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The prevalence of racism in human history comes as no inconsistency; the categorization

of peoples based on particular strategic albeit convenient ideological constructs provides a means

in which can manifest the intangible social structures that are inherent in the dominant ideology.

As connections amongst different peoples became undeniably linked to one another, the slight

differences between them offered easy access to racial division. This type of interaction occurred

on European soil, sowing the seeds for easy integration of race into society, politics, and of

course, economics. Racialism in Europe did not form as a consequence of more complex systems

of production; its existence however did find advantage for those in position to exploit a racist

ideology for the prospect of increased profits. Feudalism stood as a precursor to capitalism where

the organization of society formed stringent lines of division between one group or person and

another based on ideological constructs. This dominant form of production as Robinson argues,

did not end in feudalism, instead it impregnated a new dominant form of production with its pre-

fabricated ideological and societal structure which included a complex ideological system

leaving racism to tie together the dimensions of society. W.E.B. Dubois in his academic

investigation of Reconstruction from 1860 to 1880 solidifies a historical narrative under the great

weight of racialism where Marxist thought cannot provide assistance due to its inexplicable

silence on the position of racialism in power relations inherent in the capitalist system.

The picture painted by Marxist thought, although glorious and striking, does not fit well

into history as it has occurred. The whip of the bourgeois and the anger cultivated by the slaving

working class, the proletariat, was to explode into full fledge revolution where again the working

class who had because of capitalist exploitation lost all access to the means of production, was to

regain control of production. The class struggle against the capitalists had far too much economic

emphasis, leaving to the imagination that established racialism did not play a part in this new

form of production. As Robinson argues, racialism did not stem from capitalist exploitation but
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began with European civilization where its activation transpired as the Germanic peoples found

integration with “other” peoples, forming a unit propelled to function as a whole under one

historical narrative (Robinson 66). With this configuration of different peoples within one

functioning system, the beginnings of racial ordering within an ideological rationale legitimated

itself simply by its own existence—the fact that it existed is held as evidence for its “natural”

existence. Racialism is ideological and not natural; ideology maintains racialism well enough as

to make it seem natural although nothing could be further from the truth.

Marxism, in ignoring thoughtful examination of the question of race as an important

element in historical narrative, has thus failed in building a substantive theory of production

based and induced relations. In Marxist thought, the creation of the state was to be the throne of

the bourgeoisie, the nation its greatest ally; the proletariat takes shape only after the bourgeoisie

establish rule thus initiating a framework of capitalist exploitation permitting the proletariat to

rise up in eventual nationalistic fashion against the bourgeoisie (58). The mention of race goes

unheard and thus the story remains grossly incomplete and incompetent. Racism supports the

historical narrative; used to promote and maintain ideological “rationalization” for the

exploitation of labor, race exists solely for the creation of social, economic, and political

hierarchies where such divisions benefit the elite far more than those whose place takes shape as

the poor. Class struggle does not exist separate from socialization; for if it were so the poor

whites and black slaves of the South would have easily joined the poor wage slave of the North

with all three fighting in union under the flag of class struggle. History did not hold out as such

and instead these three found little commonality with each other.

Racialism subsists because it cannot find separation from the dominant ideology; it exists

before and with class struggle. Class is a function of ideology; racialism is a function of

ideology. The two are part of the same construct. Racialism and class serve inequality. Western
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culture based on a European consciousness that exists as diametrically opposed to the “Other”

perpetuates the need to identify the “Other” (66). Formation of identity and perception set on the

premise of the natural existence of the “Other” and one’s interpellated relation to others based

foremost on degrees of separation from the culturally accepted “Other” remains absent from

Marxist thought. Such existence comes not through natural means but through socialization

entrenched in racialism:

“…the persistence of racialism in Western thought was of primary importance….[it] ran

deep in the bowels of Western culture, negating its varying social relations of production and

distorting their inherent contradictions….racialism insinuated not only medieval, feudal, and

capitalist social structures, forms of property, and modes of production, but as well the very

values and traditions of consciousness through which the peoples of these ages came to

understand their worlds and their experiences” (66).

Marxism’s casual blindness to the importance of racialism in society limits its ability to

formulate accurate depictions of social change and renders it almost if not completely useless as

a tool to investigate Reconstruction and race relations in the United States between blacks and

whites. Robinson by outlining the historical use of racialism in intra-European and European

relations provides the necessary evidence to support his theory on the limits of Marxism in

understanding social change especially when juxtaposed to Dubois historical review of “Black

Reconstruction.” For the most part, blacks in the United States did not even have access to wage

labor; the racialist societal structure would not permit entrance into this position. The story of the

black slave is the story of ideologically institutionalized racialism known to contemporaries as a

“peculiar institution.” No class revolution would occur for blacks; denied access to class, they

were but property thus granted no rights and kept in place under the weight of racial

“inferiority.” To them capitalism might well have been feudalism; tied to the land of their
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masters they toiled from day to day in much the same fashion as the serfs and peasants of another

time.

