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150-606: Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, and author. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz . Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She
300-514: A socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought , all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialisation of production
450-625: A "white man's thing". She joined the Che-Lumumba Club, an all-black branch of the Communist Party USA named for revolutionaries Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba , of Cuba and Congo, respectively. Davis earned a master's degree from the University of California, San Diego, in 1968. She completed some work for a PhD at the University of California, San Diego around 1970 but never received a degree because her manuscripts were confiscated by
600-593: A Howard Johnson Motor Lodge in New York City. President Richard M. Nixon congratulated the FBI on its "capture of the dangerous terrorist Angela Davis." On January 5, 1971, Davis appeared at Marin County Superior Court and declared her innocence before the court and nation: "I now declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by
750-413: A Marxist perspective. Other developments include: The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era. Marxist historiography is a school of historiography influenced by Marxism, the chief tenets of which are the centrality of social class and economic constraints in determining historical outcomes. Marxist historiography has contributed to the history of
900-519: A Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution . In a socialist society, private property —as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use . Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which
1050-554: A San Francisco pawn shop two days before the incident. She was also found to have been corresponding with one of the inmates involved. Davis had befriended George and Jonathan Jackson doing work attempting to free the Soledad Brothers. She had communicated frequently with George Jackson over letters and worked extensively with Jonathan Jackson in her work with the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. Davis became
1200-475: A backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states, such as Poland . However, it remains prominent in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states, such as in China . Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with
1350-416: A black community and then comparing the prices to those same items being purchased in a white community. This study showed that prices for the same goods were 20-30% higher in the black communities than they were in the white communities, which meant that the citizens who were struggling most to survive were actually paying higher prices for the items that were necessary for them to live. Prominent members of
1500-526: A certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution ." These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at
1650-479: A change of venue was granted, and the trial was moved to Santa Clara County. On June 4, 1972, after 13 hours of deliberations, the all-white jury returned a verdict of not guilty . After the verdict, one juror, Ralph DeLange, made the Black Power salute to a crowd of spectators, which he later told reporters was to show "a unity of opinion for all oppressed people". Ten jurors later attended victory celebrations with
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#17330932981841800-542: A concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting
1950-684: A dialectical analysis. Engels' short treatise The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 was salient in creating the socialist impetus in British politics. Marx's most important works on social and political history include The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon , The Communist Manifesto , The German Ideology , and those chapters of Capital dealing with the historical emergence of capitalists and proletarians from pre-industrial English society. Marxist historiography suffered in
2100-558: A doctorate at the University of Berlin . After returning to the United States, she joined the CPUSA and became involved in the second-wave feminist movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War . In 1969, she was hired as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). UCLA's governing Board of Regents soon fired her due to her membership in
2250-658: A field representative, C. Columbus Alston. In addition to being a member of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, Alston was also a union member of the Youth Committee of the American Federation of Labor and helped organize the black workers into the Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Industrial Union. With the help of Alston and Southern Negro Youth Congress, the Tobacco Stemmers and Laborers Industrial Union
2400-413: A labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker. In pre-capitalist economies , exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion . Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn
2550-496: A materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale , imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself." In a letter to the editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otechestvennyje Zapiski (1877), he explained that his ideas were based upon
2700-498: A mentor and teacher to George Jackson who wrote that he believed that women should never be allowed to express an opinion but should quietly listen to men. Jackson also held the opinion that if a woman couldn't find a man to marry her she should become a prostitute. She had grown close with the Jackson family in general during this time while working with them and speaking at events together. As California considers "all persons concerned in
2850-679: A position at the University of California, San Diego , and Davis followed him there after her two years in Frankfurt . Davis traveled to London to attend a conference on "The Dialectics of Liberation". The black contingent at the conference included the Trinidadian-American Stokely Carmichael and the British Michael X . Although moved by Carmichael's rhetoric, Davis was reportedly disappointed by her colleagues' black nationalist sentiments and their rejection of communism as
3000-403: A post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by
3150-726: A regents' lecturer. She delivered a public lecture on May 8 in Royce Hall , where she had given her first lecture 45 years earlier. In 2016, Davis was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters in Healing and Social Justice from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco during its 48th annual commencement ceremony. Davis accepted the Communist Party USA's nomination for vice president, as Gus Hall 's running mate, in 1980 and in 1984 . They received less than 0.02% of
