balibar, wallerstein - race nation class

5/22/2018 Balibar, Wallerstein - Race Nation Class

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Race, Nation, Classmbiguous dentities

ETIENNE BALI BARAND

IMMANUEL WALERSTEN

rala f aar

y Chr r

VERSO

London ' New York


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I l \ tl t1 3 9091 00571187 8

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Contents

PrefaceEtienne Balibar

Part Universal Racm

Is There a 'Neo-Racsm?Etienne Balibar

- 2 )The Ideologcal Tensons of CaptalsmUnversasm versus Racsm and SexsmImmanuel Wallerstein

3 \Racsm and NatonalsmI Etienne Balibar

Part II The Htorca Naton

J4 he Constructon of Peoplehood:

acsm, Natonalsm EthnctyImmanuel Wallerstein

5 he ation For: Hstory and IdeologyEtienne Balbar

/ 6 Household Structures and LabourForce Formatonn the Captast Word-EconomyI mmanuel Wallersein

Part

Cae: Poarizaton and Overdeternaton

' Cass Conct n the Catast WorldEconomy? mmanuel Wallerstein

v

2

7

69

71

86

0

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vi RACE, NATION CLASS

' 8 Marx and Hisory: Frufu and Unfruifu Emphases 125Immanuel Wallerstein

9 The Bourgeois(ie) as Concep and Realiy 13Immanuel Wallerstein

0 From Cass Struggle o Classless Srugge? 13Etenne Balibar

Part IV Dispacemens of Social Conflic? 185

f ,i Social Confic in PosIndependence ack AfrcaThe Conceps of Race and Saus-Group Reconsidered 87Immanuel Wallerstein

2 'Class Racism 204

Etenne Balibar

13 Racism and Crisis 2 17Etenne Balibar

'Posscrip 228

mmanuel Walertein


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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the colleagues who have been kind enough tocontribute papers to the seminar out of which this book arose: ClaudeMeillassoux Grard Noiriel, JeanLoup Amselle Pierre Dommergues,Emanuel Terray Vronique de Rudder, Michee Guillon IsabelleTaboarda-Leonetti, Samir Amin, Robert Fossaert, Eric Hobsbawm,Ernest Gelner Jean-Marie Vincent Kostas Vergopouos, Franoise

Duroux, Marcel Drach, Michel Freyssenet We also thank all the participants in the discussions, who it is impossible to name but whosecomments were not formulated in vain.

Soe chapters of the book have een previously published and arereprinted here with permission. Chapter 2 first appeared in Joan Smithet al., eds, Racism Sexism and the WorldSystem, Greenwood Press1988; a section of chapter 3 was published in M no. 18 December

1987January 1988; chapter 4 was published in Sociological Forum,vol II , no 2, 1 987; chapter 5 in Review, vol. XIII no. 3 1990; chapter6 in Joan Sith et al, eds Households in the World Economy, Sage1984; chapter 7 in Immanuel Waerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy, Cambridge University Press 1979; chapter 8 in ThesisEleven no. 8 1984; chapter 9 in New Left Review, no 167 1988;chapter 1 was first delivered at the Hannah Arendt Meorial Symposium in Poitical Philosophy, New School for Social Research, NewYork, 1 516 April 1 987; chapter 1 1 first appeared in E. Capbell, ed.,

Racial Tenions and National Identity, Vanderit University Press1972 chapter 12 is a revised version of a paper delivered in May 1987to the seminar Gli Estranei Seinario di studi su razzismo e antirazzismo negi anni '80 , organied by Cara Gallini at the Instituto niversario Orientale, Naples; chapter 1 3 is a revised version of a paperprsented at the Maison des Sciences de omme in 1985.

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vi

To our friendsMokhtar Mokhtefi and Elaine Klein


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Pfc

Etienne Balbar

The essays we bring together in this volume and which together wepresent to the English reader represent stages in our own personal work

for which we each assume responsibility Circumstances have howevermade them the elements of a dialogue which has grown closer in recentyears and which we would now like to share with the reader It is ourcontibution to the elucidation of a burning question: What is the specificity of contemporary racism? How can it be related to class divisionwithin capitalism and to the contradictions of the nationstate? Andconversely in what respects does the phenomenon of racism lead us torethink the articulation of nationalism and the class stuggle Through

this question the book is also our contribution to a much wider dis-cussion which has been going on for more than a decade now withinWestern Marxism We might hope that as a result of the discussion'Western Marxism will be sufficiently renewed to get abreast of its timesonce again It is by no means accidental of course that this discussionpresents itself as an international one; nor that it combines philosophicalreflection with historical synthesis, and an attempt at conceptualrecasting with the analysis of political problems that are more thanurgent today (particularly in France). Such at least is the conviction we

hope our readers will sharePerhaps I may be allowed to supply some personal background here.

When I met Immanuel Wallerstein for the first time in 1981, I alreadyknew the first volume of his work The Mode World-System (whichappeared in 1974) but I had not yet read the second. I did not knowtherefore that he had credited me in that book with providing a self


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2 RACE NATION, CLASS

conscious' theoretica presentation of the traditona Marxist thesisconcerning the perodzaton of modes of production the thesis whichdentifes the age of manufacture with a period of transition and the

begnnng of the propery captaist mode wth the industria revouton;as against those wrters who n order to mark the beginnings ofmodernity propose situating the break n historica time ether around1500 (with European expansion the creaton of the word market) oraround 1650 (wth the rst bourgeois' revoutons and the ScientifcRevouton). By the same token I was also not aware that I was mysefgoing to find hs anayss of Dutch hegemony in the seventeenth centuryof assistance in situatng the ntervention of Spnoza (with hs reoutonary characterstics in relation not ony to the medeva past but

aso to contemporary tendencies) withn the strangey atypca set ofstruggles between the politica and regious partes of the time (wthther combinaton of nationasm and cosmopoitansm emocratismand fear of the masses)

Conversey what Wallerstein dd not know was that fro thebegnning of the 1970s following the dscussions to whch our structuralst readng of Capital gave rise and precisely in order to escap theclassical aporias of the periodzation of the cass strugge I had recognzed the need to situate the anaysis of cass strugges and their reciproca effects on the deveopment of capitasm wthin the context ofsoca formations and not simpy of the mode of production consideredas an dea mean or as an nvarant system (which is a whoy mechanistc conception of structure) It therefore folowed on the one handtha a determining roe in the configuration of reatons of productionhad to be attrbuted to all the hstorca aspects of the class struggle(incudng those whch Marx subsumed under the equvoca concept ofsup rstructur )'And, on the other hand the impication was that thequeston of U reproduction space of the capita-aour (or wageabour) reation had to be posed right at the very heart of the theory,giving fu weght to Marx's constant insistence that captaism impesthe extension of accumuation and of the proetaranization of abourpower to the whoe word though in so doing one had to go beyondthe abstraction of the undifferentiated word market

Aongside ths the emergence of the specfic strugges of immigrantworkers n France in the seventes and the difficuty of expressing thesepoiticay together wth Athusser's thesis that every socia formation s

based on the combnaton of severa modes of producton hadconvinced me that the dison of the workng cass s not a secondary orresdua phenomenon but a structura (though this does not meannvarant) characteristic of presentday captalist socetes whch determnes a the perspectives for revoutonary transformaton and even for


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PREFAC 3

the daily organization of the movement for social change. ILast from the Maoist critique of 'real socialism and te history of the

'cultural revolution (as I perceived it) I had retained not, of course the

demonization of revisionism and te notalgia for Stalinism but teinigt that the socialit mode of production in reality contitutes anunstable combination of state capitalism and proletarian tendenciestowards communism. Precisely by their disparate nature these variousrectifications all tended to substitute a problematic of h istorical capitalism for the formal antitheis between structure and history; and toidentify as a central question of tat problematic te variation in therelations of production as these were articulated togeter in te longtransition from noncommodity ocieties to ocieties of generalizedeconomy.

