Thirty eight years have passed between the publication of The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and Cedric Robinson's classic Black Marxism. In that thirty eight years, two things have happened. For one thing, books like Graeber and Wengrow's new history of humanity, and two full shelves - probably 40 linear feet - of "Social Studies" section books are devoted to Black authors writing about Black issues. Black recognition, if not advancement, seems to be everywhere. As Tom Tomorrow might say, "Check the box. Problem solved!"
Contrast this, however, with the reality of the other half of the mainstream media reporting increasing hate crimes, police shootings of Blacks, reactionary politics restricting everything possible from abortion to voting so as to damp down the transition to a...what? less racially motivated society? Why can't we have this? What is so wrong about this?
I'm at the point in the Graeber and Winslow tome where they've discussed Kondiaronk, and whether this 17th century Huron leader may have articulated Huron culture and society sufficiently to influence no less than Rousseau in his writing about the natural rights of man, and how Wendats - the tribe represented by Kondiaronk - had no laws, no hierarchy, and no punishment. They chose leaders all right, in a mostly temporary manner to deal with a specific issue such as an Iroquois invasion. They had standards, like limiting immediate intrafamily marriage, and ostracized tribal members who transgressed. And they held councils to settle disputes, take votes (apparently all Hurons had an equal vote, but the book does not say whether women could vote). They worshipped no formal gods and had no formal property ownership. And you know what? They were just fine...until Europeans came along.
Contrast this with Assa Okof's A History of Africa 1855-1914. This volume preceded Robinson's dense little brick of a book by four years. Okof recounts tribe after tribe with eerily similar systems, although the details differ. Further, the Gambian nation is so eloquently described in the fictional tribe Kunta Kinte grows up in before the taobab get him. Roots preceded Okof's book by 2 years. We're now back in 1977, the year I was in junior high school.
So, while Black stories and Black thought proliferates on one level, white backlash is predictably harsh at another. I'm at the point in Robinson's book that picks up almost exactly where Graeber and Wengrow leave off, at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and I want to learn Robinson's viewpoint which has already been foreshadowed.
Both authors (Graeber and Winslow) cite Robinson, and also give a nod to the great C. L. R. James as well. They agree that slavery begat the industrial revolution; there's no question about it. How are the two intertwined? Slavery begat capitalism, a fact that seems indisputable given the convergence of thought by the mid-eighteenth century, and the fact that the notorious slave society of the United States was part of it, and that country ascended to become the richest country ever in history, seems forgotten.
More to come; and there shouldn't be two generations before the next leap of thought occurs to build upon what all of these authors are saying.
Comments