monteiro - race and empire

7/27/2019 Monteiro - Race and Empire

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RACE A N D EMPIRE:W.E.B. Du Bois and the

US State

THE EVENTS OF SEPTEMBER 1 1 , 2 0 0 1 d i d I lOtbegin the trat isformation of the USstate. They accelerated processes that hadfor almost three decades been taking shape,trausforniiug the US state and political systemtowards an authoritaiian right-witig detnocra-cy. In this respect, th e US s tate, which h-oni itsinception has beeti racialized, is today moreracist, more imperialist and more geared toglobal war than ever in its history. This recon-figuration of the US state establishes the hege-mony of its military indu strial/n ationa l securi-ty and police/domestic control sectors, overwhat might be consider its New Deal, socialwelfare and non-military and non-domesticcontrol sectors. The New Deal and WelfareState dimensions of the state (those dimen-sions associated with the radical bourgeoisreforms brought about in response to theGreat Depre.ssi()n of the 1930s and the CivilRights and Black Power Movements of the1960s) are being downsized, privatized orchminated The largest agencies of the USgovernment are today the Defense Depart-ment and the Depar tment o f HomelandSecurity. To cite no less an authority thanRichard Holbrooke, former Assistant Secre-tary of State and a former US Ambassador tothe United Nations, "the American militaryhas acquired an imprecedented role in thecon duc t of foreign policy"^ This is accountedfor by the exigencies of the global warfareand empire building policies of the Clintonand Bush Administrations, but also by thelogic inherent to neo-liberal globalist eco-

by Anthony Monteirohuman rights are under way in the UnitedStates, allegedly justified by the n ee d forhomeland secutity. This is accompanied by ar ise of pover ty , unemployment , hunger ,imprisonment and disease, especially amongAfrican Americans and other racial lyoppressed groups.W.E.B Du Bois , Race, and the World System

IN ESSENTIAL WAYS, W.E.B. Du Bois in hismajor works provides necessary elementsof a state theory, a theory of the world sys-tem and of crisis. Dtt Bois's work carries anoverarching political meaning in the currenthistorical context. The Souls of Black Folk, finstance, was de.signed to address the politicaltask of the African American struggle and theStruggle for botirgeois democracy at the startof the twentieth century. Besides many of thephilosophical, liistorical and sociological sig-nificances of the text, its contemporary rele-vance is in the manner it addresses the strug-gle for democracy and bourgeois libertiesunder conditions of racialized state power.Even in his conceptualization of bourgeoisdemocratic reforms Du Bois superseded bothprogressivism and socialism. Each were blindto the centrality of race and white supremacyas core dynamics of reaction and conser-vatism; but more, neither saw the state inracialized terms. And while each of thesereform movetneiits foresaw a crucial role forthe state in bringing about reform in the polit-ical and economic systems, neither under-


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Scholars sttch as David Levering Lewis:^) and Alex Schafcr (2001) sugge.st thatDu Bois was highly influenced by the norma-tive and reform orientation of his profe.ssorsin Berlin, in particular Clustav von Schmollerand Adolph Wagner, hoth leading figures inthe school of historical economics, Du Boiswas a graduate student in Germany hetween1892 and 1894.- Th e Germ an historicalschool of economics assumed a major rolefor the state in the organization of a jttst anddemocratic society; this in stark contrast tothe laissez-faire economics of the Anglo-American school. In defining the prohlem ofthe twentieth century as the color line andthe struggle against it, he was anticipatinghoth the civil rights and anti-colonial strug-gles, albeit in their botirgeois democraticdimensions. However, Dn Bois was mindfulin Souls of the ruin of botirgeois democraticpolitical and economic relationships in theUS after the long period of chattel .slavery,the Civil War and the overturning of Recon-struction. And thus he viewed the onslaughtagainst democracy as rooted in the racistove rturning of Reconsti uction and the forc-ing of the fo rme r slaves back towards slavery.

THE COURTS, he would argue, had becomea universal device for the reenslavementof blacks. The second chapter of Souls "Ofthe Dawn of Freedom" creates a paradigmwhich suggests that Reconstruction's greatbenefit was its demonstrating, often in limit-ed ways, the possibility of arranging bour-geois democratic poli t ical and economicrelationships upon non-racist foundations.The failure of Reconstruction, therefore,made it inevitable (a point that would befully developed in Black Reronstruftion) tbatthe problem for democracy in the twentiethcentury would be the problem of the colorline; or more precisely the problem of raceand r ace r e l a t ions h ips . The i r r e fu tab leassumption of the enterprise in Souls is thatthe overturning of Reconstruction inaugtt-rated a new stage of the racialized US stateand a racialized (or herrennolk) democracy.Plessy V. Ferguson (1896) enshrined these rela-tionships as constitutional and thus protect-ed by law. Dti Bois conceived of this problemas a global problem, which he would overthe course of bis studies conceptualize as a

RACE was both the unfinished business ofthe LTS nation and the ultimate test ofits creed. By the time of the writing of BlackReconstruction (1935) it is apparent that, forDu Bois, nothing short of revolutionarystruggle wotild bring about the realization ofdemocracy for black folk, especially the blackproletariat, A decade later in Color and Democracy: Colonies and Peace (1945) the world sys-tem implications of the struggle for democra-cy arc asserted. The world system, he argvtes,is profoundly and-democratic, dictatorial andorganized upon pr inciples not that farremoved from fascism.^ The while nations ofEurope and America defend a world systemthat locks tlie majority of humatiity in a per-petual crisis state, defined by poverty, disease,little or no education and super-exploitation;which at the same time stipports luxury forthe world's white minority.

The political and moral agency of democ-racy, in the end, insists Du Bois, is not to befound in the "Western democracies" buta m o n g t h e c o l o n i z e d a n d o p p r e s se dthroughout the world. And, finally, the crisisof the world system would be resolvedthrough the anti-colonial struggle, economicliberation and the rearranging of the world'spolitical and economic relations upon anti-racist, anti-imperialist, socialist and democra-tic principles (see Black Rfconstruction, Coloand Democracy: Colonies and Peace, The Wand Africa, The Autobiography of W.E.B. DuBm.v).' This process, in the long view, wouldconstitute a fundamental change of epochsfrom white supremacy and colonial imperial-ism to global democracy.

