Yesterday, our dear Speaker Francis spoke to this Assembly about the subjugation of British Honduras, and its implications for the Kriol people in Belize, our African brothers and sisters. I applaud his courage in speaking out against the resurgence of imperialist mentality and the efforts of white and capitalist colonization. But race is no barrier to subjugation. The Maya man toils in the same plantation as the Kriol, and deserves the same liberation.

Francis spoke about the need to expand our reach to unite the African community in the Caribbean and North America. Our reach should expand to all the subjugated laborers of the world, the fieldhands, factory linesmen, drafters, and all who bleed and sweat for the gain of masters abroad. The resurgence of imperialism is the natural result of this resurgence of capitalism, and defeating one must necessarily mean defeating the other.

No, some say - capitalism is not at fault. The problem with white imperialism and white capitalism is that it is done by the white race. No. The problem with white imperialism and white capitalism is inherent to the systems themselves. There is no solution but a Marxist solution, and in that, we as a society are too much like our white cousins - we are English speakers and molded in their tradition of thought, a bourgeois way of thinking.

It is particularly true in our part of the world, that is, the English-speaking part of the world, because the Anglo-American tradition is one of intense hostility, philosophically speaking, towards Marxism, a hostility that manifests itself in a peculiar way. It manifests itself by trying to dissociate itself even from the study of Marxism.

In the English tradition,, which was also handed down to this part of the world, to the Caribbean, to many parts of Africa, it is fashionable to disavow any knowledge of Marxism. it is fashionable to glory in one's ignorance, to say that we are against Marxism. When pressed about it one says - but why bother to read it? It is obviously absurd.

So one knows it is absurd without reading it and one doesn't read it because one knows it is absurd, and therefore one glories in one's ignorance of the position.

A genuine African nationalist must be a Marxist. To be otherwise is a contradiction. You cannot replace a system of subjugation of our race by replacing the man holding the whip. Our skin is flayed the same, whether the hand holding that whip is white, yellow, red or black. Liberation of the Kriol people, of the African people, is a noble cause, but cannot end without destruction of all oligarchies which subjugate us [...]