An Anthropology of Marxism

Cedric Robinson’s An Anthropology of Marxism was first published in 2001, but a second edition appeared in 2019 with a new preface from celebrity feminist scholar Avery F. Gordon and a new foreword by filmmaker and academic H. L. T. Quan. This new edition, which understandably pays tribute to the recently deceased author, disputes the idea that Karl Marx’s oeuvre marks the advent of socialism. Rather, Robinson concluded that Marxism rather has its roots in socialism and that socialism has galvanized the oppressed—slaves, peasants, women, workers, the unemployed—throughout the ages against manifold oppressors. The book traces Marxism to the socialist drive of Christianity but argues that the socialist component is not culture specific. While reducing Marx’s thinking to a discourse on economics indicates that Robinson underestimated Marx’s subversive clarity, ultimately, for Robinson, only socialism, not Marxism, can provide a humanist tool for universal freedom.