Race and the Logic of Capital
Review of Class, Race, and Marxism
Wald, Alan
http://solidarity-us.org/atc/192/p5183/
Date Written: 2018-01-01
Publisher: Against the Current
Year Published: 2018
Resource Type: Article
Cx Number: CX23272
A review of Review of Class, Race, and Marxism by David Roediger.
Abstract:
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Excerpts:
David Roediger's Class, Race, and Marxism, a scintillating compilation of six previously published papers, does not track these directly but is nonetheless essential reading for appraising them all. Roediger can bring to these and other conversations a Marxist grounding in how and why capitalism requires race constructions as constitutive of the deep structure that provides the continuity of our history.
Through his adroit intertwining of race and class as the coordinates of U.S. history, we learn how working people identify as "white" in a manner that sheds light on the logic of capital. This helps us understand why there is no firm division between anti-capitalist struggles and those that are anti-racist.
The essays in Roediger's collection are divided into two sections, "Interventions: Making Sense of Race and Class" and "Histories: The Past and Present of Race and Class." This is also a volume that has aspects of a retrospective of his career as a whole, a subject worth reviewing for those who wish to understand how his current activism and theorizing are a continuation of earlier generations of Marxists.
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