Marxism, Race/Class, and Eurocentrism (forthcoming article)

Just signed a contract with Bloomsbury Academic (UK) for my article “Centering the Oppressed: Marxism and the Question of Race and Class.” It will appear in a volume called “On Class, Race, and Educational Reform,” edited by Antonia Darder, Cleveland Hayes II, and Howard Ryan.

In a very short space, I try to outline four areas of question within Marxism, across its history, where the race/class question has been presented forcefully — even if we don’t always recognize these topics as involving race/class issues. I suggest that rather than being absolutely class-deterministic (in which class is always more important than race) or Eurocentric OR having a perfect understanding of how racial oppression and class exploitation are tied together, Marxism has contained various tendencies over a long and complex history.

Here are the four areas/questions around which, i suggest, these debates have happened (this is a sketch, not a comprehensive assessment):

1. Do all workers share a common material interest?

2. Was the emergence of industrial capitalism “revolutionary”?

3. Is the (industrial) proletariat *the* revolutionary class?

4. Should Marxists support nationalism?

Nelson Mandela (center) with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela (left) and Joe Slovo (right) at a 1990 South African Communist Party rally. The SACP’s history — before the end of apartheid and after — is incredibly instructive to any discussion of race, class, and Marxism. Image from South African History Online.