SOURCE: Singh, Raman K. “Marxism in Richard Wright's Fiction.” Indian Journal of American Studies 4, nos. 1-2 (1974): 21-35.

[In the following essay, Singh examines Richard Wright's works in the context of his Marxist leanings.]

Marxism may be said to be the chief ideological influence on Richard Wright. From the early stories in Uncle Tom's Children (written in the thirties) to The Outsider (1953), the impact of Marxist thought is felt in one way or another. Even though Wright left the Communist Party, he continued to be influenced by the general precepts of Marxism; a study of Wright's selected fiction shows that he often used Marxism to shape the major themes.

I have divided Wright's fiction into three broad categories; these categories are not illustrative of any real progression of thought in Wright but rather indicate the various Marxist elements that he used. The three categories are: 1. Class, Caste, and Capitalism: Under this heading, I shall examine three stories of the thirties (“Long Black Song,” “Down by the Riverside,” and “The Man Who Saw the Flood”) that focus on some fundamental Marxist ideas. 2. The Quest for Marx: All the elements of the previous category are present here, but now there is a specific quest for Marx. Native Son, the only novel in this division, is discussed from two major perspectives: one illustrates the usual Marxist emphases (class, caste, capitalism, alienation), and the other sees Bigger as an inarticulate figure in search of Marxist ideology. 3. The Anti-Communist Marxist: The paradoxical sub-heading identifies paradoxical Cross Damon in The Outsider, Communist methods are condemned, but general Marxist ideals are still upheld. Unlike Bigger, Cross is not questing for any ideological mentor, and, his abiding passion seems to be the pursuit and salvation of the Self.

The above-mentioned categories have only been broad explanatory statements. A close study of the relevant fiction will further amplify their subject-matter.

I. CASTE, CLASS, AND CAPITALISM

“Long Black Song,” “Down by the Riverside,” “The Man Who Saw the Flood”

“LONG BLACK SONG”

From the Marxist viewpoint, the story portrays the inadequacy of bourgeois values in providing self-fulfilment in a society where one class and/or race manipulates another. Through Silas, Wright shows the development of a man who moves from full acceptance of bourgeois values (specifically, the accumulation of private property), to his awareness of the inability and impossibility of such values to bring self-fulfillment. Thus, Silas comes to realize that for him these values are impossible, primarily because they belong to one class and race and he to another. The story is an interesting portrayal of the working of one idea (class) on another (race).