M OST .scHOLARSHii' ha s u nders to od th eword problem in the sentence, "Theproblem of the twentieth century is theproblem of the color line" conventionally.The word problem has been interpreted tomean just that, a problem. I would stiggestthat the word problem in the Du Boisian oeu-vre means crisis. In his work "The AfricanRoots of the War" (1915), what Du Bois isclearly addressing are the crises in the worldsystem brought about by the intensificationof discrimination along the color line and


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and world relationships, rooted in the "prob-lem of the twentieth century" must beunderstood as a crisis which leads to war,repression and fascism. At the core of theproblem of race relationships are the crisesthese relationships produce.

The color line as an explanatory categorygoes a considerable distance in explainingsocial, political, cultural, technological andother relationships and events that configurethe world system. Race, the color line andrace relationships arc the context of theworld system. At the same time, the worldsystem is a set of concrete mechanismsthrough which the color line is actuated; thecolor line configtires the relationships of thedarker to the lighter races of humanity. Putanother way, it configures the relationshipsof humanity to itself. Du Bois's 'The AfricanRoots of tbe War" (1915), Black Recon.struc-tion (1935) , Color and Democracy: Colonies andPeace (1945) and TheW(yrld and Africa (1947)are studies of crises in the US and world sys-tems. The resolution of the crisis of race iscentral to resolving the crisis of the modernworld system in Du Boisian logic. For DuBois this requires more tban a change in thenature of economic relationships, as it were,from capitalism to socialism. That changecould be the start of a deeper attack uponthe color line and thus a fundamental stagein resolving the crisis of human relationshipsand of the world system. If not, a change ofmodes of production might constitute a newway to arrange the world system and thusrace relationships, rather than overthrowingthe regime of white supremacy. This logicinsists both upon the centrality of Africa andAsia and the anti-colonial struggle in remak-ing the world system; and rejects an econo-mistic explanation that privileges economicrelationships in measuring fundamentalchange.''

IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COLD WAR and theglobal crisis created by the conflictbetween the capitalist and socialist systems,Du Bois argued that race and the coloniza-tion and neo-colonization of Africa and Asiaare foundational to the world systems crisis.

tem to capitalism is its relationship toAfricawhether the leaders of socialismwould deal with Africa upon anti-racist anddemocratic principlesor seek to rearrangethe world system in such ways as to benefitfrom the oppression and neo-colonization ofAfrica. Would socialism promise to its work-ing people a lifestyle similar to that of whitepeople in the West? Would it as a system beover-determined by efforts to resolve inter-nal political contradictions through organiz-ing its social relationships upon consumerist,individualist and ultimately white suprema-cist principles? Would the ideal be a social-ism of luxury? A socialism at odds withhumanity's non-white majority? In the end,the failure of European socialism is its failureto resolve the problem of white supremacywithin its societies and to Join humanity'snon-white majority in a consistent, indeed,revolutionary, struggle to alter the world sys-tem itself in such ways as to occasion a globalredistribution of wealth based upon worlddemocracy. This framework informs myunderstanding of US imperialism at the cur-rent stage and helps explain contemporaryevents.

The New Imperialism

PHILIP BOBBITT (2004), a defender ofAmerican imperialism, writes thatGeorge W. Busb is "the authentic voice ofthe liberal imperialist." An imperialist who,according to Bobbitt, is concerned with aworld of prosperity, women's and minorityrights, secularization and democracy. Thesepolicies, he insists, "take the doctrine of'democratic engagement' of the first Bushadministration, and the doctrine of 'democ-ratic enlargement' ofthe Clinton administra-tion, one step further. It might be calleddemocratic transformation'. Or, it might becalled 'liberal imperialism.'" And tben, heasks, "What is wrong with this noble idea?"This article will, in part, attempt to suggest"what is wrong with this noble idea."

The current moment of empire and thenew relationship of forces witbin the UnitedStates are crystallized in the Bush Adminis-


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Act. The Justice Dep artmen t and the H ome-land Security Department are designed asthe command centers of the at tack uponcivil and political rights. International lawand international in.stitutions, at the samet ime, are under assaul ted as the BushAdm inistration declares its right to wage warLiuilaterally anywhere in the world. TheAdministration has literally declared itselfoutside of the bounds of international lawand thus according to its own definitions, arogue state. In economic terms, a policy shiftfrom Keynesian state econom ic an d financialplanning to a neo-liberal Friedmanite freemarket, has been iustitutioualized.

THAT HAVING BEEN SAID, modern capital-ism, bourgeois democracy, globalizadonand contemporary pop culture are virtuallyincomprehensible wi thout understandingthe modern racialized capitalist state. Norcan the new imperialism be understood with-out understanding its historical anchorage inthe racialized US state. While these are issuesthat engage state and political theory theyare also matters that must be investigatedhistorically. Th e social psychological an d ide-

ological dimensions are particularly impor-tiint. It is safe to say that the American popu-lation, particularly white people, views thecurrent moment as a new and un.safe fron-tier. There is a perceptible transformation ofthe psychological and ideological iruptdsesamong white Americans and something thatrese m bles a collect ive traum atiza t ioi i isoccurring as the business of empire comeshom e to roost.The psycho log ica l and ideo log ica lmoment is nourished by the concerns thatordinary white people have with their ownvulnerability and their awareness that it isthey who are called upon to make significantsacrifices in the name of empire. It is in thismilieu that we witness the attempt of leadingelements of the state to forge a nationalidentity and sense of purpose geared to fitthis new moment. Indeed, the conscious andsubconscious dimensions of the American

belief system are historically constituted. Onthe one hand they are variants of extreme

supremacy that acknowledge the contin-gency of the individual upon the largergroup. This dialectic between the white raceand white supremacy on the one hand, andindividualism on the other, accounts for cer-tain of the contradict ions of act ion audthought among white folk. This is pardcular-ly pronounced as regards economic and classinterests.In the priority hierarchy of most whitepeople class and economic intere.sts are ofsecondary or tertiary significance in thedetermination of poli t ical behavior; racetrumps class in defining consciousness andpolitical behavior.

