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Cultural Logic: Marxist Theory & Practice 
2014 (Whole Number 21), pp. 1-28 

Identifying the Theoretical Development of the League of Revolutionary 
Black Workers for a Pedagogy of Revolution 

Anthony Barnun 
Dickinson College 

Abstract 
This research identifies a pedagogy of revolution, or “education for revolutionary activity” 
(Lenin [1902] 1988: 76) by analyzing the development of the League of Revolutionary Black 
Workers (hereafter referred to as LRBW). The LRBW grew out of confrontations within the 
Detroit auto plants in the late 1960s and remained an organized force until the early 1970s 
before breaking apart and moving in various political directions. The purpose of this research is 
to study the historical trajectory of one of those sections, the workers. This is accomplished by 
identifying the objective conditions that led to the political struggle of the LRBW and their 
understanding of theory and practice, i.e. pedagogy of revolution. This study uses a historical 
time frame as a means to delineate and focus the research. Brief attention is applied to a prelude 
leading up to their organization in 1968; however, the main focus is on their intellectual process 
(theoretical development) from 1968 to 1973. This study conducts content analysis of archival 
data and media materials such as interviews with working class members of the LRBW. The 
research examines the process by which the members of the LRBW were themselves taught 
revolutionary ideas and practices, and how they, in turn, developed a pedagogy of revolution 
specific to their material conditions.  

Introduction 

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers organized in the late 1960s in order to fight 
race and class oppression in the auto-plants of Detroit, Michigan. They sought to address the 
objective material conditions within which they found themselves and developed a subjective 
social response to injustice, one that was intellectual, organizational, and political. The League of 
Revolutionary Black Workers (henceforth LRBW) did this through a combination of theory and 
practice that resulted in the intellectual development of the members of the LRBW and new 
organizational forms, as they created a pedagogy of revolution in the process of engaging 
politically in a particular time and space.  

The LRBW was a workers struggle, led by Black workers to achieve certain objectives at 
a particular moment. Therborn writes that this historical moment was the beginning of “de-
industrialization [which] started in the second half of the 1960s and accelerated in the wake of 
the 1970s oil crisis, with its subsequent weakening of labour and trade unions which reached 
their maximum organization in the 1970s” (2013: 94). The LRBW is part of the story of Detroit; 
specifically it is a struggle that took place at a major turning point of global capitalism. A turning 
point that meant the end of the rise of Detroit as the industrial center of the United States and the 
beginning of its decline, within the context of global capitalism in the late twentieth and twenty-
first centuries. 



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The LRBW was formed as an overarching umbrella organization that brought together 
various local struggles, known as Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs), in the automobile 
plants of Detroit and other workers’ groups. Composed of Black workers, they adopted a Marxist 
inspired orientation combined with Black Nationalism. Although short lived, coming into 
existence in 1968 and lasting until about 1973, they were able to organize a vast number of 
workers and to fight for their collective interests (Maines 1978: 630). They did this through 
developing a pedagogy of revolution that could be used to raise critical consciousness—that is, 
class-consciousness and revolutionary consciousness—and spread the idea of struggle to others.  

The struggle of the LRBW is one of the political development of Black workers inside 
the development of global capitalism in the United States and within a leading sector of capitalist 
production in the early and mid-twentieth century. This socio-economic location molded a 
section of Black workers into revolutionaries and comrades. The LRBW members were shaped 
by the historical moment in which they found themselves: the end of the post World War II 
capitalist expansion and the beginning of capitalist globalization, rooted in the new electronic 
forces of production. The very process of their pedagogy of revolution, of their study of theory 
and of their analysis, shaped their practice making them revolutionaries.  

The purpose of this paper is to identify a pedagogy of revolution, or “education for 
revolutionary activity” (Lenin [1902] 1988: 76) by analyzing the development of the LRBW. 
This is accomplished by identifying the objective conditions that led to the political struggle of 
the LRBW and their understanding of theory and practice, i.e. pedagogy of revolution. This 
study uses a historical time frame as a means to delineate and focus the research. Brief attention 
is applied to a prelude leading up to their organization in 1968; however, the main focus is on 
their work from 1968 to 1973.  

This study conducts content analysis of archival and media materials. As such, the data 
are limited to the publicly available surviving documents, scholarly journals, and media, which 
treat a small group of LRBW members. Although members numbered into the hundreds and 
active participants in the strikes numbered even higher, the available data regarding the roles and 
actions of specific individuals is limited.  

The research examines the process by which the members of the LRBW were themselves 
taught revolutionary practices, tactics, and strategies, and how they, in turn, developed a 
pedagogy of revolution specific to their material conditions. The research focuses on the 
intellectual process (theoretical development) of these individuals in the LRBW, and the manner 
in which they were able to carry out and understand their work in the unity of theory and practice 
through a pedagogy of revolution as a political process.  

The focus on the intellectual process of the LRBW in the context of developing global 
capitalism, is addressed as a means of identifying a pedagogy of revolution as a reflective 
process by which praxis is arrived at. The point of discovering the intellectual process 
(theoretical development) of the LRBW is to enable an understanding of this social movement 
process through their ability to identify and name the world around them and the steps they took 
to then engage with the larger context. This development, seen as a process, serves to situate 
them historically through time.  



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The LRBW is an interesting and complicated expression of the relation between Black 
workers in Detroit and the global capitalist system. It is the struggle between autoworkers, the 
union, and the automobile industry. It encompasses the struggles and contradictions between the 
proletariat and the bourgeoisie, as well as between workers and the union of which they were a 
part. The LRBW was able to create a process of struggle consisting of a pedagogy of revolution 
combining both theory and practice. This is their unique contribution to history and to 
revolutionary social movements. Although other studies have documented the LRBW in a 
historic manner and attempted an analysis of the organization, to date no study has examined the 
role they played in both coming to and further elaborating a pedagogy of revolutionary practice. 
This study fills that gap. 

This work helps to document and shed light on a group that is understudied and 
extremely important. As Manning Marable wrote:  

Although many histories of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements focus 
on groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black 
Panther Party, the League was in many ways far more significant as an expression 
of Black radical thought and politics (2000: 18). 

Although a historical study, it may well be as relevant today as it was then. There are signs that 
the current historical moment has many similarities to that earlier time of revolutionary 
momentum (Robinson 2004). Elbaum points out that the LRBW “had a more concentrated 
ideological impact on young activists of all races moving toward working class politics” (2002: 
80).  

Today there is growing social movement in the world as the masses of humanity are 
being thrown out of the capitalist world system of wage labor. The result is that they are forced 
to fight harder than ever for their survival, economically, ecologically, socially, politically, etc. 
As movements look for ways in which to engage and conceptualize a new vision of the world, it 
is important to keep in mind both theory and practice. For this reason it is necessary to study 
historical movements and to analyze tactics and strategies so that we can learn from their 
successes and failures in order to move forward towards the vision we have of a better world “for 
it is only by looking back that we can make sense of where we are and how we got here” (Kelley 
2004: 149). Though based in local struggle in Detroit, the LRBW always positioned themselves 
through their analysis in the bigger struggle against capitalism, imperialism, and racism and saw 
their ultimate goal as “the liberation of all oppressed peoples in the world” (Inner City Voice 
November-December 1970 cited in Geschwender 1977: 124). 

