A Black Construction of Colonialism: The Black Marxist Response to Fascism in the 1930s

Abstract

This article aims to understand why Black Marxists and white Marxists had different theoretical and practical responses to 1930s fascism. I argue this stemmed from different conceptualizations of colonialism. Following Marx and Lenin, many white Marxists viewed colonialism as an imperial extension of capitalist conditions from western Europe to non-Europe. In contrast, Black Marxists viewed colonialism as the site of capitalism and race: the practicing of white dominance and capital accumulation through territorial dispossession, material extraction, and forced labor in the colonies. Black Marxists understood fascism as extending these racial-colonial practices into Europe, while white Marxists failed to see this because of their foreclosure of race. In viewing fascism as primarily a threat to the spread of European communism, the Soviet Union made anti-fascism a priority exceeding anti-colonialism. The interwar Black Left therefore produced a more expansive conception of colonialism, widening the spatial and temporal horizons upon which to understand the emergence of fascism and remain committed to anti-colonialism.