Originally written June 3, 1996.
CAPITALISM
Capitalism breeds and is inseparable from racism, xenophobia, sexism, and a limitless assortment of inequities. Inequitable practices and the bigotry that rationalizes them are profitable!
Capitalism is organized on the principle of dog-eat-dog, survival of the most ruthless. It is overwhelmingly competitive in nature. The capitalist sharks are sharp rivals to one another, uniting only in maintaining their privileges over the working class and the oppressed on a national as well as international scale. The competitive struggle for survival is spontaneously reflected among the middle class and even among the working people and the oppressed themselves. The hierarchical model of capitalist society breeds and reinforces the dominant social attitudes of the ruling class among all sections of the population. It is the class struggle, the development of working class consciousness, consciousness of the unity of interest of the working class of all ethnic and national components of that class, women and men, young and old, native and immigrant, which works to counteract chauvinist poison. But just as class consciousness is not an all-or-nothing attribute but proceeds from the lowest level of, say, a scab, to the highest level of capacity for supreme self-sacrifice in the interest of the class, so prejudices and sensitivities proceed along a continuum, as well, generally but not mechanically or automatically in tandem with class consciousness.
Second, beyond its profitability, the oppression and divisions of various sectors of the people are crucial in strengthening ruling class control. Divide and Rule!
The ruling class is not content to rely on the spontaneous hatreds, jealousies and divisions stimulated by the inherent nature of the social system. It works to constantly reinforce those divisions through the ideological means at its disposal: the political Establishment, the media, the educational Establishment, the religious Establishment, and the cultural Establishment.
The anti-racist, anti-sexist, and the struggle against discrimination against other sectors of the population that make up the working people is a critical aspect of the class struggle, most crucial of which, as the history of this country shows, is the anti-racist struggle.
The anti-racist, anti-immigrant, anti-sexist, etc., struggle must be conducted in two ways:
Through education, which means explanation that not only is oppression unjust and morally wrong but that such oppression has a devastating impact on the well-being of all working people, on the struggle for social justice and social progress, and on the struggle for a fundamentally new and humane kind of society.
Through active class struggle, through the transformative power of struggle in which lessons are best learned and attitudes changed, not relying on class struggle to spontaneously raise consciousness to the necessary level, but bringing the lessons of the struggle as one engages with the masses in the struggle.
RACE
There are of course superficial biological differences that characterize various ethnic groups. But the notion of race arose with the development of the ideology of white supremacy concomitant with the development of the institution of slavery and later with the rise of imperialism, in both cases used to justify exploitation and total subjugation. Race was a category used not only to describe physical types but to ascribe to the “races” inherent psychological and intellectual attributes, from the most desirable to the least desirable. Thus, the “white” race was at the top while the “black” race was at the bottom of the racial categories. It is evident that there are substantial physical differences within each “racial” group. The Europeans vary from the blue-eyed blondes of the Nordic countries to the dark-skinned types of the Mediterranean. Among the Africans there is likewise a wide range of physical types. The biology, of course, among all ethnic groups is basically the same.
At a time when anthropologists were abandoning the notion of race, Hitler set race at the center of his political program, promoting the notion of a superior Nordic race as the apex of human development, going down through the Anglo-Saxon, past the “mongrel” races down to the Jews and Africans. In line with the Nazi racial theory a program of extermination of entire peoples and a program of eugenics was Implemented. The right-wing climate in the US today is encouraging the revival of the pseudo-scientific racial theories popular a century ago, with genetic “studies” claiming proof that African-Americans are intellectually inferior, have a predisposition to violence and anti-social behavior, etc.
Definitions of race have varied from country to country and from state to state within the United States. While the offspring of “black” and “white” parents should be considered in the “mixed race” category, the laws of the United States have defined such offspring as Black. This makes no sense biologically, but it did ensure that the offspring of slave mothers would remain slaves. The mass rape of slave women by their masters makes absurd any notion of African-Americans as a racially pure category, not to mention their high degree of intermarriage with Native Americans.
As for European-Americans, there was an African presence in Europe in the case of Spain for hundreds of years, but also in other European countries for shorter periods of time. The Mongols spent centuries in Europe, as well as North Africans and Turks who were a quite diverse ethnic mixture.
