Race, economy and Society

Notes for a dialogue

Abstract

By revisiting the debates on the relationship between capitalism and racism, this article argues how what is identified as ‘theoretical racial evasiveness’ prevents a proper understanding of the relationship between the economy and society. The epistemological erasure of race, in this sense, is discussed through its possible practical results. Drawing on Michel Callon's perspective on the performativity of markets, it is argued that theoretical responses to the evidence of race in the shaping of the economic can impact on the very functioning of the capitalist mode of production as we understand it. For the purposes of this argument, the essay contrasts the racist perspective of economists from the pre-Civil War US South with works from the so-called ‘black radical tradition’, in particular Oliver Cox, C. L. R. James. The conclusion is that race must be incorporated into the structures of dialogue in the social sciences aimed at the study of economics, and not ‘merely’ as an aspect of the social.