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Radical Caribbean social thought: Race, class identity and the postcolonial
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Rhoda Reddock
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392114524507
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DOI: 10.1177/0011392114524507
and the postcolonial nation csi.sagepub.com
Rhoda Reddock
The University of the West Indies, Trinidad and Tobago
Abstract
The Caribbean, that first place of significant European conquest, colonialism, large-scale
transportation and varying levels of forced or coerced migration and labour, provided
the impetus for many ‘race theories’ of the 18th and 19th centuries. This article explores
the engaged scholarship of radical intellectuals of the English-speaking Caribbean
emerging from this racially defined colonial context that emerged over the early to
mid-20th century and produced counter-narratives of ‘postcolonial’ and ‘anti-colonial’
thought. With a focus on the radical pan-Africanist, socialist and neo-Marxist traditions
it locates elements of radical Caribbean social thought within a larger radical global
intellectual tradition and as a precursor in many ways to today’s critical race theories/
studies. It focuses on particular themes and methodologies that characterize this work
and writing as well as its regional and international impact. Also, the significance of
women’s rights and ‘gender’ issues in this tradition is examined; both by its attention to
the situation of women in writing and activism and through the important work of key
women in these movements. Finally, the article makes a call for a re-engagement with
this earlier radical tradition contributing to what Michael Burawoy refers to as public
sociology, i.e. a sociology in dialogue with audiences outside the academy while drawing
on the traditions of critical sociology.
Keywords
Caribbean, neo-Marxist, pan-Africanist, radical social thought, women’s rights
Corresponding author:
Rhoda Reddock, Centre for Gender and Development Studies, The University of the West Indies,
St. Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago.
Email: reddockr@gmail.com

494 Current Sociology Monograph 2 62(4)
In his 2010 review of Caribbean sociology, Paget Henry describes it as experiencing ‘an
unmistakeable crisis of normal knowledge production’ (Henry, 2010: 156). The current
phase he argues varies greatly from earlier stages of intellectual rigour, creativity and cri-
tique characterized by the work of eminent Caribbean sociological and economic thinkers
across the first 70 years of the 20th century. One reason for this Henry suggests is the absence
of ‘deep ongoing feedback relations with the regional intellectual tradition’, although he
suggests this may be changing. Caribbean sociology, he surmises, ‘is only now awakening
to the full potential of this local tradition’ and ‘finally becoming aware of the distinct history,
the record of achievements, and primary concerns of this tradition’ (Henry, 2010: 156). The
reliance on the Western intellectual tradition and the way over time it excluded or coopted
many pillars of Caribbean and Southern theory more generally, he concludes, ‘is still too
strong for this regional sociological tradition to emerge in all of its clarity, distinctiveness,
coherence, and creativity’ (Henry, 2010: 156). While this is beginning to change, in many
respects, this is still the case as new generations of Caribbean students, scholars and citizens
have been cut off from this earlier radical tradition of social thought.
Sociology, in contrast with anthropology, has also often been conceptualized as the
study of industrial or ‘modern’ societies. Indeed, in the Netherlands, until the 1990s, in
many universities, anthropology was known as Niet-Westerse Sociologie.1 At the University
of the West Indies until recently, anthropology, perceived of as a colonial and colonizing
discipline, was not introduced at its inception, while sociology was (Reddock, 1998: 467).
Since that time, global anthropology has taken on board the colonial critique and has turned
its ethnographic lens on modern (industrial) and ‘Northern’ societies, and on itself in a way
that sociology is only just beginning to do. This article, therefore, is in conversation with
recent scholarship on the marginalization at best, or exclusion at worst, of ‘the postcolonial’
and of ‘Southern theory’ (Bhambra, 2007; Connell, 2010; Magubane, 2013) from main-
stream sociological thought and praxis; and of sociology’s shift from being a mega-
discipline connected to history, political science, economics and psychology to one focused
on ‘social relations’, ‘groups’, forms of association and human relations (Connell, 2010:
21); features which characterize sociology in the North as well as in the South.
In this article I explore early race thinking in the English-speaking Caribbean and the
tradition of radical scholar-activists that emerged over the early to mid-20th century as a
counterweight to the colonial realities of white supremacy, class warfare and the coloni-
ality of power. In particular I weave a web of intersectional knowledge and experience,
focusing on specific themes and methodologies that characterize their work and writing
as well as their local and regional impact. I excavate the contours of this Caribbean intel-
lectual tradition as it evolved by examining the ways a number of prominent and lesser-
known Caribbean-born scholar-activists attempted to grapple with the problems of race,
class and identity. In doing so, they engaged in the construction of counter-narratives of
modernity, critiquing and disrupting as they did, the universality and dominance of
Eurocentric intellectualism and many of its sociocultural and economic institutions.
By locating radical Caribbean social thought within a larger radical global intellec-
tual tradition we can begin to see the former as a precursor, in many ways, to today’s
critical race theories/studies (CRT) which emerged in the early 1980s among legal
scholars in the USA. Interestingly, this is the same time period in which Henry laments
the decline of Caribbean radical thought. Ideas now incorporated in concepts such as

Reddock 495
‘intersectionality’, ‘critical whiteness studies’, ‘institutionalized racism’, ‘reparations’,

