Nonviolent mass action handed Black liberation back to bourgeois mediators

Evidence

But “nonviolent mass action” threw the Black struggle back into the hands of the petit bourgeoisie, albeit a radical petit bourgeoisie. It was they who would mediate between the mass movement and the representatives of imperialism. And neither James nor any of the others ever came to terms with this theoretical error. It was simply the case that the demand for the right of Black people to govern themselves (the position adopted at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester in 1945) articulated by a radical intelligentsia speaking on behalf of the dominated would have historical consequences quite different from those that resulted from the Black masses seizing their liberation. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1282

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: A compact statement of Robinson’s core thesis about the tradition’s decline: choosing reformist nonviolence structurally hands liberation back to mediators, so that even good articulations by intellectuals differ fatally from masses seizing freedom.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1282
• XREF: connects to: Educated black elites were trained as a mediating restraint against mass violence — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 154; Black self-help movements actively inculcated mainstream bourgeois values into the poor — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 454; Marginalized black communities can and should lead their own liberation — Eddie S. Glaude Jr., Democracy in Black: How Race Still…, 624