Du Bois on Double Life: Du Boisian and Marxist Alienation

This article challenges the reception of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk as a text consigned to his “early liberal” period, distinct from a later period in which he incorporates Marxist analysis. This periodization of Du Bois’s corpus risks obscuring a longstanding focus in Du Bois’s work: the alienation of Black life. In Souls, alienation consists not only in the alienated double-consciousness Black Americans suffer, but also in a material “double life” that grounds this consciousness. Insofar as it attributes theoretical priority to the objective conditions of racial capitalism, Du Bois’s early account of alienation bears striking similarities to Marx’s theory of alienation. By appreciating Du Bois’s emphasis on objective, socioeconomic conditions, it becomes apparent that core, philosophical insights of Souls persist throughout Du Bois’s corpus and prefigure his later embrace of Marxism.