Fidel & Malcolm X—Memories of a Meeting

By Rosemari Mealy—1993, 2013 Black Classic Press 

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

In September of 1960 an event brought together the people of Harlem, New York with the revolutionary government of Cuba. This was the time when Fidel Castro spent a few days at the Hotel Theresa while he was in New York City to address the United Nations. Malcolm X helped in arranging the stay of the Cuban Delegation at the hotel in Harlem. 

Rosemari Mealy was one of thousands who greeted the Cuban delegation. She wrote a short book of interviews with several people who interacted with the Cuban delegation during their stay in the city. To appreciate the significance of this meeting, I believe it is useful to look at the backgrounds of both Harlem and Cuba during those years.

The Black community in 1960

Today there continues to be vicious discrimination against the Black community. Evidence for this was seen in the murder of George Floyd as well as many others by the police. However, the reality of the discrimination in 1960 was even more vicious.

Many people who lived in Harlem at that time migrated away from the states where Jim Crow segregation was the law. Black and white people were prohibited, by law, from using the same hotels or restaurants. The law even prohibited Black and white people from playing a game of checkers. 

While Jim Crow wasn’t the law in the northern or western states, discrimination was institutionalized. Employers prohibited Black people from getting the better jobs. When Blacks managed to get an education, they found that discrimination was routine even in the more skilled jobs. 

Malcolm X came out of that environment. His father was lynched, no doubt because of his political activity in support of the politics of Marcus Garvey. The insurance company refused to pay on the fund his family paid into because they ruled the murder of Malcolm’s father a suicide.

When Malcolm told a teacher that he wanted to become a lawyer, his teacher responded. A lawyer isn’t a job for a n—word. You’re good with your hands and can become a carpenter. 

Because employers prevented Black people from getting lucrative jobs, many resorted to hustles outside the law to make a living. Malcolm received a longer sentence in prison because he was seeing a white woman at that time.

While in prison, Malcolm’s family introduced him to the Nation of Islam and the writings of Elijah Mohammed. Upon his release from prison, Malcolm recruited thousands of Black people to the N.O.I. For people who saw little future in the racist system of the United States, the politics of disciplined self-reliance promoted by Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam was inspiring. 

Cuba and the 1959 revolution

Cuba had a long revolutionary heritage going back to the 19th century. Antonio Maceo was a Black Cuban Major General of the Cuban revolutionary forces that demanded an end to slavery as well as and end to Spanish rule. Today the women’s contingent of the Cuban armed forces is named for Maceo’s mother, Mariana Grajales. Black Cubans known as Mambises were the heart of those Cuban revolutionary forces. 

This Cuban revolutionary movement was cut short because an invasion by the United States. This was mis-named the Spanish-American War. Cuba became an island where most people lived in dire poverty. Mobsters ran resorts that catered to people from this country who enjoyed what they thought was a tropical paradise.

Cuban cultural history also had a profound connection to the Black community in this country. We see this in the connections to both music and baseball.

The Cuban musical influence

The Palladium was a nightclub in New York City that featured Machito and his Afro-Cuban All Stars. This was the first band in this country that openly identified with Africa. Machito’s band also introduced the conga drums to the music here. 

A leader of Machito’s band was Mario Bauza who was a mentor to Dizzy Gillespie who was one of the most influential jazz artists of his day. Bauza introduced Chano Pozo to Gillespie and they teamed up to compose the tunes Salt Peanuts and Manteca. 

Cuban rhythms also influenced many artists as diverse as Bo Didley and Frankie Lyman and the Teenagers.

Cuban baseball and the Negro Leagues

Up until 1947, the owners of professional baseball teams prevented Black players from joining teams in the so-called Major Leagues. So, excellent Black ball players competed in the Negro Leagues. One of the routine stops for the Negro Leagues was in Cuba.

Cuban baseball had a different history from this country. In Cuba the amateur game had the most prestige. Cuban corporations gave generous donations to the so-called amateur players. The professional players competed in a league that wasn’t as prestigious. Because of the racist discrimination in pre-revolutionary Cuba, Black players competed in the professional leagues along with Negro League players from this country. 

Peter C. Bjarkman wrote a history of Cuban Baseball. Bjarkman reported that Martin Dihigo was included on the list of all-time best players in the Negro Leagues. Dihigo played second base but was also a fearsome pitcher and hitter. 

To paraphrase a statement by Orestes (Minnie) Miñoso,  “it is perhaps impossible⎯especially in today’s transient world crammed with instant celebrities but void of lasting heroes⎯to apprehend just how large a national treasure Dihigo actually was in the baseball-crazed nation of Cuba.”  Bjarkman adds that “Here was a disadvantaged youth from Miñoso’s own sugar cane plantation background of grinding poverty who had somehow ignored all insult and exclusion to achieve ultimate hero status.”

