PARTISAN!

In an essay penned for Partisan, Mila Volkova puts forward a communist theory of race and racism, and how it relates to patriarchy and class society.

Across the Australian left, activists of all stripes blame colonialism for a variety of problems. Ableism, racism, patriarchy, and capitalism itself. Within this nascent political consciousness, there are some correct observations. For example, race is a social construct which has nothing to do with skin colour.

However, if colonialism is entirely to blame for patriarchy, how do we explain the existence of patriarchal institutions in China, India, and the Middle East prior to colonisation? If race is a purely European invention, how do we explain the spontaneous emergence of racial hierarchies in modern South-East Asian states? One could assert the expansive and enduring influence of colonialism and imperialism, which might be true, but doing so robs non-Europeans of their subjectivity, a subjectivity perfectly capable of producing racism. This understanding mirrors, rather than deconstructs, racial exploitation.

A communist approach begins with understanding the historical and contextual development of a specific kind of racism – white European colonial race science – but goes beyond it, examining the mechanisms of capitalism itself. In doing so, an inevitable conclusion emerges, that racism is a tendency within capitalism which can only be overcome by its destruction.

Defining Race

The colonisation of Ireland, the racialisation of Italian migrant labour, and modern racial hierarchies in China and South-East-Asia prove that the division of the species into races is always constructed by the powerful without regard to any “objective” differences. Differences in appearance and behaviour between people are always fabricated and exaggerated to create racial “others”.

Most of the Australian left is informed by theories of race that emphasise cultural and psychological factors, reinforced by social science academia and a certain brand of decolonial scholarship. These claim that racism is baked into us by our parents, reinforced by the media, and taught to us in schools. There is value to these analyses, social science insights into the “double consciousness” of racial minorities, which describes the dehumanising psychological effect of racism on its victims, are valuable.

But where they downplay class, these narratives fit perfectly into liberalism. Liberal anti-racists may talk of “systemic” racism, but by this they simply mean “generalised” (as in, everywhere). They do not mean “structural” in the Marxist sense, which views racism as a tendency in the material relations of capitalism. Where they do acknowledge the economic factors behind racial oppression, they nonetheless attribute these to biases, bad ideas, institutional norms, and culture, which can be tackled through institutional reform or changes in management.

First, we must define race. Historically, race always asserts itself as a caste system, where certain groups are constructed, objectified, and then forced into a subjugated class role. Meanwhile, the working-class of the dominant race in this relationship (especially the most privileged) adopt a strategy of collaboration with the ruling class. On the other hand, the working-class of the subjugated race is encouraged to align with the “community”, i.e. the small and medium capitalists of its own race. The subjugation of members of the race-caste is supported by, and characterised by, the deprivation of civil and political liberties, and the distinction between the castes is maintained by restrictions on inter-marriage between them. These traits are what distinguishes race from other forms of class relationship.

This is achieved through a variety of legal or extra-legal mechanisms depending on the context and the aims of the dominant racial caste. In settler-colonial systems, such as Israel, extensive legal mechanisms are employed, including the deprivation of voting rights, restrictions on inter-marriage, and explicit bans on owning property. However, for more advanced types of exploitation, more subtle means can be employed almost as effectively. Discrimination, informal segregation, gerrymandering, and addiction push down the wages of racialised workers and maintain them as a separate racial caste.

The History of Capitalism and Race

The dominant form of racism today, whiteness, had its beginnings in the medieval conflicts between Catholic Europeans and the Muslim dynasties, especially over the area that is now Spain and Portugal (The Iberian Peninsula). In these wars, Muslims often employed Black African soldiers, which was a formative experience in a specifically anti-African and anti-Arab racism.

The Catholic church adopted a policy of feudal conquest with regards to its imagined racial enemies. This simply meant replacing the landowners of the Peninsula with their own. This gave Catholic Europeans their first experience in racial nation-building, where they cobbled together a Portuguese cultural identity, which did not previously exist, out of the disparate Christian ethnic groups that invaded and displaced the previous inhabitants. Furthermore, this led to the invention of the first caste system in medieval Europe, as even forcibly converted ex-Muslims were considered second-class citizens.