‘postcolonial theory’ and ‘racial liberalism’ can all be identified in Caribbean radical
thought but they only became sociologically mainstream when adopted and applied to
North American experiences. According to one source, critical race theories (CRT):
… combine progressive political struggles for racial justice with critiques of the conventional
legal and scholarly norms which are themselves viewed as part of the illegitimate hierarchies
that need to be changed. Scholars, most of whom are themselves persons of color, challenge the
ways that race and racial power are constructed by law and culture.2
This same quote could easily be applied to the realities of radical Caribbean social
thought in the first half of the 20th century, 50 years before the emergence of CRT.
This article explores the engaged scholarship of English-speaking Caribbean intel-
lectuals with a focus on radical pan-Africanist, socialist traditions, neo-Marxist thought
and Caribbean feminism. In many ways all these strands overlapped and fed into each
other in the ‘deep ongoing feedback relations’ Henry states Caribbean radical thought
has now lost. The strands had significant common interests and conflation. The extreme
racism and social and economic inequalities of the period meant that issues of race and
class had to be addressed, although to varying degrees and in different ways. As CLR
James wrote from a Caribbean perspective in the Black Jacobins, ‘to think of imperial-
ism in terms of race is disastrous. But to neglect the racial factor as merely incidental is
an error only less grave than to make it fundamental’ (1963: 283). This article also high-
lights the recognition of ‘gender’ and feminist issues among these scholar/activists, both
by attention to the situation of women in their writings and the important involvement of
key women as intellectuals and activists in these movements. Another commonality of
many of the thinkers I discuss was the importance of the arts in their work. Some were
poets, novelists or playwrights, while popular cultural forms like carnival and parades
became expressions of community and reflections of the Caribbean penchant for public
performance, pageantry and spectacle (Ford-Smith, 2004). Many recognized the impor-
tant role of journalism so periodicals and newspapers were important mechanisms of
literary and political expression as well as intellectual analysis.
It is at the nexus of the decimation of the indigenous peoples of the region; the slave
experience as an economic and cultural system; the confrontation between Africa and
Europe in the Americas; the impact of new migrant communities from Asia and the
Middle East; and diasporic experiences in North America, Europe, Africa and Central
America that we can locate the profusion of social thought on race, class and the colonial
condition which would emerge in the late 19th-century Caribbean and continue into the
early to mid-20th century. This was fuelled by the aspirations of an emerging educated
middle- and lower middle-class group who, despite their reduced circumstances, were
properly trained in the ways of colonial arts and letters.
Diaspora, transnationalism and the Caribbean intellectual

A central defining characteristic of the Caribbean region then has been its early forma-
tion as a diasporic society, albeit a forced one. I argue, like many others (James, 1998:

Torres-Saillant, 2006), that Caribbean social thought emerged out of the interactions
and transnational connections of Caribbean peoples with their ‘others’. In the post-
emancipation period these diasporic connections would expand with the addition of
Asian and South Asian (locally referred to as Chinese, Javanese and Indian) indentured
labourers and other newer, smaller populations from Europe and the Middle East. This
would continue to characterize Caribbean life and significantly shape its social thought
over the 20th century. Moreover, many of the leading scholars and scholar-activists like
CLR James and Claudia Jones migrated to the United States, Britain or France. In some
instances, such as Oliver Cromwell Cox, their links with the region were minimal,
although their formative experiences influenced their approaches and perspectives. In
other cases, the contact was regular and continuous and some returned to the region in
their later years after being educated or living abroad. These transnational linkages with
other diasporic communities, the metropolitan intelligentsia including anti-colonial
activists, as well as local or national intellectuals and movements, all influenced their
work in this area.
This raises the question – how do we understand the Caribbean intellectual? By
what criteria, therefore, could they be described as Caribbean or as intellectuals? In
his discussion of the secular intellectual, Said (1996) draws our attention to the
Eurocentrism of much work on intellectuals (Gouldner, 1979; Joll, 1961). Each for-
mation, he argues – geographic, historical or political – creates its own intellectuals
resulting in much global diversity. This includes, he noted, ‘those who live in exile
between two or more worlds as cosmopolitans or expatriates’ (Said, 1996: 15), a
group recently explored by Pankraj Mishra in relation to Asia (Mishra, 2012), which
has been particularly important for the Caribbean region based on its history and con-
tinued trajectory of migration and transnationalism. Winston James notes the clear
differences that existed in the ‘articulation of race’ within the Caribbean and between
the Caribbean and North America. For example he paid particular attention to the
distinctions between Hispanic Caribbeans and Anglophone Caribbeans in the US and
between Anglophone Afro-Caribbeans and African Americans in the United States
(James, 1998: 102–103).
Gramsci notes further that ‘Every social group … creates together with itself,
organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an
awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and politi-
cal fields’ (Gramsci, 2003 [1971]: 5). This is supported by Said when he highlights the
special relationship between the critical or engaged intellectual and the history and
politics of the time; a role that goes beyond the actual profession or disciplinary
responsibility of that individual (Said, 1996: 19–20). In many ways those discussed in
this article would be classed as ‘organic’ intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, distin-
guished less by their profession or job but by ‘their function in directing the ideas and
aspirations of the class [or group], especially the latter, to which they organically
belong’ (Gramsci, 2003 [1971]: 3). As argued by Brym however, these intellectuals
were embedded in social networks – local, regional and international – whose ties to
various classes and other collectivities such as ‘race’, gender or national/regional iden-
tity shifted over time and helped account for their ideologies and political allegiances
(Brym, forthcoming; 2010 [1980]).

