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An Anthropology of Marxism
Cedric Robinson was one of the most important and influential Black radical scholars of recent times, best known for the pathbreaking Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. In this late major work, he turns his attention to European radical traditions and explores a genealogy of emancipatory thought and practice that predates Marxism and capitalism itself, and which continues to guide struggles for liberation today. Accompanied by a foreword by H. L.T. Quan and a preface by Avery Gordon, this invaluable text reimagines the communal ideal from a broader perspective that transcends modernity, industrialisation and capitalism.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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540 people want to read
About the author
Cedric J. Robinson
10 books126 followersCedric Robinson was a professor in the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He headed the Department of Black Studies and the Department of Political Science and served as the Director of the Center for Black Studies Research.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 12, 2019
In his An Anthropology of Marxism, Robinson takes an expansive view of Western history to explore and, ultimately critique, the intellectual history of Marxist thought. By examining Western history and thought--from Antiquity to the era in which Marx was writing--Robinson points out the inherent contradictions, assumptions, and processes of naturalization of Marxist thought. In short, Robinson argues that though Marxist thought is a response to and critique of Western economic political and economic structures, Marxism itself is limited by the very logics it hopes to critique.
In his first chapter, Robinson outlines the three key elements that root and restrict the project of Marxism: English Political Economy, German Philosophy, and French Socialism. These specific elements root Marxism in "...a historical system which put the critique nurturing the political movement on empirical groundings, some of which were spurious" (11). In his vast second chapter, aptly titled "The Social Origins of Materialism and Socialism," Robinson outlines the different meanings for materialism (Aristotelian, Dualism/Manichaeism, Classical materialism, and Historical materialism) and outlines the ways in which socialist thought propagated in the thirteenth-century, without the "necessary preconditions" of industrialization and bourgeois society that Marx claims (59). In chapter three, "German Critical Philosophy and Marx," Robinson moves on to analyze Kant and Hegel as a means through which to analyze German philosophy's impact on Marx--in particular, "...the logical system of the dialectic, notions of History as Freedom and the proletariat as the Subject of History, as well as the more perverse contribution of a Eurocentric view of history" (60). The "universal subjectivity" or "unversiality" of the European subject, in particular, is key to Marx and Engel's project: "Hegel privileged Western civilization in hist historical philosophy, citing the absence of Reason elsewhere....[other societies] were doomed to arrested development or ahistoricality. For Hegel, ultimately, the historical development of the species-being was discoverable only in Europe" (82). These notions of the subject of history--a paradigmatically Western subject--would be absorbed into Marxism and Western socialist thought. Robinson's fourth chapter, "A Discourse on Economics," is the most-interesting, and links to Black Marxism in thinking through the production of the Western economic system. In this chapter, Robinson does a close reading of Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, reading the development of democracy in its classical form as itself producing, "...a growing dichotomy between activities which were public and collective, and those which were private and individual, and it accelerated the disparity between males and females" (92). This, then, becomes relevant not only in the difference-making project inherent in the production of divisions of labor that are valued or devalued--between private and public, women and men, slave and human (97), for example--but it also is relevant in the specific ways that Marx and Engels think of gendered labor. This "invisible" or devalued labor is defined by Marx and Engels as without historical agency, and representative of states of repression (110). It is in his final chapter, "Reality and its Representation," that Marx, now having written on the discursive origins and inherent contradictions of Marxist thought, turns to modes of resistance to power, a project he takes up in other books with more time and focus.
Robinson's An Anthropology of Marxism should be taught in every first-year seminar for political theorists. In rooting the canon in not only their historical conditions, but also in the histories that they maintain, Cedric Robinson offers a sharp critique of canonical thought, all the while offering us glimpses at what resistance to power--especially in cases outside of or unrecognizable by the canon--might look like. In critiquing the canon and its Western focus, Robinson does the covert (and sometimes overt) work of elevating the unseen, unrecognized, and minimized forms of rebellion/political thought. Ultimately, though focusing on Marxism and the production of the West, An Anthropology of Marxism remains a key example of the Black Radical Tradition.