Early colonisation was pursued under a similarly explicitly Catholic agenda, but this process was still feudal rather than capitalistic. Expanding their “reconquest”, Portugal and Spain sought to bring their faith to previously “undiscovered” lands, where they could establish the church and extract tribute. But they were stunned by the simple fact that their new colonial subjects had never heard of Jesus. By shattering the division of the world into the faithful, the heretic, and the infidel, Europe suffered an identity crisis that undermined the authority of the entire church-backed feudal apparatus. This situation left the development of Europe’s racial dominance in limbo, while simultaneously concentrating enormous wealth in European hands, laying the groundwork for future developments.

Developing European racism was left to non-Catholic Christians, who refined the practice in Ireland with the backing of the British state, serving as a model for other colonies. The process of appropriating native land and employing forced labour was instrumental to the development of capitalism. The trade in foreign goods such as spices, sugar, and other cash-crops for European consumption, all of which were produced extremely cheaply through chattel-slavery or serfdom, provided European merchants the capital and low-operating costs necessary to industrialise their domestic economies.

Finally, enlightenment science and liberalism resolved the European identity crisis. By adopting Christianity’s view of universal humanity on the one hand, but rhetorically dehumanising colonial subjects on the other via “rationalism”, Europe could justify its racial dominance and significantly intensify it through new styles of colonial administration informed by race science.

Therefore race, as we understand it today, is a uniquely European invention created under historically contextual conditions, with an enduring economic, cultural, and linguistic influence embedded in modern institutions that is difficult to shake off.

However, leaving things there does not explain the continuation, and expansion, of racism today. It is naïve to imagine racism as an outdated institution that is being gradually eliminated by capitalism, continuing only as a conspiracy of the ruling class to divide the workers. Such a narrative cannot explain the emergence of modern racial hierarchies in China and South-East Asia relatively independently of European colonial influence. We need a comprehensively communist theory of race.

The Spontaneous Force of Race

Capitalism has a habit of pursuing combined and uneven development. This means that while capitalism is always expanding its reach; subjugating new populations, expanding industrial production, and constantly growing, it is assisted in this process by doing the exact opposite elsewhere.

This dialectical contrast, between the growing unity and standardisation of the economy on the one hand, and atomisation and stratification on the other, creates hierarchies within the working class.

This has played out in different ways historically. One example is the gradual confinement of women to household labour from the 1850s to 1980s, allowing capitalists to outsource the cost of reproductive care labour, which increased profit margins and accelerated the industrialisation of male labour.

The vulgar Marxist narrative, that capitalism is gradually eliminating all distinctions between race and gender, is only partially true. In fact, capitalism often opportunistically uses, reinforces, and even creates seemingly backwards social relations to thrive.

This includes the creation of racial caste of super-exploited semi-proletarians, such as the vast global population of peasants, who often partake in wage labour to supplement subsistence agriculture. It is a common occurrence for female subsistence farmers to support a vast familial network of young men that go abroad and serve as migrant labour in construction, manufacturing, or service work, sending a portion of their wages home to support the family.

It also leads to a strategy of class-collaboration with the ruling class. Using restricted labour markets, restricted access to education, or asset ownership, privileged layers of the working class can monopolise certain skills and extract significantly higher wages from their bosses at the expense of other workers. This is the source of the university-educated and house-owning so-called “middle-class”.

Although these privileged workers would nonetheless benefit from communism greatly, they would immediately lose out if there was greater equality within the working class. This is, of course, an unsustainable strategy. By refusing to organise themselves independently of the capitalists, these layers leave themselves incredibly vulnerable to attacks on their standard of living. Nonetheless, this is what pushes the middle-class towards racist politics. Without this base material tendency towards collaboration between privileged workers and the bosses, racial castes would not be stable and could not have existed for as long as they have.