The people of Latin-America, of course, are a mixture of African, indigenous and European populations that defy racial classifications.
A “minority.” Along with other peoples of color, African-Americans are called a “minority.” It is instructive that the South African whites never referred to themselves as that. The use of the word “minority” is politically charged, conveying the impression that the most essential characteristic of peoples of color is their minority status, that in a democracy majority rules and therefore African-Americans and other peoples of color should submit to the majority order. Actually, it is the ruling elite that is the minority, and a tiny minority at that. African-Americans, Latinos, Asians are part of the vast majority of the working people. Of course, within another generation, “whites” will be an ethnic minority within the United States.
“Black Americans.” This conveys the notion that African-Americans are simply Americans with black skin. The name ignores the African heritage of African-Americans, and the way in which that heritage has become a permanent part of African-American culture.
“Africans.” Pan-Africans refer to African-Americans as Africans. They deny the fact that the African-American has been formed by a unique
synthesis of the African and the US experience and fail to see that America is not European but a synthesis of the African-American and European-American contributions. They deny the crucial role of African-Americans in shaping the American political and economic history and culture. They say the African-American is not American. And they call European-Americans European, thus discounting the enormous role of African-Americans in shaping European-Americans.
The African-American Nation. A nation requires a territorial component. The territory inhabited by African-Americans (overwhelming in the South for several hundred years) was jointly settled and jointly inhabited by European-Americans and other national groups. Even the Black Belt has a large European-American population, whose historical evolution was in no way separate from other parts of the South, differing in some respects only in degree and not in kind. To create a Black or African state there is to indulge in Black Zionism, that is, to institute a repressive regime vis-a-vis the other national group. Such a policy was possible in Israel only because it had the support of Western, especially U.S. imperialism and would be impossible in the face of US hostility, which is\would be inevitable.
Further , the African-American is a distinct national group or nationality existing as part of the U.S. nation. This distinctness originated first in the transmission of a common African heritage
shared by the Black population which, unlike the experience of assimilation of immigrant groups, retained a strong hold generation after generation in the conditions of the slave experience and racial segregation among the free Black population in slave times. After slavery, segregation not only continued but was intensified, both in the North and in the South, while other national groups were gradually merging into a US nationality. The lives of Black people maintained its distinct character because of the conditions of its oppression and while African elements, though still a part of the African-American heritage and culture, lessened in importance to the development of a unique fusion of African, African in America and European elements in creating.
The national character of African-Americans means that their self-determination demands development of autonomous institutions in which they will participate along with their participation in institutions common to the US nation as a whole. Thus, African-Americans have a dual character, both part and separate from the U.S. nation, and it is a mistake to deny either aspect of this dual character.
Bringing a common African heritage to this country, being subjugated in a unique slave experience that served to preserve important aspects of the African heritage while most immigrants were gradually being assimilated into the US nation, then being kept in a state of segregation following slavery north and south — and subjected to a uniformly brutal and oppressive treatment, the African-American held and further developed a distinct culture and conditions of existence that are akin to a national culture and national identity, constituting a fusion of African, African-in-America, and European elements under the conditions of segregation.
RACISM
Racism is defined by many simply as an irrational animus or hatred against someone because of their race. While one could search in vain for any mention of racism in the media and other Establishment institutions for hundreds of years of slavery, semi-slavery and Jim Crow, in recent years these institutions have become extraordinarily sensitive to racism. In fact they see racism everywhere. But it is Black racism that they are now so quick to identify, or “reverse racism,” as they call it.
Racism, like every social term, must be defined by making reference to its historical context. Racism is both a theory and practice. It is a practice institutionalized in the US and other capitalist societies in the exploitation and subordination of peoples of color, especially African-American people, by a European-descended elite, and shared by most European-Americans in all social classes. There is a political structure that enforces this exploitation and subordination. The theory of racism rationalizes this subordination and exploitation. It provides a theory for white supremacy.
The hallmark of this theory is that Black and other peoples of color, in differing degrees, are inherently inferior. It is a theory which justified the practice of slavery, colonialism, neocolonialism, Jim Crow, and other discriminatory practices. Although it is against their real interest, the majority of European-Americans have been indoctrinated with the racist ideology, although they are infected in different degrees — and this is “‘color blind’ strategy for resisting racism in which all workers were viewed simply as workers with no specific identity or problems.”