THE PSYCHOLOGICAL and ideological reali-ties of ordinary white folk are filteredthrough the prisms of race, nationalism andwhite supremacy. The perceived threats,therefore, are viewed as threats to white peo-ple as a collecdve and not solely to the eco-nomic interests of the nation, or even to spe-cific class interests. For them the Americandreamscape has been sullied and tarnished.Their sense of security and the expectationof privacy are wounded. In tlieir minds, their

dream world has to be redeemed iu orde r thatthe American psyche be restored. In the d e e pest sense tlie privileges of whiteness and whitesupremacy are perceived as being underattack. Hence, the defense of America and ofdemocracy is at the core a defense of the glob-al rights of white people, articulated variotislyas defenses of civilization or the West.What we have is the reassertion of thenotion of civilized and uncivilized nations.Civilized nations are either Western or thosewhose elites adhere to or adopt Western civi-lizational values. Hence, the war against ter-rorism is to uphold Western civilization.However, once it is connected to its objec-tive, an American global empire, it may beproperly viewed as a war to universalize w hitesupremacy and to establish the United Statesas its begemon. This inevitably leads to tear-ing up of the internaiioual legal frameworkestablished since 1945; in particular, the UN

Charter and its commitments to decoloniza-t ion and universal ly recognized human


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Great Nations system of the nineteenth andearly twentieth centuries. As is clear tliis sys-tem harkens back to the time of rampant col-onization. Clusters of right-wing commenta-tors are either calling for the US to leave theUN or to severely minimizes its participation.Others more boldly assert the need to for analternative international organization calledthe League of Democracies, which woulddivide the v^forld between the so-called civi-lized nations and the less than civilized oruncivilized nations.

The US State's Evolutionary History

THE GENERAL HISTORIGAL TREND is for t h eUnited States to move to the right interms of foreign and domestic policies. Thisinexorable movement, with temporarymoments of slow down in the 1930s and1940s, and the 1960s, has reached anextremely dangerous moment. The over-turning of Reconstrnction inaugurated thismovement.' Race and white supremacy inthe post-slavery history of the US have soshaped the nature of class and social rela-tionships and thus of consciousness that themost significant trend among white folk is tothe right and conservatism. Hence, supportfor most state policies of war and racism.

There is yet another way to understandstate policy, which is as a manifestation of agrowing crisis of the global economic system.World systems theorists as varied as VladimirIlyich Lenin, W.E.B. Du Bois, ImmanuelWallerstien, Samir Amin and Andre (iuntherFrank have argued that the world system hasbeen in crisis since the beginning of thetwentieth century. According to world sys-tems theorists, this has produced war, eco-nomic depressions and revolution. This ideaof a crisis of the global system is periodizedin two ways: one, from the standpoint of eco-nomic and business cycles and secondly fromtbe standpoint of large socio-political phe-nomena, such as wars, national liberationstruggles and revolutions. However, botbtypes of phenomena tend to overlap in histo-ry and can be viewed as part of the multipledeterminations of historical reality. Certainly,

empire fits a moment of economic crisis andthe challenges to US hegemony by forces asdisparate as China's industrial development,India's technological challenge and the anti-authoritarian movements in the Middle East.C^omnientators such as Chalmers Johnson(2004) are explicit in arguing that the Bushdoctrine represents an effort to resolve pro-found problems in tlie global system.

WHITENESS is a dynamic and crucial fac-tor of state formation. TraditionalMarxian state theory understands state for-mation in tbe US as determined by class con-flict. Hence, the class of slave owners,bankers, merchants and small capitalistsseized state power in the American Revolu-tion in the name of democracy and theAmerican nation. In this construal the Amer-ican Revolution was a bourgeois democraticrevolution, Du Boisian hi.storiography assertsthat a racialized class, made up of slavehold-ers, merchants, bankers, small farmers andworkers (see Suppressiun of the African SlaveTrade (1896), Black Reconstruction (1935)seized power and deployed il to maintain themain form of propertyslavesas the basisfor nationa] economic development andwhite privilege.

It is significant that Du Bois defines theslaves in Suppression as workers and inBlackReconstruction as a proletariat. Here rests hisvisionary reconceptualization of the classstruggle and revolutionary agency. Indeed, itis the industrial working class or the proletari-at as suggested by Marx that constitutes therevolutionary agency of modernity. However,Du Bois will initiate an act of profound theo-retical displacement in Suppression and mostdecisively in Black Reconstruction, argtiing thathe former .slaves are the racialized proletariatof America, and the principal agency of pro-gressive and revolutionary change.

E VEN IN THE EARLY PERIODS of American his-tory, in relationship to the slaves thewhite proletariat and petty botirgeoisie con-stituted a nascent labor aristocracy, whichdefines its social being in opposition to theblack proletariat. Therefore, the dominance


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wealth, gave a racialized definition and identi-ty to the slaves, and to the classes that make upwhite people. In fact, the racialized dimensionof these identi ties is overd etermin ing of oth ersocial relationships. To use Maixist language,the bourgeoisie in ihe American context (aswell as in Europe, Australia, New Zealand andSou th A fnca) is first wh ite. T h e wo rking class-es are, therefore, racially identified. All classesand strata of white people become identifiedas a sepiu-ate race


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people of black slaves, workers, sharecrop-pers and middle classes. The betrayal of theNegro, to use Rayford Logan's phrase, is crit-ical in every moment of state formation andlegitimization in American history. NoelIgnatiev's s t t idy How The Irish Became Whiteand David Roediger 's The. Wages of Whitenessare recent explanation of the consequencesof the white working class's betrayal and itsrole in the legitimization of whiteness.Ignatiev says, "In the combinadon of South-ern planters and the 'plain republicans' ofthe North the Irish were to become a key ele-ment. The truth is not, as some historianswould have it, that slavery made it possible toextend to tbe Irish the privileges of citizen-ship, by providing another group for them tostand on, but the reverse, that the assimila-don of the Irish into the white race made itpossible to maintain slavery" (1995:69).

M ARY FRANCES BERRY (1994) takes tbestory further, urging that the US stateand Constitution were forged in the struggleto contain black resistance. The logic ofBerry's position is that whiteness and theracialized state function to suppress blackresistance and maintain blacks as a "sub-pro-letariat." Leronne Bennett, Jr. in his workForced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln's WhiteDream (2000) argues that through it all Lin-coln was unprincipled regarding the free-dom of the slaves and had he lived beyond1864 would have, like Jefferson, slaughteredthe ideals of the nation upon the alter ofwhite supremacy. Lincoln, in Bennett's nar-rative, was another of a long line of whitebetrayers of blacks. What is missing in Ben-nett's account is that Lincoln as Presidentwas first and foremost a defender of theracialized state, and his behavior was bothconstrained and facilitated by tbat state.Berry's account is as close as one gets in theconfines of academic discourse to arguingthat the US state is a racist state.