Global Capitalism 

Global capitalism is the fourth and most recent epoch of capitalism (See Figure 1). It is in 
the transition period between the third epoch of corporate, monopoly capitalism and the fourth 
epoch of global finance capitalism that the struggle of the LRBW took place. This equates 
roughly to the late 1960s and early 1970s. As such, globalization must be addressed in order to 
understand the development of this study as an “underlying structural dynamic that drives social, 
political, economic, and cultural processes around the world” (Robinson 2006:21). Robinson 
notes that this new incarnation of global capitalism can be traced back to the “world economic 



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crisis of the 1970s” (2006: 23), or the crisis of the “post-World War II expansion” (2006: 148), 
an incarnation that the LRBW understood to well on the factory floor. 

	

 

Figure 1. The Four Epochs of Capitalism as identified by Robinson (2004 :4) 

It is of importance to note that the late 1960s and early 1970s, or the years in which the 
LRBW was active were also years in which capitalism was undergoing a transition from a lower 
stage to a higher stage of capitalism. The 1970s were also the historic moment to which the 
growing gap between the haves and the have-nots or the rich and the poor can be traced 
(Robinson 2004: 152). This epoch is one in which “‘predatory globalization’ has eroded . . . the 
former social contract that was forged between state and society” (Falk 1999: 3). This has been 
accomplished through neoliberalism on the global stage. 

Cycles of crisis plague the capitalist system. They are built into its very structure from the 
base. As technology changed so did the crisis. Katz-Fishman and Scott pinpoint this process 
historically, noting how the current  

deep structural crisis . . . marked by extensive application of technology . . . and 
globalization . . is based in the closing decades of the twentieth century, beginning 
in the 1970s, with the hegemonic rise of the neoliberal policy agenda of the state 
and global financial institutions (2012: 164-5). 

For capitalism, the goal of ever increasing profit has been the rationale for an ever-increasing 
polarization of wealth being held in check more or less by various national government policies. 

• Mercantilism		
• Primitive	
Accumulation	

1492-1789	

• Classical	
• Competitive	

1789-late	19th	
Century	 • Corporate	

• Monopoly	

Late	19th	Century	-	
early	1970s	

• Globalization	
• Finance	
• Information	
Technology	

Mid	1970s	-	
present	



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With polarization of wealth also comes the need to protect wealth by both the forces of capital 
accumulation and the state as defender of capitalism (Dutt 1934).  

The City 

Hobsbawm tells us “whatever else a city may be, it is at the same time a place inhabited 
by a concentration of poor people and, in most cases, the locus of political power which affects 
their lives” (1973: 220). He points out that throughout history, people living in cities have 
engaged in riots and insurrections as a means to “direct pressure on the authorities who happen to 
operate within their range” (Hobsbawm 1973: 220). It also happens that when riots and 
insurrections occur in cities which are also “headquarters of giant national or international 
corporations [that they] have much wider implications than if the city authority is purely local” 
(Hobsbawm 1973: 220).  

Hobsbawm emphasizes that “popular riot, insurrection or demonstration is an almost 
universal urban phenomenon . . . [that] occurs even in the affluent megalopolis of the late-
twentieth century industrial world” (1973: 220). He notes that the effectiveness of riots and 
insurrections is dependent upon three parts of the urban environment “how easily the poor can be 
mobilized, how vulnerable the centres of authority are to them, and how easily they may be 
suppressed” (1973: 221). He also identifies the impact of the centrality of universities to cities 
and the concentrations of urban poor near the city center as being dangerous potential hot spots. 
He specifically highlighted the poor urban Black communities of the U.S. as an example of this 
potential for uprisings (Hobsbawm 1973: 221). As will be shown, both the proximity of a 
university and urban Black communities played crucial roles in the development of the LRBW 
and their organizational ability. 

Lefebvre examines the city, as a place created by capitalism and the direct result of the 
machinations of the bourgeois class in dominating the working class (1970: 124). It must be 
noted that the city is always political and as such the city is the prime location to build the 
authoritative power of capitalism. Within this authoritarian power structure of capitalism 
inequality develops naturally (1970: 124). Lefebvre does identify a problem with this 
development however. Dialectically the seeds of the new are planted within the old. In the case 
of the city, the necessity of bringing a large number of workers together to exploit their labor 
also creates a large concentration of the masses, creating more need for the dominant capitalist 
class to oppress the working class within the context of the city. This leaves the possibility open 
for mass organization and revolution (1970: 124). As a result the urban, which grew out of the 
industrial is a location of repression of the worker and is constructed as such (1970: 162).  

Lefebvre discusses the two simultaneous processes of urbanization and industrialization 
([1968] 2009: 6). Within these dual processes, Lefebvre addresses the issues of classes or 
fractions and fragments of classes. He divides the city into those fractions who possess the 
capital and the power and the working class who are also divided into fractions and fragments 
based on the section of the work they perform, their geographic positions and nationalities 
([1968] 2009: 12). For Lefebvre, the historic role of the city becomes extremely important in 
understanding social processes. It is in the city that capitalist processes become faster (i.e. speed-
ups in factories due to efficiency and scientific management); it is the place where capital 
accumulates and is concentrated; it is the place where exploitation is greater; and it is the place 



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where revolutions occur ([1968] 2009: 55). Lefebvre explores the idea of urban revolution 
through the question of the right to the city, which is a right to the urban as well. The right to the 
city is a right that only the working class can fight for and demand (Lefebvre [1968] 2009: 108). 
But it is a right that requires theory in order to be fought for and won (Lefebvre [1968] 2009: 
113).  

David Harvey engages the ideas of Lefebvre in Rebel Cities (2012). Harvey highlights 
that Lefebvre was expanding the idea of the revolutionary working class to include all urban and 
not just industrial workers (2012: xiii). Harvey defines “Lefebvre’s theory of a revolutionary 
movement” as “the spontaneous coming together in a moment of ‘irruption,’ when disparate 
heterotopic groups suddenly see . . . the possibilities of collective action to create something 
radically different” (2012: xvii). Lefebvre’s writings were greatly influential in the student and 
labor uprising in France in May of 1968 (Harvey 2012; Hess et al. 2009). Harvey makes clear 
that “with the ’68 revolt came a financial crisis” (2012: 10). Reiterating Lefebvre’s discussion of 
the street, Harvey notes that the city is the one place where people from all class backgrounds 
meet and interact (2012: 67). Expanding on this, it can be understood that the city is also the site 
of struggle.  

 Harvey identifies three main points regarding urban revolution as they have emerged 
historically. The first is the success of worker based struggles depends on how much support 
they can garner from the community at large (Harvey 2012: 138). The second is that the 
participants in revolution, or those who are considered to be part of the working class must 
expand beyond the limitations of industrial factory workers and must include all working people 
(Harvey 2012: 139). The third and final point that Harvey identifies is that although labor value 
should remain central to the struggle, it also must be expanded to include value that is produced 
in space and in the city (2012: 140).  

