Marxist theory could not logically class American Blacks as a nation

Evidence

The logical extension from Marx or Engels would have been to identify the Blacks of America as a national minority or as a nationality, but not as a nation. For Marx and Engels, the nation was a quite particular historical phenomenon: … Since the end of the Middle Ages, history has been moving towards a Europe made up of large national states. Only such national states constitute the normal political framework for the dominant European bourgeois class and, in addition, they are the indispensable prerequisites … without which the rule of the proletariat cannot exist. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1062

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that for Marx and Engels a ‘nation’ was strictly a post-medieval European bourgeois state formation, which excluded American Blacks by definition.
• XREF: The Comintern’s self-determination doctrine for American Blacks connects to the broader debate over whether the Black radical tradition can be absorbed by European-derived Marxist categories.