August Nimtz on His New Book "'Black Marxism': A Marxist Critique"

In 1984, Professor August Nimtz was on leave from the University of Minnesota doing political work in Pittsburg that was of enormous importance to him. At that same time, he wrote a review of the recently published book Black Marxism by Cedric Robinson. More than 40 years later that review served as the catalyst for Nimtz's newest book "Black Marxism": A Marxist Critique.

Nimtz was critical of the book, which, at the time, did not receive much attention. He does not think that had anything to do with his review; rather, his theory is that it was because "Robinson's book was oblivious to what was happening in the real world of politics, especially with the Black struggle and developments in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Third World." To Nimtz, the book was an "apolitical, ahistorical treatment of what it called the 'Black Radical Tradition.'"

Another issue with Robinson's work that Nimtz missed in his original review but discovered when writing his new book was that Robinson never mentioned Malcolm X.

In 2017, more than 30 years after Black Marxism and Nimtz's review were published, the book began to gain a lot of attention when Historian Robin D.G. Kelly put the book on the map.

By this time, Nimtz had nearly forgotten about his review. He could not find it in his office and the only Google Scholar result was for a Portuguese translation. Luckily, he was able to receive a copy of his review through an interlibrary loan.

In searching for his own original review, he discovered how popular and influential Robinson's book had become. Nimtz started on a mission to reassert his position about the book.

40 Years of Work

While his book primarily utilizes Nimtz's scholarly work, he also includes some autobiography. He begins by explaining the context of what he is doing with the book and why it is that he and Robinson, who are age cohorts, came to such different conclusions.

A reprint of his 1984 review appears in the second chapter along with a preface. In that preface, Nimtz explains how the article got published by the Journal of African Marxists.

In addition to his 1984 review, "Black Marxism": A Marxist Critique is a collection of other articles Nimtz has written in the last 40 years that dispute various arguments Robinson makes. One such argument is that Marx was Eurocentric, which Nimtz argued against in a 2002 article.

Furthermore, the final chapter of Nimtz's book is an original essay that draws on all of his most recent scholarship, particularly his 2024 book, The Communist and the Revolutionary Liberal in the Second American Revolution: Comparing Karl Marx and Frederick Douglass in Real-Time, co-authored with Kyle Edwards. In Robinson's 2000 republication, he doubled down on his Eurocentric charge about Marx, and claimed he had nothing to say about slavery and did not relate to the abolitionist movement in the United States. Nimtz and Edwards offer compelling evidence that contradicts that charge, thus making Robinson's book the perfect foil.

To Nimtz, his new book is ultimately "an opportunity to straighten out the record, correct the record, and to note that indeed, contrary to what Robin Kelly said, there was a very early review of Robinson's book, and I'm the person who wrote that review."

Context is Critical

In the Age of Trump, Nimtz argues in the preface, the last thing we need is a book that is oblivious to political reality but pretends to be revolutionary. The book's popularity in the academic world "betrays the latter's all-too-often disconnect with the real world of politics."

Nimtz concludes the book with a discussion about an increasingly dangerous world owing to capitalist competition — not unlike the lead up to World War I — one in which nuclear weapons are available for what could be World War III. "The only force on the planet that can prevent the most lethal of those weapons, on U.S. soil, submarines, or, maybe, satellites, from being deployed, and thus, the likely end to our species as we know it is the U.S. proletariat," he says. "Robinson's book, which rejects the revolutionary potential of the working class, is, therefore, an obstacle to what is so sorely needed today: working class unity in all of its skin colors."