Marx, Race, and Neoliberalism

Abstract

The Marxist MomentA Marxist perspective can be most helpful for understanding race and racism insofar as it perceives capitalism dialectically, as a social totality that includes modes of production, relations of production, and the pragmatically evolving ensemble of institutions and ideologies that lubricate and propel its reproduction. From this perspective, Marxism's most important contribution to making sense of race and racism in the United States may be demystification. A historical materialist perspective should stress that "race"-which includes "racism," as one is unthinkable without the other-is a historically specific ideology that emerged, took shape, and has evolved as a constitutive element within a definite set of social relations anchored to a particular system of production.

The Subject of the Discourse: Reading Online Activist Discourse for Human Capital Theory

“…39 Such a move is detectable in much progressive discourse, wherein we can discern what Adolph Reed has identified as 'the striking convergence between the relative success of identitarian understandings of social justice and the steady, intensifying advance of neoliberalism.' 40 The convergence Reed identifies can be at least in part attributed to neoliberalism's valorisation of individualism and the individual, although of course in practice not all individuals are valued. The privileging of the experience of specific individuals in their irreducible singularity is a logical consequence of neoliberalism's concern with enshrining the individual as sacrosanct, and as neither socially embedded nor socially co-constituted.…”

The political economy of race and caste: Revisiting the writings of Mariátegui and Ambedkar†

“…The rise of identity based movements since the early 1980s has generated considerable debate within the left as to the nature and origins of such movements and more importantly, as to the stance to be adopted vis‐à‐vis their politics (Fraser, 2000; Harvey, 2014; Hobsbawm, 1996; Karat, 2011; Wood, 2000). In contrast to the universalistic appeals that animated much of leftist politics in the 20th century, the explosion of identity based movements with their emphasis on social experiences of exclusion and their prioritization of identitarian agendas rather than class interests, have created a deep sense of unease within the left, to the extent that large sections now view identity politics as a handmaiden of neoliberal capitalism (Karat, 2011; Reed, 2013, 2018). In some senses, it is not difficult to see why such reflexes are so widely prevalent, as there have been numerous instances of identity based movements clashing directly with traditional left parties and their programs (Reed, 2018).…”

Exorcising “Racecraft”: Toward the RaceSyllabus

“…5 Genetic diversity and similarity do not align with the social categories that we call race and yet we continue to structure our national life around this "taxonomy of ascriptive difference" by which we "construct populations as groups" and then "sort them into hierarchies of capacity, civic worth and desert." 6 Perpetuating race requires an intermixture of practices and beliefs, ways of "acting and imagining [that] are collective and individual, day to day, yet historical, and consequential even though nested in mundane routine." 7 Caught as we are in this twilight zone of racialism, Americans are particularly illequipped to struggle against racial injustice in ways that do not further enshrine the hegemony of race as a legitimate organizing principle.…”