Black Marxism: Race, Class, and Liberation (AMSTUD 170, SOC 181)

3 credits · Undergraduate

Contemporary thought on Black struggle is often dismissive of Marxism, on grounds that it is eurocentric or no longer relevant. But for over a century, some of the most famous and engaging Black intellectuals and revolutionaries have used Marx's thought to analyze their struggle. For these thinkers, it was essential to understand race and class as interconnected. In this module, you will study not only the ways they used Marx's concepts but transformed them in response to their own circumstances. You will read Marx alongside some of the most famous African and African Diaspora thinkers of the twentieth century - including W.E.B. Du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah, Frantz Fanon, Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. We will explore the ways Marxism influenced their understanding of the history of Black struggle - from pre-colonial Africa through slavery, abolition, and decolonisation to contemporary issues affecting gender, diaspora and the movement toward prison abolition. We will thereby interrogate the ways Black marxists understood both the past and present, but also anticipated and wanted to help shape a liberated, socialist future.