We analyze class, race, and revolution in the United States through Marxist theory and philosophy, and the experience and lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (League) in the auto and related plants and community in Detroit in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The League brought the black liberation movement to the point of production. They grasped the dialectics and interpenetration of class exploitation and racial oppression within capitalism, and the strategic centrality of white supremacy for ruling-class profit and control. Their struggle embodied the unity and interrelation of theory and practice and the necessity of becoming proletarian intellectuals. The League came to Marxism-Leninism as the theory most closely related to their practice as workers at the point of production. Armed with the weapon of Marxism, former League members stayed the course through the stages of capitalist development—from Detroit as the epicenter of global capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s, through the technological shift from labor-enhancing to labor-replacing automation and robotization in the plants, to the deepening capitalist crisis, economic, ecological, and social destruction, and intensifying militarism and fascism in the twenty-first century. For over fifty years, they were part of the leadership of the multiracial, multinational, and multigendered working class in the 1960s, and they remain active within the twenty-first century’s rising movement. Former League members consistently lift up the strategic direction and class unity necessary for revolutionary transformation in the interests of the working class, and for the survival of humanity and the planet.

Burawoy's call for a critical and transformative "public sociology," whose goal is realizing the "real utopia" of democratic socialism, is welcome. We especially value and appreciate his call at this time because Burawoy has offered it during his presidency of the ASA -and thus from inside the profession and a key center of power in defining sociology as both theory and practice. We also value and appreciate it because it comes at a crucial moment in bottom-up movement building -another powerful process in defining social theory, social struggle and their dynamic relationship in social transformation.Our brief comments are informed by our work in Project South as "organic public sociologists" -in the trenches as well as the academy for 35+ years. They are also informed by a long and rich tradition of radical and Marxist sociology that teaches us many lessons. Two of the most essential are that "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point however is to change it." For us this change is fundamental, qualitative, systemic, transformative, and is central to our historic struggle for human liberation in the broadest, deepest and most inclusive sense. And, second, that theory and practice are two aspects of a powerful, dialectical unity born out of and continuously tested in our social struggle to end all forms of exploitation and oppression. Neither can exist without the other.Burawoy argues -and we agree -that change flows from outside the university in. The movements of the 1960s and 1970s -black liberation, national liberation and anti-imperialist/anti-colonial struggles, women's equality, sexual equality, environmental justice struggles, etc. -created the conditions for a radical sociology. Social struggles outside the university

This article presents a critical pedagogy for a racially oppressed working-class community, situated in this current moment of capitalist crises. In the aftermath of the police killing of Mike Brown and militarized police occupation in St. Louis, MO, students from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) employed a Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) module with African American high school students, during Alternative Spring Break 2015. The political education tools were grounded in Historical Materialism and Critical Race Theory. This was rooted in a movement-based praxis by and for the most affected persons (people of color, women, indigenous, immigrants, and queer populations). The PIC module informed this pedagogical process of raising consciousness, creating a vision, and strategizing toward long-term social change. Here, we discuss how this module enabled students to begin to grapple with the root of systemic racism, by connecting theory to their lived experiences. We understand this process as contributing to scholar activism, rooted in transformative public sociology. The modifications are discussed for implementation within future curriculums.

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From the inception of the emerging American nation, the South is a central battleground in the struggles for freedom, justice, and equality. It is the location of the most intense repression, exploitation, and reaction directed toward Africans Americans, as well as Native Americans and working people generally. At the same time the South is the site of the most heroic resistance to these oppressive conditions of class domination, of white supremacy, and of sexist social relations in the public and private sectors. The institution of chattel slavery thrusts the Black radical tradition into the forefront of these early struggles. Today's globalization in the electronic age and neoliberal policies -the attack on the New Deal and Civil Rights reforms of the past era -again place the Black radical tradition at the center of the struggles for freedom, justice, and equality.