The theories offered by Eugene V. Wolfenstein in The VictimÆs of Democracy and those offered by Robert L. Allen in Black Awakening in Capitalist America are similar in that they show the significant interconnection of race, class, economics, education, labor, and politics in the process of social transformation. Wolfenstein (351) provides an account of the psychological impact of this process on consciousness and identity but basis this impact on the foundation of capitalism, ôThe alienation of sensuous energies, when mediated by the commodity-character of bourgeois social production, results in the systematic falsification of conscious activity.ö Overcoming this falsification is what Wolfenstein (351) maintains Malcolm X achieved but he also argues it is necessary for overcoming ôracist oppression.ö Allen (275) expands WolfensteinÆs concept by maintaining that what must be overcome to eliminate racist oppression, in a system whose economic and social structures reinforce it, are the forces that remove democracy from ôeconomic relations.ö These, Allen explains, are forces inherent in a capitalistic cycle of social revolution that moves through a process of colonialism, decolonization, and neocolonialism. In a system that is economically and socially arranged around exploiter and exploited, becoming liberated and forging a true identity can only equate to the ôhavesö and ôhave-nots.ö This analysis will compared and contrast the theories offered by Wolfenstein and Allen.
Allen maintains the story of Black Nationalism is one that can be viewed through a Marxist lens, one where capitalist structures can undermine nationalist interests in favor of groups working in their own interest. This is what Allen maintains is apparent in the historical struggle for Black Nationalism in the U.S. Moving through a stage development from internal colonialism, decolonization, and neo-colonialism, a rising black bourgeois became co...