The city of Detroit symbolizes many things for Detroiters and Americans, but it is the 
quintessential city of the American industrial working class (Mitchell [Waistline] 2010: 1). As 
the headquarters for the American auto industry it built not just cars, but the American middle 
class. It is also important to remember the Detroit of the late 1960s and the early 1970s was an 
industrial city. Detroit was the site for the combination of various factors that created a fertile 
environment for the creation of the LRBW. Geschwender writes that “the nature of Detroit and 
its history of race relations; the structure and history of the automobile industry and the UAW; 
and the mood of Black rebellion which developed through the civil rights movement and 
culminated in a wave of urban insurrections” were part of the material conditions that led to the 
creation of the LRBW (1978: 281). 

Geschwender notes that Detroit consisted of a “large segregated Black population who 
had experienced a history of both local and national exploitation” (1978: 282). He cites the Civil 
Rights Movement and the “increasing number of young Blacks employed in the auto plants” as 
important factors in the development of Black national consciousness (Geschwender 1978: 285). 
The LRBW can be seen as a direct result of the historically specific material conditions of 
Detroit and the auto plants. 

Detroit as a specific historical and sociological location has risen on the radar of many in 
the years since the 2007-2008 U.S. economic recession. But as LeDuff argues “Detroit was 



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dying forty years ago when the Japanese began to figure out how to make a better car” (2013: 3). 
The moment when changes in technology began to greatly impact the future of Detroit and the 
auto industry was the 1970s when the LRBW came into existence as it confronted the objective 
material conditions of the city, the state, and global capitalism. LeDuff also convincingly argues 
that Detroit as the American industrial city “was the vanguard of our way up, just as it is the 
vanguard of our way down” (2013: 4). He describes Detroit as a symbol of American economic 
power and then as a symbol of that loss of economic power. As the “vanguard of our way down” 
LeDuff (2013: 4) is showing that Detroit is the precursor of an American future (2013: 7).  

Examining the historicity and comparing different epochs of capitalist development, 
Hobsbawm writing in 1973 hypothesizes that “the movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s 
may seem in retrospect another prelude” (1973: 254). If we consider this as a possibility, then 
social movements from this time period such as the LRBW need to be understood as a point in 
the progression of the larger movement. He goes on to identify that the revolutionary forces of 
the 1960s were the result of “technological and social transformation of unparalleled rapidity and 
depth” (Hobsbawm 1973: 254). He further states that “so far the most dramatic symptoms of 
revolutionary agitation in the industrial countries are still those which took place at the height of 
the boom, i.e. in 1967-9” (Hobsbawm 1973: 256) years which coincide with the LRBW and their 
revolutionary activity. 

In order to understand the world and the historical moment in which the LRBW 
developed it is important to highlight the milieu in which they found themselves. 1968 was a 
tumultuous year for the U.S. As a nation we were engaged in war in Vietnam, we witnessed the 
assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Black Americans rioted in over 100 cities 
nationwide (Elbaum 2002: 1). The years 1969 and 1970 saw labor striking at a rate not seen 
since 1946 (Elbaum 2002: 2). Elbaum also identifies “the growth of revolutionary nationalist 
sentiment in communities of color” during this time period, including the LRBW (2002: 2). In 
1967 families of color earned only 62 percent of the income White families earned and that by 
1972 this had not changed (Elbaum 2002: 15-16). To help understand the political, racial, socio-
economic climate of the times, Elbaum counts over 300 riots between 1964 and 1968 (2002:17). 
It is within this backdrop that the LRBW grew and developed. 

In the 1960s, Black autoworkers were no longer being used by plant management to 
break the unions. Black autoworkers were now included in the unions and yet they found 
themselves in a familiar situation, once again they were being used, but this time by both the 
union management and plant management. Geschwender and Jeffries write that it was this 
situation of being played by both sides against the other in which “many African American 
autoworkers developed the belief that their ultimate fate would be determined by their own 
collective strength and actions” (2006: 136). The views of many Blacks during this time “were 
characterized by a rising mood of militancy among African Americans, reaching its peak 
between 1967 and 1969” (Geschwender & Jeffries 2006: 136). These were also the peak years 
for the LRBW in Detroit.  

Pedagogy 

The discussion of pedagogy is based on the core works of Paulo Freire beginning with his 
well-known work Pedagogy of the Oppressed ([1970] 1989), Pedagogia do Oprimido ([1968] 



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2011). Freire developed his ideas of pedagogy while teaching literacy to adults under the U.S. 
supported dictatorship in Brazil. His pedagogical practices can be understood as a means for 
mobilizing the masses through popular education (INODEP 2006: 19). What Freire initially did 
was to examine the situation of the oppressed and the oppressors and to identify the need for 
liberation as a process. His means for this liberatory process were through education and 
pedagogy. He criticized the traditional system of education calling it a “banking” method where 
teachers make deposits in passive students. He saw the need for the transformation of the 
educational process into a “mutual process” by which both the teacher and the student learn and 
teach simultaneously through his concepts of “teacher-student” and “student-teacher.” Freire’s 
pedagogy was based on the idea of dialogics or the process of learning through dialogue and 
engaging with our fellow humanity and the world around us. Freire thought that it would only be 
through cooperative and unified actions brought about through a liberatory pedagogy that would 
allow humanity to reach its full potential ([1970] 1989; [1968] 2011).  

These ideas are very similar to those of Gramsci. Gramsci “begins . . . not from the point 
of view of the teacher but from that of the learner, and he emphasizes that the learning process is 
a movement towards self-knowledge, self-mastery, and thus liberation” (Forgacs 2000: 54). 
Liberatory pedagogy such as Freire’s seeks to help humanity reach its full potential because it 
serves to wake people up to their oppression and in the process is a means for inciting rebellion 
(INODEP 2006: 21). In order to wake up, one must be able to see and identify that the dominant 
pedagogy of society is the pedagogy of the dominant class. To rebel against the dominant 
pedagogy and to embrace a pedagogy of the oppressed through conscientização is to engage in 
class struggle.  

The ideas of Freire and popular education strive to take the person as object and empower 
them to become the person as subject who is transformed into an active creator in controlling 
their own lives, lived experience, and history. Fanon also refers to this dialectical process 
between object and subject or “a real dialectic between my body and the world” (1967: 111). 
This is accomplished through giving individuals the power to claim voice. Freire’s term, 
conscientização, has been defined by Ramos as “learning to perceive social, political, and 
economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” ([1970] 
1989: 19). The goal of popular education is liberation. In this instance, popular education results 
in liberation from various forms of oppression and exploitation.  

It is only through linking knowledges, and the self to the world that conscienticização can 
take place, allowing individuals to make active and conscious decisions about their participation 
and practices in the world. In short, “the educator’s task is to encourage human agency” 
(Aronowitz 2001: 10). The goal of literacy should not be “to transfer the comprehension of the 
object” to the patient, but should be the teaching of a process of investigation or a way of 
transforming the patient into “a knowing subject, to become capable of comprehending and of 
communicating what has been comprehended” (Freire 2001: 106). This also ensures a more 
sustainable literacy that the newly aware citizen can then pass on to others. This dialogical 
process creates the connections between revolutionary movement, mass movement, and 
community. As dialogue is essential to learning and hence to literacy, without dialogue we 
cannot achieve knowledge which makes the process of learning a communal process, an act that 
we do, not as individuals but within our communities and within relationships to others. Freire 
positions his pedagogy within a greater framework of revolutionary action. 



