strong beat, for instance, but the British lion's roar at present is like that of Bottom in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream -- as gentle as any sucking dove. A virile new Britain cannot continue indefinitely to be traduced in the eyes or rather ears, of the world by the effete languors of Langham Place, brazenly masquerading as "standard English." When the Voice of Britain is heard at nine o'clock, better far and infinitely less ludicrous to hear aitches honestly dropped than the present priggish, inflated, inhibited, school-ma'amish arch braying of blameless bashful mewing maidens!

Letter in Tribune

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but, quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse. I list below, with notes and examples, various of the tricks by means of which the work of prose construction is habitually dodged:

Dying metaphors. A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image, while on the other hand a metaphor which is technically "dead" (e.g. iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves. Examples are: Ring the changes on, take up the cudgel for, toe the line, ride roughshod over, stand shoulder to shoulder with, play into the hands of, no axe to grind, grist to the mill, fishing in troubled waters, on the order of the day, Achilles' heel, swan song, hotbed. Many of these are used without knowledge of their meaning (what is a "rift," for instance?), and incompatible metaphors are frequently mixed, a sure sign that the writer is not interested in what he is saying. Some metaphors now current have been twisted out of their original meaning withouth those who use them even being aware of the fact. For example, toe the line is sometimes written as tow the line. Another example is the hammer and the anvil, now always used with the implication that the anvil gets the worst of it. In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer, never the other way about: a writer who stopped to think what he was saying would avoid perverting the original phrase.

Operators or verbal false limbs. These save the trouble of picking out appropriate verbs and nouns, and at the same time pad each sentence with extra syllables which give it an appearance of symmetry. Characteristic phrases are render inoperative, militate against, make contact with, be subjected to, give rise to, give grounds for, have the effect of, play a leading part (role) in, make itself felt, take effect, exhibit a tendency to, serve the purpose of, etc., etc. The keynote is the elimination of simple verbs. Instead of being a single word, such as break, stop, spoil, mend, kill, a verb becomes a phrase, made up of a noun or adjective tacked on to some general-purpose verb such as prove, serve, form, play, render. In addition, the passive voice is wherever possible used in preference to the active, and noun constructions are used instead of gerunds (by examination of instead of by examining). The range of verbs is further cut down by means of the -ize and de- formations, and the banal statements are given an appearance of profundity by means of the not un- formation. Simple conjunctions and prepositions are replaced by such phrases as with respect to, having regard to, the fact that, by dint of, in view of, in the interests of, on the hypothesis that; and the ends of sentences are saved by anticlimax by such resounding commonplaces as greatly to be desired, cannot be left out of account, a development to be expected in the near future, deserving of serious consideration, brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and so on and so forth.

Pretentious diction. Words like phenomenon, element, individual (as noun), objective, categorical, effective, virtual, basic, primary, promote, constitute, exhibit, exploit, utilize, eliminate, liquidate, are used to dress up a simple statement and give an air of scientific impartiality to biased judgements. Adjectives like epoch-making, epic, historic, unforgettable, triumphant, age-old, inevitable, inexorable, veritable, are used to dignify the sordid process of international politics, while writing that aims at glorifying war usually takes on an archaic color, its characteristic words being: realm, throne, chariot, mailed fist, trident, sword, shield, buckler, banner, jackboot, clarion. Foreign words and expressions such as cul de sac, ancien regime, deus ex machina, mutatis mutandis, status quo, gleichschaltung, weltanschauung, are used to give an air of culture and elegance. Except for the useful abbreviations i.e., e.g., and etc., there is no real need for any of the hundreds of foreign phrases now current in the English language. Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones, and unnecessary words like expedite, ameliorate, predict, extraneous, deracinated, clandestine, subaqueous, and hundreds of others constantly gain ground from their Anglo-Saxon numbers.* The jargon peculiar to


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*An interesting illustration of this is the way in which English flower names were in use till very recently are being ousted by Greek ones, Snapdragon becoming antirrhinum, forget-me-not becoming myosotis, etc. It is hard to see any practical reason for this change of fashion: it is probably due to an instinctive turning away from the more homely word and a vague feeling that the Greek word is scientific.


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Marxist writing (hyena, hangman, cannibal, petty bourgeois, these gentry, lackey, flunkey, mad dog, White Guard, etc.) consists largely of words translated from Russian, German, or French; but the normal way of coining a new word is to use Latin or Greek root with the appropriate affix and, where necessary, the size formation. It is often easier to make up words of this kind (deregionalize, impermissible, extramarital, non-fragmentary and so forth) than to think up the English words that will cover one's meaning. The result, in general, is an increase in slovenliness and vagueness.