Reddock 497
Pan-Africanism and radical pan-Africanism

Pan-Africanism has been a consistent thread in radical Caribbean social thought through-
out the 20th century. It is difficult to come up with a single pan-African ideology,
although it can be said at minimum to incorporate a concern with the plight of persons of
African descent and an interest in the progress of Africa. Since its early conceptualiza-
tion by Trinidadian Henry Sylvester-Williams, the concept of pan-Africanism has under-
gone many changes and adaptations over the centuries in keeping with the objective
conditions of people of African descent in Africa and the Western world (Campbell,
1994: 285–286). This moves it away from being a fixed solidified notion to a diverse
collectivity of broad social and political movements, with spokespersons at various
points in history who shaped the discourse.
Marcus Mosiah Garvey, Jamaican philosopher, thinker and activist, is globally
renowned in the Western Hemisphere as the leading pan-Africanist of all time. His
United Negro Improvement Association African Communities League (UNIA) was
founded in Jamaica in 1914 with his first wife Amy Ashwood Garvey, a major pan-
Africanist intellectual and feminist herself. With branches throughout the Caribbean,
North and South America the reach of the movement was extensive with influences
reaching into Africa (Martin, 1983a: 18, 59–61). A number of lesser-known thinkers and
activists also contributed philosophically to pan-Africanist thought in the late 19th and
early 20th century including Trinidadian John Jacob Thomas, St. Thomas born Edward
Blyden, Jamaican Theophilis Scholes and Guyanese Norman Cameron (Smith, 2002:
xvi) as well as Bahamian-born and Jamaican resident Robert Love. Garvey’s movement
would have significant membership in numerous countries worldwide including the
United States. His ideas would also influence anti-colonial developments in Africa. Tony
Martin notes that a number of African leaders claimed to have been influenced by Garvey.
Kwame Nkrumah for example identified Garvey’s Philosophy and Opinions as a major
influence, as did Nnamdi Azikiwe, first governor-general of independent Nigeria. He
also claims a Garveyite influence on the African National Congress of South Africa
(Martin, 1983a: 18). Suriname-born thinkers and activists, like Otto Huiswood and
Hermina Dumont-Huiswood, would also have been critical to the Harlem Renaissance as
documented by Moore Turner (2005).
Pan-Africanism is also associated with a series of international congresses of which
the 1945 Congress, which included many of Africa’s future leaders and is perceived as
a precursor of the independence of Africa, is considered the most important. Interestingly
two of the main organizers of this conference were diasporic Caribbeans – George
Padmore and Amy Ashwood Garvey – and based on his own intervention WEB Du Bois
would become involved (Adi, 1995: 17–18). The socialist orientation of Padmore
would ensure that labour and trade unions had significant representation at this meet-
ing. Here we see the beginning of a radical pan-Africanism or pan-African liberation
(Campbell, 1994) that would continue into the 20th century. Yet Marcus Garvey,
undoubtedly the most important pan-Africanist leader of all time, would not be counted
in that tradition. Garvey’s message was an exhortation to self-pride and self-actualization,
organization and action and a formidable challenge to white supremacy. Like many
cultural nationalists his was a call for justice, equality and liberation but often using the

yardstick of the colonizer. He recognized the importance of economic independence

and embarked on a number of economic undertakings such as the Black Star Shipping
Line (Martin, 1983a, 1983b).
Race and class: Radical anti-capitalism/anti-imperialism

Twentieth-century Caribbean Marxism, anti-imperialist and neo-Marxist thought would
also be characterized by pan-Africanist or anti-racist consciousness. What did Oliver
Cromwell Cox, CLR James, George Padmore and Walter Rodney have in common other
than their birth and early formation in the Caribbean? This would include their exposure
to a sound colonial education, at least to high school level, and the resulting competence
in a recognized colonial language; the experience of growing up in a racialized, colonial
socioeconomic milieu where colour and phenotype were important markers of status but
with strong traditions of political or labour activism; a majority consciousness as
described by Winston James, i.e. ‘a familiarity in negotiating a world where they are the
majority of the population and not a minority’ (James, 1998: 51); and diasporic and trans-
national connections with the metropole, the colonial world and their own countries and
regions of origin. All of them were published authors and would also have been associ-
ated with social or revolutionary movements, hence my designation of them as
scholar-activists.
Interestingly Claudia Jones, CLR James, Oliver Cromwell Cox and George Padmore3
were all born in Trinidad and Tobago but spent much of their adult life in the USA and/
or Britain. Although just one or two generations out of slavery, these persons represent a
small early Black intelligentsia that benefitted both from the elite colonial education
system as well as Trinidad and Tobago’s tradition of socialist and radical organizing
(Reddock, 1994; Rennie, 2011 [1974]). The personal confrontation of Black male youth
with this elite system in what would have then been predominantly ‘white’ schools must
have also contributed towards their radicalism as well as a certain degree of adaptation.
What was common in later life would be their critical engagement with communism as
it existed at that time. For them it was necessary to modify mainstream Marxist and com-
munist thought to engage with issues of ‘race’, ‘racism’ and the colonial condition and,
although to a lesser extent, women’s rights. While it would be true to say that they all
remained socialist-oriented to their deaths, this would be in ways of their own making.
The recent work of Carole Boyce-Davies (2008, 2011a) has established Claudia Jones
as an important thinker and intellectual.4 Prior to this work, she was hardly known in the
US although better recognized in Britain where she ended her days.5 This work also
brings to light the other examples of Black communist women and men in the US.6 In
many ways the Communist Party education programmes provided an educational and
intellectual space to the working classes and people of colour, many of whom were
unable to attend university.
Although both James and Padmore attended prestigious secondary schools, unlike
James, Padmore would continue to Howard University and involvement in anti-imperialist
and pan-African activism and join the US Communist Party,7 quickly becoming one of
its leading ideologues. Robin Worrell describes Padmore as a pan-African communist
arguing that ‘Padmore joined the Communist party because he felt that this organisation