Black people in this country were aware of these historical ties to Cuba.

Cuba and the United States

I believe it is useful to look at the timeline of events in this country and Cuba.

On July 26, 1953 Fidel Castro led a raid on the Moncada Barricks in Santiago Cuba. That raid failed. The armed forces murdered many of the insurgents. After the government sent Fidel Castro to prison, he wrote his statement that “History will absolve me.”  

In 1955 racists murdered Emmett Till because he might have whistled to a white woman. The murderers were found not guilty in the town of Money, Mississippi. 

Months after the murder of Till, a police officer arrested Rosa Parks because she refused to sit in the back of a bus. Then the Montgomery Bus Boycott erupted. The Black people of Montgomery refused to ride the busses in the city for over one year. The city eventually changed the law.

On July 1, 1959, the revolutionary armed forces of Cuba forced the repressive government of Fulgencio Batista out of power. The new government outlawed racist discrimination, instituted a land reform, carried out a comprehensive literacy program, and began to develop an internationally recognized health care system.

In September of 1960 Fidel Castro stays at the Hotel Theresa and addresses the United Nations.

In April of 1963 Martin Luther King writes his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” The authorities in Birmingham sent MLK to prison for leading the movement to do away with Jim Crow segregation.

In that letter King explained that he could no longer be patient in waiting for progressive change to happen. He and his daughter didn’t like the fact that they were barred from entering a public park because of their skin color. 

In her book, America on Fire, Elizabeth Hinton reported on hundreds of rebellions that erupted in the United States between the 1960s and 1980s. The cause of these rebellions were usually protests against police brutality.

From 1975 to 1991 Cuban forces defended the government of Angola from an invasion supported by the apartheid government of South Africa. The defeat of the South African forces was instrumental in forcing the apartheid government to make fundamental change. As a result, the government freed Nelson Mandela from prison and abolished the apartheid laws. Mandela would become the first Black president of South Africa. 

Cuba and the United States today

Ever since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the United States government has been doing everything in its power to overthrow the revolutionary government. When we look at history, we see that Cuba has had a distinctly different history from the reality here.

The repressive measures against Cuba have escalated. Now there is an oil embargo that is attempting to starve the Cuban people into submission.

As we see this trade embargo, we see a vicious escalation in the war against working people here. The United States has the largest prison population of any nation in the world. Yet democratic and republican politicians aren’t satisfied with this. So, they are arresting people off the streets and placing them in concentration camps. What is the crime that these people are guilty of? Due to circumstances beyond their control, immigrants were born in another country, and they might not have proper documentation.

These actions by the federal government are reminiscent of the support previous governments gave to the infamous “slave catchers” who apprehended people who escaped from human bondage. About 350,000 Union soldiers died in the effort to rid this country of the infamous institution of chattel slavery.

So, when we look at the history of the United States and Cuba, we see two nations where the governments have clearly conflicting missions. The U.S. government has had a long history of supporting the interests of the most affluent people in the world. This while working people all over the planet struggle to make ends meet. 

Cuba has done its best to support the people who live on the island as well as to bring health care to some of the poorest regions in the world.

This is why I continue to support the movement that has been in solidarity with Cuba since their revolution.

The Working Class and the Contrasting Perspectives of Naomi Kein and David Harvey

 

By Steve Halpern

Karl Marx wrote his classic work Capital in the late 19th century. These are the first two sentences of this fundamentally important work.

“The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its elementary form. Our investigation therefore begins with the analysis of the commodity.” 

The key word to this passage is, appears. 

Growing up in the capitalist world, we learn that there is a stark difference between the way things appear and the way they are. 

When I was a child in Newark, New Jersey, teachers told me to stand up every day, place my hand on my heart, and pledge allegiance to the flag. That pledge argued that this is “one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

While I recited the words to that pledge, the government ordered the military to carpet bomb the people of Vietnam. Literally millions of Vietnamese men, women, and children died because of the organized war against their people. This is just one example of how appearances are different from the realities of the capitalist world.

Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein is a prolific writer. She’s also an activist working against the destruction of the environment and opposition to the Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinian people. Her latest book written with Astra Taylor is End Times Fascism and the Fight For a Living World. There is an interview with Klein and Taylor about their book in a recent edition of the New York Times Magazine. 

Klein also wrote the best-selling book Shock Doctrine about the effects of the capitalist political-economic system known as neoliberalism. To be honest, I haven’t read any of Klein’s books and have relied on quotations from her interview on Democracy Now and the internet.

In their book End Times Fascism Klein and Taylor argue that there are three groups that are driving this country to fascism. These are what they call, Religious end timers, Tech end timers, and Ethno-nationalist end timers. 