Meaningless words. In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.† Words like romantic, plastic, values, human, dead, sentimental, natural, vitality, as used in art criticism, are strictly meaningless, in


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† Example: Comfort's catholicity of perception and image, strangely Whitmanesque in range, almost the exact opposite in aesthetic compulsion, continues to evoke that trembling atmospheric accumulative hinting at a cruel, an inexorably serene timelessness . . .Wrey Gardiner scores by aiming at simple bull's-eyes with precision. Only they are not so simple, and through this contented sadness runs more than the surface bittersweet of resignation." (Poetry Quarterly)


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the sense that they not only do not point to any discoverable object, but are hardly ever expected to do so by the reader. When one critic writes, "The outstanding feature of Mr. X's work is its living quality," while another writes, "The immediately striking thing about Mr. X's work is its peculiar deadness," the reader accepts this as a simple difference opinion. If words like black and white were involved, instead of the jargon words dead and living, he would see at once that language was being used in an improper way. Many political words are similarly abused. The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies "something not desirable." The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another. In the case of a word like democracy, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using that word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. Statements like Marshal Pétain was a true patriot, The Soviet press is the freest in the world, The Catholic Church is opposed to persecution, are almost always made with intent to deceive. Other words used in variable meanings, in most cases more or less dishonestly, are: class, totalitarian, science, progressive, reactionary, bourgeois, equality.

Now that I have made this catalogue of swindles and perversions, let me give another example of the kind of writing that they lead to. This time it must of its nature be an imaginary one. I am going to translate a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort. Here is a well-known verse from Ecclesiastes:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Here it is in modern English:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

This is a parody, but not a very gross one. Exhibit (3) above, for instance, contains several patches of the same kind of English. It will be seen that I have not made a full translation. The beginning and ending of the sentence follow the original meaning fairly closely, but in the middle the concrete illustrations -- race, battle, bread -- dissolve into the vague phrases "success or failure in competitive activities." This had to be so, because no modern writer of the kind I am discussing -- no one capable of using phrases like "objective considerations of contemporary phenomena" -- would ever tabulate his thoughts in that precise and detailed way. The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyze these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains forty-nine words but only sixty syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains thirty-eight words of ninety syllables: eighteen of those words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ("time and chance") that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its ninety syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first. Yet without a doubt it is the second kind of sentence that is gaining ground in modern English. I do not want to exaggerate. This kind of writing is not yet universal, and outcrops of simplicity will occur here and there in the worst-written page. Still, if you or I were told to write a few lines on the uncertainty of human fortunes, we should probably come much nearer to my imaginary sentence than to the one from Ecclesiastes.

As I have tried to show, modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer. It consists in gumming together long strips of words which have already been set in order by someone else, and making the results presentable by sheer humbug. The attraction of this way of writing is that it is easy. It is easier -- even quicker, once you have the habit -- to say In my opinion it is not an unjustifiable assumption that than to say I think. If you use ready-made phrases, you not only don't have to hunt about for the words; you also don't have to bother with the rhythms of your sentences since these phrases are generally so arranged as to be more or less euphonious. When you are composing in a hurry -- when you are dictating to a stenographer, for instance, or making a public speech -- it is natural to fall into a pretentious, Latinized style. Tags like a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind or a conclusion to which all of us would readily assent will save many a sentence from coming down with a bump. By using stale metaphors, similes, and idioms, you save much mental effort, at the cost of leaving your meaning vague, not only for your reader but for yourself. This is the significance of mixed metaphors. The sole aim of a metaphor is to call up a visual image. When these images clash -- as in The Fascist octopus has sung its swan song, the jackboot is thrown into the melting pot -- it can be taken as certain that the writer is not seeing a mental image of the objects he is naming; in other words he is not really thinking. Look again at the examples I gave at the beginning of this essay. Professor Laski (1) uses five negatives in fifty three words. One of these is superfluous, making nonsense of the whole passage, and in addition there is the slip -- alien for akin -- making further nonsense, and several avoidable pieces of clumsiness which increase the general vagueness. Professor Hogben (2) plays ducks and drakes with a battery which is able to write prescriptions, and, while disapproving of the everyday phrase put up with, is unwilling to look egregious up in the dictionary and see what it means; (3), if one takes an uncharitable attitude towards it, is simply meaningless: probably one could work out its intended meaning by reading the whole of the article in which it occurs. In (4), the writer knows more or less what he wants to say, but an accumulation of stale phrases chokes him like tea leaves blocking a sink. In (5), words and meaning have almost parted company. People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning -- they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another -- but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying. A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: 1. Could I put it more shortly? 2. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you -- even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent -- and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear.