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Freire’s pedagogy is useful in that it prepares a theoretical grounding for the way in 
which the liberatory transformative project can be actively engaged and expanded. It is useful in 
helping us to not only identify what a pedagogy of revolution might look like by providing an 
example, but also in providing the necessary structure of a transformative revolutionary 
pedagogy. 

Findings and Analysis 

In the following sections, the development of a pedagogy of revolution by the LRBW as 
a means to address the exploitation, oppression, and racism that they encountered in their 
objective material conditions will be addressed. In identifying a pedagogy of revolution as 
understood and developed by the LRBW an attempt is made to draw distinctions between 
theoretical, organizational, and political development. There is much overlap between these 
divisions as they develop dialectically with each other. This analysis of the data focuses on the 
intellectual process (theoretical development), although these three processes are reflexive and 
inform each other. Additionally theoretical development of pedagogy is explored as a process of 
historical development: from their inception around 1967 to the split in 1971, from the split in 
1971 to their dissolution in 1973, and from their dissolution in 1973 to post LRBW. 

Intellectual (Theoretical Development) Process 

To begin to understand the intellectual process that LRBW members underwent it is 
important to understand the intellectual atmosphere of the late 1960s. The LRBW went through a 
process whereby they analyzed the historical moment in which they found themselves. This 
provided them not only with a greater understanding of the issues they were addressing, but also 
served as a pedagogical tool for members and potential members to become conscienticized.  

In the early 1960s there was a large influx of new Black workers into the 
automobile plants in and around the city of Detroit. Most of these workers were 
younger and had developed a high degree of national consciousness as a result of 
participating in and observing the sharply escalated civil rights struggle (LRBW 
[n.d.] 2004). 

Geschwender also points out that there were various opportunities for Blacks in Detroit to 
encounter Marxism. The Communist Party, C.L.R. James, and the Socialist Workers Party all 
conducted Marxist education in Detroit at various times (Geschwender 1977: 80).  

Geschwender begins looking for the origins of the LRBW in 1963 with the arrest of Luke 
S. Tripp, Jr., John Williams, John Watson, General G. Baker, Jr., and Gwendolyn Kemp for 
disturbing the peace while the national anthem was played at a ceremony related to Detroit’s 
1968 Olympic Games bid. All five were members of Uhuru. They were protesting the killing of 
Cynthia Scott, a Black prostitute (1977: 87). Geschwender links their involvement in Uhuru and 
the Negro Action Committee to the overall Black movement in the U.S., stating that “they had 
been active in civil rights work since 1961” (1977: 87). According to Geschwender, it was as 
part of the Negro Action Committee that these individuals began “political self-education,” due 
to their realization that they needed both “knowledge and analysis” (1977: 88). 



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During this time period Luke Tripp, Charles Johnson, Charles Simmons, and General 
Baker traveled together to Cuba as part of a Progressive Labor Movement sponsored trip as 
members of UHURU (Mitchell 2012). It was there that they met Ernie Allen a student on the 
same trip from California, who would later move to Detroit (Allen 1983). 

Early in 1963 Black students at Wayne State University formed a revolutionary 
Black nationalist/socialist action cadre called UHURU. . . UHURU was led by 
Luke Tripp, John Williams, John Watson, Charles Johnson, General G. Baker, Jr., 
and Gwen Kemp. UHURU members studied Marx, Lenin, Mao, Fanon, Malcolm 
X, Robert F. Williams, Che and many others. They attended Socialist Workers 
Party weekly forums, listened to members of the Communist Party and followers 
of C.L.R. James. The UHURU cadre considered themselves Black Marxist-
Leninists and were inspired by the Cuban and Chinese revolutions. . . in 1964, 
UHURU members went to Cuba, where they met Robert F. Williams, Fidel 
Castro, Che Guevara and Muhammad Babu (Ahmad [n.d.] 2013) 

It was on this study trip to Cuba that General Baker became conscienticized through two events 
that he witnessed in Cuba that were then lied about in the New York Times.  

These events made me question everything. It was sort of rebirth. I had to 
physically shut myself off in a hotel room for a couple of days so I could regroup. 
If they lied to me about these things, then they’ve taught me lies all my life. I 
went through a short of metamorphosis (Baker 1994: 307).  

While the ideas of individual Black workers were developing, the larger movement was 
also developing and being felt throughout American social institutions. 

Throughout 1966 and 1967, as Black militants moved to implement their ideas in 
such American institutions as the university, the church, business, and 
government, often through disruptive tactics, the trade unions were largely spared 
as a target for their activities. But by 1968 the labor movement too had begun to 
feel the impact of the Black power ideology (Foner 1974: 401). 

It is out of this milieu that both the Great Rebellion of 1967 and the LRBW surfaced. Omi writes 
that these two occurrences “dramatically demonstrated the response of Black people in Detroit to 
the pervasiveness of racism in every facet of their work and everyday lives” ([1981] 2005: 7-8). 
Furthermore, this climate led to the Great Rebellion of 1967, that Lefebvre would explain as an 
example of urban transformation whereby the societal changes and energies are expressed in the 
chaos on the street (1970). This occurs through the act of struggle. 

Detroit was, and . . . still remains an industrial city with a heavy concentration of 
Black workers. . . The city also has a history of various forms of struggle of the 
Black masses against racism and national oppression (Baker 1985).  

The LRBW were able to see the world around them to understand their lived experiences 
and the material conditions of their existence. In an internal document, they wrote: 



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This super-exploitation resulted in a heightening of both the national and class-
consciousness of Black workers, which led to the development of increasing 
militancy in the plants. This fact combined with the overall deterioration of the 
quality of life of the Detroit Black community with regard to dilapidated and 
inadequate housing, stepped up repression and brutality by the police, inferior 
schools, etc, thus producing a resistance throughout the community which 
resulted in the July 23, 1967 rebellion in Detroit, essentially a worker’s rebellion 
(LRBW [n.d.] 2004). 

The Great Rebellion of 1967 in Detroit, was a learning process. The soon to be members of the 
LRBW were analyzing their experiences and the material conditions within which they found 
themselves. General Baker notes:  

One of the things that motivated us was, first of all, I told you about, during the 
rebellion we learned that the only place you had any meaning in society was 
going to be at the point of production. Secondly, by 1968, see, we had done 
passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Civil Rights Bill of 1966 and ain’t 
nothing changed! (Baker 2003). 

Importantly, Black workers were able to see themselves in the bigger picture that allowed them 
to understand that they were a step in the process; that there had been movement before them. 

When we get to the DRUM movement in the 1960s, there was already a legacy of 
struggle around discrimination. So this thing didn’t jump out of nowhere. There 
was a history and continuity to it (Baker 2010). 

At times, scholars have categorized the LRBW as a Black Marxist-Leninist organization 
(Georgakas & Surkin [1975] 1998; Geschwender 1977) but the LRBW members themselves do 
not seem to share this view. Though acknowledging that they were inspired by Marxism-
Leninism, it is only a section of workers who adopted this perspective after the LRBW split and 
dissolved in 1971. However, it does seem that most if not all of the executive board members did 
hold Marxist-Leninist ideas. 

