This is more than a year old. Reed is misrepresenting several issues while grinding an axe subtly against those who subscribe to the Black Radical Tradition described by Cedric Robinson's book *Black Marxism*. Read between the lines of this and several other polemics and you discern that underlying point.
Whatever Reed's virtues, and they are a few, he still retains a certain animosity for those to his Left and denigrates them as such. I wrote a column about this last month. https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/17/adolph-reed-jr-and-the-essence-of-class-essentialism-in-which-we-essentially-examine-this-with-class/ -- Best regards, Andrew Stewart 5a. What Materialist Black Political History Actually Looks Like From: Max Power <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2020 21:38:50 EDT A fantastic article by Adolph Reed, Jr. Whatever the failings of the DSA/Jacobin crowd, it’s to their credit that they give priority to Dr. Reed. “… a de facto alliance between ostensibly progressive identitarians and Wall Street Democrats has come together around asserting, along with Paul Krugman and others, that “horizontal inequality”—i.e., inequality between statistically defined racial/ethnic groups—is a more important problem than “vertical inequality,” characterized as inequality between individuals and households. That distinction instructively makes class and class inequality disappear, which is consistent with the trajectory of American liberalism across the more than seven decades since the end of World War II. Moreover, in a sort of mission creep, opponents of what they decry as a “class-first” position increasingly have come to denounce any expressions of concern for economic inequality as in effect catering to white supremacy. This tendency, which Touré Reed has argued rests on a race-reductionism, has surfaced and spread within the newly revitalized Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), as even many among those who consider themselves socialists object to the organization’s selection of Medicare for All as its key political campaign on the ground that pursuit of decommodified health care for all is objectionable because doing so does not sufficiently center antiracist and anti-disparitarian agendas. I submit that there’s clearly a problem when anti-socialism is defined as socialism.” https://nonsite.org/editorial/what-materialist-black-political-history-actually-looks-like -- View This Message: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/787 Reply To This Message: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/787?reply=1 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76377739/4845976 ________________________________________________________________________ 5b. Re: What Materialist Black Political History Actually Looks Like From: Ernestleif <[email protected]> Date: Sun, 23 Aug 2020 21:51:04 EDT To Max Power What do you present as an alternative strategy for Black people? To link up with the myriad white forces of revolution? -- View This Message: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/789 Reply To This Message: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/789?reply=1 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76377739/4845976 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#794): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/794 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/76377739/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES<br />#1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message.<br />#2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived.<br />#3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