Unlike others I was not exaggeratedly sensitive to the economism forwhic Wallersteins analyses ave frequently been criticized It is in factimportant to carify what we mean by this term. In the tradition ofMarxist ortodoxy economim figures as a determinism of the development of the productive forces in its way te Wallersteinian model ofthe world-economy in fact substituted for tat determinism a dialectic ofcapitalist accumulation and its contradictions In asking under what

historica condition the cycle or phases of expansion and recessioncould become establised Wallerstein was not far removed from whatseems to me to be Marxs autentic thesis and an expression of hicritique of economism: the primacy of the social relations of productionover the productive forces so that the contradictions of capitalism arenot contradictions between relations of production and productiveforces (between for example the private caracter of one and tesocial caracter of the other as the formulation endorsed by Engels hasit) but among other things contradictions of progress. Moreoverwhat is called the critique of economism is most often undertaken in tename of a claim that the political sphere and the state are autonomouseither in relation to the sphere of the market economy or in relation tothe class struggle itself wic comes down practically to reintroducingthe iberal dualism (state! civi society politics! economics) which Marxcriticized so tellingly/Now Wallersteins explanatory model as I understand it made it pos'be both to conceive the overall structure of thesystem as one of generalized economy and to conceive the processes of

state formation and the policies o hegemony and class alliances asforming the texture of that econom)From that point on te questionof why capitalist socialist formations took te form of nations or moreprecisely the question of what differentiates nation that are individualized around a strong state apparatus and the dependent nations woseunity is impeded both from within and without and ow tat dierence


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4 RACE, NATION CLASS

is transformed with the history of capitalism ceased to be a blind spotand became a decisive issue

To tell the truth it was at this point that queries and objections arose

in my mind. I shall mention three of these briefly leaving it to the readerto decide whether or not they are the product of a traditional conception of historical materialism

First I remained convinced that the hegemony of the dominantclasses was based in the last analysis on their capacity to organize thelabour process and, beyond that the reproduction of labour-power itselfin a broad sense which includes both the workers subsistence and theircultural formation. To put it another way, what is at issue here is the realsubsumption which Marx in Capital, made the index of the establish

ment of the capitalist mode of production properly socalled that is,the point of no return for the process of unlimited accumulation and thevalorization of value If one thinks about it carefully the idea of thisreal' subsumption (which Marx opposes to merely formal subsumption) goes a long way beyond the integration of the workers into theworld of the contract of money incomes of law and offcial politics: itimpies a transformation f human individuality which extends from theeducation of the labour force to the constitution of a dominant

ideology capable of being adopted by the dominated themselves. Nodoubt Wallerstein would not disagree with such an idea, since he stressesthe way in which all social classes all statusgroups which form withinthe framework of the capitalist world-economy are subject to the effetsof commodification and the system of states One may, however askwhether, t describe the conflicts and developments which result omthese it is sufficient as he does to draw up the table of the historicalactors, their interests and their strategies of alliance or confrontationThe very identity of the ators depends upon the process offormaton and

maintenane of hegemony. Thus the modern bourgeoisie formed itselfinto a class which managed the proletariat after having been a classwhich managed the peasantry it had to acquire political skills and aselfconsciousness which anticipated the way that resistance to it wouldbe expressed and which transformed itself with the nature of thatresistance.

The universas o the dominant ideology is therefore rooted at amuch deeper level than the world expansion of capital and even than theneed to procure common rules of action for all those who manage that

expansion. 2 It is rooted in the need to construct in spite of theantagonism between them an ideological world shared by exploitersand exploited alike The egalitarianism (whether democratc or otherwise o modern politics is a good illustration o ths process. This meansboth that all class domination has to be formulated in the language of


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PREFACE 5

universality and that there are in history a great number of universalities which are mutually incompatible Each of them and this is alsothe case with dominant ideologies in the present period - is shot through

with the specific tension of a particular form of exploitation and it is notby any means certain that a single hegemony can simultaneouslyencompass all the relations of domination that exist within the framework of the capitalist worldeconomy. In plain language I am sayingtha I doubt whether a world bourgeoisie exists;Or to put it moreprecSely I entirely acknowledge that the extensn of the process ofaccumulation to the world scale implies the constitution of a worldwideclass of capitalists' among whom incessant competition is the law (and,

paradox for paradox I see the need to include in that capitalist classboth those at the helm of free enterprise and those who managesocialist state protectionism) but I do not for all that believe that classto be a world bourgeose in the sense of a class organized in institutionswhich is the only kind of class that is historically concrete

To this question I imagine Wallerstein would immediately retort thatthere is ndeed an institution which the world bourgeoisie shares andwhich tends to confer concrete existence upon it, above and beyond itsinternal conflicts (even when these take the violent form of military

conlicts) and particularly above and beyond the quite different conditions of its hegemony over the dominated populations! hat institutionis the system of states itself the vitality of which has become particularlyevident since in the wake of revolutions and counterrevolutionscolonizations and decolonizations the form of the nationstate has beenformally extended to the whole of humanity I have myself argued formany years that every bourgeoisie is a state bourgeoisie even wherecapitalism is not organized as a planned state capitalism and I believe

that we would agree on this point. One of the most pertinent questionswhich Wallerstein seems to me to have raised is that of why the worldeconomy was unable to transform itself (in spite of various attempts todo so from the sixteenth centuy to the twentieth) into a politicallyunified world why in the worldeconomy the political institution has taken the form of an interstate system' No a priori answercan be given to this question: we have precisely to reconstruct thehistoy of the worldeconomy and particularly that of the conicts ofinterest the monopoly phenomena and the unequal developments of

power which have repeatedly manifested themselves at its core - whichis in fact today less and less localized in a single geographical area - aswell as the history of the uneven resistances of its periphery.

But precisely this answer (if it is correct) leads me to reformulate myobjection. At the end of The Mode World-System (vol. I) Wallersteinproposed a criterion for identifying relatively autonomous social


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sysems: h creron of he inteal autonomy of hr dvlopmen (orof hr dynamc) H drew a radcal concluson from hs mos of hhsorcal uns o whch we generally apply h label socal sysems'

fro rbes o naon-saes) are no n raly socal sysems bu merelydependen uns; he only sysems proprly so-called whch hsory hasknown have been on he one hand, subssence communes and onhe oher he worlds (he world-emprs and h Orld-economes).Reformulaed n Marxs ermnology hs hess would lead us o hnha he only socal formaon n the rue sens n h world oday heworld-economy self because s he larges un whn whch hsoral processes become nerdependen In oher words, he worldeconomy would no only be an economc un and a sysem of saes bu

also a socal un In consequence he dalecc of s developmenwould self be a global dalecc or a leas one characerzed by heprimacy of global consrans over local relaons of force

I s beyond doub ha hs accoun has he mer of synhecallyexplanng he phenomena of he globalzaon of polcs and deologywhch we have seen occurrng over several decads and whch appear ous o be he oucome of a cumulave process exendng over manyenures I s partcularly srngly exemplfed n prods of crss Iprovdes as we shall se n he essays whch follow a powerful nsruen for nerpreng he ubquous nationalism and racism of hmodern world whle avodng confusng hem wh oher phnomena ofxenophoba or nolerance sen n h pas he one (naonalsm) as areacon o domnaon by saes of he core, he oher (racsm) as annsuonalzaon of h herarches nvolved n he world-wd dvsonof labour. nd ye I wonder wheher, n hs form Wallersens hssdoes no mpose on h muulplcy of socal conflcs a formal or aleas unlaeral unformy and globalsm I sems o me ha wha

characerzes hese conflcs s no only ransnaonalzaon bu hedecsve role ha s ncreasngly played n hem by localzd socalrelaons or local forms of soal conlc (whhr hs be economcrelgous or polco-culural) he sum of whch s no mmedalyoalzable In oher words ang n my urn as my creron no heexreme ouer lm whn whch h regulaon of a sysem aes placebu he specfcy of socal movemens and he conlcs whch arsewhn (or, f one prefers he specfc form n whch he globalconradcons are refleced n ) I wonder wheher he social units of

he conemporary world do no have o be dsngushed from seconomic unty. After all, why should he wo concde? By he sameon I would sugges ha he overall movemen of he worldeconomys he random result of he movemen of s socal un raher han scause Bu I do acknowldge ha s dffcul o denfy he socal uns


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PREFACE 7

in question in any simple way since they do not coincide purely andsimply with national units and may in part overlap (why would a socialunit be closed and a fortiori, autarkic?) .3

Which brings me to a third question. The power of Wallersteinsmodel generalizing and concretizing as it does Marxs initial insightsinto the law of population implied in the endless accumulation ofcapital is that it shows this accumulation has unceasingly imposed (bothby force and by law) a redistribution of populations into the sociooccupational categories of its 'division of labour either by coming toterms with their resistance or by breaking it indeed by using theirstrategies of subsistence and by playing off their interests against one

another The basis of capitalist social formations is a division of labour( in the broad sense including the various functions needed for theproduction of capital) or rather the basis of social transformations isthe transformation of the division of labour But is it not cutting a fewcorners to base the whole of what Althusser not so long ago termed theociety effect on the division of labour? In other words can we take theview as Marx did in certain philosophical texts) that societies or socialformations are kept alive and form relatively durable units simply byvirtue of the fact that they organize production and exchange in terms of

certain historical relations?Do not misunderstand me here: the point is not that we should rerun

the conflict between materialism and idealism and suggest that theeconomic unity of societies has to be supplemented or replaced by asymbolic unity whose definition we would seek either in the sphere oflaw or religion or the prohibition of incest and so on . The point is rather toask whether Marxists were not by chance victims of a gigantic illusionregarding the meaning of their own analyses which are in large part

inherited from liberal economic ideology (and its implicit anthropology) The capitalist division of labour has nothing to do with a complementarity of tasks, individuals and social groups it leads rather asWallerstein himself forcefully reiterates to the polarization of socialformations into antagonistic classes whose interests are decreasinglycommon ones How is the unity (even the conflictual unity) of a societyto be based on such a division? Perhaps we should then invert our inter-pretation of the Marxist thesis. Instead of representing the capitalistdivision of labour to ourselves as what founds or institutes human

societies as relatively stable colectivities should we not conceive this aswhat destroys them? Or rather as what would destroy them by lendingtheir internal inequalities the form of irreconcilable antagonisms ifothersocial practices whch are equally material but irreducible to thebehaviour of homo (conomicus - for example the practice of linguisticcommunication and sexuality or technique and knowledge did not set


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limits to the imperialism of the reaton of producton and transform tfrom within?

