Reflections on Black Marxism
By TRAVIS TATUM
Race & Class Vol. 47(2)
Abstract: Cedric Robinson’s work on the Black radical tradition is, in effect, a challenge to the basic cultural and social assumptions of western society. These assumptions – the underlying ‘terms of order’ holding society together – limit our perception of the choices that are available to us, even seeping into programmes for radical change, such as Marxism. But by recovering the hidden histories of resistance by those on the margins of capitalism, in this case in the African diaspora, we can move beyond the misconceptions and myths that bind us to power.
Keywords: African diaspora, Black radical tradition, Cedric Robinson, history, Marxism, myth, resistance
The re-emergence of Black Marxism: the making of the Black radical tradition comes at a most opportune time, given the current political ascendancy of conservatism in American politics. Indeed, so long is it since the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall, one wonders whether or not there is even an interest in Marxism. And, in this regard, Robinson’s title may seem deceptive. His work is not a celebration of Marxism, but rather a critique of it and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The primary focus here is on Black radical thought and social movements. Certainly, over the past decade, there has been little in the way of a serious Black movement of the kind that existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Even so, Black Marxism is a text of our times. Robinson lays forth the rise of capitalism as a world system and the means by which racialism, myth, legend, nationalism, patriotism and violence served to secure a ruling class’s hold over the state and use that power to protect and expand its interest and wealth in the world economy. More specifically, Robinson critiques Marxist theorists and historians for their inability to understand this process since they are locked in the same historical and analytical presumptions as the bourgeoisie they oppose:
But the ideas of the elites and the state itself are not Robinson’s primary focus; he is far more concerned with the forms of resistance to domination. Herein lies one of the key points in Robinson’s analysis. His views are held in opposition to those of so many others precisely
because he is not focusing his analysis on the elite or the ‘great men’ theory of history, but rather on the Black radical movements which are invisible, marginalised and distorted as historical agents. What is of most interest in Robinson’s work is the spotlight he throws on resistance to enslavement and the encroachment of domination, and the means by which various peoples came to terms with and challenged capitalism and the expansion of the world economy. This process continues today. Specifically, he examines the mechanisms by which African peoples throughout the diaspora resisted slavery and, in the process, created a radical response that was embedded in the historical and cultural experience and consciousness of these peoples and that was unanticipated and has been misunderstood and ignored by the intelligentsia of both the Right and Left. The nature of that resistance was rarely examined beyond the need for its repression and seldom comprehended in terms of its social, cultural and political dynamics. To this end, Black Marxism is a text that deserves examination and exploration on a variety of levels.
Black Marxism is an important contribution to the study of Africans and the struggle for freedom, to the study, too, of the means by which capitalism transformed these people, but not in the terms set forth by Marxism. Robinson provides a historical analysis that examines how
the ideology of race and the demands for cheap labour converge to move people into the embrace of capitalism. This is a process that emerges over time and is rooted in European history. Unfortunately, that historical process is seldom examined critically in terms of how racialism and the demand for labour have shaped European thought. But this is, in fact, one of the strengths of Robinson’s work; his examination of history embodies a critical dialectical analysis that attempts to move beyond the myths that are usually taken as history. The problem of ‘what is history’ presents itself not only to bourgeois historians, but also to Marx. Part of Robinson’s task in Black Marxism is to provide a critique of Marx and Marxism. In so doing, he points out how Marx was limited by his own misconceptions of history, peasants and industrial workers. Marx’s critique of capitalism and those of his followers were never able to step beyond the paradigm of European ethnocentric conceptualisations of the world. Indeed, Marx and many of his followers are foiled by a presumption of rationality and determinism that is, in and of itself, without historical basis.
Robinson seeks to be authentic in his construction of history. His systematic examination and analysis of the historical record represent an attempt to present a more accurate understanding of historical moments. What he does not do is develop an alternative historical myth. Indeed, one of his goals is the demystification of history. Creation myths or histories are perhaps necessary social constructs in the development of a collective identity. The myths help define who a people are, what they are in the world and,more importantly, strengthen the social bonds that give society cohesion. In other words, they lay the foundations for what we come to call ‘tribes’ or ‘nations’, their means of social control and, as well, the boundaries for freedom and human dignity in those societies. In the context of western society, the bourgeoisie appropriates these myths of nation and race as it lays claim to power and the state and constructs its own nationalism and patriotism.
