Cedric J. Robinson

On Racial Capitalism, Black Internationalism, and Cultures of Resistance

Cedric J. Robinson, H.L.T. Quan, H.L.T. Quan

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786805218
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Cedric J. Robinson is considered one of the doyens of Black Studies and a pioneer in study of the Black Radical Tradition. His works have been essential texts, deconstructing racial capitalism and inspiring insurgent movements from Ferguson to the West Bank. For the first time, Robinson's essays come together, spanning over four decades and reflective of his diverse interests in the interconnections between culture and politics, radical social theory and classic and modern political philosophy. Themes explored include Africa and Black internationalism, World politics, race and US Foreign Policy, representations of blackness in popular culture, and reflections on popular resistance to racial capitalism, white supremacy and more. Accompanied by an introduction by H. L. T. Quan and a foreword by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, this collection, which includes previously unpublished materials, extends the many contributions by a giant in Black radical thought.

PART I

ON AFRICA AND BLACK INTERNATIONALISM

CHAPTER 1

Notes Toward a “Native” Theory of History

The leaders of a revolution are usually those who have been able to profit by the cultural advantages of the system they are attacking.

— C. L. R. James¹

THE FIRST ATTACK IS AN ATTACK ON CULTURE

The construction of radical social theory requires coming to terms with the fundamental nature of historical movement; the characters of social organization and structure and their historical thrust; and the formulation of social consciousness. Put differently, change, adaptation, and thought are the boundaries which mark the work of such social theories.

Yet the work of any theorist – the selection, integration, and interpretation of events – is not separate from his subject. Social theorists are embedded in sociohistorical matrices. It is imperative, then, that they acquire consciousness of the significances which their objects of study possess.² This is not a simple task, for many obstacles mediate against it, the most important of which, perhaps, is the ideological integument of the very analytical, intellectual, and conceptual tools they have in hand. Thus the analyst must not only be concerned with the “objective” form in which the subject “presents itself,” but must also come to a realization that his or her conceptual set may be in part a result of the “subject’s” social and ideational impact.³

Moreover, the difficulties multiply when the theorist must pass beyond his or her situating culture or, alternatively, when the analyst possesses a disparate psychosocial identity or cultural heritage from the subject. Without a keen sense of the historical and ideological trappings in mind, much distortion may result. Indeed, the total deflection of the intentionality of the theorist may ensue. When the Black American scholar reviews and reconstructs the events which make up the dispersions, exploitations, adaptations, and reactions of Black people, he or she must do that consciously. Scholasticism, that is, the addition of new “facts” or the challenge to old ones (revision), is insufficient in itself. These are merely correctives to Western paradigms of history – the same paradigms produced by European intellectuals for the purpose of rationalizing the political and economic dominances of European ruling classes. Already in 1935, W. E. B. DuBois, the radical Black theorist recognized “that with sufficient general agreement and determination among the dominant classes, the truth of history may be utterly distorted and contradicted and changed to any convenient fairy tale that the masters of men wish.”⁴ It was not by chance that the dominated, whether they be classes (the poor, the peasantry, and the working class), ethnic groups and peoples (the Irish, Slavs, Jews, and Blacks), or civilizations (Africans, Asians, New World Indians, etc.), were “reduced” in those histories to prehuman beings. They could not be destroyed or exploited in the brutal terms in which they were without the concomitant evolution of a justification. This tendency to rationalize was conserved even in the revolutionary traditions of European thought and historiography.⁵

Thus Black scholasticism is a perversion of intellectual work. It “corrects” the facticity defined and determined by theories of history antithetic to the evolution of Black people. It contributes to the ideological traditions of a civilization whose raison d’être is violence, domination, and exploitation. Black scholasticism does not challenge theft but attempts to deflect it. (And here I am referring to thefts of consciousness as well as thefts of labor, life, and material well-being.) The result, I would presume, is an honored position for Black thieves.

The true task for Black scholars, however, is an entirely different one. What is required for the African Diaspora to assume its historical significance is a new and different philosophy and a new theory of history. “[T]he foundation for national liberation rests in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history.”⁶ Such systems and constructs may, indeed, borrow from the defectors from European historiography, a Marx, a Nietzsche, a Kropotkin, an Oppenheimer, a Weber, etc., but they must be built upon the experience and consciousness of the new African people, the Blacks. In a very literal way, these new interpretations must come to terms with the historical force of Africans in the Ancient World, the Old World, and the New World. (I employ these periodicities as conveniences only for the moment, since they too will have to be resolved into the point of view of this new people in formation.) African peoples, as producers of material and cultural wealth, as producers of ideologies and epistemologies, as producers of history, must be accounted for. This can only be done authentically in our own terms.

