CLASS AND RACEof racism within advanced capitalist societies re-
quires further explanation.
Whereas cultural differences have served as a
basis for intergroup conflicts for the entire history
of humanity, the expansion of Europe, starting in
the sixteenth century, set the stage for a new form
of intergroup relations. Never before was con-
quest so widespread and thorough. Nor was it ever
associated with such a total ideology of biological
and cultural inferiority. Modern racism, with its
peudoscientific claims of inferiority, is a unique
phenomenon.
An understanding of European expansion,
and its impact on people of color, begins with an
analysis of capitalism as it developed in Europe.
Capitalism is a system that depends on the private
ownership of productive property. In order to
earn profits on property, the owners depend on
the existence of a nonowning class that has no
alternative but to sell its labor-power to the own-
ers. The owners accumulate wealth through profit,
that is, the surplus they extract from labor. Hence,
a class struggle develops between capitalists and
workers over the rights of capitalists to the surplus.
In Europe, labor came to be ‘‘free,’’ that is,
people were no longer bound by serfdom or other
forms of servitude but were free to sell their labor-
power on an open market to the highest bidder.
Being free in this sense gave European workers a
certain political capacity, even though they were
often driven to conditions of poverty and misery.
Capitalism is an expansionary system. Not
only does it unleash great economic growth, but it
also tends to move beyond national boundaries.
The expansionist tendencies lie in a need for new
markets and raw materials, a search for investment
opportunities, and a pursuit of cheaper labor in
the face of political advances by national labor
forces. European capitalism thus developed into
an imperialistic system (Lenin 1939).
European imperialism led to a virtually total
conquest of the globe. Europe carved up the entire
world into spheres of influence and colonial domi-
nation. The idea and ideology of race and racism
emerged from this cauldron. Europeans construct-
ed a kind of folk-scientific view of human differ-
ences, dividing the world’s human population into
semi-species or ‘‘races.’’ Of course, this division
has no basis in fact, and racial categorization has
been completely discredited. Nevertheless, the idea
of race, and its use in structuring societies along
hierarchical lines, remains exceedingly robust. In
sum, race is strictly a social construction, but one
with profound implications for the way society is
organized.European domination took multiple forms,
from unequal treaties, unfair trade relations, con-
quest, and the establishment of alien rule to anni-
hilation and white settlement in places where once
other peoples had thrived. Imperialism received
ideological justification in beliefs that non-Euro-
pean cultures were primitive, uncivilized, barbar-
ic, and savage, and their religions were pagan and
superstitious. Europeans were convinced that they
had the true religion in Christianity and that all
other peoples needed to be ‘‘saved.’’ The denigration
of other cultures was accompanied by beliefs in
natural, biological inferiority. Dark skin color was
a mark of such inferiority, while white skin was
viewed as more highly evolved. Africans, in par-
ticular, were seen as closer to the apes. These kinds
of ideas received pseudoscientific support in the
form of studies of cranial capacity and culturally
biased intelligence tests (Gould 1981). The totalizing
oppression and dehumanization of colonial domi-
nation is well captured in Memmi’s The Colonizer
and the Colonized (1967).European economic domination had many
aspects, but a major feature was the exploitation of
colonized workers. Unlike white labor, which was
free (in the sense of unbound), colonial labor was
typically subjected to various forms of coercion. As
conquered peoples, colonized nations could be
denied any political rights and were treated openly
as beings whose sole purpose was to enhance
white wealth. Throughout the colonial world, vari-
ous forms of slavery, serfdom, forced migrant
labor, indentured servitude, and contract labor
were common.Not only did European imperialists exploit
colonized workers in their homelands, but they
also moved many people around to other areas of
the colonial world where they were needed. The
most notorious instance was the African slave
trade, under which Africans were brought in bond-
age to the Caribbean area and sections of North
and South America. However, other examples