"The American Blindspot": Reconstruction According to Eric Foner and W.E.B. Du Bois

Examines the differing interpretations of Foner and Du Bois on labour and class struggle during the Reconstruction period following the American Civil War. Du Bois focused on the revolutionary, proletarian character of Reconstruction as black workers asserted their political power in the American South, despite violent white opposition. Foner, in contrast, emphasized the triumph of the white Northern bourgeoisie. Argues that Du Bois rightly pointed to what he called " the American blindspot," i.e., the racial prejudice that precluded white labour from forming a partnership with blacks, instead colluding with capital. Concludes that Du Bois' perspective put him at odds with other Marxist analysts, including the US Communist Party, which during its Popular Front period of the 1930s considered Reconstruction to be a bourgeois revolution.