Black radical tradition

Last updated

The Black radical tradition [1] is a philosophical tradition and political ideology with roots in 20th century North America. It is a "collection of cultural, intellectual, action-oriented labor aimed at disrupting social, political, economic, and cultural norms originating in anti-colonial and antislavery efforts." [2] It was first popularised by Cedric Robinson's book Black Marxism . [3]

Contents

Influential concepts from the Black radical tradition include abolition, racial capitalism, and intersectionality. [4] The Black radical tradition is closely related to anti-colonial, decolonial thought and Marxist third worldism. [5] [6]

Prominent figures and movements associated with the Black radical tradition include W. E. B. Du Bois, Malcolm X, the Black Panther Party, Angela Davis, the civil rights movement, Black feminism, Afrocentrism, and contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter. A prominent Black Radical journal is Race & Class . [7]

Thinkers

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ernesto Laclau</span> Argentine philosopher and political theorist

Ernesto Laclau was an Argentine political theorist and philosopher. He is often described as an 'inventor' of post-Marxist political theory. He is well known for his collaborations with his long-term partner, Chantal Mouffe.

Marxist feminism is a philosophical variant of feminism that incorporates and extends Marxist theory. Marxist feminism analyzes the ways in which women are exploited through capitalism and the individual ownership of private property. According to Marxist feminists, women's liberation can only be achieved by dismantling the capitalist systems in which they contend much of women's labor is uncompensated. Marxist feminists extend traditional Marxist analysis by applying it to unpaid domestic labor and sex relations.

Charles Wade Mills was a Jamaican philosopher who was a professor at Graduate Center, CUNY, and Northwestern University. Born in London, Mills grew up in Jamaica and later became a United States citizen. He was educated at the University of the West Indies and the University of Toronto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Burawoy</span> British sociologist (born 1947)

Michael Burawoy is a British sociologist working within Marxist social theory, best known as the leading proponent of public sociology and the author of Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process Under Monopoly Capitalism—a study on the sociology of industry that has been translated into a number of languages.

Communism is a left-wing to far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes, and ultimately money and the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cedric Robinson</span> American professor (1940–2016)

Cedric James Robinson was an American professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science. He served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research. Robinson's areas of interest included classical and modern political philosophy, radical social theory in the African diaspora, comparative politics, racial capitalism, and the relationships between and among media and politics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Open Marxism</span> Marxist school of thought

Open Marxism is a collection of critical and heterodox Marxist schools of thought which critique state socialism and party politics, stressing the need for openness to praxis and history through an anti-positivist method grounded in the "practical reflexivity" of Karl Marx's own concepts. The "openness" in open Marxism also refers to a non-deterministic view of history in which the unpredictability of class struggle is foregrounded.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Postcolonial international relations</span> Critical theory approach to international relations

Postcolonial international relations is a branch of scholarship that approaches the study of international relations (IR) using the critical lens of postcolonialism. This critique of IR theory suggests that mainstream IR scholarship does not adequately address the impacts of colonialism and imperialism on current day world politics. Despite using the language of post-, scholars of Postcolonial IR argue that the legacies of colonialism are ongoing, and that critiquing International Relations with this lens allows scholars to contextualize global events. By bridging postcolonialism and International Relations, scholars point to the process of globalization as a crucial point in both fields, due to the increases in global interactions and integration. Postcolonial IR focuses on the re-narrativization of global politics to create a balanced transnational understanding of colonial histories, and attempts to tie non-Western sources of thought into political praxis.

Political Marxism (PM) is an anti-positivist strand of Marxist theory that places history at the centre of its analysis. It is also referred to as a form of neo-Marxism.

According to the political theorist Alan Johnson, there has been a revival of serious interest in communism in the 21st century led by Slavoj Žižek and Alain Badiou.

<i>Marxs Revenge</i> 2002 book by Meghnad Desai

Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism is a 2002 book about the contemporary relevance of the philosopher Karl Marx by the economist Meghnad Desai.

Analytical Marxism is an academic school of Marxist theory which emerged in the late 1970s, largely prompted by G. A. Cohen's Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (1978). In this book, Cohen drew on the Anglo–American tradition of analytic philosophy in an attempt to raise the standards of clarity and rigor within Marxist theory, which led to his distancing of Marxism from continental European philosophy. Analytical Marxism rejects much of the Hegelian and dialectical tradition associated with Marx's thought.

Neo-Marxism is a collection of Marxist schools of thought originating from 20th-century approaches to amend or extend Marxism and Marxist theory, typically by incorporating elements from other intellectual traditions such as critical theory, psychoanalysis, or existentialism. Neo-Marxism comes under the broader framework of the New Left. In a sociological sense, neo-Marxism adds Max Weber's broader understanding of social inequality, such as status and power, to Marxist philosophy.

