Wright rose to the Communist Party’s most illustrious proletarian author.

Evidence

Wright had joined the American Communist movement in the early 1930s. This was a period that coincided with an intensification of the party’s work among Blacks following the Sixth Congress of the Comintern’s “resolution on the Negro Question” in 1928 and the beginnings of the Scottsboro trials in 1931. Wright left the party a decade later. During those years he worked in the movement in the various capacities of organizer, member of a Black party cell in Chicago, officer in the John Reed Clubs and writer for the Communist press. At first, his work for the party was to take place primarily in Chicago; later he was transferred to Harlem. It was, of course, during this time that his writing was most directly influenced by the party. He proved to be very good at it. By 1937, the year he had published “Blueprint…,” he had become, in Daniel Aaron’s words, “the Party’s most illustrious proletarian author.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1344

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• Wright joined the Communist Party in the early 1930s and left a decade later (similarity 0.93)
• Wright joined the party believing communists had misread workers’ lived experience. (similarity 0.86)
• Wright joined communism to give meaning to the party’s abstracted proletariat (similarity 0.83)
• Wright initially distrusted the Communist Party as a white man’s organization (similarity 0.81)
• Wright’s postwar reputation outlasted that of his more powerful critics (similarity 0.80)
• Wright’s intellectual arc moved from Marxism through Existentialism to Black nationalism (similarity 0.80)
• Wright’s fiction constitutes a running critique of Marxist class theory. (similarity 0.79)
• Richard Wright came to Marxism from the Black peasantry, not the petit bourgeoisie (similarity 0.79)
• Wright’s novels function as studies of Marxism and Black development. (similarity 0.79)
• Wright came to Marxism from the peasantry, not the petit bourgeoisie (similarity 0.79)
• Wright moved beyond classical and Leninist Marxism toward European existential thought (similarity 0.78)
• Wright came to see Marxism as petit bourgeois ideology, not proletarian theory (similarity 0.78)
• Wright saw the Black revolutionary movement as poised to challenge Western civilization’s very foundations. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Wright aimed to give concrete meaning to the abstracted proletariat #expands (0.65) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1356
• Wright’s fiction critiqued Communist abstraction of the proletariat #qualifies (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1364