In this eulogy for dub poet Michael “Mikey” Smith, Amiri Baraka asserts the need for Black and Third World mass organization against the ravages of neo-colonialism, imperialism, racism, and capitalism.
Forty years ago, August 17, 1983, on the anniversary of Marcus Garvey’s birth, the Jamaican dub poet Michael “Mikey” Smith was killed. Lauded by figures like Kamau Brathwaite and Linton Kwesi Johnson, Smith was considered among the foremost poets of his era, dub-wise or otherwise. But his career was tragically cut short when, after speaking at a Stony Hill rally for the Jamaica Labour Party, he was struck in the head by a rock. At a November, 1983 memorial service for Smith held in Brixton, London, African American radical poet Amiri Baraka delivered a speech on Smith’s poetics and politics, linking his killing to the recent assassination of two other Caribbean intellectuals: Walter Rodney, killed in Guyana three years earlier, in 1980, and Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, murdered but a month before, in October 1983. For Baraka, this trinity of Smith, Rodney, and Bishop, exemplified the highest potential of the Black intelligentsia; they were “revolutionary Black intellectuals” who challenged the status quo of neocolonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. It was no wonder all three were murdered.
Also for Baraka, their deaths were possible because of a lack of organization among Black and Third World radicals — and because of certain tendencies of the Black intelligentsia. Baraka writes that “the entire black world should have been mobilized to speak out and condemn” these killings. However, to do so “requires progressive organization and the abandonment of petty bourgeois individualism, addiction to atavism and metaphysics among the artists and intellectuals and renewed commitment to struggle at the most scientific levels.” As we sit watching an unfolding intervention in Haiti and an ongoing genocide in Palestine, Baraka’s charge is as potent now as it was forty years ago, perhaps more so as individualism has become entrenched among Black “intellectuals,” and metaphysics has triumphed over materialism.
Baraka’s speech, whose full title was “Bloody Neocolonialism, or the Murder of Mikey Smith, or the Murder of Walter Rodney, or the Murder of Maurice Bishop,” was printed in a special Caribbean number of the Oakland-based journal, Black Nation: A Journal of African American Thought and anthologized in his collection, Eulogies. We reprint it below.
Bloody Neo-Colonialism
or
The Murder of Mikey Smith
or
The Murder of Walter Rodney
or
The Murder of Maurice Bishop
Amiri Baraka, November 3, 1983, Brixton, London
I want you to think about a world where it is impossible for black people, anywhere, to develop an intelligentsia, in the fullest and profoundest sense of that term, without them being assaulted, and in too many cases, murdered! Why? Because to be a black intellectual, since the slave trade began, is to be a consciousness that not only understands the historic oppression of the black race worldwide, but also has some clarity about what must be done to end oppression!
The poet, Michael Smith, was such a consciousness, and not idly, his poetry speaks directly to those two levels of our most developed minds - understanding the oppression and understanding what must be done about it. The most developed of such intellectuals also understands that such realization is sterile unless it is a blueprint for action!
Why was Michael Smith destroyed? Only because of our collective weakness. That we have developed this intelligentsia, not only in the Caribbean, but all over the black world, but have not organized sufficiently to protect them!!
In the last generation we could mention Lumumba, Cabral, Nkrumah, Sibeko in Africa. We could mention Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Fred Hampton in the U.S.
And now, very recently in a brutal sickening rapid succession Walter Rodney, Mikey Smith, Maurice Bishop in the Caribbean!
Revolutionary black intellectuals are dangerous to the status quo of superpower imperialist domination throughout the world, because all over the world, black people are at the bottom of these racist imperialist societies. Not only is imperialism and worldwide system, but since the primitive accumulation of capital needed to develop modern capitalism, including the industrial revolution, was based on the African slave trade, the social order of Imperialist societies is not only based on classes but caste as well. So that the darker one is, the more completely one is victimized by monopoly capitalism and imperialism. The sharper we are attacked by racism.
Particularly in the third world, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, since the revolutionary intellectuals, historically, traditionally, have tried to guide their people toward social transformation, material liberation, self-determination, scientific socialism, they have always come under sharp attack by the rulers.
For black people such attacks will always be more brutal and murderous because of our position at the bottom of these societies. But now imperialism has evolved to the stage of neo-colonialism, where we no longer are ruled directly by the hand of European colonialism, but now, in most cases, we are ruled by imperialism indirectly, through what Amilcar Cabral called “native agents.”
Throughout the third world, imperialism rules now mostly through native agents. So that Neruda is murdered by Pinochet; Ngugi is imprisoned by Kenyatta, driven into exile by Arap Moi. Mikey Smith is murdered by Ciaga, Walter Rodney is destroyed by Forbes Burnham.
In the U.S., where the African American people have never been in a colonial situation, but have existed since the 19th century as an oppressed nation within a nation, today in many of the 26 large cities we live in, there are black mayors who too often serve as messengers from Ronald Reagan and little else.