Post-Marxism is a perspective in critical social theory which radically reinterprets Marxism, countering its association with economism, historical determinism, anti-humanism, and class reductionism, whilst remaining committed to the construction of socialism. Most notably, Post-Marxists are anti-essentialist, rejecting the primacy of class struggle, and instead focus on building radical democracy. Post-Marxism can be considered a synthesis of post-structuralist frameworks and neo-Marxist analysis, in response to the decline of the New Left after the protests of 1968. In a more broader sense, post-Marxism can refer to Marxists or Marxian-adjacent theories which break with the old worker's movements and socialist states entirely, in a similar sense to post-Leftism, and accept that the era of mass revolution premised on the Fordist worker is potentially over.

Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the death of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century, expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades, and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914, whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify, codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with Instrumental Marxism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Barbara Clare Foley</span> American writer

Barbara Clare Foley is an American writer and the Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University-Newark. She focuses her research and teaching on U.S. literary radicalism, African American literature, and Marxist criticism. The author of six books and over seventy scholarly articles, review essays, and book chapters, she has published on literary theory, academic politics, US proletarian literature, the Harlem Renaissance, and the writers Ralph Ellison and Jean Toomer. Throughout her career, her work has emphasized the centrality of antiracism and Marxist class analysis to both literary study and social movements.

African-American socialism is a political current that emerged in the nineteenth century, specifically referring to the origins and proliferation of Marxist ideologies among African-Americans for whom socialism represents a potential for equal class status, humane treatment as laborers, and a means of dismantling American capitalism. Black liberation is in line with Marxist theory, which asserts that the working class, regardless of race, has a common interest against the bourgeoisie.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Racial capitalism</span> Post-Marxist social and economic concept

Racial capitalism is a concept reframing the history of capitalism as grounded in the extraction of social and economic value from people of marginalized racial identities, typically from Black people. It was described by Cedric J. Robinson in his book Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, published in 1983, which, in contrast to both his predecessors and successors, theorized that all capitalism is inherently racial capitalism, and racialism is present in all layers of capitalism's socioeconomic stratification. Jodi Melamed has summarized the concept, explaining that capitalism "can only accumulate by producing and moving through relations of severe inequality among human groups", and therefore, for capitalism to survive, it must exploit and prey upon the "unequal differentiation of human value."

<i>Black Marxism</i> Book written by Cedric Robinson

Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, first published in 1983, again in 2000 and a third edition in 2020, is a book written by the scholar Cedric Robinson. Influenced by many African-American and Black economists and radical thinkers of the 19th century, Robinson creates a historical-critical analysis of Marxism and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The book does not build from nor reiterate Marxist thought, but rather introduces racial analysis to the Marxist tradition.

Class reductionism is an epithet used to describe social theories that emphasize the role of the exploitation of labour along the lines of social classes in creating societal inequality, over all other social divisions and forms of oppression, such as racism or sexism. It is also used to describe political policies and strategies that prioritize broad economic reform to the exclusion of addressing issues facing specific minorities. The term is most commonly used in the context of Marxist theory and critiques thereof.