In the beginning Silas wants to imitate the ways of white capitalists. He has devoted ten years in trying to achieve what he thinks will eventually lead to economic freedom: “Fer ten years Ah slaved mah life out to git mah farm free. …”¹ On account of his values, he holds personal property (his farm and his wife, Sarah) to be goals worth striving for, hoping that these will fulfill his every need. But soon, Silas is to learn the impossibility of the values he has accepted. His awareness is occasioned by his wife's adultery. Of course, feelings of jealousy are aroused in him, but these eventually lead to a consciousness of the unattainability of the values he has adopted. He says, “They take yo lan! They take yo freedom! They take yo women! N then they take yo life” (p. 125). His bourgeois dream of owning the farm (and his wife) is unrealizable because of the caste system he is subject to. Wright uses the racial differences in order to disclose the differences of caste inherent in a capitalist society, and in this way he shows that there are complex combinations of economics and race operating in such situations as Silas finds himself in. Silas's class and racial identity cannot meaningfully change in a capitalist and racist society. He is aware of his lack of choice: “Ef Ah run erway, Ah ain got nothin. Ef Ah stay n fight Ah ain got nothin. It dont make no difference which way Ah go” (p. 124). Previously, it had mattered, but now he recognizes that his middle-class values will not help him fulfill his Self. In fact, the values he had once upheld are the ones to blame for his wife's infidelity, for the seducing white man comes in the role of a smooth-talking salesman. He, in the role of a petty bourgeois, can afford to reduce the phonograph's price by ten dollars for Sarah. According to Edwin Burgum, Silas sees that his wife's offense “has been imposed upon her by the social system he had accepted and expected to profit by.”² Given the predicament Silas finds himself in (that is, his lack of meaningful choice,) it is entirely believable to see him fighting to the end. In my opinion, his last fight does not illustrate an anti-bourgeois or pro-Marx attitude, as much as it shows the hopelessness of Silas's goals in an exploitative environment. But Edwin Burgum takes a different position; according to him, Silas's final struggle is not to save his property (he has lost that illusion) but to assert “his new sense of values.”³ Although Burgum places the story rigidly in a Marxist framework, I hesitate to agree with him entirely. Significantly, Silas's “new sense of values” is never made clear. In my view, the Marxist element of the story lies in its combination (as Wright saw it) of economic and racial levels and in its portrayal of the failure of middle-class values to provide self-fulfillment for Silas. The combination of class and race is readily observed. The salesman is white, but he is also a member of the bourgeoisie. He represents the ruling class for he, to the black man, appears to control the traffic in material goods. Wright is not confusing race and class as much as he is showing their relationship; he seems to be saying that the color conflict is understandable in terms of the class conflict, and this insight Wright owed to his reading of Marxist thought. Marx and Engels wrote in The Communist Manifesto that “The bourgeoisic … has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefensible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade.”⁴ The salesman comes as a free trader and manages to destroy Silas's life's work. His color and his economic position place him in a class above Silas. And Silas, in destroying himself and the salesman, seems to acknowledge the impossibility of his goals as long as one class and/or color has power over another. Such, to me, is the story's broad framework of Marxism. The new values that Burgum thinks Silas accepts, are not clearly shown to be Marxist. In my opinion, the Marxist bias of the story lies more in the presentation of the class conflict (in combination with the racial one) than in any clear expression of anti-bourgeois, pro-Marxist values.

“DOWN BY THE RIVERSIDE”

The subject and theme of the story may be summed up in one word: group-consciousness. Group-consciousness, as against individual consciousness, is not an idea exclusive to Marxist thought, but it is one of its dominant ones. Marx and Engels often reiterated the importance of the group over the individual self: “history does not end by being resolved into “self-consciousness” … [but it is] a sum of productive forces, a historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another. …”⁵ The relationship between individuals (or, awareness of the group) is the main concern of “Down by the Riverside.”

“Down by the Riverside” is a good illustration of Wright's feeling towards group-consciousness in the Marxist sense. Mann tries to forget his own troubles for the sake of helping others: “Now and then he remembered Lulu and Heartfield and he felt dizzy; but he would urge himself and it would pass” (p. 87). The irony occurs, of course, when Mann is called to rescue the family of Heartfield. Consequently, Mann is very reluctant to go but again his concern for the group rather than his own life overtakes him and he rescues the family. After Mann rescues the Heartfields, the ending becomes a forgone conclusion: Mann is to be shot for his crime. At this point, he becomes a martyr, for we see how he gave up his own life for the sake of others. Mann, however, is no religious Uncle Tom who would lie down in submission and die; he is one of the new breed of Uncle Tom's children. He is a rebel who prefers to die by choice; he would die before he would let them kill him: “Ahll die fo they kill me! Ahll die …” (p. 102). He runs for it and is shot to death. Death is the price Mann has had to pay for his new sense of values and awareness of the group; but it is a price he pays by his own choice.

In moving from individual consciousness to group-consciousness Mann becomes a vehicle for Wright's Marxism. And it is in this development in Mann's nature that the Marxist thrust of the story lies. Mann, of course, does not mouth Marxist phrases (in this he is similar to Bigger Thomas), but his actions speak for themselves. Mann represents the force for the brotherhood of man; as such, this force denies artificial barriers of race and color, and denies, too, the existence of the individual as separate from the group. And in doing so, it falls within the ambience of Marxist thought.

