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293 “Liberation or Revolution?” is a speech delivered at Stanford University in March 1978 during a symposium titled “What Is Black Liberation?” In 1980 the National Organization for an American Revolution (NOAR) issued the speech as a pamphlet that featured images created by artist Tom Feelings. Liberation or Revolution? I want to thank you for inviting me to speak to you. I also want to warn you that what I am going to say may not please you. But it has to be said if I am to discharge my responsibility to speak the truth on what liberation is and what it is not. In every period of history, there are those few who try to define the state of the particular society and the principal contradictions around which those who are concerned about the society should mobilize themselves at that particular time. Any understanding of where we are, in the United States today, in the year 1978 must, at the very least, begin with an understanding of where the world was right after World War II. At the same time, the old Western alliance had been shattered by Hitler and Tojo. The British Empire, having crumbled, was being liquidated. The people in the colonial countries were beginning to stir. The United States had come out of the war as the world’s most powerful nation. But a few questions were already being raised as to the purpose of our existence as a nation. For a brief period during the Eisenhower years of the 1950s, it seemed that these questions were premature. To most people, preoccupied with the pursuit of goods that were pouring off the nation’s production lines, it seemed that the United States could continue on its merry and not-so-merry way dominating the world. Then, suddenly, a giant within our nation, which had lain dormant for years, began to stir. Black people, especially southern black people who had been systematically damned by racism, began to ask what should be the relationship between one set of human beings—black—and another set of human beings—white. It was no mystery that the stirrings of black people within the United States coincided with those people of color in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. People of color inside the United States and people of color outside the United States had not only been participants in World War II. They had also been observers. They were aware that World War II had been a struggle between two blocs for world mastery. But they were also aware that it had been a struggle for the minds of people all over the world as to what should be our way of life in the twentieth century. People of color recognized that Europeans who had dominated the world for four centuries were now in deep crisis. So both in the United States and outside the United States they began to feel and to believe that there could be another way of life for them. They began to dare to dream that they could shape their own future. Ward.indb 293 12/21/10 9:28 AM Part III 294 How Movements Have Developed When human beings begin to question existing reality in this way, they are at the starting point of all philosophy. They may or may not go on to create a new philosophy. But when they question the philosophy that has up to now justified their oppression, their questioning contains the opportunity for them to create a new philosophy. Most movements , however, do not begin with recognizing the need to create a new philosophy. Instead, those who participate in the movement believe that if they only exert enough pressure on those in power, they can make them share the rights and privileges they have been denied. In other words, they believe that all they have to do is reform the system to make it serve their needs. To understand the black movement after World War II, it is helpful to compare and contrast it with the labor movement that erupted during the Great Depression before World War II. The black movement set out to establish the dignity of blacks as the labor movement had established the dignity of labor. But the contradictions faced by the black movement or the civil rights movement were far more complex than those of the labor movement. In the 1930s, millions of Americans were living a Tobacco Road existence. They were ill fed, ill clothed...

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