CLASS, RACE,
AND MARXISM
David R. Roediger
First published by Verso 2017
© David R. Roediger 2017
All rights reserved
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Verso
UK: 6 Meard Street, London W1F 0EG
US: 20 Jay Street, Suite 1010, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Verso is the imprint of New Left Books
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-123-7
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-125-1 (UK EBK)
ISBN-13: 978-1-78663-126-8 (US EBK)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roediger, David R., author.
Title: Class, race, and Marxism / David Roediger.
Description: New York : Verso, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016051237 | ISBN 9781786631237 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Social classes. | Class consciousness. | Race relations. | Socialism. | Communism. | BISAC: SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination & Race Relations. | SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Classes. | POLITICAL SCIENCE / Political Ideologies / Communism & Socialism.
Classification: LCC HT609 .R634 2017 | DDC 305.5—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016051237
Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by Hewer Text UK, Ltd, Edinburgh
Printed in the US by Maple Press
To Adrian Gaskins, Josie Fowler, and Joel Olson
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Thinking through Race and Class in Hard Times
PART ONE
Interventions: Making Sense of Race and Class
1The Retreat from Race and Class
2Accounting for the Wages of Whiteness: US Marxism and the Critical History of Race
3A White Intellectual among Thinking Black Intellectuals: George Rawick and the Settings of Genius
PART TWO
Histories: The Past and Present of Race and Class
4Removing Indians, Managing Slaves, and Justifying Slavery: The Case for Intersectionality
5“One Symptom of Originality”: Race and the Management of Labor in US History (Coauthored with Elizabeth Esch)
6Making Solidarity Uneasy: Cautions on a Keyword from Black Lives Matter to the Past
Notes
Index
In a book gathering work done over the course of a decade but reflecting thinking about these matters for four, acknowledgments cannot ever be adequate. I err here on the side of brevity and apologize for omissions. Everything I have written on race and class is informed by mentoring long ago from George Fredrickson, Margaret George, and George Rawick. Learning from Sterling Stuckey came early and continues to only grow. Outside of universities the Chicago Surrealist Group and especially Franklin Rosemont, Paul Garon, and Penelope Rosemont have been constant presences. Where psychology and contemporary social movements are concerned, my sons Brendan Roediger and Donovan Roediger have shared insights. Research assistance from Zach Sell, John Marquez, Stephanie Krehbiel, Martin Smith, Kathryn Robinson, and Hannah Bailey has helped greatly as has work from Edward G. Lee on web matters. I have run drafts and ideas by countless people, including Rebecca Hill, Paul Gilroy, Kevin Mumford, David Camfield, Vron Ware, Alberto Toscano, Dianne Harris, Michael Mizell-Nelson, Rachel Gugler, john powell, Joel Helfrich, Jean Allman, Jonathan Garlock, Noel Ignatiev, Nell Irvin Painter, Moon-Kie Jung, Thavolia Glymph, Richard Seymour, Tricia Rose, Robin D.G. Kelley, Joel Olson, Mark Leff, Clarence Lang, Rod Ferguson, Ferruccio Gambino, Enoch Page, Abigail Bakan, Enakshi Dua, Rose Feurer, Chad Person, John Bracey, Susan Ferber, Shawn Alexander, and George Lipsitz. At Verso Sebastian Budgen, Sophia Hussain, John Merrick, and Rosie Warren have been especially helpful. Coauthor on one of the pieces, as well as supportive and most perceptive critic on all, was Elizabeth Esch.
My research and writing benefitted from institutional support in the form of fellowships from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, the Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society at University of Illinois, the Center for Advanced Study at University of Illinois, the Mellon Foundation, and from residencies at University of South Carolina and University of London’s Queen Mary University. Thanks especially to Lawrence Glickman and to Gerry Hanlon for arranging the two residencies.
The essays originally appeared in the venues below and both the editors and editorial collectives involved improved them greatly in each case. They are reprinted with thanks:
Chapter 1: “The Retreat from Race and Class.” Monthly Review, 58 (July–August 2006), 40–51.
Chapter 2: “Accounting for the Wages of Whiteness: US Marxism and the Critical History of Race” in Wulf Hund, David Roediger, and Jeremy Krikler, eds., The Wages of Whiteness and Racist Symbolic Capital (Berlin: LIT, 2011), 9–36.
Chapter 3: “The White Intellectual among Thinking Black Intellectuals: George Rawick and the Settings of Genius.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 109 (Spring 2010), 225–47.
Chapter 4: “Removing Indians, Managing Slaves, and Justifying Slavery: The Case for Intersectionality” in Sabine Ritter and Iris Wigger, eds., Racism and Modernity: Festschrift for Wulf D. Hund (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2011), 117–30.
Chapter 5: Coauthored with Elizabeth Esch, “ ‘One Symptom of Originality’: Race and the Management of Labor in US History.” Historical Materialism, 17 (2009), 3–43.
Chapter 6: “Making Solidarity Uneasy: Cautions on a Keyword from Black Lives Matter to the Past.” American Quarterly, 68 (June 2016), 223–48.
Thinking through Race and Class in Hard Times
In a recent symposium in the web publication Syndicate on his book Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, the Marxist theorist David Harvey takes issue with one