“THE MAN WHO SAW THE FLOOD”

“The Man Who Saw the Flood” is Marxist by virtue of its topic: capitalist exploitation. The story is not, as Dan McCall asserts, about “a helplessly dazed Negro family at the mercy of nature and the white man. …”⁶ It is about a Negro family at the mercy of a capitalist white man. A brief summary of plot helps to illustrate this.

Tom's family is driven out of its cabin by the destruction wrought by the flood. When the flood subsides, the family returns home to salvage what it can. The cabin is still standing, the water-pump works; the family finds its cow and a few other possessions. The destruction awakens Tom not to the wrath of unmerciful nature, as McCall asserts, but to his economic situation. Tom knows that he needs money to start all over again, but he is reluctant to work again for Burgess, the white store-keeper to whom Tom already owes eight hundred dollars. As Tom says, if he gets deeper in debt, Burgess will “own us body in soul.”⁷ When Burgess arrives at the scene, Tom asks him to reduce his debt on account of being “down n out now” (p. 115). But Burgess is adamant; he threatens Tom with legal action if Tom refuses to go back to work for him. Tom reluctantly gets into the buggy with Burgess, knowing that he has no other choice. In fact, rather than getting his debt reduced, he is getting deeper into debt, for he needs food and new equipment. Thus, by drawing a picture of Tom's helplessness, Wright has brought out not so much the terror of nature and the white man, but the tyranny of a society structured along almost feudal lines. The story portrays exploitation of one man by another; this exploitation is made possible because the society is built around levels of class. The classes encompass race as well as privilege. For Tom, labor becomes unbearable in the Marxist sense; and his relationship to the capitalist leads to estrangement and alienation. Tom's begging for mercy dehumanizes him, for it places him below another man (Burgess). His dehumanization is not caused by industry (as Marxists usually like to say) but by his dependence on a ruthless ruling class represented by Burgess (Burgess's name is symbolic of the ruling class since it is conceivably linked to members, called Burgesses, of the colonial legislatures of Virginia and Maryland). Wright puts Tom at the center of the story, but Burgess places materialism above Tom. Tom suffers from the consequences of Burgess's non-Marxist belief which holds materialism to be above man, property above person. But “Marxism places man in the center of its philosophy, for while it claims that material forces may change man, it declares most emphatically that it is man who changes the material forces.”⁸ Tom of course is not a Marxist, but he does serve to bring out the Marxist doctrine of capitalist exploitation and its consequent effect of dehumanization. Thus, the story shows a Marxist (or specifically, anti-capitalist) bias in portraying the alienation, degradation, and dehumanization that result from exploitation and class division under capitalism. Tom, although certainly ignorant of any political ideology, is not unaware of the basic predicament he is in; he sees this predicament in broad Marxist terms. That is to say, he is fully aware of the way he is owned by the ruling class: he says, “Ef we keeps on like this tha white man'll own us body n soul” (p. 114).

II. THE QUEST FOR MARX: NATIVE SON

Native Son is Wright's major Marxist novel. It contains all the important Marxist concepts I have discussed under “Caste, Class, and Capitalism,” but it also portrays an obvious search for Marx. “Long Black Song” shows the inadequacy of bourgeois values, “Down by the Riverside” emphasizes group-consciousness, “The Man Who Saw the Flood” points out the dehumanizing influence of capitalism, and Native Son reveals a clear quest for and discovery of Marx.