If the Socialist Party ignored racism outside the workplace, that of course deserves criticism. But first, how does one deal with racism even within the workplace while adopting a color-blind policy? The fact is the Socialist Party did not fight racism in the workplace any more than it fought it outside the workplace — which is one of the reasons the Socialist Party had so few African-Americans adherents.
But even more fundamental for purposes of this discussion, how is the position of the Socialist Party Marxist?!!
The second conception, which is identical to the first, is elaborated by West as adding a specific “super-exploitation” to the general working-class exploitation, but still limited to the workplace. Once again, how is this Marxism? The most cursory examination of Marx’s own activity on the question of national oppression demonstrates how alien such a conception is from Marxism.
Third conception: the Black Nation thesis, whereby it is held that African-Americans constitute a “distinct nation in the Black Belt South and an oppressed national minority in the rest of American society,” originally put forward by the American Communist Party with the collaboration of the Communist International. We shall return to this later, noting here only that West raises some valid objections, which as he points out, were recognized by the Communist Party in later years causing it to renounce the Black Belt nation thesis.
The fourth conception of racism in the Marxist tradition, says West, encompasses not only working-class exploitation but “xenophobic attitudes that are not strictly reducible to class exploitation. From this perspective, racist attitudes have a life and logic of their own, dependent upon psychological factors and cultural practices.”
This is really a muddle. Here West compares exploitation with attitudes not reducible to class exploitation. To be logical, he should have compared attitudes reducible to class exploitation with attitudes not reducible to class exploitation or class exploitation with other forms of racist oppression. Moreover, Marxist theory as it is in reality and not as the straw man provides that while psychological factors and cultural practices do take on a life of their own, have a certain independence from the underlying economic structure, nevertheless they are ultimately conditioned by that structure.
West recognizes the “indispensable” need for Marxist theory because it “highlights the relation of racist practices to the capitalist mode of production and recognizes the crucial role racism plays within the capitalist economy.” Nevertheless, according to West, Marxism is “inadequate” because it “fails to probe” other spheres of American society such as the “psychological and cultural spheres.” Here, as mentioned above, West reveals that what is inadequate is not Marxism but West’s grasp of Marxism. It is a commonplace distortion of Marxism to equate it with economic determinism. On its face, if Marxism reduces itself to that, then there is nothing to be done but have history unfold itself automatically without human intervention. But of course if Marxism preaches anything, it preaches that human beings make history, that the masses make history, that for the masses, and particularly the working class, to play the role laid out by history, by economic science, it is necessary for the working class to reach a certain level of consciousness, and one of the fundamental activities of Marxists was and remains the struggle to raise consciousness — which precisely means dealing with the psychological or subjective aspect of class struggle.
As for the cultural sphere, we do not know exactly what West refers to in his use of the word, but Marx and Marxists after him have always taken into account the historical traditions of a people, take into account the sum total of social relations in analyzing social phenomena, and certainly have recognized the importance of the artistic productions of society in shaping society and in helping to change it, using “cultural” here in its narrower definition.
West goes on to claim that racism predates capitalism, its roots lying in “earlier encounters between the civilizations of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America…” But West provides no explanation as to why “encounters” should engender racism. The fact is that peoples from various regions have made contact with one another for thousands of years without giving rise to any expression of racism. Many lighter-skinned peoples admired the culture of darker peoples whose civilizations were often superior and recognized as such by the lighter-skinned peoples. Examples given by West of racism predating capitalism, racism “rampant throughout the Middle Ages” or “Christian anti-Semitism,” which hardly relate to skin color or biological racism, the proof of which being that so many Jews upon simple religious conversion were welcomed into society without further discrimination, and “Euro-Christian antiblackism.” West might profitably consult the “Golden Age of the Moor,” a collection of essays by eminent historians, many of whom are of African descent, edited by Ivan Van Sertima, where the African presence in Spain for hundreds of years became the mecca of enlightenment for much of the rest of Europe. As far as examples of European racism in the 17th and 18th century, the period of mercantilist capitalism, such examples in no way refute the association of racism with capitalism. Similarly, the reference to anti-Indian racism in Latin America is associated with what Marx calls the era of capitalist primitive accumulation. The seizure of Indian lands, the plunder of Indian natural resources and the attempted enslavement of Indian labor are all associated with the dawn of capitalism — not only in terms of the motive forces for plunder but also the development of science and technique, (in many cases appropriated from Africa) rapidly further developed, which helped make trans-Atlantic voyages feasible. Thus, the “encounters” of the European maritime powers with non-European peoples bore a special character because of the motive forces driving European society, and specifically the European ruling classes of the time. Incidentally, the rationale for the brutality against the Indian was couched first in religious and not racial terms. The Indians were barbarians because they were heathen, not because their skin color was different from the Spaniards. This would argue that racism had not yet been established as an ideology in Europe. The long “Moorish” presence in Spain had basically come to an end only shortly before the first Spanish expedition to the Americas, a presence which, as mentioned previously, had represented a Golden Age of Spanish history.
