Racial Capitalism

First published in 1983 and recently revised, Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism is a seminal text that critically engages with Marxism by tracing the traditions of Black radical thought. Robinson invites us to understand Marxism as a western construction that fails to appropriately grapple with the category of race. Black Marxism offers both a history of Black resistance and an introduction to racial capitalism. Thinking about racial capitalism first emerged from Apartheid South Africa, but today Robinson’s text is one of the most-cited authorities as scholars return to thinking about racial capitalism in the context of transatlantic slavery, settler colonialism, and the prison-industrial complex.

Core reading:

Cedric Robinson, Black Marxism (UNCP: 2020)

Seminar Questions:

• Why does Robinson argue that capitalism is a Western construct?
• How does racial capitalism extend Marxist theories of labour and capital production?
• In what ways does the Black radical tradition differ from Western radicalism? What insight does it bring to our understanding of capitalism?
• What insight can racial capitalism bring to different historical contexts?
• Is capitalism always racialised?

 

Further reading:

Histories of Racial Capitalism, ed. by Destin Jenkins and Justin Leroy (Columbia University Press, 2021)

Michael Ralph and Maya Singhal, ‘Racial Capitalism’, Theory and Society, 48.6 (2019), pp. 851–81

Catherine Hall, Lucky Valley: Edward Long and the History of Racial Capitalism, 1st edn (Cambridge University Press, 2024)

Jonathan Saha, ‘Racial Capitalism and Peasant Insurgency in Colonial Myanmar’, History Workshop Journal, 94 (2022), pp. 42–60

Colonial Racial Capitalism, ed. by Susan Koshy and others (Duke University Press, 2022)

Diana Paton, ‘Gender History, Global History, and Atlantic Slavery: On Racial Capitalism and Social Reproduction’, The American Historical Review, 127.2 (2022), 726–54

Catherine Hall, ‘Racial Capitalism: What’s in a Name?’, History Workshop Journal, 94 (2022), pp. 5–21

E. Cardwell, 'Black Marxism and the English working class' Race & Class, 66.4 (2025), 16-36