Cedric Robinson (1940 - 2016)

Tue Nov 05, 1940

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Cedric Robinson, born on this day in 1940, was the author of "Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition" and a professor of Black Studies and Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Robinson's areas of interest included political philosophy, radical social theory in the African diaspora, comparative politics, and the relationships between and among media and politics.

According to Professor Robin D.G. Kelley, "[Robinson's] monumental Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition (1983) takes Karl Marx to task for failing to comprehend radical movements outside of Europe. He rewrites the history of the West from ancient times to the mid-twentieth century, scrutinizing the idea that Marx’s categories of class can be universally applied outside of Europe. Instead he characterized black rebellions as expressions of what he called the 'Black Radical Tradition', movements whose objectives and aspirations confounded Western social analysis. Marxism also failed to account for the racial character of capitalism."

In a critical review of the work, authors William I. Robinson, Salvador Rangel and Hilbourne A. Watson state "Black Marxism has become a favored text with which to badger radical intellectuals and activists who place a premium on proletarian struggle. This has led some among left organizers to fear they may be condemned as Eurocentric, as 'class reductionists', and as 'ignoring race' should they place a premium on class analysis, should they insist that racism is an outcome of class exploitation, and that its eradication involves a transnational and pan-ethnic proletarian struggle against capitalism...At a time when global capital is on an all-out rampage against the global working and popular classes and when our very survival is under threat, we need more than ever a transnational revolutionary proletarian politics. We won’t find that in Black Marxism."

"Racism, I maintain, was not simply a convention for ordering the relations of European to non-European peoples but has its genesis in the 'internal' relations of European peoples."

- Cedric Robinson

• Date: 1940-11-05
• Learn More: en.wikipedia.org, files.libcom.org, www.bostonreview.net, thephilosophicalsalon.com.
• Tags: #Marxism, #Birthdays.
• Source: www.apeoplescalendar.org