Nationalist sentiment in one form or another thoroughly pervaded the 
organization from bottom to top. Ironically, though the LRBW widely projected 
itself as a Marxist organization, such categorizing had little to do with the 
concrete political sentiments of its rank and file (Allen 1983: 291).  

Scott (2013) agrees with this interpretation when he said that it was not until after the split and 
engaging in study that the rank and file even knew what Marxism meant. Allen continues  

the LRBW as a whole could not be justifiably characterized as a Marxist-Leninist 
organization at any single stage of its development. On the other hand, an 
apparent majority of the membership at least nominally accepted the proposition 
that Marxist theory and practice were vital to the liberation of Afro-American 
workers (1983: 291). 



Cultural Logic 

	

12 

This seems to be the most appropriate view, after examining the varied readings that are cited as 
influencing them. The LRBW themselves held this view during the 1960s. A “central committee 
member said the League’s internal education program stresses Marxism, but takes from it what is 
most applicable to Afro America” (Dudnick [1969] 2004: 7). 

Intellectual (Theoretical Development) Process 1967-1971 

Having established, that Detroit in the 1960s was a hotbed of the Black Power 
Movement, this analysis now turns to the Black workers in the auto plants.  

In the fall of 1967 . . . something else was also taking place in Detroit. Black 
workers at the Chrysler Dodge Main assembly plant began meeting. Among these 
workers a few had historical connections with the activists who were putting out 
Inner City Voice (Baker 1985). 

To understand why Black workers began meeting at this time is to understand the main social 
problem that the LRBW movement organized to address: racism and institutional racism in the 
auto plants. 

of the almost 14 million members of the AFL-CIO in 1968, about 2 million were 
Black . . . But Black representation in top leadership was not even at the token 
stage in most unions despite an influx of Black workers into many industries and 
a rise in Black union membership (Foner 1974: 397). 

But beyond the racist practices of the auto companies and the union, it was the sheer increase in 
the number of Black workers that made challenging the social problems encountered in the 
plants through the emergence of the LRBW even possible.  

My thing for getting in DRUM was that from the first day I got hired in, I noticed 
immediately that the day I was hired there were about 60 of us hired at the same 
time and we were all taken to the body shop. And out of that number, about 40 
were Black. Out of this group, I think it was between seven and ten of the White 
workers that went into the body shop, went into inspection and the others 
[Whites] were systematically given light jobs on the sixth and seventh floors. The 
area of the line I went into, it was putting fenders and doors on the cars and, well, 
the door job was the worst job in that area. And from the time I started in there 
until I left that area, until I went on days, every time a new Black worker came in 
he was given that door job. All the time I stayed in that area I never saw a White 
worker work that job (Wooten [1969] 2004). 

Eventually, it was these conditions of racism, institutionalized or overt, that led to the self-
organization of Black workers in the Dodge Main Hamtramck plant. The combination of a racist 
company structure and a racist union resulted in a catalyst in the social environment of Black 
Power and the Civil Rights Movement. 

In May 1968, some 3,000 workers walked out of Dodge Main in Hamtramck in a 
wildcat strike. At Dodge Main, 85 percent of the workers were Black, but only 2 
percent of the foremen and shop stewards were Black, an indication of racist 



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promotion policies shared by the company and the union. In due course, Dodge 
workers would assert: “UAW means ‘You Ain’t White.’” The year before had 
seen the Great Rebellion. Now, the issues of the Great Rebellion were being 
expressed on the factory floor (Georgakas 2002). 

It was during the wildcat strike of May 1968 that DRUM was born. 

During the wildcat strike of May 1968 . . . A few workers and I went across the 
street and sat in the bar, sitting there drinking. We were sitting at that table talking 
and it was here we decided we would do something about organizing Black 
workers to fight the racial discrimination inside the plants and the overall 
oppression of Black workers (Wooten [1969] 2004: 13). 

The intellectual development that led to the decision to organize is essentially the story of how 
the working class founders of the LRBW who would become part of the executive committee 
became conscienticized. It is their intellectual development that would eventually lead to the 
Marxist-Leninist ideas that were studied and explored in the LRBW.  

The LRBW seems to have focused on political education as a means to analyze the 
material conditions of their lives. The following section begins to offer us a glimpse at the 
method and content of their study and at the process they underwent in order to identify 
themselves as Black inspired Marxist-Leninists. This process of political education and study has 
been little analyzed in the literature and yet plays an essential role in the development of the 
LRBW, their mobilization and organization.  

Lefebvre identifies two points that need to be raised in a discussion of thought and self-
education. First he writes that there is no thought without utopia, without a vision or a discussion 
of what is possible. Secondly, he notes that there is no thought without reference to practice 
(1970: 240). The first point is important because it relates to an identification of goals and 
objectives. The LRBW identified their main goal: 

The goal is to educate and successfully implement the arduous task of the 
liberation of Black people specifically, other[s] oppressed in the U.S. generally, 
and contribute the blow that will enable freedom for the internationally oppressed 
to be reality (League of Revolutionary Black Workers [1969] 2004). 

The second relates to an idea of reflection that we must have a means of practice and then to 
evaluate that practice in order to correct its mistakes and move it forward. Geschwender and 
Jeffries pinpoint the development of a “program of political self-education” to 1966 (2006: 138). 
They identify this process of education of the LRBW as being a conscious decision wherein 
“they realized that effective action must be based upon correct knowledge, sound judgement, and 
analysis” (Geschwender & Jeffries 2006: 138). The importance of knowledge and analysis is a 
repetitive theme in both studies of the LRBW and in the way they seem to have conceived of 
themselves. In fact, the political education of the LRBW is one of its defining characteristics. 
This move to educate themselves is illustrated by Geschwender. However, what he attributes to 
the LRBW as a whole, is limited to specific cadre members, who would form the executive 
committee. 



Cultural Logic 

	

14 

They read Marx and Lenin; but they also read Mao Tse-Tung, Frantz Fanon, 
Malcolm X, and Che Guevara among many others. They became acquainted with 
various Black and White radicals in and around Detroit. They listened to what the 
members of the Socialist Workers Party and the Communist Party had to say. 
They also gave consideration to the thoughts of the followers of C.L.R. James. 
Several members participated in a special seminar on Capital conducted by 
Martin Glaberman. In every case they read and/or listened with a critical 
orientation. They did not believe that any existing ideology could be accepted in 
rigid dogmatic form if it were to be used in analyzing the situation of Black 
Americans. It was felt that the Black experience in America was unique and that 
any existing system of thought required reshaping to make it applicable. They 
sought to develop such a political-economic theory. They examined, tested, and 
reformulated various theoretical orientations until they arrived at a position that 
enabled them to describe themselves as Black Marxist-Leninists (Geschwender 
1977: 88). 

This citation shows us one of the critical elements of the development of the LRBW: the 
educational process of cadre members. Geschwender places the political self-education as 
beginning in 1966 two years before the creation of the LRBW. This research would place the 
beginning of their political self-education at least to 1963 as part of an initial collective, if not the 
1950s within the context of being Black in a racist society experiencing the Civil Rights 
Movement. That political self-education fits into the LRBW is clear, yet the way in which it fits 
into the LRBW and its importance and their level of commitment to this educational process 
remains unclear. That members were studying and in contact with various leftist, Marxist-
Leninist, and Black nationalist ideas is certain, however, to what extent they studied before, 
during, and have continued to study since the LRBW is at times difficult to quantify. What is 
clear, is that education was also one of the primary means by which they engaged with workers 
seeking support and a larger membership base (Geschwender 1977). 