In our time it is broadly true that political writing is bad writing. Where it is not true, it will generally be found that the writer is some kind of rebel, expressing his private opinions and not a "party line." Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style. The political dialects to be found in pamphlets, leading articles, manifestoes, White papers and the speeches of undersecretaries do, of course, vary from party to party, but they are all alike in that one almost never finds in them a fresh, vivid, homemade turn of speech. When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases -- bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder -- one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs which seem to have no eyes behind them. And this is not altogether fanciful. A speaker who uses that kind of phraseology has gone some distance toward turning himself into a machine. The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favorable to political conformity.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism., question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as "keeping out of politics." All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find -- this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify -- that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better. The debased language that I have been discussing is in some ways very convenient. Phrases like a not unjustifiable assumption, leaves much to be desired, would serve no good purpose, a consideration which we should do well to bear in mind, are a continuous temptation, a packet of aspirins always at one's elbow. Look back through this essay, and for certain you will find that I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against. By this morning's post I have received a pamphlet dealing with conditions in Germany. The author tells me that he "felt impelled" to write it. I open it at random, and here is almost the first sentence I see: "[The Allies] have an opportunity not only of achieving a radical transformation of Germany's social and political structure in such a way as to avoid a nationalistic reaction in Germany itself, but at the same time of laying the foundations of a co-operative and unified Europe." You see, he "feels impelled" to write -- feels, presumably, that he has something new to say -- and yet his words, like cavalry horses answering the bugle, group themselves automatically into the familiar dreary pattern. This invasion of one's mind by ready-made phrases (lay the foundations, achieve a radical transformation) can only be prevented if one is constantly on guard against them, and every such phrase anaesthetizes a portion of one's brain.

I said earlier that the decadence of our language is probably curable. Those who deny this would argue, if they produced an argument at all, that language merely reflects existing social conditions, and that we cannot influence its development by any direct tinkering with words and constructions. So far as the general tone or spirit of a language goes, this may be true, but it is not true in detail. Silly words and expressions have often disappeared, not through any evolutionary process but owing to the conscious action of a minority. Two recent examples were explore every avenue and leave no stone unturned, which were killed by the jeers of a few journalists. There is a long list of flyblown metaphors which could similarly be got rid of if enough people would interest themselves in the job; and it should also be possible to laugh the not un- formation out of existence*, to reduce the amount of Latin and Greek in the average sentence, to drive out foreign phrases


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*One can cure oneself of the not un- formation by memorizing this sentence: A not unblack dog was chasing a not unsmall rabbit across a not ungreen field.


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and strayed scientific words, and, in general, to make pretentiousness unfashionable. But all these are minor points. The defense of the English language implies more than this, and perhaps it is best to start by saying what it does not imply.

To begin with it has nothing to do with archaism, with the salvaging of obsolete words and turns of speech, or with the setting up of a "standard English" which must never be departed from. On the contrary, it is especially concerned with the scrapping of every word or idiom which has outworn its usefulness. It has nothing to do with correct grammar and syntax, which are of no importance so long as one makes one's meaning clear, or with the avoidance of Americanisms, or with having what is called a "good prose style." On the other hand, it is not concerned with fake simplicity and the attempt to make written English colloquial. Nor does it even imply in every case preferring the Saxon word to the Latin one, though it does imply using the fewest and shortest words that will cover one's meaning. What is above all needed is to let the meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one's meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations. Afterward one can choose -- not simply accept -- the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one's words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

(ii) Never us a long word where a short one will do.

(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.

(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

These rules sound elementary, and so they are, but they demand a deep change of attitude in anyone who has grown used to writing in the style now fashionable. One could keep all of them and still write bad English, but one could not write the kind of stuff that I quoted in those five specimens at the beginning of this article.

I have not here been considering the literary use of language, but merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought. Stuart Chase and others have come near to claiming that all abstract words are meaningless, and have used this as a pretext for advocating a kind of political quietism. Since you don't know what Fascism is, how can you struggle against Fascism? One need not swallow such absurdities as this, but one ought to recognize that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.

America's Second Civil War

America's Second Civil War

America is at war with the universe, a situation vastly more complex than any thinkers can imagine. With our myopic American exceptionalism, we are deaf, dumb and blind to the coming reality that we have out used our time in the universe.

And what we have done to the universe must now be called into account, and we know everything that goes around comes around. Thus, simply look at our condition, somewhat far beneath any animal or jungle savage in our destruction of each other and nature.

Our children are beasts who murder at will. And yet we are dumbfounded why they commit such acts. It never dawns upon us that our defense budget is a trillion dollars annually to cause mass murder around the world. Baldwin told us the murder of my child will not make your child safe.

American corporations have polluted the earth, rivers, oceans beyond repair. Only Mother Nature herself will be able to heal from the destruction by the hands of man, especially the so called leader of "civilization," America.

