Nineteenth-century American socialists absorbed slavery’s racism despite European origins

Evidence

What was true for the mainstream of the American labor movement was also a factor in the radical traditions in the country. Though mid-nineteenth-century socialism had been largely transferred from areas of Europe where antipathies toward Blacks were inconsequential, its adherents, too, had not been capable, generally, of resisting the corrosive influences of slavery. This had been the case for both Marxist and non-Marxist socialists. The precedents established during this period would be of no substantial help to twentieth-century socialists whether their programs directly or indirectly addressed themselves to “the Negro Problem.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 947

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s broader argument about Marxism’s failure to grasp the Black radical tradition, and to Du Bois’s critique of American labor as described here. — connects to: Antiblack prejudice in America followed slavery rather than preceding it