But in the Caribbean, particularly, we have seen for the last few years how thoroughly ruled by neo-colonialism that region is! Since the age of colonialism, i.e., open direct foreign domination, has mostly been past, in the Caribbean U.S. imperialism sees that its interests are served by spineless running dogs who resemble the oppressed people we selves!
And while we rejoiced at the passing of colonialism, though we must still kill it dead in the black world, in South Africa, Namibia and in the Caribbean, in Puerto Rico, its successor and higher stage neo-colonialism, has proved to be even more dangerous, since all to often it dupes the oppressed people that are free and independent!
While those of us who try to take the lead toward real independence and self determination are brutally attacked by imperialism in a variety of ways and often totally eliminated!
Black oppression and submission are still key elements in the existing world order. Africa is a neo-colonial travesty subordinated north and south by racist settler colonies, Israel and South Africa! The few progressive states are constantly in danger.
The third world is too poor to afford bourgeois democracy in the U.S. and European model, though they must give lip-service to it. So that most times there is not even the facade or illusion of representative democracy the way people are tricked it exists in the metropoles. In the third world, resistance to the neo-colonial order is met with swift violent death. The niceties and trappings of bourgeois democracy, trial by jury, appeals, freedom of speech, etc. are not even pretended toward.
So that in Guyana, Walter Rodney’s militant leadership of the Working People’s Association is stopped suddenly and permanently by the bloody neo colonial fiend, Forbes Burham, Rodney’s crime = working to build an authentic scientific socialism as opposed to the gibberish and nonsense spouted by Burham to cover his exploitation of the Guyanese people.
The tragedy of this assassination has still not totally been absorbed by us. Rodney was one of our most brilliant leaders. How long before he is replaced? What vacuum and suffering exist because of this? Why were we not better organized to prevent this?
In Jamaica, Michael Manly’s confused social democracy is overthrown by U.S. imperialism. That is another loss in the sense that even those slim gains represented by the Manley government must now be recovered. Manley’s replacement, Seaga, is an open agent of U.S. imperialism and part of the new even more reactionary order set in motion by the rise to power of the right wing regime of Ronald Reagan in the U.S.
It is such a regime, in such a reactionary period, when Mikey Smith can be murdered. Reagan openly sanctions such attacks. His whole regime is based on the philosophy that the rise tide of revolution, seen throughout the world since WW2, must be stopped!
What must be done to a black revolutionary consciousness in openly neo colonial Jamaica when the television ads say to millions of Americas, “Come Back to Jamaica; things are like they used to be - the niggers have been put back in their places - come to Jamaica. Sun and Fun - while the native niggers are made to eat even more shit than before!”
What must be done to a revolutionary consciousness that speaks directly of the people’s suffering and the causes of that suffering? A revolutionary consciousness that even dares to openly criticize the rulers in front of the people and walk the streets nightly singing that criticism to whoever will listen!?
This is why the revolutionary consciousness in artists is especially dangerous, because they can put revolution into the hearts and minds of the people with a simple melody! (I am still not satisfied with official stories of how Bob Marley died - cancer of the toe?)
And did you notice the hypocrite Seaga babble about pardoning Marcus Garvey as a dumb gesture of guilt in connection with Mikey Smith’s assassination by his Heathens!?
Mikey Smith’s poetry was important because it not only addressed itself, with its content, to the needs of the people, and opposed the people’s enemies; its form was a revolutionary innovation in the way it sought to use the speech of the people. The poetry did not seek to imitate the rulers, as those negroes do who get the rulers’ prizes. Mikey Smith’s poetry spoke the truth in the rhythms and accents of the masses. This is why his poetry was so dangerous to imperialism. This is why the whole dub poetry movement is so important. This is why Reggae is so important. The artist can make truth irresistible!
But still we must ask, in these brutal dangerous times, how much longer will we go on largely unorganized and vulnerable to our enemies? Ronald Reagan, everyday, moves the whole world closer to WW3, how are we organized to stop it?
The murder of Maurice Bishop and his cabinet stinks of the U.S. CIA! Another brilliant young black revolutionary intellectual slaughtered by imperialism.
And No matter what internal struggles we may hear happened in Grenada, nothing can justify the U.S. invasion! But it is one more long stride by Reagan and U.S. imperialism toward fascism domestically and nuclear war internationally!
Reagan, and the extreme right wing ideologies of the section the U.S. bourgeoisie he represents, seem determined to regain world domination, in constant contention with the other superpower, the U.S.S.R., or blow up the world trying!
U.S. intervention in El Salvador; attempts to destabilize and eventually overthrow the democratic Nicaraguan government; the occupation of Lebanon in support of an unrepresentative fascist government and now the invasion of Grenada - these events should make it clear that the first shots of WW3 are already being fired!!!
Reagan lies when he says U.S. marines invaded Grenada to save U.S. citizens. Those students were in no danger. It is an utterly transparent lie!
And to say that the U.S. has invaded to restore democratic institutions, while at the same time violating the U.S. Constitution by banning U.S. press coverage of the invasion should speak directly to how far to the right U.S. society is moving and how domestic fascism must accompany international imperialist war.