In his first chapter, Robinson outlines the three key elements that root and restrict the project of Marxism: English Political Economy, German Philosophy, and French Socialism. These specific elements root Marxism in "...a historical system which put the critique nurturing the political movement on empirical groundings, some of which were spurious" (11). In his vast second chapter, aptly titled "The Social Origins of Materialism and Socialism," Robinson outlines the different meanings for materialism (Aristotelian, Dualism/Manichaeism, Classical materialism, and Historical materialism) and outlines the ways in which socialist thought propagated in the thirteenth-century, without the "necessary preconditions" of industrialization and bourgeois society that Marx claims (59). In chapter three, "German Critical Philosophy and Marx," Robinson moves on to analyze Kant and Hegel as a means through which to analyze German philosophy's impact on Marx--in particular, "...the logical system of the dialectic, notions of History as Freedom and the proletariat as the Subject of History, as well as the more perverse contribution of a Eurocentric view of history" (60). The "universal subjectivity" or "unversiality" of the European subject, in particular, is key to Marx and Engel's project: "Hegel privileged Western civilization in hist historical philosophy, citing the absence of Reason elsewhere....[other societies] were doomed to arrested development or ahistoricality. For Hegel, ultimately, the historical development of the species-being was discoverable only in Europe" (82). These notions of the subject of history--a paradigmatically Western subject--would be absorbed into Marxism and Western socialist thought. Robinson's fourth chapter, "A Discourse on Economics," is the most-interesting, and links to Black Marxism in thinking through the production of the Western economic system. In this chapter, Robinson does a close reading of Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae, reading the development of democracy in its classical form as itself producing, "...a growing dichotomy between activities which were public and collective, and those which were private and individual, and it accelerated the disparity between males and females" (92). This, then, becomes relevant not only in the difference-making project inherent in the production of divisions of labor that are valued or devalued--between private and public, women and men, slave and human (97), for example--but it also is relevant in the specific ways that Marx and Engels think of gendered labor. This "invisible" or devalued labor is defined by Marx and Engels as without historical agency, and representative of states of repression (110). It is in his final chapter, "Reality and its Representation," that Marx, now having written on the discursive origins and inherent contradictions of Marxist thought, turns to modes of resistance to power, a project he takes up in other books with more time and focus.
Robinson's An Anthropology of Marxism should be taught in every first-year seminar for political theorists. In rooting the canon in not only their historical conditions, but also in the histories that they maintain, Cedric Robinson offers a sharp critique of canonical thought, all the while offering us glimpses at what resistance to power--especially in cases outside of or unrecognizable by the canon--might look like. In critiquing the canon and its Western focus, Robinson does the covert (and sometimes overt) work of elevating the unseen, unrecognized, and minimized forms of rebellion/political thought. Ultimately, though focusing on Marxism and the production of the West, An Anthropology of Marxism remains a key example of the Black Radical Tradition.
August 11, 2025
If Anthropology of Marxism were a Netflix series, it would be the kind where you start episode one and within fifteen minutes, you realize you should’ve done the reading list they posted on Twitter first. Cedric J. Robinson is doing that thing where he dismantles the intellectual furniture of Marxism while also making you feel like you’ve accidentally wandered into a faculty lounge debate that’s been going on since 1973.
He’s not wrong about anything — but you may need a double espresso and a glossary the size of War and Peace to keep up.
The core pitch is actually spicy: Marx and Engels did not descend from the heavens in a puff of dialectical smoke to bestow socialism on the world. They were just two guys, in 19th-century Europe, who wrote some extremely compelling theory but also carried all the baggage of their time — Eurocentrism, philosophical tunnel vision, and a habit of making their personal framework sound like the eternal, one-true-science of liberation. Robinson’s whole mission is to remind us that socialism existed before them, outside them, and in forms that have nothing to do with the capitalist-industrial drama Marx fixated on.
It’s a bold move, because for a certain set of Marxists, implying that Marxism is anything less than the distilled truth of history is like telling a Tolkien superfan that hobbits are just made-up little guys. Robinson says: Sorry, but socialism didn’t start with Marx, and it’s arrogant to pretend it did. Cue the sound of Twitter leftists sharpening their reply-guy swords.
When Robinson is direct, he’s devastating. He’ll casually point out that Engels and Marx didn’t just find socialism; they took an existing, centuries-old impulse toward collective justice and branded it with their own philosophical style. They universalized their own provincial experience and — voilà — “scientific socialism” was born. It’s the intellectual equivalent of trademarking water.