West tells us that racism is as much a product of the interaction of cultural ways of life as it is of modern capitalism and that an adequate conception of racism should reflect cultural as well as economic realities. Unlike Marxism, which examines phenomena in their totality, their interconnectedness, the unity of opposite phenomena as well as their struggle, the shifting weight of component elements in their moments of development in other words, examines phenomena dialectically, West creates rigid, isolated categories, mutually impenetrable in other words, displays mechanistic thinking. The fact is that culture develops within a certain environment, an environment established by how people go about their life-sustaining functions, how they produce the means of life, how they satisfy the ever-expanding material needs of society, how such production is organized, the rise of classes, the role of such classes in society, etc. Of course, culture is inherited and reflects the conditions of previous societies. But it is also true that revolutionary changes in social organization, which can always be shown to have an economic foundation, are reflected in radical cultural changes. Of course, there is a reciprocal relation between culture and the economic base, as Marx points out, so that the culture affects the economic base while the economic base is affecting the culture. Marxism simply points out that ultimately, changes in the economic structure of society are decisive, are primary. This is a far cry from the vulgar reductionism which West attributes to Marxism. West goes on and on about culture and cultural practices. It would seem that West would have felt constrained to define those terms. His statement that “Cultural practices are the medium through which selves are produced” befogs more than enlightens. He does say that cultural practices involves the use of language, psychological factors, sexual identities, and aesthetic conceptions.
Now, these elements are common to all periods of history. Man has used language, had aesthetic conceptions, sexual identities and “psychological factors,” (whatever that means), for tens of thousands of years, but here is the question: What accounts for change? What accounts for social change and development? What accounts for change and development of language, of aesthetic conceptions, etc.? West cannot answer this based on his theoretical construct. And he therefore cannot answer the question of what gave rise to racism, which more particularly is a system of white supremacy, cannot explain its development.
All his generalizations about cultural practices gets us not a whit closer to an answer. And here again is where Marx shows itself infinitely richer than West. For Marx insists on concrete examination of phenomena. Marx would be the last one in the world to be satisfied with explanations that reduce themselves simply to the “economic base.” And so in the case of the rise of the system of white supremacy, he would examine the socio-economic conditions which put maritime European countries in the ascendancy around the 16th century, the development of mercantile capitalism, all the phenomena attendant to the primitive accumulation of capitalism, the plunder and slaughter of indigenous peoples in other continents, above all, the rise of the slave trade, the institution of modern chattel slavery linked to merchant and then industrial capitalism, would closely examine the workings of slave society in the “New World,” the workings of the Southern plantation system, examine the relation of classes, the slave owners, slaves, free Blacks, non-slaveholding whites, examine the relationship of the Southern plantation economy to Northern capitalism, the relationship of both to the world economy, the evolution of the slave system in all its aspects, the political, legal and cultural superstructure which developed in conjunction with the two types of economy, and later on, the development of imperialism and colonialism, the emergence of the US as an imperialist world power, its assumption of the “white man’s burden” in world affairs, and all the social, political and cultural phenomena attendant upon that development of primary importance, the working-class struggle within the United States, its evolution and consequent relationship to the African-American population, the role of African-Americans themselves in the anti-racist struggle, their struggle for liberation, right up to today’s triumph of neoliberalism, the collapse of socialism worldwide, accompanied by a racist counter-attack in the United States against peoples of color and especially the African-American people.
