Who Is Cedric Robinson & What Is Racial Capitalism?
Welcome to a short history on prolific Political Theorist, Cedric Robinson and his famous theory of racial capitalism.
About Cedric Robinson
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Born November 5, 1940, Robinson grew up in a black working-class neighborhood in West Oakland. He was regarded as a genuine polymath by those close to him. He attended the University of California, Berkeley, where he majored in social anthropology and rose to prominence as a campus activist. He helped bring Malcolm X to campus and protested the Bay of Pigs Invasion, for which he received a one-semester suspension. After graduation in 1963 and a brief stint in the army, Robinson worked briefly for the Alameda County Probation Department. These experiences led to first hand encounters of a racially biased criminal justice system that perpetuated larger systems of inequality that were predicated in racial capitalism, a term coined by Robinson. Robinson's life experiences and coursework converged to form his perspective ultimately leading to becoming one of the most original political theorist of his generation. In 1974 Robinson earned his doctorate in political theory from Stanford University. Robinson's objectives and aspirations confounded Western social analysis. Ultimately, Robinson believed Marxism failed to account for the racial character of capitalism. Having written much of the book(Black Marxism) during a sabbatical year in England, Robinson encountered intellectuals who used the phrase “racial capitalism” to refer to South Africa’s economy under apartheid. He developed it from a description of a specific system to a way of understanding the general history of modern capitalism. (bostonreview.net).
Diving Deeper Into Racial Capitalism
"Perhaps more than any other book, Black Marxism shifts the center of radical thought and revolution from Europe to the so-called "peripheryn-to the colonial territories, marginalized colored people of the metropolitan centers of capital, and those Frantz Fanon identified as the "wretched of the earth." And it makes a persuasive case that the radical thought and practice which emerged in these sites of colonial and racial capitalist exploitation were produced by cultural logics and epistemologies of the oppressed as well as the specific racial and cultural forms of domination"(Robinson, 16)
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"Robinson proposed the idea that the racialization of the proletariat and the invention of whiteness began within Europe itself, long before Europe's modern encounter with African and New World labor"(Robinson, 16)
Epistemologies Of Race/Race As A Crystallization Of Social Practice
"Capitalism and racism, in other words, did not break from the old order but rather evolved from it to produce a modern world system of "racial capitalism" dependent on slavery, violence, imperialism, and genocide"(Robinson, 12)
If we are to view race through the lens of technology, how does it vivify or obscure widespread social beliefs? Race is a crystallization of social practice because it reinforces invasive hierarchal-ideas that establish contemporary systems for power and wealth consolidation. Is race merely an arbitrary identifier, or is the concept of race weaponized as an industrial tool that provides a framework for controlling people and maintaining the status quo? When viewed through the lens of Robinson, race becomes more than color or an experience; it is the foundation for maintaining a capitalist social order.
"The creation of the Negro was obviously at the cost of immense expenditures of psychic and intellectual energies in the West. The exercise was obligatory. It was an effort commensurate with the importance Black labor power possessed for the world economy sculpted and dominated by the ruling and mercantile classes of Western Europe. As chapter 5 indicates, the Atlantic slave trade and the slavery of the New World were integral to the modern world economy"(Robinson, 45)
Marx vs Robinson
Difference Between The Two Theories
Cedric Robinson disagreed with Karl Marx’s idea that capitalism replaced feudalism (the old system of kings, lords, and peasants) through a progressive change. Robinson argues that race has historically played a role in the structure of capitalism for many years prior to Marx's euroecentric depiction of capitalism. Marx assumes that the story of capitalism can be told as if it were just a class struggle in industrial Europe: factories, wage-labour, bourgeoisie/proletariat, etc. Robinson argues Marx's view forgets how slavery, colonialism, Africa, the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, and global racial hierarchies helped build modern capitalism. Robinson believes marxism emerged from the historical experiences of Europeans, therefore having a built-in blind spot to non-European experiences of labour, exploitation and world-systems.
Marx's Theory Of Capitalism
Robinson's Theory Of Racial Capitalism
Mainly focuses on social class as a means for economic exploitation
(Marx)
Considers the intersections of race and class together
(Robinson)
Wealth is created through unpaid labor
(Marx)
Wealth is created through a mix of unpaid and racially organized labor
(Robinson)
Originates from feudalism and industrialization
(Marx)
Originates from slavery, colonialism, and race-based hierarchy
(Robinson)
Does not consider race, more focused on class
(Marx)
Race is the foundation for who is exploited
(Robinson)
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