Oliver C. Cox and the political economy of racial capitalism

In the paper

“violence is frequently an effective, if sanguinary, means for the attacking class in the political class struggle, at least when the ruled population 'feels that it is being unjustly 'oppressed' and that it can command the power to bring the government to terms'”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 166 source

In the paper

“the society of leading capitalist nations (or cities) is inherently composed of two principle political classes…The two major groups thus tend to be divided both in interests and in feelings. This major conflict of attitudes… occurred in every capitalist city of early capitalism”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1964 186-187

In the paper

“Materialist analysis and political economy is for Cox precisely that method by which complex cultural phenomena can come to be understood.”

In the paper

“Cox concludes that if exploitation is necessary for a capitalist society, and so for the capitalist system, racial prejudice becomes the most developed justification of and ultimately necessary for capitalist exploitation.”

In the paper

“the development of racial prejudice was, for Cox, not only an invention of capitalism as a particular moment in history”

In the paper

“By exposing the causal structure between political economy and ideological justification, Cox believed that one would thereby show the way beyond race prejudice in all its manifestations.”

In the paper

“The two primary responses from the ruling class to contestations of their power include, first, persistent moralizing and, second, the development of ever-harsher legal structures against certain kinds of violence, namely, violence propagated by the attacking political class.”

In the paper

“If capitalist society requires the exploitation of the laboring masses, the lower political class will always assume an aggressive form.”

In the paper

“In Cox's view, racial prejudice and collective racist actions-that is, the 'public estrangement of sympathetic feeling for and loss of social identification with [an] exploited group'-are undergirded by and meant to justify the impersonal imperatives of a particular mode of production, namely, that mode of production which requires a large docile labor force available for exploitation”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 480 source

In the paper

“Cox wants to emphasize that the class struggle is not only waged in terms of ownership of property and the necessity of selling labor-power but is also characterized by a struggle over state power.”

In the paper

“The trick, Cox thinks, which began in embryo from the first capitalist conquests, was to produce and then exploit divisions among the ruled.”

In the paper

“Such racial forms of prejudice may, however, take any number of guises-any 'race' may, conceivably, be the target for racial prejudice depending on the needs of the ruling class.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 345 source

In the paper

“Cox believes that the fundamental rift between the dominant and attacking political classes is produced and subsequently perpetuated by the fundamental and irreconcilable division in capitalist society.”

In the paper

“Cox believed that the irreconcilable contradiction of interests and the fundamental antagonism between the two political classes, the rulers and the ruled, explains not only why violent conflict exists within capitalist society, but also provides a reason for the basic and necessary ideological response of the ruling class.”

In the paper

“The dominant political class endeavors, so far as it is able, to constantly secure for itself favorable educational reforms, judges, laws (protections for private property), and a monopoly of violent enforcement mechanisms (especially police departments) to fortify its rule against its structural antagonist.”

In the paper

“it is the only method available to see the causal structure which renders certain social practices necessary, such as exploitation and its ideological justification”

In the paper

“Capitalist society produces two political classes which are necessarily and intractably at war with the other.”

In the paper

“Capital's structural requirement to produce race prejudice and so justify mass exploitation is precise, and the only way which we may, for Cox, use the term racial capitalism.”

In the paper

“If antagonisms are necessarily entailed in political economies premised on the exploitation of the ruled, if the ruling class requires a docile labor force, and if the rulers are thereby incentivized to divert political antagonism from inter- to intra-class conflict, then such a process becomes a requirement, a necessity, for that society.”

In the paper

“Cox preferred to use the term political class (as opposed to, say, bourgeoisie and proletariat ) because he argued that Karl Marx himself was not sufficiently precise in his own distinction between the two antagonistic classes characteristic of capitalist societies.”

In the paper

“Cox apparently did not believe it was possible for capitalism to develop to a point at which it could eliminate the need for racial prejudice.”