In her book Shock Doctrine, Klein argues that shocks to the economy have enabled capitalists to push through an and agenda that compromises both the working class and the environment. Milton Freidman, one of the architects of neoliberalism, used the term shock therapy to describe the measures used by the Pinochet military government of Chile to drive through his reforms. Those reforms were harmful to both the working class and the ecology, but were lucrative to capitalist investment. 

Certainly, Klein and Taylor have a tremendous amount of evidence to support their view. However, as the above quotation from Marx illustrates, in the capitalist world the appearances are different from the reality. The following quotation by Naomi Klein summarizes her perspective about what needs to be done.

“So we are left with a stark choice: allow climate disruption to change everything about our world, or change pretty much everything about our economy to avoid that fate. But we need to be very clear: because of our decades of collective denial, no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.”

David Harvey

David Harvey is a geologist and a college professor who has been teaching students about Karl Marx’s book Capital for about fifty years. His podcasts have an audience of over a million viewers. Those podcasts consist of Harvey’s view of how Marx’s works are relevant to the world today. Harvey also wrote a book about neoliberalism. 

Unlike Klein, Havey argues that the policies known as neoliberalism didn’t happen because of shocks, but because of the natural functioning of the capitalist system. After the Second World War, capitalism in the United States dominated the world’s econ0my. About 60% of the commodities in the world were manufactured here.

This state of affairs gave the working-class real leverage to improve our standard of living. The capitalist system also needs to continually grow and create an ever-expanding market. As a result of this and the horrendous environments many workers faced, the movements of labor, civil rights, and women’s rights erupted. 

These movements won real gains and there was a significant improvement in the standard of living for the majority of the population in this country. President Johnson even relaxed the controls on immigration because of a labor shortage here. However, dire poverty continued to be a fact of life for millions.  

On the other hand, capitalism is a changing system where there is a continuous decline in the percentage of profit on investment. This decline in the rate of profit prompts capitalists to be continually obsessed with cutting costs. 

This obsession with cutting production costs created a tremendous increase in investment capital. This explains why the stock market continues to rise while there is a decline in the standard of living for the majority of the population. There is also a continued destruction of the environment. 

This explains why Marx argued that capitalism is continually at war with the two sources of wealth. These are labor and the land.

So, by the beginning of the 1970s President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard. Prices initially increased and the Federal Reserve Bank compensated by dramatically increasing interest rates. These measures prompted corporations cut their costs by automating jobs and investing in countries where the prevailing wages were about two dollars per day.

David Harvey summarized what was happening with his term, “accumulation by dispossession.” 

One example of how this worked was the increase in price for a semester at Rutgers University. In 1972, tuition at Rutgers was $200 per semester. Today tuition at Rutgers for one semester is about $18,000. 

So, during the times when U.S. capitalism was in its ascendency, universities received significant subsidies from corporate interests. Today when capitalism is in decline, the working class needs to pay considerably more for that same education.

Corporations eliminated literally millions of manufacturing jobs through automation and outsourcing. After the Second World War about 60% of the commodities in the world were produced in the United States. Today that percentage is about 15% while Aisia produces about 50% of the commodities in the world. 

Most of the replacement jobs have effectively lower pay and fewer benefits. Yet, both Democratic and Republican Party politicians like to argue that they are creating jobs. 

When we look at the labels on our clothes, most are made in other countries. When we look at the cars on the road, a large percentage are made in other countries. Basic food products like bananas and coffee are produced in other countries. When we look at the huge infrastructures required to bring these commodities to market, we get an idea of the tremendous potential power of the international working class.  

We are ruled by abstractions

One of David Harvey’s arguments is that under the capitalist system we are all “ruled by abstractions.”  What is he talking about?

We all need and want about eight things. These include food, clothing, housing, transportation, communication, health care, education, and exposure to culture that includes music, art, theater, sports, etc.…

However, to get any of these things, we all need to have access to money. Money has no direct value. We would not want to eat money. Money is merely a means of exchange. In other words, our routine motivation to attain money from our jobs is, in a real sense, an abstraction. 

Then there are the three IN’s. These are insurance, inflation, and interest to banks. These enterprises, as well as corporate law, advertising, and landlords never directly produce any of the goods and services we need or want. Yet we need to pay for all these enterprises. We do this with both the extraction of wealth derived from jobs where we work, and in the prices we pay for commodities. 

Another of David Harvey’s observations is that while problems can be solved, we need a completely different political-economic system to resolve fundamental contradictions. While Harvey doesn’t elaborate on this, we can imagine what this would mean. What would the world look like if we had a government that made a priority of providing people with lifetime rights for our needs?

What would a socialist world look like?

