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Monopoly capitalism didn’t create the race problem in the USA, as it was inherited from the pre-Civil War slave economy, but race relations must be traced through the development of American capitalism. A core tension in the USA is between both the liberal claims to equality that America was founded on, and the racism that America was founded on. How does this core tension, always fluctuating but never resolved, map on to the monopoly capitalist structure of the 1960s?
Race prejudice (as belief in a hierarchical racial order) came into being with the growth of European colonialism, as a justification for the pillage, theft, and occupation of the entire global. White Europeans slotted the other ‘races’ into their hierarchy, inevitably deciding that the best way to ‘civilize’ their ‘inferiors’ was bloody domination or extermination. This system obviously mapped quite smoothly onto the slave economy of the American South. A material reality of White masters driving Black slaves existed, but the ‘race fetishism’ led nearly all Whites to believe in their inherent (rather than class) superiority, and even many slaves to believe in their inherent (rather than class) inferiority. In this way, we see racism as a mystificatory tool to hide the economic structure of the slave society.
The Civil War was not fought over the issue of state’s rights, or even that of slavery. It was a project of the Northern industrial/financial elite, eager to maintain their stronghold over the Southern slave oligarchy. While slavery was ended in the process, the ongoing post-Reconstruction white supremacist project of the South was a sort of compromise for the Southern elite accepting their defeat and ongoing subjugation by the Northern elite. In place of slavery, wage labour, debt peonage, and sharecropping ensured the ultimate shared aim of the Northern and Southern elite: disciplined and oppressed Black labour. This led to the legalized segregation of Jim Crow, which in many ways was as socially and economically oppressive as slavery had been.
Before WWI, the Northern working class in the USA was generally replenished by the latest waves of European immigrants: Germans and Irish, then Italians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, etc. But the slaughterhouse of WWI cut this population flow to a trickle. Additionally, agricultural automation in the South was reducing the need for Black labour. These combined factors shifted the industrial demand for ‘unskilled’ labour from external immigration flows to internal (primarily Black) migration flows. The acceleration of Black people moving north, in search of work in cities, rather than the Southern fields, continued throughout the first half of the 20th century. There was also increasing urbanization of Black people in the South, from country peasants to urban workers. In the cities of both North and South, Black workers faced both historical racial animosity and the prejudice that faced each new immigrant group at the base of the American racial/labour hierarchy.
Did Black labourers from the South gain the same economic boost as previous waves of European immigrants to America? Yes, but for a different reason. The boost that Black Southern labourers (coming to cities in both the North and South) received was due specifically to this urbanization. Life in cities, no matter how difficult, was better than rural life. However, there was no discernable relative increase in occupational status between Black labourers and other White labour demographics within the cities. While the relative median wage ratio did rise slightly before WWII, Black labourers with equal skills and training still held relatively lower occupational status in American cities. They were also paid less for the same work.
A key example of this racial segregation in the labour market was unemployment. Between 1940 and 1962, Black unemployment grew from 1.12x to 2.25x larger than White unemployment. Ghettoization also grew, with Black people living in worsening urban conditions, while White people moved to suburbs from which Black people were legally forbidden from living. In these ways, Black labourers were structurally unable to move up the economic/social ladder as prior White groups of immigrants had.
B+S then examine the social forces and mechanisms that have kept the Black working class in a sort of ‘permanent migrant’ state, never able to achieve the living standard increase of prior waves of immigrants. These include: 1) an array of private sector interests devoted to maintaining a divided proletariat, 2) the socio-psychological pressures of monopoly capitalist society that enhance rather than dampen racial prejudice, and 3) the tendency for demand for un/semi-skilled labour to fall absolutely and relatively as monopoly capitalism develops.
Re: the private sector forces invested in the Black ‘subproletariat,’ there were several. There are employers who can keep wage levels down by threatening White labourers with replacement by even more exploited Black labourers. Ghetto landlords reap windfall revenue from overcharging Black families for overcapacity living spaces. Higher incomes groups can employ unemployed Black labour in a domestic context. Marginal small businesses are able to profitably operate only due to the superexploitation of Black labour. White labour benefits from reduced competition for better, higher paid work. With varying levels of intensity (or even comprehension), the broad mass of these groups benefitted from the continued subjugation of Black workers.
