Third World masses revive the revolutionary role the industrial proletariat lost

Evidence

In Marx’s theory of capitalism, the proletariat is not always and necessarily revolutionary. It was not revolutionary in the period of manufacture, becoming so only as a consequence of the introduction of machinery in the industrial revolution. The long-run effects of machinery, however, are different from the immediate effects. If the revolutionary opportunities of the early period of modern industry are missed, the proletariat of an industrializing country tends to become less and less revolutionary. This does not mean, however, that Marx’s contention that capitalism produces its own gravediggers is wrong. … If we consider capitalism as a global system … we see that it is divided into a handful of exploiting countries and a much more numerous and populous group of exploited countries. The masses in these exploited dependencies constitute a force in the global capitalist system which is revolutionary in the same sense and for the same reasons that Marx considered the proletariat of the early period of modern industry to be revolutionary. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2217

Categorization

• XREF: This aligns with the reader’s goal of mapping the rise of the Black radical tradition: the global South/colonized world becomes the revolutionary subject once the Western proletariat is integrated. Echoes themes in the reader’s reading list on postcolonial identity and resistance. — connects to: Neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat now act as agents of historical transformation — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the…, 91; Lukács located revolutionary agency in workers’ self-awareness as commodities — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 66; Third World liberation movements were the strongest contemporary force for radical change (+1 more)