Reddock 499
would better facilitate the liberation of all persons of African descent from the savaging
of capitalism, colonialism and racial discrimination’ (Worrell, 2009: 24–25). In 1933 he
would break with the Communist Party and in 1956 would publish possibly the most
famous of his many writings, Pan-Africanism or Communism? The Coming Struggle for
Africa. Padmore and James would eventually meet in London to which James migrated
somewhat later in 1932. Both of them at that time would be having their own battles with
communism – James based on his Trotskyite critique and Padmore his pan-Africanist
critique. This would be the basis of the ideological schism between them that strength-
ened with James’s move to the US in 1938 after Padmore had departed from there
(Bogues, 2008). Claudia Jones too would make her critique of the US Communist Party’s
ideology and praxis, especially demanding greater attention to the situation of Black
women, as will be discussed later in this article. But she would also write and reflect on
race and human rights, art and personal freedom, and US racism more generally.
A plethora of published commentaries on James have emerged (Bogues, 1997; Buhle,
1997; Henry and Buhle, 1992; Nielsen, 1997; Rosengarten, 2007; St Louis, 2007;
Worcester, 1996). Yet it has been observed by some that ‘few defining figures of the 20th
century are as famous and as unknown’ (Craven, cited in Høgsbjerg, 2009: 221). He was
in many ways an organic intellectual; one of the most well-known intellectuals of the
Caribbean region but one who acknowledged his debt to British literature, especially
Shakespeare and Thackeray. His early 1930s political essays focus on local and regional
themes, e.g. The Case for West Indian Self Government (1933). But later in that decade
his work would take on a more internationalist focus as a neo-Marxist scholar and critic
of Soviet communism, as in his 1937 publication World Revolution. In 1938 he would
publish the play Toussaint L’Overture and his historical epic The Black Jacobins, seen as
a masterpiece of historical scholarship which analyses and documents the 1789 Haitian
Revolution (Grimshaw, 1991).8 This work, it has been argued, provides an analysis for
the emergence of social classes and patterns of intersectionality within the plantation
economy in a manner uniquely Caribbean that feeds into the stratification model of the
Caribbean today.9 Robin Kelley suggests that this shift towards pan-Africanism was
fuelled by the failure of Western countries to defend Ethiopia in face of the Italian inva-
sion in 1935 (Kelley, 1999: 1070–1071). Nevertheless, while James held to the basic
Marxist position on the relationship of class and ‘race’ he presented many alternatives to
European Marxist formulations.
Oliver Cromwell Cox, on the other hand, also a Marxist intellectual, was very much
outside the mainstream of political organizing. There is no evidence so far that I could
find linking him to James, Padmore or Jones despite their common origins in Trinidad
and Tobago, although they were in the US at the same time. Yet Robinson links Cox with
James, Padmore, Du Bois, Eric Williams and Richard Wright as representing the first
phase of a radical pan-Africanist tradition that emerged after 1930 (Robinson, 1983:
446–447). Cox was closest to the true scholar. He completed his higher education in the
US with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago. He has been characterized
as both a Marxist and an independent thinker who produced five major works: Caste,
Class, and Race (1948), The Foundations of Capitalism (1959), Capitalism and American
Leadership (1962), Capitalism as a System (1964) and Race Relations: Elements and
Social Dynamics (1976). While his early works focused more on analyses of core

sociological concepts, in his later works, he presents important critiques of capitalism as

well as some of Marx’s core concepts.
Like the other Caribbean-born anti-racist, neo-Marxist thinkers, Cox sought to craft a
framework for incorporating ‘race’ more centrally into Marxist thought. It is generally
believed that Cox was a theorist ‘before his time’ and as noted by one source ‘Oliver C.
Cox could, like DuBois, be described as a “forgotten sociologist” ’ (Smith and Killian,
cited in Lemelle, 2001: 325). In his first and most influential book, Caste, Class, and Race,
Cox begins with a clear definitional discussion of all three concepts. It is possible that his
background in multi-ethnic Trinidad and Tobago with its significant Indian-descended
population provided the impetus for his extensive and detailed analysis of the Hindu caste
system and detailed exploration of the concepts of class and race.10 The reason for this
analysis becomes clear near the end of this book when he refutes Gunnar Myrdal’s use of
caste as an explanatory mechanism to understand race discrimination and exploitation in
the USA in An American Dilemma, Myrdal’s classic and historical work. Cox argued that
the tendency at that time to use caste as a surrogate for ‘race’ was to ignore and undermine
the socioeconomic underpinnings of the US racial system (Cox, 1959 [1948]: 520).
According to Celarent this act would doom Caste, Class, and Race to the invisibility
it experienced for many years. Unlike Myrdal’s book, it was virtually ignored with some
slight attention in the 1970s and 1980s period of Black radicalism, and was visible
mainly in the race/ethnic relations journals and discourses (Celarent, 2010: 1668). It was
not until 2006 that ‘Cox was finally recognised as one of the founding fathers of histori-
cal sociology and one of the major American theorists of race relations’. ‘Caste, Race,
and Class is now recognised as one of the most important works of midcentury sociology
in the United States’ (Celarent, 2010: 1664).11
Cox acknowledged the existence of ethnic groups and ethnic relations among social
groups based on caste, class or culture which could be antagonistic and competitive
although not necessarily so. Similarly, Cox the sociologist was clear that ‘race’ had no
biological basis and was indeed a social construct (Cox, 1959: 319). He illustrated clearly
the circumstantial ways in which ideas of ‘race’ were constructed, so that someone could
be defined as ‘white’ in Cuba but as ‘negro’ in America. He noted further that unlike the
biologist or social anthropologist12 who presumed that ‘race was real’, the sociologist is
interested in what meanings and definitions a society gives to certain social phenomena
and situations (Cox, 1959: 319). In many ways he echoed sentiments normally attributed
to Barthes and others’ work on ethnic groups and more in line with thinking of the late
20th- and early 21st-century social constructionism. In his later works on capitalism,
such as The Foundations of Capitalism (1959) and Capitalism as a System (1964), he
veers towards a different world system perspective of capitalism and it is this which puts
him in opposition to Marx’s conceptual scheme (Hunter and Abraham, 1987: xl, cited in
Lemelle, 2001: 335) and possibly closer to the 20th-century world systems, dependency
and plantation schools of Latin American and Caribbean development economics.
A late-20th-century heir of the Caribbean radical intellectual tradition would be
Walter Rodney. Born in Georgetown in what was then British Guyana, Rodney can be
distinguished from the thinkers and scholar-activists who went before him in some dis-
tinctive ways. First, Rodney graduated from the University of the West Indies (UWI) in
1963 during a period of intense anti-racist and anti-imperialist consciousness and

