But if historical materialism is to retain any coherence as a doctrine for understanding human history, certainly it does insist upon the notion that the relations of production, and thus the class struggle, is determinant in human history, if only, in the famous Althusserian attempt to provide some coherent version of historical materialism which is not reductionist, in the last instance. [It was these Althusserian attempts to reconcile the determining role of class struggle with the actuality of all manner of independent political and cultural actors in history that leads to such oxymoronic formulas as Poulantzas' notion of the "relative autonomy" of the state, a concpet not unlike the postulation of a condition of relative pregnancy or of relative death.]
Remove the ultimate primacy of class struggle throughout human history, and historical materialism dissolves. Once you allow that there are instances where class struggle is not the determining force in and of human history, you have left the realm of historical materialism, and entered a far more eclectic and pluralist version of human history. That is why Gramsci, since he believed that only 'fundamental' social classes rooted in the relations of production could organize political hegemony, remained on the terrain of historical materialism, albeit in a rather heterodox way, and why Laclau and Mouffe, once they took that one small step beyond Gramsci, to the idea that social classes were not the only social actors capable of organizing political hegemony, became post-Marxists.
I don't think that a view that sees the relations of production and class struggle as a sort of historical selection mechanism, one which simply takes discourses which first develop independently in the realm of civil society and the state and incorporates them into its dynamic of surplus extraction, can meet the test of a coherent historical materialism; it is simply a more developed, more refined version of functionalism, in which the relations of production are one of many distinct historical logics at work. Justin's account below simply provides a functionalist description of the intersection of race and class [note his use of the terminology "functionally useful" and "functionally harmful"]; the same intersection could be just as easily described from the viewpoint of the relations of racial domination and subordination, with an account of how capitalist relations of production become functional for relations of racial domination and subordination. Why, then, should we accept the ultimate primacy of class struggle in the historical materialist sense, and not adopt something more like Fanon's work, which -- with a theoretical structure which parallels Marx's own thought, right down to the appropriation of the Hegelian master-slave dialectic -- would argue for the primacy of racial domination and subordination, at least in the modern era? If one wants to adhere to historical materialism, one has to provide some compelling reason why one particular set of power relations -- those based on the economic extraction of the social surplus -- determine [again, even if only in the final instance] all other power relations. When this is tried historically, we end up with more or less elaborate versions of functionalism; when it is attempted philosophically, we invariably enter into a priori notions of human nature [human beings are, in essence, laboring beings] which are beyond rational proof and disproof.
The same must be said of the account Kelley last evening provided of the relationship between racist sexual discourses and class struggles. To be honest here, I once published an account of the relationship between class struggle and sexism/racism/heterosexism which identified many of the very same elements that Kelley raises in her thumbnail sketch ["Sexual Politics and the Subversion of the Public Sphere," in _Perspectives on Sexual Politics and Democratic Socialism_. (Chicago: DSA, 1983.).] But I no longer think that such a view can be sustained. For one, its functionalism does extraordinary violence to historical specificity. Industrial capitalism and Victorian notions of womanhood are read as the functional cause of developments [the modern emergence of public and private spheres and discourses of racial superiority and inferiority] which precede it by centuries. When modern notions of racism first appear, in the Spanish Inquisition and in the first stages of New World slavery, industrial capitalism and Victorian conceptions of womenhood are centuries away. For another, the causal leaps in this argument are great, and without adequate supporting evidence and logical proofs. Yes, the emergence of public and private spheres does take place roughly coincident to the earliest development of capitalist relations of production [since we are not talking about actual events, but about ways in which conceptually organize events, it is impossible to be more precise]; but that hardly establishes that there is any relationship of determination between the two, much less that it is capitalist relations of production which are determinative.
That different relations of power intersect, combine, and overdetermined; that therefore, class mediates race, and race mediates class, and so on: these are indisputable. What is at issue is whether or not one power relation -- that of social class rooted in the relations of production -- is determinative, in some ultimate sense, of human history, and of the other power relations.
<< Historical materialism is not crude economic determinism. It does not trace everything back to the bottom line. As I understand it, HM says the economy provides a structural framework that explains why causes of social phenomena, which may not be economic at all, have the effects they do. In the present context, there is a lot of psychosexual charge to racism (would you want one to marry your daughter, etc.) Winthrop Jordan is the best on this as far as I know.
But those impulses, which could go in lots of directions, gety channelled into a racialized class subordination: they are used to keep Blacks as cheap labor. Capitalists benefit if workers are divided and Blacks acn be used to threaten white workers. I don't mean that this is necessarily conscious and deliberate, though sometimes it is, but generally speaking it doesn't have to be.
It's rather than attitudes, activities, and organizatiobs that are consilient with the needs of capital are find less resistance than those that oppose such needs. In that way, functionally useful ideologies are selected for, and functionally harmful ideologiesa re selected against. Marx discusses this clearly in his treatment of anti-Rish racism among 19th century English workers.
- --jks >>
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010313/69c05220/attachment.htm>