I believe that the first stage of this development is criticism. In a sense, the first attack is an attack on culture. This can be demonstrated in social, historical, and theoretical terms. The revolutionary social development of dominated peoples, the emergence of social movements of resistance, and the appearance of revolutionary ideology are all evidence of this process through which the negation of oppression occurs. As Amilcar Cabral observed in the midst of the struggle in Guinea-Bissau:

The study of the history of national liberation struggles shows that generally these struggles are preceded by an increase in expression of culture, consolidated progressively into a successful or unsuccessful attempt to affirm the cultural personality of the dominated people, as a means of negating the oppressor culture … [I]t is generally within the culture that we find the seed of opposition, which leads to the structuring and development of the liberation movement.⁷

For that purpose, I have chosen here to criticize the work on African movements of liberation of one of the finest non-African historians of Africa, George Shepperson. In the following pages, I will attempt to identify some of the influences which have made the work of Shepperson distinctive, powerful, but ultimately vulnerable. That vulnerability is less to the challenges of the facticity of positive sciences than to those of Black philosophy and theory of history.

THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF GEORGE SHEPPERSON

“Well,” said the Quartermaster, dismissing his native assistant brusquely, “I can’t let you have a white sheet or any wood. All I can let you have is a blanket – that’s good enough for a Wog’s body anyway.”

I stiffened. All my annoyance at being forced into this unpleasant task at the end of a hot day vanished. I saw only the image of a live, eager little Amidu before my eyes …

Back in my tent, I changed into some smarter clothing and put on my Sam Browne. My anger was mounting. I was becoming furious at the nonchalant way in which the funeral of this eager little servant of the Crown was being handled. As I flicked away a few specks of the ubiquitious [sic] red dust from the toes of my highly polished brown boots, I became determined that I, at least, would try to add a little dignity to Amidu’s funeral …

I rolled back the sheet, and turned to leave. But before doing so, I did what many would consider needlessly sentimental: I saluted the corpse of Lance-Corporal Amidu, turned about in the correct manner and left. That is what Amidu would have done in my place, I am sure.⁸

For many reasons, these lines from a short story entitled “Obsequies of Lance-Corporal Amidu” seem a most fitting introduction to George Shepperson, Professor of Commonwealth and American History at the University of Edinburgh. They are his lines, written by him in an obvious passion for justice. Yet, in truth, they are more autobiographical than philosophical, for they could, with only slight stretches of the imagination, be used to describe the historical task as George Shepperson perceives it: “to add a little dignity.”

This description might at first glance seem to be nothing more than romantic dribble. However, we shall see that there is a constant motive in the man’s work manifesting itself in a peculiar form of historical reconstruction. Shepperson’s work is quite reminiscent of the effect of those “amateurish” paleontological drawings, crowded with all sorts of bizarre species in close order, all fully adult, all quite unaware of each other’s presence. His themes and reconstructions have that kind of life: tall, distant, and distinct – an analyst’s world. With him this is fascinating and problematical.

It is clearly inadequate to describe Professor Shepperson, as he is projected through his works, as an analyst of Commonwealth and American history. His concerns are not only much more particular than such a general historical area, but also seem to deny quite fundamentally the bounded legitimacy of the traditional parameters employed in these fields. Shepperson, using his written work as an indicator, has not been concerned with the Commonwealth, but with one particular part of it – British Central Africa (to use the colonial misnomers, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, and Southern Rhodesia) and South Africa. But to be more particular than administrative and pseudo-geographic referents can be when dealing with human society, it would be accurate to say that Shepperson has concerned himself with Black Revolution, African nationalism, and “what H. Richard Niebuhr called ‘the churches of the disinherited.’”⁹

His interests in American history are equally particular. Here, too, he has focused primarily on those Africans and Afro-Americans who have been participants in the development of revolutions, revolts, nationalisms, and separatist churches. Yet his major contribution involves going on and above what could have become localized investments, for Shepperson has attempted to trace the various links, associations, interchanges, and interactions which have occurred between these two spatially very disparate “societies.” He has put together “Commonwealth” and “American,” much to the dignity and integrity of both.

There is too a “hidden” dimension to Shepperson’s work, a dimension which is critical to our interest in conscious historiography. Shepperson is an Anglo-Scot.¹⁰ Moreover, he has taught for some years at Edinburgh, a center of Scottish history, academic nationalism, and national consciousness. The implication is that Shepperson’s conceptualization of African and Black nationalism has been informed and mediated by that of Scottish nationalism. And there is much to sustain this implication objectively (that is, historically) and analytically. There are parallels between Scottish, African, and Black histories which suggest that, as Shepperson reconstructs the latter, he transfers in part his preoccupations with the former.

ENGLISH COLONIALISM IN SCOTLAND

As a people, the Scots are a relatively new national identity forged in important part by the dynamics of English imperialism.¹¹ Prior to the one-hundred years of the Scottish Enlightenment dating from the mid-eighteenth century, what has now become the Scottish people was a population roughly divided into two: the Highlanders of the northwest and the Lowlanders of the south.¹²

The Highlanders were a rough, peasant, generally pastoral, Gaelic-speaking people. They were organized by clans whose structures had been influenced by the Teutonic feudalism to their south. Though Christian missionaries had been active among them for centuries, for the most part their beliefs were pre-Christian or a syncretic mixture of Christian and nonChristian elements.¹³ The Highlanders, then, possessed their own language, music, dress, religion, and social and economic institutions and structures.

Effectively, this was all destroyed su...