The first sentence of this blog quoted Karl Marx who argued that his analysis of capitalism started with the commodity. Marx argued that in order to produce a commodity there needs to be constant capital (buildings, machinery, and materials), variable capital (labor), and surplus capital (profits, interest, insurance, taxes, advertising, rents, etc.) 

A fundamental question Marx asked was: Who should control surplus capital? 

In the capitalist world, surplus capital is controlled by capitalists who are motivated to maximize profits. The goal of a socialist world would be to provide everyone in the world with lifetime rights to everything we need and some of the things we want. These would include food, clothing, housing, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture that includes music, art, theater, recreation, and sports.

When we think of the enormous resources effectively waisted on enterprises that contribute nothing to the goods and services we need, we get an idea of how those resources could be used in a rational way. 

Today, we all travel to our jobs wherever they are. In a planned economy there could be a mass transportation system that transports workers to enterprises that provide for our needs. Since this would require much less work, workers could retire at a significantly earlier age. The class sizes for teachers might be a maximum of five or ten students. The number of doctors could quadruple, and health care would be a routine fact of life for everyone. 

All of these ideas are unthinkable to those who support the capitalist system. This is the context of David Harvey’s statement that while problems can be solved, we need a different political-economic system to resolve basic contradictions. 

Why was Donald Trump elected President?

When we look at the decades of deteriorating standards of living due to neoliberalism, it should be of no surprise that millions of people want a change. However, today there is no grass roots mass political party arguing that workers and capitalists have fundamentally antagonistic interests.

So, millions of people who wanted a change were deluded in believing that Donald Trump represented that change. Since he has been in office, Trump’s policies have followed the politics of the democrats, but only more in a more vicious way. He, like the democrats has a mass deportation program. Like the democrats, Trump ardently supports Israeli organized genocide against the Palestinians. Like the democrats, Trump ardently supports the gross disparity of wealth in this country. His primary difference with the democrats is how he makes seemingly stupid remarks literally every day. 

Both Jill Stein and Zohan Mamdani are attempting to reform the capitalist system. I do not question their motives. However, we have a 250-year history that gives us clear evidence that capitalism cannot and will not be reformed.

We need a labor party that identifies with the working class all over the world. This is not the perspective of either Naomi Klein or David Harvey. However, I agree with Naomi Klein when she argues that “no gradual, incremental options are now available to us.” For me, this can only mean advocating for a political party and a political economic system that makes human needs and not profits the fundamental priority.

The Making of a (PARDONED) Felon and Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History

 

By Steve Halpern 

This morning I read an obituary of Dr. William G. Anderson by Clay Risen in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He was 98 years old.  Anderson was raised in the outskirts of Albany, Georgia. Because of the Jim Crow laws Anderson went to school in a historically Black university. He then served as a medical corpsman during World War II. Eventually Anderson received a doctorate degree in osteopathy from Des Moines University in Iowa. He did a residency in Flint, Michigan and settled in Albany. 

Dr. Anderson was not allowed to practice in the one hospital in Albany because he was Black. He did house-calls, oftentimes to homes that lacked electricity and running water. He once delivered a baby outside illuminated by the headlights of his car. 

Then in 1961 young activists from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee came to Albany to organize the movement. In a 2019 interview Dr. Anderson reflected on the effect those young people had on him.

“I came out of my office and, after watching these kids be intimidated, I went and started marching.” “They weren’t marching for themselves: they were doing it for myself, my family, my patients, and my community.”

Over the course of a year, the Albany police arrested 1,200 people who protested Jim Crow segregation. Dr. Anderson was one of those who was arrested and spent a brief time in prison. This gave him the distinction of being a convicted felon.

In 2025 Dr. Anderson wrote his memoir: The Making of a (PARDONED) Felon During the Civil Rights Movement in America: The Physician Who Helped Heal American Democracy. 

Dr. Anderson went on a West Coast speaking tour and was interviewed on the NBC news program Meet the Press. James J. Kilpatrick asked Dr. Anderson if the protesters “invited” their arrests.

Dr. Anderson responded: “Yes,” “If expressing your constitutional rights is inviting arrest, then yes.”

Dr. Anderson eventually moved to Detroit, Michigan where he became the first Black surgical resident in the city. He taught at Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine. He became the first Black President of the American Osteopathic Association. 

Donald Trump claims he wants to “Restore Truth and Sanity to American History”

I read Dr. Anderson’s obituary shortly after President Donald Trump issued a report titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” Trump argued that the museums of the Smithsonian Institution present a “divisive race-centered ideology.”

Well, history is not an ideology but a record of the facts. Historical facts can not change. Certainly people, even with advanced degrees, can ignore historical facts. Conclusions can be made while ignoring essential facts. However, any child can report on facts that others choose to ignore.  Those children can make highly educated people look like fools.  