Because these myths are part of the basic assumptions of a society or state, those who question or challenge the creation myths and histories of the state are, at best, heretics and, at worst, traitors. They must be denied, rejected, ignored – in short, obliterated. (Perhaps this explains why Black Marxism is not more widely read.) And, in its terms, the bourgeoisie is correct to see such challenges as a threat. For it understands the necessity to control the construction of history and myth in order to maintain popular support in the struggle for domination. WMD can justify war, whether or not they exist. It is only necessary that people are made to believe they exist. When people are no longer able to accept the myths as history, then they are able to reject the bonds of society that are enacted by those myths. That is, people are then free to make different choices about how they live their lives and about what authority they are willing to accept.
The late Archie Singham once stated that Cedric Robinson was a most dangerous man in spite of his sense of humour. Singham was correct in his assessment of Robinson. His comment came, I think, in response to the issues, concerns and anxieties that emerged during the formation of the Black Matters Committee at the University of Michigan. This was a group of students and faculty who were organising a political economy programme in the political science department. At the time, many students and some faculty were extremely anxious because such a programme was a direct challenge to some of the basic tenets of the department. The question was: how would the department respond to such a challenge and what would it do to the people issuing it? In the midst of the heated debate on these issues, Cedric Robinson made a rather simple but powerful statement. He stated that the reality was that the department could really do nothing to us. If they fired the faculty, then wouldn’t the faculty get a job elsewhere? If they cut off student funding, then wouldn’t people go to another school? What else could they do? Within those parameters we were free to act on what we perceived as our best learning experience and the values that we thought important. He was pointing out that we could be agents of change. We, in fact, had more authority to change our environment than we realised. To me, this was a powerful statement. It pointed out the degree to which we restrain and constrain ourselves when it comes to change. We act as if the institutions can at all times control us.
Throughout the years that I have known him, Robinson has maintained a point of view that is fundamentally more radical than many of us have understood. Most of us opposed and attacked the social systems we defined as oppressive. We worked to critique those systems and institutions and the people who supported them. But in the context of that critique, we all too often succumbed to the notion that, if we could replace the people who led the institutions, then the institutions would work better. This applies to the notion of liberal American party politics and, in effect, is what we recently experienced in the election. We assumed that Kerry would be better than Bush, so we supported Kerry in the belief that his election would make things better. There would somehow be a better democracy. So we worked for that democratic process. Or if we argued for the replacement of the system itself, we tended to define the new systems along the same lines as the old, in the belief that if the radicals defined the system, then it would naturally be better than the old system. Better for some, perhaps.
Robinson, on the other hand, takes another step. He recognises that, in many ways, it is irrelevant who wins, Bush or Kerry or Gore. Whoever wins will, in fact, operate out of the same set of assumptions that underlie the fundamental processes of the current social, political and economic systems. Some may perform the job better than others and some may even reform the system, but all are operating out of the same cultural assumptions and consciousness about the nature of power, reality and what Robinson calls ‘the terms of order’. As long as they operate out of those assumptions, then they will act in ways to support the system, which constitutes their notion of reality. So how would Kerry or Gore be different from Bush? It is Robinson’s ability to recognise the set of assumptions that construct the social reality he is addressing that makes him dangerous. Because he sees the underlying assumptions, he is able to evaluate those assumptions relative to the dynamics of the system. The recognition gives the individual the power to make choices that are not available when he or she does not see those assumptions at work. The dilemma is that almost all of us are socialised into the same set of assumptions, cultural and social, of the society within which we live. We stand in the midst of those assumptions, which define the context of the very notion of reality. Thus, those assumptions go unquestioned and unexamined for most of our lives. As a consequence, we reinforce them in all that we do. This is the point that I think Robinson makes in relation to Marx, Lenin and Engels and to Marxism. They sought a critique of capitalism, but did not fully understand the cultural assumptions and terms of order of the societies which produced capitalism and in which they lived. Most certainly, they had little or no comprehension of the cultural assumptions and consciousness of the peoples who were on the margins of world capitalism. Thus, Marx and Engels and the bourgeoisie they attempted to critique shared many of the same assumptions about racialism that were inherent in their own societies. As a result, the notion of Marxism would inevitably be a reflection of, and in many ways duplication of, the very social structures they sought to critique.
