In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this. To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by Blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century Black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright. This revised and updated third edition includes a new preface by Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley.

Part 1. The emergence and limitations of European radicalism: 1. Racial capitalism: the nonobjective character of capitalist development ; 2. The English working class as the mirror of production ; 3. Socialist theory and nationalism -- Part 2. The roots of Black radicalism: 4. The process and consequences of Africa's transmutation ; 5. The Atlantic slave trade and African labor ; 6. The historical archaeology of the Black radical tradition ; 7. The nature of the Black radical tradition -- Part 3. Black radicalism and Marxist theory: 8. The formation of an intelligentsia ; 9. Historiography and the Black radical tradition ; 10. C. L. R. James and the Black radical tradition ; 11. Richard Wright and the critique of Class Theory ; 12. An ending.