It is possible that none of us will survive the second Civil War, a war to address the lingering issues of this society: Race, Culture, Justice, economic parity and self determination for minorities. Denial and white privilege have forestalled any detoxification and recovery of those who control and benefit from a white supremest neo-slave system.

A second Civil War is inevitable once dissatisfaction forces people to demand radical changes in the social and economic order. The ultimate solution will be similar to the break up of the old Soviet Union, a Balkinization of territories and states into ethnic enclaves, white, black, brown and yellow peoples who shall claim sovereignty over their areas. Pakistan is another example of a breakaway nation once a part of India.

And yet, America may not be successful in such a break up because it may simply self-destruct due to environmental contamination. It may simply become uninhabitable. Where the population will go is any ones guess. Sun Ra said, "America, the Devil don't even want you, you ain't suitable for hell."

We may try to dismiss his words as poetry, although we know he was prophetic if there ever was a prophet in our midst. He said we were less than human, less than beasts, less than devils. And it's true if we examine our history and present behavior. We are worse than jungle savages who never went around the world committing mass murder, rape, torture, and genocide.

No wonder Mother Nature is stepping up to say enough of you who are beneath the vipers and cobras. Your sting is more venomous, more lethal. But we claim all is well, we shall overcome, we shall recover. And yet sincere thinkers and seers can see clearly we are on the way out. The Second Civil War is in motion as we speak. The war of drugs is war against the poor, for who fills the jails and prisons for drug offenses except the poor. Very few rich white men who bring in the dope go to jail, or if they do they buy the jail or prison and continue business as usual from their cells.

The destruction of public schools is but another war against the poor. The only reason Johnny can't read is because this society is afraid of men who can read. Literate and thinking men and women are a threat to this society. As a result the schools are merely holding cells for the department of corrections, as Dr. Julia Hare told us. What kind of society spends more for prisons than universities? What kind of society would spend $200,000 per year per inmate to incarcerate its children in juvenile halls? It would be cheaper to send all juvenile criminals to Harvard and Yale! Yes, give them ankle monitors and let them serve time at Harvard, Yale and Stanford. Harvard is now ready to receive all poor students and give them a free education!

War against the workers is in high gear with declining wages, declining benefits, declining jobs. What shall be the result of no jobs except war, first internal with violence in the hood, then it shall reach into the greater society with mass demonstrations and protests that shall be put down violently as we see happening in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain and Syria, nations that have suffered from colonialism and neo-colonialism, just as we have suffered from domestic colonialism in America.

And so the war is in progress as we speak. Many of us are simply too cowardly to inform our children we live in a war zone, even after we attend last rites of fallen youth on a regular basis.
We don't tell them to "be prepared," as they go about their daily round, to be aware of their surroundings.

Some parents are indeed allowing their children to attend school armed to level the playing field as in the Wild Wild West. Even colleges and universities are permitting guns on campus so that students can protect themselves from deranged fellow students.

We may find ourselves exiting these shores as Elijah predicted in his lesson called The Exodus. The right wing whites may enhance their propaganda to the poor whites that the blacks are too uppity and must be contained, along with other minorities. The white ruling class may whip the poor whites into a nazi, fascist frenzy as the Tea Party is demonstrating at this hour. And the sad irony is that the ruling class care less for the poor whites than they do the blacks and other minorities. After all, poor whites ain't picking fruits and vegetables. So all this immigration BS is just that, BS! If you deport the Latinos who is going to do farm labor, construction work and other jobs whites and blacks refuse to do?

Isn't it clear if Blacks and Chicanos call a general strike this country will fall in a short matter of time? Two or three Days of Absence will bring America to her knees. At that time we may indeed call/demand a redistribution of the wealth, what's left of it and we know this Beast is not broke. She can be made to bring her wealth back from her global finance hideouts.

The blood suckers of the poor can be brought to trial in People's Courts throughout the land. There shall be no hiding place. The Second Civil War is not coming, it is now.

For sure, Nature is on our side. The birds and bees are with us. The bees are already withholding their honey because of man's treatment of them. The water is drying up for the same reason. The plants know how evil and wicked man is to them, polluting them with pesticides, insecticides and fertilizers, genetic engineering and cloning for the avaricious free market economy.

The capitalists cannot imagine a fair and just market economy. Such a concept is beyond the capacity of their souls. Amiri Baraka tells us in his play A Black Mass, "Where the soul's print should be there is only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits!"

Fear is all one need to overcome. Do not be paralyzed by the fear of death and prison. You are in the big yard of the great America jail, you are on death row yet pretend you are living but you are a dead man walking. You can only come alive be rising and standing tall as you see the people doing in North Africa and the Middle East. They are the example sent to you. There was a time when you were their example during the American march for Civil Rights. Now you must stand up for human rights by any means necessary, although we can be more scientific and utilize the best means necessary to insure success. Fearless unity is the best weapon we have. Don't neglect sobriety and spirituality. Drunk and high, you can't see the enemy coming because you are the worse enemy to yourself!

