#6- Toward a Theory of Mutual Comradeship
As my book Black Scare/Red Scare makes its way through the review process, I am beginning work on my second single-authored monograph, which deals with my theory of “mutual comradeship.” Just as my theorizing of racial capitalism has undergone several iterations, from superexploitation to modern U.S. racial capitalism to U.S. capitalist racist society, so too has my theory of mutual comradeship meandered, evolved, and developed over time.
In the first draft of a forthcoming edited collection chapter, “The Mutual Comradeship of W.E.B. Du Bois and Radical Black Women,” written in 2017, I wrote the following: “Mutual comradeship can be understood as an affective practice of freedom constituted by the enduring commitment to, advocacy for, and protection of those engaged in radical political struggle.”
In my journal article, “W.E.B. Du Bois in the Tradition of Radical Blackness: Radicalism, Repression, and Mutual Comradeship, 1930–1960,” published in 2018, I discussed mutual comradeship as “a political commitment necessarily prioritiz[ing] the racialized, colonized, and oppressed to expose statist imposition, not least because, historically, white supremacy compounded the effects of imperialism, colonialism, capitalist exploitation, and antiradical repression”; and “an ethical practice rooted in the tradition of radical blackness,” which “included protection from and defense against state repression; dedication of time and other resources to leftwing causes; mutual support for radical organizations, institutions, and periodicals; and the provision of jobs and income for persons whose politics deemed them undesirable as employees.”
In a 2019 talk for the Walter Rodney Foundation titled “Walter Rodney and the Tradition of Radical Blackness,” I defined mutual comradeship as: “[T]he ethical practice of collaboration, reciprocal care, and learning in community rooted in political work on behalf of the racialized, colonized, and oppressed. Mutual comradeship entails dedication of time and other resources to leftwing causes; mutual support for radical organizations, institutions, and periodicals; the provision of jobs and income for persons whose politics deemed them undesirable as employees; and protection from and defense against state repression. In this way, mutual comradeship is diametrically opposed to the individualist, exploitative, violent, and dehumanizing values that constitute racialized capitalist-imperialist society.”
Similarly, in a piece published shortly thereafter in Black Perspectives titled “Radical Blackness and Mutual Comradeship at 409 Edgecombe,” I employed this definition of mutual comradeship: “[T]he political and ethical practice of cooperative social activity based on shared values and a common conception of social transformation rooted in the eradication of white supremacy, capitalist exploitation, colonialism, imperialism, and perpetual war. Expectations and standards are set and maintained through consistent struggle, debate, organizing, and institution building. Such practice also demands courage—the willingness to place one’s self at risk for the betterment of others—to cultivate reciprocal care and concern. Additionally, mutual comradeship includes protection from and defense against state repression; dedication of time and other resources to left-wing causes; support for radical organizations, institutions, and periodicals; and the provision of jobs and income for persons whose politics have deemed them undesirable as employees. It also requires attention and responsibility to all stigmatized and oppressed groups, given their linked fates.”
Finally, in my most recent journal article, “Carole Boyce Davies and Claudia Jones: Radical Black Female Subjectivity, Mutual Comradeship, and Alternative Epistemology,” I build on all of the previous iterations to define mutual comradeship as:
Radical African descendants’ ethical practice of collaboration, reciprocal care, and learning in community rooted in political work on behalf of the racialized, colonized, and oppressed. It entails dedication of time, energy, and resources to radical causes; mutual support for radical organizations, institutions, and periodicals; the provision of jobs and income for persons whose politics deemed them undesirable as employees; and protection from and defense against state repression… [it] also entails the lateral and intergenerational practice of legacy maintenance—including archiving, commemoration, public remembrance, and truth-telling—predicated upon the enduring commitment to, advocacy for, and protection of those who, because of their radical praxis, are intentionally erased, obscured, distorted, displaced, silenced, and/or hidden from memory.
Clearly, I’ve been thinking about and working through this concept for a long time, and I’ve tweaked and modified the definition based on the subject—i.e., Walter Rodney, W.E.B. Du Bois, or Claudia Jones—the genre of writing, and where I was in my own thinking on the matter.
In my book length treatment of the subject, tentatively titled, Mutual Comradeship: The Ethical Praxis of Radical Blackness, I draw on correspondence, memoirs and autobiographies, political texts, and speeches, among other archival sources, to interrogate the multivalent ways that mutual comradeship was practiced between roughly 1930-1960. I envision each chapter explicating a different articulation of mutual comradeship, for example between married couples like Eslanda and Paul Robeson; between women comrades like Louise Thompson Patterson and Angie Dickerson; between W.E.B. Du Bois and his vast network as he encountered antiradical hostility from the NAACP, Atlanta University, and the U.S. State Department; between CPUSA members like Claudia Jones and Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., who defended each other in speeches and writings as they were targeted by anticommunist legislation; and in drafting, circulation, and defense of the We Charge Genocide petition.
In a practical sense, thinking through mutual comradeship feels particularly important in a moment when many (Black) leftwing organizations in the United States seem to be imploding or disintegrating from within. I am keen to draw lessons from radical Black folks who continually worked in and through organizations, built institutions, and sustained movements in the face of antiradical state repression, white supremacist violence, and very limited resources. And equally important, I am deeply interested in how these people cared for and protected each other, took seriously criticism and self-criticism, and understood the importance of remaining comrades even if they weren’t friends. To be sure, they vehemently disagreed and fiercely debated, but they seemed to have uncanny clarity about the difference between enemies and those with who they had a difference of perspective. And their day-to-day actions and relations followed from that invaluable distinction. They were disciplined, ethical, principled, and honest not only because it was required of them, but because they seemed to understand love—from agape to philia to eros—as a cornerstone of revolution.
It is these lessons, this Black-and-Red print (lol), I hope to vivify in Mutual Comradeship.