Reddock 501
activism among students (Lewis, 1998: 13–29). Second, Rodney’s diaspora was Africa.
In London for postgraduate studies, he interfaced with many Caribbean and international
intellectuals, including CLR James, who had an important influence on his development
(Young, 2008: 491).
Rodney’s pan-Africanist and Marxist race/class analysis complicated the normative
‘Black–White’ formulation. In many ways this would pre-date some of Magubane’s cri-
tiques of the limitations of US sociology of ‘race’ and its failure to integrate postcolonial
and more global understandings (Magubane, 2013: 83). His perspective on pan-Africanism
was one which stressed the need to examine the class nature of ‘power’ in Africa and the
Caribbean ‘to develop a perspective that was anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, and that
speaks to the exploitation and oppression of all peoples’ (Dupuy, 1996: 117). He rejected
North Atlantic notions of ‘race’ as useless in Africa, the Caribbean and in Guyana where
an ‘African ruling class’ monopolized power. Pan-Africanism, he argued, had to move
from a purely race-based perspective to one where class was central. Rodney’s work, like
that of other non-metropolitan-based scholars, would not take as its starting point the US
or British race contexts.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa can safely be seen as Rodney’s most important
work. In his introduction to the 1983 edition, Robert Shenton noted his own frustration
that this book, a major breakthrough in the study of African history, had been largely
ignored by the African history establishment. He noted that ‘it was as if the political and
scholarly importance of the book could be killed by a conspiracy of silence and polite
laughter in University corridors and “Africanist” conferences’ (in Rodney, 1983: ii). For
his part Rodney identified his concerns in this publication as deriving from a concern
with the contemporary African situation and ‘a search for an understanding of what is
now called “underdevelopment” in Africa’ (Rodney, 1983: 7). This book presented an
important critique of the notions of development and underdevelopment which continue
to be relevant. While locating his pan-Africanism within the tradition of Garvey,
Padmore, Du Bois and Hunton,13 and acknowledging the racism of European workers,
Rodney was also clear that African workers must find their place as part of the interna-
tional working-class movement (Rodney, 1983: 304–306).
However, Rodney’s views changed through his experience with an oppressive Afro-
Guyanese-led government and disappointment with the nationalist governments of Africa.
In his last work, A History of the Guyanese Working People: 1881–1905, written in the
context of the African–Indian (South Asian) ethnic polarization that continued to charac-
terize Guyana, and published posthumously, Rodney proposed a non-reductionist class
theory of race or ethnicity exploring alliances between the various working-class ethnic
groups. In so doing Rodney moved radical race thinking beyond the discourse on ‘Black’
and ‘White’ to include relationships among people of colour, reflecting a larger turning
point for Caribbean scholarly engagement with ‘race’ and ethnicity (Dupuy, 1996: 114).14
Sex, race and class: Gender and feminism in early 20th-

century radical Caribbean social thought
While some have critiqued ‘Black internationalism’ for the absence of women’s voices
(Stephens, 2005), this is a largely incorrect position. I have argued elsewhere for a West

Indian pan-Africanist feminist consciousness that to varying degrees characterized the

politics of male and female leaders in the first half of the 20th-century (Reddock, 2002).
This was true for both pan-Africanism in its purer cultural nationalist sense and to a
lesser extent also true of the more Marxist-oriented thinkers. It is significant that many
addressed issues of gender, even if only briefly, at a time when women and gender as
categories were largely excluded from analysis of race and class. This is a thread that
runs through some of their works, although sometimes treated almost as incidental to
race, class and identity formation.
In this vein, Kamugisha (2011) argues that gender is a theme which permeates CLR
James’s texts and suggests that there is genuine concern about women and their relation-
ship to and place in the new society James envisioned. He refers to James’s fictional
work, e.g. his short stories and novel Minty Alley, where poor women rather than men are
the main characters, constantly upstaging the male characters with their strengths in the
midst of a world of colonial rule and their adverse living conditions. Kamugisha also
refers to James’s correspondence with Constance Webb in the 1940s on ‘The Woman
Question’ and his celebrated though criticized essay on black women writers published
in the 1980s (Kamugisha, 2011: 78).
In his discussion of caste in Caste, Class, and Race, Cox presented what could be
described as a feminist-Marxist analysis of women’s location in the caste system and the
patriarchal Brahmanic family. While some of his analysis could be described today as
culturally insensitive, it supports many of the discourses of late 20th-century feminist
anthropology, and certainly some of my own work on hypergamy and hypogamy in inter-
ethnic/inter-racial unions and relationships which was developed independently of Cox
(see Reddock, 2014). But his analysis is not limited to India and at times extends to other
patriarchal and socially stratified societies, where control over marriage, and by exten-
sion over women, undergirds systems of hierarchy and general inequality. He argues for
example that:
H. H. Risley and E. A. Gait conclude that ‘marriage is the most prominent factor in the caste
system.’ From the same point of view, however, marriage is also the most prominent factor in
the social-class system, or the race system, or any other system of group isolation. … The
greater the disparity in social-class status, the more rigid the sanctions against intermarriage.
Endogamy, then, is a sort of fence behind which a variety of social interests and types of social
organization may be protected. (Cox, 1959: 54)
Rodney, too, in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, drew attention to the exploitation
of women by men in polygamous relationships and the ‘capture of their labour power’
which was usually accompanied by oppression. But he also noted a counter-tendency to
ensure women’s dignity, and cited instances where women were able to exercise power
and leadership. These rights and privileges would disappear under colonialism (Rodney,
1983: 247–248), something which would be documented by feminist anthropologists of
the 1970s and 1980s.
Women were central to the pan-Africanist project from its inception. Anna Julia
Cooper and Anna Jones were among the US delegation which included WEB Du Bois to
the 1900 first pan-African Conference in London. Sylvester-Williams himself attributed

