1. The Socialist Party, according to James, “did not keep faith with the radical egalitarianism of Marx,” and for some black socialists like Harrison, “black nationalism was the last resort of a black socialist in a racist land where race is elevated above social class in politics as well as in social life.”
2. One of the many strengths of the Perry biography is the detailed exposition of the transformation of Harrison from a socialist to both a socialist and Black Nationalist, who while not rejecting socialism will put race first in the organizing of black workers and the black community.”
The Perry study is a comprehensive biography of Harrison which explores his genealogical and educational roots in St. Croix and his early intellectual development in St. Benedict’s Lyceum, a Roman Catholic Church, with an interracial congregation and St. Mark’s Lyceum, a black Methodist Episcopal church, after his 1900 arrival in New York. It was through the lyceums that Harrison deepened his exposure to the philosophical and historical traditions of Europe, America, and Africa.
Through Perry’s detailed analysis of the Harrison critique of capitalism and racism in the United States, we witness the maturation of a serious working class intellect and his intellectual evolution toward socialism. Of particular importance is a five part series of articles beginning in 1911 that Harrison wrote for the Call, the Socialist Party newspaper in New York, which contains some of his most trenchant writings on racism, capitalism, and socialism.
“We witness the maturation of a serious working class intellect and his intellectual evolution toward socialism.”
In his first article entitled, “The Negro and Socialism,” Harrison asserts that the so-called “Negro Problem” is not one of “social adjustment” or social control of relationships, and he rejected the argument of a biological basis for racism based on the idea of superior and inferior groups. Rather, Harrison found the roots of racism, like that of the class struggle, in economic relationships related to the means of production. Harrison clearly asserts a “materialist” basis for the emergence of white supremacy ideology rooted in slavery and the need to rationalize that exploitative superior ordinate and subordinate nature of black-white relationships derived from that institution.
The contradictions between the democratic rhetoric of the Enlightenment as manifested in the founding documents of American republic – the Declaration of Independence and Constitution – necessitated the designation of blacks as racial inferiors undeserving of the democratic and egalitarian rights of the nation and consigned by God and nature to slavery.