What Reagan wants is to make Grenada like its black ghettoes of the U.S. with their 40% unemployment rate, and ubiquitous dope addicts. Are these democratic institutions? Since Reagan has not invaded S. Africa to restore democratic institutions in that racist settler colony, we can presume that he includes South Africa in his definition of “the Free World.”
The invasion of Grenada was not only an example of naked imperialist aggression, it also reeks of racism and white supremacy. Since in all other cases in the last years U.S. imperialism has used stooges and surrogates to undermine, destabilize or overthrow progressive regimes in the third world. But in the case of small black Grenada, the effrontery of self determination was too much for the racists in the White House to stand. Bishop had to be killed! The marines had to invade, and now we find out that an appointee of Queen Elizabeth 2, Sir Paul Scoon, the so called Governor General, is nominally i.e. the house slave in charge. (Sir Paul Scoon? - well we’ve met his coon, now where is Sir Paul?)
And then as we look on in horror, that horror changes to utter shame when we witness the crew of house niggers (Charles, Dominica; Adams, Barbados; Seaga, Jamaica; Cato, St. Vincent; Compton, St. Lucia; Byrd, Antigua) who jump up and down and applaud on cue, hoping to legitimize the invasion to black eyes. As imperialism grows more desperate and wild, so its apologists must also get wilder and more bizarre in defending it!
Yes, the tide of revolution has been blunted many places in the world by the counter attack of U.S. imperialism, and with this same motion, as one aspect of U.S.-U.S.S.R. international superpower contention, the danger of WW 3 is even more possible.
But how shall we survive and how shall we eventually prevail? Certainly we must understand that the only weapon we have is organization! It is not enough to have a revolutionary consciousness, a revolutionary idea, we must build truly revolutionary organizations wherever we are to overthrow and eliminate the rule of monopoly capitalism thereby smashing the material base of racism and national and sexual oppression. We must build organizations rooted in the masses with close ties with those masses. Revolutionary organizations that link theory with practice. Organizations which are capable of criticism and self-criticism. Organizations which can build as well as be a part of united fronts, wherein a majority of the people are focused on the destruction of our enemies. Organizations that can fight and help make revolution!
In the U.S., we need a multinational communist party which can lead the various popular movements and tie them together in order to struggle more intensely against our common enemy white racist monopoly capitalism!
We must also begin work in the very near future to maximize black voting strength and as part of some national progressive coalition of all nationalities [to] get right of Reagan in the next national elections!
But wherever we are, our movements can only be strengthened by strengthening our organizational capacity to resist and defeat imperialism. Black artists and intellectuals must organize themselves on a much higher level, according to the specific social context they exist in.
We must have organizations of revolutionary writers and painters as well as historians. We must build international support groups to assist in the crushing of South African colonialism so that when the time comes we can turn whatever country we’re in upside down to make it impossible for the western governments to help the South African racists stop the black revolution.
We must be able to counter attack against imperialism internationally and make hoodlums like Seaga and Baby Doc, or the neo colonial surrogates that assisted Reagan’s invasion, tremble and denounce their collaboration with imperialism. But we cannot do this without organization!
The murders of Rodney, Mikey Smith and Bishop speak directly to our lack of strong national and international organization among black revolutionaries.
The entire black world should have been mobilized to speak out and condemn the monster, Burnham, for his assassination of Walter Rodney. The entire black world, and through its influence, the entire civilized world, must be mobilized to condemn Seaga for his duplicity in the slaying of Mikey Smith.
But this requires progressive organization and the abandonment of petty bourgeois individualism, addiction to atavism and metaphysics among the artists and intellectuals and a renewed commitment to struggle at the most scientific levels. And ultimately we must be always working to build the true organizational instruments of scientific socialism because unless monopoly capitalism is destroyed, conditions cannot exist in which racism and national oppression can be destroyed!
Unless we are willing to organize ourselves as revolutionary fighters, in command of the historic legacy of working class political analysis and led by the masses of people themselves, carrying our various national liberation and independence struggles through to the end, that is, all the way to socialism, we will always be tortured and weakened by the murders of our most brilliant brothers and sisters by our enemies.
Let us, in the name of Walter Rodney, organize in all the places we live, not only towards the liberation of ourselves, but as part of the whole population, where we live in multinational contexts, organize for the transformation of the whole society.
And let us, in the name of Maurice Bishop, fight imperialism and neo colonialism and finally make revolution so the majority can take power.
And finally let us, those of us who are intellectuals and artists, let us, in the name of Mikey Smith, develop as truly revolutionary intellectuals and revolutionary artists, whose works issue from the collective mind, memory and feelings of the people. Whose creations move through the world with the power of unstoppable truth, so that they will be celebrated even in the future when finally there really is a Free World
DEATH TO IMPERIALISM AND NEO COLONIALISM!
LONG LIVE MIKEY SMITH!
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