If this is so, the history of socal formations wuld be not so much a

history of noncommodity communities making the transition to marketsociety or a society of generalized exchange (including the exchange ofhuman labourpower) the iberal or socologca representaton whchhas been preserved in Marxis as a history of the reactions of thecompex of noneconomc socia relatons, which are the bindng agentof a historica collectivity of indivduas to the destructuring with whchthe expansion of the vaue form threatens them. t is these reactionswhch confer upon soca hstory an aspect that s rreducble to thesmpe ogic of the extended reproducton of capita or even to a

strategic game among actors defined by the divison of abour and thesystem of states. t is these reactons aso whch underie the intrinsicayambiguous ideologcal and institutinal productons which are the truesubstance of potcs (for example the deology of human rights andaso racism, nationaism sexism and their revoutionary antitheses).Finaly, it s these too whch account for the ambivaent effects of cassstrugges to the extent that, seekng to eect the negaton of thenegation that is to destroy the mechanism which i tending to destroythe condtons of soca exstence - they aso am, n utopan fashon torestore a lost unity and thus offer themseves for 'recuperation byvarious forces of dominaton.

Rather than engaging in a discussion at this leve of abstraction, tseemed to us from the outset that t was better to redeploy the theoretical tools at our disposa in the analysis, t be undertaken together ofa crucia question raised by the present situation - a question ofsufficent dicuty to enable the encounter between our two positions to

progress This project materiaied in a seminar which we organized overthree years ( 1985-87 at the Maison des Sciences de Homme in ParisThe semnar was devoted successively to the themes Racism andEthnicity aton and Nationasm and Casses The texts whchfoow are not itera transcripts of our contributions, but rework theoriginal substance of these senars suppementing them on severapoints Some of these texts have been presented or pubished in otherpaces (see pp x-xi for sources) We have rearranged them in sucha way as to bring out the pints of conict and convergence We do

nt caim absoute coerence or exhaustveness for ths coection whichis designed rather to open up questions to expore some paths ofnvestigaton t is much too eary to draw any conclusions We do,however hope that readers wi find here something to fue theirthinng and crtcsm


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PRFACE 9

In Part I Universa Racism we attempt to sketch out an aternativeprobematic to the ideoogy of progress which was imposed by iberaism and has argey been taken over (we sha see further on in what

conditions) by the Marxist phiosophy of history We observe that intraditona or new forms (the derivation of which is however recognizabe) racism s not recedng, but progressing in the contemporary wordThere is uneven deveopment and there are critica phases in thisphenomenon the manifestations of which we shoud be carefu not toconfuse but it can ony be expained in the ast anaysis by structuracauses To the extent that what is in pay here whether in academictheories institutiona or popuar racism is the categorization of

humanity into artificiay isoated types there must be a violentyconfictua spit at the eve of socia reations themseves. We are nottherefore deaing with a mere prejudice Moreover it has to be the casethat above and beyond historica transformations as decisive as decoonization this spit is reproduced within the word-wide frameworkcreated by capitaism Thus we are deaing neither with a reic nor anarchaism. Does it not however run against the ogic of generaizedeconomy and individuaist rights? In no way. We both beieve that theuniversaism of bourgeois ideoogy (and therefore aso its humanism) is

not incompatibe with the system of hierarchies and excusions whichabove a takes the form of racism and sexism Just as racism and sexismare part of the same system

As regards the detai of the anaysis we do however diverge onsevera points Waerstein sees universaism as derving from the veryform of the market (the universaity of the accumuation process)racism from the spitting of the abour force between core and peripheryand sexism from the opposition between mae work and the femae

nonwork' performed in the househod which he sees as a basic institution of historica capitaism. For my own part I think the specificarticuation of racism is within nationaism and I beieve I am able todemonstrate that universaity is paradoxicay present in racism itsefThe time dimension here becomes decisive: the whoe question isopened up of how the memory of past excusions is transferred into theexcusions of the present or how the internationaization of popuationmoveents and the change in the poitica roe of nationstates can eadinto a neo-racsm or even a postracism

In Part II The Historica Nation we attempt to revive discussion ofthe categories of peope and nation We have rather differentmethods I proceed diachronicay seeking out the ine of deveopmentof the nation form; Waerstein in synchronic fashion examines thefunctiona pace which the nationa superstructure occupies among otherpoitica institutions in the wordeconomy As a resut, we bring the


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same differences to our articulation of the class struggle and the nationalformation To be extremely schematic one might say that my positionconsists in nscribing historical cass struggls in the nation form (though

they represent its antithesis) whereas Wallerstein's position inscribes thenation with other forms in the field of the class struggle (even thoughclasses only ever become casses for themselves' [fr sich 1 in exceptionalcrcumstances a point we shall return to later)

It is here no doubt that the meaning of the concept social formaton' comes nto play. Wallerstein suggests we should distinguish threegreat historca modes of the construction of the people: race nationand ethnicity, which relate to different structures of the worldeconomy;he stresses the historical break between the bourgeois state (the nation

state) and earlier forms of the state (in fact, in his view the very termstate s ambiguous) For my own part, seeking to characterize the transton from the pre-national to the national state, attach greatmportance to another of his ideas (not taken up by him here), namelythat of their plurality of political forms during the constitutive period ofthe world-economy I pose the problem of the constitution of the people(what I call fictive ethicity) as a problem of internal hegemony and Iattempt to analyse the role played in its production by the instituionswhch varously give body to the anguage community and the racecommunty As a result of these differences, it seems to me thatWallersten is better at explaining the ethnicization of minoritieswhereas am better at explaining the ethniciation of majorities;perhaps he is too American and too French' . . . What is certainhowever s that it appears equaly essential to us to think nation andpeople as historica constructs, by means of which current institutionsand antagonsms can be projected into the past to confer a relative stabilityon the communities on which the sense of individual identity' depends

In Part II Classes Polarization and Overdetermination, we askwhat radica transformations shoud be made to the schemas of Marxistorthodoxy (that is to say, in short, to the evolutionism of the mode ofproduction n its different variants) in order to be able, following upMarx's most original indications, actually to analyse capitalism as historca system (or structure) t would be wearisome to summarize ourpropositions in advance Hostile readers will be able to enjoy countingup the contradictions between our reconstructions' We live up to thelaw that two Marxists whoever hey may be, always prove incapable of

according the same meaning to the same concepts But et us not jumpto the conclusion that this is a mere scholasic gae. On rereading thissection what actualy strikes me as most significant is the extent towhch, given that we start out from such differen premisses, we agree inor utimate concusions


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PREFACE 1 1

What is at issue quite obviously is the articulation of the economicand the 'politial aspects of the class struggle Wallerstein is faithful tothe problematic of the lass an ich and the class fr sich ' (which I

reject) but he ombines this with theses whih are to say the eastprovocative regarding the main aspet of proetarianization (which isnot, in his view the generalization of wage labour). Aording to hisargument payment of a wage is a development which takes plae inpite of the immediate interest of the apitalists as an effet of twothings rises of realization and workers strugges against 'peripheralsuper-exploitation (that of parttime wage labour). My obetion to thisis that his reasoning here assumes that all exploitation is extensive thatthere is not in other words a further form of super-exploitationassoiated with the intensifiation of wage abour that is subjeted totehnological revolutions (what Marx alls 'real subsumption theproduction of 'relative surplus-value) But these divergenes in analysis which might be seen a reflecting a peripheral by contrast with a'core point of view remain subordinate to three ommon ideas

1 . Marxs thesis oncerning the polarization of classes in capitaism isnot an unfortunate error, but the strong pont of his theory. However ithas to be carefully distinguished from the ideological representation of a

'simplification of class relations with the development of captalism anidea bound up with historical atastrophism

2. There is no 'idea type of lasses (proletariat and bourgeoisie) butthere are procee of proletarianization and embourgeoisement,4 eachof whih involves its own internal onflicts (what I shall for my partfollowing Althusser term the overdetermination of the antagonism): inthis way we an see how the history of the apitalist economy dependson political struggles within the national and transnationa spae

3.