Finally, the crucial moment in definingwhite rights and black denial and henceupdating the US Constitution to reflect thenew stage of US racial and economic life wasthe famous Plessy v. Ferguson Aecmon of 1896.

the foundation of US Constitutional law andthat whiteness is essentially a form of proper-ty to protected under the Constitution.

Legal Evolutions of Whiteness

The legal evolution of whiteness beginswith the three-fifths clause of the Constitutionand is perfected through multiple politicaland Constitutional interpretations and rul-ings. Among these are the Dred Scott Decision(1857), Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and mosnotably the recent interpretations of the USSupreme Court holding that the equal protec-tion clause of the fourteenth Amendmentapplies equally to white men as to blacks.Native Americans and other peoples of color.

White (or American) nationalism is, inthis configuration, the political manifesta-tion of whiteness. The racialized US state isthe central political organ of white power. Itis, however, a complex network of relation-ships and socio-political forces. It is a site ofintense political and ideological conflict. It isneither sui generis, nor above the politicaland economic realities of the historical,socio-political and ideological contexts with-in which it exists. Thus it is possible toobserve the command and control functionsof tbe US state as well as its mediation func-tions. Whereas liberal theorists generallvpoint to the mediation or "above class" func-tions of the state (see John Rawls, Theory of

Justice and Robert Nozick, Anarchy, Slate andUtopia), Marxists and other radical theoristspoint to the command and control ftmctionsas primary to the definition of a stale.

IT IS CLEAR that both radical and liberalcommentators on the US state can makea case that from the standpoint of theory theUS state is both liberal (in tbe sense of aboveclass) and class-based. However, the deeperissue is how the state functions to configure,defend and promote race and race relationsat particular historic moments. In thisrespect neither the liberal nor traditionalradical views are adequate. Wliat is called foris an understanding of the US state as aracialized mechanism that is the principal


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white people over non-whites , especial lyblack people, it functions to mediate classconflict and fissures among whites and toexert, more than not, command and controlfunctions with respect to blacks. This situa-tion is not only deeply contradictory, but alsoprofoundly ironical. Blacks, the spearhead ofmost of the important democratic reforms inUS history, have benefited least from democ-racy. Remaining outside of the social con-tract, excluded from the liberal frameworkconstructed and defended by the state andthe chief objects ofthe state's command andcontrol functions, they appear almost as astateless people, somewhat like the Palestini-ans or black South Africans under apartheid.The racialized dimension of the US state,dialectically, compels its class dimension tobe contingent, indeterminate and fluid. Thevery fluid and dynamic nature of race andwhiteness, their changing modes of politicaland social identities, predetermine certainindeterminacy with respect to the formationsand development of the racial ized s tate.Hence, rather than being a stable entity theracialized state is dynamic, somewhat tmsta-ble and an ever evolving structu re.

D t.MOGRAPHic CHANGES in the US popula -tion, resulting from immigration andlow birth rates among w hites, force the needto rede fine whiteness in such ways as to guar-antee a white majority as a condition of legit-imization of white authori ty. Non-blackimmigrants are faced with complex negotia-tions between anti-black racism and white-ness. Many Latinos and Asians are so posi-tioned to become in a generation white, orat least Iionorary, or near-whites.Heterarchical, o r mtiltileveled logics of socialstructural formation, are what we see evidencedin the formation of the racialized state in thehlstoriatl .setting of the US. Hence, the prcKess-es that unfold are far more complex than thehierarchical top down logics usually identifiedwith state formation logics in Marxist and leftdiscotirse. Du Bois in Black Recomtrudion identi-fied this heterarchical logic and suggested thattlie strategy for the achievement of botirgeoisdemocratic rights by black folk would require

suggested that black folk seen as strategic actorscould alter the political landscape and in sodoing maniptiiate time, i.e. the rhythms andsequences of events. (For Dn Bcjis on this aspectsee Lemmert [2001]. Kontopolous (1993:236)speaks of this situation as heterarchy whereinstructures stich as the state are determined inand through contingencies and indetermina-cies. Hence the logic of racialized state forma-tion rather than top down and hierarchical isheterarchical, meaning top down and bottomup at the same time.'"

THIS IS THE SITUATION w ithin which thedynamics of state formation occur at thepresent, post September 11, 2001 moment; amoment of political fluidity, war, militarism andeconomic transformation and uncertainty;However, the theoretical defenders of theliberal state and its potential to stand apartand mediate race and class conflict are alsodefenders of the notion of a colorblind stateand thus are themselves blind to the histori-cally constituted racially determined natureof the US state. It is they, in the end, not theUS state, who are colorblind. This color-blindness itself, as Charles Mills points out,entrenches white privilege." In being blindto the racial nature of the state they fail tosee the profound command and controlftmctions of the state, which are overwhelm-ingly constructed upon and defmed by theUS state's role as the defender of racializedsocial relationships. The liberal democraticframework should have a sign outside of itsdoor that reads, "For Whites Only."

Bernard Magtibane (1996) sbows that theracialized state in South African was con-structed on the basis of a race-class dialectic.Th e pure class analysis, he points ou t, canno texplain the racial factor in its formation.However, like the US state, it was profoundlymalleable and entangled in a set of contextsthat changed over historical time. Du Bois'sBlark Rf!construction is bes t im de rs to od as astudy of the construction, deconstructionand reformation of the racialized state inorder to reestablish white power over the for-mer slaves, the work force in general and thenation. Du Bois shows this was a necessary


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iiis book. Race and Civilization: Rebirth of BlackCentrality, Clarence J. Munford (2001) tracestbe ideological roots of tbe racialized state toEurope and European ideolog). He assertstbat the Euro-American state is tbe principalagency of wbite civilizational power in themodern world. As stich, it is connected tomore tban class power, but to the moreendtiring cultural and civilizational patternsthai are based on wbite stipremacy.

