Marxism employed by American Communism served political power rather than analysis or praxis.

Evidence

Yet Wright was also critical of Marxism, the second and more modern radical Western tradition. It, too, was profoundly limited theoretically, and subject to the abuses of narrow political interests. Marxism had ultimately failed to come to terms with nationalism, with consciousness, with racism, with Western civilization, with industrialization, and with the history of Blacks. Wright had already demonstrated some of its limitations in Native Son. Daniel Aaron, commenting on Bigger Thomas’s Communist lawyer, had observed, “Even Boris Max never really understands Bigger, and is frightened by Bigger’s vision of himself.” Wright made this same point even more tellingly in The Outsider. Wright maintained that the purposes of Marxism as employed in American Communism were less analytical than political. The result was neither theory nor praxis but the achievement of power. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1405

Categorization

• XREF: Core to the reader’s arc of the downfall of the Black radical tradition within Marxist formulations; connects to the broader critique of Western Marxism and its racial blindness.