--Marvin X

5/22/11

Happy Birthday Sun Ra!

Emperor Obama vs the Arab people - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Emperor Obama vs the Arab people - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

Marvin X and Lenin on the National Question

While it is simple intelligence to examine a question from a variety of viewpoints or points of analysis, in order to arrive at a theoretical solution, such analysis does not eliminate the problem, though it may prolong it. The problem may become confounded in analysis and theory, yet the reality of the situation remains.

While a workers revolution may be the ultimate solution to the American capitalist nightmare, the North American African nation should not be held hostage to the reactionary condition of white workers in particular and all ethnic workers in general. We indeed have the human/divine right to self-determination. We are a nation of forty million strong who have the ability to achieve independence, freedom and dignity, just as the people in the Sudan, as the people are striving to do in Palestine. For sure, we do not want to establish another bourgeoisie nation state, wherein we are nothing but reactionaries in black face, as we have throughout Africa and the Caribbean. We must transcend this level of ignorance and niggardliness.

Africa has yet to overcome tribalism and North American Africans are deeply addicted to white Western individualism, compounded by sectarianism and the color caste system, wherein the mulattoes have a stranglehold on power in many spheres, political, economic, religious and educational. Thus, we should be busy addressing our internal problems as a nation of people, certainly before we can unite with other nationalities, whether white, brown, yellow or whatever.

The question of unity, whether multi-national, Pan African, or global must begin with unity of self and kind. How can we unite with others who in fact have a degree of national unity, e.g. whites, Asians, Latinos, when two North American Africans cannot going around the corner together.

While we may call the nation state a capitalist formation, we originated from nations and empires that exercised the highest level of independence. For us to imagine that we must suffer under the pseudo democratic state of America is the height of delusion and confusion, spearheaded by those who lack the capacity to think out of the box of Americana. America represents no ideal state, except being the haven for every filthy, unclean bird.

After four centuries, we have no illusion about the American dream. Our ancestors were very clear on our possibilities in this land. And we are not fooled by the election or selection of a mulatto as President. They have always been a wedge between the master and the masses, for we are duped by skin color, yet in the end we see oppression continues. We were tricked by the black face, but it was a black face with a white heart, as they say in the Caribbean, "Black man with white heart!"

The most important task is for us to recover from our addiction to white supremacy, but this may be achieved through the process of achieving national liberation, after which we may be happy to consider relations with other states, nations, whether the European, Asian, Latino and/or Indigenous.

We are mature enough to have no fear of international unity, but there can be no international unity without national unity. How in the hell can we unite with other nations while we are lacking national sovereignty. Nations do not deal with individuals, they only deal with other nations. They don't deal with groups, sects, cults, clubs, fraternities, but nations.

An individual will not be able to deal with a Pan African entity, for we come to the table empty handed, only representing ourselves which is unacceptable. For some time we have had individuals and groups going around the world in the name of North American Africans, yet the masses of our people have not benefited from the fruits of these so called representatives, who mainly benefited themselves and/or their little group, cult, sect.

The concept of revolutionary nationalism is not to be seen as reactionary but it is a sane, progressive attempt to lift us out of the muck and mire of this slave system called America. Otherwise, we may linger here another two or three centuries awaiting the day when white suddenly discover the world in not white and they must overcome their addiction to white supremacy. But why should we wait. The baby doesn't wait to come out of the womb because the father is not present.

This child called freedom is long past due for delivery, yet we want to restrain the mother from giving birth, in short, we want an abortion. We continue in the tradition of Sisyphus's climb up the mountain but have yet to gather the strength, call it national will, to reach the top, for we are continually distracted by illusions, mostly of our own making but often merely another trick in the bag of tricks the American slave system devises for our continual subjugation.

It is time to think hard and long where we plan to be in the next fifty to one hundred years. Sadly, our thinkers are caught inside the academic morass and thus paralyzed from thinking outside the box. Name the intellectuals who will stand up for black revolutionary nationalism! They will call it narrow minded nationalism, yet without such black revolutionary nationalist thinkers as David Walker, Henry Highland Garnett, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, where would we be today. Their vision made an Obama presidency possible, but that must be transcended because it is not the ultimate but the height of individualism, at a time when our national needs go unmet, and yet Obama speaks of helping nations around the world, forgiving debts, handing our multi-billion dollar grants, proving schooling, housing and employment. Why are we so blind, deaf and dumb that we cannot imagine the American government can be forced to do the same for forty million people if they will only stand up from being kneegrows and push an agenda that represents the aspirations of forty million people, victims of the slave system.