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#17330932981843300-490: A representative from all historically black colleges was present as well and members from YMCA branches and Girl and Boy scouts across the region. Like the National Negro Congress before it the Southern Negro Youth Congress also consisted of Communist party members as well. The Southern Negro Youth Congress met on February 13 and 14, 1937 where they were divided into groups to discuss problems and to advocate ideas to
3450-576: A school of thought, Marxism has had a profound effect on society and global academia. To date, it has influenced many fields, including anthropology , archaeology , art theory , criminology , cultural studies , economics , education , ethics , film theory , geography , historiography , literary criticism , media studies , philosophy , political science , political economy , psychoanalysis , science studies , sociology , urban planning , and theatre . Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing
3600-643: A sister, Fania. Ben played defensive back for the Cleveland Browns and Detroit Lions in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Davis attended Carrie A. Tuggle School, a segregated black elementary school, and later, Parker Annex, a middle-school branch of Parker High School in Birmingham. During this time, Davis's mother, Sallye Bell Davis, was a national officer and leading organizer of the Southern Negro Youth Congress , an organization influenced by
3750-552: A speech, "Not Only My Victory", praising the GDR and USSR and denouncing American racism. She visited the Berlin Wall , where she laid flowers at the memorial for Reinhold Huhn , an East German guard who had been killed by a man who was trying to escape with his family across the border in 1962. Davis said, "We mourn the deaths of the border guards who sacrificed their lives for the protection of their socialist homeland" and "When we return to
3900-685: A word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe . Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production: While historical materialism has been referred to as
4050-408: Is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces." Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas)
4200-453: Is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilising its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren , especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analysed
4350-401: Is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution , along with
4500-403: Is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist." The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping
4650-402: Is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology , Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in
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4800-403: Is directly an attack against us as well." On February 28, 1978, Davis wrote to President Jimmy Carter , asking him not to assist in efforts to retrieve a child from Jonestown. Her letter called Jones "a humanitarian in the broadest sense of the word". In 1975, Russian dissident and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn argued in a speech before an AFL–CIO meeting in New York City that Davis
4950-473: Is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything. This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries , land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of the society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism. Through working class revolution,
5100-448: Is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to
5250-470: Is necessary to understand his later works properly. Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser , Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism . Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science , Marxist humanism reaffirms
5400-465: Is not prerequisite. In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements." Marx posited that the remaining feudalist societies in the world and forms of socialism that did not conform with his writings would be replaced by communism in
5550-551: Is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats . Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France ; emphasising the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism , libertarian Marxism
5700-761: Is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism . Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism , council communism , De Leonism , Lettrism , parts of the New Left , Situationism , Freudo-Marxism (a form of psychoanalysis ), Socialisme ou Barbarie and workerism . Libertarian Marxism has often strongly influenced both post-left and social anarchists . Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton , Cornelius Castoriadis , Guy Debord , Raya Dunayevskaya , Daniel Guérin , C. L. R. James , Rosa Luxemburg , Antonio Negri , Anton Pannekoek , Fredy Perlman , Ernesto Screpanti , E. P. Thompson , Raoul Vaneigem , and Yanis Varoufakis ,
5850-548: The Communist Party aimed at building alliances among African Americans in the South. Davis grew up surrounded by communist organizers and thinkers, who significantly influenced her intellectual development. Among them was the Southern Negro Youth Congress official Louis E. Burnham , whose daughter Margaret Burnham was Davis's friend from childhood, as well as her co-counsel during Davis's 1971 trial for murder and kidnapping. Davis
6000-574: The Cuban Missile Crisis and became his student. In a 2007 television interview, Davis said, "Herbert Marcuse taught me that it was possible to be an academic, an activist, a scholar, and a revolutionary." She worked part-time to earn enough money to travel to France and Switzerland and attended the eighth World Festival of Youth and Students in Helsinki . She returned home in 1963 to a Federal Bureau of Investigation interview about her attendance at
6150-663: The East German government was dealing better with the residual effects of fascism than were the West Germans. Many of her roommates were active in the radical Socialist German Student Union (SDS), and Davis participated in some SDS actions. Events in the United States, including the formation of the Black Panther Party and the transformation of Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to an all-black organization, drew her interest upon her return. Marcuse had moved to
