Wright fused Lenin’s vanguard theory with the Black talented tenth tradition

Evidence

Working with these conceptions, Wright was clearly reflecting an earlier Marxian tradition, one in which Lenin had transformed a “renegade” petit bourgeoisie into a revolutionary vanguard. (Wright appears to have always opposed the Stalinist anti-intellectualism that marked the Communist movement domestically and internationally in the 1930s.) But Wright was also mindful of a second and separate tradition that had emerged among Blacks in the United States during the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. At these historical moments from among the ranks of free Blacks, there had emerged an intellectually, economically, and politically elite class that had assumed leadership on behalf of the largely enslaved Black masses. This nucleus later contributed significantly to the formation of the Black middle class. The ethos of this class and its sociohistorical traditions had been given its most enduring name by W. E. B. Du Bois: the talented tenth. Wright was thus suffusing two distinct and opposing traditions. But more important, even here, while he was ostensibly addressing Black intellectuals, he was also going about the work of recreating his world in his own ideological terms. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1348

Working with these conceptions, Wright was clearly reflecting an earlier Marxian tradition, one in which Lenin had transformed a “renegade” petit bourgeoisie into a revolutionary vanguard. (Wright appears to have always opposed the Stalinist anti-intellectualism that marked the Communist movement domestically and internationally in the 1930s.) But Wright was also mindful of a second and separate tradition that had emerged among Blacks in the United States during the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. At these historical moments from among the ranks of free Blacks, there had emerged an intellectually, economically, and politically elite class that had assumed leadership on behalf of the largely enslaved Black masses. This nucleus later contributed significantly to the formation of the Black middle class. The ethos of this class and its sociohistorical traditions had been given its most enduring name by W. E. B. Du Bois: the talented tenth. Wright was thus suffusing two distinct and opposing traditions. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1348

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘talented tenth’ echo ties directly to the reader’s knowledge of Du Bois from earlier sections and to the Black middle class formation that drives the Black radical tradition’s arc.
• DEFINE: Links Wright’s synthesis to two distinct traditions: Lenin’s vanguardism and the free Black elite class that Du Bois named the ‘talented tenth’.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1348