Without Commerce and Industry, The People Perish
Marcus Garvey's Gospel of Prosperity
[Reprinted from Issues & Views Spring 1991]
Making claim to historic
figures in order to promote a position or cause is an age-old
practice. Among blacks, there are several greats from the past
who appear to be favorites. It is not unusual to see the likeness
of Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X reproduced on everything from
banners, to posters, to T-shirts, symbolically implying their
support of some political position or agenda.
Pseudo-nationalists enjoy
appropriating these two men to their causes, and prefer to
freezeframe Malcolm into the earlier, angry stage of his
development, when he denounced all whites as the incarnation of
evil. These deceivers are always careful, however, to skip over
Malcolm's pronouncements to blacks to take the responsibility for
cleaning up their own house. "The gospel of black
nationalism," he once said, "is not designed to make
the black man re-evaluate the white man, but to make the black
man re-evaluate himself. We ourselves have to remove the evils,
the vices that are destroying the moral fiber of our
community." Those words from Malcolm, and others like them,
that urged blacks to take greater business initiatives in order
to control their neighborhood economies, somehow get lost in the
shuffle by people determined to promote what usually amounts to
variations of socialist or collectivist agendas.
Even the unmistakable
pronouncements of Marcus Garvey get refashioned, as these people
work to fit his powerful message to their diverse political
schemes. Yet, there was no more relentless advocate of capitalism
as the route to liberation than this great black man, who lived
from 1887 to 1940. "Without commerce and industry,"
Garvey taught, "a people perish economically. The Negro is
perishing because he has no economic system, no commerce, no
industry." Garvey's goal was to assist blacks to become a
"rich and prosperous people," and he taught that
nothing was worse than ending up as a "hobo race that
lingers by the wayside."
He instructed blacks not to
expect others to do what they ought to be doing for themselves
and, like many other blacks before and after him, saw the
accumulation of wealth as the true path to eliminating racism.
"Wealth is power, wealth is justice, wealth is real human
rights," he said. He wanted to see a "universal
business consciousness" among all blacks around the world.
His vision was one of racial uplift through capital investment
and development, as blacks created their own economic
opportunities.
As his enemies liked to
point out, Garvey was not a perfect human being. At one stage in
his life, he was known to express bitter words against another
ethnic group, words that he not only recanted, but was big enough
to admit had been inspired by resentment. From then on, he
denounced racism motivated by jealousy for the success of others,
and he exhorted blacks not to waste time harboring envy for the
achievements of others. "The opportunity is yours," he
declared, "you can lift yourselves to any height, as others
have done."
Garvey was a great admirer
of Booker T. Washington and Washington's attempts to
systematically organize black business through such mechanisms as
the National Negro Business League. He saw in Washington's work
the foundations for economic advancement, and later he was to
enlarge on Washington's philosophy, that had come to be known as
the "Gospel of Wealth." Holding others up as examples
for blacks to follow, Garvey urged blacks to become
"captains of industry." He asked, "Why should not
Africa give to the world its black Rockefeller, Carnegie, and
Henry Ford?"
In 1914, Garvey established
the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), an
extraordinary and unique fraternal organization comprised of
educational institutes that cultivated racial pride, while
offering practical instruction and skills. Through UNIA, (founded
to "work for the general uplift of the Negro peoples of the
world," eventually with branches in 40 countries), Garvey
was instrumental in creating vehicles to promote commerce and
industry.
The Negro Factories
Corporation operated a chain of businesses in Harlem, which
included restaurants, groceries, laundries, the Phyllis Wheatley
Hotel, and a hat factory. The Black Star Steamship Corporation,
financed by its shareholders, launched its first ship, the Frederick
Douglass, in October 1919, which sailed on its first voyage
to Cuba, Jamaica and Panama. Although it was not to happen,
Garvey's dream was to foster commercial trade between blacks in
the U.S., the Caribbean and Africa.
Africa was central to all
of Garvey's teaching, and he wanted to see the continent free of
the yoke of colonial domination, with its nations eventually
participating as strong and respected members in the world
community. Not surprisingly, Garvey was ridiculed and harassed by
the black establishment of his day--most especially by W. E. B.
Du Bois of the NAACP, who heaped abuse on him. Such establishment
leaders recognized Garvey's call for racial loyalty and emphasis
on economic independence as a threat to the drive for integration
with whites. He was painted as a "dangerous radical" by
both the black and white press of the day, which relentlessly
campaigned against him.
Today, many who claim to be
"Garveyites," are actually committed to other agendas,
and purposely ignore Garvey's pragmatic linking of race pride to
the goal of economic liberation--and his guidelines for using the
free market to achieve that goal. Garvey had no illusions about
capitalism, and scathingly criticized what he considered its
negative aspects, believing that there should be certain checks
on those who might abuse the system. Yet, he saw capitalism as
the best economic arrangement through which the "little
man" could uplift himself, claiming that, "Communism
robs the individual of his personal initiative and ambition or
the result thereof." He separated the human abuse of the
capitalist system from the system itself, and maintained that
capitalism was "necessary to the progress of the
world," while viewing those who "unreasonably or
wantonly oppose or fight against" it as "enemies to
human advancement."
