BLACK MARXISM: THE MAKING OF THE BLACK RADICAL TRADITION - CEDRIC J. ROBINSON

Goddamn, this book is good. It’s pretty famous, and I just got around to reading it, and I’d say it basically lives up to the hype. Robinson is pretty clear about what he’s trying to do. He wants to highlight a Black Radical tradition within and outside of European Marxism, explain the strands and sources of this radicalism and then deep-dive into a few authors, Du Bois, James and Wright, who exemplify the tradition. The whole book is incredible, though I liked the first sections slightly better. Robinson is clear about the relationship between European civilization and Capitalism and the ways in which the Black Radical Tradition stands apart from Marx and others YT critics. To me, the most interesting and challenging part of this section had to do with Robinson’s attempts to talk about a uniquely African form of resistance which is, as I understand it, more interested in rebuilding society along their lines than it is a direct, violent overthrow. He cites the low number of YT deaths in many slave uprisings (we get a really great long list of slave uprisings), the alternate forms of resistance like work-strikes (Christmas rebellion, Nongqawuse’s cattle-killing rebellion amongst the Xhosa, etc.) and the ways that non-European thought were preserved in Black communities across the New World. Here’s my favorite quote from the book: “The Black Radical Tradition cast doubt on the extent to which capitalism penetrated and re-formed social life and on its ability to create entirely new categories of human experience stripped bare of the historical consciousness embedded in culture.” Robinson thinks deeply and intelligently about the class-position of Blacks in the United States and across the world. He’s really good about including non-USAmerican Black thinkers as well. Additionally, he includes the thinking of non-Black leftists on Black issues. This is especially interesting in his discussion of nationalism vs. proletarian internationalism. I did not know that Lenin himself pushed hard for the CPUSA to recruit Blacks and to add an independent “Negro Soviet Republic” in the South. These issues of Black nationalism vs integration still come up constantly in the BLM groups I march with and we could all stand to read this book and get smarter on the issue. There is really smart stuff about how actual, successful revolutions, and here he adds Mexico to Russia as the 2 successful revolutions of the early 20th century, are not actually started by an revolutionary vanguard of educated rebels but rather peasants who built their revolutionary mindset in the midst of revolution, not the other way around. The insight about how capitalism and Marxist communism are products of “Western Civilization” and thus incomplete will stay with me for a long time. The idea that we need to look outside of this frame for critiques is vital. The back half of the book, which focused on the 3 authors was also very good, I especially liked the Du Bois part (he’s such a fucking genius). Robinson is smart to include the class background of the writers when he’s discussing their work. I would have liked a segment on Black Radical Thought in the 60’s-80’s, especially the way that various groups including the Panthers integrated Maoism but the book was already long enough, I suppose. In our current situation, where issues of power and economics and $, as well as any sort of historic frame, is often (I would argue purposefully) left out of discussion of race this book is beyond vital. I beg leftists to read it. 1533 Marxisms.