Ahmed Shawki. Black Liberation and Socialism.
Bindas, Kenneth J.
Ahmed Shawki. Black Liberation and Socialism. Chicago: Haymarket
Books, 2006. 256 pp. $12.00.
"There is a greater sense of alienation and powerlessness in
Black America," argues Ahmed Shawki, just when "the need for
an organized movement of resistance has grown more urgent" (11).
This book seeks to provide the historical and theoretical context for
the revival of the movement by outlining the struggle for Black
liberation in the United States and its connection to socialism. The
result is a readable and interesting survey that seeks to connect
capitalism to racism and racialized oppression, and detail how the rise
of the US as an imperial power "only deepened ... the ideology of
racism" (241).
The first two-thirds of the book forms a fairly standard overview
of a struggle for Black liberation from the establishment of slavery
through the Great Depression and World War II. Shawki begins by
exploring slavery and race in the US through Reconstruction and the rise
of industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century, arguing that
standard histories have focused on race while ignoring the
"material connection between capitalism and the development of
racism" (23). His treatment outlines how race was used to justify
slavery to profit from the labor of enslaved peoples and points out that
Black Abolitionists like David Walker, Henry Highland Garnet, Martin
Delany, and most specifically Frederick Douglass had a nascent
understanding of this materialist connection. Their arguments set the
tone for the struggle that was to come in the Civil War and
Reconstruction, when the realities of racism did not evaporate with
emancipation, but became more politically and economically entrenched.
He then outlines how Black leaders continued to advocate for liberation
during the rise and advance of industrial capitalism; he analyzes
Washington's accommodationism, Du Bois's activism, and
Garvey's nationalism. The new century brought new challenges to the
emerging Black working class, and the discussion over how to maintain
the struggle for racial liberation within the larger struggle for class
liberation became more pronounced. However, these leaders saw the basic
line to their liberation within the capitalist system. The Socialists
and Communists in this period fared little better, as divisions within
their ranks concerning Black liberation allowed for the issue to be
ignored as part of the larger discussion concerning organization and
liberation of all workers. One exception was the activism of the
leftwing of the Socialist Party and its work with the International
Workers of the World (IWW), which organized without regard to color.
This activism proved anomalous, as neither the Socialist nor the
Communist Party developed a clear policy regarding Black liberation.
Shawki does suggest that Trotsky recognized the need for Black
liberation within the construct of his theory of permanent revolution,
and he uses the discussions between Trotsky and C. L. R. James to
display how the Socialist Workers Party came to accept that the struggle
for Black liberation "has a vitality and validity of its own."
Shawki's analysis of the more recent Civil Rights movement and
the liberation ideologies from that era are the most cogent. He suggests
that the inability to connect the issues of race to materialism meant
that the "civil rights movement ... was above all a benefit to the
Black middle class" (151), and the revolutionary rhetoric of such
groups as the SNCC, CORE, and the Black Panthers did not smoothly merge
Trotskyism to their Black nationalism. Even Malcolm X, while recognizing
the need to view race and class as part of the same struggle, saw
"socialism as synonymous with national independence and economic
development" (183) and comes across, as in Shawki's analysis
of Martin Luther King, Jr., as a leader still willing to work within the
existing capitalist structure. This liberal view of race and class
encouraged white liberals to adopt the cause of Black liberation through
a slew of Great Society social programs that attacked the culture of
poverty and placed blame for both poverty and crime on the victim
without recognizing the materialist connection between race and racism
in the US. Even the potential radicalism of Black Power was legitimized
and became diluted within the marketplace as Black capitalism, electoral
power, cultural nationalism, and radical Black nationalism. Moreover,
President Richard Nixon favored Black power in this diluted form, as a
part of individuals controlling their own destiny. Shawki's
analysis of DRUM (Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement) suggests the
closest combination of socialism and Black liberation, but like earlier
revolutionaries, the leaders of DRUM found it difficult to develop a
"multiracial class strategy" (220).
In the end, Shawki's survey reveals the inability of
revolutionary Marxism to maintain long-term influence over the struggle
for US Black liberation. The author remembers those who have fought for
this liberation in a manner that allows the reader to see them as noble,
yet their inability to recognize that the "material basis for
racism [is] built into capitalism competition" (245) underscores
their ultimate failure. Black Liberation and Socialism is a worthy and
interesting read, although Shawki might have expanded his secondary
reading to provide better historical context. As it is, his notes do not
imply a very comprehensive understanding of the historical periods he
discusses, and although his analysis of the principal figures is
accurate, at times the connection to socialism, particularly through the
first seven chapters, is thin. In fact, until the modern period this
reader forgot that the book's proclaimed focus was on Black
liberation and Socialism, as Shawki insufficiently explores the stated
thesis throughout these chapters. I was also surprised by the limited
coverage of the rise of third world leftists who saw the struggle for
liberation within the US as part of a world-wide struggle uniting all
people of color, and the lack of inclusion of Angela Davis's
writings into the discourse concerning the 1960's radicals. There
were also some interesting misnomers, like calling consensus historian
Richard Hofstadter a "radical historian" (59), or saying that
the "socialist movement also has a consistent record of struggle
against racism" (252-53) while highlighting throughout the book
socialism's limited activities and the "open racists"
(253) within its ranks. In the end, Shawki's book promises much,
and while the story is interesting and readable, one does not come away
from the work convinced that the connection between Black liberation and
socialism was consistent or strong.
Reviewed by
Kenneth J. Bindas
Kent State University
