54 pages • 1 hour read
Robin KelleyFreedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Ideological Context: Marxism
Robin D. G. Kelley describes himself as a “Marxist surrealist feminist who is not just anti- something but pro-emancipation, pro-liberation” (Ray, Elaine. “Profile of Robin D.G. Kelley.” Stanford Report, 29 July 1998). As a student, he was involved in the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Communist Workers Party. Freedom Dreams is written from this ideological perspective.
Marxism is a political theory that history and society are defined by the struggle of the poor and working-class against the upper-class. What is known as doctrinaire Marxism is primarily concerned with materialism, or concrete, real things, such as the conditions of workers or the way that objects for the market are made. Kelley takes a slightly different approach to Marxism. While he sees material concerns as important, he also seeks to incorporate the way that immaterial elements, such as art, poetry, love, and imagination, animate class struggle. For this reason, he emphasizes the role of surrealism—an artistic style characterized by the absurd, the intangible, and the unreal—in radical movements.
While communists or radical socialists hold many different views, as described in the text, they have core shared beliefs, namely that workers should own the means of production, government should work for the common good, and all people should be equal, without hierarchy. Kelley is primarily concerned with how this ideology was mobilized by Black organizers in the United States to advocate for racial equality.
One of the key points of difference between Marxist communist organizers that Kelley explores is that of nationalism. Doctrinaire Marxism is internationalist, meaning that its advocates seek to reach across borders to work in solidarity with working class people anywhere. Black organizing for liberation does not fit neatly into this paradigm, however, as some leaders and groups see Black people in the United States as a nation unto themselves. This is a nationalist, rather than internationalist, point of view. Freedom Dreams describes in detail how the nuances and tensions between internationalist Marxism and Black Nationalism played out over time and influenced one another.
Sociohistorical Context: Black Radical Movements
Kelley is both an academic and an activist. Freedom Dreams embodies both aspects of Kelley’s background. On one level, it is an academic text that uses traditional methods of historical analysis to make an argument that imagination and love are critical components of Black radical movements, especially in the United States. On another level, it is an activist text that seeks to promote and propel Black radical organizing today. Kelley’s argument is not that today’s activists should replicate the methods and ideas of past movements, but rather that they should use their knowledge of this history to inform and inspire their work. Kelley addresses other activists directly, encouraging them to use this history to further their aims, even as he acknowledges the difficulty of advancing racial and social equity in post-9/11 America.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred soon after the manuscript of Freedom Dreams was finished. Kelley addresses their impact on American society and organizing in the Preface and Afterword of the text, noting:
[It]’s very hard to imagine a visionary social movement when officials can openly advocate the racial profiling of ‘Arab-looking’ people with hardly a voice of dissent, or when laws are passed that ease wiretapping of private citizens and allow officials to detain immigrants without charge (196).
Another barrier to organizing noted by Kelley is the fracturing of the Black radical movement due to the FBI’s COINTELPRO operations. COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence program, was a series of covert actions from 1956 to 1971 designed to discredit and weaken radical movements by infiltrating organizations, arresting lead organizers, and otherwise restricting their ability to organize. One well-known example of a COINTELPRO operation is when the FBI extorted civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. for his extramarital affairs, hoping to coerce him into taking his own life. COINTELPRO was part of a larger effort of the United States government during the Cold War to fight Communism at home and abroad. As Dr. Ula Taylor, professor of African American studies at the University of Berkeley, noted in an article about COINTELPRO and related operations, “The threat of communism became a way to undermine Black radical movements” (Hoban, Virgie. “‘Discredit, Disrupt, and Destroy’: FBI Records Acquired by the Library Reveal Violent Surveillance of Black Leaders, Civil Rights Organizations.” Berkeley Library News, 18 Jan. 2021).
