Anticolonial struggles birthed a Black radical intelligentsia that critiqued and relocated socialist theory

Evidence

The anticolonial struggles that were increasingly mounted from the mid-nineteenth century on were the beginnings of the transformation of Black radicalism into an engaged confrontation with European domination. Indeed, it was as a response to the mass resistances to colonialism that the other human contradictions to which colonial domination was inherently vulnerable were catalyzed. The very nature of colonial dominance required the adaptation or creation of privileged strata among the dominated people. And from the conflict, which was inevitable between the native “bourgeoisie” and their colonial masters, a renegade intelligentsia was induced, one to which the idea of a total opposition, a nationalist confrontation and critique of Western society was necessary and natural. The experience of the Black petit bourgeoisies, their intimacy with European power, culture, society, and racism, and their contradictory relations to them, in time drew from their number nationalists and radical nationalists. While the nationalists generally confined their attentions to the struggles at home where their ambitions could most immediately be realized, the radical nationalists were really internationalists, settling into variants of Pan-Africanism or socialism. Invariably, some of the radicals would be ideologically attracted to the opposition movements gestated within Western society itself. Their ambivalence toward the Black masses, their social and psychological identifications with European culture made the analytical and theoretical authority of European socialism an almost irresistible political ideology. For some that proved sufficient. For others, however, the continuing formation of militant nationalist and workers’ movements in the colonial world raised questions about the breadth and acuity of European socialists. And as mass Black radicalism adapted to the instrument of people’s wars as the form of the anti-imperialist struggle, its revolutionary intelligentsia began the critique or relocation of socialist theory. For them, the struggles of the European working classes were linked with the anti-imperialist movements of the nonindustrial world. The gulf between class struggle and anti-imperialist and nationalist activity began to be closed. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1435

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Direct continuation of the argument developed throughout the book on how Black radicalism’s intelligentsia arose from the contradictions of colonial petit-bourgeois strata; connects to earlier chapters on the origins of Black radicalism.
• SEED: Angle: the native ‘bourgeoisie’ as a structurally manufactured stratum whose intimacy with the colonizer becomes the seedbed of radical internationalist critique — a reusable model for understanding how imperial systems generate their own opposition.

Related

• Colonial rule itself generated the nationalist intelligentsia that overthrew it (similarity 0.93)
• Colonialism itself generated the radical intelligentsia that opposed it (similarity 0.87)
• Colonial contradictions produced the radical Black intelligentsia from the native bourgeoisie (similarity 0.86)
• Black radical historiography was founded by Western-educated Black petit-bourgeois intellectuals (similarity 0.85)
• Fascism’s rise pushed 1930s Black radicals away from European socialist comrades into radical Pan-Africanism (similarity 0.84)
• Black revolutionary theory emerged independently from European radical movements (similarity 0.84)
• Ex-colonial intellectuals shaped the New Left and Cultural Studies from its origins (similarity 0.83)
• Black struggles in the US function under domestic colonialism linked to worldwide anticolonialism (similarity 0.83)
• The new republic faced colonial dualism, illiteracy, and an unprepared elite (similarity 0.82)
• The Black petit bourgeoisie’s hybrid Western education drove its radicalization and critique (similarity 0.82)
• Black radicalism is transcending nationalism and class struggle for its own authority (similarity 0.82)
• The Black radical tradition challenges Western radicalism’s claims about capitalism and the vanguard intelligentsia. (similarity 0.82)
• Black radical ideologues emerged as internal aliens from the colonial middle class (similarity 0.82)
• Black radical theory was nurtured in the diaspora, not in Africa itself. (similarity 0.82)
• Black nationalism arose natively from Black super-exploitation in the United States (similarity 0.82)