Re: AUT: strategy/ies

[fabian@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Montyneill wrote
>A few thoughts on this question of race and class strategies.
>
>Ted Allen (in _Radical America_  May-June 1975 "Class Struggle and the Origin
>of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race") pointed out that in
>Virginia it was after Bacon's rebellion (which united exploited, black and
>white) was defeated that the beginnings of the "black codes" began clearly
>separating African (and descendants) from English (and descendants),
>including banning intermarriage, more careful distinctions from indentured
>servitude, etc.

Yes but he's wrong. Sir Edward Coke's ruling in the CALVIN CASE of 1606
established a legal differentiation between people from a Christian nation
and those from a non-christian nation, the latter to be regarded as a
'perpetual enemy' In many respects this was irrelevant to the case
concerning whether a scottish person could petition an English court.
However it is Coke's involvement with the London Virginia Company which
explains why he would make such a judgement. It provided a legal precedent
for any measures which the LVC might care to take during their proposed
colonisation of North America. The evidence seems to indicate that they
originally planned to make the Native Americans the victims of their
imperial enslavement, following the spanish model (this is revealed in the
minutes of their debates). As the Native American resistance to enslavement
succeeded (even if they lost the land) the development of a trade circuit
with Africa meant that the triangular trade ensured a supply of African
slaves.

> Race was thus constructed politically to attack class unity
>-- a point apparently in accord with Balibar's quoted remarks in Angela's
>post. Other work has shown constructions of race and civilization to be tied
>to colonialism and imperialism in 19th century capitalist scholarship (c.f.
>articles in Federici, ed., _Enduring Western Civilization_).

I seem to recall one of the points of Bacon's rebellion was a more vigorous
attack on Native Americans. The library shut for a week so I can't check
this.

>Noel Ignatiev in _How the Irish Became White_ has traced the lengthy
>processes from African-American and Irish immigrant class unity to Irish race
>riots against blacks. Clearly they were pitted against each other in labor
>competition. The tragedy is not that the bosses tried this, but that they
>succeeded so well here in the US.
>
>It is the centrality of race in class relations in the US that makes
>addressing it so essential. Thus, as Bill remarked, class unity against
>capital requires addressing racism within the working class. Of course the
>whole issue gets used opportunistically, as Angela remarks -- but what does
>not, by someone(s)?

I think it is wrong to look at the US in isolation - it just doesn't make
sense. One question that springs to mind is this: would the English
bourgeoisie ever have generated sufficient power to overcome the resistance
to the factory system if they had not accumulated vaste wealth through the
triangular trade? i.e. could capitalism have developed (then? at all?)
without racism?

>I concur that often class-race-sex/gender get treated as self-contained
>entities (Weberian style) when they are social relations which have developed
>(and continue to) conjointly within capitalism in enormously complex and
>contradictory ways.

>Politically, failure of "white" working class to deal with racism and the
>relative advantages from not having to compete with African Americans for
>some jobs or advancement occupationally (and it has worked that way in the US
>at times) and from social status means a crippling weakness in possible class
>unity.

The problems run deeper than that: the success of the White working class
in excluding Black people from jobs, in which trade unions played a major
part. Certainly in Britain this chiefly related to the position of seamen,
and occasioned race riots stimulated by trade unionists following WWI. Also
there was agitation by Dock unions (including some leaders of the 1890's
London dock strike) against Jewish immigration at the beginning of this
century. I understand that such attitudes prevailed in the Knights of
Labour and the AFL in the US (but not the IWW).

Surely the problem is the failure of the working class as a whole, rather
than as an aggregate of ethnically, racially or nationally defined segments
to deal with racism that w ehave to deal with.


Leutha Blissett





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