In the paper

“When white workers attack Asian immigrant workers, Cox thinks, it is never for the benefit of the working-class, even if they think so: their jobs and well-being were not saved by resorting to violence, nor could it be coherently described as progress toward socialism. But such violence does serve to benefit the ruling political class.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“There then are race relations…they are labor-capital-profits relationships; therefore, race relations are proletarian bourgeois relations and hence political-class relations”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 336 source

In the paper

“Cox agreed with Williams' conclusion that at 'the origin of Negro slavery…The reason was economic, not racial; it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor'”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Williams 1944, 19

In the paper

“'Prime movers,' Cox observes, 'must be sought in peculiar economic interests and power structures[.]'”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1962, 242

In the paper

“It was not an abstract, natural, immemorial feeling of mutual antipathy between groups, but rather a practical exploitative relationship with its socioattitudinal facilitation-at that time only nascent race prejudice”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 332 source

In the paper

“He considers race prejudice the single most important alibi for the developed capitalist regime to reproduce itself.”

In the paper

“'Sepúlveda,' Cox argues, 'may be thought of as among the first great racists; his argument was, in effect, that the Indians were inferior to the Spaniards, therefore they should be exploited'”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 335 source

In the paper

“Thus, for Cox, racial prejudice is inherent to capitalism, and in this precise sense, racial capitalism, as a necessary system of exploitation and ideological alibis, is always capitalism tout court .”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“Lynching in the South is not a crime, and this notwithstanding the fact that a few state statutes apparently proscribe it”

• Also stated in: § The Lynch Mob and Proletarian Terror · p. 15 · plain

  “the constitutions of the Southern states and their supporting black codes, the system of discriminatory laws intend to keep Negroes in their place, intentionally put the Negro beyond the full protection of the law”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 551 source

In the paper

“Such a position would, he thought, necessarily extend the capitalist method of exploitation to times and places in which such methods and prejudices are not found.”

In the paper

“From then forward, an ever-expanding system of capital would continue to develop the instruments and ideologies of race prejudice.”

In the paper

“recognized that elite whites defined the matrix within which non-elite whites crafted their political agency, and he emphasized the ruling-class foundations of racism as part of his critique of the liberal scholars of race relations who theorized race relations without regard to capitalist political economy and class dynamics”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Reed 2001

In the paper

“Sepúlveda became an intellectual for the early development of expansionist capital on the American continent, first as an apologist who justified the brutality required to subdue the potential laborers, and second as he marked 'the beginning of modern race relations…only nascent race prejudice'”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 332 source

In the paper

“Race prejudice, from its inception, became part of the social heritage, and as such both exploiters and exploited for the most part are born heirs to it.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 333 source

In the paper

“But neither the lynch mob nor any form of racial prejudice, Cox submits, is a natural destiny of a society, no human community is prescribed to be the perpetrators or victims of racial terror, nor is it part of an essential human nature to be cruel and antagonistic.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“One could almost say, without too much hyperbole, that the raison d'être for the entirety of the ruling political class, its intellectual ambition, in addition to extracting profit from the laboring masses, is to maintain a racist order.”

In the paper

“For Cox, the police were one of the key instigators of allowing and encouraging such a terroristic atmosphere, as they did not arrest nor prosecute lynchers, or were active participants of the mob themselves”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 554 source

In the paper

“Christopher Columbus, Cox implies, despite his brutality, may have been among the last half-generation of non-racist imperialists, for the methods of justifying conquest and brutality were non-racial.”

In the paper

“Absent such a total social force, Cox thought, the working class could do a great deal, over time, to eliminate racial prejudice among its own ranks.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“Once it is accepted that capitalist societies require for their existence a docile labor supply, such a mass of human beings needs to be made to continuously submit to that very system.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“such a class of exploiters first attempted to dominate native peoples, then the poor white Europeans, and finally Africans, a shift which was determined by the demand, availability, and price of labor in the Americas.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Williams 1944, 19

In the paper

“Cox argued that the ruling political class recognizes that it is constantly at war with the subordinate political class”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“They are, for Cox, the foot soldiers of division, though they are not its generals.”

In the paper

“Cox did not believe that race prejudice was a timeless fact of human interaction; social intercourse of different kinds of people (even different races of humans) did not automatically entail the inevitable development of racial hatred.”