The 'bourgeoisie annot be defined by mere aumulation ofprofit (or by productive investment) this is a neessary but not a suffiient ondition. The reader will find here Walersteins argumentconcerning the bourgeoisies quest for monopoly positions and thetransformation of profit into rents guaranteed by the state in a variety ofhistorial modalities This is a point to whih it will ertainly be necessary to return The historiization (and therefore dialecticization) of theconcept of lasses in Marxist sociology is only just beginning (whichamounts to saying that there is still work to do to dismante the ideology

which has set itsef up as Marxist sociology) Here again we are reactingto our national traditions contrary to a prejudice firmly held in France Iam intent upon demonstrating that the bourgeois/capitaist is not aparasite; for his part Wallerstein coming from the country where themyth of the 'manager was created is keen to show that the bourgeois isnot the opposite of the aristocrat (neither in the past nor today).


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1 2 RAE, NATION CLASS

For dierent reasons I otaly agree that, in present-day capitalismgeneraized formal educaion has become not ony reproductive butproductive of cass differences It is merey that being ess opimistic

han he is 1 do not beieve tha this meritocratic mechanism is politicay more fragile than the historica mechanisms for acquiring priviegedsocial staus tha preceded it This has to do in my view with te facttha schooing at east in he deveoped countries is constituted bothas a means for the selection of managerial staff and as an ideologicalapparatus we suited to nauraliing socia divisions tecnically andscienificaly' in particular the division beween manual and intellecuaabour or between the management and the performance of labour inhe successive forms those divisions have assumed Now this naturalia

tion which as we sal see is by no means unrelated to racism is noless eecive han other historica legitimations of privilege

Which leads us directy to our last point summed up in the phraseDisplacements of Social Conflict? The object of this fourth section isto reurn o the quesion raised a the beginning (that of racism or moregeneraly of communiy status and identity) referring to the determinaions discussed aove and preparing the ground for practicaconclusions tough these are stil quite some way off. We are asoconcerned here to evaluae the degree to which we have moved awayfrom some classic hemes in sociology and history Nauraly the differences in approach and he more or ess important divergences whichappeared earier remain there is no question herefore of bringngthings to a conclusion If I waned to press a poin I woud say that thisime i is Wallerstein who is much less optimistic han I since he seesgroup consciousness as necessariy winning out over cass consciousness or at eas as constiuting he necessary form of its hisorica reaiaion. It is true that at the (asymptotic) limit the wo erms come

ogether again in his view in the ransnationaiation of inequaities andconfics For my part I do not beieve tha racism is the expression ofcass srucure; rather i t is a ypica form of poitica aienaion inherentin cass strugges in the ed of nationaism in particuary ambivalentforms (racializaion of he proetariat workerism and inercassconsensus in the presen crisis) I is rue that my reasoning is basedesseniay on the exampe of the situation and history of France wherethe question of the renewa of internationalis practices and ideoogiestoday hangs uncertainy in the baance I is rue aso tat n ractie,

the proearian naions of the hird Word or more exacty teirpauperied masses and the new proletarians of Western Europe andesewhere in heir dversity have a singe enemy: instiutional racismand is extensions or antpations in mass poitics And they havethe same stumbling boc to overcome the confusion of ethnic particu


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PREFACE 1 3

larism or politico-religious universalism with ideologies that are liberatory in themselves. This is probably the essential point, the one towhich more thought should be devoted and on which more research

should be carried out with those cocerned outside university circlesHaving the same enemy does ot however, imply either having thesame immediate interests or the same form of cosciousness or afortori, a totalizatio of the various struggles Such a totalization is infact only a tendency and there are structural obstacles in its way For itto prevail favourable cojuctures wi ll be needed and politicalpractices. This is why in the course of this book I have maitaiedparticularly that the (re-)constitution on new bases (and in new words

perhaps) of a class ideology capable of counteractig today's (andtomorrows) galloping nationalism has as a pre-conditio whichalready determies its content an eective anti-racism

Notes

L I must snge out here from among many nfluences the cruca par payed by thereearch of Yves Duroux Caude Meassoux and Sunne de Brunhoff on the repro

ducton of abourpower and the 'wage form n hapng these reflecton.2. A uggeted by Waersten most notaby n Historical Captalsm, Verso London

93 pp 80 et sq.3 I recogne aso that th pont of vew cats doubt upon the perpectve of a

convergence between antytemc movement (Waersten group under 'antytemc movement not ony the ocat movement of the workng cas and natonaberaton movement but ao womens strugge agant sexm and the strugge of theoppress mnortes who are al potenta partcpant n a word famy of ant ytemcmovement Htoral Captalsm p 09) The pont s that thee movement eem to meto be tmatey noncontemporaneou and sometme mutuay ncompatbe bengbond up wth unvrsal but dstnt contradctons with soca confcts that are unequaydecve n dfferent

oca formatons 1 see ther condensaton nto a nge boc not a

aong-term tendency but as a conjunctura! comng together the duraton of whch dependon poca nnovaton Th s true frt and foremot of the 'convergence betweenfemnsm and the cass strugge: t woud be nterestng to nqure why hardy anyconsco femnt movements have deveoped wthn oca formatons n whch there snot ao an organzed cas trugge, even though the wo movement have never managedto combne Doe th have to do wth the dvon of abour? Or wth the potca form oftrugges? Or wth the unconscous of 'cas concounes?

4 I prefer to use the French term mbrgsmnt rather than 'bourgofcatonwhch aerten ue n spte of the pobe ambguty of the term And yet therendeed any ambguty? Jut a soder are recruted from the cvan popuaton obUrgeo down to the th generaton have been recruted from the nonbourgeo


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=P RTIUniversal Racism


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1

Is Th 'No-Rcsm' ?

Etienne Balbar

To what extent s it correct so speak of a neo-racsm? The question sforced upon us by current events n forms whch dffer to some degree

from one country to another but which suggest the existence of a transnatona phenomenon The queston may however be understood ntwo senses On the one hand are we seeng a new historca upsurge ofracist movements and poces whch mght be expaned by a crsisconjuncture or by other causes? On the other hand n ts themes and tssoca sgnifcance s what we are seeng ony a new racsm rreducbeto earier modes or s it a mere tactca adaptaton? I sha concernmysef here prmariy wth this second aspect of the question. I

Frst of a, we have to make the folowing observaton The neoracsm hypothess at east so far as France is concerned, has beenformuated essentiay on the basis of an nterna crtique of theores, ofdscourse tendng to egtmate polices of excusion in terms of anthropoogy or the phosophy of history Ltte has been done on finding theconnection between the newness of the doctrines and the novety of thepotca stuatons and socia transformatons which have given them apurchase I sha argue in a moment that the theoretca dimenson ofracism today as in the past is historicaly essentia, but that t is nether

autonomous nor prmary Racism a true 'tota socia phenomenonnscribes tsef n practces (forms of vioence contempt ntoerancehumiation and expoitation) n discourses and representations whichare so many intelectua eaboratons of the phantasm of prophyaxis orsegregaton (the need to pur the ocia body to preserve 'ones ownor our identty from a forms of mxng interbreedng or nvason) and

1 7


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1 7


which are articuated around stigmata of otherness (name skin coourreigious practices) It therefore organizes affects (the psychologicalstudy of these has concentrated upon describing their obsessive

character and aso their irrational ambivaence) by conferring uponthem a stereotyped form as regards both their obects' and theirsubjects It is this combnation of practices discourses and representa-tions in a network of affective stereotypes which enabes us to give anaccount of the formation of a racist community (or a community ofracists among whom there exist bonds of imitation over a distance)and aso of the way in which, as a mirror image individuas and colectivities that are prey to racism (its objects) find themselves constrainedto see themseves as a communty.

But however absoute that constraint may be it obviously can neverbe canceed out as constraint for its victims: it can neither be interior-ized without confict (see the works of Memmi) nor can it remove thecontradiction which sees an identity as community ascrbed to colectivities which are simultaneousy denied the right to define themseves(see the writings of Frantz Fanon) nor most importantly can it reducethe permanent ecess of actua violence and acts over discoursestheories and rationaizations From the point of view of its victims thereis then an essentia dissymmetry within the racist compex hichconfers upon its acts and actings out undeniable primacy over itsdoctrines naturally incuding within the category of actions not onyphysical violence and discrimination but words themselves the volenceof words in so far as they are acts of contempt and aggresson Whicheads us in a first phase to regard shifts in doctrine and language asrelativey incidental matters: shoud we attach so much importance to

justifications which continue to retain the same structure (that of adenia of rights) while moving from the language of reigon into that of

science or from the anguage of bioogy into the discourses of cuture orhistory when in practice these justications simpy ead to the same odacts?