Reddock 503
his consciousness of pan-Africanism to a woman (Hooker, 1975). Garvey incorporated

women in his organizations in significant numbers and his two wives have often been
described as important activists in their own right. The structure of the UNIA, although
patriarchal, ensured that women were represented at all levels with special executive
positions and women-only sections such as the Black Cross Nurses (Reddock, 2002).
Boyce-Davies suggests that ‘generations of twentieth century feminists would con-
tinue the radical analysis of patriarchy, gender ideologies and heterosexism’ in the work
of early women intellectuals (2011a: 8). This would include Claudia Jones and Amy
Ashwood Garvey,15 two early 20th-century Caribbean feminist thinkers and activists.
Jones, according to Boyce-Davies, ‘consistently presented herself as “a Negro woman
Communist of West Indian descent”, and identified women’s rights as a focus of her
work along with the fight against Jim Crow racism, for unity of workers and struggles to
change US foreign and domestic policy’ (2008: 33). In her classic essays ‘An end to the
neglect of the problems of negro women’ and ‘We seek full equality’, Jones inserts the
issues of ‘race’ and ‘gender’ into Communist Party debates. Writing on the specific situ-
ation of Black working-class women in New York: ‘Claudia challenged the Communist
Party to take more serious interest in the cause of Black women in all aspects of the
struggle for peace, civil rights and economic security’ (Boyce-Davies, 2008: 40). In so
doing, Boyce-Davies argues, Jones is a precursor of the notion of the ‘superexploitation’
of Black women as workers, as ‘Negroes’ and as women and defines them as the most
exploited section of the entire population. Boyce-Davies observes: ‘Using the economic
indicators of her time, such as those from the Department of Labor, Jones was able to
identify the wage rates of black women in relation to other women and men and found
them at the lowest end of the pay scale’ (Boyce-Davies, 2008: 41).
Boyce-Davies goes further to link this analysis of the superexploited Black woman,
e.g. domestic workers, with that of Oliver Cromwell Cox in Caste, Class, and Race on
subsistence wages under capitalism (Boyce-Davies, 2008: 42–43). Interestingly, the
nominal reason for Jones’s second arrest in 1950 was a speech made on International
Women’s Day, at that time celebrated primarily by the socialists and communists (Boyce-
Davies, 2008: 59). After her deportation to Britain and unable to establish the ‘central,
respected relationship’ that she had with the Communist Party of the USA, Jones would
turn her efforts to the West Indian community in Britain, which was developing at that
time (cited in Boyce-Davies, 2008: 170). She criticized the British Communist Party’s
racism and unwillingness to address the problems of colonial migrants and in a letter to
the editor of its organ, the Daily Worker, she cited the reluctance of white British workers
‘to fight against the colour bar’ (Sherwood, 1999: 81). As a result, in Britain her focus
would shift to the arts, culture and a continuation of her journalistic work specially
focused on the diasporic Asian and Caribbean communities in Britain.
In many ways Ashwood Garvey was a connecting link among the many strands of the
radical movement (Boyce-Davies, 2011b: 15). Jamaica-born, she is often credited for the
clear focus on women that characterized the UNIA or Garvey movement; although this
was also a result of Garvey’s own recognition of women’s importance (Martin, 2007:
137–153).
In 1945, along with George Padmore, TT Makkonen, Kwame Nkrumah and Peter
Abrahams, Amy Ashwood was involved in organizing the historic Fifth Pan African

Congress in Manchester from 13 to 21 October. This conference was significant to the

decolonization process as many of the future leaders of independent Africa were present.
Amy Ashwood, who with fellow Jamaican Alma La Badie were the only two women
presenters, chaired the opening session. Speaking on day 5 of the conference she
lamented the absence of women’s voices and issues generally in these discussions.
Highlighting the class differences among women in Jamaica, she lamented the absence
of middle-class Jamaican women from the political developments in that country. Not
surprisingly, the resolutions on the West Indies were the only ones to include clauses
related to women, such as: equal pay for equal work regardless of nationality, creed or
sex; removal of all disabilities affecting the employment of women, e.g. removal of the
‘marriage bar’ for women employed in government services;16 modernization of existing
Bastardy Laws, with legal provision for registration of fathers with adequate safeguards;
raising the age of consent to 16 (or 18); and others (Padmore, in Adi and Sherwood,
1995: 107–108).
In her lectures in the region and writings she encouraged educated Caribbean women
to take their place in the movement for self-government. Although her audience com-
prised primarily Afro-Caribbean women, in Trinidad in 1953, she reached out to Indo-
Trinidadian women, some of whom had hosted her visit to the country and region
(Reddock, 1994: 248–249). While there she published her pamphlet Liberia Land of
Promise, which included an introduction written by feminist and Ethiopianist, Sylvia
Pankhurst.17 In later years she would strengthen her connections with Africa and with
radical causes in Britain. Tony Martin suggests that in this period she moved away from
Garvey’s ‘Race First’ doctrine and towards a more ‘melting pot’ philosophy. He even
quotes her as criticizing Garvey’s approach on race in the Americas as being ‘too dog-
matic’ (Martin, 2007: 273).18
Journalism, the arts and literature

Winston James argues that a high level of literacy and a love for books and reading dif-
ferentiated the Caribbean migrants to the US from their African American and long resi-
dent Euro-American counterparts. Therefore is it not surprising that the radical thinkers
and activists of the period were also poets, playwrights and novelists in addition to writ-
ing and publishing political and polemical treatises. Additionally, all the organizations
produced periodicals and journals which they edited or to which they contributed. For
the Garvey movement it was The Negro World, published in New York but circulated
internationally, with contributors including Arthur Schomburg, Zora Neale Hurston and
others. Tony Martin observed that ‘Amy’s [Ashwood] arrival in New York coincided
with the birth of the Negro World weekly organ’ (Martin, 2007: 37). In later years
Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, associate editor between 1924 and 1927,
would introduce a page entitled ‘Our Women and What they Think’.19 The first editor,
Jamaican WA Domingo, would eventually split from Garvey as his more Marxist inclina-
tions could not accommodate Garvey’s ‘Race First’ philosophy (James, 1998: 270).
It is also as a journalist that Claudia Jones would make her mark on intellectual life.
She would make her way through various editorial levels of the Communist Party news-
papers in the US and Britain, culminating in her founding of the West Indian Gazette and

