Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction advanced a mass-action theory of history diverging from Marx.

Evidence

Black Reconstruction, however, was more the result of another purpose, a concern that was quite different from the task of historical revision. Du Bois committed himself to the development of a theory of history, which by its emphasis on mass action was both a critique of the ideologies of American socialist movements and a revision of Marx’s theory of revolution and class struggle. From the integument of America’s Civil War and the Reconstruction, Du Bois attempted to identify the unique character of mass praxis, class consciousness, ideology, and contradiction as they had occurred in the dialectics of American social and historical developments. In so doing, he was going beyond the argument of American “exceptionalism” that had persisted in the ideology of the American Marxist Left. He was seeking to identify historically and analytically the processes that during the Depression years had given American social dynamics their character and potentialities. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 912

Categorization

• DEFINE: This is a core statement of what Black Reconstruction’s theoretical project is and how it revises Marx — central to defining the Black radical tradition’s theoretical break.
• XREF: Relates to Robinson’s broader argument that the Black radical tradition is its own theoretical lineage, not a derivative of European Marxism.