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

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  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.
>
> Tahir: Well, you skate on thin ice here. Are all forms of prejudice and
chauvinism now to be termed 'racism'. European racism, which is what people
usually have in mind when this term comes up, would hardly discriminate
between Hutus and Tutsis, for example, on the grounds of race. Was the
struggle between the British and the Boers also a conflict between 'races'
then? You see, either we have to reserve the term 'racism' for certain
phenomena or else we have to distinghuish between very different kinds of
racism. The relationship between black and white in say South Africa is
hardly the same as that between Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda. Otherwise we get
to a situtation where the conflict in Yugoslavia, that in Northern Ireland,
or even disputes between French and English speaking Canadians all become
racial questions. Maybe what we need is a detailed typology of chauvinisms
to discuss this thing with any clarity!
Chris:  A 'detailed typology' takes us exactly back to Enlightenment
thought, which is where this whole problem begins ideologically.

I think the relationship of racism and nationalism deserves a complicated
treatment.  for example, to say as you do that we cannot compare the
relationship of Tutsi and Hutu as against 'black versus white'.  Maybe we
can.  That depends in part on how those two groups see each other.  One
unique difference between race and nation has to do with the fact that race
has always implied inherited inferiority, where to some extent nation
implies a degree of equality, of people from two separate nations, with
their own states.  That national status can be degraded by racial reference
or not.  But racialized oppression automatically confers inferiority.  That
is part of the reason, IMO, that many people racialized as 'inferior' see
attaining the status of a 'nation' as politically progressive, as an
advance.  Certainly, in reference to Yugoslavia, we might be able to make
the argument for racism between Kosova and Serbia or Croatia, but not so
obviously between Croats and Serbs.  If we start from the idea that race is
a fetishized form of human relation, a form of expressing a certain kind of
oppression, an oppression with no appeal to bougeois equality (i.e. the
state), then we can begin to see a difference.  Race implies an immediate
asymmetry of power that nation does not.  As such, as fragmented forms of
human relations, as identities which attempt to freeze an aspect of our
beings into the definition of 'us', racialization does have unique, but
slippery aspects.

Anyway, this is sketchy, and what you and Rowan have raised simply points to
the problem of trying to talk race outside of a live political context.
Maybe racialization is taking place in some situations and not others, but
that is a political struggle.  Races do not just 'exist'.  we cannot say
they 'are' or 'are not'.  Racialization is a struggle, a process that the
racialized fight against or defend, limit or extend.  Racial struggles can
become national struggles and vice versa.

> 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.
>
> Tahir: But at least I did suggest that there is some very primitive or
archaic 'otherness' which gets transformed into something quite different
and much more sophisticated under capitalism, to the point where it results
in a whole range of juridical and ideological forms. This is quite absent in
primitive societies (which might nevertheless discriminate between who you
can eat and who you can't), whereas in ancient Greece it came down to the
question of citizen and non-citizen. This provided a model for apartheid,
where black people were regarded as as non-citizens of SA, but as
'foreigners'.
Chris:  Not sure where you are going with this last bit.

> 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
>
> Tahir: No sorry, do some homework here. I would like to see some evidence
that the same level of prejudice against darker people existed say in
ancient Rome (or even in the middle ages) to the extent that it did in
Europe or the USA in the twentieth century.

Chris:  Agreed.

>  although the different forms in which the
> hegemonic race (whichever it is at a particular moment) expresses its
> superiority vary with history.
>
> 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?
>
> Tahir: But there is abundant evidence that they often aren't. They are
very, very often expressed through language, religion and custom. The
conjuncture that I cited earlier, namely the Union of South Africa in 1910
is fascinating in this regard. From just a few years earlier when the
British had regarded the Boers as hardly better than Blacks, they signed a
very generous peace treaty with the Boers and then brought into being a
nation based on white unity. Clearly, British imperialism had faced a dual
threat. The Boers were initially more threatening, but once they were
defeated the foundation was laid for white unity AGAINST black aspirations.
And from there a whole new ideological discourse begins to unfold, based
much more solidly on 'whiteness' than previously. Yes racism 'as we know it'
starts right there.

Chris:  Here again I think you reify race to some extent, assuming it really
exists.  The relationship of the irish to the English from say the 1400's
through the 1850's could be discussed as a kind of religio-racism.  Ted
Allen's book has a pretty interesting discussion of this possibility and it
deserves consideration.

>  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?
>
> Tahir: Again, note that it is only one amongst many. But I would guard
against a crudely instrumental view. You are right insofar as a lot of this
happens below the level of explicit consciousness, and yes it does often
build on deep and archaic prejudice. But also sometimes not. Take the
example of xenophobia as an interesting case. Today in South Africa there is
huge prejudice against Africans from other parts of the continent which
often leads to violence. These are black people discriminating against other
black people, who are identified easily due to the fact that they don't
speak a local African language. Clearly this is the effect of nationalism,
and here, my friend, it must be said that nationalism is deeply enmeshed
with capitalism.
Chris:  Again, the problems of form and fetishism get lost.  Race is one
fetishized form of the separation of doing and done, or rather of the
fragmentation of life that results from the avsolute separation of doing and
done, of producing from owning, of creating from controlling, of creating
separated from the means of creating.  Race is a fetishized form of the
capital-labor relation, just as the state is.   The particulars of that
however, how that particular form comes into being, how it is destabilized,
restabilized, altered or maintained cannot be separated from that aspect of
the problem.