The ability to question and challenge fundamental social and cultural assumptions is rare and is usually assigned to the insane, the foreigner or the visionary. In order to challenge and question those assumptions, one needs to make a paradigm shift and stand outside of the cultural context within which one lives. One must be able to see the assumptions from the point of view of the outsider as well as the insider. This, I think, is precisely what Robinson does in his work. He examines history and the struggles of people for freedom, but he looks at history from a perspective that is culturally different and asks different kinds of questions. He recognises that the African peoples who were brought to the New World carried with them a consciousness
that was rooted in their history, their myths and their social reality. He points out that the mere invention of the ‘Negro’ did not negate these peoples’ historical and cultural consciousness, their valuing of life and freedom. Consequently, it was through this consciousness that they made meaning of their experience and constructed their response to it. They had choices available to them that their masters were unaware of. Indeed, they had options that we are only now becoming aware of, even though aspects of that cultural consciousness persist to this day. And one of the strengths of Robinson’s work is that he lays the foundation for thinking about social movements from a different perspective, with a different set of choices, with this historical consciousness in mind. This is the stuff of the Black radical tradition and its African roots. Certainly, the perspective provided by Robinson puts him in that tradition of Black radical thinkers and activists.
Race & Class Vol. 47(2)
Abstract: Cedric Robinson’s work on the Black radical tradition is, in effect, a challenge to the basic cultural and social assumptions of western society. These assumptions – the underlying ‘terms of order’ holding society together – limit our perception of the choices that are available to us, even seeping into programmes for radical change, such as Marxism. But by recovering the hidden histories of resistance by those on the margins of capitalism, in this case in the African diaspora, we can move beyond the misconceptions and myths that bind us to power.
Keywords: African diaspora, Black radical tradition, Cedric Robinson, history, Marxism, myth, resistance
The re-emergence of Black Marxism: the making of the Black radical tradition comes at a most opportune time, given the current political ascendancy of conservatism in American politics. Indeed, so long is it since the fall of the Soviet Union and the Berlin wall, one wonders whether or not there is even an interest in Marxism. And, in this regard, Robinson’s title may seem deceptive. His work is not a celebration of Marxism, but rather a critique of it and the Eurocentric tradition from which it evolved. The primary focus here is on Black radical thought and social movements. Certainly, over the past decade, there has been little in the way of a serious Black movement of the kind that existed in the 1960s and 1970s. Even so, Black Marxism is a text of our times. Robinson lays forth the rise of capitalism as a world system and the means by which racialism, myth, legend, nationalism, patriotism and violence served to secure a ruling class’s hold over the state and use that power to protect and expand its interest and wealth in the world economy. More specifically, Robinson critiques Marxist theorists and historians for their inability to understand this process since they are locked in the same historical and analytical presumptions as the bourgeoisie they oppose:
Combining political theory, history, philosophy, cultural analysis, and biography, among other things, Robinson literally rewrites the history of the rise of the West from ancient times to the midtwentieth century, tracing the roots of Black radical thought to a shared epistemology among diverse African people and providing a withering critique of WesternMarxism and its inability to comprehend either the racial character of capitalism and the civilization in which it was born or mass movements outside Europe. At the very least, Black Marxism challenges our ‘common sense’ about the history of modernity, nationalism, capitalism, radical ideology, the origins of Western racism, and the worldwide Left from the 1848 revolutions to the present.The challenge of understanding history and the ideologies of nationalism, racism, capitalism, and so on continues and is reflected most widely and most recently in the US in the confusion over the Iraq war, as well as in the rise of conservatism and the Republican Party and the decline of the economy. Robinson situates current issues of capitalism and the world economy in a historical context that makes sense. We observe similar kinds of mechanisms at play – nationalism, patriotism and fear, historically used to mobilise the state and the masses to go to war – in the US’s attempts to colonise other countries. These mechanisms are no different from those used by the emergent bourgeoisies in Europe for the past 500 years. Thus, while the American public were bombarded with the myth of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the media did not examine the significance of Iraq’s oil in the decision to go to war, although the leaders of the current administration are deeply tied to oil and energy corporations. As Robinson demonstrates, this process is consistent and consonant with how state power is used to achieve the necessary goals of elites. The very process of domination produces its own negation in the form of resistance.