Before undertaking an interpretation of the novel through a Marxist perspective, a few introductory remarks about various critical opinions are pertinent. Many critics admit the presence of Marxist ideology, but refuse to see it as central. Robert Bone's comment is quite typical: “To Bigger, Communism is a matter not of ideology but of relatedness.”⁹ The Communist Party, too, seems to have been irked by Wright's novel, feeling that he had not correctly understood the ideology.¹⁰ And yet, Earl Browder, the head of the Party, did not view Wright's novel with displeasure. Therefore, one conclusion that can be safely reached is that critics are not in agreement as to the role of Marxism in the novel, although it is agreed that it is present in abundance. In my opinion, Marxism is the central idea in the novel; theme, plot, main character: all are subservient to it; and, furthermore, Wright converts the ideology into art. (However, it is not within the scope of this essay to demonstrate the artistic merit). Whether we approach the novel through the main character, or through the related themes of alienation and the quest for identity, Marxism lies at the core. Through Bigger, Jan Erlone, Mary Dalton, and Boris Max, it forcefully attacks what it considers to be the inequities of the capitalist system. My intention is not to reject those opinions that hold race to be Wright's central concern,¹¹ but to assert that in Wright the racial conflict is seldom separate from the social and economic one, and that Wright thought that the problems of race could be explained as problems of class. As Wright himself repeatedly said: “Truly, you must now know that the word Negro in America means something not racial or biological, but something purely social, something made in the United States.”¹² The entire perspective of Native Son, whether one studies race or class, is Marxist.

Bigger's quest for Marx is made more believable after his basic position in society is studied. Thus, it is important to examine the conditions that lead to his quest. In fact, the quest is made necessary because of these conditions. From the beginning to end, Wright emphasizes Bigger's position in his society and his search for an ideology that will explain his oppressed state. Wright makes Bigger into a revolutionary, because Bigger fulfills the basic conditions of such a person: Bigger is “black, unequal, despised.”¹³ These oppressive conditions, as Max explains in his long speech, are a result of the peculiar society (capitalistic and racist) in which Bigger lives. It goes without saying that Bigger's blackness would exist in any society, but Wright is perhaps saying that racial prejudice is an ally of capitalism, for both racial prejudice and capitalism create separate classes (the one based on race, the other on wealth and ownership) that serve one another (that is, the black man is also the poor man). Narrow outlooks of race, class, and nationalism are alien to Marxist thought. Bigger cannot be called an articulate Marxist; he is, rather, the archetype of what Marx envisioned as the ideal revolutionary: poor, alienated, discriminated against, and ready to act violently against forces that dehumanize him in every way.

Bigger comes to feel that what he is pitted against is not only the white man as a racial entity (he does come to understand both Jan and Max), but the white man's economic, political, and social structure; and he sees too that race determines one's social status. If he can overcome a system in which race is a separate class (and Marxism promises to eliminate all classes; the behavior of Marry Dalton and Jan Erlone testifies to that), then he will cease to be an oppressed being merely by virtue of his race. Because it is impossible to destroy any structure in the abstract, his violence is directed against those who uphold this structure, and if his own race were to uphold such a structure, he would be pitted against it too. In fact, he feels alienated from the black bourgeoisie too. When Max asks him why he did not turn to black leaders for help and sympathy, Bigger replies: “Aw, hell, Mr. Max. They wouldn't listen to me. They rich, even though the white folks treat them almost like they do me. They almost like white people” (p. 330). In his reply, Bigger is hinting at the class basis of his feeling of alienation. His need of money reflects his awareness of the division of classes: “They [whites] own the world” (p. 25). The murder of Mary also helps to arouse class-consciousness in Bigger; talking to Max late, he says: “Well, I acted toward her only as I know how. She was rich. She and her kind own the earth. She and her kind say black folks are dogs. They don't let you do nothing but what they want. …” (p. 324). As Bigger keeps talking, he sees the division of classes (in the sense that the Negro has limited economic opportunity) with even more clarity: “Mr. Max, a guy gets tired of being told what he can do and can't do. You get a little job here and a little job there. You shine shoes, sweep streets; anything. … You get so you can't hope for nothing. You just keep moving all the time, doing what other folks say. You ain't a man no more. You must work day in and day out so the world can roll on and other people can live” (p. 326).

