I read it --- and I don't buy it ---- I don't know enough Russian history to deal with the Lenin part of the argument --- but the idea that the black slaves and ex-slaves constituted a "proletariat" is nonsense --- Even more important -- the aspirations of the newly freed slaves and their free black political allies after the Civil War was on LAND --- on getting their own land ---
They did not see wage labor as a step forward --- and the "semi-slavery" of sharecropping and tenantry that ended up being the Plantation Mode of Production (see the work of Jay Mandle on this subject) was a COMPROMISE between the desire of plantation owners to continue the "relationship between people at the point of production" --- driving ex-slaves in gangs for a wage --- and the complete unwillingness of ex-slaves to be exploited that way --- DuBois hoped for a black-white working class alliance but it never happened ---- the closest to that occurred during the early period of Southern Populism (before the Southern Populists [white] went "full racist") --- and again, this was an alliance of small farmers fighting a losing battle to preserve something akin to an "independent mode of production" --- a transitional economic formation that was the rule for northern and western agriculture in colonial and immediately post colonial North America --- In a complicated world, the addition of the complications of identity politics to working class politics is the "hand we've been dealt" --- the history of American racism weighs heavily upon the present reality of the current working class population --- It cannot be wished away by what I believe (at least for the US) is a misreading of post Civil War history -- DuBois was a great historian, cultural critic, activist, and overall human being --- Black Reconstruction was a great book --- broke new grounds --- became a touchstone for those disgusted by the racist Dunning School of Reconstruction historiography ---But I think he was wrong about the slaves and freedmen being a proletariat --- [Mike Meeropol] > > By Tony Monteiro > > If a working-class left is to be built there has to be complete and > thorough rejection of identity politics in its gender, sexuality preference > and afrocentirc/neo-Garveyist manifestations. It means a rejection of > bourgeois socialism, social imperialism, anarchism, bourgeois trade > unionism and Trotskyism. > > > https://blackagendareport.com/vi-lenin-and-web-du-bois-class-struggle-and-civilization > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#3705): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/3705 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/78364365/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #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]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
