ontology of class and race?

[Rakesh Bhandari]

My argument was that the universal properties, dispositions and
depravities people attribute to various racial kinds only exist by way of
self-reinforcing illusion and mystification.  On the other hand, the
mystical power of commodities to determine our social relations actually
does inhere, independent of our consciousness and will,  in those objects
as a result of our social relations in and through which social labor time
can only be distributed by the exchange value of commodities. Racial kinds
have no properties outside of collective misrepresentation; commodities
have fetishistic power outside of our representations. Ideology is not
fetishism, one of Althusser's errors as Pilling argues. 

 Now I am not suggesting that the elimination of the ideology of race
would eliminate persistent inequalities among similarly skilled workers,
segmented labor markets, unemployment, or  poverty. All these maladies
would persist though perhaps more randomly distributed among the
population (which I think would be a good thing). Moreover,
deracialization would mean that such problems could no longer be
contemptuously dismissed because they are disproportionately suffered by
only certain racial kinds. If we no longer believed in races like we no
longer believe in witches, then it would make no sense to think of poverty
and unemployment as primarily  black problems which is pretty much the
point of the Thernstroms, D'Souza, etc. The racial composition of who
suffered these problems would be an absurd datum. 

 The radicalization of the class struggle would meet considerable
resistance however even among a more diversified bottom half of the
working class and the consequent inability to race bait it.  The limits to
class struggle, especially those battles waged by the unskilled mass
worker and the unemployed, are not the racial prejudices of capital but
capital itself. 

As I said, I am trying to work out some ideas here, so all and any
objections are very much appreciated. Thanks for the reply. 

best, rakesh

On Wed, 8 Jul 1998, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:


> Hi Rakesh,
> 
> I liked your reply to Wojtek. Nice to see you back. I also found your
> differentiation between fetishism of commodities and ideology of race
> interesting. I'm not sure if ideology of race is as amenable to rational
> criticism as you assert, in that ideology of race does have real effects
> (as you also argue) at the level of social practices (jobs, housing,
> education, public assistance, policing, etc.) which in turn reinforce
> ideology, and also because anti-racist attempts to universalize New
> Deal-type reforms have always met tremendous resistance and in many cases
> were either aborted from the beginning, compromised in the process, or
> rolled back in the recent decades.
> 
> Yoshie
> 
>