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