To develop that in all its concreteness is not the purpose of this discussion. We lay this out simply to contrast it with West’s approach, which develops three lines of inquiry.
“genealogical inquiry into the ideology of racism, focusing on the kinds of metaphors and concepts employed by dominant European supremacists in various epochs in the West….”
Cornell West
Now, Marxism not only teaches that the economic foundation is ultimately primary with regard to all societal phenomena, but that matter is primary over consciousness. West fails to touch on the basic philosophical approach which undergirds everything in Marxist analysis. As a Marxist one does not begin with the ideological reflections of material reality but with the material reality which produce those ideological reflections. One therefore must begin with the specific forms of racist oppression, the specific needs of the oppressor, in order to understand the specific forms of the ideological justification for that oppression.
West’s second point calls for analysis of the “mechanisms that sustain white supremacist discourse in the everyday life of non-Europeans,” and cutting through the sociological jargon which is typical of West’s “discourse,” the various ways in which the oppressor works to impose his ideology on the oppressed, how white supremacist ideology becomes internalized in the oppressed. These “mechanisms,” however, are a function of concrete economic and political conditions and change with those conditions.
West’s last area of inquiry is a “macrostructural approach that emphasizes the class exploitation and political repression of non-European peoples.”
Once again, there is an attempt to isolate elements of the question, which is all right so long as one returns to a synthesis, but this is precisely what West fails to do.
West goes on: “The first line of inquiry aims to examine modes of European domination of non-European peoples; the second probes forms of European subjugation of non-European peoples. And the third focuses on types of European exploitation and repression of non-European peoples. Here I am stumped.
Modes, modes and forms in my lexicon are synonymous, as they are in Webster’s dictionary.
Now West indicates that the specificities of racist practices can be revealed only by detailed historical analyses.
Starting with the “genealogical inquiry, he finds three “basic discursive logics” just cannot dispense with the sociological jargon Judeo-Christian, scientific, and psychosexual, which he says are not “inherently racist” but “employed to justify racist practices.” The Judeo-Christian justification is to be found, he says, in the Biblical account of Ham. The problem with this is that the Bible has been interpreted in a racist way at times and in a non-racist way at other times, in a racist way by some Christians and Jews and in a non-racist way by other Christians and Jews. Africans were among the earliest Christians. So it turns out that racists or people with a racist agenda find rationalizations to reinforce their beliefs or their agendas. Racism developed not because it was embedded in the Bible but rather the racist interpretation of the Bible was developed because it suited interests with a racist agenda As for science, the same may be said: In the first place, the attempt to use science to buttress racist assumptions is appropriately designated by West as pseudoscience. Indeed it is, and there is a difference between the two. So he should not use them interchangeably.
The fact is that everything that could be used to indoctrinate people in racist thinking has been used: pseudoscience, philosophy, popular education, cultural vehicles, the media, political leadership, moral leadership, including religious leadership — all the mechanisms of the superstructure, which together serve the interests of the ruling class. And this because the ruling class has benefitted from, thrived on, and required mass indoctrination in racist attitudes to facilitate institutional racism which was and remains indispensable to their class needs. Society has been ruled by a class which has derived enormous wealth from the exploitation of African-Americans and other peoples of color, has derived enormous wealth from the exploitation of peoples of European descent which was closely bound to the exploitation of peoples of color, and have maintained political control on the basis of ensuring that peoples of European descent — workers, farmers, people of modest means, did not come to understand the commonality of their interest with that of peoples of color, and especially African-Americans.
The third element of West’s analysis, class exploitation and political repression, he says resembles traditional Marxist theories of racism. But he adds that the capitalist mode of production constitutes “just one of the significant structural constraints determining what forms racism takes in a particular historical period.” Others include “the state, bureaucratic modes of control, and the cultural practices of ordinary people.” Once again, the state and the bureaucracy are seen as something independent of the capitalist system rather than their manifestation. Since the capitalist class has a vital interest in racist oppression, it follows that the state and the bureaucracy which serves it will carry out racist policies. As for cultural practices of the ordinary people, these do not exist in a vacuum but are heavily influenced by the social and political system, by the commercialization of culture, by the greater or lesser extent of state support of culture, popular and elite, by the greater or lesser success of the political indoctrination of the masses, etc.