The LRBW designed an educational program that is identifiable as their pedagogy of 
revolution. Their outline for this program is reproduced below: 

Educational Programs of the LRBW 
 

I. General Education Program 
 

A. Cursory study of monopoly capitalism (one month) 
B. Imperialist Stage (one month) 
C. The State Apparatus (one month) 
D. Local and State Power Structures and Community Groups (two weeks) 
E. Other Groups (one week) 
F. Workers and Need For a Political Party (one month) 

 

Racism shall be discussed throughout each avenue as to how it shapes our struggle in this 
country. 



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II. Candidate Member Education. 
 

A. Persons will be educated on specific questions to strengthen their theoretical 
comprehension. 
 

B. Practical assignments. 
a. Some will assist in general education as assistant instructors. 
b. Some will be assigned to organization team. 
c. Some will be assigned to the print shops. 
d. Some will be assigned to the newspaper. 
e. Some will be assigned to research and public relations. 

 
III. Cadre Education. 
 

A. Imperialism and the Nature of the Working Class 
a. Imperialism today. 
b. Discussion of the Black Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 
c. Discussion of the International Proletariat. 

 
B. Organization and Organizing 

a. Local, state, and national organizing. 
 

C. The United Front 
 

a. What is it? How did it evolve? 
b. What are the issues and circumstances? 
c. Who’s involved and what determines composition? 
d. Critical analysis of new, similar, and old fronts on the local, national, and 

international scenes. 
 

D. Discussion of Practical Implementation of Our Political Party. 
 

E. Discussions and subsequent implementation, concrete and relevant new-society goals. 
(League of Revolutionary Black Workers [1969] 2004). 

What is noticeable about this pedagogy of revolution is that it is both theoretical and practical. 
Of note is that they had different levels of education for different members based on levels of 
involvement and commitment. The General Education Program is theoretical and is addressed to 
the membership at large. Although focusing on Marxist-Leninist ideas it also notes that racism 
and White supremacy should be addressed whenever it arises, taking advantage of teachable 
moments.  

Political education classes were set up for all League members. The classes on the 
basics of Marxism-Leninism were first taught by Luke Tripp. Tripp, not knowing 
how to break theory down into everyday language, would bore the workers, who 
often went to sleep in class. Mkalimoto [Ernie Allen] was asked to teach class. He 
broke it down plain and the workers enjoyed going . . . It should be noted that 



Cultural Logic 

	

16 

most of the workers were revolutionary nationalists. They weren’t anti-Marxist. 
Marxism-Leninism was something new to them (Ahmad [n.d.] 2013) 

As individuals became more involved in the organization, their education developed to become 
more practical and include experience building education and became specific to a needs based 
assessment. Finally the third section of the program addresses cadre and directs itself towards the 
needs of the LRBW but also to the movement as a whole. 

Many scholars have addressed the so-called dual nature of the LRBW: that it was Black 
nationalist and Marxist-Leninist (Georgakas & Surkin [1975] 1998; Geschwender 1977). But 
LRBW members themselves do not see these as the two dominant trends. Instead they identify 
that 

The League . . . represented in fact a merger of two trends: a petty bourgeois 
revolutionary trend centered around the newspaper Inner City Voice combined 
with the Black workers’ movement in the Detroit area factories (Baker 1985). 

The LRBW was clear both in how they defined themselves and in their objectives. They, 
as Black Americans and as members of the proletariat, were in a unique position to understand, 
through lived experience, the meanings and consequences of capitalism and the false 
consciousness of a capitalist hegemony. The following excerpt highlights this perspective: 

The League of Revolutionary Black Workers is dedicated to waging a relentless 
struggle against racism, capitalism, and imperialism. We are struggling for the 
liberation of Black people in the confines of the U.S. as well as to play a major 
revolutionary role in the liberation of all oppressed people in the world (Inner 
City Voice Nov-Dec 1970 quoted in Geschwender & Jeffries 2006: 151). 

The LRBW identified a small elite capitalist owning class and pointed out that this class 
was all White. But they were careful to also emphasize that there was not a clear line between 
Black workers and White capitalists and that a majority of Whites were also excluded from the 
capitalist owning class. The LRBW knew this especially since they worked in auto plants with 
Polish immigrants and poor southern Whites that had immigrated north for jobs as many of the 
Black workers had (LRBW 1970).  

Intellectual (Theoretical Development) Process 1971-1973 

The organization experienced a series of purges and splits beginning with the executive 
committee in July of 1971. Although this was the beginning of the end for the LRBW, it was 
ultimately a move forward for the workers who engaged in collective study for the first time. 
This collective study was arguably the impetus behind the workers themselves engaging in a 
pedagogy of revolution and attaining a higher level of class-consciousness. It also reflects an 
understanding of themselves as moving towards something larger than a Black Workers 
organization and towards a revolutionary party. 

The Party must absorb and educate all the progressive elements of the working 
class, learn from progressive workers, instill a spirit of revolution, and take 
advantage of the dedication and commitment of Black workers to bring change in 



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the sphere of labor reform. In order to be an effective party, the Party must 
agitate, educate, and propagandize the masses to expand the struggle (LRBW 
[1971] 2004). 

The LRBW seems to have seen one of its main obligations as a revolutionary organization to be 
the education of workers through agitation and propaganda, but also by using theory and practice 
to drive each other to a higher level of consciousness. 

We became Marxists in the 1970’s because we discovered it was a tool for 
revolutionary analysis and leadership. Marxism offered guidelines to assess our 
current situation and determine what the tasks were. From this we would develop 
a strategy, which directed our path (Hamlin 2012: 61). 

Marxism-Leninism became, for many LRBW members, a set of guidelines for analyzing the 
material conditions of their particular situation within global capitalism and for providing the 
foundations from which to develop a strategy of movement organization. In a post 1971 split 
LRBW, the workers needed Marxism-Leninism more than ever, because they had lost over half 
of the executive board who had been responsible to a large extent for producing the analysis of 
the auto plants from a Marxist-Leninist perspective. 

By 1971 the League split. We were being drawn off into too many other things 
instead of plant agitation. We had Black Star Productions, Black Star Printing, 
two Black Star bookstores, Black Conscious Library, and all these other facilities 
that we’d gathered around us. In the split we lost our intellectual wing that we 
relied heavily on to be our spokesmen. Not having these spokesmen, then, there 
developed a great sense of collectivity, which became the basis for us to become 
tolerant of the educational process. We went on a kind of retreat. We had to 
(Baker 1994: 310). 

The split in 1971, though meaning the beginning of the end of the LRBW, in many ways left the 
remaining members much stronger as a collective organization. It also left members on more 
equal footing as they studied together and became intellectuals together.  