Think of now and the future, what is your plan, what is your agenda for a people yet victimized by the criminal justice system on the basis of their skin color and economic condition? When will you stand up to oppose the incarceration of over one million of your brothers and sisters. Will you stand up when three, four, five million are imprisoned, when? Shall we end with ancestor Harriet Tubman, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they were slaves!"
--Marvin X
5/21/11


Lenin on the National Question
Written by Rob Sewell
Wednesday, 16 June 2004

As part of our commemoration of the centenary of Lenin's death, we are publishing a series of articles about his life and ideas. Lenin not only led the first succesful socialist revolution, but he also made an enourmous contribution to Marxist theory. The present article deals with the important contribution he made on the national question, and how such a correct stand on this issue guaranteed the success of the Bolshevick Party in October 1917.
The existence of nations, nation states, and national consciousness, is a characteristic feature of the capitalist epoch. Before the advent of capitalism, there was no genuine national consciousness in the modern sense. Feudal society was dominated by particularism, where peoples identified themselves as members of villages, towns, localities, regions, and principalities. It took the development of capitalism, an economic revolution, to bring about the home market and the assimilation of peoples into nations. The gathering together of the productive forces into one nation state was a progressive historical task of the bourgeoisie. On this material basis, in the period particularly from 1789 onwards in Europe, the epoch of bourgeois national-democratic revolution, we see the emergence of nations and national consciousness.

"For the complete victory of commodity production", states Lenin, "the bourgeoisie must capture the home market, and there must be politically united territories whose population speak a single language… Therein is the economic foundation of national movements…

"The tendency of every national movement is towards the formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied." (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, Progress Publishers, pp.8-9)

Therefore, a nation is a historically evolved entity, which emerged under conditions of war, invasion, upheaval and the dissolution of old frontiers and the emergence of new ones. In the general sense, from the viewpoint of Marxism, the nation state arises from a developed stable community of language, territory, economy and culture. There are, however, given the laws of uneven and combined development, exceptions to the rule, where nation states are composed of different nationalities (as in Britain) and different languages (as in Belgium). Nations can be created where none existed before. The last 100 years have been littered with such examples, most notably in the Balkans and the Middle East.

On the basis of capitalism and its drive for markets, power and spheres of influence stronger powers dominated weaker powers. In the epoch of imperialism, this tendency of national oppression took an extreme form, coupled with the oppression of national minorities within states. As Lenin explained in his book 'Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism': "Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the population of the world by a handful of 'advanced' countries."

A Colossal Brake

Capitalism, rather than resolving the national question, has in its decline exacerbated the problems worldwide. The productive forces created by capitalism have now outstripped national markets. Together with private property, the nation state has become a colossal brake on the further development of society. As a consequence, nationalism has raised its head in the present epoch, with explosive repercussions, from Europe to the Balkans, from the Indian subcontinent to the Middle East. The Colonial Revolution brought national liberation to the fore, bringing millions to their feet from the African continent to the continent of Asia.

The re-emergence of the national question reflects the profound impasse of capitalism on a world scale and the failure of the leaders of the workers' organisations to offer a way out. There can no longer be any solution of the national question on a capitalist basis.

Following on from Marx, Lenin took up the national question as a means of arming the revolutionary social democracy in Russia and uniting the oppressed nationalities under the banner of the working class. In answer to national oppression, the Russian Marxists (in the famous Clause 9 of the Russian Social Democratic Party) called for the right of nations to self-determination - that is, to complete separation as states. This was particularly relevant to tsarist Russia, whose empire constituted a "prison house of nationalities". Such was the make-up of the empire that the Great Russians, the ruling nationality, only constituted 48% of the whole. Those under Russian domination (Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Finns, Letts, Ukrainians, and so on), deprived of their rights, were systematically oppressed by tsarism. It was this that gave the national question in Russia such an explosive force.

To win over the oppressed nationalities, Lenin came out against the forcible incorporation of a nationality within the boundaries of a general state. In this, the Bolsheviks were not "evangels of separation". On the contrary, all this meant was that they were obliged to fight implacably against every form of national oppression. "To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i.e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separation, is foolish and hypocritical as accusing those who advocate freedom of divorce of encouraging the destruction of family ties", stated Lenin. (The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, p.83)

The demand of the right to self-determination was however to give rise to a heated controversy within the Russian Party, with opposition from Rosa Luxemburg, Bukharin, Pyatakov, and others. The essence of their opposition was that under capitalism, self-determination was utopian, while under socialism it was reactionary. However, the argument is completely false as it ignores the epoch of the socialist revolution and its tasks. Clearly, under the domination of imperialism, the existence of stable independent small states is impossible. Also under socialism, with the progressive withering away of the state, the question of national boundaries will fall away. However, in the intervening period, the forces have to be educated and mobilised to overthrow capitalism and a correct dialectical approach to the national question would facilitate this task.

