Dogmatic adherence to inherited categories prevents movements from transcending stale frameworks

Evidence

The new categories, the impulses, the instinctive actions, the strong knots formed, were observed, talked about, but always incorporated into the old shell; state capitalism or reformist international that would destroy private property and refuse to support the bourgeoisie in imperialist war, an anti-proletarian bureaucracy that throve on state property and would defend it to the last against private property, all the knots, impulses, etc. which drove these into the mind, were allowed in only in so far as they filled into the formed and finished categories which Lenin left. That is why what were the results of Reason in one generation become Understanding in another, and the negating, the transcending of the determinations into a higher unity cannot be done. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1310

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the Jamesian distinction between Reason (creative historical moment) and Understanding (petrified inherited category) that recurs through this chapter.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Frankfurt School material on Adorno’s critique of positivism’s frozen categories; also echoes Marxism and Form’s revisionism theme. — connects to: Horizontalist movements that fetishize form over results fail against hierarchy — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1731