An attempt is made to outline a systematic Marxist theory of race relations. Traditional leftist analyses of race and racism are criticized for relying on liberal idealist and conservative racialist notions. As an alternative, Althusserian structuralist notions of ideology and the logic of the mode of production are employed in the analysis of groups falsely considered to be races. It is argued that three specific positions in the capitalist mode of production structurally define "inferior races": the positions of special exploitation, exclusion and mediation. It is suggested that the tendency for black people to be increasingly defined as an excluded population and less as an especially exploited group may possibly establish the conditions for a radical increase in their vulnerability.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Acufia, Rodolfo
. 1981. Occupied America. New York: Harper and Row.
2.
Althusser, Louis
. 1971. Lenin and Philosophy. London: New Left Books.
3.
American Jewish Committee
. 1973. American Jewish Yearbook, Vol. 74. New York.
4.
Aronowitz, Stanley
. 1973. False Promises. New York: McGraw-Hill.
5.
Baran, Paul
and Paul Sweezy. 1966. Monopoly Capital. New York: Monthly Review Press.
6.
Barrera, Mario
. 1979. Race and Class in the Southwest. West Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press.
7.
Berger, Peter
and Thomas Luckman. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, New York: Doubleday.
8.
Blauner, Robert
. 1972. Racial Oppression in America. New York: Harper and Row.
9.
Bonacich, Edna
. 1973. A Theory of Middleman Minorities. American Sociological Review38:533-544.
10.
Bonacich, Edna
. 1980. Class Approaches to Ethnicity and Race. The Insurgent Sociologist. X(2):9-23.
11.
Bonacich, Edna
and John Modell. 1981. The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
12.
Burawoy, Michael
. 1979. Manufacturing Consent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
13.
Burnbaum, Linda
and Bob Wing. 1981. Toward a Communist Analysis of Black Oppression and Basic Liberation, Part II. Line of March8 (Sept.-Oct.).
14.
Castles, Steven
and Godula Kosack. 1971. Immigrant Workers and Class Structure in Western Europe. New York: Cambridge University Press.
15.
Davis, Mike
. 1981. Why the U.S. Working Class is Different. New Left ReviewNo. 123 (Sept.-Oct.).
16.
Edwards, Richard
. 1979. Contested Terrain. New York: Basic Books.
17.
Friedman, Andrew
. 1977. Industry and Labour. London: Macmillan.
18.
Genovese, Eugene
. 1967. The Political Economy of Slavery. New York: Vintage.
19.
Genovese, Eugene
. 1969. The World the Slaveholders Made. New York: Pantheon.
20.
Genovese, Eugene
. 1974. Roll Jordan Roll. New York: Pantheon.
21.
Genovese, Eugene
and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese. 1983. Fruits of Merchant Capital. New York: Oxford Univeristy Press.
22.
Geschwender, James
. 1978. Racial Stratification in America. Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown Co.
23.
Gossett, Thomas
. 1963. Race: The History of an Ideal in America. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press.
24.
Greenberg, Stanley
. 1980. Race and State in CapitalistDevelopment. New Haven: Yale University Press.
25.
Harris, Marvin
. 1964. Patterns of Race in the Americans. New York: Walker and Co.
26.
Kolko, Gabriel
. 1976. Main Currents in Modern American History. New York: Harper and Row.
27.
Lenin, V.I.1920. Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions. In, Selected Works, in Three Volumes. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
28.
Leon, Abram
. 1950. The Jewish Question:A Marxist Interpretation. New York: Pathfinder Press.
29.
Light, Ivan H.1972. Ethnic Enterprise in America. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
30.
Lustick, Ian
. 1980. Arabs in the Jewish State. Austin: University of Texas Press.
31.
Magubane, Bernard M.1979. The Political Economy of Race and Class in SouthAfrica. New York: Monthly Review Press
32.
Marx, Karl
. 1867. Capital. Vol. I. Moscow Progress Publishers.
33.
Marx, Karl
and Frederick Engels. 1972. Ireland and the Irish Question. New York: International Publishers.
34.
Montagu, M. F. Ashley
. 1953. Man's Most Dangerous Myth: The Fallacy of Race. New York: Harper and Row.
35.
Reich, Michael
. 1981. Racial Inequality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
36.
Rosenblum, Gerald
. 1973. Immigrant Workers: Their Impact on American Labor Radicalism. New York: Basic Books.
37.
Sowell, Thomas
. 1981. Ethnic America. New York: Basic Books.
38.
Snyder, Louis
. 1939. Race: A History of Modern Ethnic Theories. New York.
39.
Stone, Katherine
. 1975. The Origin of Job Structures in the Steel Industry. In, Labor Market Segmentation, Richards Edwards, Michael Reich, and David Gordon (ed.). New York: D.C. Heath.
40.
Szymanski, Albert
. 1976. Racial Discimination and White Grain. American Sociological Review41(3), Winter.
41.
Szymanski, Albert
. 1983. Class Structure. Praeger: New York.
42.
Wilson, William J.1978. The Declining Significance of Race. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