This is a fair point even a vitay important one but it does not soveal the problems For the destruction of the racist compex presupposesnot ony the revot of its victims but the transformation of the raciststhemseves and consequenty the inteal decomposition of thecommunity created by racism. In this respect the situation is entirelyanalogous as has often been said over the ast twenty years or so with

that of sexism, the overcoming of which presupposes both the revot ofwomen and the breakup of the community of maes Now racisttheories are indispensabe in the formation of the racst communityThere is in fact no racism without theory (or theories) It woud be quitefutie to inquire whether racist theories have emanated chiefly from the


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IS THERE A NEO-RACISM'? 19

elites or the masses from the dominant or the dominated classes It ishowever quite clear that they are rationalized by intellectuals And it isof the utmost importance that we enquire into the function fulfilled by

the theorybuilding of academic racism (the prototype of which is theevolutionist anthropology of biological races developed at the end ofthe nineteenth century) in the crystallization of the community whichforms around the signifier race

This function does not it seems to me reside solely in the generalorganizing capacity of intellectual rationalizations (what Gramsci calledtheir organicity and Auguste Comte their spiritual power) nor in thefact that the theores of academic racism elaborate an image ofcommunity of original identity in which individuals of all social classesmay recognize themselves It resides rather in the fact that the theoriesof academic racism mimic scientific discursivity by basing themselvesupon visible evidence (whence the essential importance of the stigmataof race and in particular of bodily stigmata) or more exactly theymimic the way in which scientific discursivity articulates visible facts to hidden causes and thus connect up with a spontaneous process oftheorization inherent in the racism of the masses.2 I shall therefore iventure the idea that the racist complex inextricably combines a crucial

function of msrecognton (without which the violence would not betolerable to the very people engaging in it) and a will to know a violentdesre for immediate knowledge of social relations These are functionswhich are mutually sustaining since both for individuals and for socialgroups their own collective violence is a distressing enigma and theyrequire an urgent explanation for it This indeed is what makes the intel-lectual posture of the ideologues of racism so singlar however sophisti-cated their theories may seem Unlike for example theologians who

must maintain a distance (though not an absolute break unless theylapse into gnosticism ) between esoteric speculation and a doctrinedesigned for popular consumption historically effective racist ideo-logues have always developed democratic doctrines which are immedi-ately intelligible to the masses and apparently suited from the outset totheir supposed low level of intelligence even when elaborating elitistthemes In other words they have produced doctrines capable ofproviding immediate interpretative keys not only to what individuals areexperencng but to what they are in the social world (in this respect

they have ainities with astrology characterology and so on) even whenthese keys take the form of the revelation of a 'secret of the humancondition (that is when they include a secrecy effect essential to theirimaginary efficacity: this is a point which has been well illustrated byLon Poliakov)3

This is also, we must note what makes it difficult to crcize the


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20 RACE NATION, CLAS

coten and, most impotantly, he nfluence of academc racsm In thevery construction of its theories, there lies the presupposition that thekowedge' sought and desired by the masses is an elementary know

edge whch simpy justifies them in their spontaneous feelings or bringshem back to the ruth of their instincts. Bebe as s well known, calledat-Semitsm the socialism of fools' and Nietzsche regarded it more oress as the potics of he feeble-minded (though this in no wayprevented him from taking over a large part of racial myhologyhimsef). Can we ourseves, when we charactere racist doctrnes assrcty demagogic theoretical elaboratons, whose eicacity derives fromhe advance response they provide for the masses' desire for knowledge,escape this same ambiguous positon? The category of the masses' (or

the popuar') is not itself neutral, but communicates directly with theogc of a naturazation and racization of the social. To begin to dispelhis ambguity, it is no doubt insuicent merely to eamine the way theacst myth' gains its hold upon the masses; we also have to ask whyoher sociologcal theories, developed wthin the framework of a divisionbetween intellectual' and manua' activities (n the broad sense), areunabe to fuse so easil with this desire to know. Racist myths (theAyan myth', the myth of heredity) are myths not only by vrtue of theirpseudo-scientific conten bu in so far as they are forms of imaginarytrascedence of the gulf separating intelectuality from the masses,forms ndissociable from that implcit fatalism which imprisons themasses in an allegedy natural infantilism.

We can now turn our attention to neo-racism'. What seems to pose aprobem here s not the fact of racism, as I have already ponted out practice being a fairly sure crieron (if we do not allow ourselves to bedeceved by the denias of racism which we meet among large sections ofthe potical cass in particular, which only thereby betrays the com

pacecy and blindness of that group) but determining to what etentthe relatve novety of the language is epressing a new and lastingatcuation of social practices and collective representations, academicdoctries and politcal movemens. In short to use Gramscan language,we have to determine whether something like a hegemony is developinghere.

The functioning of the category of immigration as a substitute for theotion of race and a solvent of class consciousness' provides us with afirst clue. Quite cearly, we are not simply dealing with a camouflaging

operation, made necessary by the disrepute into which the term race'and its derivatives has falen, nor solely wth a consequence of the transformatons of French society. Collectivties of immigrant workers havefor many years suffered discriminaion and xenophobic violence in whichacst stereotyping has played an essential role. he interwar period,


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IS THERE A 'NEO-RACISM? 21

another crisis era, saw the unleashing of capaigns in France againstforeigners Jewish or otherwise, campaigns which extended beyond theactivitis of the fascist movements and which found ther logica culi-

nation in the Vichy regimes contribution to the Hitlerian enterpriseWhy did we not at that period see the sociological signifier definitivelyreplace the biological one as the key representation of hatred and fearof the other? Apart from the force of strictly French traditions ofanthropological myth, this was probably due on the one hand, to theinstitutional and ideological break which then existed between theperception of immgration (essentially European) and colonial experi-ence (on the one side, France was being invaded, on the other it was

dominant ) and, on the other hand, because of the absence of a newmodel of articulation between states, peoples and cultures on a worldscale4 The two reasons are indeed linked The new racism is a racism ofthe era of decolonization, of the reversal of population movementsbetween the old colones and the old metropolises, and the divison ofhumanity within a sngle political space Ideologically, current racism,which in France centres upon the immigration compex, fts into aframework of racism without races which is already widely developedin other countries, particularly the AngloSaxon ones t s a racism

whose dominant theme is not biologcal heredty but the insurmount-ability of cultural dierences, a racism which, at first sight, does notpostulate the superiority of certain groups or peoples in relation toothers but only the harmfuness of abolishing frontiers, the incompati-bility of lifestyles and traditons; in short, it is what P A. Taguie hasrghtly called a differentalst racsm.

To emphasize the importance of the question, we must first of allbring out the political consequences of this change. The first is a de-

stabilization of the defences of traditional antiracism in so far as itsargumentation finds itself attacked from the rear, if not indeed turnedagainst itself (what Tague excellently terms the tu-about effect' ofdierentialist racism). It is granted from the outset that races do notconstitute isolable biological units and that in reality there are nohuman races . t may also be admitted that the behaviour of indvdualsand their aptitudes cannot be explained in terms of their blood or eventheir genes, but are the result of ther belongng to hstorcal 'cultures.Now anthropological culturalism, which is entirely orientated towards

the recognition of the diversity and equality of cultures with only thepolyphonic ensemble constituting human civilization and also theirtranshistorical permanence, had provided the humanist and cosmo-politan antiracism of the postwar period with most of its arguments. tsvalue had been confirmed by the contribution it made to the struggleagainst the hegemony of certain standardizing imperialisms and against


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22 RACE, NATION CLAS

the elimination of minority or dominated civili7tions ethnocideDierentialist racism takes this argumentation at its word One of thegreat figures in anthropology Claude viStrauss who not so long ago

distinguished himself by demonstrating that all civilizations are equallycomplex and necessary for the progression of human thought, now inRace and Culture finds himself enrolled, whether he likes it or not inthe service of the idea that the 'mixing of cultures and the suppressionof 'cultural distances would correspond to the intellectual death ofhumanity and would perhaps even endanger the control mechanismsthat ensure its biological survivaL6 And this demonstration is immedi-ately related to the spontaneous tendency of human groups (in practicenational groups, though the anthropological ignificance of the political

category of nation is obviously rather dubious) to preserve theirtraditions, and thus their identity What we see here is that biological orgenetic naturalism is not the only means of naturalizing humanbehaviour and social affinities At the cost of abandoning the hier-archical model (though the abandonment is more apparent than real, as

J we shall see), culture can also function like a nature, and it can in partilar function as a way f locking individuals and groups a priori into agenealogy, into a determination that is immutable and intangible inorigin

But this first turnabout eect gives rise to a second which turnsmatters about even more and is, for that all the more eective: if insurmountable cultural difference is our true 'natural milieu the atmo-sphere indispensable to us if we are to breathe the air of history then theabolition of that difference will necessarily give rise to defensive reac-tions 'interethnic conflicts and a general rise in aggressiveness Suchreactions, we are told, are 'natural but they are also dangerous By anastonishing volteface, we here see the dierentialist doctrines them-

selves proposing to explain racm (and to ward it o)In fact what we see is a general displacement of the problematic. Wenow move from the theory of races or the struggle between the races in

r human history, whether based on biological or psychological principles, to a theory of 'race relations within society, which naturalizes not racial

belonging but racist conduct. From the logical point of view, differ-entialist racism is a metaracism, or what we might call a 'second-position racism which presents itelf as having drawn the lessons fromthe confict between racism and antiracism, as a politically operational

theory of the causes of social aggression If you want to avoid racismyou have to avoid that abstract antracism which fails to grasp thepsychologcal and sociologcal aws of human population movements;you have o respect the 'tolerance thresholds maintain culturaldistances or, in other words, in accordance with the postulate that


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IS THEREA NED-RACISM'? 23

individuals are the exclusive heirs and bearers of a single culturesegregate collectivities (the best barrier in this regard still being nationalfrontiers) And here we leave the realm of speculation to enter directly

upon political terrain and the interpretation of everyday experienceNaturally, 'abstract i not an epistemological category but a valuejudgement which is the more eagerly applied when the practices towhich it corresponds are the more concrete or eective: programmes ofurban renewal, antidiscrimination struggles including even positivediscrimination in schooling and jobs (what the American New Rightcalls 'reverse discrimination; in France too we are more and more oftenhearing reasonable figures who have no connection with any extremist

movements explaining that it is antiracism which creates racism by itsagitation and its manner of 'provoking the mass of the citizenrysnational sentiments)?

