Blackburn’s observations are accurate. He rightly highlights
that Marx’s engagement with the Civil War was core to his political work in the
1860s, not just a side interest. As the review states, Marx closely tracked
military campaigns, contributed extensively to the New York Daily Tribune and
the Vienna Presse, and coordinated widespread working-class resistance in
Britain against Palmerston's pro-Confederate interventionist policies.”¹ Blackburn
also notes Marx’s respect for Lincoln as a bourgeois revolutionary who, faced
with circumstances, went beyond his class boundaries. Marx’s 1865 tribute—cited
in the assessment—praises Lincoln as “one of the rare men who succeed in
becoming great, without ceasing to be good.”²—was not diplomatic rhetoric but a
political judgment grounded in historical necessity.
Blackburn’s political framework is rooted in his
longstanding connection to the New Left Review and its post-Trotskyist origins.
The assessment places Blackburn within the tradition of the International
Marxist Group and the reunified Fourth International, which split from the
International Committee in 1963, leading to a trajectory of political
abandonment. This milieu transitioned from Pabloite entryism into the Labour
Party to Eurocommunism, support for national-liberation movements, and
ultimately to academic postmodernism and identity politics prevalent in today's
pseudo-left. As noted, this development “is not a series of disconnected
errors. It flows from the abandonment of the central Marxist principle: the
political independence of the working class and the fight for world socialist
revolution".”³
This political lineage influences Blackburn’s view of the
American Revolution as an unfinished process. Marx considered the Civil War a
bourgeois-democratic revolution that dismantled the slaveholding elite.
However, the emancipation of four million enslaved individuals highlighted
social issues—land redistribution, political rights, education, and economic
independence—that capitalism could not address. The failure of
Reconstruction—marked by the withdrawal of federal troops and the reinstatement
of white supremacist rule in the South—further exemplifies this ongoing
incompleteness.”⁴—expressed the class limits of the bourgeoisie, not the
failure of American democracy in the abstract. From this perspective, the
unfinished tasks of the Civil War point not toward liberal reform but toward
socialist revolution.
Blackburn, however, examines the issue from a left-liberal
reformist perspective. The critique suggests that the New Left Review’s
shifting politics—ranging from Keynesianism to left-nationalism and academic
radicalism—fail to recognize the working class as a crucial revolutionary
subject. Consequently, their idea of the “unfinished revolution” stays confined
within bourgeois political boundaries. Here, the working class is seen merely
as an object of analysis rather than as an active agent shaping history.
The methodological critique is equally decisive. Marx did
not approach the Civil War as an intellectual curiosity but as a revolutionary
strategist. His journalism was “a political act aimed at clarifying the stakes
of the conflict for workers in Europe and America.”⁵ He aimed to analyze the
class forces at play and the strategic consequences of their conflict.
Blackburn’s research, however, views Marx’s involvement as a moment in
intellectual history rather than a blueprint for revolutionary action. This difference
in approach highlights the divide between Marxism as a revolutionary practice
and the academic Marxism that now largely influences the post-Trotskyist left.
The assessment compares Blackburn’s method with the stance
of the International Committee of the Fourth International regarding the 1619
Project. It characterizes the project as a defense of the revolutionary legacy
of the Civil War, opposing a racialist misrepresentation. The argument suggests
that the 1619 Project replaces “an immutable racial pathology”⁶ with the class
dynamics of American history, thereby serving contemporary ruling‑class
interests by dividing the working class. This example illustrates what it means
to apply Marx’s method to contemporary political struggles: history is not
merely to be interpreted but to be used as a guide to revolutionary practice.
The review concludes by asserting that the working class is
the rightful successor to the democratic revolutions of 1776 and 1865. These
victories—such as equality before the law, the abolition of slavery, and
birthright citizenship—are currently under persistent threat from a capitalist
oligarchy that is shifting towards authoritarianism. Defending these gains is
inherently linked to the struggle for socialism. As David North writes, “The
American working class will not arrive at the construction of independent
organs of struggle and rule without studying the history of the country in
which it lives.”⁷ The unfinished tasks of the Civil War, the assessment argues,
cannot be resolved within the framework of the New Left Review or the
academic left more broadly.
Blackburn’s book is useful but constrained. It retrieves key
historical data but misses its revolutionary significance. A true Marxist
approach to the Civil War should start not with academic analysis but with
revolutionary planning. Only then can the concept of the “unfinished
revolution” be fully understood and realized.
Footnotes
- A
Marxist Assessment of Robin Blackburn’s An Unfinished Revolution, 1.
(“Marx followed the military campaigns in detail, wrote extensively… organised
mass working-class opposition…”)
- Ibid.,
2. (“one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to
be good”)
- Ibid.,
3. (“is not a series of disconnected errors… abandonment of the central
Marxist principle…”)
- Ibid.,
4. (“the withdrawal of federal troops, the restoration of white
supremacist rule in the South”)
- Ibid.,
5. (“a political act aimed at clarifying the stakes of the conflict for
workers…”)
- Ibid.,
6. (“an immutable racial pathology”)
- Ibid.,
7. (“The American working class will not arrive at the construction of
independent organs of struggle…”)