It is this class-division that accounts for Bigger's psychological and economic alienation. Bigger touches on this point when he says to Max: “‘Well, they own everything. They choke you off the face of the earth. They like God. …’ He swallowed, closed his eyes and sighed. ‘They don't even let you feel what you want to feel. They after you so hot and hard you can only feel what they doing to you. They kill you before you die’” (p. 327). Thus, Bigger is economically and emotionally dehumanized by the collaboration of his environmental forces. Bigger's awareness of his state (his alienation) in society leads him on his quest for a system of beliefs that will articulate what he has been feeling.

It has become a cliche with critics to say that Bigger searches for his identity. The validity of this cliche is not being questioned here, but something is being added to it; namely, that Bigger seeks a confirmation of what he has discovered in himself already; he seeks a system of thought that upholds what Bigger has found through instinct. And Marxism supplies him with the answer.

His search for what we might call ideological identity is apparent:

Of late he had liked to hear tell of men who could rule others, for in actions such as these he felt that there was a way to escape from this tight morass of fear and shame that sapped at the base of his life. He liked to hear of how Japan was conquering China; of how Hitler was running the Jews to the ground; of how Mussolini was invading Spain. He was not concerned with whether these acts were right or wrong: they simply appealed to him as possible avenues of escape. He felt that some day there would be a black man who would whip the black people into a tight band and together they would act and end fear and shame. He never thought of this in precise mental images; he felt it; he would feel it for a while and then forget. But hope was always waiting somewhere deep down in him.

(pp. 109-110)

Here, then, are an uneducated youth's stirrings; at this early stage of the novel, these instinctive stirrings are not given any Marxist overtones. Only towards the end of the novel does Bigger arrive at Marxism. The novel portrays a youth's search for a system of beliefs (in the beginning, only his search, not the beliefs, is evident); the youth finds this belief through Max, the Marxist lawyer. The movement of the novel, then, is from a dim, but real, yearning in Bigger to a more conscious acceptance of Marxism. As the novel progresses, the dim yearning becomes a strong desire:

… he hungered for another orbit between two poles that would let him live again; for a new mode of life that would catch him up with the tension of hate and love. There would have to hover above him, like the stars in a full sky, a vast configuration of images and symbols whose magic and power could lift him up and make him live so intensely that the dread of being black and unequal would be forgotten; that even death would not matter, that it would be a victory. This would have to happen before he could look them in the face again: a new pride and a new humility would have to be born in him, a humility springing from a new identification with some part of the world in which he lived, and this identification forming the basis for a new hope that would function in him as pride and dignity.

(p. 256)

Thus we see Bigger's quest for an ideology that would fill his need not only on the racial and local level, but, more significantly, on the social and universal level. He wishes to identify himself with a universal ideology that would help not only the poor blacks but the poor of all colors. Jan and Max provide him with such an ideology. Bigger's rejection of other ideas and ideologies (in favor of Marxism) formally takes place in prison. As Robert Bone has pointed out, in prison Bigger “discards one alternative after another. He rejects his family … the race leaders … and religion.”¹⁴ But Bigger acknowledges the validity of Max's ideology when he tells Max: ‘“If all folks was like you then maybe I wouldn't be here” (p. 332). Thus, the latter part of the novel deals with Bigger's ideological awakening; of course, Bigger had always felt these thoughts within him, but it took Jan and Max to draw these feelings and thoughts out. Max awakens Bigger to his full ideological identity: “… in Max's asking of those questions he had felt a recognition of his life, of his feelings, of his person that he had never encountered before” (p. 333). After he has accepted Max's ideology, Bigger sees hope in the world because of the universal kinship felt by all who share his ideology; he “tried to see himself in relation to other men, a thing he had always feared to try to do” (p. 334). This acknowledgement within himself of his universality and kinship, gives him a “new sense of the value of himself gained from Max's talk” (p. 334). And he becomes “the equal of others” (p. 335). Thus, I see Bigger as moving from an inarticulate and instinctual stage (in which he shares the essential conditions of a Marxist revolutionary) to a position where he becomes conscious of Marxist ideology and which helps him to shift from an entirely racial view to a view that includes race and class (since, as Wright believed, Marxism spoke to issues of both race and class). The inculcation of race into class means that eventually race becomes submerged within class, or, to put it in another way, all differences of race and color vanish since racial divisions are a form of class divisions. The vanishing of racial differences is clear enough: “… and he was standing in the midst of a vast crowd of men, white men, and black men and all men, and the sun's rays melted away the many differences, the colors, the clothes, and drew what was common and good upward toward the sun …” (p. 335). The newly acquired ideology becomes now his identity: “But he was not interested in hating them [whites] now. … It was more important to him to find out what this new tingling, this new elation, this new excitement meant” (p. 336).

