Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition

Rating:
Summary: important addition to both Afro- and European history
Review: 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 periods, and shows how its thinkers were guided by ethnocentric and universalistic tendencies that caused them to miss the way that class solidarity has been thwarted by nationalism and ethnicity, and of how socialism as envisioned by European radicals has never been monolithic but has adapted itself to local and regional folkways. My only criticism of this work is that Franz Fanon is not included in the list of important black thinkers (Du Bois, James and Wright) to be discussed. Fanon's synthesis of nationalism, communism and existentialism as phenomena to be considered simulatenously for analyzing postcolonial movements seems to fit Robinson's discussion very well, so I'm surprised he receives such little attention. Otherwise, this is a wonderful and surprising study, which I highly recommend, and one that surpasses the unfortunate practice of so many books on African thought that refuse to recognize the dialectic between black and European intellectuals.

Rating:
Summary: A good study in Ideology
Review: 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 is a bit inaccessible at times, but it's worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: An Afrocentric Sickle-and-Hammer
Review: Sadly this text is used to give a radical leftist ideological bent to "African-American Studies" programs... After, learning history and culture, students are spoon-fed a hybrid Afromarxism, ensuring that they will have chip on their shoulder about how the white man is keeping them down even in the 21st century.... Since you pretty much teach with this degree... they will in turn, pawn their socialist gibberish on a new generation.

Get Black and Right instead.