Du Bois positioned slaves rather than industrial workers as revolutionary.

Evidence

In this, he went no further than Marx, but this is merely where he began. Next, he would demonstrate, historically, the revolutionary force of slave and peasant laborers—this in opposition to a reactionary industrial working class. Finally, with Lenin in mind, Du Bois would question the presumed roles of a vanguard and the masses in the development of revolutionary consciousness and effective revolutionary action. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1075

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core of the Black radical tradition’s inversion of classical Marxism: the revolutionary subject is the slave/peasant.