W. E. B. Dubois in his academic examination of Reconstruction in the United States

following the end of the Civil War focuses on the importance of the previously non-historical

blacks and poor whites. Setting his analysis of Reconstruction on the obvious distinction between

black and white provides striking evidence for a racial motivation of historical narrative that as

such cannot conform easily to Marxism. It is Marxism that suffers, for Marx’s denial of racialism

in his work ultimately defeats his claims of a proletariat induced revolution. Black slaves held

under the master’s thumb to work day in and day out without compensation and with scant

attention did not have privilege enough to attain the position of the proletariat. Barred by color

from these working class positions, blacks could never, during this historical epoch of slavery

and transition from slavery, follow the course of revolution against the bourgeois. Blacks became

part of the economic foundation of the colonies and continued as a vital economic linchpin for

the Southern economic structure and by that note thus connected to the Northern industrial

system primarily in part of the textile industry. As stated in Black Reconstruction, “Black labor

became the foundation…not only of the Southern social structure, but of the Northern

manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying

and selling on a world-wide scales” (5). Southern slavery launched the colonies into a

systemically united nation founded on gross racially motivated inequality as a means for

industrial production and financial enrichment, extending the reach of slavery in America

throughout the world. Cotton became King and with this Marxist historical narrative cannot

coincide.

With cotton driving forth immense profit not only for the masters and plantations but for

the nation as a whole, this economic renaissance made the subjugation of the Negro important to
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the maintenance of prosperity for the master, the capitalist, and of course, the nation. For this

reason ideology was carried out to mark without imperfection the supposed vast differences

between the Negro slave and the civilized white regardless of economic position. In reality the

poor whites toiled along the same lines of the blacks yet the ideological apparatus came alas to

their rescue from this commonality with the Negro race. “There was the great mass of poor

whites, disinherited of their economic portion by competition with the slave system, and land

monopoly”; here rests the crucial utilization of race to falsely distinguish the plight of the poor

white from that of the slave even though one without color would look dramatically similar to

the other (Dubois 6). Blacks were to reshape the methods in which race operates in the United

States by becoming an imaginary enemy of the poor white and any other who did not want

classification with the plight of the slave. The black slave pushed the white male into a place of

privilege by the sheer disassociation with the black slave. The Negro was therefore forced into

submission as avenues of social mobility were obstructed and outright denied. Opportunity

existed for white social mobility to employ and for black slave labor to lament.

With millions of slaves in daily drudgery on a concentrated number of plantations, the

regulation of these people required an active police force; the five million poor whites, recruited

by the capitalist whites for such a position, informally because of racialist ideology, took the

reins of policing the four million black slaves as a kind of birthright thus allowing the

continuance of the slave system (12). In doing so the poor whites only devalued their own labor

not only in the Southern states but also the labor of the poor whites in the factories of the North.

The illusion of privilege was but a foil of the Negro’s status and the wage slave a mirror

reflection of a “free” slave. Race relations would function within this construct and thus for

either reason the Negro was to be hated by the poor white; the rich white could not help but bask

in joy of the Negro’s position for it allowed a system of perpetual enrichment and status for the
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elite. Property could then be saved for the white, it being a right of privilege. Education could

follow suit and therefore even in freedom, the Negro would always feel the brunt of white

privilege.

The American Civil War saw in its reflection the face of the black slave; the Negro

became the cornerstone of the war for many reasons. The war could not be won without them;

the North coming to this realization only after the war had already taken a large toll, the Southern

Confederacy coming to the same conclusion after thousands of slaves fled into Northern camps

on the hope of freedom from the slave system. The Emancipation Proclamation announced on

January 1, 1863 by President Lincoln had the grand effect of replacing tired and unwilling

Northern white soldiers with passionate black soldiers fighting not for preservation of the Union

but for the dignity of freedom; this however was twofold for not only did blacks replace the

dwindling number of white Northern soldiers but it left the Confederacy without a viable labor

source (84). Blacks would provide the striking Northern blow to the South by arming millions of

blacks not only with weaponry but also with the means to strike thus starving the South of much

needed labor for food and other military production. The Southern economy lay at the mercy of

the Union allied Negro. The immense resentment of the defeated rested on the shoulders of the

free black slave and race relations between the two continued under a more strict ideological

construct of inferiority that persisted beyond the war, finding home in Reconstruction only to

intensify on part of those in need of maintaining privilege for the poor white.

The work of W.E.B. Dubois in his academic investigation of Reconstruction from 1860

to 1880 congeals the historical narrative of Reconstruction under the power of racialism; here

Marxist thought cannot provide assistance due to its inexplicable silence on the position of

racialism in power relations inherent in the capitalist system. The use of ideology to construct the

Negro as an objectified “Other” formed the pillars of American society where the white color of
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skin resulted in an undeniable position of privilege that contrasted with a second-class

citizenship of the newly freed black slave. The repercussions of such a pervasive racial dynamic

integrated in the dominant ideology allowed for the rise of such groups as the Ku Klux Klan as

protectors of white privilege; this ideology stood for denial of political and economic power to

those with colored skin, leaving the full control in the hands of white male privilege. The poor

whites, manipulated by this seductive ideology permitted such divisions to continue for it was

made to seem for their own benefit although history supports the opposite.

Works Cited

Dubois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880. New York: 1935.

Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of Black Radical Tradition. Pp. 9-24; 45-68.

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