The World Socialist Web Site had subjected the 1619 Project, launched in August 2019, to a swift and comprehensive rebuttal that attracted broad interest. The critical essays and interviews with leading scholars of American history and politics were published in the volume The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History, edited by David North and Thomas Mackaman.
The critical essays and interviews with leading scholars of American history and politics were published in the volume The New York Times’ 1619 Project and the Racialist Falsification of History, edited by David North and Thomas Mackaman.
This summer, Mehring Books has released two pamphlets, Marcus Garvey & the Reactionary Logic of Racialist Politics, and Marxism vs. Critical Race Theory.
Marcus Garvey & the Reactionary Logic of Racialist Politics by Lawrence Porter
In this essay, World Socialist Web Site writer Lawrence Porter demolishes the hagiographies of Marcus Garvey by the contemporary boosters of racialist politics, including Nikole Hannah Jones and Ta-Nehisi Coates, for whom Garvey is black nationalism’s “patron saint”.
“For a time, aspects of Garvey’s politics struck a chord with some of the most exploited black workers in America’s industrial cities and the impoverished nations of the Caribbean. This certainly distinguishes him from the contemporary milieu of “race experts,” whose audience is confined to the comfortable upper middle class.
“But Garvey’s pursuit of wealth and power emerged directly from his politics. He is among the first substantial proponents of black capitalism. He praised capitalism and the development of a black bourgeoisie dedicated to its preservation,” Porter writes.
This essay is the Marxist reply to contemporary advocates of black nationalism, who themselves profit from the promotion of a reactionary and divisive ideology.
“A critical contribution to the counteroffensive against the sowing of racial divisions in the working class, and it deserves the widest possible audience.” Tom Mackaman, Professor of History, King’s College.
Marxism vs. Critical Race Theory by Tom Carter
World Socialist Web Site writer Tom Carter’s left-wing critique overturns the generally accepted misconception that contemporary identity politics is somehow “left-wing.”
Critical race theory, as the main essay in this pamphlet explains, is a “body of academic writing that emerged in the US in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which combines postmodernism and subjective idealist philosophy with historical revisionism, racial sectarianism, and an orientation to the Democratic Party and its satellites.”
Carter contrasts genuine left-wing thought with the ideological foundations, methods and political trajectory of critical race theory and to the essentially reactionary politics of racialism and nationalism, counterposes the history and traditions of the Marxist movement, based in the struggle for social equality, and political independence and unity of the working class, the vast majority of the world’s people, in the global struggle against capitalism and for socialism.
The pamphlet also includes two shorter essays critiquing the New York Times’ embrace of the British monarchy and Ukrainian nationalism.