B I SIDES HISTORICAL, sociological and philo-sophical studies of tbe racialized stateand state theory, the nature of mass polidcalmobilization to legitimate tbe state confirmsits racialized nature. Clearly tbe legitimiza-tion of the American state rests upon abroad wbite consensus and the mobilizationof tbat consensus by tbe principal institu-tions of white power, including tbe mainpol i t i ca l pa r t i e sthe Democra t ic andRepublican partiestbe media, religiousinstitutions, labor organizations, rigbt-wingorganizations, even liberal organizations andwom en's organizations, to name but a few.I

N FACT, tbe racialized state achieves legiti-macy to tbe degree tbat it resolves tbeclass, etbnic and gender problems and con-tradictions among wbite people. In otberwords, tbe state meditates tbese socio-eco-nomic, etbnic, gender and politico-ideologi-cal fissures in ways that races trump tbese fis-stires in tbe politics of the nation. In tbisregard, I define tbe mediation of class issuesto mean not only economic class issues, butabove all ideological class issues. Tbus Du

Bois's idea of a wage for wbiteness, a non-material or ontological wage, is crucial tound erstand ing tbe legitimization of the state.Seymour Lipset writes, "A system in wbicbtbe support of different parties corre.spondstoo closely to basic sociological divisions can-not continue on a democratic basis, for sucba development would reflect a state of con-flict among groups so intense and clear cutas to rule out all possibility of compromise(1959:93)." When Lipset in tbis cla.ssic state-ment references sociological differences beis referring to economic and ideological dif-

in a certain way mtiltiparty, consisting ofcoalitions of parties based on sectionalism,economic interests, programs and class con-s t i tuencies) s t ruc tures tba t compete toacbieve tbe upper hand in determining themodalities by whicb wbite privilege is dis-pensed and defended. Tbey cooperate tolegitimize a wbite consensus.

Once class is no longer an i.ssue and work-ing-class seizure of state power is resolved,and wben tbe state is legitimized tbrougbdemocratic and electoral processes, tbe ques-tion is wbat tben defines tbe state and wbomdoes it operate for and against. '- The twosources of tbe state's legitimization are, first,the fear (real and imagined) of domesticunrest sparked by blacks and the globalthreat eitber from international communismin tbe past, or anti-imperialist and anti-glob-alization movements and militant Islam intbe present. And second, tbat tbe subde yetopen message of tbe elite representatives ofthe racialized state is tbat it defends whiteprivilege and wbiteness against tbese domes-tic and foreign tbreats.'"*

Du Bois and Bourgeois Democracy:A History of the United StatesD u BOIS STATES in Black Reconstruction,"The record of tbe Negro worker dur-ing Reconstruction presents an opportunityto study inductively tbe Marxian tbeory oftbe s ta te (1992:381) ." Char les Lemmert(2000:222) is rigbt when he insists tbat BlackReconstruction "thinks race tbrougb in moreenduringly substantial ways" tban The Souls of

Black Folk. It is, moreover, global in its scopeand its intellectual and ideological implica-tions. In thinking about Reconstruction, DuBois was also thinking about tbe present andfuture of race, democracy, class conflict andtbe state. In Black Reconstruction be goesbeyond tbemes tbat bad appeared in his JohnBrown (1909): instirrectionary violence, thepolitical and ideological agency of tbe slavesand state power. In Black Reconstruction DuBois openly discusses tbe possibility of tbedictatorsbip of tbe proletariat in severalstates of tbe former Confederacy, counter-


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what we today would call racialized relation-ships of production. At the core of this set ofproduction relationships is what he called "awage for whiteness." It is a work of theory andempirical research. Its point is to talk about thefuture. The paradigm it presents is revolution-ary and tiansgressive. It establishes a frame-work for a larger revolutionary research pro-ject concerning US democracy, the racializedstiite and the relationship of class and class con-flict to race and race conOict. It carries enor-mous predictive power. Wliich is to say, its cate-gories of analysis provide a way to explain andindeed predict the modalities and regulatoryprinciples of institutions, social structtires ands


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s tance perhaps ref lected pract ical necess i tygiven tha t b lacks were a lmos t comple te lypow er les s an d d i se nf ra nch i sed an d l iv ingunder what was virtually a fascist dictatorshipin the southern states.

D i; BOIS'S PROFESSIONAL CAREER started inthe per iod of the Nadir , when blackshad been complete ly deprived of c ivi l andh u m a n r i g h t s . T h e j u s t i f i c a t i o n f o r th i sdenial was that blacks were less than human,w i t h o u t h i s t o r y , a n d h a d n o s t a n d i n g a sequal cit izens within society. As a poli t icaltext Dti Bois 's 1897 speech before the Ameri-c a n N e gro A c a de my " T he C ons e rva t i on o fR aces" is a defense of the r ights of cit izen-ship for blacks based on their being part ofhuman history and civil ization. Likewise, thepo l i t i c a l a nd i de o l og i c a l me a n i ng o f TheSouls of Black Folk shotild be read as a passion-ate defense of the civil and human rights ofblack folk wi thin the context of bourgeoisdemocracy . The a rgument made in SouLs and"The C onse rvat ion of R aces" is that blackshad made fundamental contr ibut ions to UScul ture and the shaping of i t s democracy ,were in fac t a t once the mos t cons i s t en tdemocratic force in the nation, but ironicallyw e r e t h e m s e l v e s w i t h o u t f ul l l e g a l a n dhuman rights. He insists this was attested toby thei r col lect ive s t r ivings ; making blackfolk the best defenders of the spiri t of theDec la ra t ion of Independence .

Du Bois argues that the current s i tuationof blacks was occasioned by the overturn ofReconstruction and the return, as he says, ofblacks back toward a new form of slavery.The cour t s , he poin t s out , had become theuniversa l device for the reens lavement ofblacks. Du Bois's intellectual work is overar-chingly poli t ical and confronts him not justwith the color l ine, but the racialization ofsociety's hegemonic political and social insti-tution, the state.

