The interview is about an anthology book on black studies that he’s a part of. It also includes W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Bell Hooks, Barbara Smith, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw, Huey Newton, and Bobby Seale. The ebook is available for free from Haymarket Books.

I.O.: You put this book together with two of the most prominent Black Marxists in the country, and most, if not all, of the featured writers are anti-capitalists. How did this collaboration come about?

C.K.: I’ve long admired Keeanga and Robin’s work as well as their uncompromising political analysis and understanding that Black liberation simply isn’t possible under capitalism. I think the anthology makes this argument quite well, and I hope it challenges readers to see that racism is not white supremacy’s only ingredient. White supremacy persists in part because of its relationship with capitalism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, and so on.

I.O.: What are you reading these days?

C.K.: No More Police: A Case for Abolition by Mariame Kaba and Andrea J. Ritchie. Abolition. Feminism. Now. by Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Erica R. Meiners, and Beth E. Richie.

Edit: I’ve put this in c/news because I originally found this out via an article on The Hill and I was going to post that, but then I thought I’ll just post the original interview instead. It has a lot more information.

  • MattsAlt [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Bad take, the whole idea of Marxism is applying it to your current conditions which in this case is black liberation in our current time.

    Lumping the analysis done by those who have studied Marx with an interest in black liberation with 'Western "Marxists"' that you're clearly using as a pejorative is lumping the most radical type of thinker in the US, black liberation groups, with a number of less serious, typically white groups.

    What is the point in being so dogmatic here that you're willing to sling mud at a widely known public figure talking about Marxism and anti-capitalism in an overwhelmingly good way because he wasn't anticapitalist enough or didn't explicitly say communism will win and lay out exactly how to accomplish that