Re: racial prejudice, the use of this as a social/cultural rationale for the justification of the slaveholder economic system has already been mentioned. However, this pattern of prejudicial behaviour began to serve other ends as well. The stratifications of monopoly capitalist society (with its ‘everyone for themselves’ propaganda) causes deep psychological anxiety regarding status, across all classes. With a certain group rooted at the bottom, and distinguishable by skin colour, other more important class divisions can be papered over. White labourers come to see themselves as comrades of their White bosses rather than Black labourers. The White working class finds solace that they don’t have it as bad as the Black working class, rather than acknowledging how much worse off all workers are than their shared bosses, regardless of race.
Re: the diminishing need for unskilled labour, overall unskilled labour (as a portion of the workforce) declined from 36% in 1910, to 20% in 1950, to 5% in 1962. That’s a loss of 9 million unskilled labour positions. This trend maps closely onto the increasing unemployment of Black labourers. Relative to White labourers, Black labourers on average had less training, and were generally less likely to be hired over a similar White candidate. Automation and mechanization of industry made unskilled Black labour superfluous, as it had previously done in Southern agriculture. This created what amounts to a permanent reserve army of Black labour, unemployed due to monopoly capitalist stagnation, but useful for capitalists to keep downward pressure on the wages of White labour.
What can be mystifying is that, despite all these structural and psychological forces, Black living standards and status did not continually worsen in the post-WWII period. So what were the counteracting forces preventing further degradation?
First was the aforementioned grand movement from country to city. Even as bad as they were, urban education, welfare, and housing still improved on their counterparts in the country.
Another interesting factor was increasing Black employment in government, from 5.6% in 1940 to 12.1% in 1962. The most powerful force behind this ongoing inclusion within the American social hierarchy was the Black liberation struggle, forcing concessions from the White elite.
Additionally, the stain of racial prejudice was staining American imperial prestige on the global stage. The oligarchy had reasons to slightly lessen racial division. However, since racism is a product of American capitalism, it can only be done away with by the abolition of the American monopoly capitalist system.
The material fact of Black resiliency in 1960s America is testament to the community’s revolutionary power, and thus the need for the oligarchy to squash or appropriate this power. Now, B+S come to ‘tokenism.’ Segregation meant that Black professionals took up certain services (medical, dentistry, law, beauty, etc.) that White professionals refused to undertake for Black clients. This led to the development of a Black bourgeoisie, or Black elite. In the Black elite, there is the contradiction of benefitting from a status quo that also racially oppresses them. By securing the loyalty of the Black bourgeoisie, the American oligarchy could both tamp down the revolutionary potential of the Black liberation movement, and distance itself from embarrassing but legitimate comparisons to segregation states like apartheid South Africa.
So how was the loyalty of the Black bourgeoisie secured?
First, the abolition of Jim Crow legal segregation. The South had to be made into the North’s image (of legal but still unreal racial equality), as legalized segregation was harmful to all Black people, whether labourer or bourgeoisie.
Second, the Black elite must be admitted into society’s heights, like legislature, the giant corporation, and universities. The possibility of moving up in society, without actually enabling mass structural social realignment, eased the psychological stress of racial oppression without any real oligarchic concessions.
Third, Black members of the upper classes must remain dependent on White oligarchs for their relatively esteemed positions. Through the use of finances, co-optation of movements, or the destruction of subversive Black elite individuals/movements, the White oligarchy retained control on the velvet rope into elites.
Through these various methods, the ceiling for any single Black individual can be made limitless, without any liberation of the Black masses, and always at the whims of the White oligarchy. Through B+S’ crystal clear analysis of the forces at play here, we can see how effectively the White oligarchy continues to divide the working class, and co-opt Black liberatory movements, without the global condemnation faced by South Africa or Rhodesia.
For these reasons, overcoming racism in the working class, and uncovering Black peoples’ eyes to the betrayals of the Black elite, are necessary to turn the Black working class from a sub-proletarian reserve army of labour, to a real revolutionary proletarian force in the imperial metropole.