Robin Blackburn

Robin Blackburn delivering one of the Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2010.

Robin Blackburn (born 1940) is a British socialist historian, a former editor of New Left Review (1981-99), an author of essays on Marx, capitalism and socialism, and of books on the history of slavery and on social policy. His most celebrated works, The Making of New World Slavery: from the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (1997) and The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (1988) offer an account of the rise and fall of colonial slavery in the Americas, contributing to the emerging field of 'Atlantic history'. Blackburn has also published critiques of the 'financialisation of everyday life' and of the privatization of pension provision. He was educated at Oxford and the LSE. A former member of the International Marxist Group, he is currently Professor of Sociology at Essex University and between 2001 and 2009 has been Distinguished Visiting Professor of Historical Studies at The New School in New York City. He has been a regular contributor to New Left Review since 1962.

Selected works/articles

Robin Blackburn (right) after giving one of the Oxford Amnesty Lectures, with Robin Kelley (left) who was the chair for the event, 2010.

• Prologue to the Cuban Revolution New Left Review 21 (1963)
• Towards Socialism edited for the "New Left Review" (with Perry Anderson) (1966)
• The Incompatibles : trade union militancy and the consensus (with Alexander Cockburn)(1967)
• Student Power : problems, diagnosis, action (edited with Alexander Cockburn (1969)
• Strategy for revolution [essays by Régis Debray translated from the French](editor) (1970)
• Ideology in Social Science : readings in critical social theory (editor) (1972)
• Explosion in a Subcontinent : India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Ceylon (editor) (1975)
• Revolution and Class Struggle : a reader in Marxist politics (editor) (1977)
• The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776-1848 (1988) 550 pp
• After the Fall : the failure of communism and the future of socialism (editor) (1991)
• The Making of New World slavery : from the baroque to the modern, 1492-1800 (1997)600 pp
• Banking on Death: Or, Investing in Life — The History and Future of Pensions (2002)500 pp
• Haiti, Slavery and the Age of the Democratic Revolution, William and Mary Quarterly 2006
• Age Shock: How Finance Is Failing Us (2006) 280 pp
• Economic Democracy: Meaningful, Desirable, Feasible?, Daedalus, Summer 2007
• Proposal for a Global Pension, New Left Review, no 48, Nov-Dec 2007
• "The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights",(2011), 460 pp.
• "Marx and Lincoln: an Unfinished Revolution", 2011, 220 pp.
• The Credit Crunch, New Left Review, no 50, Mar-Apr 2008.

External links

• Homepage
• Guardian profile
• John Lennon interview (with Tariq Ali) (1971)
• Essex University homepage
• New School for Social Research (New York) Homepage
• Class forces in the Cuban Revolution book review in International Socialism 2:9, (1980)
• Reviewing the millennia, book review in International Socialism, 2:86 (Spring 2000)
• "What really ended slavery?", an interview with Blackburn in International Socialism, 2:115 (summer 2007)
• Works by or about Robin Blackburn in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

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