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from: The University of North Carolina Press
List Price: $30.00Amazon.com's Price: $24.94 You Save: $5.06 (17%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 335.430917496
EAN: 9780807848296
ISBN: 0807848298
Label: The University of North Carolina Press
Manufacturer: The University of North Carolina Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 480
Publication Date: January 24, 2000
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Release Date: January 05, 2000
Sales Rank: 312203
Studio: The University of North Carolina Press
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of black people and black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this.
To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Erudition at it's best
Upon completion of this treatise all readers should receive a Master's Degree in Black Studies. Robinson provides a detailed and complex study of Black Radicalism and Marxism's relation to it. This book works on a number of levels; Historical, Sociological and Philosophical. I think one of the book's strong points is that it broadens the reader's mind to other interpretations of Black Radicalism. His analysis of DuBois, and C.L.R. James' transformation is interesting along with his dissection of ... Read More
Rating:  - A good study in Ideology
Obviously the first reviewer hasn't read the book. Robinson is arguing against a Marxist interpretation of the black radical struggle. He traces the history of European capitalism and the Marxist theoretical development that is based on this history in order to illustrate that Marxism is somewhat divorced from the history of Africa and African descendants. George Padmore was once an adamant Communist, but rejected the ideology due, in part, to the reasons that Robinson outlines.
The book ... Read More
Rating: - important addition to both Afro- and European history
It's time that Robinson's work receives the attention it deserves. No other book on African and African American thought that I know of shows such a keen ability, or even acknowledges the need for, a contextualization of black radicalism within the larger currents of world history. Unlike most intellectual histories which restrict themselves to national or racial boundaries, Robinson addresses the emergence of Marxism within western civilization, reaching back to the medieval and even classical ... Read More
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