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6300-604: The Soviet Union as the government requested overdetermined historical writing. Notable histories include the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) , published in the 1930s to justify the nature of Bolshevik party life under Joseph Stalin . A circle of historians inside the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) formed in 1946. Southern Negro Youth Congress The Southern Negro Youth Congress
6450-531: The University of California initiated a policy against hiring Communists. At their September 19, 1969, meeting, the Board of Regents fired Davis from her $ 10,000-a-year post (equivalent to $ 63,750 in 2023) because of her membership in the Communist Party, urged on by California Governor and future president Ronald Reagan . Judge Jerry Pacht ruled the Regents could not fire Davis solely because of her affiliation with
6600-574: The Vietnam War , racism, sexism, and the prison–industrial complex, and her support of gay rights and other social justice movements. In 1969, she blamed imperialism for the troubles oppressed populations suffer: We are facing a common enemy and that enemy is Yankee Imperialism, which is killing us both here and abroad. Now I think anyone who would try to separate those struggles, anyone who would say that in order to consolidate an anti-war movement, we have to leave all of these other outlying issues out of
6750-474: The state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on cooperation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be
6900-486: The working class , oppressed nationalities, and the methodology of history from below . Friedrich Engels' most important historical contribution was Der deutsche Bauernkrieg about the German Peasants' War which analysed social warfare in early Protestant Germany regarding emerging capitalist classes. The German Peasants' War indicates the Marxist interest in history from below with class analysis and attempts
7050-731: The " prison–industrial complex " and was one of the founders of Critical Resistance , a national grassroots organization dedicated to building a movement to abolish the prison system. In recent works, she has argued that the US prison system resembles a new form of slavery, pointing to the disproportionate share of the African-American population who were incarcerated. Davis advocates focusing social efforts on education and building "engaged communities" to solve various social problems now handled through state punishment. As early as 1969, Davis began public speaking engagements. She expressed her opposition to
7200-464: The "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base. The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour , means of production and relations of production , i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness " that derive from
7350-624: The 100 most influential people in the world . Angela Davis was born on January 26, 1944, in Birmingham, Alabama . She was christened at her father's Episcopal church. Her family lived in the "Dynamite Hill" neighborhood, which was marked in the 1950s by the bombings of houses in an attempt to intimidate and drive out middle-class black people who had moved there. Davis occasionally spent time on her uncle's farm and with friends in New York City . Her siblings include two brothers, Ben and Reginald, and
7500-646: The 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory . The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been
7650-580: The 1963 Birmingham church bombing , committed by members of the Ku Klux Klan , in which four black girls were killed; she had been personally acquainted with the victims. While completing her degree in French, Davis realized that her primary area of interest was philosophy. She was particularly interested in Marcuse's ideas. On returning to Brandeis, she sat in on his course. She wrote in her autobiography that Marcuse
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#17330932981847800-569: The 1980s, Davis was twice the Communist Party's candidate for vice president . In 1997, she co-founded Critical Resistance , an organization working to abolish the prison–industrial complex . In 1991, amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union , she broke away from the CPUSA to help establish the CCDS . That same year, she joined the feminist studies department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she became department director before retiring in 2008. Davis has received various awards, including
7950-536: The African-American movement during this time. Although there was much debate on where the first Southern Negro Youth Congress meeting would be held it was eventually decided that it would be held in Richmond, Virginia on February 13 and 14, 1937 at the Fifth Baptist Church. The first Southern Negro Youth Congress meeting consisted of 534 delegates that represented 250,000 young people in 23 states. Of these delegates
8100-583: The American Communist Party and their visibility from 1935 to 1939, the United States government began to take actions to suppress organizations with Communist members. From 1940 to 1952, the FBI gathered data on the Southern Negro Youth Congress through technical surveillance such as telephone and microphone taps. Besides this the FBI paid informants and paid for subscriptions to the Southern Negro Youth Congress’ publications. However,
8250-581: The Angela Davis campaign. In August 1972, Davis visited the Soviet Union at the invitation of the Central Committee , and received an honorary doctorate from Moscow State University . She also received an honorary degree from the University of Tashkent during that same visit. On May 1, 1979, she was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union. She visited Moscow later that month to accept
8400-474: The CPUSA. After a court ruled the firing illegal, the university fired her for the use of inflammatory language. In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County , California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies—including conspiracy to murder—she was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. During
8550-528: The Communist Party in 1968 and had become a member of the Black Panther Party, working with a branch of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles where she directed political education. When Black Panther Party leadership determined that party members could not also be affiliated with other parties, Davis retained her Communist Party membership although continued to work with the Black Panther Party. In 1969,
8700-513: The Communist Party, and she resumed her post. The Regents fired Davis again on June 20, 1970, for the "inflammatory language" she had used in four different speeches. The report stated, "We deem particularly offensive such utterances as her statement that the regents 'killed, brutalized (and) murdered' the People's Park demonstrators , and her repeated characterizations of the police as 'pigs ' ". The American Association of University Professors censured