D u B O I S U N D E R S TO O D tha t the modern USstate was bo th l iberal an d racia l ized,which meant that he had observed the con-t r a d i c t i on be t w e e n e xpa nd i ng de moc ra t i crights for whites and the equally significant

found in European states as well. The differ-ence was that E urop ean powers primarily exer-cised the racialized dimension of state powerin their colonies and in wars of national con-quest and suppression (see Du Bois's "AfricanRoots of the War") . The uniqueness of theA merica n situation is that both features wereexercised wi thin the nat ional boundaries ofthe US nation-state. The liberal view is that tlies t a te cons t i tu tes a ne t i t ra l p layer s t a ndin gapart from, or above race and class, as tbelegal arbi ter of societa l re la t ionships . Theproto-fascis t , authori tar ian view is that thestate is an op en instrum ent o fth e interest of arace-class in its struggle for liberty, nationalconsolidation and progress. These views coex-ist and are mutually supportive. The l iberalview is almost solely associated with social con-tract theory and with the liberal view of thestate adv ance d by Jo h n Rawis (1971)."^ Th eproto-fascist or authoritarian view is as Ameri-c a n as J e f f e r s o n , A n d r e w J a c k s o n a n dLincoln."' '

Moreover , whi le present throughout DuBois's early works, including T/w Stnils of BlackFolk, is a clear predispo sit ion to su pp or t th einsurrect ionary path to changing the racia l -ized American state; this aspect becomes morepronounced in his writing after 1920, reachingits peak in Black Reconstruction. His view wotildsupersede several extant socialist and commu-nist constructions. O n the o ne han d, his viewwould supersede the Fabian idea that the stateplays a technical function and organizes tlieintellectual resources of society for the pur-pose of advancing the technical and socialre l a t io ns hip s of society."* I t would a lso gobeyond the classical Marxist-Leninist position,that the state is die concentrated expression ofthe repressive power of the dominant class. Insuperseding these views Du Bois would insistthat the Western state was racialized and thuscons t i tu ted the concent ra ted power of thewhite race and hence defended existing racerelationships within their national boundariesand internat ional ly through colonial ism andimperialism.

THERE EMERGES from th e an aly tic d im en -sion of his work th e para m otin t ro le of


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slave rebellions and insurrections, tbe role oftbe Haitian Revolution and i ts leader, Tous-sa in t L 'Ouver ture cont r ibu ted to Du Bois ' sconclusion tbat tbe role of tbe wbite masses intbe bistory of resistance to repression was exag-gerated by historians and bad not measured upto tbe maroon and slave re.sistance. Du Bois'sstartling view tbat tbe slaves refusal to workafter 1862 constituted a general strike repre-sented a revolutionary approacb to Americanbistory writing. From tbis the sense tbat the cri-sis of slavery from 1860 to 1880 cons tituted arevolutionaiy situation and diat black folk werethe principal agents of revolutionary changelead logically to tbe bypotbesis tbat in severalsoutbern states a "dictatorsbip of tbe proletari-at" to use bis language, could have possiblyem erged . It is as imp ortan t to exam ine bowtbese ideas worked tbemselves out in strategy,tactics, organization and politics. Tbe bulk ofb i s work addre s s ing tbe pres s ing ne ed forblacks to achieve bourgeois democratic rigbtsand liberties as a part of the struggle for fullliberation, would require practical day-to-dayorganization, education and agitation.

Du Bois's organizational work speaks aboveall else to bis attempt to implement bis ideas.In every stage of bis career be was in someorganization, or organizing and edit i t ig somepolit ical or scbolarly jo ur n al . How ever, it isapparent tbat be ful ly unders tood tbat tbepath of bourgeois democracy for blacks wouldnot proceed as i t bad in Etirope or for tbatmatter as it had for wbites in tbe United States.It would be, in tbe end, a struggle for bour-geois democratic rigbts witliout tlie leadersbipof an existing or aspiring bourgeoisie. It wouldbe as be concepttialized it in Souls a strugglefor tbese rigbts by a peo ple. Th e texture of tbisstruggle was similar to wbat becam e tb e nation-al liberation struggles of th e mid twentietb cen-tury. At tbe s tar t of tbe twent ie tb centuryta tber tban a revolut ionary path to acbievetbese rigbts tbe reform patb was tbe only avail-able o ptio n available to blacks.'"'

Th e Con tempo ra ry American S ta te

THE ORIGINS of tbe m o d e r n A m er ic anstate can be traced roughly to tbe end of

c oda a nd t be i na ugur a t i on o f t be mode r nstate system in tbe US. Tbe Soutb is back intbe Union and blacks are being pi tshed backinto a new form of slavery. Tbe US is again acont inental nat ion. America 's vic tory in tbeSpanish .American War is the nodal point intbe poli t ical and ideological consolidation ofth e US s ta te as racia l ized a nd im per ia l is t ;seeking global reacb. Tbeodore Roosevel t ' spresidency (1901-1909) and with it tbe styleof tbe strong man executive wbo is at once am a n o f a c t i on , v i go r, a n d a n i n t e l l e c t ua ldefined tbe poli t ical and personal character-i s t i c s a s soc ia ted wi tb contempora ry Amer i -c a n e xe c u t i ve l e a de r s b i p . T be p r e s i de nc yf rom Tbeodore Rooseve l t ' s t ime unt i l nowhas usurped Congress iona l power , usua l lyjustifying tbis by a reference to one or anotb-e r c r is is t ha t de m a n de d c e n t r a l i z e d s t a t eleadersb ip .

By tbis time tbe L'S was second only to Eng-land as an indu strial na tion a nd sea power.Tbe two-party system became tbe institutionalframework tbroitgb wbicb ideological and psy-c b o l o g i c a l m o b i l i z a t i o n o f t b e m a s s e soccurred. Appeals to wbiteness. Manifest Des-tin)^'^ and scientific racism"' were fasbioned togive a progressivist cover to tbis mobilization.(See Audrey Smedley, Race in North America:OrigiTu and Evolution of a Worldineio [191] andTukufu Zuberi , Thicker Than Blood: How RacialStatistics Lie, [cbapter 1]) Tbe centrality of tbisperiod in defining tbe twentietb-century USnation-state is being exam ined by any n um berof establisbment bistorians. Warren Zimmer-ma n ' s First Great Triumph: How Americans MadTheir Country a Great Power tells a tale of tbemen who cbanged US state policy and ideolo-gy in sucb ways as to prepare it to asstime arole on tbe global stage. I detect a direct lin-eage to tbe unilateralist policies an d pre sen twar of tbe cu rre nt Btisb Adm inistration fromtbat per iod and tbe pres idency of TbeodoreRoosevelt

W ITH THE PRESIDENCY of F ra nkli n D e la noRoosevelt and tbe New Deal, tbe state astbe guarantor of tbe economy's bealtb and astbe principle regulator of social and econom-ic processes was es tabl isbed. Keynes ianism


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same time Congress's power became pro-foundly diminished. The Cold War occa-sioned a renewal of the political and ideologi-cal rationale for the US state as theinstrument of US imperialism and the globalreach of its power. The nineteenth-centurydoctrine of Manifest Destiny, and the tropethat white Americans were a chosen people,became a global doctr ine in the struggleagainst "communism" This was best enunciat-ed in the Truman Doctrine, which informseach stage of the American struggle against"the threat of communism." The scope ofManifest Desdny included the vast majority ofthe world's peoples in Africa, Asia and LadnAmerica. The Social Darwinist aspects of thisdoctrine were clear to any who would dare tolook. Twentieth-century post World War IIManifest Destiny targeted Africa as tlie princi-pal site of the Cold War conflict.