Reddock 505
Afro-Asian Caribbean News in London. For Jones this was an effort at political educa-
tion for ‘a community that was beleaguered, scattered, uninformed and subject to racial
oppression’ (Boyce-Davies, 2008: 172). Boyce-Davies underscores the significance of
journalism at that time and its importance as a means of communication within commu-
nities of various types. During the period of her sojourn in the US (1924–1928), Amy
Ashwood and her partner, Trinidadian calypsonian Sam Manning, published the periodi-
cal The West Indian Times and American Review, arguing that the African American
periodicals neglected the 3 million Caribbean people in the United States. This paper
also circulated within the Caribbean region (Martin, 2007: 107).
Beyond the literary and the journalistic, theatre and performance were also important
to these scholar-activists. In relation to Marcus Garvey and his movement, Ford-Smith
observed that the spectacular parades and theatrical productions staged by Garvey were
an exemplary teaching technique and reached thousands of people (Ford-Smith, 2004:
24). Relatedly, Amy Ashwood Garvey in her New York sojourn would, in collaboration
with Sam Manning, produce three plays including the musical Hey Hey to rave reviews
at the La Fayette Theatre in Harlem, Pittsburgh, Columbus, New Orleans and Chicago:
all strongholds of the Garvey Movement (Martin, 2007: 100).20
Claudia Jones’s position on culture and the arts varied significantly from that of both
the British and US Communist parties. For them artistic and cultural issues often took
second or third place to the economic and the political. Boyce-Davies argues that Jones
understood culture in a materialist sense and:
… was drawn to those aspects of culture that lent themselves to community joy and social
transcendence of the given conditions of people’s existence, that is, their material culture. Thus
putting in place the celebratory, in this case, was an act of cultural affirmation. (Boyce-Davies,
2008: 175)
It is here that Claudia’s Caribbean heritage came to the fore with the introduction of a
Trinidad-type carnival to Britain. The first overseas Caribbean carnival, precursor of
today’s Notting Hill Carnival, was organized by Claudia Jones in London in 1958 on
dates coinciding with the Trinidad carnivals, and continued in this format until her
untimely passing in 1964 (Boyce-Davies, 2008: 183). Since that time, Boyce-Davies
points out, overseas carnivals have become important sites of Caribbean communities
‘coming together’, noting that these festivals can be read as sites of resistance to the
Northern/puritanical based culture which seek ‘to carnivalise in “postcolonial” intent
these landscapes with some of the joy and space commensurate with Caribbean Carnival’
(Boyce-Davies, 2008: 176). These developments, despite Jones’s migration from the
region as a child, remind us of the power of transnational identities and connections in
these individuals’ lives.
Concluding remarks
The public intellectuals discussed in this article emerged as part of early to mid-20th-
century confrontations with racism, colonialism, imperialism and sexism. In doing so it
was necessary for them to engage theoretically and analytically with contemporary

knowledge and radical scholarship and to develop ideas of their own based on their own
experiences. As sociologists, there is much in their writings from which we can learn, as
we seek to engage with the current global context of ‘race’ and ‘class’. Their diasporic
and local contributions infused accepted Northern approaches to ‘race’ and racism’ with
a more anti-colonial and indeed international focus, a recognition of capitalist inequality
and its colonial impact (social, economic and psychological) on peoples of colour, the
centrality of class, a consciousness of women’s and gender issues and the need for soli-
darity among the ethnically diverse working peoples of the colonial world. Through their
poetry, artistic and literary contributions they were able to engage with deeper issues of
identity, gender and culture in ways not always understood by mainstream academics
and political actors at that time and their journalistic work allowed them to engage with
wider local, regional and international publics. In particular, they sought to engage with
then existing socialist and communist thought in a way which recognized its intellectual
strengths while publicly confronting its weaknesses and presenting living alternatives.
Contemporary radical and critical sociology would do well to engage more actively with
this work. The work of sociologist Oliver Cromwell Cox would be particularly important
in this regard.
Surinamese sociologist Glen Sankatsing reminds us that, ‘the emergence of the
social sciences in this region, while officially recognising the differentiation into dis-
creet sub-disciplines of Western Social Science has had an underlying interdisciplinar-
ity, necessary in order to come to terms with the complex concerns of the region’
(Sankatsing, 2001: 57). The social thinkers and intellectuals discussed above may not
all have been trained as sociologists, but their writings are of great significance to con-
temporary sociology and other social sciences, history, literary and cultural studies and
of course lay persons. The emergence of postcolonial studies has given some of these
writings a new lease on life, but these classic works deserve a place in the mainstream
of global and Caribbean sociology that they certainly do not enjoy at present. As Connell
(2010) has argued in Southern Theory, ‘a sociology that takes the interconnected history
of the world more seriously than it does now. … must be open to theoretical ideas from
a wider range of places than today, and must be attentive to alternative knowledges that
exist in the global South and to the ways in which those knowledges are being increas-
ingly marginalized’ (Connell, 2010: 149). By the mid-20th century, a body of Caribbean
sociological thought would emerge from intellectuals trained in and/or based in the
region. This would include a new genre of indigenous sociological theorizing, part of an
emerging professional sociological tradition as described by Burawoy (2009). This
would also be important for understanding the region as it moved towards independence
and its new postcolonial identity and would become the dominant tradition (see Barrow
and Reddock, 2001).
Nevertheless, this review of the radical tradition in Caribbean social thought is also a
call for a re-engagement with this earlier tradition, contributing to what Michael Burawoy
refers to as public sociology, i.e. a sociology in dialogue with audiences outside the acad-
emy while drawing on the traditions of critical sociology. Moving beyond Bourdieu,
Burawoy perceives the public sociologist as not necessarily located in the lofty heights
of academia, but as an organic public intellectual who ‘directly engages with publics in
the trenches of society’ (Burawoy, 2009: 452). In closing I return to Paget Henry when