8850-622: The FBI. Instead, two years later, she received three honorary doctorates: In August 1972 from Moscow State University , and from the University of Tashkent during that same visit, and in September 1972 from the Karl-Marx University in Leipzig , Germany. In 1981, she returned to Germany to continue working on her PhD. The Humboldt University of Berlin does not have a record of an often-cited PhD degree from Angela Davis. Beginning in 1969, Davis
9000-400: The I. N. Vaughn & Company. At the time, the tobacco industry already had an established tobacco union, The Tobacco Workers’ International Union, which followed the policy of occupational segregation rather than racial discrimination which allowed them to ignore the rights and needs of African-American workers. In order to get the black workers organized, the Southern Negro Youth Congress sent
9150-546: The Industrial Revolution which undermines the democratic agency of citizens. Marxists differ in their positions towards democracy. Types of democracy in Marxism include Soviet democracy , New Democracy , Whole-process people's democracy and can include voting on how surplus labour is to be organised. According to democratic centralism political decisions reached by voting in the party are binding for all members of
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#17330932981849300-615: The South in integrated schools in the North. She chose Elisabeth Irwin High School in Greenwich Village . There she was recruited by a communist youth group, Advance. Davis was awarded a scholarship to Brandeis University in Waltham , Massachusetts , where she was one of three black students in her class. She encountered the Frankfurt School philosopher Herbert Marcuse at a rally during
9450-432: The South, despite the poll taxes. The Southern Negro Youth Congress pushed this movement through their editorial “Citizenship Campaign” which stated that the majority of problems blacks faced in the South could be changed if they voted. Besides editorials, the Southern Negro Youth Congress also passed out pamphlets, leaflets, manuals, and buttons to encourage interest in voting. Although not always successful in their tactics,
9600-561: The Southern Conference on Human Welfare as well as many other organizations in hopes to support legislation that would make lynching a federal crime. Members of the Southern Negro Youth Congress were encouraged by members of the NAACP to send telegrams, letters and postcards to delegates in the area and more importantly, President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Since its inception, the Southern Negro Youth Congress attempted to get many blacks to vote in
9750-500: The Southern Negro Youth Congress Community Theatre also performed across the South to reacquaint Southern African-Americans with their heritage, as well as show them that struggle was necessary to demonstrate that America should change its democratic pronouncement. Since the formation of the Southern Negro Youth Congress in 1937, there was a strong communist representation present. With the emergence of
9900-530: The Southern Negro Youth Congress also believed in the power of using the arts as an instrument to promote their causes to the youth. The two main tactics used by the Southern Negro Youth Congress were poetry and drama. The Congress helped this movement by creating a literary publication Cavalcade: The March of Southern Negro Youth and a creative association entitled the Association of Young Writers and Artists to allow blacks to spread their expressions. In addition,
10050-511: The Southern Negro Youth Congress claimed that it represented about 250,000 young black southerners but due to insufficient records these numbers could not be verified. The Southern Negro Youth Congress saw its demise in 1949 in part due to the postwar period of the United States caught in the Cold War as well as fear, hysteria, racial violence and loss of jobs that led to many difficulties for the Southern Negro Youth Congress leaders to solve. Prior to
10200-641: The Southern Negro Youth Congress did excel in being one of the first community groups to have citizenship campaigns that included voter registration clinics. A sample of the aims and projects of the Southern Negro Youth Conference can be found in Louis Burnham's organizational report at the 1942 Atlanta joint meeting of SNYC's Advisory Board and National Council. The proposals were: All the proposals in Burnham's report passed. Besides campaigning,
10350-744: The Southern Negro Youth Congress felt that it was a great organization because it allowed people to not only settle into the Southern areas but also take action to change it for the better as well. The Southern Negro Youth Congress engaged in many activities during the late 1930s and 1940s such as leading boycotts against discriminatory working environments, registering African-American votes, discussed problems with government officials in Washington, D.C., organized workers into unions and assisted rural African-Americans in legal cases. The Southern Negro Youth Congress performed such studies as taking items being purchased in
10500-481: The Southern Negro Youth Congress included veteran activists James Jackson, Helen Gray, Esther Cooper Jackson (at the far left of the photo with Senator Taylor ), Louis Burnham (to the left of, and holding a paper with, Senator Taylor in the photo) and Edward E. Strong. At one time or another it had the support of prominent figures that included Mary McCleod Bethune , Charlotte Hawkins Brown , Franklin D. Roosevelt and William Edward Burghardt DuBois . At its prime
10650-438: The Southern Negro Youth Congress often campaigned for the rights of black workers in the South, they also targeted lynching crimes, the poll tax, and registering African-Americans to vote. The Southern Negro Youth Congress sought to combat the lynch terror that was occurring against the youth throughout the south. The Southern Negro Youth Congress teamed up with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP),
10800-490: The Southern Negro Youth Congress. The most frequently used method for expansion was the membership drives that consisted of three different types: affiliate, club, and individual. Throughout its history, SNYC followed a four-point program that was utilized in almost all issues and campaigns. In addition to the SNYC, 100 local councils associated with the group supported this four-point program. The four-point program sought to improve
10950-601: The Soviet Union's Lenin Peace Prize and induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame . Due to accusations that she advocates political violence and due to her support of the Soviet Union, she has been a controversial figure. In 2020, she was listed as the 1971 "Woman of the Year" in Time magazine's "100 Women of the Year" edition. In 2020, she was included on Time ' s list of