Max, through Marxist ideology, gives universal meaning to Bigger's violent and meaningless life. When Max convinces Bigger that the reasons for whites hating blacks are strongly economical, then Bigger has made the ideological leap forward and, consequently, even sees his crime in Marxist terms. Thus, before death, his life achieves meaning. When Bigger asks, “B-b-but what they hate me for” (p. 390), Max replies: “They want to keep what they own, even if it makes others suffer!” (p. 390) Of course, Max does not mean to completely negate Bigger's racial status (“You're black, but that's only a part of it,” p. 391), but he puts the emphasis on economics: “… the rich people don't want to change things; they'll lose too much” (p. 391). Consequently, having understood this, Bigger can now view his crime in a favorable light: “What I killed for must've been good” (p. 393). The act of killing, then, frees Bigger in that he sees it as an extension of his new found ideology; ideologies require action, and Bigger has acted.¹⁵ The ideology does not negate the criminality of his action, but it justifies it under the terms of its beliefs. In this way, Bigger is free. Insofar as Bigger's crime is a natural reaction to a hostile environment, it “must've been good.” Bigger's crime serves two major functions: it frees Bigger in that it is an act which boldly challenges the social environment, and it points to the nature of the environment which, from Wright's Marxist perspective, is dehumanizing. Bigger's actions point to the system under which he lives; as George Kent says: “Bigger Thomas and Richard Wright were after the system—not merely its pieces.”¹⁶

III. THE ANTI-COMMUNIST MARXIST: THE OUTSIDER

The Outsider is often cited as an example of Wright's disillusionment with Marxism and Communism; for instance, Walter Rideout calls it “explicitly anti-Communist.”¹⁷ Also, critics like to point out that The Outsider came out in 1953, which is nine years after Wright had left the Communist Party. It is pointless to deny the anti-Communist elements of the novel. But the point I wish to establish is that although Wright's main character, Cross Damon, is violently anti-Communist, he is not necessarily anti-Marx. Furthermore, his quarrel is with the methodology of the Communists, not with their Marxist goals. As with Sartre, Cross's Existential outlook does not necessarily negate his Marxist perspective. In my opinion, it is not important to classify Cross as Marxist, Existentialist, or anti-Communist; it is essential to see all the sides of his personality. In short, Cross, Damon is a Marxist Existentialist who rejects Communist methods and Christianity, but becomes himself a kind of god-figure. He is a “cross” between various ideas. Critics have written enough on his Existentialism, but they have neglected to see his Marxism (perhaps because of the explicit anti-Communism in the novel). I shall focus only on his Marxism.

