Black Communists Against US Racial Capitalism with Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly

In this episode we talk to author, scholar and educator Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly. Burden-Stelly is currently a visiting scholar in the Race and Capitalism Project at the University of Chicago. She also serves as an Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. Along with Dr. Gerald Horne, Burden-Stelly co-authored the book W.E.B. Du Bois: A Life in American History.

We talk to Charisse about her work studying the political theory of Black Marxist Leninists from the mid-20th Century. We also discuss her work on defining anti-Blackness and anticommunism as co-constitutive structures of repression in the US. Burden-Stelly also discusses her work on Modern US Racial Capitalism, and the lineage and archive that she draws upon to put forth her analysis. This includes examining the theoretical contributions of Claudia Jones, W.E.B. Du Bois, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Louise Thompson Patterson, and others.

We also talk about how the US’s ongoing legacies of anticommunism and anti-Blackness still dictate the terms of state insurgency against material progress for Black people and a majority of the US population and people around the world.