Ahmed Shawki. Black Liberation and Socialism.

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