11100-640: The Temple's mass murder-suicide, Davis spoke via amateur radio telephone "patch" to members of his Peoples Temple who were living in Jonestown in Guyana . In her statement during the " Six Day Siege ", she expressed support for the People's Temple's anti-racism efforts and she also told Temple members that there was a conspiracy against them. She said, "When you are attacked, it is because of your progressive stand, and we feel that it
11250-582: The USA, we shall undertake to tell our people the truth about the true function of this border." In 1973, she returned to East Berlin, leading the U.S. delegation to the 10th World Festival of Youth and Students. In the mid-1970s, Jim Jones , who developed the cult Peoples Temple , initiated friendships with progressive leaders in the San Francisco area including Dennis Banks of the American Indian Movement and Davis. On September 10, 1977, 14 months before
11400-556: The administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin , a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country. These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe , who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society. Marxist sociology, as
11550-562: The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, she declared that the "horrendous situation in New Orleans" was due to the country's structural racism, capitalism, and imperialism. Marxism Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to analyse class relations, social conflict , and social transformation . Marxism originates with
11700-509: The analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems , the nature and origin of economic value , the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution . Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox , ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of
11850-527: The areas of the South in citizenship, education, jobs, and health. In adopting these points, the SNYC attracted acceptance not only from African-Americans but white citizens in the south, as well. The Southern Negro Youth Congress was caught in two spontaneous strikes that occurred in Richmond, Virginia in 1937. The first strike occurred on April 16, 1937 against the Carrington & Michaux Tobacco Stemming Company. The second strike occurred on May 7, 1937 against
12000-409: The attackers, Ruchell Magee , were injured. Although the judge was shot in the head with a blast from a shotgun, he also suffered a chest wound from a bullet that may have been fired from outside the van. Evidence during the trial showed that either could have been fatal. Davis had purchased several of the firearms Jackson used in the attack, including the shotgun used to shoot Haley, which she bought at
12150-414: The awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally in its best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat . Without defining ideology , Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology
12300-456: The black colleges in the country, Boy and Girl Scouts , young steel workers, and even members of the YMCA all joined together to form the Southern Negro Youth Congress. The Southern Negro Youth Congress felt that the major threat to democracy was not communism or socialism but rather fascism , not only to the black population but also a major threat to the white population as well. Many members of
12450-414: The black defendants and took Judge Harold Haley , Deputy District Attorney Gary W. Thomas , and three female jurors as hostages. As Jackson transported the hostages and three black defendants away from the courtroom, one of the defendants, James McClain, shot at the police. The police returned fire. The judge and three of the black men were killed in the melee. One of the jurors, the prosecutor, and one of
12600-533: The board for this action. Davis was a supporter of the Soledad Brothers , three inmates who were accused and charged with the killing of a prison guard at Soledad Prison . On August 7, 1970, heavily armed 17-year-old African-American high-school student Jonathan Jackson , whose brother was George Jackson , one of the three Soledad Brothers, gained control of a courtroom in Marin County, California . He armed
12750-417: The capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity. Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society
12900-675: The colleges. In 2020 it was announced that Davis would be the Ena H. Thompson Distinguished Lecturer in Pomona College 's history department, welcoming her back after 45 years. Davis taught a women's studies course at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1978 and was a professor of ethnic studies at the San Francisco State University from at least 1980 to 1984; she taught political science courses there until 1990. She
13050-498: The commission of a crime, ... whether they directly commit the act constituting the offense, or aid and abet in its commission, ... are principals in any crime so committed", Davis was charged with "aggravated kidnapping and first degree murder in the death of Judge Harold Haley", and Marin County Superior Court Judge Peter Allen Smith issued a warrant for her arrest. Hours after the judge issued
13200-643: The communist-sponsored festival. During her second year at Brandeis, Davis decided to major in French and continued her study of philosopher and writer Jean-Paul Sartre . She was accepted by the Hamilton College Junior Year in France Program. Classes were initially at Biarritz and later at the Sorbonne . In Paris, she and other students lived with a French family. She was in Biarritz when she learned of
13350-415: The complex dynamics of modern society." Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx , Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology . The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism , of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During
13500-399: The concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital " was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment. Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour —the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing
13650-520: The creation of the Southern Negro Youth Congress, many African-Americans during the first 30 years of the twentieth century struggled with financial hardships and often were near the bottom of the American economic and political life. The National Negro Congress was held in Chicago in 1936---although the young were present felt the need to create their own congress in hopes of not being hampered by elder members of