The trouble is, Robinson’s prose sometimes makes Engels and Marx look accessible by comparison. You can tell he’s writing for an audience that already knows its dialectics from its historical materialism, its Second International from its Third. There are whole passages where the subtext feels like, “If you don’t get this, that’s on you for not being conversant in 19th-century German social theory.” Which is fine if you’re teaching a graduate seminar; less fine if you’re a curious reader who just wanted to understand Marxism without drowning in subordinate clauses.
There’s a lot of circling. Robinson loves a layered, refracted argument — he’ll take an idea, turn it over, polish one facet, show you how it reflects another idea, then point out that the reflection itself is suspect, then zoom out to the cultural anthropology of reflection as a metaphor. By page 80, you start to suspect you’ve wandered into an Escher staircase of critique. He’s not lost; you just can’t see the exit yet.
That’s where the roast really kicks in: Anthropology of Marxism is the kind of book that could have been a 180-page surgical strike, but instead it luxuriates in the long form. It’s not so much “cutting down” Marxism as it is “growing an elaborate topiary of critique” — beautiful, but you keep walking around it wondering if there’s a door somewhere.
His main argument is honestly essential. By framing socialism as a broad, historically diverse set of resistances rather than a single Eurocentric doctrine, Robinson forces you to rethink the entire origin story. Marxism, in his telling, is just one branch — influential, sure, but also historically contingent, rooted in a specific cultural moment. It’s a sobering reminder that political theories have origin myths too, and those myths can obscure as much as they reveal.
But here’s the rub: Robinson’s critique of Marxism’s exclusivity sometimes mirrors Marxism’s exclusivity. He’s so deep into the intellectual highlands that his readers often need a helicopter to join him. This is not “Socialism for Dummies.” This is “Socialism for People Who Can Recite the Footnotes of the Grundrisse From Memory.” It’s almost ironic: he’s unpacking Marxism’s inaccessibility using methods that are, themselves, a little… inaccessible.
And yet, the man can turn a phrase. Every so often, you get a sentence so perfectly sharp it feels like it could cut through a Lenin statue. He’ll take the idea of “scientific socialism” — the claim that Marxism is a universal, objective method — and show that it’s not just science, it’s also a cultural performance. What “destiny” did Marx and Engels attached to their theory? Robinson treats it like a political marketing campaign. Once you see it that way, you can’t unsee it.
Still, there are moments where you wish he’d stop admiring the architecture of his own argument and just get to the demolition. He has this habit of stacking reference upon reference, each one brilliant in isolation, but cumulatively exhausting. Imagine being handed a cocktail with the perfect balance of flavors, then the bartender keeps adding new ingredients because “it’s all relevant.” By the time you drink it, it’s technically a masterpiece, but you’re also drunk, confused, and wondering what the original point was.
That’s not to say it’s all intellectual showmanship. Robinson’s central point — that socialism is a human impulse as old as oppression itself, not a product of industrial capitalism — is liberating once you get it. It opens the door to thinking about liberation in non-industrial contexts, in non-European traditions, in ways that don’t have to pass through the Marx-Engels filter. It’s a corrective that the Left still needs, especially given how much of its rhetoric still clings to 19th-century industrial metaphors.
But man, the pacing. At times Anthropology of Marxism feels like one of those meticulously slow-burn art films where you admire the lighting and composition but also check your watch every twenty minutes. You could boil whole sections down to: “Socialism existed before Marx; he rebranded it; that rebranding is culturally biased; we should study socialism in the plural.” Instead, Robinson takes you on a scenic route through intellectual history, anthropology, and political theory, pausing to note every landmark along the way.
By the end, you can’t say you weren’t warned. This is a book for people who already have strong opinions about the First International. It’s for the reader who’s read Marx and the critiques of Marx and the critiques of the critiques. If you’re new to the whole thing, it’s like being invited to a championship chess match when you’ve only just learned the rules for how the pawns move.
And yet, you have to respect it. Robinson isn’t trying to give you “Marxism Lite.” He’s not here to make you comfortable. He’s here to pick apart one of the most influential ideologies in history and remind you that it’s not universal, not inevitable, and definitely not free from the cultural DNA of its creators. If he has to drag you through a thicket of theory to do it, so be it.
So here’s the verdict: Anthropology of Marxism is brilliant, infuriating, necessary, and niche. It will absolutely change how you think about Marxism — if you survive it.
