“We’ll try anything, but it’s time to move on from Marxism, because it is inadequate in explaining global black suffering and global antiblackness.” – Howard Dean Johnson

Pressed on whether China’s Marxist past still matters, Johnson argues that class analysis without race leaves black people trapped. Race modifies class relations.

✅ Maoism & anti-colonial synergy: revolutionary China did funnel money and arms to liberation struggles, but that phase is over

✅ Marx’s blind spot: Marx was openly racist—calling Black people “degenerate n*****”—and never saw white supremacy as a global political system. Baby analysis.

✅ Superstructure problem: reducing racism to a tool of monopoly capital erases lived racial orders like apartheid South Africa.

✅ Race-first lens: for today’s racialised black communities, Marxism is “not current”; liberation begins with naming the global colour line, and global antiblackness.

🗣️ Skip race and you reproduce it—name the system, then dismantle it.

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