In the paper

“Cox argues that workers in the leading nations are relative beneficiaries and therefore develop a chauvinism that incentives them to only accept reforms within the system, at the cost of the even more exploited workers in the satellite nations.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1964, 195

In the paper

“Negative attitudes and perceptions do not cause exploitation and they cannot be abolished or fundamentally reformed without addressing the material conditions characteristic of domination and exploitation.”

In the paper

“The elite (i.e., the ruling political-class) would be its intellectuals and creators, though not necessarily its primary practitioners.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 333 source

In the paper

“posits that any effort to change the racial order of the United States must attack the racially hierarchical political economy, not perceptions and attitudes”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Burden-Stelly 2020a, b

In the paper

“Cox identifies the years 1493-1494 as the last critical years of non-racialized colonial expansion.”

In the paper

“A primary prerogative of the ruling class is to materially establish, encourage, or deploy racial prejudice anew whenever the ideological inertia begins to wear down.”

In the paper

“the exploitative act comes first; the prejudice follows”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 532 source

In the paper

“Cox situates the case of anti-Asian prejudice within a section entitled Race Prejudice, Class Conflict, and Nationalism because he believed it was ultimately a case of labor relations between exploited and exploiter. Neither intolerance nor persecution correctly identifies the social attitude for this situation; it is rather, for Cox, exploitation, and race prejudice.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 393 source

In the paper

“a powerful white exploiting class, by 'might of the strong' and for 'economic expediency,' pushed the Negroes down into chattel slavery and then, as a justification and facilitation of this, utilized the means of propaganda, which are ordinarily in its control, to develop racial antagonism and hate in the white public for the Negroes”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 532 source

In the paper

“We should not expect, then, that workers in leader nations will take a determined initiative in transforming their society to socialism. The initiative must come from still more disadvantaged groups.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1964, 195

In the paper

“The exploitation of native peoples,' Cox concluded, 'is not a sin, not essentially a problem of morals or of vice; it is a problem of production and of competition for markets.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 336 source

In the paper

“For Cox, it is historically, politically, and sociologically untenable to assume that racial prejudice existed throughout all historical epochs.”

In the paper

“the anti-Negro attitude which the ruling class propagates among the white masses cannot be 'in the mores' of the people of the South because at least half of them, all the Negroes and a considerable minority of whites, reject them entirely.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“Race prejudice had nothing fundamental to do with the establishment of interracial communities all over the world by imperialist European nations.”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1976

In the paper

“the causes of racial prejudice can never be found in presumed 'racial' traits of different persons or groups-combining different persons does not necessarily lead to social antagonism”

In the paper

“The backward peoples are the real exploited and exploitable proletariat of the system”

What the sources say

• ?Not matched

  Couldn’t be matched to a paper in Crossref, so it can’t be checked.

  cites Cox 1964, 195

In the paper

“In capitalist societies, one such major division-inherent to the capitalist system and perhaps the most profound and enduring division-is called, for Cox, race prejudice.”

In the paper

“Miles misses Cox's larger point, which is that a particular form of racial prejudice is found among the working class.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Miles 1980 source

In the paper

“It is the apparent spontaneity, autonomy, and originality of intra-class racial prejudice, not the racial prejudice itself, which is, for Cox, a simplification.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“Cox's second conclusion, therefore, is that racial prejudice has become necessary to developed capitalist societies.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source

In the paper

“Lynching is crucial in the continuance of the racial system of the South”

• Also stated in: § The Lynch Mob and Proletarian Terror · p. 16 · plain

  “it is rather in the whip hand of the ruling class. It is the most powerful and convincing form of racial repression operating in the interest of the status quo. Lynchings serve the indispensable social function of providing the ruling class with the means of periodically reaffirming its collective sentiment of white dominance”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948, 555 source

In the paper

“mutual hostility among those who should be in solidarity, despite some real and some illusory differences, benefits none but the ruling political class.”

In the paper

“It requires, for example, an economic, educational, legal, and punitive apparatus which conjures, deploys, and exploits racial prejudices in order to maintain an internally antagonistic labor supply. It also requires a ruling political-class whose inherent interest is to extract such brutal asocial behavior from a significant section of the ruled.”

What the sources say

• ?Not checked — no full text of the sourcecites Cox 1948 source