Cross's leanings to the left are obvious. He feels that the left is on the side of the wronged and alienated man (the outsider): “… he knew that he would feel somewhat at home with Communists, for they, like him were outsiders.”¹⁸ It is essential, and obvious, to note that although he derides the methods used by the Communists, he is not against the stated aim of Communist leaders as it is derived from Marx; he is pro-Marx but anti-Party. His understanding of Marx, it appears, does not exactly parallel the Party's understanding. The Party totally neglects the human element; it becomes, in the novel, an instrument of fascist power, not Marxist humanitarianism. Gil Blount is a good Party member but not a good Marxist when he says to Bob Hunter: “Goddamn your damned feelings!” And, “Who cares about what you feel? Insofar as the Party is concerned, you've got no damned feelings!” (p. 183) As Cross sees it, the Party ought not to deny a man's feelings; such a position would constitute the un-Marxist teaching of denying the Self and not allowing the individual to develop fully. Marx's position on this is clear; he says that in “communist society … each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes … it [is] possible for me to do one thing to-day and another to-morrow … just as I have a mind. …”¹⁹ In The Outsider Cross Damon is anti-Party because its functionaries treat people as “things” (as the incident with Bob Hunter shows). Cross Damon is against the Party because it has distorted Marxism. When the Party plays God then it has stepped beyond its social-political-economic base and has become allied with the fascists; appropriately, Cross kills Herndon (the Fascist) and Gil Blount (the Communist) together. Gil Blount is a good spokesman for the way the Party has distorted the basic principles of Marx. Marx, for instance, does not see Communism as a state which demands that everything conform to it: “Communism is for us not a stable state which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call Communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”²⁰ Blount, on the other hand, demands complete suffocation of the self for the sake of the Party: “You exist to execute the Party's will. That's all there is to it,” he tells Bob Hunter he continues: “The Party hopes that you can understand why you must obey; but even if you don't understand, you must obey” (p. 183). We know, too, that Gil married Eva for the sake of the Party: “… Gil Blount had been ordered to marry her (Eva) to get her into the Party for prestige purposes” (p. 208). For Cross Damon, the Party is distorting the essential Marx. For him, as for Marx. the Self is important. He sees the purpose of his life as being the reforging of the self: “His was a passion to recast, reforge himself …” (p. 188). He agrees with the general direction and aim of the Party (Marxism) but not with its ways of achieving goals; “… he was almost persuaded that they had in a wrong manner moved in a right direction …” (p. 189). Cross turns against Communists, fascists, capitalists, and all those who deal in naked power and neglect the human element:

… there was not perhaps on earth a system of governing men which was more solidly built upon the sadly embarrasing cupidities of the human heart and its hunger to embrace the unembraceable. And this system of sensualization of the concept of power wasn't restricted to the Communist or Fascist worlds; the Communists had merely rationalized it, brought it nakedly in the open. Cross began to see that this systematization of the sensuality of power prevailed, though-in a different form, in the so-called capitalistic bourgeois world; it was every where, in religion as well as in government, and in all art that was worthy of the name.

(p. 200-201)

What we eventually have, then, is a man moving towards philosophical anarchy, but yet sympathizing with the broadest aspects of Marxist ideology. The Party wants to “hold absolute power over others” even to the extent of defining “what they should love or fear” (p. 198). Cross sees the Party's position as non-Marxist, for he says that such a position “was a non-economic conception of existence” (p. 198). Thus, Marxism in the hands of the American Communist Party becomes essentially non-Marxist since it denies the economic approach to human struggle. To Cross, the Party is not moved by humanitarian impulses; the Party plays God, whereas Marxism and Communism are supposed to overthrow human gods in power. Like God, the Party can supposedly predict behavior by “a man's convictions” (p. 337). Cross may not agree with the methods of the Party but the Party thinks he'll make a good functionary: “I've been thinking over your analysis of last night,” Blimin said. “With a little discipline, we could do something with you” (p. 370). Thus, it is essential to note that Cross's analysis has evoked the interest of the Party because of certain Marxist perspectives that he holds.²¹

Cross Damon, then, as a cross between various ideas, is a unique person and, therefore, cannot be precisely classified. He is a paradox: he is the anti-Communist Marxist who, while deploring Communist methods, exceeds the inhumanity of the Party; he is the atheist Existentialist who denies the existence of God, but behaves like one.