James W. Loewen wrote his book published in 1995 and 2018 titled: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. In this book, Loewen documented all the misinformation contained in about 90% of American History textbooks. Why did the authors of these textbooks deliberately falsify the history of this country? The answer is the same as President Trump’s attempt to further distort the history of this country. This is to glorify the history and deny the unimaginable horrors of the past.

We need to be aware of the life story of Dr. William G. Anderson. We also need to be aware of thousands other stories that document how the United States government has trampled on the rights of people who lived here, as well as people who lived all over the world. 

Instead of glorifying the history of this country, there is another consistent theme to our history. That is, if we dare to struggle, we can indeed dare to win.   

Black Marxism—A Marxist Critique

 

By August H. Nimtz

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Today growing numbers of people understand that we are faced with fundamental problems. The United States launched an unprovoked war against the nation of Iran. For close to four years, the world has seen a livestreamed genocide against Palestinians. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents are kidnapping our neighbors because they happen to be born in another country. I could go on. 

Nicole Hanna Jones, editor of the book The 1619 Project, pointed to another persistent issue that has been a constant feature in the history of the United States. “The effort of Black Americans to seek freedom through resistance and rebellion against violations of their rights have always been one of this nation’s defining traditions.”

August Nimtz’ book Black Marxism takes issue with books by Cedric Robinson and others who argue that the political orientation of Karl Marx is irrelevant to the struggle for Black liberation. After all, what could Marx, who lived his entire life in Europe, and never even visited the United States, have something relevant to say about the Black liberation struggle?

Karl Marx

To begin to appreciate the contributions of Marx, perhaps it is useful to look at his life story. Karl Marx was born in Germany at a time when that nation was ruled by a feudal monarch. His father needed to change his religion from Jewish to gain a lucrative job. Because of his controversial political activities Marx was exiled from his homeland.

Eventually Marx was able to live in Britain, a nation at the center of the capitalist world at that time. Frederick Engels wrote a book that deeply influenced Marx titled, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844. This book reported on the unimaginably horrendous living and working conditions in the industrialized city of Manchester. 

So, this reality presented Marx and Engels with a problem. They understood that capitalism was a clear advance over the feudal system. Yet capitalism also produced horrendous conditions for workers, while a tiny minority lived in opulence. 

Looking at the capitalism from this perspective, Marx developed a way of looking at the world that was diametrically opposed to the view presented by most so-called history teachers here. Those teachers ask students to stand up, and pledge allegiance to a flag. They claim this flag represents “liberty and justice for all.” They also argue that everyone is supposed to have equal rights, and that we live in a “democracy.” 

In his studies of capitalism, Marx learned that the system needs to continually grow. For the system to grow, a surplus needs to be derived from the workers who produce the commodities we all need. Because of this state of affairs, the owners of capital, the capitalists, are continually obsessed with cutting their costs of production.

So, when you might have a disagreement with a boss, it isn’t just because the boss might be mean-spirited, or insensitive, or stupid. No, the interests of workers and capitalists are fundamentally antagonistic. This antagonist relationship also explains racist and sexist discrimination. This also explains why about 80% of the population of the world lives on ten dollars per day or less. 

Sven Beckert wrote a book titled Capitalism: A Global History. In this book, Beckert showed how capitalism has always been an international system. However, politicians routinely argue that our problems can be solved with a national or an America First agenda. In their Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels appealed to the “workers of the world.” Unlike the politicians we listen to today, Marx and Engels argued that workers all over the world ultimately have the same interests.  

I believe the quotation by Marx that most attracted August Nimtz is when is when he said, “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” 

It is from this perspective that Nimtz dismantles those who argue that Marx’s example is basically irrelevant to Black liberation. Cedric Robinson argued that Marx had no theory on race. In Marx’s day, the primary struggle was about the abolition of the slave system. Yet Marx was well aware that workers needed to develop an anti-racist consciousness if they ever hoped to achieve liberation. 

We also know that Marx’s position evolved on nationalities who were discriminated against. Initially he believed that Irish workers could only become liberated when the more advanced British, workers liberated themselves. Then, he discovered those who were engaged in the struggle for Irish liberation. Marx eventually argued that British workers could not be liberated unless they support Irish liberation.

The former Boxing Heavyweight Champion Mohammed Ali had a few things to say about these issues.

“A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has waisted thirty years of his life.”

“I am America. I am the part you don’t want to recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours, my religion, not yours, my goals, my own; get used to me.”

I believe it was this kind of uncompromising attitude that convinced Marx to change his attitude on Irish liberation. Mohammed Ali, in effect, argued that Black people weren’t just part of the so-called “melting pot” of this country, but the Black community had its own independent ideas that represent a distinct perspective. 

Marx made it his top priority to support the Union forces in the Civil War. Ultimately the victory of the Union Army led to the abolition of slavery. The exception was in cases of penal servitude.