It is not by chance that the theories of diferentialist racism (whichfrom now on will tend to present itself as the true anti-racism and there-fore the true humanism) here connect easily with 'crowd psychologywhich is enjoying something of a revival as a general explanation ofirrational movements aggression and collective violence, and, particu-larly of xenophobia We can see here the double game mentioned above

operating fully the masses are presented with an explanation of theirown spontaneity and at the same time they are implicitly disparaged asa primitive crowd The neoracist ideologues are not mystical hereditytheorists, but realist technicians of social psychology . .

In presenting the turnabout effects of neoracism in this way I amdoubtless simplifng its genesis and the complexity of its intealvariations, but I want to bring out what is strategically at stake in itsdevelopment Ideally one would wish to elaborate further on certain

aspects and add certain correctives but these can only sketched outrudimentarily in what followsThe idea of a racism without race is not as revolutionary as one

might imagine. Without going into the uctuations in the meaning of theword 'race whose historiosophical usage in fact predates any re-inscription of genealogy into genetics we must take on board anumber of major historical facts however troublesome these may be (fora certain antiracist vulgate and also for the tuabouts forced upon itby neoracism)

A racism which does not have the pseudobiological concept of raceas its main driving force has always existed, and it has existed at exactlythis level of secondary theoretical elaborations Its prototype is anti-Semitism Modern antiSemitism the form which begins to crystallizein the Europe of the nlightenment if not indeed from the period inwhich the Spain of the Reconquista and the Inquisition gave a statist


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24 RACE, NATION, CLASS

naionalistic inflexion to theological antudaism is already a cultur-alst racism. Admittedly bodily stigmata play a great role n ts phantasmatics but they do so more as sgns of a deep psychology as signs of a

spiritual inheritance rather than a bological heredty8 These sgns areso o speak the more revealing for being the less vsible and the Jew smore truly a Jew the more ndiscernible he is. Hs essence s that of aculural tradition a ferment of moral disntegraton. AntSemitism issupremely dierentialist and n many respects the whole of currentdifferentia lst racsm may be consdered from the formal point of viewa a generalized anti-Semitism. Ths consderation is partcularyimpoant for the interpretation of contemporay Arabophoba especiall n France since t carres wth t an mage of Islam as a concepton

of the world whch is incompatble with Europeanness and an enter-prise of universal ideological dominaton and therefore a systematicconfusion of Arabness and Islamicsm.

This leads us to direct our attention towards a hstorical fact that iseven more difficult to admt and yet crucal taking into consideratonthe French natona form of racst tradtons There is no doubt aspecifically French branch of the doctrines of Aryanism anthropometryand bological geneticsm but the true French ideoogy is not to be

foundin these: it les rather in the idea that the culture of te land of

the Rights of Man has been entrusted wth a unversal misson toeducate the human race There corresponds to ths msson a practce ofassimilatng dominated populatons and a consequent need to dffereniate and rank indviduals or groups n terms of ther greater or lesserapttude for or resstance to assmilaton It was ths simultaneouslysubtle and crushing form of exclusion/nclusion whch was depoyed inthe process of colonzaton and the strictly French (or democratc)varant of the Whte mans burden I return in later chapters to the

paradoxes of universalism and partcularism in the functionng of racstideologies or in the racst aspects of the functioning of deologies"Conversely t s not difficult to see that n neoracst doctrnes the

suppression of the theme of herarchy is more apparent than rea. Infact, the dea of hierarchy which these theorsts may actualy go so far asloudly to denounce as absurd is reconsttuted on the one hand in thepractcal applcaton of the doctrine (it does not therefore need to bestated explictly) and on the other n the very type of crtera applied inthinkng the dfference between cultures (and one can agan see th

loical resources of the second poston of metaracsm in action )Prophylactc action against racal mixing in fact occurs in places

where the establshed culture s that of the state the dominant classesand at least ocally the 'national masses whose style of life andthnking is legtmated by te system of nsttutons; it therefore func


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S THR A 'NEO-RACISM? 25

tions as a ndirectional block on expression and social advancement. Notheoretical discorse on the dignity of all cltres will really compensatefor the fact that, for a Black in Britain or a 'Beur in France the assimi-

lation demanded of them before they can become integrated into thesociety in which they already live (and which will always be sspected ofbeing sperficial imperfect or simlated) is presented as progress, as anemancipation, a conceding of rights And behind this sitation lie barelyreworked variants of the idea that the historical cltres of hmanity canbe divided into two main grops, the one assmed to be niversalisticand progressive the other spposed irremediably particlaristic andprimitive. It is not by chance that we enconter a paradox here: a logi

cally coherent differential racism wold be uniformly conservativearging for the fixity of a cltres It is in fact conservative, since, onthe pretext of protecting Eropean clture and the Eropean way of lifefrom Third Worldization, it utopianly closes off any path towards realdevelopment. Bt it immediately reintrodces the old distinctionbetween closed ad open static and enterprising, cold and hot,gregarious and individalistic societies a distinction which, in itstrn brings into play all the ambigity of the notion of cltre (this isparticlarly the case in French!)

The difference between cltures considered as separate entities orseparate symbolic strctures (that is, clture in the sense of Kultur)refers on to cltral ineqality within the Eropean space itself ormore precisely, to cltre (in the sense of Bi/dung, with its distinctionbetween the academic and the popular, technical nowledge andfolklore and so on) as a strctre of ineqalities tendentially reprodcedin an indstrialized, formally edcated society that is increasinglyinternationalized and open to the world The different cltres are

those which constitte obstacles or which are established as obstacles(by schools or the norms of international commnication) to the acqisition of cltre And, conversely the cltral handicaps' of the dominated classes are presented as practical eqivalents of alien stats, or asways of life particlarly exposed to the destrctive effects of mixing (thatis, to the effects of the material conditions in which this mixingoccrS) 1J This latent presence of the hierarchic theme today nds itschief expression in the priority accorded to the individalistic model(jst as in the previos period, openly inegalitarian racism in order

to postlate an esential fixity of racial types had to presppose adifferentialist anthropology, whether based on genetics or on VOerpsychologie): the cltres spposed implicitly superior are those whchappreciate and promote individal enterprise social and politicalindivdalism as against those which inhibit these things These are said tobe the cltres whose spirit of commnity is constitted by individalism


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In thi way we ee how the retu of the bological theme i permittedand with it the elaboration of new variant of the biological mythwithin the framework of a cultural racim There are, as we know

different national ituation where thee matter are concerned Theethological and ociobiological theoretical model (which are themelve in part competitor) are more influential in the AngloSaxoncountrie where they continue the tradition of Social Darwinim andeugenic while directly coinciding at point with the political objectiveof an aggreive neo-liberalim I I Even these tendentially biologisticideologie however depend fundamentally upon the differentialitrevolution' What they aim to explain i not the contitution of races butthe vital importance of cultural closures and tradition for the accumu

lation of individual aptitudes, and, most importantly the natural baeof xenophobia and ocial aggresion Aggreion i a fictive essencewhich i invoked by all form of neo-racim, and which make it possiblein thi intance to diplace biologim one degree: there are of coure noraces, there are only population and culture but there are biological(and biophyical) caues and effect of culture, and biological reactionto cultural difference (which could he aid to contitute omething likethe indelible trace of the animality of man, till bound a ever to hiextended family and hi territory). Converely where pure cutural

ism eem dominant (a in France), we are eeing a progreive drifttoward the elaboration of dicourses on biology and on culture a theexternal regulation of living organm' their reproduction performance and health Michel Foucaut, among other, foresaw thi2

t may well be that the current variants of neoracim are merely atranitional ideological formation, which i detined to develop towarddicoure and ocial technologie in which the apect of the hitoricalrecounting of genealogcal myth (the play of ubtitutions between race

people culture and nation) wil give way to a greater or leer degree tothe aspect of pychoogical aesment of intellectual aptitude anddipoition to normal ocial life (or conversely to criminality anddeviance) and to optima reproduction (a much from the affective asthe sanitary or eugenic point of view) aptitUdes and dipoition which abattery of cognitive, ociopsychological and tatitical cience wouldthen undertake to meaure, elect and monitor striking a balancebetween hereditary and environmental factor " n other word thatideological formation would deveop toward a postracism am all

the more inclined to believe thi ince the internationalization of ocialrelation and of population movement within the framework of asytem of nation-tates will increaingly lead to a rethining of the notionof frontier and to a reditributing of its mode of application; thi willaccord it a function of ocial prophylaxis and tie it in to more indi


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IS THERE A NEO-RACISM? 27

vidalized stattes, while technological transforations will assign ed-cational inequalities and intellectual hierarchies an increasinglyiportant role in the class strggle within the perspective of a general-

ized technopolitical selection of individals. In the era of nation-enterprises the tre 'mass era is perhaps pon s

Notes

1 t was ony after writing this aticle that PierreAndr Taguiefs bookL Force duprjug Essi sur e rcime et ses doubles (L Dcoverte Paris, 988) became known tome. In that book he considerably deveops competes and nances the analyses to which Ihave referred above and I hope, in the near fture, to be able to devote to it the discssion

it deseves2 Colette Guiamin has provided an exceent explanation of this point which is in

my opinion fundamental: The activity of categorization is also a knowlede tivity. . . .Hence no doubt the ambiguity of the struggle against stereotypes and the supises it hodsin store for s Categorization is pregnant with knowledge as it is with oppression(LIdoogie rciste. Gense et nge cel Moton, Pais/The Hague 1972 pp 83 etseq)

3 L Poiakov The A ryn Myth A Htory of Rcist nd Ntionlist Ides in Europetrans E Howard, Sussex University Press Brighton 974; L Cus lit dibolique essissur oriine des perscutions Camannvy Paris 1980

4 Compare the way in which in the United States the Back probem remained

separate from the ethnic problem posed by the successive waves of Eropean immigrationand their reception unti in the 90 and 60s a new paradigm of ethnicity led to theatter being projected on to the former (cf Michael Omi and Howard Winant RilFormtion in the United States Routedge & Kegan Pa London 1986)

. See in particuar his Les Prsppostions dfinitionnelles dun ndfinissable; eracisme, Mots no. 8 1984 LIdentit nationae saisie par les ogiqes de racisationAspects figres et probmes du racisme diffrentiaiste, Mots no 12 1986 Ldentitfranaise au miroir du racisme diffrentiaiste, Espc 89, L 'dentt frn se EditionsTierce Paris 1 985 The idea is aready present in the studies by Colette Guillamin Seeaso Vronique de Rdder LObstacle cutre: a diffrence et la distance L Homme etl ocit Janary 986 Compae for the Anglo-Saxon word, Martin Barker The NewRcim: Conserties nd th e Ilogy of the Tribe Junction Books London 9 8 1

6 . This was a ecture written in 1 9 7 1 for UNESCO reprinted i n The View from A fr,tras J. Negrosche and P Hoss Basic Books New York 1985 . the critique byM. OCallaghan and C Gillamin 'Rc et race .. a mode 'naturee en scienceshumaines, L Homme et 10 soit, nos 31-2 974 From a quite different point of viewLvi-Strass is today attacked as a proponent of 'antihmanism and reativism (cfT. Todorov LviStrass entre niversaisme et reativisme Le Dbt, no 42, 986A. Finkiekraut L Dfite de l pense Gllimard Pais 1987). Not ony is the discussionon this point not cosed it has hardy begun For my own part would arge not that thedoctrine of Lvi-Strauss 'is racist but that the racist theoies of the ninetenth andtwenteth centues have been constructed within the conceptua fied of humanism it istherefore impossible to distinguish between them on the basis suggested above (s my

Racism and Nationaism this volume pp. 3767)7 In Ango-Saxon contries these themes are widely treated by hman ethoogy

and sociobioogy n France, they are given a directly cturaist basis An anthoogy ofthese ideas running from the theorists of the New Right to more sober academics is to befound in A. Bjin and J Frend eds Racmes antircismes MridiensKlincksieck Paris1986 t is usef to know that this work was simultaneosy vulgaized in a masscircation popuar pblication, Ji tout compris no. 3 1987 Dossier choc Immirsdemin hine edited by Guilame Faye)


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8 Ruth Benedict among othes pointed this out in respect of H S Chambelain:'Chambelain howeve did not ditingush Seites by physical taits o by genealogy;Jews as he knew cnnot be accuately sepaated fro the est of the population n odenEuope by tabulated anthopomorphc measuements. But they wee eneme because they

had special way of thnking and acting "One can very oon becoe a Jew etc (Raceand Racsm, Routledge & Kegan Paul London 983 edn pp 132 et eq) n he view itwas at once a gn of Chambelain anknes and his self-contradicton Th selfcontadicton became the rule but n fact it s not a self-contradiction at all n antiSemitim the thee of the nfeiority of the Jew a we know much les impotant thanthat of hs reducble otheess Chamberlain even indulges at tmes n referng to thesupeoty of the Jew in mater of ntellect commerce or ene of community makingthem all the more dangeou And the Nazi entepise frequently admits that it anentepise of reductio of the Jews to ubhuman status ather than a conequence of anyde fato subhumanity ths s indeed why it object cannot eman mere slavey but mutbecome exteminaton

9 See ths volume chapter 3, Racis and Nationasm

. t s obviously this subumpton of the ociologcal dfference between culturesbeneath the intitutional heachy of Culture the decisive agency of ocial clasfcatonand its natualization that accounts fo the keenne of the adical tife and esentmentthat suounds the presence of mmgrants in chools whch s much greater than thatgeneated by the mee fact of lving n close pomity Cf S Boulot and D. BoysonFradet LEchec colaire de enfant de tavalleu mgr Le Temps moderespecal nuber Llmmgraton maghbne en ance 94

Cf Barke he New Racm.2 Mchel Foucault The Hstoy of Sexalt vol , A Itrodcto tran Robet

Juley Peregne London 97


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2

The Ideologica Tensios of Capitalism:Universaism versus Racis and Sexism

\ Immanuel Walerstein

The modern world we have long been told is the first to reach beyondthe bounds of narrow, ocal loyalties and to proclaim the universal

brotherhood of man Or so we were told up to the 1970s Since thattime we have bee made conscious that the very termiology of univer-salist doctrine as for example the phrase 'the brotherhood of manbelies s hrase is mascuine in geder thereb i citlyex atin to a se ere a w 0 are fem Itwould be easy to multipy gUstic examples all of w C reveal anunderlying tension between the continuing ideological legitimation ofuniversaism in the modern world and the cotiuing reality (both

materia and ideological) of racism and sexism in this same world It isthis tension or more precisey this contradiction that I wish to discussFor contradictions not only provide the dynamic force of historicalsystems; they aso reveal their essentia features

It is oe thing to ask whence universalist doctrine ad how widely itis shared or to ask why racism and sexism exist and persist It is quiteanother to inquire ito the origins of the pairing of the two ideologiesindeed what one might argue has been the symbiotic relatioship ofthese presumed opposites. We start with a seemig paradox Th mchaenge to racism ad sexism has bee iversalist be efs and the

g e has been racist and sexist bels Wes ume t a p n s 0 each set of beiefs are persons in opposite

camps Only occasioaly do we aow ourselves to notice that the enemyas P that most o us (per s find it perfectlypossibe to pursue both docte multaeously This is to be deplored-

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29


no doub; bu i is also o be explained, and by more han he simpeasserion of hypocrisy For his paradox (or his hypocrisy) is enduring,widespread and srucural I is no passing hman failing

In previous hisorical sysems i was easier o be consisen. Howevermuch hese previous sysems varied in heir srucures and in heirpremisses hey all had no hesiaion in making some kind of mora andpoliical disincion beween he insider and he ousider, in which bohhe belief and the higher moral qualiies of he insider and he sense ofobligaion by insiders o each oher ook precedence over any absracconceps abou he human species, if such absracions were assered aal Even he hree monoheisic world religions Judaism Chrisianiyand Islam made such disincions beween insiders and ousidersdespie heir hypoheical commimen o a single God presiding over asingular human species

This essay discusses frs he origins of modern universalis docrineshen he sources of modern racism and sexism and finally he realiies ofhe combinaion of he wo ideologies boh in erms of wha gave rise oi and wha has been is consequences

There are wo main ways of explaining he origins of universaism asan ideology of our presen hisorical sysem One is o see universalism

as he culminaion of an older inellecual radiion The oher is o see ias an ideology paricularly appropriae o a capialis world-economy.The wo modes of explanaion do no necessarily conradic each oher

\ The argumen ha i is he oucome or he culminaion of a ongradiion has o do precisely wih he rio of monoheisic religions The

crucial moral leap, i has been argued, occurred when humans (or somehumans - e eve m ' d he uniciy ofGod nd th r imp heiciLhu!ity To be sure heargumen cOtinu -thr nof istic religions pursued he logic. of heir siiond eial posiion forhe peo i- osen n was olbership by

adopn._ oh _ grouhe chosen, and ind -n wih'P sel a on u bo risianiyslam normally required an

affirmaive ac of allegiance (whch one could make as a formerly nonbelieving adul by formal conversion) in order o gain ful access o hekingdom of God Modern nlighenmen hough, i is said simply ookhis monoheisic logic one sep furher, deriving mora equaiy and

human righs from human naure iself a characerisic wih which weare all bo and as a resul of which our rghs become enilemensraher han eaed privileges

This is no an incorrec hisory of ideas We have severa imporanpoliicomoral documens of he lae eigheenh cenury ha refec his


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IDEOLOGICAL TENSONS OF CAPITAUSM 3 1

Enlightenment ideology documents that were given widespread credence and adherence as a resut of major poitical upheavals (the FrenchRevolution, the decolonization of the Americas and so on) Further-

more we can carry the ideologica history forward There were many defacto omissions in these ideoogical documents of the eighteenth centuy- and most notably those of nonWhites and women But as time wenton, these omissions and others have been rectified by explicitly incudingthese groups under the rubric of universalist doctrine Today even thosesocial movements whose raison d'tre is the implementation of racist or

exist policies tend to pay at least lip service to the ideology of univer-salism, thereby seeming to consider it somehow shameful to assert

overtly what they vey clearly believe and think should govern politicalpriorities It is not hard therefore to derive from the histoy of ideas asort of secular upward curve of the acceptance of universalist ideologyand, based on that curve to make a claim about the existence of a sortof inevitable worldhistorcal process at work

The claim however that since universalism has only been eriousypursued as a political doctrine in the modern world its origins must besought in the particular socioeconomic framework of this word alsoseems very strong The capitalist wordeconomy is a system built on the

endless accumuation of capita One of the prime mechanisms thatmakes this possibe is the commodification of everything These com-modities low in a world market in the form of goods of capital and oflabourpower. Presumably the freer the flow the greater the degree ofcommodification. Consequently anything that restrains the ow ishypothetically counterindicated.

Anything that prevents goods, capital or labourpower from being amarketable commodity serves to restrain such ows. Anything that uses

as criteria for evauating goods capitaLor labourpower something otherthan their market value and then gives these other valuations priortymakes the ite to that extent nonmarketable or at least less marketabe Hence by a sort of impeccable logic particularisms of any kindwhatsoever are said to be incompatible with the logic of a capitalistsystem, or at least an obstacle to its optimal operation It woud folowthen that within a capitalist system it is imperative to assert and carry outa universalist ideology as an essential eement in the endless pursuit ofthe accumuation of capital Thus it is that we talk of capitalist socia

relations as being a 'universal solvent working to reduce everything to ahomogeneous commodity form denoted by a singe measure of money

This is said to have two principa consequences. t is said to permitthe greatest possible eiciency in the production of goods Specificallyin terms of labourpower if we have a career open to talents (one ofthe slogans born out of the French Revolution we are likey to place


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the most competent persons in the occupation roles most sitable forhem in the world division of labou. And we have indeed developedwhole insi o em,he civilservc t that are' t-ish what todaywe cG_

. .

Fuhermore It S sat Dnly S mertocracy economcally eicentbut i is also pong. To the extent that there are in- quaitidistribu of reward in istorical capitalism (as inpior historical systems), resentment of tose wo receive reaterrewards by those wo eceive fewer is less ecauses juification r of meianto e basis oft@dJhat is, jHQ!hat privilege earned b erU soha _oraly and politicaly, to 1han pivilegeaan;'- . -- JT S isColitical sociology. The exact opposite is true in factWhle privilege earned by ineritance as long been at least marginallyaccepabe to te oppressed on the basis of mystical or fatalistic beliefsin an eeal order whic belief at least offers them the comfort ofceainy privilege earned because one is possibly smaer and certainlybetter educated than someone else is extremely diicult to swallow,except by the few who ae basically scrambling up te ladder. Nobodywho is not a yuppie loves or admires a yuppie Princes at least may seemo be kindly fahe figures A yuppie is nothing but an overprivilegedsibling The meritocatic system is politically one of te least stablesystems. And i is precisey because of this political fagility tat racismand sexism enter te picture

The presumed u ward curve 0 iverJQ!beenth mtb_e of te deree.QDyr,_QLg!2-Jas ideoly'nSIct.

Ths however has imply not been te case emp:6 perhaps mae te inverse argument ta th curves of race and genderinequalities have actually been going up in the moden world, or at leastave not been going down certainly in fact, possibly even as ideology.To see why this might be so, we sould loo at what te ideologies ofracsm and sexism actually asset

Racism is not simply a matter of aving an attitude of disdain for ofear of someone of anote grup as defined by genetic criteia (suc assn coour) o by social criteria (religious affiliation cultural pattens

lnguistc preference and so on) Racism normally includes suc disdainand fear, but it is far moe tan that Disdain and fear are quite second-ay to what defines te practice of acism in the capitalist worldeconomy Indeed it could even be argued tat disdain and fea of teother xenophobia) is an aspect of acism that entails a contadiction.


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IDEOLOGICAL TENSIONS OF CAPITALISM 33

Xenophobia in all prior historical systems had one primary behavioural consequenc: the eection of the barbarian from the physicallocus of the community the society the ingroup death being theextreme version of ejection. Whenever we physically eject the other wegain the 'purity of environment that we are presumably seeking but weinevitaby lose something at the same time. We lose the labourpower ofthe person eected and therefore that persons contribution to thecreation of a surpus that we might be able to appropriate on a recurringbasis. This represents a loss for any historical system but it is a particu-larly serious one in the case of a system whose whole structure and logicare built around the endless accumulation of capital.

A capitalist system that is expanding (which is half the time) needs allthe labourpower it can find since this labour is producing the goodsthrough which more capital is produced realized and accumulated.Ejection out of the system is pointess. But if one wants to maximize theaccumuation of capital it is necessary simultaneously to minimize thecosts of production (hence the costs of labourpwer) and minimize thecosts of politica disruption (hence minimize not eliminate becauseone cannot eliminate the protests of the labour force). Racis is themagic formula that reconciles these objectives.

et Us 10okCe of ist and most famous discussions aboutracism as an ideology. When Europeans came to the New World theyencountered peoples whom they slaughtered in large numbers eitherdirectly by the sword or indirectly by disease. A Spanish friarBartolom de Las Casas, took up their cause arguing that Indians hadsouls which needed to be saved. Let us pursue the implications of theas Casas argument which won the formal assent of the church andeventually of he states. Since Indians had souls they were human

beings and the rules of natural aw applied to them. Therefore one wasnot morally permitted to saughter them indiscriminately (eject themfrom the domain). One was obliged instead to seek to save their souls(convert them to the universalist value of Christianity). Since they wouldthen be alive and presumaby en route to conversion they could beintegrated into the work force at the level of their skills of coursewhich transated into meaning at the bottom level f the occupationaland reward hierarchy.

Racism operationally has taken the form of what might be called the'ethnicization of the work force by whch I mean that at all times therehas existed an occupationalreward hierarchy that has tended to becorrelated with some socaed social criteria. But while the pattern ofethnicization has been constant the details have varied from place toplace and time to time according to what part of the human genetic andsocial poos were located in a particular time and place and what the


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hierarchical needs of the economy were at that time and placeThat is to say racism has aways combined claims based on continuity

with the past (genetic and/or socia) with a presentorentated exibility

in dening the exact boundaries of these reified entities we ca races orethno-national-religious groupings The flexibiity of caiming a link withthe boundaries of the past combined with the constant redrawing ofthese boundaries in the present takes the form of the creation andconstant re-creation of racial and/or ethno-nationalreligious groups orcommunities. They are aways there and always ranked hierarchicalybut they are not always exactly the same Some groups can be mobie inthe ranking system; some groups can disappear or combine with others;while still others break apart and new ones are born. But there are

always some who are 'niggers. If there are no Blacks or too few to playthe roe one can invent White niggersThis kind of system racism constant in form and in venom but

somewhat flexible in boundary ines does three thing extremely well.It alows one to expand or contract the numbers available in any particular spacetime zone for the lowest paid, least rewarding economicroles according to current needs. It gives rise to and constantly recreatessocial communities that actually socialize children into playing theappropriate roles (although o course they aso socialize them intoforms of resistance) And it prov n- basis to justifyi o:"(rhudeJI!!

balibar, wallerstein - race nation class

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