13800-495: The defense. The fact that she owned the guns used in the crime was judged insufficient to establish her role in the plot. She was represented by Howard Moore Jr. and Leo Branton Jr. , who hired psychologists to help the defense determine who in the jury pool might favor their arguments, a technique that has since become more common. They also hired experts to discredit the reliability of eyewitness accounts. After her acquittal, Davis went on an international speaking tour in 1972 and
13950-493: The doctrine that "man is the measure of all things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory. According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists. The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology
14100-425: The economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions , whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation . This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains
14250-408: The end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history. Marx saw the fundamental nature of capitalist society as little different from that of a slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger group. Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing
14400-600: The end of the eighth Southern Negro Youth Congress and the resigning of the president the Congress began to lose rapid popularity in the south and north as membership declined drastically. The opposing powers against the Congress were too much to withstand as well as the times that occurred post World War II. The United States was undergoing what later became known as the Cold War and this led to heightened racial tension and encouraged local and national law enforcement agencies to increase
14550-570: The establishment of the infrastructure of the Southern Negro Youth Congress in the National Office located in Richmond. The Congress looked to make officers consisting of young people who lived and worked in the South. The national officers elected to serve a one-year term were as follows: William F. Richardson as National Chairman, Edward Strong as Executive Secretary, C. Columbus Alston as National Field Representative, and James A. Cox as Treasurer. National officers were responsible for recruitment for
14700-405: The failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I , led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism . Karl Marx criticised liberal democracy as not democratic enough due to the unequal socio-economic situation of the workers during
14850-491: The forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S., and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesised Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while others like John Holt analyse adult education from
15000-482: The foundation of a form of social organisation . Those newly formed social organisations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic , expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave , patrician and plebeian , lord and serf , guild -master and journeyman , in
15150-405: The future in a similar manner as with capitalism. Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups: Class consciousness denotes
15300-521: The general body for approval, modification or rejection. Prominent adult leaders such as John P Davis , executive secretary of the National Negro Congress, as well as many other leaders from the Christian Youth Council of North America , members of the YMCA and teachers from the black colleges around the area assisted the divided groups of the SNYC. The key components of the first Congress were noted by
15450-544: The global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle , such as creative destruction , have been fitted for use in capitalist systems. Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire , Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America
15600-485: The imminent perception of the Southern Negro Youth Congress as a Communist Party dominated the mass, which subsequently led to the downfall of many Southern Negro Youth Congress campaigns and its popularity. Sallye Davis, mother of communist scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis , was active in the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Birmingham, Alabama. The Southern Negro Youth Conference in 1948 held their eighth Southern Negro Youth Congress Conference that also happened to be
15750-507: The last conference. The meeting was held on April 23, 24, and 25, 1948 in Birmingham, Alabama where the headquarters was located. The eighth conference attracted national news headlines as well as showed the extent of control over the lives of citizens that lived in the South. During this time the Police Commissioner was Bull Connor who used everything in his power to prevent the Southern Negro Youth Congress from gathering stating that
15900-550: The latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation , and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital . They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations
16050-426: The level of class struggle . Under the capitalist mode of production , this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie ) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat ). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another,
16200-570: The material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production , influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure . As forces of production (i.e. technology ) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At
16350-494: The meeting would violate the state of Alabama’s laws. Three black churches turned down the Southern Negro Youth Congress before Reverend H. Douglas Oliver allowed the meeting to be held in his pastor of the Alliance Gospel Tabernacle. The meeting was held on May 1, 1948 and upon arrival all white members were arrested and charged for breaking the segregation laws. Despite this occurrence the meeting still commenced with
16500-407: The necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat
16650-432: The objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses
16800-530: The party. Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde —both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying
16950-464: The picture, is playing right into the hands of the enemy. She has continued lecturing throughout her career, including at numerous universities. In 2001, she publicly spoke against the war on terror following the 9/11 attacks , continued to criticize the prison–industrial complex, and discussed the broken immigration system. She said that to solve social justice issues, people must "hone their critical skills, develop them and implement them." Later, in
17100-434: The population's living standards due to its need to compensate for the falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory , socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. The term Marxism