Working Class Unity

Above all, the slogan of the right to self-determination was a powerful weapon in undermining bourgeois nationalism and winning the confidence of the workers of the oppressed nation. The possibility of separation facilitated a free unification of peoples. In order to convince the more politically backward workers, who had nationalist prejudices, it was necessary to stress that the working class had no interest in coercing any national minority. At the same time, we must argue for the unity of the working class under one banner, with implacable hostility to the poison of the small nation mentality and the poison of chauvinism.

"The sectarian simply ignores the fact that the national struggle", states Trotsky, "one of the most labyrinthine and complex but at the same time extremely important forms of class struggle, cannot be suspended by bare references to the future world revolution."

Of course, the demand of the right of nations to self-determination cannot be used willy-nilly, but must proceed from the facts and not ideal norms. It could only apply to nationalities and not simply to groups, religious castes, or other such minorities.

Above all, Lenin regarded the right of self-determination as subordinate to the interests of the working class. "The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so in categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle." (Ibid, p.21) And again, "While recognising equality and equal rights to a national state, it values above all and places foremost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses any national demand, any national separation, from the angle of the workers' class struggle." After all, the right to national self-determination is a bourgeois-democratic demand, not a socialist one.

Lenin also repeatedly explained that the Marxist programme on the national question is essentially a negative one: against national oppression, against the suppression of national culture, etc.

Today, various sectarians in confronting national problems proclaim self-determination at every turn, without any regard to the concrete situation or consequences. They see self-determination as a panacea, universally applicable under all circumstances. Such "Leninists", who simply pay lip service to Lenin and have no idea of his method, invariably end up in a shameful mess. That is why it is necessary to develop the theory of Marxism and apply it to the concrete conditions, and not simply repeat like parrots some of the phrases of Lenin or Trotsky.

When it came to Yugoslavia, they were evangels of the break-up of the country, which prepared the way for reactionary wars and the nightmare that followed. They had no concern for the bloody consequences or the "interests of the class struggle". Their capitulation to petty bourgeois nationalism made them cheerleaders for ethnic cleansing and chauvinist madness. Rather than "independence" for Croatia, Slovenia, Kosovo or Bosnia, and the Balkanisation of the region, the only way forward for the peoples of the Balkans was a socialist federation. There was not an atom of progressive content in the break-up of the former Yugoslavia. Once again, the fate of small peoples was cynically exploited by the imperialist powers for its own ends.

This shows the fundamental difference between Leninism and petty bourgeois nationalism. Lenin supported the right of self-determination exclusively from the point of view of the class struggle, of the unity of the working class.

Even the old pre-war Social Democracy in the Balkans put forward the slogan of the democratic Balkan federation as a way out of the madhouse created by the separate national statelets. Even the word "Balkanisation" became synonymous with the patchwork of squabbling states.

Today, this federation cannot be realised on a capitalist basis, and therefore we call for a Balkan socialist federation as a solution to the problems peoples of the peninsula. Such a federation, as with former Yugoslavia, would be made up of autonomous republics within a common frontier. This would overcome the "Balkanisation" of the region. Those who advocate a Balkan "confederation" (socialist or otherwise) simply reinforce this reactionary "Balkanisation" through a loose alliance of separate independent Balkan states. In the disputes over this question prior to the First World War, the internationalists decisively came out against such a confederation and for a Balkan federation, later partially realised under Tito, when the Yugoslav Federation was formed.

In the Middle East, there can be no solution to the "Palestinian problem" on a capitalist basis. While the Marxists opposed the partition of Palestine in 1948, and the expulsion of the Palestinians, Israel now exists with a people living there. The question now is how to guarantee a homeland to the Palestinians and put an end to their national oppression.

Revolutionary Programme

The national oppression of the Palestinian masses by the Israeli state expresses itself in the desire for their own homeland. How can this aspiration be realised? The policy and methods of the PLO, of individual terrorism and fawning towards the reactionary Arab regimes for a period of decades, have proved to be completely bankrupt. Only a revolutionary programme can serve to appeal to the Israeli workers and the Arab masses. Only a socialist revolution in Israel and similarly in all the surrounding Arab states can bring about a socialist federal state of Israel/Palestine, with its capital in Jerusalem, linked to a socialist federation of the Middle East.

Truth is always concrete. There is no cookbook with a recipe for every national problem. In reality, it is the Marxist method, of dialectical materialism and a class analysis, which allow us to draw the correct conclusions, as the Bolsheviks did in 1917.

In Lenin's writings, there is a sharp difference between the national question before and after 1917. Prior to the October Revolution, Lenin envisaged that the national question could be resolved on a capitalist basis. However, on the basis of October, the resolution of the national question is tied to the fate of the working class and the overthrow of capitalism. Events since that time graphically confirm this prognosis.