After the Civil War, Marx was discouraged by the policies of President Andrew Johnson, who worked to reimpose many of the aspects of the slave system. So, Marx wouldn’t have been totally surprised by the vicious defeat of Radical Reconstruction that led to the Jim Crow laws. That defeat effectively abolished citizenship rights for African Americans.  

Frederick Douglass

August Nimtz also wrote a book with Kyle Edwards where he compared the political lives of Frederick Douglass to Karl Marx. I haven’t read that book, but Nimtz wrote about Douglass and Marx in his book Black Marxism. Nimtz labeled Douglass a “revolutionary liberal.” In my opinion that characterization is unwarranted. 

In his 1852 speech about what the Fourth of July meant to the slave, Douglass had this to say. “For shameless hypocrisy and ruthless barbarity, America reins without a rival.” In my opinion, this was not a statement of a liberal.

Perhaps the reason why Nimtz gives Douglass the liberal label is because he did not advocate for an abolition of capitalism. I believe we get a better understanding of who Frederick Dougass was by looking at his life story. His autobiography is a classic in the literature of this country.

Frederick Douglass was born a slave and witnessed the unimaginable horrors of chattel slavery. At the age of 19 he escaped enslavement and, for the first time, learned how wage labor had fundamental advantages over the system of chattel slavery.

Douglass was enslaved when he worked on the shipyards of Baltimore. Then he saw how three workers in Massachusetts were doing the work of twelve slaves in Baltimore. Also, the workers in Massachusetts were paid a wage and might have their own home where they could raise a family.

Douglass also saw how there was racist discrimination in the North. In spite of this, he viewed northern capitalism as a fundamental improvement from the enslavement he endured.

On the other hand, when Karl Marx was introduced to the capitalist system in Britain he viewed an unimaginable horror story. This contrast in the lives of Marx and Douglass begins to explain why they looked at the world differently.

When it came to the Civil War, Marx and Douglass agreed that the government of the slave owners needed to be decisively defeated. They both saw the limitations of President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln initially argued that the war was about preserving the union. Both Marx and Douglass understood that the Civil War was about abolishing slavery and celebrated when Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation.

Both Marx and Douglass understood how the hundreds of thousands who escaped enslavement would play an invaluable role in defeating the slaveocracy. However, they also believed that the enslavers could only be defeated with the full force of the Union Army.

August Nimtz, I believe, accurately argues that Marx and Douglass had different reasons for supporting the abolition of slavery. Douglass’ primary goal in life was to see an end to chattel slavery. Marx felt that the abolition of slavery was a necessary step for the working class in their eventual overthrow of the capitalist system.

Nimtz was critical of Douglass for not supporting a land distribution to freed slaves, as proposed by Thaddeus Stevens. We can only speculate as to Douglass’ thinking with respect to this issue. What we know is that because of the Union victory in the Civil War, Douglass changed his critical view of the United States government. He became an Ambassador to Haiti and was the President of a bank. 

However, as Mohammed Ali said, “A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has waisted thirty years of his life.”

In 1894, towards the end of his life, Douglass gave his masterful speech Lessons of the Hour. Here he distanced himself from the vicious racist repression he saw in the North and the South. He advocated to enforce the Constitution that would have given Black people the rights they were supposed to have. However, Douglass wasn’t familiar with the ideas of Marx and his advocacy of a worker’s government that would make human needs the fundamental priority.

Ida Wells

August Nimtz mentioned several leaders who made outstanding contributions to the struggle for Black liberation. These include John Brown, WEB DuBois, CLR James, Malcolm X, Maurice Bishop, and Thomas Sankara. He didn’t mention the name Ida Wells, who was a friend of Frederick Douglass. 

I believe both Ida Wells and Douglass agreed with Marx when he argued that they weren’t about interpreting the world, but about changing it. Wells became a champion in the struggles against lynching as well as the liberation of women. In my opinion, Ida Wells, in a way, was a bridge from the politics of Frederick Douglass to the politics of Malcolm X.  

Malcolm X argued that the struggle for Black liberation needs to be advanced “By any means necessary.” Ida Wells argued that Black people need to reserve a special place in their home for a “Winchester rifle,” to defend against lynch mobs. 

Malcolm viewed the liberation of women as necessary to the struggle. Ida Wells shared that view. 

Private property

August Nimtz reported that the primary goal of Karl Marx was the abolition of private property. When workers think about that, they might conclude that a socialist government would take away our toothbrushes. This is the kind of slander spread by the mainstream so-called “news media.” So, what did Marx mean when he argued for the abolition of private property?

In the capitalist world, the owners of capital own and control the productive forces of society. Workers go to work, but capitalists control the work environment, as well as the prices we pay. While workers do the work, capitalists produce nothing useful, but reap the profits.