The LRBW focused on organizing the Black working class. But even so, it was not a 
Marxist-Leninist organization (Elbaum 2002: 82). What this means is that the LRBW never said 
that it was exclusively a Marxist-Leninist organization. It held many of the values and beliefs of 
such an organization, but from 1968 to 1971, struggle was spontaneous and not theoretically 
driven. When the LRBW split in 1971, this would change for the working class members. 
Elbaum examines the role of study groups in organizing collective bodies (2002: 93). He sees the 
study group as being the organizational starting point for many revolutionaries and activists of 
the late 1960s and early 1970s. What is interesting about this idea in regard to the LRBW is that 
the study groups did not form until after the 1971 split. Jerome Scott noted that it was after the 
internal split and the break away from the majority of the executive board, who can be 
considered members of the petite bourgeoisie, that the working class members organized 
themselves in an 18-month intensive study group (2013).  



Cultural Logic 

	

18 

In addition, during this process of study, the remaining LRBW members in many ways 
became more independent as they no longer needed to depend on executive committee members 
providing them with an organizational line. This carried over into their refusal as seen below to 
participate in a pedagogy of revolution that took away their power or failed to value them as 
intellectual revolutionary workers. 

Certain conditions give rise to organization and certain conditions give rise to the 
fact that it disintegrates and dies away. It’s not needed anymore. You need 
something else. You need to know how to shift your program and give rise to 
something else . . . We didn’t need the League of Revolutionary [Black Workers] 
no more. In fact the League split. And once the League split some of us decided to 
start doing some study. People kept telling us about the science and stuff and I 
said what science are you talking about? And we all of us workers went to a 
meeting one time . . . it was so packed you couldn’t get into it and they said they 
were going to teach us the science of Marxism/Leninism. And I said I’ve heard 
that but what is it? And we consistent, workers were getting off work and 
everything and everybody all of us and we wanted to learn what was going to 
keep our organization going and for us to be able to continue to have a better life 
and some people, some young folks told us “Some of you are gonna learn 
Marxism and Leninism and some of you will not. Because it is not for you.” And 
we said well what in the hell are we doing here trying to listen to you for? For 
three consecutive weeks we had gone. And once we had put them out we started 
teaching ourselves. You know and some other folks that knew. And we stuck 
together and we ended up with a majority of the organization in the old League 
and since that time we’ve stuck with it letting it be a science a guide (Kramer 
2013). 

By engaging in an 18-month study of theory, the working class members of the LRBW gained 
class-consciousness. They were able to use their study in their analysis and therefore to more 
strategically engage in praxis. In addition by reading and engaging with the works of Marx, 
Lenin, and Mao, to name a few, the LRBW were able to conceive of themselves, the role they 
played and their position in the capitalist system as part of a global proletariat. 

We had a ten point program which included making sure that Blacks got 
integrated into the leadership of the union and into the leadership of the company 
and that we had a voice in what went on in the plant. And we realized after a 
while by 1971 these demands were all met. We had Black representation 
throughout the union and throughout the plant. But our work conditions did not 
change. Our exploitation did not change. The fact that the plant was totally unsafe 
to work in did not change. So that made us once again step back and say 
something is wrong with this picture. And we realized that we didn’t know 
enough about what was going on in our world to develop a really solid plan and 
so what we decided we should do was to really get a handle on what this world 
was really made up of. So we went on a 18 month education retreat. 18 months. 
Education. Ya’ll probably think that’s crazy, but we decided that if we could 
develop a plan that could be met and nothing fundamentally change then we had 
wasted much more time than 18 months. And we knew that the only way that we 



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could develop a plan that could be a changing plan a fundamental changing plan 
is if we did our best to understand the world in which we live. So that’s what we 
did. We studied everything, but the most important stuff we studied was theory 
and that I think is the thing. Many people ask me how do you stay in this struggle 
for 40 something odd years and I think its because we studied theory (Scott 2011). 

Scott echoes Baker with the idea that nothing had changed in their lives, meaning that although 
they had won several struggles for representation in the plants they were still exploited and 
subjected to unsafe working conditions. Scott also echoes Kramer with the idea that the LRBW 
had run its course and needed to change as an organization in order to continue struggling. This 
is also apparent in how they both identify the theoretical perspective they gained during this time 
as being the motivation behind engaging in struggle for the rest of their lives and as being a 
connection to each other as a collective. 

I love my history in the sense that I had the opportunity to participate in the 
development of a Marxist-Leninist party in the ‘70s . . . I was asked to sit on the 
preparatory committee to struggle out the party’s line. I had never studied like that 
before in my life. I never learned to read real good in school. But I have learned to 
read real good in dealing with the ‘science’ and dealing with my community 
involvement (Kramer 1994: 104). 

As the LRBW became better versed in Marxism-Leninism, they began to also understand the 
importance of the connection between theory and practice. As Freire would note by learning to 
read the word, they learned to read the world (Freire & Macedo 1987). 

The fundamental principle of Marxist-Leninist thought is a wedding of theory and practice. Any 
theory must be based on analysis obtained from objective reality: that is to say, a complete 
understanding of the historic conditions that have brought things to their present state of being 
and of what that present state is comprised (LRBW [1971] 2004). 

As the LRBW came to better understand the relationship between theory and practice and the 
praxis of revolutionary work, they grasped one of the necessary dialectical relationships for a 
pedagogy of revolution. 

Intellectual (Theoretical Development) Process 1973-1974 

As the LRBW members continued to study and to engage in the pedagogy of revolution 
through theory and practice, they began to take a step back from the struggle and to reevaluate 
their tactics and strategy. 

We were struggling and working in the plants. Fifteen to twenty of us looked 
around after three years and said what have we done? We fought against White 
supremacists in the union and in the company. We achieved a lot. We got Black 
foremen hired. But shit is getting worse. Our daily lives are not getting better 
(Scott 2013). 

 This realization through analysis of their practical experience had driven them to study and 
through the process of study had led them to become a collective with much more clarity.  



Cultural Logic 

	

20 

The driving force behind our study is that we were just a bunch of workers, who 
realized we didn’t know what was going on around us, which drove us to study. 
We did it collectively. We got to understand the big picture (Scott 2013). 

 The extended period of study, taken by the workers section of the LRBW after the internal split 
is really the beginning of their dialectical transformation of their movement into a new form 
intellectually. The result is that their organizational and political form also changed to reflect 
their new intellectual position. While they were engaged in study, the other sections of the 
LRBW remained engaged in movement, such as those alluded to in the end of the following 
quote: 

We studied Leninism, political economy, and organization. We hadn’t had an 
overall analysis of the auto industry or a national focus. We hadn’t had a 
comprehensive sense of American history or the revolutionary process in 
America. The more you learned, the more conservative you became in choice of 
tactics. We didn’t participate in any mass activity, including Coleman Young’s 
election and the effort to get rid of [police anti-crime undercover unit] STRESS 
[Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets] and the other big movements in the city 
(Baker 1994: 310). 

It was as this extended period of study came to an end with the workers section of the LRBW as 
an intellectually grounded revolutionary collective, that they were absorbed into another 
movement organization. 

We were fortunate to meet up with representatives from the CL [Communist 
League] and have classes. We withdrew totally from all participation in mass 
activity and began the tedious process of struggling with Marxist education. After 
a short period of study about sixty of us joined the CL (Baker 1994: 310). 

Their experiences in the LRBW, in the auto factories, and in the union provided them with an 
experience of a pedagogy of revolution that brought them out on the other side as conscienticized 
workers with a Marxist-Leninist perspective. 