The Russian Revolution gave an enormous impetus to the colonial revolution. This movement reached new heights following the Second World War and the victory of the Chinese revolution of 1944-9. Lenin himself had recognised two stages in the national-democratic revolution; the first phase lasting from 1879 to 1871, where the modern European states were created, and the second from 1905 onwards, encompassing Eastern Europe and Asia. In 1920, at the Second Congress of the Communist International, Lenin explained that the only solution to the national question was through the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie was no longer capable of leading the struggle as it was tied hand and foot to imperialism, and was in the camp of counter-revolution.

Communist international

"The cornerstone of the whole policy of the Communist International on the national and colonial questions", stated Lenin, "must be closer union of the proletarians and working masses generally of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landlords and the bourgeoisie; for this alone will guarantee victory over capitalism, without which the abolition of national oppression and inequality is impossible." (Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions, 5th June 1920)

It was at this Congress that a decision was taken to substitute the term "national-revolutionary" for the term "bourgeois-democratic", to emphasis the Marxist support only for genuinely revolutionary liberation movements. Lenin went on: "In all the colonies and backward countries, not only should we build independent contingents of fighters, party organisations, not only should we launch immediate propaganda for the organisation of peasants' soviets and strive to adapt them to pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should advance and theoretically substantiate the proposition that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, the backward countries can pass over to the Soviet system and, through definite stages of development, to communism, without going through the capitalist stage." (The Report of the Commission on The National and Colonial Questions, 26th July 1920)

This is none other than the theory of the Permanent Revolution put forward by Leon Trotsky. Here Trotsky explains that the colonial bourgeoisie have come onto the historical scene too late. They could not play the same revolutionary role of carrying through the bourgeois-democratic revolution as did their counterparts of the 18th and 19th centuries. The colonial bourgeoisie were tied to the landed interests and imperialism, which now placed them on the side of counterrevolution. Therefore the unfinished tasks now fell to the new revolutionary class, the proletariat. However, the working class would come to power and not stop with the bourgeois tasks, including the national question, but would immediately proceed to the socialist tasks of expropriating the landlords and capitalists. The revolution would transcend national boundaries, and lay claim to the world revolution.

In other words, the national question, which is a leftover from the past, can only be solved by the coming to power of the working class. This is the case in relation to all the national-democratic tasks wherever these have not been accomplished. The only way out for the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, of the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, or Europe is through the socialist federation of their region as part of a world federation of socialist states. In regard to Ireland, where the living body of the country was divided by British imperialism, only the coming to power of the working class in the 32 counties, can resolve the problem. On a capitalist basis, there can be no solution.

Capitalist crisis

The re-emergence of nationalism in countries where the issue was regarded as long dead, is a product of the deepening crisis of capitalism on a world scale. The national question is not confined to the former colonial countries, but has now affected the advanced countries. At bottom, this crisis reflects the fundamental contradiction of the constrictions imposed on the productive forces by the nation state and private property. The crisis has served to re-ignite all the old poisons of nationalism. In the epoch of capitalist decline, of imperialist crisis, the national question is once again raising its head everywhere, with the most tragic and sanguine consequences. It rests with the working class to come to the head of the nation and offer the masses a way out of this nightmare. At bottom, explained Lenin, the national question is about bread.

Without a correct stance on the national question, the October Revolution would not have taken place. A component part of this outlook was, from 1903 onwards, the need to maintain the sacred unity of the working class and its organisations, free from distinctions of nationality, religion or language. "The policy of Bolshevism in the national sphere had also another side, apparently contradictory to the first but in reality supplementing it", explained Trotsky. "Within the framework of the party, and of the workers' organisations in general, Bolshevism insisted upon a rigid centralism, implacably warring against every taint of nationalism which might set the workers one against the other or disunite them. While flatly refusing to the bourgeois states the right to impose compulsory citizenship, or even a state language, upon a national minority, Bolshevism at the same time made it a verily sacred task to unite as closely as possible, by means of voluntary class discipline, the workers of different nationalities. Thus it flatly rejected the national-federation principle in building the party. A revolutionary organisation is not the prototype of the future state, but merely the instrument for its creation. An instrument ought to be adapted to fashioning the product; it ought not to include the product. Thus a centralised organisation can guarantee the success of a revolutionary struggle - even where the task is to destroy the centralised oppression of nationalities."

Lenin

As can be seen, Lenin made a unique dialectical and dynamic contribution to the national question, which will find its place among the theoretical treasure-houses of the workers' movement. The national borders created by capitalism have long ago become fetters on the development of society. Our task remains the expropriation of the monopolies, the elimination of borders and the free association of peoples. In that way will the national question be finally resolved.