THE CURRENT PHASE of the form ation ofthe US state begins roughly with theReagan Adminis t ra t ion . The ba lancebetween tbe Welfare and Warfare aspects ofthe US state, which had been m ainta inedbetween 1945 and 1980, was upse t in favor ofthe military-industrial side. One could speakof the period up to the first Reagan Adminis-tration as one where the policy and philo-sophical line on the state's role in the econo-my as a Keynesian-neo-classical synthesiswherein the state serves the free market sys-tem and at the same time maintains the bal-ance between classes and social strata withinthe white population."'^ It was, therefore, abarrier to class conflict among whites, whileholding to its racialized. repressive and con-trol dimension vii-d-vis blacks. Thus, thetwenty-three year period of shifting the bal-ance of state power increasingly to the mili-tary industrial and police dimensions of thestate has been completed. The process lead-ing to this moment has been uninterrupted.Both parties supported it, albeit, with differ-ing rhetoric, programs and tactics for achiev-ing it. As .such the competition dimension ofthe two-party system was lessened and thedifferences are today so slight as to be incon-sequential. Milton Friedmanite neo-liberal

Empire,War and the Social Science

IN THE FACE OE THE CRISIS in the World sys-tem and the war and empire strategy ofthe Clinton and Bush Administrations, thesocial .sciences are in crisis; a crisis whichmost professional social scientists seem tohave no awareness of. American social sci-ence has been fashioned by the exigencies ofthe Cold War. As a consequence, American.social sciendsts have tended to conservatismand forms of professionalism which self-deflne them away from political and ideolog-ica l engagement with the s ta te . Thisapproach has served the overall needs ofwhite supremacy and colonialism. The ques-tion is which side of the struggle for globaldemocracy the social sciences will stand.Franz Fanon (1967), Michel Foucault1972), Edward Said (1978), V.Y. Mudimbe(1988), and Lewis Gordon (1995) have drawnattention to the crisis. Fanon, for example,demonstrated that the European social andphilosophical sciences evidence not the supe-riority of European man, btu the crisis ofEuropean man. He pulled the mask off theclaims to reason and objectivity of Europeanscience. They were, he tells us, mere manifes-tations of the colonial and racist predisposi-dons of European thought. Foticault's contri-bution to understanding, if not resolving thecrisis, was to place the social scientist as sub-ject/agent at the center of interrogadon. Inso doing the f ield, or discursive space,hecomes a legitimate area of investigation,and not above the fray. By establishing knowl-edge as contingent, conditioned and under-determined, he focuses upon the agents ofknowledge production and their discursivepraxis and the ways discursive form ationscome about. Foucault believes that Europeansocial thought is in crisis; unlike Fanon hebelieves the crisis is resolvable on Europeanterms through epis temic rupture . Eanonallows that only through revoltitiouary rup-ture based upon the revolutionary agency ofthe colonized masses will the crisis beresolved. Said and Mudimbe show the anti-Asian and and-African moorings of Europeanthought. Said interrogated the claims to


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imagined space that frames European knowl-edge, in which the Other is imagined tojustityEuropean hegemony and colonialism. Euro-pean knowledge is .self-referential and egotis-tic, and operates in a circular and insularmanner to justify European hegemony andcolonial ism.D ti BoLS was a co mmitted social scientist.He was deeply invested in the projectof scientifically explaining human relation-ships, particularly race relationships. Hisbold and cut t ing edge approach to thehuman sciences displaced the old eugenicsand Social Darwinist approaches and antici-pated a good part of whal is contemporaryhuman sc ience . In Color and Democracy:Colonies and Peace (1945) he observed thatthe ri.se oft he US to the hegem onic econom -ic and military power in the world did notoccasion a democratic efflorescence. In factit occasioned the opposite. The situation ofthe US as the m ain thre at to peace anddemocracy compelled Du Bois to look anewat his political direction, but also to reconsid-er the ideological, political and epistemolog-ical foundations of the human sciences. Hethus fotuid himself in a situation of epis-temic rupture in relationship to the socialsciences. In their majority American socialscientists were moving to the r ight andretreating into new forms of positivism andhe was moving to the left and searching fornew modes to critically investigate the episte-mologies, methods and politics of the socialssciences. At the core of his renewed invest-ment in social research was that uppermostmust be the transformation of world eco-nomic and political relationships. For thehuman sciences to be truly human they mustbe global, tbey must be rooted in actual his-tory and begin with the anti-colonial libera-tion struggles. At this stage in his life Du Boishad superseded the Fabian orientation of hisearly career. He now tmderstood the strate-gic necessity of the seizure of the state by theoppressed. Since the racialized state func-tioned to uphold white supremacy and colo-nialism on a global scale, in dialectical fash-ion he grasped that the power of the

To answer the quest ion what is to bedone, a study and extension of Du Bois'sunderstanding of the racialized state is para-mount. The situation of anti-democratic andwhite supremacist assault upon the people'srights is in a very profound sense the out-come of America's racial history. To defendbourgeois democracy dem ands eitbe r radicalreforms of the existing state system or itscomplete over throw. Du Bois a t var iousmoments in his career argued botli positionsand suggested tactics, strategies and organi-zational modalities to achieve each.'^

. \ . '

Endnotes1. In Foreign Affairs {November/December 2002:149)

Richard Holbrooke, in examining a body of newrevisionist scholarship wiites:Max Boot, for example, has shown recently in ThrSavage Wars of Pen re thai, contrary to the PowellDocirine" and the views of the nirreni leaders of theAmerican military, the United States has conduetedendless small military inlervenlion.s with successthroughout its history. Walter Russell Mead, in fipe-dal Providence, has idendlied ibur differeni themesin Ameriran foreign polic}' and found continuitystretchiii)^ back to the founding of the republic.looking at events thai siraddle the Cold War buifi'oni a wholly post-C()ld War perspective, SamaiiihaPower has offered up '.4 Pro/ilttn Jriim Hell,'her whol-ly original examination ol eonsisteni American fail-ure to act in the faee of genocide. And Eliol Cohen'sSupreme Command is a somew hat diffe rent .sort ofbook: a study of four historical events designed toprove the indisputable thesis that war is siill tooimportant to leave to the generals.

