Bayard Rustin Can’t Save Us: Social Democratic Illusions and Black Politics
Abstract
This article challenges the rehabilitation of Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph as models for contemporary socialist and black liberation politics, particularly in the scholarship of Adolph Reed Jr. and Cedric Johnson. While acknowledging the value of their critiques of racial identity politics, it disputes their characterization of the Black Panther Party as a precursor to contemporary identity-based movements and an obstacle to class-based organizing. Drawing upon historical accounts of the Civil Rights Movement and the American left, the article emphasizes the Black Panthers’ Marxist-Leninist commitments, opposition to cultural nationalism, and efforts to establish multiracial working-class alliances. It contrasts this revolutionary orientation with Rustin and Randolph’s anti-Communism, their alliances with conservative labor leadership and the Democratic Party, and their role in undermining the Popular Front. Reexamining the 1963 March on Washington, the Freedom Budget, and pivotal struggles over civil rights and labor organizing, the article argues that independent mass militancy, rather than liberal coalition-building, produced decisive political advances, while Rustin’s reformist strategy failed to secure its central economic objectives. The article concludes that contemporary social democrats risk reproducing the political failures of their predecessors by subordinating working-class organization to liberal institutions and dismissing the revolutionary Marxist tradition.
Keywords
Anti-Communism, Bayard Rustin, Black Liberation, Black Panther Party, Popular Front, Racism, Social Democracy