We were all raised to believe that banks finance corporations. Marx argued that to produce a commodity in the capitalist system there are three requirements. These are labor, the materials and machinery, and what he called “surplus value.” 

For Marx, surplus value doesn’t merely consist of profits. There are entire enterprises such as banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, corporate law firms, and landlords. These enterprises do not directly produce useful commodities. However, the surplus derived from the production and distribution of commodities effectively finances all these enterprises. In other words, workers, in a real way finance banks. Banks merely absorb the surplus derived from the workers who produce commodities.

So, when Marx argued for the abolition of private property, he was arguing for an end to the antagonistic relationship between workers and capitalists. A worker’s government would make it their top priority to use the means of production to serve the needs of all workers and farmers.

The outstanding singer Etta James has a song where she said she wanted “security.” This song is about a relationship James had with someone she loved. However, isn’t security something we all want? Don’t we all want the right to have a decent place to live, food to eat, clothing, health care, education, transportation, communication, and exposure to culture.

In the capitalist world we need money to get these things. We can only have money if we work for an employer who is obsessed with gouging out profits. Even after we worked our entire lives, we need to have the money to provide for our basic necessities. This drive for profits is the root cause of racist discrimination. 

We won’t have an egg unless there first is a chicken. There can only be racist discrimination because of an outgrowth of capitalist exploitation.

I believe August Nimtz book Black Marxism makes the argument that the working class will not be liberated unless it unconditionally supports Black liberation. The reverse is also true. Only the entire working class has the potential power to bring about a political-economic system that can begin to erase all vestiges of racist discrimination.

Zohran Mamdani and the Democratic Socialists of America

The election of Zohran Mamdani as Mayor of New York City raises the question: What do socialists stand for? In my opinion, there are a few ways to answer this question.

First, Mamdani’s opposition to the genocide organized against Palestinians separates him from mainstream democratic and republican politicians. 

Mamdani, who is Muslim and born in Uganda actively worked to recruit the diverse communities of New York City. I can’t recall other candidates who had that kind of success in celebrating the international character of this country. This contrasts with the politics of President Trump, as well as Democratic Party politicians. They support agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who kidnap and deport our neighbors merely because they were born in another country.

However, Mamdani has no plans to aid in the mobilization of working people to ultimately take the control of the productive forces we all deal with. As I have attempted to argue, capitalism has its own driving forces. Those forces work continually to compromise the interests of the working class around the world. 

This means that as capitalism continues to deteriorate, Mamdani will be unable to institute fundamental change. I believe that August Nimtz’s book Black Marxism gives us the background to the history of the movement for Black liberation. That history gives us many inspiring examples of how working people indeed have the capacity to mobilize and bring about fundamental change.

The Fort Bragg Cartel—Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces

 

By Seth Harp, 2025 

Viking—Penguin Random House 

Reviewed by Steve Halpern

Recently the United States destroyed several boats in the Caribbean Sea and caused the deaths of over 200 people who were on board. President Donald Trump argued that the United States is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. We might also consider that the Drug Enforcement Administration is funded to the tune of about $3.25 billion. As I’m writing this review, Secretary of War Peter Hegseth is planning to conduct military operations in several Latin American nations. The pretense for this military action is to battle against “designated terrorist organizations.” 

In Seth Harp’s best-selling book, The Fort Bragg Cartel—Drug Trafficking and Murder in the Special Forces, he makes the following statement that questions the motives of the government in their supposed effort to battle drug trafficking. 

“Throughout its history, the CIA has worked to achieve American national security objectives in partnership with known drug traffickers, including the anti-communist Kuomintang, the founders of modern-day Taiwan; Frances’s Corsican mafia syndicates; Cuban exiles opposed to Fidel Castro; Hmong irregulars in Laos as well as the Royal Lao Army; and the contra rebels in Nicaragua. But American foreign policy elites’ complicity in the international drug trade was never so substantial, sustained, witting, and consequential as in Afghanistan.”

To begin to see how military officers became involved in drug trafficking we need to look at the elite Delta Force. These are the soldiers who go through the most rigorous training. Military commanders are very particular about who is chosen.

President Jimmy Carter gave the orders for the Delta Force to attempt a rescue of U.S. personnel who had been held in Iran. The Iranians had just carried out a revolution where they deposed the hated dictator the Shah Riza Pahlavi. Carter gave refuge to Pahlavi, and this sparked the Iranian people to detain members of the United States embassy. 

Carter ordered Delta Force officers to attempt a rescue of U.S. personnel who had been detained. That effort failed.

When President Regan came into office, he modernized the Delta Force into the Fort Bragg based Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). JSOC officers also supported the contras who opposed the revolutionary Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The contras were known to partially fund their efforts by drug trafficking.

