In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson
demonstrates that efforts to understand black people's history of
resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are
incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose
European models of history and experience that downplay the
significance of black people and black communities as agents of
change and resistance. Black radicalism must be linked to the
traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of blacks on
western continents, Robinson argues, and any analyses of African
American history need to acknowledge this.
To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of
Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by blacks in
historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of
these traditions on such important twentieth-century black radical
thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard
Wright.