The Economics of the Nation of Islam

The Economics of the Nation of Islam

The judicious involvement of institutional religious organizations in Black economic development cannot but vastly enhance their religious, social and political influence far beyond their numbers and denominational doctrines. The Nation of Islam while under the leadership of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and now under that of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan is a remarkable case in point. Muhammads was a nation indeed. As noted by Emerge magazine:

Elijah preached mythology but rooted himself in solid ground. His motto was do for self. And he did just that. He ruled over 76 temples nationwide and 50,000 to 100,000 people. His nation owned 15,000 acres of farmland, a newspaper with a circulation of 500,000, several aircraft, a fish import business, restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets. A fire-eater with a whispery voice, Muhammad redeemed the disenfranchised in the ghetto, infusing them with pride

The nation functioned as a nation with a national capital, Chicago; a head of state, Elijah Muhammad; a national, hierarchical administration; a binding religion and a political ideology; a set of distinct family, educational, economic, commercial, religious, martial, informational, and social institutions. Through these unified and allied institutions the nation forged a presence in the Black community, the United States and the world, one phenomenal given its rather small membership (compare 100,000 Black Muslims with 10 million Black Baptists, for example). By forging and unifying religious and ethnic identity and acting on these bases, the nation was able to generate enough wealth to fund the building of its temples, the education of its children, the establishment of businesses and industries of various types. It demonstrated in concrete and mortar, in its transformation of antisocial, derelict and criminal persons, the effectiveness of its doctrines. This permitted it to ultimately win the admiration and support of many Black non-Muslims and permitted its best-known spokespersons, Malcolm X and Louis Farrakhan, to gain great popular acclaim in the Afrikan American community and to wield, conservatively speaking, enormous influence in that community as well. Its economic growth and success are as responsible for this outcome no less so than its unadulterated, forthright Black Nationalism.

The economic success story of the Nation of Islam (the Nation) is all the more remarkable in light of the general economic and intellectual level of its membership. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad himself completed only the third-grade. The economic and educational growth of the Nation of Islam, its growth as a religious body, and its political and social influence in the Black community and the United States hardly overstates the power that can be generated and exercised by a community that has a deep and abiding sense of nation and which comports itself as one.

Many in observing what they perceived as the forced charity or dues imposed on the members of the Nation and have complained that this is the foundation of its economic prowess and image, overlook a number of factors. These dues supported a number of independent institutions such as the schools which permitted the Nation to educate its youth as it saw fit. Little do these observers, i.e., regular taxpayers, see the taxes that they pay as forced charity often used to support failing schools and other dysfunctional anti-Black, anti-life institutions and practices.

Tastes, Money and Power. Tastes and the accumulation and distribution of money, wealth and power are closely related. For example, the taste of Europeans for sugar transformed the economic destinies of both Europeans and Afrikans, helping to transform the former peoples into wealthy imperialists, landholders, industrialists and slave holders, the latter into poverty-stricken colonials, laborers, slaves and producers of cheap raw materials. As owners of the means of production and as the chief manipulators and producers of Afrikan tastes, appetites and needs which can only be satisfied by the consumption of European/White producers, White imperialists have induced Blacks to seek to satisfy their (created and natural) tastes in ways which only enrich Whites themselves. Hence the social role of Blacks almost exclusively as consumers.

Under the dominant influence of the White owners of the means of production Black are discouraged from seeking to create and produce for their own tastes and desires, that is, are not encouraged to own the means of producing to satisfy their self-created desires or those created in them by others. Thus, their very patterns of consumption lead to the enriching of their exploiters and oppressors and to the financing of their own oppression. Through their consumption they forge the chains which bind them in powerless dependency on dominant Whites whose power they helped to enhance through their non-discriminating (except against their own enterprises) political and consumer behavior to begin with. Thus, a vicious cycle is established and maintained.

The genius of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad lay in his ability to change or redirect the desires and tastes of the members of his nation, to in many instances, create tastes and desires in them as well. By demonizing many of the pernicious, yet overwhelmingly popular products of White society and many of its lifestyles, values and edibles, such as wines, liquors, cigarettes, drugs, junk foods, excessive eating, expensive and promiscuous clothing, and other consumer items and social activities, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad weaned his followers from unhealthy and economically self-defeating consumer addictions. He changed their appetites and tastes for items, the purchase of which not only enriched Whites and other exploitative ethnic groups but impoverished and often harmed the health of his followers themselves. He was able to induce his followers to save more of their earnings by neutralizing many of the tastes and desires produced in them by and for White-owned manufacturing, wholesale-retail and advertising establishments.

These individuals and families saved between $2,000 to $5,000 per person, or between $2,000 to $10,000 per family by not spending on junk foods, excessive food, beers, wines and liquors, egregious entertainments, and the like. Moreover, he induced his followers to produce and retail for the satisfaction of their own self-generated tastes and natural needs. Thus, these national savings like all national savings, could be used for investment purposes to invest in schools and other social institutions; to invest in businesses, property and other economic development projects. Monies once spent outside the Nation, because tastes were created by outsiders, produced for and satisfied by outsiders (through White-owned manufacturing wholesale-retail-advertising establishments), were now spent inside the Nation thereby enriching and empowering it.

Thus the Nation like all nations who can reasonably produce for internal demands and markets, can engage in successful import substitution; institute adequate savings rates and economic growth; adequately balance its internal deficits, i.e., not let its expenditures markedly outrun its revenues; reduce or eliminate external debts, i.e., monies owed to other peoples, foreign financial and business establishments, etc.; maintain internal stability and organization; achieve a significant degree of increasing prosperity and wealth, power and influence, as well as measurably enhance its standing in the world. We are not contending here that the Nation of Islam has attained all these ends few nations do. But we are contending that a number of these ends were reasonable approached given its relative youth and the difficult circumstances under which it operated. We also contend that it had established the ideological and structural framework which, given more fortuitous circumstances, would have made it a virtual nation-within-a-nation exerting formidable economic and political power in America and the world.

The Nation of Islam provides an exemplary vantage point from which the Afrikan American Community can critically analyze its national or community-wide economic, social and political options. More importantly, the Nation provides some intellectual and conceptual tools, a vocabulary which may be very helpful in creating workable solutions to the problems that confront the de facto Black nation in the United States. This vocabulary would permit the Black community to move away from unhelpful, outmoded and even harmful individualistic, familialistic, particularistic modes of analysis of and approaches to its problems.

For example, if the Afrikan American community perceived itself as a nation and not merely as aggregate of individuals who happen to be Black, it could plan and successfully execute its own jobs development program without abjectly begging and importuning the increasingly hard-hearted U.S. government and intransigent White business establishment to do so. If it were to measure its own economic growth and output, its own trade relations as is done by sovereign nations, it could possibly execute programs to increase employment and economic opportunities for its constituents as well as enhance its wealth and power

[Dr. Amos Wilson]