Socialist antisemitism and its discontents in England, 1884–98

Virdee's essay explores the relationship between English socialists and migrant Jews amid the new unionism of the late nineteenth century: a cycle of protest characterized by sustained collective action by the unskilled and labouring poor demanding economic and social justice. Reading this labour history against the grain, with a greater attentiveness to questions of race and class, helps to make more transparent both the prevalence and structuring force of socialist antisemitism, as well as English and Jewish socialist opposition to it. In particular, the essay suggests that the dominant socialist discourse was intimately bound up with questions of national belonging and this directly contributed to a racialized politics of class that could not imagine migrant Jews as an integral component of the working class. At the same time, such socialist antisemitism was also challenged by a minority current of English Marxists whose conceptions of socialism refused to be limited by the narrow boundaries of the racialized nation-state. And they were joined in this collective action by autonomous Jewish socialist organizations who understood that the liberation of the Jewish worker was indivisible from that of the emancipation of the working class in general. With the help of Eleanor Marx and others, these latter strands entangled socialist politics with questions of combatting antisemitism, and thereby stretched existing conceptions of class to encompass the Jewish worker

Un Marxisme sans garanties: Stuart Hall et ce pourquoi la race compte

Stuart Hall mérite d'être lu. Trop longtemps appréhendé avec soupçon par les marxistes plus traditionnels, toujours suspect d'avoir trop concédé au « postmodernisme » et de s'être éloigné du marxisme, Satnam Virdee propose ici de lire l'œuvre de Hall comme une contribution matérialiste cruciale pour comprendre le racisme. Le grand mérite de Hall est d'avoir, selon Virdee, rapproché deux points de vue antithétiques sur la conscience de classe et l'idéologie : Althusser et E.P. Thompson. À rebours des querelles d'écoles au sein du marxisme, Satnam Virdee ébauche les points sur lesquels Hall s'est montré particulièrement fécond, ainsi que les limites de son travail pionnie

Racialized capitalism: an account of its contested origins and consolidation

Undergirded by the perspective of historical materialism stretched in dialogue with black Marxism and Marxist feminism, this article constructs an account demonstrating the significance of racism to the making of modernity. The analytic returns of unthinking Eurocentric sociologies in favour of a more unified historical social scientific approach include the unmasking of the intimate relationship between capitalism, class struggles and racism, particularly how capitalist rule advanced through a process of differentiation and hierarchical re-ordering of the global proletariat. From the 17th century colonisation of Virginia to Victorian Britain and beyond, racism formed an indispensable weapon in the armoury of the state elites, used to contain the class struggles waged by subaltern populations with a view to making the system safe for capital accumulation. Additionally, situating an account of racism within the unfolding story of historical capitalism as against the postcolonial tendency to locate it within the civilizational encounter between the West and the Rest helps make transparent the plurality of racisms, including the racialization of parts of the European proletariat. This explanation of the structuring force of racism and the differentiated ways in which the proletariat has been incorporated into capitalist relations of domination has important implications for emancipatory politics. A race-blind politics risks leaving untouched the injustices produced by historic and contemporaneous racisms. Instead, an alternative approach is proposed, one that invites movements to wilfully entangle demands for economic justice with anti-racism and thereby embrace and demystify the differences inscribed into the collective body of the proletariat by capitalism

Race, class and Roediger’s open Marxism

No abstract available

Some thoughts on the theory, history and politics of race and class, or why class analysis must take race seriously

No abstract available

The second sight of racialised outsiders in the imperialist core

This essay focuses attention on a current of socialist internationalism within imperial Britain and the formative role played by racialised outsiders of Irish Catholic, Jewish and Indian descent in actualising anti-racism and anti-imperialism. The collective memories of colonial subjugation combined with their outsider status within Britain itself endowed them with a second sight that enabled them to see through the usual fog of blood and belonging and act as a leavening agent connecting the struggles of workers of different ethnicities within Britain, as well as with those beyond. The essay concludes with a call to accommodate the emancipatory potential of the racialised outsider position in critical theory and practice. In particular, if contemporary Marxism is to remain relevant, it must be stretched to accommodate the specificity of racism and anti-racism without reducing it to class. The lessons for political practice appear equally compelling: emancipatory politics today need to accommodate how identifications of race are materially inscribed social realities which can facilitate resistance against racism. In that sense, socialist political practice will have to be more intersectional if a sustainable solidarity is to be forged between the ethnically diverse proletariat in the imperialist core, as well as with those beyond

Un "marxisme sans garanties" : Stuart Hall et ce pourquoi la race compte

Stuart Hall mérite d'être lu. Trop longtemps appréhendé avec soupçon par les marxistes plus traditionnels, toujours suspect d'avoir trop concédé au « postmodernisme » et de s'être éloigné du marxisme, Satnam Virdee propose ici de lire l'œuvre de Hall comme une contribution matérialiste cruciale pour comprendre le racisme. Le grand mérite de Hall est d'avoir, selon Virdee, rapproché deux points de vue antithétiques sur la conscience de classe et l'idéologie : Althusser et E.P. Thompson. À rebours des querelles d'écoles au sein du marxisme, Satnam Virdee ébauche les points sur lesquels Hall s'est montré particulièrement fécond, ainsi que les limites de son travail pionnier. Satnam Virdee est professeur de sociologie à l'université de Glasgow. Il est notamment l'auteur de Racism, Class and the Racialized Outsider (2014)

Racism: from the labour movement to the far-right

his report is a reflection on a recent conference, ‘Racism: From the Labour Movement to the Far-Right’, which was held at the University of Glasgow from Friday 5th to Saturday 6th September 2014. The authors discuss the main themes that the conference sought to address, consider the key highlights of the event including a summary of the opening address by Floya Anthias, and offer some suggestions as to how the initiative may be taken forward

Scotland and alternatives to neoliberalism

No abstract available

Un Marxisme sans garanties: Stuart Hall et ce pourquoi la race compte

Stuart Hall mérite d'être lu. Trop longtemps appréhendé avec soupçon par les marxistes plus traditionnels, toujours suspect d'avoir trop concédé au « postmodernisme » et de s'être éloigné du marxisme, Satnam Virdee propose ici de lire l'œuvre de Hall comme une contribution matérialiste cruciale pour comprendre le racisme. Le grand mérite de Hall est d'avoir, selon Virdee, rapproché deux points de vue antithétiques sur la conscience de classe et l'idéologie : Althusser et E.P. Thompson. À rebours des querelles d'écoles au sein du marxisme, Satnam Virdee ébauche les points sur lesquels Hall s'est montré particulièrement fécond, ainsi que les limites de son travail pionnie