I pointed out in my recent Catalyst essay that no theoretical or political tradition has produced as many brilliant analysts of racial and colonial domination as what many now refer to as the Black Marxist tradition.¹ This tradition is distinguished by its use and development of Marxist theory to better understand, and destroy, racism and colonialism. It includes many influential African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American activists and revolutionaries. It also includes many insightful writers and intellectuals, many of whom were (or are) also activists and revolutionaries. Among this latter group are such notable figures as C. L. R. James, Claudia Jones, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Frantz Fanon, Amílcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Neville Alexander, Walter Rodney, Stuart Hall, and Barbara Fields, to mention just a few.²

Was W. E. B. Du Bois part of the Black Marxist tradition? For much of his life, he clearly was not. But after a period of intensive study of Marxist texts and commentaries during 1933–34, Du Bois’s writings and speeches took on an unambiguously Marxist orientation, beginning with his 1935 magnum opus, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880.³ Du Bois came to see capitalism as the foundation of racism and colonialism. He also became increasingly concerned with the question of working-class solidarity, fearing that white racism would inhibit the struggle for both black liberation and socialism. After World War II, moreover, Du Bois grew close to a circle of Communists and so-called fellow travelers of the Communist Party, most of them African Americans, including his second wife, Shirley Graham; Esther Cooper Jackson and James Jackson Jr; and Paul Robeson and Eslanda Goode Robeson. Du Bois himself, as is well known, eventually joined the party. All this is clearly spelled out in the second and final volume of David Levering Lewis’s acclaimed biography of Du Bois.⁴

José Itzigsohn and Karida L. Brown (hereafter I&B) recently wrote a book on The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois, which ignores, denies, or obscures much of this history.⁵ One of the central claims of their book, in fact, is that Du Bois, although “influenced” by Karl Marx, was actually a strong critic of Marxism, even after 1934. (They make no mention of the Black Marxist tradition or the work of other Marxists on race and imperialism.) They reject the idea that the “late” Du Bois regarded capitalism as the central social structure — and problem — of the modern world and a fortiori his belief that communism was the solution. On the contrary, I&B regard even the late Du Bois as a race-centered thinker who saw the “color line” — “the division of people into racialized groups” — as “the central social structure of his time.”⁶