The Antinomies of Black Marxism: Critique of the Racial Capitalism Paradigm

Cedric Robinson’s widely acclaimed study on Marxism and race has enjoyed a celebratory renaissance in recent years, becoming commonplace across the disciplines and beyond to activist and left circles. The Antinomies of Black Marxism contests its now‑enormous influence, bringing together leading scholars of Marxism to reassess the decisive question of race and Marxist thought and practice. While varied in their approaches, the contributors all affirm that racism is a modern production of capitalist class exploitation. They put forth a trenchant and uncompressing critique of Black Marxism. They see Robinson’s transhistoric racialism and hostility to Marxism as politically dangerous to the extent that it propagates a race over a class consciousness that undermines working‑class unity. They place a premium on multiethnic, transnational proletarian struggle against capitalism at a time of epochal crisis in the global capitalist system. This indispensable compendium makes a timely contribution to contemporary debates on race, class, capitalism, and social inequality and is essential to classes on Black Studies and black social thought, as it provides a thorough analysis and critique of one of the landmark contemporary critical theorists in US political and social theory. Read more