New: “‘Black Marxism’: A Marxist Critique”, by August Nimtz
Over the last decade, Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition has deeply shaped debates on the place of race within capitalist societies. Perhaps these questions are now settled, but at one time they were far too controversial:
Is race subsumed by class, with the latter the sine qua non of capitalism?
Do race and class act independently within modern societies?
Or does capitalism inevitably express a deeper racial impetus in the West?
August Nimtz defends Marxism from Robinson’s accusations of myopia on matters of race, suggesting that, in charging Marx and Engels with Eurocentrism, he either failed to understand, or misrepresented, their work—and that, in effect, many thinkers inspired by Black Marxism blatantly misrepresented Marxist texts… Get your copy here
REVIEWS:
Cosmonaut: ““Black Marxism” Under Debate, 40 Years On” by Gary Levi
Cedric Robinson’s 1983 Black Marxism[1] is a work that has had a second, and even third life. First revived in academic circles by the proselytizing of his acolyte, acclaimed historian Robin D.G. Kelly, the book was again revived in popular circles by the waves of Black Lives Matters protests that sought in it (along with works of prison abolitionists) a theoretical and historical narrative to broaden the immediate convulsive moment of protest towards a vision of how society might change, and under the impact of what form of mobilization. In this sense, it played a role in BLM protests similar to Graeber’s Debt during Occupy. One couldn’t find a prescription of how to protest in it, nor could one find among most protesters a familiarity with its core ideas, but nonetheless those set into motion found themselves drawn to it, and searching for guidance in its pages….For August Nimtz, at the time a former nationalist and pan-Africanist who had moved towards the interracialism and Trotskyism of the Socialist Workers Party, the answer was straightforward. His 1985 review in Journal of African Marxists was one of the first confrontations with Robinson’s text, where he characterized it as a book by a nationalist who “has had to familiarize himself—if not always understand—class analysis.” Nimtz’ insightful review has languished for forty years in even more obscurity than Robinson’s book, until it has now been reprinted as a central element of the subject of this review — Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique, a book which collects various material Nimtz has published over the years, as well as autobiographical materials and new essays, into Nimtz’ most sustained literary confrontation with nationalist thought….”
Counterpunch, and Morning Star: “On Cedric Robinson’s “Black Marxism”, by Seth Sandronsky
“….A corollary across the Atlantic was the division between black and white labor. To wit, Nimtz details Robinson’s misreading of Marx and Engels. For instance, Marx’s journalism during the U.S. Civil War shows his understanding of the importance of ending chattel slavery to liberating enslaved blacks and white workers from their domination under the regime of private property that reproduced labor’s subordination as it created an economic surplus. As we know, private property weathered the storm of Reconstruction, destroying it and the promise of a society based on substantive equality…” Read more