17250-553: The prize, where she praised "the glorious name" of Vladimir Lenin and the "great October Revolution ". The East German government organized an extensive campaign on behalf of Davis. In September 1972, Davis visited East Germany, where she met the state's leader Erich Honecker , received an honorary degree from the University of Leipzig and the Star of People's Friendship from Walter Ulbricht . On September 11 in East Berlin she delivered
17400-500: The product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment." Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving
17550-422: The remaining black members under the segregated conditions. At the meeting the Southern Negro Youth Congress passed resolutions condemning the segregation laws and denying any affiliation with the Communist Party. The contentions of the party were not accepted by the U.S. Department of Justice and shortly after the meeting Edward K. Weaver ; president of the Southern Negro Youth Congress was forced to resign. With
17700-504: The segregated area. Across the nation, thousands began organizing a movement to gain her release. In New York City, black writers formed a committee called the Black People in Defense of Angela Davis. By February 1971, more than 200 local committees in the United States, and 67 in foreign countries, worked to free Davis from jail. John Lennon and Yoko Ono contributed to this campaign with
17850-619: The seminar on “The Role of the Negro Church in Solving Social and Economic Problems of the Negro Youth,” as well as the keynote address delivered by Dr. Mordecai Johnson , the first black president of Howard University Dean Herbert M. Smith spearheaded the seminar stating that Negro ministers had to interest themselves in matters with church members if they wanted the church to remain the greatest instrument of social enlightenment. Following
18000-436: The seminar, Dr. Johnson addressed the delegates with his keynote urging the audience to refrain from the status quo and to take a role in abolishing injustice caused by the American system against African-Americans. Dr. Johnson’s keynote addresses was received with great enthusiasm and applause from the delegates and observers, as it mainly was filled with advice for the young and criticized the old. The first conference also saw
18150-463: The separation of races was required and that any action that disobeyed this law was to be reinforced by the police. The Southern Negro Youth Congress looked for churches to hold the meetings but upon securing a location to use Bull Connor would often intervene and call the Minister of the church facilities being used and state that since the Southern Negro Youth Congress was an interracial organization that
18300-415: The social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value —the difference between the value produced and the value received by
18450-417: The song " Angela ". In 1972, after a 16-month incarceration, the state allowed her release on bail from the county jail. On February 23, 1972, Rodger McAfee, a dairy farmer from Fresno, California , paid her $ 100,000 (equivalent to $ 552,500 in 2023) bail with the help of Steve Sparacino, a wealthy business owner. The United Presbyterian Church paid some of her legal defense expenses. A defense motion for
18600-565: The southern caste system. The NNC itself had been created in 1936 to address the economic and discriminatory challenges faced by African Americans, especially in New Deal programs. The Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of young leaders who participated in the National Negro Congress . The first gathering of the Southern Negro Youth Congress consisted of a wide range of individuals. Such individuals as representatives from almost all
18750-446: The state of California." John Abt , general counsel of the Communist Party USA , was one of the first attorneys to represent Davis for her alleged involvement in the shootings. While being held in the Women's Detention Center , Davis was initially segregated from other prisoners, in solitary confinement . With the help of her legal team, she obtained a federal court order to get out of
18900-534: The structures of governance of the party" were not allowed to run for national office and thus "in a sense ... invited to leave". In 2014, she said she continues to have a relationship with the CPUSA but has not rejoined. In the 2020 presidential election, Davis supported the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden . Davis is a major figure in the prison abolition movement . She has called the United States prison system
19050-474: The study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive ( empirical ) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilisation of a revolutionary working class ." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain
19200-412: The sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living. Marx's account of
19350-489: The surveillance of radical and subversive organization. According to the United States Attorney General, Tom Clark, the Southern Negro Youth Congress appeared as a subversive organization. The Southern Negro Youth Congress was based on two fundamental objectives which were to democratize the South and to provide equal opportunities to its residents and although the Southern Negro Youth Congress disbanded by 1949
19500-599: The theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society ( social classes , political pyramid and ideologies ) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure . The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx,
19650-404: The tour included a trip to Cuba , where she had previously been received by Fidel Castro as a member of a Communist Party delegation in 1969. Robert F. Williams , Huey Newton and Stokely Carmichael had also visited Cuba, and Assata Shakur later moved there after she escaped from a U.S. prison. At a mass rally held by Afro-Cubans , she was reportedly barely able to speak because her reception
19800-484: The value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, ' ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste ' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')." Libertarian Marxism emphasises the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, such as left communism , emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism . Libertarian Marxism
19950-538: The various schools of thought , which emphasise or modify elements of classical Marxism , several Marxian concepts have been incorporated into an array of social theories . This has led to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy , the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms " dialectical materialism " and "historical materialism", though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their tenets have been challenged by some self-described Marxists. As