After a trip to several
American cities in 1917, Garvey noted with enthusiasm, "I
have seen Negro banks in Washington and Chicago--stores, cafes,
restaurants, theaters and real estate agencies--that fill my
heart with joy to realise...that at one center of Negrodom, at
least, the people of the race have sufficient pride to do things
for themselves."
The following are just a
few gleanings from the rich legacy of Garvey's speeches and
lectures. They offer insights into his economic ideas.
The man without a
business of his own or without training in performing a
particular work is always at a disadvantage in making a living.
Great wealth is made out of commerce and industry. The fault with
the Negro in business, commercial or industrial, has been his
inability to appreciate starting at a given point and climbing
steadily, while other races have been willing to start from the
lowest down to climb higher up.
The Negro has always
desired to start from the top, hence, he comes down. No success
ever came from the top, it is always from the bottom up. He will
never be an industrial or commercial factor until he has learned
the principles of commercial and industrial success, and these
principles are as much open to him as to anybody else.
Find a particular
kind of business that you would like to engage yourself in,
because you can make it profitable, and start it with whatsoever
capital you have..... Find out what your neighbors want most and
are willing to buy, and start selling it to them, if not in a
shop, by going from door to door.
If your capital is
larger, your opportunities become larger and easier. But no Negro
need sit down at his doorstep and mourn his bad luck if he has 25
cents in his pocket to start a business. If you invest your 25
cents wisely at 9 o'clock in the morning, by 6 o'clock in the
evening you may have 50 cents.
If the Negro is
going to look at Marshall Field in Chicago or Sears Roebuck and
Company, and John Wanamaker in Philadelphia or Gordon Selfridge
in London, and say, I want to start like that, the dreamer will
never start, because nothing starts that way. Wanamaker had to
climb to the top of his skyscraper by perseverance and plodding
and so did Selfridge and so did Marshall Field. They all started
from the ground floor climbing up. The Negro must start from the
ground floor of commerce and industry and climb up.
The Negro to be
employed then and to be his own employer must have his
independent farms, stores, factories, and mills, but he must
start them as the white man did, growing from the little single
room of industry to the mighty factory on the hillside of the
plain. No one goes into business just for fun or pleasure, but
for profit and results. Study all the possible means of making
profit and getting good results out of the business in which you
are to engage yourself.
A democracy is the
safest kind of government to live under for persons of individual
initiative who desire to go into business, because it gives every
man a chance to do business more safely. The man who wants to go
into business commercially, industrially or agriculturally and
win a fortune for himself, to achieve the things he aims at,
cannot and should not be a Communist, because Communism robs the
individual of his personal initiative and ambition or the result
thereof. Democracy, therefore, is the kind of government that
offers to the individual the opportunity to rise from laborer to
the status of a capitalist or employer.
The Negro must be up
and doing if he will break down the prejudice of the rest of the
world. We must strike out for ourselves in the course of material
achievement, and by our own effort and energy present to the
world those forces by which the progress of man is judged.
Whatsoever you want
in life you must make up your mind to do it for yourself and
accomplish it for yourself, and then God will bless the effort,
because He will realize that you are using your intelligence for
the best.
[Garvey's comments drawn
primarily from Marcus Garvey: Life and Lessons, edited by
Robert Hill and Barbara Bair, University of California Press.
This book's Introduction offers an excellent overview of Garvey's
philosophy and work. Also see The Philosophy and Opinions of
Marcus Garvey, pub. The Majority Press, Dover, Mass., and Marcus
Garvey, Hero, by Tony Martin, The Majority Press, Dover,
Mass.]
"Many men
opposed me because
it was
profitable to them . . . ."
[Marcus Garvey on NAACP]
In America, compromises
have been struck that never would have been arrived at but for
the presence of the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Even
the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
has had a better time because of my presence in America, because
they were able to use my name and UNIAs in approaching
white men for their patronage.
Because if [whites] did not
support the middle, that is, the NAACP, they would have to
grapple with the extreme movement of the Universal Negro
Improvement Association and the uncompromising radicalism of
Marcus Garvey. This scare brought more money into the coffers of
the NAACP than they would have gotten otherwise. Many men opposed
me because it was profitable to them . . . . That is why certain
white people looked upon me as a dangerous man because they were
prompted to that belief by my enemies to take money out of them .
. . .
We are now launching out,
in keeping with our original objects, on the proposition of
building factories in the United States . . . . We hope that in
10 years the Negro will be on the right road to the solution of
his problems. We are anticipating opposition from the same group
of men, who do nothing but oppose. They have not, up to now,
brought out any economic solution of our race problem. Yet they
agitate to oppose anything undertaken by others for the good of
the race. We must realize that our greatest enemies are not those
on the outside, but those in our midst.
See also
Honoring Garvey for the Right Reasons
Copyright © 1991 Issues & Views
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