> I dont think that Marxist categories can answer this question. The
> discussion of value does not explain why a race can be oppressed.
>
> Tahir: Well Marx presented a critique of capitalism, not a science of
everything.. This has shed a lot of light on how racism has developed in
modern times. But no-one is saying that prejudice itself, whether 'racial'
or linguistic or religious comes into being with capitalism. It is even
likely that Marx himself was not entirely free of some of these prejudices.
Chris:  Marx certainly suffered from those prejudices.  At the same time, to
say treat religion or race as generic inthis way again ignores exactly what
makes these social relations unique under capital: their form.  I suppose I
will keep hammering away at this until I get it right, but I cannot insist
enough that looking at previous forms of prejudice gets us into hot water
quickly when we try to equate them with current forms of social relations
with historically unique dynamics connected to the capital-labor relation.
No racism ever existed like the one we have under capitalism.  But no
religion existed like what we have now, either.  Protestantism, Catholicism,
etc. all look very different now than they did ever before.  Some of the
dogmas have remained the same, but how people live them, how they impact us,
how we shape them, that is all very different.  Protestantism and
Catholicism did not even exist prior to capitalism (I cannot speak with much
authority about other religions, but I do know that islam also looks very
different today, so that Islamic fundamentalism is very much a capitalist
process.)

>  So to
> answer Chriss question as to how capitalism is formed by racism and
sexism,
>
> Tahir: I'm sorry but this formulation is rubbish. Capitalism cannot so
simply be regarded as formed by racism or sexism. You would have to add so
much theory to make this claim plausible that in the end you would have
explained away this banal formulation into oblivion.
Chris:  I would not say that capitalism is formed by racism and sexism, as
such.  Rather, in so far as race and gender as we know them flow from the
capital-labor relation, from the peculiar way that capital fetishizes and
fragments all social relations, we cannot have a non-racialized or
non-gendered concept of class.  Class formation is racialized and gendered
fromt the get go.  But that is different from Rowan's formulation in my
opinion.

> then we certainly need to go beyond the categories of Marx  but Ive really
> not read enough on this to give any decent answer.
>
> Tahir: Again, what Marx did was mainly present a critique of capitalism,
so it's not very fair to charge him with failing to do something that he
didn't set out to do. But, crucially, Marx gave us a very useful way of
thinking about these things - call it historical materialism - and you
should check out Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the
State to see how this same approach can be applied to a the question of
sexism, for example.
Chris:  Here we have a major difference of approach.  Marx did not set out a
'method' which we can 'apply'.  Marx sought to understand capital from the
inside out, to draw out that which it hid, the social relations underpinning
capital, in order to find its weaknesses and see how it could be destroyed.
Historical materialism is a phrase that neither Marx nor Engels ever used.
But Engels certainly helped lay the groundwork for it in a way that
systematized Marx's weaker moments into a positive science, a method, a
philosophy.  Understanding Marx this way does not take us forwards, again,
but backwards towards Feuerbachian materialism.  Marx sought to tease out
the relations, the links, the process.  Engels turned it into a science, a
positive knowledge of the world (including the natral world), rather than as
a negation of the existing world.  If we lose sight of Marx's dialectic as a
dialectic of absolute negation, of total critique, of theory against, not a
theory of, the world, then we lose the revolutionary content of Marx's work.

As for Origin of the Family..., I would not recommend that work to anyone.
Aside from a blatant dualism between class society and gender, it also
overlooks many things.  Marx's Ethnological notebooks, though sketchy, offer
a rather different view of the transition from pre-class to class society.
for example, Marx saw class society as arising organically from the
contradictions of pre-class societies in a way that totally contradicts
Engels' approach.  Engels certainly did better than many later Marxists on
this (see for example Bebel's crude approach in Woman in the Past, present
and the Future), but not good enough.  Engels tried to apply a tool, 'the
materialist conception of history', to the past.  Marx had no such 'tool',
he shared no such instrumentalist outlook.

Well, that's enough.  I am sorry I am vague tonight on the problem of
fetishism and form.  i am still working out my understanding and my
occaissionally over-abstract points reflects that all too clearly.  I hope
to firm it up.  However, without going deeper into the specifics of the
history, i think we run into limits.  That has been something I have enjoyed
about Tahir's comments.  I wish I could do them justice, but i know too
little of South Africa to really get into it deeply.  Maybe I can do more
later.

Cheers,
Chris



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