We did a lot of work, we struck, we learned a lot and we got a lot of legacy from 
that movement that we carry on today (Baker 2003). 

Conclusion 

During the historic moment of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the League of 
Revolutionary Black Workers was able to achieve something unique in history. They were able 
to take control of and shut down the means of production for a limited time through strikes and 
to effect small change in the relations of production by having certain of their demands met 
(Georgakas & Surkin [1975] 1998). It is important to keep in mind what is possible in struggle 
within a certain historical period of capitalist development and what is not. In this analysis, the 
research has sought to evaluate the intellectual process (theoretical development) of the LRBW, 
as part of a process of a pedagogy of revolution. Summarized in the table below are general 
comments regarding the pedagogy of revolution as developed by the LRBW through the 
intellectual process. 



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Table 1: Timeline of a Pedagogy of Revolution as Developed by the LRBW 
 

Time Periods 1967-1971 1971-1973 1973-1974 
Intellectual 
(Theoretical 
Development) Process 

Understanding of 
racism, exploitation, 
and oppression in 
factory, in union, in 
state. 

18-month intensive 
study leading to 
understanding of 
Marxism-Leninism. 

Move from Black 
organization to 
multicultural/ 
multinational 
organization.  

Another means for evaluating the LRBW and their pedagogy of revolution is by 
examining their success in accomplishing certain goals of social struggle. Hobsbawm identifies 
several objectives as part of social struggle creates a means for us to evaluate the efficacy of such 
organizations as the LRBW. Of these the following are especially relevant to the intellectual 
process (theoretical development) of a pedagogy of revolution (see Table 2). 

Table 2: Evaluation of Revolutionary Struggle as adapted from Hobsbawm (1973) 

Objective Task How accomplished? To what degree? 
Education of working class to political 
consciousness (Hobsbawm 1973: 100). 

Multiple theoretical study groups, book clubs, 
propaganda, agitation, struggle. 

Ability to learn the method of Marx 
(Hobsbawm 1973: 108). 

The 18-month study of the classic and 
contemporary Marxist-Leninist texts. 

Ability to make their own analysis (Hobsbawm 
1973: 108). 

Identifying their position at the point of 
production. Historical analysis of the role of 
Black workers 

Ability to organize their perspectives and 
programs (Hobsbawm 1973: 108). 

As evidenced by the various papers they wrote 
and the articles in their various leaflets. 

The historical location and the material conditions become identifiable by the LRBW and by this 
research as necessary preconditions for the emergence of the LRBW and for the application of 
lessons learned to the current historical moment. 

DRUM grew at a time when there were certain reforms that needed to be taken 
care of. All of those reforms have been taken care of and people say why can’t we 
build a DRUM today. And people have tried. We have said that these are not the 
same conditions that gave rise to DRUM at the time. Dodge Main does not exist 
anymore (Kramer 2013). 

Although DRUM, the other RUMs and the LRBW are no longer active, the process of pedagogy 
of revolution that their members experienced led them to continue the struggle through ongoing 
theoretical study and practice. As they realized that the struggle towards raising consciousness 
requires a prolonged engagement, they remained active and cognizant of the necessity of a 
pedagogy of revolution. 



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22 

This study has attempted to identify a pedagogy of revolution as created and used by the 
LRBW. But as with all research there are certain limitations to the findings. One of the possible 
limitations that I identify in this study is the fact that the events occurred over a period of about 
forty-five years ago. The way that people remember events and represent them at different times 
based on the circumstances and material conditions of those later times greatly influences the 
way they see themselves and events within a given moment. The research is framed within a 
certain context and historical period and yet it is carried out in the present within a different 
context and historical period, this may have led the researcher into reading more than what is 
actually there. By pulling from various methodological traditions and using a variety of methods, 
the researcher sought to correct for this as best he could.   

Similarly, the way that I, the researcher, interpret them today within my own context is 
site specific. In regards to time; the confounds of history, maturation, and mortality have 
impacted the sources of my data (Bernard 2011: 85-6). Additionally, it is important to keep in 
minds that documents “are constructed in particular contexts, by particular people, with 
particular purposes, and with consequences—intended and unintended” (Mason 2002: 110). The 
phenomena being researched took place within a historical context from which the researcher is 
removed by a generation. Although material conditions are real, the way in which they are 
understood varies across time and space. 

Also in relations to a Freirian method, it remains very abstract and still requires more 
concrete conceptualization in its application. This research hopes to inform social change and 
provide a new perspective for analyzing social movements by identifying those pieces of the 
process that are common to all. It is hoped that by identifying and updating a pedagogy of 
revolution that progress can be made in humanities attainment of its full potential. For future 
research, this project hopes to further identify other aspects of a pedagogy of revolution as 
specifically created by the LRBW. In addition to the intellectual process (theoretical 
development), further research plans include an analysis of both the organizational process 
(practical development) and the political process (strategic and tactical development). The 
research hopes to identify a pedagogy of revolution that can be used as an analytic tool for the 
exploration of other social movement processes as well. 

An additional limitation involves the researcher and his interpretation. Although the 
subject of this research is the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, the researcher is a White 
male and as such has White privilege. Even though, scientifically, the researcher may strive for 
knowing the world objectively, a cultural and historical legacy of racism and sexism have 
colored the lens through which the researcher sees the world.  

There is no simple recipe for pedagogy. There are simply tools and techniques that can be 
applied uniquely in historically situated spaces of educational practice. The LRBW developed a 
pedagogy of revolution that was unique and resulted from the objective material conditions of 
the reality they experienced in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This experience of exploitation of 
global capitalism and White supremacy led them to develop a set of tools and techniques through 
which they could understand why their lives were the way they were. They were looking for 
answers to why they were exploited and oppressed and what they discovered in this process was 
a pedagogy of revolution that led them to class-consciousness through conscientização.  



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23 

This research has shown that a pedagogy of revolution should include the following 
components: collective analysis of the historical moment, entering into a local process of social 
struggle, creating a praxis or the reflexivity of theory and practice, engaging in economic, 
political and social exposures (Lenin [1902] 1988), and propaganda and agitation as an 
educational project. 

What became apparent through the course of this research project is that there are many 
versions and many perspectives from the individuals who participated in and made up the 
League of Revolutionary Black Workers. There were splits and divides and confusion among 
members, but there was also fraternity and solidarity. The LRBW may have meant something 
different to all of those who have participated in it or studied it post-facto, but what remains clear 
is that for all it was important. Further, it served as a historical event that clarified for members 
who they were not only as revolutionaries or activists, but as a collective part of humanity 
moving forward in attaining its vision of the world as a better place. Scott offers “If we want to 
build a new society we have to model our organizing using that model” (2004). This study of the 
LRBW has pulled various voices together in an attempt to examine the workers perspective and 
their process of a pedagogy of revolution in their theoretical development on their way to a 
higher stage of class-consciousness. What we can take from their story more than any other is the 
importance of the educational project in organizing social movements. 

Today we find ourselves in an uncertain world, but one with no less hope in the 
possibilities for a brighter future, a future of our own making. The LRBW and the pedagogy of 
revolution that they developed cannot show us the way for the future, but they can show us what 
did and did not work at a particular moment in time at a particular place under specific economic 
conditions.  

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