Similarly, there is disunity within the capitalists. Uneven development privileges the capitalists of the imperialist nations over those of the subjugated nations. Capitalists naturally become aware of this privilege, or lack thereof, in their drive to accumulate wealth. National and racial consciousness inevitably develops in both the subjugated (who want to upend the order) and subjugating (who want to maintain it) capitalists, who then deploy their respective working-classes against one another in racial cross-class alliances.

This is the “rational” root of race which continuously emerges in new forms under capitalism. Racial consciousness emerges spontaneously among capitalists and upper layers of the working class. Modern capitalism has intensified the development of this consciousness, due to its reliance on super-exploited labour in the third world, and racialised migrant labour in the first world, to uphold thin profit margins.

How to Smash Racism

Racial liberation is an issue of class liberation, and thus revolution against the capitalists. Race cannot be overcome by reforms within capitalism, not only because of the enduring influence of its reliance on race historically-speaking, but because it is a constantly emerging structure. We need to stop playing reformist whack-a-mole and flip the whole table.

However, many communists fall into a trap. By constantly asserting the need for revolution, we often refuse to support independent struggles for racial liberation where they are not already communist. This is a mistake. In practice, constantly stressing this sort of abstract unity simply demands obedience to the struggles of white workers. There is a reason Black feminists in the 1970s criticised the concept of universal “sisterhood”.

These divisions can be overcome, rather than just downplayed for the purposes of “unity”. Who is this sort of unity really for? By supporting all struggles for equality within the working class, we attack these divisions and undermine profit margins. This intensifies the contradictions of capitalism and builds solidarity between workers in real terms.

As Australian communists, we must not limit ourselves to solidarity with racially exploited people in our own country, such as First Nations Australians or migrant agricultural workers. We must express our solidarity internationally, with the proletariat of the entire world. It is workers who must take up the task of eliminating the distinctions of race and gender. We cannot wait for the capitalists to give us revolution on a silver platter, we simply do not have enough time.

But it would also be a mistake to silo different sectors of the working class from one another, as many “intersectionalists” on the Australian left essentially demand. How can you call yourself an intersectionalist if you don’t include the working class? Such politics can manifest only as liberal reform struggles. There is no struggle that is reserved for just one side of workers, and no struggle that makes sense without workers of all races.

For this reason, communists do not support separatist race struggles, which seek to cut racialised workers off from their comrades rather than tear down the system that exploits us all. We are not completely divided communities with unique issues to be addressed by reforms from the capitalist state.

“I am not free as long as one person is in chains” is not a moral argument, it is a revolutionary strategy. Only a revolution of all the workers of the world can abolish race and capital.

The practical takeaway from this short introduction is that we are in no position to demand outright obedience to our politics. Whether as “spokespeople” for this or that community, or as communists, we must not command deference from one another without criticism.

First, we need a communist party that unites all the divided sects under one program. Such sects are functionally organised along racial lines, with the Black Peoples’ Union forming its own distinct group rather than a faction within a larger party, while the membership of other sects are predominantly white (including the Revolutionary Communist Organisation). We cannot forge a united vision of racial liberation while we remain divided in this way. Unity will allow us to coordinate our efforts and combine our resources across the country.

From there, we must put in the hard sweat of winning people over to communist politics. We must constantly demonstrate that communists are the only consistent ally of racial liberation, as liberal anti-racist reformers will always abandon those that threaten capitalism. We do this by participating wholeheartedly in all genuine struggles for liberation.

Communists should be leading the way in fighting the under-unionisation of First Nations and migrant workers. We must push for concrete demands that alleviate their especially poor conditions, as well as general demands that improve the living and working standards of the entire working-class (which includes racial minorities). We should educate white workers on the dangers of chauvinism and raise revolutionary political consciousness among all workers through education programs.

Despite the divisions, we are already half-united in one struggle for universal liberation. We just need to wake up and get to work.