Introduction

In this paper my object is to draw on the theoretical implications of recent internal critiques of Marxist theory with a view to advancing some propositions, in a perhaps more explicit form than hitherto, relevant to the analysis of social structures and conflicts in capitalist societies in which racism is salient.

Before proceeding further, it is important to make quite explicit that throughout this paper the use of the term ‘racism’ refers, first, to a process of categorisation in which real or supposed physical differences serve to ground invidious conceptions of social differentiation and, second, to social practices in which the placing of individuals or groups unequally in the social structure entails, as an essential element, those physically based categorisations. That is to say, ‘racism’ refers to discriminatory practices in which a socially constructed notion of ‘race’ is implicated.

In order to specify the issues which are to be discussed, the paper begins with a recapitulation of the old debate between class-based and race-based theories of social structure and conflict in capitalist social formations in which race is pertinent. Paradoxically, both these competing theories depend for their construction, in opposite ways, on notions of class, which, while often different, none the less share the common property of being conceived of economistically.