Black Communist Women’s Political Thought

Organize, Fight, Win: Black Communist Women’s Political Writing is a collection of writings by Black women on the communist left. While most of the pieces within are written and published between the 1930s and 1950s, writings from as early as the 1920s and as contemporary as the 1980s are included to paint a full picture of the long-standing tradition of socialist activism and political thought among the Black left in the United States. Charisse Burden-Stelley and Jodi Dean compile the works of over a dozen different writers, including thinkers such as Claudia Jones and Charlotta Bass, mapping the origins of Black communist thought and the key role Black women have played in its foundations and evolution.In the introduction, the authors lay out their goals for this project, what they feel are the key themes of the works compiled, and the critical necessity of this collection. In confrontation with the distortion of socialist history and radical politics, the authors position thinkers and organizers in the Black radical tradition directly in their socialist political contexts. This compilation is a rebuttal to mainstream ideas about the domination of white voices and political figures over communist tradition in the United States. Radical left politics, from the perspective of Burden-Stelley and Dean, are typically whitewashed in mainstream discourses. Organize, Fight, Win serves as an intervention that properly situates the intellectual work of Black women who dedicated their lives to communist politics in pursuit of collective liberation. The authors assert that anticommunism “is a key plank of white supremacy” (9), and this collection of texts is part of the effort to combat anticommunism and the limitations of Cold War mentalities. This is an effort relevant to our modern social and political climate, at a time when both liberal and conservative wings of the political landscape engage in anticommunist tropes; from discourse about “wokeism” and “political correctness,” to supposed white domination of leftist spaces, to mainstream proclamations against “cultural Marxism” and critical race theory (9).Utilizing this collection of works, the authors aim to inspire present-day activists and organizers in the Black liberation struggle. These writings, as individual pieces, are publicly available but not always accessible, nor are they typically put at the forefront of recommended works for new activists and organizers. The compilation of these writings not only preserves them among a tradition of political thought but also situates them within a relevant temporal context. Black communist women were dealing with specific material and historical conditions that directly influenced the types of struggles they engaged with. Not only that, but their struggles built upon the work of those who came before them. By organizing the book chronologically instead of thematically, the historical legacy of Black communists and their radical movements is made apparent.In this collection, Black communist women were not just making speeches, filing reports, and composing memoirs. As theorists, they were tackling ideas about superexploitation and an understanding of the plight of the workers in general, as well as the nuances of the struggle for Black workers in particular. These writers, such as Louise Thompson, formulated theories of triple exploitation; the exploitation of Black women as workers, as women, and as Black people (71). Black communist women were also developing theories of fascism, conceptualizing fascism in relation to their lived and material experiences, and proposing strategies to combat it. Specifically, they discussed how fascist violence not only existed among movements in Europe but could be found directly in domestic society, in the Jim Crow South, under segregation, in the lynch mobs and white supremacist violence impacting Black communities across the United States. Writers like Claudia Jones were connecting their work to the broader internationalist anticolonial struggle after World War II, positing that “the main danger of fascism to the world comes from the most colossal imperialist forces which are concentrated within the United States” (152). No longer was the United States fighting fascism. For these thinkers, Washington was a leading force for fascism’s permanence in society.The authors want to be clear that these writers were not operating from a feminist lens. The work of Black communist women does not fit neatly into mainstream liberal feminist analysis. For these writers and organizers, their politics were not exclusively based on gender equality or intersectionality; rather, their politics were rooted in the organization of the Black working class (12). Classifying these works as liberal or feminist would erase the raced and classed dimensions of Black women’s interactions with non-Black women (13).The book’s main strength is in its chronological organization, showing how these theorists built on one another. By doing so, the authors challenge the reduction of Black politics to mainstream liberal iterations, showcasing the long-standing tradition of radical Black thought in communist organizing. The authors also take their time between sections to highlight what they believe are the key points for different selections, framing relevance and usefulness of the text for the reader. While it is meant to serve as a work of preservation, and while the authors offer their ideas and syntheses at the beginning, further commentary could have been useful toward the end of the book. The authors do not necessarily provide their own anticapitalist critique, and there was further opportunity to relate these texts to contemporary issues in the conclusion.Overall, this compilation preserves the intellectual works of Black communist women in the twentieth century. It is a refutation of the whitewashing of the radical left and the limited scope of liberal feminist analysis. Black women are shown as vital to the communist movement, offering answers to questions that still confound or trouble “the Left” today. The book serves as something of a handbook, a trove of theories and ideas from political activists and thinkers who were tackling questions and concepts that are still relevant in the present day. This collection is worthwhile for any contemporary activist or organizer who traces their politics to this radical tradition, as well as any scholar pursuing inspiration or guidance from theorists who dedicated their lives to political theory and intellectual, as well as physical, confrontation with white supremacist and capitalist power structures.