In summarizing my remarks on Cross, it needs to be again emphasized that he generally leans toward Marxist thought and goes far beyond the limited and narrow concerns of card-carrying Communists. If Communists act to save the world from capitalist overlordship, Cross acts to save it from both inhuman Communists and capitalists. If Communists would replace one system with another, Cross would have neither, but continue his search for a non-existent Utopia (“looking for rainbows,” Hilton calls it, p. 301). Whereas every system inclines towards integrating the individual self with the social and societal Self, Cross sees no point in integrating his Self with any flawed system. This alienation, of course, leads to his sense of being an “outsider” but an outsider is free to “abolish the present state of things” (as Marx puts it), whereas a Party-Communist is restricted to following the party program exclusively. Therefore, in a very real sense, Cross is very close to Marxist thought; he is more of a Communist than the Communists in the novel. Such a conclusion is based on Marx's own position as to what a Communist is. For Marx, Communism was not the implementation of any system (as the Communists in the novel would have Cross believe), but the overthrow of an inequitable one and the subsequent search for a new one. Cross is closer to Marx's own view of Communism than are the Party members. The distinguishing factor is that whereas Marx laid down what he saw as a scientific and practical system of societal structure, Cross, on the other hand, opposes all systems because he is motivated by utopian notions. Thus, Cross goes beyond the historical Marx in that he harbors romantic visions of an utopian society; such a view is less anti-Marx than it is pro-utopian. After all, if he had not shown a strong Marxist interpretation in his analysis of the historical process, Blimin is not likely to have asked him to join the Party. In opposing Communism, Cross is not giving up Marxism; he is merely seeking to abolish the tyranny of the Party. And in adopting Existentialism, he is not abandoning Marxism, but showing his awareness of both economic and cosmic consciousness.

Notes

1. Richard Wright, “Long Black Song,” in Uncle Tom's Children (New York: Harper & Row, Perennial Library edition, 1965), p. 124. Future references are in parentheses.

2. Burgum, The Novel and the World's Dilemma (1947), p. 254.

3. Ibid, p. 253.

4. Quoted in Clinton Rossiter's Marxism: The View from America (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1960), p. 101. The salesman also broadly fits the Marxist definition of the ruling class: “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e., the class, which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.” Marx and Engels, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers, 1947), p. 39.

5. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 29.

6. Dan McCall, The Example of Richard Wright (1969), p. 165.

7. “The Man Who Saw the Flood,” in Eight Men, (Cleveland: The World Publishing Co, 1961), p. 114. Future references are in parentheses.

8. Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People (New York: International Publishers, 1945), p. 26.

9. Robert Bone, The Negro Novel in America (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1958), p. 150.

10. See Constance Webb's Richard Wright (1968), p. 154.

11. An example of critical opinion emphasizing the novel's racial intentions is Theophilus Lewis's “The Saga of Bigger Thomas,” Catholic World, vol. 153 (May, 1941), 201-206. Lewis says: Wright's “obvious intention was to demonstrate that crime among Negroes is one of the consequences of race prejudice.” p. 203.

12. Richard Wright, White Man, Listen!, p. 80. It is entirely possible that Wright was incorrect in assuming that Marxist notions of class were applicable to race, but my primary objective is to demonstrate Wright's thinking in his fiction, not to quarrel with it.

13. Native Son (New York: Harper & Row, 1940; Perennial Classic edition Published 1966), p. 256. Further references, in parentheses, are to the Perennial edition.

14. Robert Bone, p. 149.

15. The extreme importance of action as being fundamental to an ideology is emphasized, for instance, by Daniel Bell in The Third of Ideology (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1960). Bell says that “For the ideologue, truth arises in action … He comes alive not in contemplation, but in ‘the deed’. …” (p. 371).

16. George E. Kent, “Richard Wright: Blackness and the Adventure of Western Culture,” CLA Journal, XII, 4. (June, 1969), 340.

17. Walter B. Rideout, The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900-1954 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1956), p. 261.

18. The Outsider (New York: Harper & Row. Perennial edition, 1960), p. 164. Future references are in parentheses.

19. Marx and Engels, The German Ideology, p. 22.

20. Ibid. p. 26.

21. For a detailed dissertation by Cross on his Marxist view of history, see pp. 33-367 of the novel.