Black Reconstruction In America

“The true significance of slavery in the United States to the whole social development of America lay in the ultimate relation of slaves to democracy. What were to be the limits of democratic control in the United States? If all labor, black as well as white, became free—were given schools and the right to vote—what control could or should be set to the power and action of these laborers?”

In this statement from the opening chapter of Black Reconstruction, Du Bois lays out the central questions and areas of contestation of the Civil War and Reconstruction. He also stakes out the broader implications of these questions. They do not just have to do with these historical moments, but they are significant to “the whole social development of America,” which suggests that Black civil rights is an ongoing concern as relates to the project of democracy in the United States.

“Out of the exploitation of the dark proletariat comes the Surplus Value filched from human beasts which, in cultured lands, the Machine and harnessed Power veil and conceal. The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.”

Du Bois was deeply involved in the Pan African Movement, an international movement around Black heritage and political economy. In this quote, he connects the experience of the Black proletariat and its exploitation as “human beasts” under enslavement to the exploitation of people of color throughout the Global South. He describes this exploitation using terms from Marxist economic analysis such as “surplus value” and “the emancipation of labor,” introducing The Civil War and Reconstruction as a Form of Class Struggle.

“If black labor could be expelled from the United States or eventually exterminated, then the fight against the planter could take place. But the poor whites and their leaders could not for a moment contemplate a fight of united white and black labor against the exploiters.”

Du Bois here describes the point of view of the white proletariat in the South.