References

  1. "What Is This Black in the Black Radical Tradition?". Verso. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  2. ""The Black Radical Tradition of Resistance" | U-M LSA National Center for Institutional Diversity". lsa.umich.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  3. Winterhalter, Elizabeth (2021-11-11). "Cedric Robinson and the Black Radical Tradition". JSTOR Daily. Retrieved 2023-04-16.
  4. Edwards, Zophia (2020-01-01), Eidlin, Barry; A. McCarthy, Michael (eds.), "Applying the Black Radical Tradition: Class, Race, and a New Foundation for Studies of Development", Rethinking Class and Social Difference, Political Power and Social Theory, vol. 37, Emerald Publishing Limited, pp. 155–183, doi:10.1108/s0198-871920200000037008, ISBN   978-1-83982-020-5, S2CID   224890460 , retrieved 2023-04-19
  5. Pulido, Laura; De Lara, Juan (March 2018). "Reimagining 'justice' in environmental justice: Radical ecologies, decolonial thought, and the Black Radical Tradition". Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. 1 (1–2): 76–98. doi: 10.1177/2514848618770363 . ISSN   2514-8486.
  6. Knox, Robert; Kumar, Ashok (2023-08-03). "Reexamining Race and Capitalism in the Marxist Tradition – Editorial Introduction". Historical Materialism. 31 (2): 25–48. doi: 10.1163/1569206x-bja10012 . ISSN   1465-4466.
  7. "Race & Class". Institute of Race Relations. Retrieved 2023-05-24.
  8. "Rethinking Racial Capitalism". blackwells.co.uk. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  9. Resistance and Decolonization.
  10. "Angela Davis: An Interview on the Futures of Black Radicalism". Verso. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  11. "Notes on Blacceleration - Journal #87". www.e-flux.com. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
  12. Burden-Stelly, Charisse (2018-09-02). "W.E.B. Du Bois in the Tradition of Radical Blackness: Radicalism, Repression, and Mutual Comradeship, 1930–1960". Socialism and Democracy. 32 (3): 181–206. doi:10.1080/08854300.2018.1575070. ISSN   0885-4300. S2CID   150870410.
  13. Africana Critical Theory: Reconstructing The Black Radical Tradition, From W. E. B. Du Bois and C. L. R. James to Frantz Fanon and Amilcar Cabral.
  14. "Oct. 8: Ruth Wilson Gilmore to speak". UDaily. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  15. ""The People Who Keep on Going": A Futures of Black Radicalism Listenin". Verso. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  16. "Fear of Black Consciousness: Lewis Gordon Interview | Philosophy Break". philosophybreak.com. Retrieved 2023-05-18.
  17. "230312 Exploring the Black Radical Tradition". Bishopsgate Institute. 12 March 2023. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  18. Sinitiere, Phillip Luke (2022). "Comrades in the Struggle for Black Freedom". Phylon. 59 (1): 107–127. JSTOR   27150917.
  19. Berger, Dan. "'From Dachau with Love': George Jackson, Black Radical Memory, and the Transnational Political Vision of Prison Abolition". In Chase, Robert T. (ed.). Caging Borders and Carceral States: Incarcerations, Immigration Detentions, and Resistance. pp. 355–384. Retrieved 2023-04-19 via academic.oup.com.
  20. Robinson, Cedric J. (1983). "C. L. R. James and the Black Radical Tradition". Review (Fernand Braudel Center). 6 (3): 321–391. ISSN   0147-9032. JSTOR   40240940.
  21. Kelley, Robin (2021). "Why Black Marxism, Why Now?". Boston Review.
  22. Richards, Sandra; Lemelle, Sidney J. (2005). "Chapter One: Pedagogy, Politics, and Power: ANTINOMIES of the BLACK RADICAL TRADITION". Counterpoints. 237: 5–31. JSTOR   42978673.
  23. "Black Radical Tradition Group". 3 October 2021.
  24. Mbembe, Achille. Critique of Black Reason.
  25. Kelley, Robin D.G.; Esch, Betsy (September 1999). "Black like Mao: Red China and black revolution". Souls. 1 (4): 6–41. doi:10.1080/10999949909362183. ISSN   1099-9949. S2CID   143732016.
  26. Narayan, John (2019). "British Black Power: The anti-imperialism of political blackness and the problem of nativist socialism". The Sociological Review. 67 (5): 945–967. doi:10.1177/0038026119845550. S2CID   150411821.
  27. "Black Radical Tradition". Aaron Benanav. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  28. "Empire's Endgame". Pluto Press. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  29. Robinson, Cedric J.; Sojoyner, Damien; Willoughby-Herard, Tiffany (1983). Black Marxism, Revised and Updated Third Edition: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (3 ed.). University of North Carolina Press. ISBN   978-1-4696-6372-2. JSTOR   10.5149/9781469663746_robinson.
  30. "Decolonial Marxism". Verso. Retrieved 2023-04-19.
  31. Virdee, Satnam (2000). "A Marxist Critique of Black Radical Theories of Trade-union Racism". Sociology. 34 (3): 545–565. doi:10.1177/S003803850000033X. ISSN   0038-0385. JSTOR   42856201. S2CID   146747065.
  32. Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta (20 July 2020). "Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will be Free". The New Yorker.
  33. Hirsch, Afua (2018-08-14). "Back to Black: Retelling Black Radicalism for the 21st Century by Kehinde Andrews – review". The Observer. ISSN   0029-7712 . Retrieved 2023-05-20.
  34. West, Cornel (1988). "Black Radicalism and the Marxist Tradition". Monthly Review. 40 (4): 51. doi: 10.14452/MR-040-04-1988-08_5 .
  35. "SO4C2 Racial Capitalism".
  36. Thomas, Greg (2001). "Sex/Sexuality & Sylvia Wynter's "Beyond...": Anti-Colonial Ideas in "Black Radical Tradition"". Journal of West Indian Literature. 10 (1/2): 92–118. JSTOR   23019781.
  37. Rabaka, Reiland (November 2002). "Malcolm X and/as Critical Theory: Philosophy, Radical Politics, and the African American Search for Social Justice". Journal of Black Studies. 33 (2): 145–165. doi:10.1177/002193402237222. ISSN   0021-9347. S2CID   145478798.