Reddock 507
he concludes that: ‘Given its current crisis of production, Caribbean [and global] sociol-
ogy cannot continue to ignore this local intellectual stream, which most certainly can
help to get it out of its crisis state’ (Henry, 2010: 159).
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the comments and insights of issue editor Gurminder K Bhambra and
colleague Dylan Kerrigan which were useful in the revisions to this article. All errors or omissions
are of course my responsibility.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. This is still used in some Netherlands universities today, sometimes in collaboration with
Antropologie viz. Anthropologie en Niet-westerse Sociologie or vice versa.
2. cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/critical4.htm
3. Born Malcolm Nurse.
4. Although she was discussed briefly by Angela Davis in her book Women, Race and Class
(1981: 167–171).
5. And is buried ‘left of Karl Marx’ hence the name of Boyce-Davies’s book.
6. Additionally Boyce-Davies draws our attention to other Caribbeans in the US Communist
Party in these early days, e.g. Richard Moore, Otto Huiswood of Suriname, Cyril Briggs and
Grace Campbell of Jamaica (Boyce-Davies, 2011a: xxv).
7. It is at his point that he would change his name.
8. www.marxists.org/archive/james-clr/biograph.htm
9. Dylan Kerrigan, 18 January 2014, personal communication.
10. It should be noted, however, that his analysis was based solely on India and not on Trinidad
and Tobago.
11. In 2006, the Johnson-Frazier award of the American Sociological Association was changed to
the Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award in honour of Oliver Cromwell Cox, the first recipient of the
award. The Race and Ethnic Minorities section now awards the Oliver Cromwell Cox Book
Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Article Award.
12. Although this was already being refuted/challenged by Franz Boas as early as 1920.
13. Alphaeus Hunton, US academic, leader of the Council of African Affairs and editor of its
paper New Africa.
14. Rodney was a founding member of the multi-ethnic socialist-oriented political party of
Guyana, The Working Peoples’ Alliance, in 1974.
15. Jamaican Una Marson could also be included among this group
16. At that time, women in the British colonial Caribbean had to retire from the civil and teaching
service on grounds of marriage.
17. Interview with Tony Martin, nephew of Audrey Jeffers, 24 August 1982.
18. Garvey’s second wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, who compiled and published his speeches and
writings, is much more known, recognized and revered in Jamaica. The publication of Tony
Martin’s largely unsympathetic biography in 2007 did not help this situation.
19. www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/garvey/peopleevents/e_negroworld.html
20. This was followed by two other plays, Brown Sugar and Black Magic.

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Author biography
Rhoda Reddock is Professor of Gender, Social Change and Development at the The University of
the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine Campus in Trinidad and Tobago. She is an editor of the
Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, and has researched and published in the
areas of women’s labour and labour history, feminism and women’s movements, gender and sexu-
alities, environment, development, ethnicity and identity and Caribbean masculinities. A former
chair of Research Committee 32 (Women and Society) of the International Sociological Association
(1994–1998) her publications include Women, Labour and Politics in Trinidad and Tobago: A
History (Zed Books, 1994), Plantation Women: International Experiences (co-edited with
Shobhita Jain; Berg, 1998), Caribbean Sociology: Introductory Readings (with Christine Barrow;
Ian Randle, 2000), the edited collection Interrogating Caribbean Masculinities (UWI Press, 2004)
and the co-edited volume Sex, Power and Taboo (Ian Randle, 2009).
Résumé
Les Caraïbes, ce premier siège de conquête européenne significative, de colonialisme,
de transport à vaste échelle et de divers degrés de migration et de travail forcés ou
contraints, a donné l’élan à un grand nombre des « théories sur la race » qui ont fait
leur apparition aux 18ème et 19ème siècles. Dans cet essai, j’explore le savoir engagé

Reddock 511
des intellectuels radicaux des pays anglophones des Caraïbes émergeant du contexte
colonial défini par la race créé pendant la première moitié du 20ème siècle. En mettant
l’accent sur les traditions panafricanistes et néomarxistes/socialistes radicales, j’essaie
de situer la pensée sociale caribéenne radicale en tant que précurseuren bien des points
des études/théories critiques sur la raceau sein d’une tradition intellectuelle globale
et radicale plus large. L’essai est axé sur des thèmes et méthodologies particuliers
qui caractérisent les travaux et ouvrages de cettetradition et son impact régional et
international. J’examine l’importance accordée aux problèmes de « droits des femmes
» et de « genre » dans cette tradition en analysant dans les deux cas l’attention prêtée
à la situation des femmes dans les écrits et dans l’activismeet la contribution majeure
de femmes clés à ces mouvements. Cette analyse prône un réengagement envers cette
tradition plus ancienne, contribuant à ce que Michael Burawoy appelle la sociologie
publique, c.-à-d. une sociologie qui est en dialogue avec des auditoires en dehors de
l’académie tout en s’inspirant des traditions de la sociologie critique.
Mots-clés
Caribéen, doits des femmes, néomarxiste, panafricaniste, pensée sociale radicale
Resumen
El Caribe, ese primer lugar de la importante conquista europea, el colonialismo, el
transporte a gran escala y los niveles variables de migración y trabajo forzado, impulsó
muchas de las ‘teorías raciales’ de los siglos 18 y 19. En este ensayo, exploro el compromiso
de intelectuales radicales del Caribe anglo-parlante emergente de este contexto colonial
definido por la raza, que surgió durante la primera mitad del siglo 20. Con un enfoque
en las tradiciones radicales pan-africanistas y neo-marxista/socialista, intenta ubicar al
pensamiento social radical del Caribe dentro de una tradición intelectual radical global
mayor, como precursor en muchas maneras, de las actuales teorías/estudios críticos
raciales. Se centra en temas y metodologías particulares que caracterizan su trabajo y su
escritura, así como su impacto regional e internacional. Se estudia la importancia de los
derechos de la mujer y las cuestiones de ‘género’; tanto por su atención a la situación
de las mujeres en la escritura y el activismo como a través del importante trabajo de
mujeres clave para estos movimientos. Se hace un llamado a un nuevo compromiso
con esta tradición anterior, contribuyendo a lo que Michael Burawoy se refiere como
sociología pública, es decir, una sociología en diálogo con el público fuera de la academia
mientras que funda las tradiciones de la sociología crítica.
Palabras clave
Caribe, derechos de la mujer, neo-marxista, pan-africanista, pensamiento social radical

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