Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction: The Black Worker and Racist False Consciousness

Abstract

Abstract For W.E.B. Du Bois, the greatest factor preventing the unity of the working-class—both in the US and in the international scale—was racism. In this paper, I argue that Du Bois’s analysis of racism (along with the American assumption) is best understood as a form of what the Marxist tradition calls false consciousness—a comprehensive ideological operation whereby the dominant social order reflects itself in a topsy-turvy appearance integral for the reproduction of the existing state of affairs. A paradoxical situation arises—while united class struggle is stifled by these forms of false consciousness—only through class struggle can they be overcome. The destruction of false consciousness in general—and racist false consciousness in particular—is a process, not a singular spontaneous event. It is attained through the transformation in the mode of life one is engaged in when they dedicate their life to the struggle for the working-class’ conquest of political power. In the process of developing his analysis of the U.S. class struggle and the role of the struggle against racism within it, this paper argues that Du Bois grasps the pulse of the determinate forms the class struggle takes in the U.S. in a manner which prompts his labeling as the founder of ‘American Marxism.’