Monteiro, who recently organized the Black Radical Tradition conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, acknowledged that calling for the abandonment of capitalism and the adoption of socialism in the United States is "a bold statement."
Monteiro told Sputnik's "Loud & Clear" that capitalism leaves little room to "reform the system" in the interest of "the poor, the working class, the young generation" who represent "the majority of the American people."
Such views, dating back to the 1930s, were popular in the 60s and 70s but have been dismissed over the past two decades as being too radical, said Eugene Puryear, journalist and a leader of the Stop Police Terror Project.
But recently, Puryear added, young Americans have begun championing those views "out of a necessity of the needs to make this struggle more successful."
Monteiro said the black liberation movement is inextricable from America's class struggle, adding that the United States' label as the richest country in the world is "part of the mythology of the American capitalist class."
"America maybe has the richest ruling class in the world," Monteiro said, "but if you look at the American people as a whole, we are not the richest nation in the world."
