Customer Reviews

The Victims of Democracy: Malcolm X and the Black Revolution

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
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This is a very "wordy" book about a complex man, his life, politics, and beliefs. It is not a history per se of Malcolm X, nor is it a biography, rather it is a collection of ideas within ideas about Malcolm X and what made him tick. I must warn you though it is not as easy book to read, but it rates five stars in my opinion because it attempts to be analytical and non-judgemental about the man and his times. Not an easy task when you are writing about someone as famous as Malcolm X. This is a good book to supplement Alex Haley's book on Malcolm X as it looks deeper into the man and what he stood for. Well worth reading if you have the time and patience.

This is an immensely important work. One I am embarrassed to admit has been in my library for more than a decade without having been read. And, had it not been for a reference to it in a speech by the British Psychologist, Robert M. Young (author of the magisterial "Mental Spaces,"), on the issue of Violence and Racism (given in Manitoba, Canada 13 January 1999), even today I might still not have cracked open the book.

My only excuse is that so much of the writings about Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has turned out to be disappointing idle hero-worshiping that it all has become one big rather meaningless blob -- and that includes the rendition by one of my intellectual heroes Michael Eric Dyson. To his credit though, in both the cases of King and Malcolm, Dyson at least tried to get the facts of their lives right.

Here, Wolfenstein has done so much more than just get the facts of Malcolm's life right. This is a full-bodied meta-theoretical analysis of Malcolm's life in the context of America's racist and capitalist culture and economy. And it is one done at a very high intellectual level and wielded with great skill even if it is at times a little intellectually brutal and rough around the edges.

In a deeply honest (rather than fawning) effort to get at the real meaning of Malcolm's life, Wolfenstein has produced a meta-theoretical masterpiece, one that arguably (were it not so politically radioactive (i.e. it has an avowedly socialist bent) and were it not such a raw intellectual expression), should have received a book award at least for inventiveness and creativity.

Wielding Freudian psychological analysis and Marxist political and economic analysis with equal facility and deftness, Wolfenstein has sidestepped much of the story-telling in order to put Malcolm's life experiences into a context of higher theoretical meaning, and might I add, to higher theoretical use.

Using Malcolm's life experiences as THE object lesson of what a racist society can do to one random black individual (and undoubtedly by extension to some extent has done to us all), Wolfenstein has woven together a tightly knit theoretical and social critique of America's racist culture. (It is absolutely scary how well he has done this.)

However, the purpose of this critique is not just to punch another hole into an already weak and crumbling capitalist/racist façade, it is to show where there still might be some light and hope at the end of this nightmarish tunnel and how to eventually find it. And it must be said in passing, that with only a few exceptions, this is a great deal more than most of our black intellectuals have done (and are doing). One of those exceptions, of course, is Professor Cornel West.

If one makes clear that by the "racially oppressed" Wolfenstein means both black and white races, then I believe he has correctly identified the real problem of a racist culture: How does it falsify the consciousness of the racially oppressed. And how do racially oppressed individuals free themselves from both falsification of their consciousness and the racist domination of their practical activity.

Using Malcolm's life experiences as an example (which during his early life, like that of many young black people, lurched from one dark pre-set societal trap to another), Wolfenstein shows us how to get behind the screen of false consciousness that a racist/capitalist culture creates and relies on to do most of its ideological and psychological dirty work. Only beyond this screen is there to be found a truer more authentic reality upon which a humanity of loving, caring, genuine brotherhood, and sharing can rest.

Wolfenstein, using the discrete events of Malcolm's life, demonstrates, beyond doubt, that it is the screen of false consciousness that aids and abets the capitalist project of commodifying our reality, distorting our worldview and thus greatly diminishing our humanity.

By bifurcating our culture into alienated racial and emotional groupings (Wolfenstein's more generalized idea of class), he shows rather graphically, how it is the false consciousness of capitalist exploitation that shapes our worldview -- from the intrapersonal all the way up to the level of culture. It is false consciousness that shapes and deforms individual characters, the psychology, ideology and the cultures of emotional groupings. It shapes our institutions and symbols of state, and causes so much alienation both between and within the various groupings.

The author illustrates how the false consciousness created by America's racist and capitalist social and economic system, commodifed Malcolm's mind and his reality, robbing him of any vestige of an authentic humanity and led him blindly, almost automatically down a path to violence, alienation, drug addiction, crime, exploitation of women, and ultimately to his own self-destruction. Only by getting outside the racist/capitalist paradigm into the Black Muslim religious sect was Malcolm able to partially recover from the damage done to his psyche.

In short, Wolfenstein shows, using Malcolm's life as a vivid object lesson, that it is also the false consciousness in our own lives that is the primary basis for deflecting and distorting our reality from its authentic basis. The authentic basis upon which most of us wish to rest our humanity is on a desire for human relationships based on true emotional feelings unmediated by racist psychology and ideology and that exploits, homogenizes, alienates, commodifies and then greatly diminishes our individual and collective humanity. But it is precisely the things in this list that American democracy does to each of us. And that is why, Wolfenstein considers us all: both black and white, its victims.

Although my own research tends more towards postmodern Freudian analysis of the likes of Otto Rank, Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, and especially Robert M. Young and Melanie Kline, Wolfenstein's analysis here using the old Freudian/Marxist model proves that even though it is still tricky, that there is much gold to still be mined from that model.

This is a very, very worthy effort Five stars.