But the ideas of the elites and the state itself are not Robinson’s primary focus; he is far more concerned with the forms of resistance to domination. Herein lies one of the key points in Robinson’s analysis. His views are held in opposition to those of so many others precisely
because he is not focusing his analysis on the elite or the ‘great men’ theory of history, but rather on the Black radical movements which are invisible, marginalised and distorted as historical agents. What is of most interest in Robinson’s work is the spotlight he throws on resistance to enslavement and the encroachment of domination, and the means by which various peoples came to terms with and challenged capitalism and the expansion of the world economy. This process continues today. Specifically, he examines the mechanisms by which African peoples throughout the diaspora resisted slavery and, in the process, created a radical response that was embedded in the historical and cultural experience and consciousness of these peoples and that was unanticipated and has been misunderstood and ignored by the intelligentsia of both the Right and Left. The nature of that resistance was rarely examined beyond the need for its repression and seldom comprehended in terms of its social, cultural and political dynamics. To this end, Black Marxism is a text that deserves examination and exploration on a variety of levels.
Black Marxism is an important contribution to the study of Africans and the struggle for freedom, to the study, too, of the means by which capitalism transformed these people, but not in the terms set forth by Marxism. Robinson provides a historical analysis that examines how
the ideology of race and the demands for cheap labour converge to move people into the embrace of capitalism. This is a process that emerges over time and is rooted in European history. Unfortunately, that historical process is seldom examined critically in terms of how racialism and the demand for labour have shaped European thought. But this is, in fact, one of the strengths of Robinson’s work; his examination of history embodies a critical dialectical analysis that attempts to move beyond the myths that are usually taken as history. The problem of ‘what is history’ presents itself not only to bourgeois historians, but also to Marx. Part of Robinson’s task in Black Marxism is to provide a critique of Marx and Marxism. In so doing, he points out how Marx was limited by his own misconceptions of history, peasants and industrial workers. Marx’s critique of capitalism and those of his followers were never able to step beyond the paradigm of European ethnocentric conceptualisations of the world. Indeed, Marx and many of his followers are foiled by a presumption of rationality and determinism that is, in and of itself, without historical basis.
Robinson seeks to be authentic in his construction of history. His systematic examination and analysis of the historical record represent an attempt to present a more accurate understanding of historical moments. What he does not do is develop an alternative historical myth. Indeed, one of his goals is the demystification of history. Creation myths or histories are perhaps necessary social constructs in the development of a collective identity. The myths help define who a people are, what they are in the world and,more importantly, strengthen the social bonds that give society cohesion. In other words, they lay the foundations for what we come to call ‘tribes’ or ‘nations’, their means of social control and, as well, the boundaries for freedom and human dignity in those societies. In the context of western society, the bourgeoisie appropriates these myths of nation and race as it lays claim to power and the state and constructs its own nationalism and patriotism.
Because these myths are part of the basic assumptions of a society or state, those who question or challenge the creation myths and histories of the state are, at best, heretics and, at worst, traitors. They must be denied, rejected, ignored – in short, obliterated. (Perhaps this explains why Black Marxism is not more widely read.) And, in its terms, the bourgeoisie is correct to see such challenges as a threat. For it understands the necessity to control the construction of history and myth in order to maintain popular support in the struggle for domination. WMD can justify war, whether or not they exist. It is only necessary that people are made to believe they exist. When people are no longer able to accept the myths as history, then they are able to reject the bonds of society that are enacted by those myths. That is, people are then free to make different choices about how they live their lives and about what authority they are willing to accept.
The late Archie Singham once stated that Cedric Robinson was a most dangerous man in spite of his sense of humour. Singham was correct in his assessment of Robinson. His comment came, I think, in response to the issues, concerns and anxieties that emerged during the formation of the Black Matters Committee at the University of Michigan. This was a group of students and faculty who were organising a political economy programme in the political science department. At the time, many students and some faculty were extremely anxious because such a programme was a direct challenge to some of the basic tenets of the department. The question was: how would the department respond to such a challenge and what would it do to the people issuing it? In the midst of the heated debate on these issues, Cedric Robinson made a rather simple but powerful statement. He stated that the reality was that the department could really do nothing to us. If they fired the faculty, then wouldn’t the faculty get a job elsewhere? If they cut off student funding, then wouldn’t people go to another school? What else could they do? Within those parameters we were free to act on what we perceived as our best learning experience and the values that we thought important. He was pointing out that we could be agents of change. We, in fact, had more authority to change our environment than we realised. To me, this was a powerful statement. It pointed out the degree to which we restrain and constrain ourselves when it comes to change. We act as if the institutions can at all times control us.