Seth Harp’s book reads like a novel, but the story he reported on was corroborated by facts uncovered by his research. Harp served in the United States Army Reserve and did a tour of duty in Iraq. So, rather than give a full outline of his book, I will look at three of the characters who, directly or indirectly, contributed to drug trafficking in Fort Bragg and the surrounding area of North Carolina.

General Stanley McChrystal

General Stanley McChrystal headed up the JSOC forces under the Administration of President Obama. He quadrupled the number of Delta Force combatants in Afghanistan. 

During his time directing forces in Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai was the effective ruler of the country. Seth Harp reported that “Karzai’s government was primarily a military-industrial money-laundering machine for transatlantic security elites, a corrupt conduit through which a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer dollars flowed, but secondarily and almost as important, it was a massive drug cartel that produced nearly all of the world’s illicit opiates.”

General McChrystal acknowledged that “Too often,” American proxies were “corrupt and despised warlords whom we paid handsomely.”

McCrystal organized teams of Delta Force soldiers, Navy Seals, and Army Rangers to carry out night raids where these forces murdered up to 100 Afghans and leveled entire villages.

In 2015 The New York Times did an expose titled, SEAL Team 6: A secret History of Quiet Killings and Blurred Lines. This article reported that the Seal team had been assassinating a dozen or more people every night for years on end.

However, the lead organization in those raids was Delta Force. Billy Lavigne was one of the Delta Force officers who did several tours of duty in Afghanistan under the command of General McChrystal. Lavigne is one of the central true-life characters in Seth Harp’s book.   

Freddie Wayne Huff

Freddie Wayne Huff was a police officer first recruited in Lexington, North Carolina. He was effective in stopping motorists and confiscating large amounts of cash. Because of Huff’s $9 million in confiscations the police department in his district was able to modernize.

Then Huff had a discussion with Karl Culberson, a drug enforcement officer who also had experience working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). This is the advice Culberson gave to Huff regarding his drug enforcement work.

“What you think you’re doing is noble.” “But they want it here. You’re a pawn. Everything you’re doing is in vain.”

Then Huff pulled over an inebriated insurance executive who had been a donor to the Governor. The executive warned Huff that he would have his job for writing the ticket. Within a month Huff was fired from the police department.

Needing to support a family, Huff got a job shipping appliances needing repair to Mexico. He learned that the owner of the company he worked with was also connected to the Los Zetas Mexican drug cartel.

Because of his experience of apprehending motorists, Huff was effective evading searches by the police. This is how police officer Freddie Wayne Huff became the largest drug dealer in North Carolina.

Huff maintained a close friendship with Chief Warrant Officer Timothy Dumas who was stationed at Fort Bragg. Dumas came under a cloud of suspicion for misappropriation of government funds, as well as using and selling illegal drugs. He resigned from the service and formed a partnership with Huff to expand drug dealing to Fort Bragg.

Huff also worked with Billy Lavigne who was a Delta Force officer. Lavigne also sold drugs at Fort Bragg and did several tours of duty in Afghanistan. Lavigne and Timothy Dumas were murdered and became two of 109 military officers who lost their lives at Fort Bragg in a two year period.

Gene Paul Thacker

Gene Paul Thacker was a first-generation Special Forces officer who served in Korea and Vietnam. After his time in the military Thacker purchased a municipal airport in the vicinity of Fort Bragg. Green Berets have used his airfield in their parachuting practices. 

Declassified FBI files and court records reported that Thacker maintained a small fleet of turboprop planes to smuggle huge amounts of cocaine into the North Carolina. Although Gene Thacker was never convicted of a crime, his son, took over the business. Tim Thacker would eventually plead guilty to drug trafficking and firearms charges. 

These drug traffickers who were former police or military officers were able to get away with their illegal activities for many years. Harp documented how the police as well as military commanders refused to prosecute officers for crimes such as possession or trafficking of illegal drugs, rape, and murder. 

There was a documentary film titled Invisible War that reported on many rapes in the military were there was no effort to prosecute the perpetrators. The producers of this film estimated that there are thousands of rapes in the military every year.

The U.S. military eventually left Afghanistan. The Taliban that had been in power before the U.S. occupation returned to power. Clearly the Taliban is a repressive regime. However, Seth Harp reported that the evidence shows that the Taliban eliminated the drug business from Afghanistan. Because that source of heroin was eliminated, a new market in fentanyl erupted. 

The information about U.S. government complicity with the international drug trade isn’t new. There was Alfred W. McCoy’s book The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade published in 1972, 1991 and 2003. There was the film American Gangster starring Denzel Washington. Yet President Trump claims that the government is in “armed conflict” with drug cartels. Seth Harp’s book gives us more evidence that exposes the blatant dishonesty of routine government policy.