It’s a work of intellectual deconstruction that makes you grateful for its insights while also longing for a translator who could put them into plain English. In the end, Robinson wins the argument, but whether you make it to the last page depends entirely on how much patience you have for dense, self-assured, grad-seminar prose.
If you’re in the mood to challenge your assumptions and flex your brain, dive in. If you just want a quick rethink of Marxism’s origin story, maybe wait for the podcast version.
He’s not wrong about anything — but you may need a double espresso and a glossary the size of War and Peace to keep up.
The core pitch is actually spicy: Marx and Engels did not descend from the heavens in a puff of dialectical smoke to bestow socialism on the world. They were just two guys, in 19th-century Europe, who wrote some extremely compelling theory but also carried all the baggage of their time — Eurocentrism, philosophical tunnel vision, and a habit of making their personal framework sound like the eternal, one-true-science of liberation. Robinson’s whole mission is to remind us that socialism existed before them, outside them, and in forms that have nothing to do with the capitalist-industrial drama Marx fixated on.
It’s a bold move, because for a certain set of Marxists, implying that Marxism is anything less than the distilled truth of history is like telling a Tolkien superfan that hobbits are just made-up little guys. Robinson says: Sorry, but socialism didn’t start with Marx, and it’s arrogant to pretend it did. Cue the sound of Twitter leftists sharpening their reply-guy swords.
When Robinson is direct, he’s devastating. He’ll casually point out that Engels and Marx didn’t just find socialism; they took an existing, centuries-old impulse toward collective justice and branded it with their own philosophical style. They universalized their own provincial experience and — voilà — “scientific socialism” was born. It’s the intellectual equivalent of trademarking water.
The trouble is, Robinson’s prose sometimes makes Engels and Marx look accessible by comparison. You can tell he’s writing for an audience that already knows its dialectics from its historical materialism, its Second International from its Third. There are whole passages where the subtext feels like, “If you don’t get this, that’s on you for not being conversant in 19th-century German social theory.” Which is fine if you’re teaching a graduate seminar; less fine if you’re a curious reader who just wanted to understand Marxism without drowning in subordinate clauses.
There’s a lot of circling. Robinson loves a layered, refracted argument — he’ll take an idea, turn it over, polish one facet, show you how it reflects another idea, then point out that the reflection itself is suspect, then zoom out to the cultural anthropology of reflection as a metaphor. By page 80, you start to suspect you’ve wandered into an Escher staircase of critique. He’s not lost; you just can’t see the exit yet.
That’s where the roast really kicks in: Anthropology of Marxism is the kind of book that could have been a 180-page surgical strike, but instead it luxuriates in the long form. It’s not so much “cutting down” Marxism as it is “growing an elaborate topiary of critique” — beautiful, but you keep walking around it wondering if there’s a door somewhere.
His main argument is honestly essential. By framing socialism as a broad, historically diverse set of resistances rather than a single Eurocentric doctrine, Robinson forces you to rethink the entire origin story. Marxism, in his telling, is just one branch — influential, sure, but also historically contingent, rooted in a specific cultural moment. It’s a sobering reminder that political theories have origin myths too, and those myths can obscure as much as they reveal.
But here’s the rub: Robinson’s critique of Marxism’s exclusivity sometimes mirrors Marxism’s exclusivity. He’s so deep into the intellectual highlands that his readers often need a helicopter to join him. This is not “Socialism for Dummies.” This is “Socialism for People Who Can Recite the Footnotes of the Grundrisse From Memory.” It’s almost ironic: he’s unpacking Marxism’s inaccessibility using methods that are, themselves, a little… inaccessible.
And yet, the man can turn a phrase. Every so often, you get a sentence so perfectly sharp it feels like it could cut through a Lenin statue. He’ll take the idea of “scientific socialism” — the claim that Marxism is a universal, objective method — and show that it’s not just science, it’s also a cultural performance. What “destiny” did Marx and Engels attached to their theory? Robinson treats it like a political marketing campaign. Once you see it that way, you can’t unsee it.
Still, there are moments where you wish he’d stop admiring the architecture of his own argument and just get to the demolition. He has this habit of stacking reference upon reference, each one brilliant in isolation, but cumulatively exhausting. Imagine being handed a cocktail with the perfect balance of flavors, then the bartender keeps adding new ingredients because “it’s all relevant.” By the time you drink it, it’s technically a masterpiece, but you’re also drunk, confused, and wondering what the original point was.