Throughout the years that I have known him, Robinson has maintained a point of view that is fundamentally more radical than many of us have understood. Most of us opposed and attacked the social systems we defined as oppressive. We worked to critique those systems and institutions and the people who supported them. But in the context of that critique, we all too often succumbed to the notion that, if we could replace the people who led the institutions, then the institutions would work better. This applies to the notion of liberal American party politics and, in effect, is what we recently experienced in the election. We assumed that Kerry would be better than Bush, so we supported Kerry in the belief that his election would make things better. There would somehow be a better democracy. So we worked for that democratic process. Or if we argued for the replacement of the system itself, we tended to define the new systems along the same lines as the old, in the belief that if the radicals defined the system, then it would naturally be better than the old system. Better for some, perhaps.
Robinson, on the other hand, takes another step. He recognises that, in many ways, it is irrelevant who wins, Bush or Kerry or Gore. Whoever wins will, in fact, operate out of the same set of assumptions that underlie the fundamental processes of the current social, political and economic systems. Some may perform the job better than others and some may even reform the system, but all are operating out of the same cultural assumptions and consciousness about the nature of power, reality and what Robinson calls ‘the terms of order’. As long as they operate out of those assumptions, then they will act in ways to support the system, which constitutes their notion of reality. So how would Kerry or Gore be different from Bush? It is Robinson’s ability to recognise the set of assumptions that construct the social reality he is addressing that makes him dangerous. Because he sees the underlying assumptions, he is able to evaluate those assumptions relative to the dynamics of the system. The recognition gives the individual the power to make choices that are not available when he or she does not see those assumptions at work. The dilemma is that almost all of us are socialised into the same set of assumptions, cultural and social, of the society within which we live. We stand in the midst of those assumptions, which define the context of the very notion of reality. Thus, those assumptions go unquestioned and unexamined for most of our lives. As a consequence, we reinforce them in all that we do. This is the point that I think Robinson makes in relation to Marx, Lenin and Engels and to Marxism. They sought a critique of capitalism, but did not fully understand the cultural assumptions and terms of order of the societies which produced capitalism and in which they lived. Most certainly, they had little or no comprehension of the cultural assumptions and consciousness of the peoples who were on the margins of world capitalism. Thus, Marx and Engels and the bourgeoisie they attempted to critique shared many of the same assumptions about racialism that were inherent in their own societies. As a result, the notion of Marxism would inevitably be a reflection of, and in many ways duplication of, the very social structures they sought to critique.
The ability to question and challenge fundamental social and cultural assumptions is rare and is usually assigned to the insane, the foreigner or the visionary. In order to challenge and question those assumptions, one needs to make a paradigm shift and stand outside of the cultural context within which one lives. One must be able to see the assumptions from the point of view of the outsider as well as the insider. This, I think, is precisely what Robinson does in his work. He examines history and the struggles of people for freedom, but he looks at history from a perspective that is culturally different and asks different kinds of questions. He recognises that the African peoples who were brought to the New World carried with them a consciousness
that was rooted in their history, their myths and their social reality. He points out that the mere invention of the ‘Negro’ did not negate these peoples’ historical and cultural consciousness, their valuing of life and freedom. Consequently, it was through this consciousness that they made meaning of their experience and constructed their response to it. They had choices available to them that their masters were unaware of. Indeed, they had options that we are only now becoming aware of, even though aspects of that cultural consciousness persist to this day. And one of the strengths of Robinson’s work is that he lays the foundation for thinking about social movements from a different perspective, with a different set of choices, with this historical consciousness in mind. This is the stuff of the Black radical tradition and its African roots. Certainly, the perspective provided by Robinson puts him in that tradition of Black radical thinkers and activists.
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