Race and Revolution

Front Cover
Verso, May 17, 2003 - History - 108 pages
A riveting inquiry into black history and American racism published here for the first time, Race and Revolution is a work of radiant insight and bold logic.

Astonishingly advanced for its time, the document was originally drafted in 1933 as Communism and the Negro and was by far the most comprehensive statement on race produced by the Left Opposition, the dissenting Communist tendency led by Leon Trotsky.

Race and Revolution places the black struggle for freedom and equality at the heart of American history. Racial oppression, Shachtman argues, can be comprehended only within the totality of social and class relations. The document culminates in a devastating polemic against the Communist Party’s call for a Black Belt state in the American South.

A clarifying introduction by Christopher Phelps explains the document’s historical genesis, compares it to the views of Trotsky and C. L. R. James, and evaluates it in light of subsequent theoretical and historical developments.

From inside the book

Contents

List of Illustrations
vii
Editorial Note
lxv
COMMUNISM AND THE NEGRO by Max Shachtman
5
The Period of Reconstruction
16
The Economic Changes in the South
27
The Economic Changes in the South Continued
33
The Conditions of the American Negro
40
Bourgeois and Reformist Solutions
49
The Communist Movement and the Negroes
66
The Communist International and the American Negro
97
Index
103
Copyright

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About the author (2003)

Max Shachtman (1904–72) was a socialist organizer, orator and writer. He edited the journal New International.

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