Re: AUT: Linebaugh and Rediker, _The Many-Headed Hydra_

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Sorry I took so long to reply to a few things.  I'll drop a few things on
Tahir's reply to this as well.

>
> I found your historical chronology very useful.
> It brings Foucault to mind with his D&P thesis, structures of power moving
> from attacks on life, via extermination and exclusion then moving to the
> disciplining of people by creating an 'other' (the figure of the
> 'delinquent') to maintain control and increase productivity.
>
> But I do have problems with your understanding of racism.
> We need to define what we mean by racism. Tahir, you suggest that racism
> proper, as we now know it, is the incorporation of inferior races into
> the state and workforce in subordinate positions.
First, I want to take issue with this constant need to come up with precise
definitions.  Not that they do not have a limited use, but in general, I
think the attempt to define life in this way starts from a sociological
assumption that we have 'things' in front of us, rather than social
relations.  The social relation changes over time, social relations have a
fluidity that defining attempts to arrest.  Also, defining 'race' or
'racism' outside of the context of opposition, of negation, seems to me an
academic approach.  Tahir raised the same point in his comments.
Definitions will take us to a certain point, but they will not offer
resolution.  Rather, we need to begin to approach the problem historically
(as has been done here), not take a step backwards.

Second, clearly racism does not simply incorporate people into the state or
workforce.  White supremacy, the form of racial privilege found in the
United States, when applied to Native Americans, originally meant genocide
and annihilation, not incorporation.  Incorporation seems a very recent
feature of the approach to Native Americans.

> The problem I have with your definition is that when you mention
> extermination and exclusions, these are not regarded as racist but as a
> primitive conquering consciousness. But we have had massacres in the
> twentieth century (of Armenians, Jews, Tutsis, etc), undeniably racist
acts
> with no desire to incorporate the other race into the workforce.
Agreed, see my second point.

> I think your definition buries the question of racism into one of the
forms
> in which it is expressed, i.e. it doesnt address why or how it is possible
> for notions of race to be a) developed as a subject of discourse and b)
for
> one or other to become recognised as inferior.
This whole discourse approach has problems.  I really dislike the notion of
discourse.  The problem is not language or percpetion, but a social relation
between human beings.  The whole discourse approach seems to me to distance
us from the social relation we find ourselves buried neck deep in.  Also,
"for notions of race to be a) developed as a subject of discourse" does not
help us.  To have notions of race already assumes we have a discussion of
them, which means either a) this phrase is wholly redundant, a tautology and
therefore meaningless or b) this phrase reifies race as something
pre-existing our 'discourse'.  I hope the problems with both aspects are
clear.

> This for me is the key question: that an other is generated, identified by
> skin colour or genetic heritage, that is regarded as inferior in some way.
> This cuts across time frames, although the different forms in which the
> hegemonic race (whichever it is at a particular moment) expresses its
> superiority vary with history.
Actually, since identification by genetics implies the realm of bourgerois
knowledge known as 'biology', we could hardly have such a 'discourse' prior
to capitalism.  In fact, we could not have it prior to the 19th, maybe the
20th, century.  As for identification by skin color, race goes much deeper
than that, since many Southern Italians are 'darker' than many African
Americans, but they have become 'white'.  Race is not simply socially
contructed, but a product of the particular way capital sees the world,
connected with what various people have critiqued about the Enlightenment.
The biologization, taxonomizing, animalizing of human beings enshrined in
the Enlightenment also went hand-in-hand with the classification (defining)
of all creatures by relatively arbitrary categories.  Should it surprise us
that that process got turned on human beings?  But that process also takes
place in the context of historically specific struggles and contexts,
meaning that the exact way in which that 'classification', that
racialization, takes place, varies widely within capital's framework.
However, i think we could show in each and every case that some of what
makes racialization under the capital-labor relationship unique relates to
specifically Enlightenment notions.  I have avoided recapitulating Loren
Goldner's argument because the material appears on his web site, but if it
is helpful, I will post what I think are the key sections.  Need I emphasize
that the Enlightenment was the youth of bourgeois thought, of bourgeois
ideology?

> So the main question in the racism qua capitalism/pre-capitalism is WHY
> should a different race be subject to either extermination or
subordination?
> Because its in the way of land enclosure? Because cheap labour is
required?
> Yes, but why are these antagonisms expressed through race? I dont think
> its enough to say that the ruling class find it convenient, or that
playing
> on otherness is a simple strategy  WHY is this a simple strategy? Why are
> proletarians so susceptible to being divided by skin colour? Why is the
> notion 'race' able to become a tool of the ruling class?
These questions do take us beyond a simple economic determinism and I think
you are moving in a good direction.  These questions have animated the
thought of Marxists like David Roediger, Noel Ignatiev, Alexander Saxton,
etc.  Not that I think any of them have a sufficient answer, but part of
their importance lies in asking the question and attempting to formulate a
political answer.

> I dont think that Marxist categories can answer this question. The
> discussion of value does not explain why a race can be oppressed. So to
> answer Chriss question as to how capitalism is formed by racism and
sexism,
> then we certainly need to go beyond the categories of Marx  but Ive really
> not read enough on this to give any decent answer.
I am not suggesting going beyond Marx's categories, if by that you mean the
way Marx approached the critique of political economy (his 'method' or
philosophy or whatever you want to call it, though both of those words have
serious problems.)  If you mean that Marx did not treat sufficiently of
these question in his lifetime or come up with sufficient answers, well
that's obvious.  I think the category of fetishism and Marx's understanding
of alienation provide us with sufficient theoretical bases for a critique of
race.  However, we have a lot of work to do after that.  I do not think that
people like Foucault have much to offer, except in so far as their critique
of 'Marxism' points out serious political weaknesses in post-Marx Marxism
that should make us go back to Marx, rather than blaming Marx for the
failures of his 'followers'.

Anyway, I'll continue this in my comments on Tahir's comments.

Cheers,
Chris





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