20100-462: The vote in 1980. She left the party in 1991, founding the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism . Her group broke from the Communist Party USA because of the latter's support of the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt after the fall of the Soviet Union and tearing down of the Berlin Wall. Davis said that she and others who had "circulated a petition about the need for democratization of
20250-533: The warrant on August 14, 1970, a massive attempt to find and arrest Davis began. On August 18, four days after the warrant was issued, the FBI director J. Edgar Hoover listed Davis on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitive List ; she was the third woman and the 309th person to be listed. Soon after, Davis became a fugitive and fled California. According to her autobiography, during this time she hid in friends' homes and moved at night. On October 13, 1970, FBI agents found her at
20400-432: The worker. Alienation ( German : Entfremdung ) is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterisation of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition
20550-428: The works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , and as a result, there is no single, definitive " Marxist theory ". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts. In addition to
20700-677: Was a professor in the History of Consciousness and the Feminist Studies departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz and Rutgers University from 1991 to 2008. Since then, she has been a distinguished professor emerita . Davis was a distinguished visiting professor at Syracuse University in the spring of 1992 and October 2010, and was the Randolph Visiting Distinguished Professor of philosophy at Vassar College in 1995. In 2014, Davis returned to UCLA as
20850-539: Was able to draft a list of demands aimed at the Tobacco companies. Some of the demands listed by the black tobacco workers consisted of having higher wages, shorter working-hours and better working conditions. Within 48 hours of the union’s committee presenting its case to the management of the company, an agreement was reached with Frank Kruch of the State Labor Department and the owners of the companies. Although
21000-514: Was active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign. Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama ; she studied at Brandeis University and the University of Frankfurt , where she became increasingly engaged in far-left politics . She also studied at the University of California, San Diego , before moving to East Germany , where she completed some studies for
21150-459: Was an American organization established in 1937 at a conference in Richmond, Virginia . It was established as a left-wing civil rights organization, arising from the National Negro Congress (NNC) and the leftist student movement of the 1930s. The SNYC aimed to empower black people in the Southern region to fight for their rights and envisioned interracial working-class coalitions as the way to dismantle
21300-442: Was an acting assistant professor in the philosophy department at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Although both Princeton and Swarthmore had tried to recruit her, she opted for UCLA because of its urban location. At that time she was known as a radical feminist and activist, a member of the Communist Party USA, and an affiliate of the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party. Davis had previously joined
21450-440: Was approachable and helpful. She began making plans to attend the University of Frankfurt for graduate work in philosophy. In 1965, she graduated magna cum laude , a member of Phi Beta Kappa . In West Germany , with a monthly stipend of $ 100, she lived first with a German family and later with a group of students in a loft in an old factory. After visiting East Berlin during the annual May Day celebration , she felt that
21600-561: Was attacking his own country. According to Solzhenitsyn, in response to concerns about Czechoslovak prisoners being "persecuted by the state", Davis had responded: "They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison." Davis was a lecturer at the Claremont Black Studies Center at the Claremont Colleges in 1975. Attendance at the course she taught was limited to 26 students out of the more than 5,000 on campus, and she
21750-530: Was derelict in having failed to support prisoners in various socialist countries around the world, given her strong opposition to the U.S. prison system. In 1972, Jiří Pelikán wrote an open letter in which he asked her to support Czechoslovakian prisoners; Davis refused, believing that the Czechoslovakian prisoners were undermining the government of Husák and believing that Pelikán, who was living in exile in Italy,
21900-401: Was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under
22050-467: Was forced to teach in secret because alumni benefactors did not want her to indoctrinate the general student population with Communist thought. College trustees made arrangements to minimize her appearance on campus, limiting her seminars to Friday evenings and Saturdays, "when campus activity is low". Her classes moved from one classroom to another and the students were sworn to secrecy. Much of this secrecy continued throughout Davis's brief time teaching at
22200-688: Was involved in her church youth group as a child and attended Sunday school regularly. She attributes much of her political involvement to her involvement with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America . She also participated in the Girl Scouts 1959 national roundup in Colorado . As a Girl Scout, she marched and picketed to protest racial segregation in Birmingham. By her junior year of high school, Davis had been accepted by an American Friends Service Committee (Quaker) program that placed black students from
22350-693: Was popularised by Karl Kautsky , who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term. Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians . In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing
22500-637: Was so enthusiastic. Davis perceived that Cuba was a racism -free country, which led her to believe that "only under socialism could the fight against racism be successfully executed." When she returned to the U.S., her socialist leanings increasingly influenced her understanding of racial struggles. In 1974, she attended the Second Congress of the Federation of Cuban Women . In 1971, the CIA estimated that five percent of Soviet propaganda efforts were directed towards
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