When Muhammad Ali, arguably the greatest boxer of all time, died on June 3, he was praised as a great “American hero” by the bosses’ media, including many who’d once cheered on the U.S. government as it tried to destroy him. Ali’s great historical moment came in 1966, when he stood up against genocide, inspired the anti-Vietnam War movement, and refused induction into the U.S. military with the immortal words: “I ain’t got nothing against no Viet Cong [the communist guerrillas in South Vietnam). No Viet Cong never called me n-----.”
Later on, after the bosses stripped him of his heavyweight title and for three years blocked him from pursuing his livelihood, Ali clarified his position at a fair housing rally in his hometown of Louisville. Showing a keen grasp of the connection between racism inside the U.S. and U.S. imperialism in Asia, he said:
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here.
Substitute “capitalist rulers” for “white slave masters,” and Ali was right on target.
Unfortunately, Ali had already taken a wrong turn by joining the Nation of Islam (NOI), a black separatist, pro-capitalist Muslim organization. In 1963, after his friend Malcolm X left the organization, he stayed with the NOI and its ruthless gangster leader, Elijah Muhammad. Two years later, NOI members killed Malcolm X. To his credit, Ali later acknowledged his mistake: “Turning my back on Malcolm was one of the mistakes that I regret most in my life. I wish I’d been able to tell Malcolm I was sorry, that he was right about so many things. But he was killed before I got the chance. He was a visionary ahead of us all.”
Ali’s Limits
When Ali was part of the worldwide mass movement against U. S. imperialism in Vietnam, he was unbeatable. He gained tremendous strength from the mass heroism displayed by hundreds of millions of workers and youth and, in turn, inspired those millions to deeper resistance. But when the mass movement collapsed, Ali’s celebrity and wealth isolated him from the working class. He drifted into a capitalist outlook.
In his later years, as Ali stopped fighting the rulers and became a defanged “humanitarian” reformer, the capitalist class showered him with endorsements. Wheaties, Pizza Hut, Louis Vuitton, Porsche, Adidas, Under Armour, and Toyota all came on board. Ali made up to $7 million a year and left an estate worth between $60 and $80 million.
He kept up his part of the deal. In 1984, Ali endorsed the racist union-basher Ronald Reagan for president. In 2001, he accepted the Presidential Citizens Medal from Bill Clinton, the arch-racist who engineered the mass incarceration of young Black workers, the racist destruction of welfare, the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia, and, according to United Nations statistics, the murder of more than 500,000 children in Iraq by imposing sanctions that blocked food and medicine.
In 2005, four years after President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and two years after invading Iraq, the war criminal awarded Ali with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, By then, Ali had been slowed by the Parkinson’s Disease that ultimately killed him. It was a sad and telling moment when Clinton spoke at his funeral.
Paul Robeson, Unconquerable Communist
Ali’s political rise and fall recalls an earlier world-famous Black celebrity who was also vilified by the capitalist ruling class but stayed true to his anti-imperialist principles to the end: actor and singer Paul Robeson. In the 1930s, Robeson was a proud part of the international communist movement. He supported the advances made by the Soviet Union, at the time a revolutionary working-class state. He was an uncompromising fighter against racism and imperialism, and a lifetime member of the Communist Party-USA.
Called to testify before the anti-communist House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), Robeson refused to name names and was blacklisted from working in the United States. To prevent him from performing abroad, the U. S. government also took his passport. Like Ali, he lost the equivalent of millions of dollars in income for standing up for his beliefs.
The big difference is that Paul Robeson was hated by the capitalists to the end. Even today, when they may name a school or a park in his honor, the bosses refuse to tell the truth about what he stood for. Robeson was a militant communist and anti-racist to the day he died. In 1973, sick and in seclusion, he said: “Though I have not been active for several years, I want you to know that I am the same Paul, dedicated as ever to the worldwide cause of humanity for freedom, peace and brotherhood.”
Robeson had two significant advantages over Ali. First, he came of age during the heyday of the old communist movement, when the Soviet Union was a beacon for workers throughout the world. Second, Robeson was exposed to advanced political ideas and developed a class-conscious worldview that sustained him through hard times.
Here is perhaps the biggest lesson of these two courageous men: If you want to fight for a better world, you cannot do it alone. Lifelong working-class fighters must draw their strength from the masses. And as the last few decades of Ali’s life showed, you can’t fight racism and sexism by accommodating the ruling class.
Today, capitalism is alive and well, murdering workers by the millions worldwide in its racist, sexist, and imperialist drive for profit. But with the bosses’ every new attack on our class and every step toward bigger wars for profit, the international working class is forging new fighters. Communists in Progressive Labor Party need to organize millions of workers to follow the lead of the Ferguson rebels and smash “the whole damn system.” Ferguson showed what Robeson knew and Ali may never have fully understood: History is made not by a few isolated “heores,” but by multiracial masses of workers, united in anti-racist struggle.
We cannot reform the racist, sexist, warmongering, profit-seeking system of capitalism.  Fight and organize the international working class for the only solution: communist revolution.  Join PLP!