That’s not to say it’s all intellectual showmanship. Robinson’s central point — that socialism is a human impulse as old as oppression itself, not a product of industrial capitalism — is liberating once you get it. It opens the door to thinking about liberation in non-industrial contexts, in non-European traditions, in ways that don’t have to pass through the Marx-Engels filter. It’s a corrective that the Left still needs, especially given how much of its rhetoric still clings to 19th-century industrial metaphors.
But man, the pacing. At times Anthropology of Marxism feels like one of those meticulously slow-burn art films where you admire the lighting and composition but also check your watch every twenty minutes. You could boil whole sections down to: “Socialism existed before Marx; he rebranded it; that rebranding is culturally biased; we should study socialism in the plural.” Instead, Robinson takes you on a scenic route through intellectual history, anthropology, and political theory, pausing to note every landmark along the way.
By the end, you can’t say you weren’t warned. This is a book for people who already have strong opinions about the First International. It’s for the reader who’s read Marx and the critiques of Marx and the critiques of the critiques. If you’re new to the whole thing, it’s like being invited to a championship chess match when you’ve only just learned the rules for how the pawns move.
And yet, you have to respect it. Robinson isn’t trying to give you “Marxism Lite.” He’s not here to make you comfortable. He’s here to pick apart one of the most influential ideologies in history and remind you that it’s not universal, not inevitable, and definitely not free from the cultural DNA of its creators. If he has to drag you through a thicket of theory to do it, so be it.
So here’s the verdict: Anthropology of Marxism is brilliant, infuriating, necessary, and niche. It will absolutely change how you think about Marxism — if you survive it.
It’s a work of intellectual deconstruction that makes you grateful for its insights while also longing for a translator who could put them into plain English. In the end, Robinson wins the argument, but whether you make it to the last page depends entirely on how much patience you have for dense, self-assured, grad-seminar prose.
If you’re in the mood to challenge your assumptions and flex your brain, dive in. If you just want a quick rethink of Marxism’s origin story, maybe wait for the podcast version.
February 12, 2022
At first I was a little put off by Robinson's criticism of Marxism in this work, but by the end I found his "anthropology" of Marx, starting with proto-socialist movements in the Middle Ages—and further, with roots in antiquity—interesting, supurbly researched, and compellingly argued.
In the end I couldn't entirely agree with all of his conclusions—I think there were many important details skipped over here, and several others barely touched—but I appreciate his attempts to broaden the horizon of socialism. Also, I think this book brings together a lot of threads in a way which proves its standing in the literature of critical discourse.
In the end I couldn't entirely agree with all of his conclusions—I think there were many important details skipped over here, and several others barely touched—but I appreciate his attempts to broaden the horizon of socialism. Also, I think this book brings together a lot of threads in a way which proves its standing in the literature of critical discourse.
October 28, 2023
A very technical historical accounting of the philosophical roots of Marxism. The book includes some explanations of key parts of marxism like historical materialism, dialectical materialism and more. However, using the inspirations of marxist theory, like the works of Hegel, Kant and many more, for someone who hasn’t taken the time to deeply study marixism can have a strong introduction to key theoretical points.
April 7, 2022
Το φοβήθηκα λίγο το βιβλίο όταν το ξεκινούσα (άλλη μια κριτική του Μαρξισμού) αλλά με εξέπληξε ευχάριστα τελικά γιατί είναι μια πολύ κατατοπιστική μελέτη, με πλήθος ιστορικών στοιχείων από διάφορους τομείς (κοινωνιολογία, φιλοσοφία, πολιτική). Θέλει σίγουρα ξαναδιάβασμα.
October 10, 2019
This is an overall good introduction to Marxism for anthropologists. A limitation is certainly the age of the book as there have been further developments in Marxian anthropology since the 1980s. However, this is still good for understanding the historical and theoretical connections between Marxism as an ideological perspective and sociocultural anthropology as a social science.
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August 15, 2023
It is a really interesting reading and gives a lot of insight (sometimes too much) into the origins of Marxian thought. It will be loved by medieval history enthusiasts because the biggest part of the book is focused on this part of human history. It analyzes the way that feudalism, the Catholic Church and Medieval Europe worked and functioned.
December 28, 2020
Just as important as black Marxism
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews