MARX & MARXISTS ON RACISM

MARX  & MARXISTS  ON  RACISM

by

REGINALD YOUNG

Sociology / Politics/Geography.

  For  Nazma, Mo, Tatiana and Liberty.

 Copyright  ©  Reginald  Young  1995.

                                                               All rights reserved

First published in the UK 1995

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Produced  by  Reginald Young

  March 1995              

Printed in the United Kingdom

ISBN  1  899968  02  4

SOME EVALUATIONS ON MARX, MARXISTS ON RACISM.

  "It is not possible to enslave  men without logically making them inferior  through and through.

And racism  is only the emotional, affective, sometimes intellectual explanation  of this inferiorisation".- Fanon.

"If  there is a taint, it lies not  in the soul  of the individual  but rather in that  of the environment". - Fanon.

INTRODUCTION

The competence, content and scope of this article  do not provide an adequate examination of the multi-theoretical model approach necessary to appreciate and do justice to the intellectual feats of Marx, Marxists and the controversies raging in the social sciences.

However this article will not attempt to trivialise the contradictions, debates and conflicts engaging Marxists in academic literature, politics and society.

It is intended to stimulate additional controversies and speculations wherever and whenever possible to encourage fresh imaginative and magnifiable understanding, hopefully to enhance the desire or need for changing the prevailing causal factors engendering the spectre of racism so prevalent in a crisis prone, ever changing and an unpredictable contemporary world.

Because of the reasons given above this article while recognising the ability and democratic rights of individuals to make sense of their own perceived sense of realities by constructing, accepting or even buying into popular common sense terminologies, will nevertheless, not attempt to embark on an acceptance, narration, usage and debate on the racialised, essentialised and common sense terms such as “race’, “white”, “black”  and “race relations”.

However, these terms that have been institutionalised and legitimised to respectable status in certain academic circles by some so-called social scientists undemocratically are worthy of the analytical scrutiny expressed by some honest, impartial and consistent researchers, analysts and social scientists.

Therefore, where and when references are made in this article to such common sense terms it is intended to demonstrate in a critical manner the analytical dilemmas, ambiguities, contradictions, distortions, misrepresentations and ultimate injustice to the innocents that is implicit in the reckless usage of these terms in reinforcing negative stereotyping, prejudicial attitudes and xenophobia in political discourses, identity politics or politics of “racial”  conflicts, and policy implementation by academic and non-academic individuals.

Marx, Marxists, socio-economic relations and racism.
[According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted.
 Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms

that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phase. . . .  Marx  and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people  sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to allow
the other elements involved in the interaction to come to their rights. But when it was a  case of presenting a section of
history, that is, of a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was possible. 
Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have mastered its main principles, and even those not always correctly.
And I cannot exempt many of the more recent ‘Marxists’ from this reproach, for the most  amazing rubbish has been
produced in this quarter, too.]  -  Letter from Engels to J. Bloch, London, 21-22 September, 1890.

Controversy reigns over the theme of Marx and Marxism especially the complex and intense academic debates conducted among some writers who profess or have alleged to be writing within a "Marxist" tradition.

Racism is not ingrained in human nature, nor is it a product of nature, nor essentially characteristic of the human personality.

         “A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave in certain relations”. Marx. (Mclellan page 256.)

 Racism is a social phenomenon that is conditioned by historical, political, psychological, cultural, economical, military, technological and ecological factors.

In other words racism is not produced by any superior or inferior genetic processes inherent in the biological function of Homo Sapiens.

It is socio-historically fabricated and is one of a multitude of other ideological forms that permeates human socio-economic relations within societies interacting with the natural environment.

 Some examples are: elitism, individualism, sexism, nationalism, liberalism, fascism, capitalism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, imperialism, fundamentalism, familism, tribalism, casteism, ageism, Nazism, phallocentrism, anthropocentrism, afrocentrism, eurocentrism, orientalism, environmentalism and regionalism.

An awareness of the location, role and status of individuals within the unequal hierarchical socio-economic processes prevalent within the capitalist and non-capitalist modes of production, is indispensable in comprehending the complex multiple exclusionary and inclusionary tactics employed by signifying individuals, communities, institutions and organisations on such a way as to substantiate elitism, fascism, sexism, racism and other concepts of the ideological apparatus.

Concerning the role, conception, and significance of racism as an ideology about the human

experience Marx explains:

[Men do not in any way begin by ‘finding themselves in a theoretical relationship to the   things of the external world’. Like every animal they begin by eating, drinking, etc. that is not by ‘finding themselves’ in a relationship  but by having actively, gaining possessions of certain  things in the external world by their actions, thus satisfying their needs. (They thus   begin by production.)......This is an inevitable result; for, during the process of production  (that is, the process of acquiring these things), men continuously create active relationships with each other and these things, and soon they will have to struggle with each other for  their possession.....Thus, men begin effectively by appropriating certain things in the external world as means of satisfying their own needs, etc.; later they came also to give them verbal designation according to the function they seem to fulfil in their practical experience that is, as a means of satisfying these needs.] 
-  Marx. - Mclellan, page 581-582.

Therefore to Marx the content, essence and principal element of survival are the consumption and production processes involving the relationships between human beings in “gaining possession of certain things in the external world by their actions, thus satisfying their needs.” And “later.  . . . . . came” the “verbal designation”, form, expression, explanation, justification or ideologies of the existing particular historical mode of production and reproduction necessary for realising their material needs, or, as Marx illustrated. “According to the function they seem to fulfil in their material experience, that is, as a means of satisfying these needs”.

 In other words racism as a form of ideology, (“a verbal designation”)  is not a cause but a circumstantial consequence of human social action, “according to the function” or the specific socio-economic system  and is subordinate to the material conditions that influence the actions and needs of human beings.

 Here, it must not be assumed that the dialectical and reciprocal processes involved in the intricate interrelationships that entangle the prevailing mode of production, the human sensual activities, the ideological system and the ecological environment, are overlooked.

Therefore, to state that racism, as a discourse, a concept, as a form of ideology, and even a form of consciousness, did not play an independent causal role in the evolution and development of nature, real living human beings, either as prehistoric creatures or as post-modernist individualists, is consistent with the historical materialist and dialectical materialist conceptions that are the corner stones of the theoretical methodology known as Marxism.

Marx further asserts that:

[We do not set out from what men say, imagine, conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of imagined, conceived,
in order to arrive at men in the flesh. We set out from real, active  men, and on the basis of their real life process we
demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life process.
Life is not determined by consciousness but consciousness by life. . . . But life involves before everything else eating
and drinking, a habitation, clothing, and many other things.
The first historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these needs, the production of material life itself.
And indeed this is an historical act, a thousand of years ago must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order to sustain
life.]  - Marx.  -  Mclellan page 164-165.

Since the making of history is of no relevance to the unborn or the dead, the meaning, perception, conception and ideological construction of real life are generated by the actualisation of the sensuous nature of living organisms.

 Historical action is the action of all living human beings making history. The past and the future are meaningless terms unless they are explained, understood and analysed through the mediation of the real life experiences of human beings struggling to survive in particular environments conditioned by historical, socio-economic, cultural, political, technological and ecological processes.

Ideologies and productive activities interact, interpenetrate and are interdependent entities that are inalienable in real definite historical circumstances. Without activity or reference to such an activity engaged in the process of the producing the means to sustain life, ideology lingers in the sphere of sheer fantasy. Just as human sensuous activity is purposeless without the intervention of the thought processes of the human brain.

Therefore, racism as a single factor or an ideological variety is inadequate, inappropriate and too constricted as a conceptual term when used in theoretical analysis to appreciate the role of ideologies, or the socio-economic relations of human societies (some of whose mode of production is endowed with negative features such as oppression, exploitation, social inequality and injustice,) historically,  generally or in specific circumstances.

Racism cannot describe fairly the multitude of tyrannical socio-economic relations that is widespread in human societies historically, personally, nationally, and globally.

The injustices associated with racism are not comprehended nor experienced simply in the ideological systems of oppressive societies but in the actions and activities of individual human beings, the policies implemented by the managers and controllers of socio-economic institutions that failed to serve the needs of humanity.

Without oppression  there is no racism.

It is irrelevant how, why and what explains, expresses and justifies the tyranny of oppression. Although being alive and free is a precondition in appreciating what, why, and how racism is manipulated.

 This is the precise reason why humanity that is degraded, dehumanised, and alienated under oppressive socio-economic conditions cannot, do not, and will not develop a rational, clear and de-alienating so-called consciousness when they are terrorised by a status quo perpetuating the negative features of the superior forces of new technology, lack of access to adequate food, drinking water, shelter, safe and healthy environments, information and control to live in peace without fear, hate and poverty.

 Although Marx’s explanations are not historically precise about the human condition in the process of producing for the purpose of “satisfying their needs”  at least their implications extend beyond the historical period of the development of the capitalist mode of production, to which some Marxist writers limit their analysis of racism as an ideological phenomenon.

An example of Marx’s articulation of a pre-capitalist historical process is;

"The  first  historical act is thus the production of material life itself. . . . . a fundamental condition of
all history, which today, as thousand of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in order
to sustain life”. 

Accordingly, the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt share a parallel phenomenon with the ruling power elites of contemporary civilised societies in the way images, symbols and other forms of ideological systems operate and interact with the prevailing modes of production developed in the process of attempting to acquire “the external things which, above all others, serve to satisfy"  the “needs”  of societies.

The techniques used by the dominant ruling group in ancient Egypt to camouflage and justify the power of their tyranny to terrorise the slaves to submission, is expressed in the symbolism of the Sphinxes.

The difference in the cultural form of expressiveness from contemporary western civilisations is due to various factors, one of which is the level of technological development achieved and its impact on the prevailing mode of production cannot be excluded.

 The process of alienation prevailing under the rule of the Pharaohs operates on different levels, naturally, socially and politically.

To the slaves of Egypt alienation appeared as the combination of human, animal and material symbolism of superiority in the shape of the Sphinxes.

The Pharaohs had to symbolically express their control over energy sources that were relatively superior to the energy source of the human labour they had enslaved.

They had to veil their dependence on animal and material forces, and their common human qualities with the human beings they degrade and alienate by projecting themselves as distorted human heads with non-human animal bodies made of larger than real life giant stones that dominate the landscape.

 The slaves were aware of the superior strength of the body of the lion, the superior mechanical techniques of the tools and their application to harness, release and control the forces of nature such as wind, water and gravity.

The spectacle of the images of the heads of Pharaohs displayed on huge beast-like bodies made of stones that dominate the landscape was intended to terrorise the human labour power into biological, psychological, natural, material and ecological enslavement.

The realisation that it takes an alien relatively superior energy source that is more powerful than human energy to compel, oppress or inferiorise human beings to comply with a socio-economic relation of slavery and degradation, linked ancient and modern civilisations.

Today’s Pharaohs do not only control, organise and command the energy sources of humans, animals, trees, minerals, they have at their determination the energy sources of electronics, chemistry, biochemistry and nuclear explosions.

The tyrannies of today’s Pharaohs symbolically do not have to rely on the bodies of enlarged stone lions (except the four great bronze lions guarding Lord Nelson’s column at Trafalgar Square, London) to transmit their facial images or ideologies.

The Pharaohs of the twenty-first century employ the images produced by an alien superior inanimate energy source of an electron beam to bombard the brain cells in the “ privacy” of our “castles”  by the modern wonder well known as the television screen.

 What is significant is the role of ideology, (not the form it takes as racism per se) and the levels of technological development operating within the prevailing particular historical mode of production, communication, distribution and exchange that interact dialectically with the given relations of production that justify and legitimise the concept of racism as an ideological design, and "which results necessarily from the existence of language.” Marx . (Mclellan, page 581.)

RACE, RACISM AND THE RACIALISING PROCESS - SOME MARXISTS

The word “race” first appeared in the English language as early as 1508 and was in use throughout the sixteenth century. ( Miles, page 10, 1982.)                                       

The “other” as an exclusive category has been perceived, described, defined and on certain occasions  negatively evaluated by individuals and communities during pre-modern and modern  times.

 Various criteria including the environment, climate, geography,  colour, blood, culture, religion, sex, age, physical appearance, image, cosmological symbolism, and “race”  (scientific and non-scientific determinism) were made use of in the process of constructing the other  across the socio-historical landscape accommodating a multitude of meanings.

It can be argued, however, that the idea of “race”, racial typification or racialised categorisation predates capitalism and racism as an ideology defined by nineteenth century  scientific determinism relating to a definite historical socio-economic process.

 In this sense, “race”  predates “racism”.

 Some factors utilised in constructing the “other”  as a “race” occasionally  on the socio-historical landscape were;

(a) BLOOD.
The aristocracy of feudal society rationalised their socio-economic status as a natural order by
constructing an  ideology emphasising  the superiority of “blue blood”  to explain and justify the
difference and inferiorisation of their  subjects.

(b) COLOUR (phenotype)
“Black” was prominent as a descriptive category in European discourses to describe the environment,
physical and cultures of the non-European “other”  in ancient times up to the Fifteenth century. During and  after the Fifteenth century  connotative meanings of “blackness”  or associated with the
colour "black"  took on a negative significance especially during and after the changing socio-economic environment that conditioned the degradation and enslavement of human beings identified as ”black skins” ( or whose skin colour was used as an object of racialised consciousness or identification) on a massive scale.

Also during the eighth and ninth centuries before the arrival of the  “European” or “Christian” slave trade, it was Arabian and Iranian writers who at first negatively attributed the physical qualities of human beings with “black skins” to the deterministic influences of cosmological existence in the form of the planet Saturn, environmental and climatic factors. Then later, the curse of Canaan popular in the Bible was applied as a rationale to explain and justify the degradation, the natural propensity for slavery and the blackification of the “sons of Ham” who deserve to be enslaved because they wear “black skins” as a just punishment for ancestral sins. Moreover, by the tenth century Muslim writers boasted that all blacks and people with kinky hair were descended from Ham who was cursed by Noah. Also because their hair could not extend beyond  their ears slavery would be their inevitable
fate wherever they may be.
 Furthermore, before the European negative constructions of the word "black”, Muslim literature negatively connotated the images and symbols of “blackness” to such an extent that  the Arabic word “abd”  was used to describe a slave with a “black skin” and in some areas “abd” was synonymous with “black”  to describe a human being with a black skin, slave or not. (D. Brion Davis page 33,

 43, 1984.)

(c)NATION- the imagined community and the construction of Englishness”. 
 During the mid-seventeenth century the ideology of “race”  was defined by  descent and lineage
thereby highlighting the inherent superiority of  the Anglo-Saxon “race” with its natural inclination
for freedom  and its historical responsibility in preserving the culture, political institutions and

democratic traditions of ancient Germany.

This imagined community constructed on the idea of racial supremacy was concocted during the
English Reformation to affirm the sovereignty of the Christian Church in Saxon England, while
during  the English Civil war the notion of an alleged "oppressed” Anglo-Saxon “race” regaining its
rightful place in history by freeing Parliament from a supposedly  oppressive "foreign race”  since the
Norman invasion of 1066.( Miles, page 65-66, 1993.) 

(d) IMPERIALISM.

During the nineteenth century social and natural scientific theories were utilised by the imperial
ruling elites to construct  ideologies promoting the uperiority  of the Anglo-Saxon “race” to plunder
exploit and control the wealth of the colonised inferior non-Anglo-Saxon nations and regions to

 secure raw materials and markets.   (Hobson ) 

 The origin of race prejudice and its attitudinal justification was alleged by Cox to have been formed
in the period from the end of the fifteenth century to the beginning and during the early sixteenth
centuries respectively. ( Miles, page 82, 1982. ) 
 According to Cox;

 [Racial antagonisms is part and parcel of this class struggle because it developed within capitalist system as one of its
fundamental traits. . . . . The interest behind racial antagonism is an exploitative interest - the peculiar type of economic
exploitation characteristic of capitalistic society:]  -  Cox, page xxx-xxx1, 1948.

Cox’s thesis claims that race prejudice and racial conflicts originated and are characteristic of the
historical development and nature of capitalism, were accepted and shared by other writers who
contributed to the Marxist  and sociological analysis on racism.

THE PERSPECTIVES OF SOME MARXIST WRITERS ARE:-

 (a) Nikolinakos who unlike Cox defined racism as a “social  attitude” that predates capitalism.

 “It was not coherently expressed for the purpose of exploitation”.  ( Miles, page 83, 1982. ) 

Nikolinakos claimed that racism was an important feature of imperialism.

[Racism served in this way as a justification and at the same time as means for the Europeans to exploit the indigenous
peoples. This exploitation facilitated the capital accumulation of the imperialist countries. . . . . It is therefore evident that
racial conflicts appear as racial only on the surface. In reality, they are class conflicts and they have always appeared as
such both in cases where racial groups have been dominated and where they have been dominant.]  - Miles, page
83, 1982.

He also states that racism functions as an ideology of the bourgeoisie to justify colonial exploitation and as a means of dividing and intensifying the exploitation of labour power within the colonialist countries. (Miles, page 83.)

 Here it is unclear what Nikolinakos means when he asserts that “racism . . . .  as a justification and at the same time as a means for Europeans to exploit the indigenous peoples”, as he does not specify whether racism, however he defines it, functions as an ideology and its relation with the dominant and the dominated of a historically given social, economic and political structure.

 He also states that racism is a means “to exploit indigenous peoples” and “this exploitation facilitated the capital accumulation of the imperialist countries” which is dominated by the bourgeoisie which uses racism as an ideological “justification and at the same time as means for Europeans to exploit the indigenous peoples”.

Nikolinakos reason is circular and racism as a concept is not made any more comprehensible. In one case racism is used as a justification and in another instance it is used as a means of exploitation it’s supposed to be justifying. He reduces racism to a functionalist perspective.

The cause becomes the consequence, and the consequence becomes the cause. Exploitation causes racism which causes exploitation which causes etc.

 Furthermore, Nikolinakos essentialises, racializes and reifies the terms “Europeans” and “indigenous peoples” thereby making invisible the various multiple social categories such as individuals, class, gender and ethnicity.

 Furthermore, his statement that “racism . . . . . as a means for Europeans to exploit the indigenous peoples”  violates one of the fundamental maxims of historical materialism which Dr. Marx clearly expounded that exploitation is a historical, socio-economic process punctuated by social class divisions and conflicts, and generated by the prevailing mode of production of which the social relations of production is dominated by a disproportionate number of prominent individuals and their families due to their control, ownership and command of the means of production, exchange and distribution in the legal form as private property.

            Historical materialism suggests that it is individuals belonging to socio-economic classes that own, control, and command a relatively large disproportionate amount of personal, private, family, corporate and institutional wealth, resources and power which exploit. Not nations, races, regions, religions, sexes, environments, skin colour or any other form of identity based on the phenotypical disposition of the human biology.

The use of the terms “Europeans” and “indigenous peoples” are too simplistic, ahistorical, and stereotypically defined. They do not disclose the variety, contradictory aspects, and unique complex processes that are demographically, ecologically, and socio-economically involved in sustaining the “Europeans” and “indigenous peoples” productive and reproductive life systems.

Recognising the cultural, national, ethnic and class characteristics of human beings engaging in historical social relations, and the exploitative nature of such social relations in whatever socioe-conomic system such as colonialism, slavery and capitalism does not necessarily mean a Marxist methodological approach is adopted.

In fact Marx declared in a letter to Weydemeyer, 5 / 3 / 1852.

 [ . . . .  And now as to myself no credit is due to me for discovering the existence of classes in modern society,
or the struggle between them. Long before me bourgeois historians had described the historical development of
this classes. What I did that was new was to prove: (1) that the existence of classes is only bound up with particular
historical phases in the development of production, (2) that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the
proletariat, (3) that this dictatorship itself only constitutes the transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.] - Marx. - Mclellan, page 341, 1985.

So to attempt to explain exploitation as a social relation ethnically defined without highlighting the role of real living individuals potentially or actually engaging in the prevailing historic social relations of production and how they correspond to the means of production, and the natural environment is to limit observation and analysis to the role of description of racism and its causes as an abstract phenomenon at best, and apologetic of the exploitative oppressive socio-economic systems that racism relates, at worst.

(b) Castles and Kosack  states that
[Racialism and xenophobia are products of the capitalist national state and of its imperialist expansion.

Their principal historical function was to split the working class on the international level, and to motivate one section to
help exploit another in the interest of the ruling class.]  -  Miles, page 84, 1982.   

Here racialism and xenophobia are described as “products of the capitalist national state and of its imperialist expansion”. Theoretically, the role of the state in capitalist societies is more complex than Castles and Kosack have implied in their statement.                           

Their argument reduces the role of the state as an instrument of the capitalist ruling class, and does not make allowance for the relative autonomy model of the concept of the state which recognises the possibility of the demands of the various interest groups, trade unions, and other organisations representing different social groups and individuals in civil society, being met by the state in capitalist society.

 Also racialism and xenophobia might play a role in reinforcing and perpetuating divisions among the working classes nationally and internationally in a subjective situation, but it is unconvincing whether or how racialism and xenophobia have caused the ecological, geographical, social, economic and cultural processes that stimulated divisions affecting the populations of working peoples internationally, or  even before the development of the capitalist national state.

(c) Sivanandan  declares that:

[For capital requires racism not for racism’s sake but for the sake of capital. Hence at a certain level of economic activity (witness the colonies) it finds it more profitable to abandon the idea of superiority of capital. Racism dies in order that
capital might survive.]  -  Miles, page 84, 1982. 

Here Sivanandan reduces the concepts of capital and racism to over-simplistic phenomena thingified as autonomous objects alienated from the real sensuous life processes of human activities.

 Capital is defined as an historical and non-human related finite. Racism is defined as a finite determinant of capital which possesses a life of omnipotence, because he fails to appreciate the active role played by the human potential intellectually and physically as mediators, creators, designers, and controllers of the material world where capital originates.

 In other words he announces the death of racism without the death of the human brain which has the ability to recall, create, imagine, and most important of all to respond to the very natural, social and ecological environments which human beings of necessity engage to obtain certain externalities to sustain life.

Sivanandan announces the death of racism without  changing or abolishing the exploitative oppressive  socio-economic processes and degrading conditions that give rise to the indispensability of racism in all its forms.

To explain the disappearance of racism is easy in the domain of idealism but in the real material world Sivanandan is unable to explain how is it that after the disappearance of racism the negative effects of the socio-economic system of capitalism such as poverty, pollution, unemployment, war, fear, and hunger still exists while the dominant capitalist power elites are nevertheless capable of propagating, perpetuating, reproducing and benefiting from other ideological expressions as elitism, religious fundamentalism, tribalism, sexism, Nazism, liberalism. nationalism and xenophobia, despite its role in controlling new technologies that is rapidly changing the capitalist mode of production in a dynamic way towards an advancing nuclear age.

His argument is circular by suggesting that “capital requires racism”  whose death requires the survival of capital, or capital depends on the death of racism which depends on “a certain level of economic activity   ( witness the colonies )”  of capital.

As a materialist "Marxist"  writer how does he prove or justify the existence of “the idea of superiority” in the material world including the human brain, where all ideas “of superiority”  originate from.

The term “black”  familiar with the discourse on race, racism and race relations is not defined as a scientific phenomenon involved in the study of sub atomic physics analysing the frequency of electromagnetic waves that constitute the various colours of the spectrum. It is perceived and defined in a reified, essentialised and racialised  manner.

That is, its common sense descriptive meaning is made to be a real objective phenotypical category to fabricate objectivity into another reified terminology called race, (Miles, page 33, 1982.) that is employed in a reductionist and deterministic way to categorise, describe and stigmatise real, objective, living, imaginative, independent, dynamic human beings who have a dialectical, interdependent, relationship with a multitude of different socio-economic, cultural and ecological processes.

The word “black”  when used to identify, categorize and describe the human personality in an exploitative, alienated and degraded environment by relating to the colour of the human skin as an object of consciousness, reified or not, within a cultural framework that harmonises with an exploitative socio-economic system, is a code,  symbol, image or mirage of over loaded negatively connotated meanings  that is conditioned by centuries of prejudices, hatreds, assumptions, superstitions, fears, xenophobias and negative attributes of the human character which remain deep in the human psyche only to be revived and inflamed by opportunistic ambitious writers, politicians and oppressors of all kinds to justify promoting wars, dividing and enslaving humanity.

"Black"  as a word or term is punctuated with racist connotations, crude stereotyping and negative assumptions camouflaging the individuality, the positive creative human potential that is vibrating to be emancipated from the alienating, oppressive and dehumanising socio-economic conditions to realise harmony, and the preservation of all life on Earth.

Paul Gilroy condemned Robert Miles who cautions social scientists not to reify race in analysing social relations ( Miles, page 32-35 )  by alleging that

 “Miles writes on occasions as if he believes that banishing       the concept ‘race’ is a means of abolishing racism.”  (Gilroy, page 22, 1987.)                   

To do justice to Miles, he was not expounding any religious beliefs when he stated in his own words

 [I recognise that people do conceive of themselves and others as belonging to ‘races’ and do describe certain sorts of
situation and relations as being ‘race relations’, but I am also arguing  that these categories of everyday life cannot
automatically be taken up and employed analytically by an enquiry which aspires to objective, or scientific status.] 
-  Miles, page 42, 1982.

 Miles approach is quite positive in liberating the human intellect from the negative recollections of the past that is associated with the reified term ‘race’, to focus on, address and objectively analyse the processes of dynamic change in the contemporary world.
Dr. Marx  supports Miles  when he proclaims

“The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions”.

Nietzsche  also stated

 “I dedicate myself to living beings not to introspective mental process”.

Yet Gilroy appears to contradict his condemnation of Miles at best or indulged in sheer hypocrisy at worst, when he wrote about the very problems of objectivity involving the use of the term "race" that  Miles advised against.

This is Gilroy,

“Indeed the attempt to make ‘race’ always already a meaningful factor, in other words to racialise social and political
phenomena, may be itself identified as part of the ‘race’ problem”. (Gilroy, page 116, 1987.)      

The functionalism of Gilroy’s argument on racism is impressive.

He asserts that racism is a cause of social problems such as poor housing, unemployment, repatriation, violence or aggressive indifference.  

Furthermore with amazing consistency Gilroy’s arguments succeed in substantiating the circular  method of  analysis  by  ambiguously perceiving, defining and suggesting that race or racism  is  a probable cause of social problems which causes “a complex effect”.  (Gilroy, page 116, 1987.)

Gilroy states that “oppression. . . . determines their lives” - “the people who are actually affected by racism” - on one hand and on the other he expounds that  “It is not that people . . . are . . . incapable of thinking abstractly about the character of the oppression which determines their lives”.

Here the “people”  are both victims of racism and oppression. Gilroy’s patronising attitude blinds him to the alienating process of oppression to the extent that he expects an oppressed people “not . . . incapable of thinking abstractly”.

The important point is the victims of oppression are alienated.

If they were not, the mechanisms of oppression would have been illegitimate, then the need to perceive them as helpless victims of the oppressive situation would not exist.

 As far as “think abstractly”  is concerned  the oppressive socio-economic environment that legitimises racism  is not only a philosophical process.                                            

 As far as survival priorities are concerned  the processes of abstract thought as a priority  is irrelevant to the real life processes of individuals.

What is crucial, necessary and urgent is the liberating material forces and energies that will produce the food, housing, health and self-esteem necessary to sustain and adequate living standard.

The “abstract thinking”  can develop later but it cannot eliminate the cause of fear, hunger, poverty, powerlessness and disease.

Gilroy’s argument fails to explain why and how some “blacks”  alleged victims of “racism”  are able to be socially mobile as sports persons to world class standards earning fantastic sums of money without becoming or even earning more than philosophers or professors that are labelled “white”, or “thinking abstractly”.

Gilroy’s use of the term “black”  without a clear specific meaning is vulnerable to negative connotative racist implications.

According to David Theo Goldberg, ‘Anatomy of Racism’, page 296, 1990.

 “Racists are those who explicitly ascribe racial characteristics of others that they take to differ from their own and those
they take to be like them”.                                     

Gilroy’s assertion  consistently and typically employs the term “black”  to the extent of being a reified racialised category loaded with crude “racial” stereotyping, negative assumptions, ambiguities and contradictions.

Gilroy writes in black and white in a contradictory style implying that the making and remaking of the "unique cultures"  of  ”black  Britain”  is impotent  and subservient to the cultural and political "raw materials" drawn from "black populations elsewhere" including "black America and the Caribbean"  while  simultaneously capable of performing as visionaries of a Diaspora. (Gilroy, page 154, 1987.)

‘Collins’ dictionary defines a Diaspora as:

 "A dispersion, as of people originally belonging to one nation, as the dispersion of Jews from Palestine after the Babylonian captivity”.   (Collins page 271, 1987.)

 To claim that human beings that are phenotypically categorised, labelled stereotypically or defined in racist terms as “black”, is part of a “Diaspora”  is , ambiguous at best and a blatant attempt to falsify historically, ethnically and genetically the realities of “black populations everywhere”.

Human beings categorised as “blacks”  are geographically dispersed across continents from Australasia, India, Africa, Europe and the Americas, have no common origin genetically, culturally and psychologically.

 They live unequally on the same planet and have the same fears, suffer and die in so many years, as any other human being.

     In fact having a “black”  coloured skin does not make humans immune form religious bigotry, hatreds, prejudices, conservative attitudes, racism, sexism, nationalism, tribalism and other forms of hegemonic ideologies.

If the “raw  materials”  that will create the definitions of “what it means to be black”  in Britain are drawn from the “inspiration” of “black  populations everywhere”, and “black America and the Caribbean” ( Gilroy, page 154, 1987),  the prospects for an anti-racist, democratic, anti-sexist, just cultural life styles for black Britain free from poverty, tyranny and violent crime are remote.

Here Gilroy’s statement seems to substantiate by implication the claims of the right wing racist groups that blacks as immigrants are responsible for the social problems such as crimes, unemployment, and poverty in British society.

Besides what is positively inspirational about the political and socio-economic conditions in the Caribbean when in 1983 during the bloody invasion of a relative tiny island nation occupied mostly by a “black  population”, a member of the Commonwealth, was violated by “black”  American troops high on drugs, sponsored by a super power national imperialist state - a non-commonwealth member - and supported by “black”  troops from  commonwealth member nation states such as Jamaica, Barbados, and Dominica, slaughtering innocent “black”  babies lying helplessly ill in hospital.

Historically, in terms of the development of an  Afro-Atlantic or so-called black culture functioning as the “raw materials for creative processes which define what is meant to be black”  was well illustrated by the maroons who were essentialised or racialised by some historians as activists in slave rebellions.   (Thornton, page 8, 1992.) 

The “runaways”  (maroons - "runaway slaves")  of West Jamaica signed a peace treaty with
the British  in 1738. Later in 1760  a campaign of terror and unspeakable savagery and carnage  was executed  by the maroons  (who had surrendered to the British  under the terms of the 1738 treaty) and their British allies against the rebellious maroons ("runaways" ) of  St Mary parish.

 The present maroons  in Jamaica are the descendants of the maroons who had to surrender to the British by 1/1/1796. Those who did not were deported to Nova Scotia and Freetown, Sierra Leone. ( Johnston page 244, 1910.)  

Gilroy’s assertions regarding the role of “black” Afro-Caribbean cultures are  dubious  as  the above example involving the maroons demonstrate.

There seems to be a remarkable consistency with past and contemporary comparative events in which “Africans”, “blacks”, “Afro-Caribbeans”  or “maroons”  making alliances with “Europeans”,

European nation states and institutions to capture, trade, subjugate, slaves  ( as in Jamaica ) or legitimise the exploitative, oppressive and unjust actions and policies of individuals, institutions  (private and state) of monopoly capitalism in maintaining and perpetuating a status quo whose features include discrimination, socio-economic inequality and insecurity towards subordinate nations, ethnic, gender, dispossessed social classes, migrant workers, refugees and animals.

What is so inspiring about the activities of “black”  gangs who were nurtured and cultured in  non-British environments and who are actively involved in drug related violence, muggings, murders and gang rape on the streets of some inner cities of U.S.A. and Jamaica.

 (The notorious “Yardies”  have successfully graduated as violent criminals from the shanty towns of Jamaica to the major cities of USA and the UK maturing into prime targets of the FBI and other international anti-drug law enforcement  agencies during the early 1990’s.)

What is so inspiring about the  history, culture, media, and state legitimisation of patriarchal, sexist, phallocentric, and androcentric values prevailing in American and Caribbean  societies, “inspiring”  the abuse, torture, murder, and oppression of millions of females, animal or human, in all aspects of personal, socio-economic and ecological existence by males nurtured and cultured on  a rich multicultural cosmopolitan diet of aggressive masculinity.

What is so inspirational about the ethnic, tribal and religious bigoted violent conflicts occurring on the African continent and elswhere involving the Zulus, the Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria, Egypt, Nigeria, Sudan and Mauritania, the civil wars in Rwanda, Mozambique, Angola and the Horn of Africa that have made millions insecure, maimed and deprived. Also, despite the existence of "black cultures" incessant wars, land degradation, disease, famine, hunger, malutrition and forced migration have compelled millions to enjoy refugee status.

Gilroy need not be inspired by the cultural activities of “black populations elsewhere”  to realise that here in Great Britain some members of the “black”  inspired population have already fulfilled one of the most feared nightmares of women’s subjugation - “female circumcision”.

Yes, in civilised Britain some women do not have the basic human right to possess part of or their clitoris. The monthly magazine published by the Royal Geographical Society - ‘Geography’. February 1991, circulated an article called 'Alarming distribution of female circumcision' written by Allison Whyte.

This barbaric practice of mutilating the human body was summarised as:
[The practice of cutting out a girl’s clitoris to make her “pure”, marriageable, and more pleasing to her husband, is

widely practised through out Africa and the Middle East. But while the Western world cries fie, it may be unaware
that female circumcision is carried out in ethnic minorities living in many of its countries. The issue is not easily
 solved. Although Britain made female circumcision illegal in 1986, it is still widely practised. In some ethnic minorities, uncircumcised girls will become outcasts among their own people.]

 Salman Rushdie’s life is still in danger, and he is kept alive by the so-called “white”  police who are not members of the “black populations”  whose “unique cultures draw inspiration from those developed by black populations elsewhere”, such as the “black” fundamentalist Muslims and their accomplices who are sponsored by their cohorts in Iran and elsewhere, and have already executed a Japanese author for attempting to translate the ‘Satanic Verses’  in the Japanese language.

“Black Briton’s . . .unique cultures drew inspiration  from . . . black populations elsewhere”  proclaimed Gilroy. If public demonstrations are one of the highest forms of cultural expression perhaps the anti-Rushdie protests have the possibility of contributing to a more democratic, just and civilised Britain.

On a Saturday afternoon, June 1989, the largest  gathering of human beings from the so-called “black”  or “ethnic minority"  that had ever taken place in the social history of Britain  at  Hyde Park.

The protesters marched to Westminster where the "Mother of Parliaments" is located.

At Westminster Bridge  fierce battles had broken out between the Iranian and Iraqi Muslims. Some protesters have been seen burning the British Union Flag, brandishing swords and pistols, and burning an effigy of Salman Rushdie.

At one point when the main demonstrators were near Westminster a counter demonstration, mainly consisting of women (including non-"blacks") was proclaiming that the participants of the main march  (mostly men) were patriarchal, undemocratic and chauvinistic in nature and were not representative of the “black”  or “ethnic communities”  they claimed to represent.

 The counter protesters of the main march were out numbered by 10,000 to 1. They were physically confronted by other women sympathetic to the NF neo-fascists while the “black”  or non-white males of the main demonstration were yelling abuse at the women counter protesters.

 Simultaneously, at  Speakers Corner  ( located at  near Marble Arch ) there were raging battles between the  NF neo-fascists and anti- fascists and the police equipped with dogs, batons and vehicles.

 Against the NF neo-fascists were children about thirteen tears of age, young men and women, many of whom sustained injuries as they were  being  forcefully restrained during  arrest  and were brutally thrown into police vans  for their criminal, illegal and disorderly anti-fascist behaviour.

These anti-fascists would not be described by most Marxists and Gilroy as “black” or “ethnic minority”  but as “white” and therefore perpetuators of “racism”, and according to Gilroy individuals “amidst the decadent peculiarities of the Welsh, Irish, Scots,  and English”.                                                                        

            The main demonstration that marched to the heart of Westminster to protest were not demanding better educational facilities, an improved health service, higher housing standards, more houses for the homeless, equal pay and equal treatment for women, nursery schools for children, peace, an end to war, drug abuse and terrorism,  anti-pollution polices, an end to violence against women and children, better health and safety conditions at work, an end to unfair discriminatory immigration laws, abortion rights, an end to racists attacks and attacks against homosexuals, and to abolish  the poll tax.

Instead the anti-Salman Rushdie protesters were chanting slogans calling for the death of Salman Rushdie, a renown literary artist, a British citizen, an individual who could be (in common sense terms) be categorised as “black”  or a member  of British “black culture”  and someone who was born into a Muslim culture of “black  populations elsewhere”,  whose book, ‘The Satanic Verses’, it is questionable whether the majority of the demonstrators “inspired from ‘black’  cultures elsewhere"   (according to Gilroy) had the fundamental professional artistic, legal and philosophical educational background to make a fair, objective, and reasonable verdict.

 The anti-Salman Rushdie demonstration on June 1989 clearly illustrates the ambiguity, inconsistency and contradiction of socially constructed racialised, essentialised terms as “black”, “black culture” and “ethnic minority”  especially when employed as analytical tools in describing the tensions between  “black”  British Islamic fundamentalists, Salman Rushdie and Women Against Fundamentalism.                                        

Almost all of the demonstrators  fitted the criterion of being identified or related to cultures categorised as “black”, British and Muslim.

Also why weren't the 50,000 so-called “blacks” (anti-Salman Rushdie demonstrators and others) able to unite under a “black umbrella” and offer solidarity with the so-called “white” anti-fascists who were battling with the NF neo-fascists (supporters of a nineteenth century biological determinist ideology that racialises “whiteness” or a “white”  identity to exclude at best, while contemptuously justifying physical assaults and xenophobia  against so-called “blacks”  or non-whites  at worse) and the police.

In other words, is anti-politics free from complications?

 Can an anti-racist perspective  grasp clearly and comprehensively the phenomenon of fascism?

Is an anti-racist policy  adequate for  combating or opposing  what is defined as fascism?

 Can neo-fascists be active in anti-racist movements?

 Can anti-racism explain, reveal, and address the issues stimulated by elitism, liberalism, fascism, individualism, familism, casteism, tribalism, afrocentrism, eurocentrism, nationalism, fundamentalism, sexism, ageism, environmentalism, anthropocentrism, capitalism and imperialism?

            Gilroy’s attempt to elevate the racialised term “black”  to a respectable scientific status into social science literature implicates serious negative consequences for non-racist social movement activists and social policy makers.

The anti-Salman Rushdie demonstration illustrates  indisputably that the liberal leftist and some Marxists' slogans  including “Black and White unite and fight”  do not necessarily  translate into practice as actions of individuals or movements against fascism, racism, sexism, and fundamentalism for individuals who buy into racialised identities.

Gilroy further pronounces the cultural determinism and contribution of so-called “black”  cultures, histories and traditions from elsewhere to urban Britain by excluding, essentialising and depicting non - “black”  cultures as detached, void of value and passive in a condescending way that is swayed and moulded by so-called “black”   factors.  ( Gilroy, page 155, 1987. )

What is “black”  music? Who or what culture  has a monopoly of music?

Gilroy tends to essentialise, romanticise and glamorise the histories and traditions of Afro-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans in such a way as to imply  an absence of individual, class or other forms of social struggles such as tribal wars, violence and brutality against animals, children, women and homosexuals to justify cultural difference, identity and ethnocentrism, thereby contemptuously representing the cultures of the Welsh, Irish, Scots and English as negative and “decadent”. (Gilroy 1987, page  156)

     It is ironic that “the decadent peculiarities of the Welsh, Irish, Scots and English”  cultures which many Afro-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans are integrated to the extent of acquiring  Welsh, Irish, Scots and English surnames. Also it is the same “decadent”  culture that outlawed female circumcision, gender and racial discrimination.

At least Cicero  recognised the need for an all embracing humanist cultural perspective when he declared;

“You must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both Gods and men are members”.
Dr. Marx  agrees:

[If man is shaped by his surroundings, his surroundings must be made human. If man is social by nature, he will develop his true nature only in society, and the power of his  nature must be measured not by the power of separate individuals but by the power of society.]  - Marx - Mclellan, page 54, 1985.

Marx's understanding of the sociology of human social relations although developed during the later part of the nineteenth  century appears so well developed  in demonstrating some validity in its articulation by deconstructing the common sense, reductionist, deterministic, and negatively connotated terms as “race” “white”  and “black”  when compared to the discourses, literature and analysis of some Marxists and non-Marxists of the last decades at the eve of the twentieth century.
 The recent political changes in the Republic of South Africa since the early nineteen nineties can be taken as a glaring example, when the use of ambiguous, bankrupt, reified, essentialised and racialised   terms such as “race”, “Black”, “white”, “racism” “anti-apartheid”  and “nationalism” were recklessly employed by journalists, politicians, social scientists and social movement activists to describe, analyse, and rationalise the complex dialectical socio-economic relations.

 Furthermore, these socio-economic relations interact with the various divergent political interests, ideological orientations, communal loyalties, religious affiliations, tribal and traditional allegiances, patriarchal customs, state and private monopoly institutions in the world of finance, industry, commerce and the media, trade unions and elitists’ aspirations and other organisations representing individuals in civil society.

In other words, as “the Sun moves across  the sky”, in the distant past South Africa was notorious for its “racist”  apartheid policies practised by “whites”  who were  inherently "racist"  and therefore "guilty" of inflicting “racial“  injustice and oppression towards the “black”  majority who were “innocent” victims of an "unjust"  system of “white”  supremacy.

 Now, South Africa has a “black”  president, “apartheid”  has been smashed, ”race”, “race relations” “racial” prejudice and “racial” injustices are no longer considered meaningful in the "new republic".

The ambiguities resulting from racialising or colouring the complex contradictory political processes  in South Africa  contributed to confused common sense expressions  as, “blacks”  are rejoicing as they are no longer an oppressed exploited majority by a “racist  white”  minority, “blacks”  are in power ,“whites”  have lost their power. Under the new constitution, a new flag, a new president who is “black” means a miraculous transformation has materialised thereby abolishing all the sufferings endured under the alleged apartheid regime.

In the mass media apartheid was racialised and defined as the cause of all forms of oppression in South Africa to such an extent that a rearrangement of the images and symbols of “blackness”   or/and “whiteness”  within the legal socio-political hierarchical power structure implied

(a) The nature of the nation state that is now under a "black”  leadership is no longer bureaucratic,
coercive nor repressive towards "black"  dissidents or "black"  protest organisations.

 (b) Individuals would give up their tribal and religious loyalties to embrace or/and buy into the idea of "race", "nation"  or "national"  and“racial”  identities.

(c)  The common sense notion “race”  will polarise and unite all individuals signified by skin colour
in spite of ideological, gender, ethnic, occupational, educational and ecological
differences and inequalities.

 (d) The negative features of the capitalist model of  development  such as the private monopoly and
control of the major economic institutions both national and international, socio-economic inequality
and insecurity, discrimination, exploitation, pollution, land degradation, poverty, the production of
unsafe, dangerous and life threatening commodities such as instruments of war and torture and
corruption are no longer significant under “black”  majority rule
(e) “Racial” identity can be mobilised to create a “multi-racial”  society without “racial” inclusion or
exclusion thereby  eliminating “non-racial”  political interests relating to  class exploitation and
conflict, gender inequality, environmental protection and water management.

Despite the hegemony of the popular common sense discourses that reproduces, reinforces and legitimises common sense notions of biological and phenotypical criterion of “race”, “white”  and “black”  for millions of dispossessed persons in South Africa the obvious everyday reality is conditioned by socio-economic inequality and insecurity for the landless labourers, small farmers procuring a feeble existence on overworked exhausted degraded soil, poverty, malnutrition, bitter memories and hatreds of residents in “tribal”  areas, long term unemployment and poverty for the young, religious and tribal bigotry and the disproportionate distribution of wealth, power, ownership and control.

In short, for the majority of South Africans, their “surroundings”  have not been “made human”  by the recent constitutional changes  that was intended to improve the well-being of individuals  “by the power of society”  that Marx elucidated.

SUMMARY AND IMPLICATIONS OF SOME MARXISTS ON RACISM.

The theses asserted by some Marxist  writers are:

(a) Racism as a form of ideology

(b) Racism as racial exploitation and racial prejudice developed with the rise of capitalism and
 nationalism in Europe

(c) Racism is produced by the capitalist bourgeoisie of Europe and North America

(d) Racism matured during the late nineteenth century

(e) Racism and xenophobia are consequences of the capitalist nation state and is employed by the
capitalist bourgeoisie to divide and manipulate the working classes internationally

(f) The concept of reification employed as a means of overcoming the problems of objectivity
involved in the uncritical usage of such terms as “black”, “white”  and ‘race”.

(g) The theoretical importance of historical record in explaining racism as an ideology.

(h) Race is a “paper tiger”  when used as an analytical tool to scrutinise socio-economic relations.

Uncritical essentialist assumptions, phenotypically based stereotypes and crude reductionist over simplifications, have resulted in an acceptance of common sense usage of negatively connotated terms such as "black”, “white”  and “race”  to a reified respectable analytical status in Marxist discourse and literature.

Thus, some Marxists have created dilemmas in perceiving the dynamic vibrant personality of humanity as if it were phenotypically determined by skin colour on one hand, and on the other, alleges that these vibrant human beings racially categorised as “black” in particular are “victims of racism” which benefits capitalism which determines racism.

Also it is unclear whether such terms as “racism”, “victims of racism”, “black”, “white”  or “race”  are adequate expressions to describe, analyse and differentiate the various complex social economic, political, cultural and ecological factors involved in the relations of dominance affecting individuals in their personal, family and community life-styles.

In other words, racism as an epiphenomenal term is unable to explain how and why the alleged “victims of racism” participates, perpetuates and reproduces alienating, degrading and unjust human experiences characterised as ageism, individualism, sexism, familism, elitism, casteism, tribalism, nationalism, fascism and imperialism.

Furthermore is racism a cause or a consequence?.

Is racism part of human nature?

If so, why isn’t so-called “blacks” perceived as perpetuators of racism and so-called “whites”  perceived as “victims”  of racism?.

Can racism be defined without legitimising, reproducing and perpetuating the negatively connotative meanings associated with the idea of race that is so prevalent in everyday common sense discourse?.

Can the words “race”, “white”  and “black”  be employed in analysing racism without individuals buying into the racially connotative meanings associated with these terms?.

Moreover in terms of formulating policies, strategies or movements against racism.
(a)   Is it expedient to challenge the causes of racism or control, lessen, and Limits its effects?

(b) Can racism be abolished without changing the alienating, exploitative and  oppressive socio-
economic structures whose features inferiorises, degrades and terrorises humanity?

 (c) If racism is identified as part of human nature, how is it to be challenged? - By targeting the
human skin?, by way of ethnic or race cleansing?

(d) Can racism be challenged without deconstructing racist images, symbols,  and languages?
i.e. Are human beings “victims” or “survivors”  of  “racism”?

(e) If “blacks” and “whites” are phenotypically racist constructed identities. Can “blacks” or “whites” be anti-racists?

 (f) Is anti-racism  non-racism?

 (g) Are human beings exploited because of, or despite the colour of their shins?

 (h) Is degradation and exploitation the result of a beauty contest of skin colours, or the consequence of socio-economic class inequality, insecurity and conflict?
(i)  Can racism adequately define, analyse and challenge fascism or/and neo-fascism? - The traditional  adversary of Marxism.

Some Marxists are unable to justly appreciate human beings who are survivors of oppression because of a crude, biased, phenotypical and determinist perspective.

 Furthermore, some Marxists identify so-called “blacks”  as an oppressed victimised group by using skin colour as a marker of identification and categorisation as if the colour of the human skin is a wrapping of special values.

 The unjust implication of this positive and negative connotation of binary group perception - “white”/“black”, “evil”/“good”, “oppressor”/“oppressed”  makes invisible the following issues;
(a)   The tyranny and ill-treatment of individuals with so-called “white”  skins perceived as belonging
to the "evil, oppressor, superior" grouping by individuals with so-called “black”  skins identified as
belonging to the "innocent, oppressed, inferior, victimised"  grouping.
(b)   The abuse and exploitation of individuals whether as children or adults by individuals belonging
to the dominant  gender, caste, tribe and class category within the so-called “black”, “white” or
non-"black” groupings - “oppressed by their own Kind”
(c)   Individuals who deconstruct the idea of “race”, who struggle for a “non-racial”, humane  and
civilised existence and life style within civil society and an ecologically friendly environment.

 In other words, some Marxists fail to recognise oppressed humanity fairly that is identified or
categorised as “black”, “white”, “non-black”  and “non-white”  by using the deterministic, essentialised and reified skin colour criterion as a marker of identification.

Briefly, in addition, some Marxists tend to ignore the supreme violence involved in the process of procuring, maintaining and eating the chicken by sympathising with or reifying the colour of its feathers, instead of concentrating or focusing on the meat and how it is eaten, or how it has been cooked and by whom.

Historical materialism asserts that racism is not a product of nature nor a constant of the human personality.

Therefore targeting, focusing on or blaming the alleged victims of oppression or "racism", as if they are the only creators or causers of their predicament, without taking into account other socio-economic, technological (science or information), military, cultural and ecological factors, is not consistent with the historical processes through which real living human individuals exercise their potential to promote change and development.

Human beings are not helpless victims of exploitative and oppressive socio-economic systems that reproduces racism.

 Racism is socially and historically constructed and as such it is conditional on the ability and willingness of individuals to deconstruct, change or reproduce and legitimise relations of power, culture, socio-economic production and ecology.

  A Marxist approach to the analysis of racism will depend on the intellectual competence, analytical objectivity that is free from dogma, prejudice, and uncritical assumptions of professed Marxists.

Bibliography.

John Solomos (1989) 'Race and Racism in Contemporary Britain',  Macmillan Education Ltd.   

 'Collins Dictionary'  (1987)

  Robert Miles, (1982) 'Racism and Migrant  Labour'   Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Robert Miles (1990) 'Racism',  Routledge.

Robert Miles, (1993) 'Racism After Race Relations',  Routledge.

David Mclellan (ed) (1989) 'Karl Marx Selected Writings', Oxford University Press.

Kwame Nkrumah (1964) 'Consciencism', Modern    Reader Paperbacks.

'Geographical'   February (1991).

Paul Gilroy (1987) 'There ain’t no black in the Union Jack',  Unwin Hyman.

David Theo Goldberg (ed) (1990) 'Anatomy of Racism',  University of Minnesota Press.

J. Thornton  (1992) 'African and the Africans’,  Cambridge University Press.

J. Donald and A. Rattansi (1992) ‘Race , Culture and Difference’,  Sage Publications.

 H. H. Johnston (1910), ‘The Negro  In The New World’,  Nethuen & Co. Ltd.

David Brion Davis, (1984), 'Slavery  And Human Progress',  Oxford University Press.