What Holbrooke suggests about this scholarship is thatAmerica has been a warfare state since the l>egimung


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Fascism, whose extravagance has brought it.s ownovertbrow. but rather imperial colonialism, wherethe disfranchisement of tbe mass of people hasreduced millions to tyrannical control witbout anyvestige of democracy (1945:84)." In The World andAfrica, speaking ni ihe global economy based uponcapitalism and colonialism, Du Bois says tbat theglobal economy is a .'iocial process and "if not sociallycontrolled sinks to anarchy witb every possible crimeof irresponsible greed. Such was the African slavetrade , and such is tbe capitalistic system it brought tofull flower." He goes on, "A process of incredibleingenuity for supplying human wants became in itsrealization A series of brutal crimes." He then insiststhat if capitalism can reform iLself "by means otherthan Communism. . . Communism need not befeared." However, "if a world of ultimate democracy,reaching across the color line and abolishing racediscrimination, can be accomplished by the metbodlaid down by Kail Marx, then that metbod deservesto be triumphant no matter what we [biiilc or do(1947:258)."

4. David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fighl forEquality and the ATtterican Century (2000: 496-5.5.S)chastises Du Bois for moving to the "far left" in hislater years. Gerald Horne (1986:289), contrary toLewis, argues. 'Tbe trip from the NAACP in 1944 tothe Comnninist Party in 1961 was not as convolutedas some might suspect; their immediate goals wereclosely con grue nt...Th e black comm unity was proba-bly the most left sector of the United States polity,and Du Bois was a leader of both Blacks and theleft." In The Autobiography Du Bois declares, "1 havestudied socialism and communism long and careful-ly in lands where they are practiced and in conversa-tion with their adherenis. and with wide reading. Inow state my conclusion fiankly an d clearly: 1 believein communism. I mean by communism a plannedway of life in tbe production of wealth and workdesigned for building a state whose object is thehighest welfare of its people and not merely theprofit of a part" (57). This is a logical progression ofhis theory ofthe color line, capitalism and the stateand that to alter world economic and poliucal rela-tionsbip.s the world system, especially its capitalistpart, would have to be radically transformed.

5. Franz Fanon (1967) makes a similar point. His cri-liqtie of European socialism is precisely at the pointthat it retreats from an all-out attack upon the colorline and white supremacy. He conchides. therefore,that the revolutionary initiative in world terms hasshifted to the 'Third World" and the anti-colonialstruggles. At one point Fanon insisis thai the social-ism imagined by the representatives of the Westernworking class is of a socialism of luxury, which wouldmake imperative some form of neoco lonialism.6. See 'The National Sec-urity Strategy of the United States ofAmerica" (http://wwiv.whitehouse.gov/nsc/nss.html):I^marks by the President at 2(K)2 Clraduation Exercise

"Vice President Speaks at VFW lOS"" National Con-vent ion" (ht tp : / / www. Wh it fhouse.gov/ news/release/2002/). Here we have laid out the policy ofglobal military domination and the strategy forend uring war and preemptive warfare.7. It should be noted tbat American history lacks aJacobin or revolut ionary democrat ic t radi t ion,

excepi among .\frican .\mericans. In general, pro-gressivism in the American setting has meant, in themain, progressivism for w hites. This has been seen inthe trade union, women's rights and radical move-ments am ong whites.8. Slaves were the principal form of property in tlie peri-od of the early accumulation of capital in the UnitesStates. The slaves occupy a peculiar, almost paradoxi-cal, space in the political economy of world capital-ism. The slaves are a proletariat who as humanbeings are the property of their "employers." Thisagainst the classic European situation where theemployer owns the labor power of the worker, notthe worker him/herself. This slave condition andcapitalist production based on slave labor produceda situation of super exploitation.9. David Roediger (1991:12) correctly interprets themeaning of Du Bois's Black Reconstruction, pointingout that the book is organized around issues of raceand class, and that in teasing out these issues DuBois "continually creates jarr ing , provocative theoret-ical images." Roediger points out tbat at the centerof the problem of the class struggle in ihc US is theproblem of whiteness, or a wage for w hiteness; as DuBois calls it, "a public and psychological wage."Charles Lemmert (2000) insists that Du Bois in writ-ing the history of Reconstruction was actually writingthe history of tbe present and future. The point isthat Black liecomtrurticin and Du Bois's theory of thclass struggle and class formation speaks as much tothe twenty-first as to the nineteenth century.10. On strategic actors and the ma nipulation of time see

Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory oj Practice (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Kon-topolous (1993:236) helps us conceptualize heterar-chies. He says, 'The combinaiion of the dimensionsof constraining, enabling and availing makes it possi-ble to see each level, at least in reference lo the topdown aspect of interlevel relations as semi-indepen-dent and yet interdependent witb others. And as itmtist be clear by now, we can extend this notion ofavailing to all level connection s, thus positing consid-erable 'degrees of indeterminacy' or 'degrees of cre-ative discretion' evidence [a] in the rise and differ-ential strengthening of corporate and collectiveactors and forms of structures initiated by them atthe qtiasi-global level; [b] in the formation of a vari-ety of conjunctions and novel institutional forms,technicjues of domination, technologies of inventionand monopfjlization, and various forms of bio-powerdeveloped within them; and [c] in the emergence,within these novel settings, of a number of impro-


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11 . Charles Mills (1997:77) writes, "The black philoso-pher Bill I.awson comments on the deficiencies ofthe cmicfpumi apparalus of tratlitioiial liberalism,which has no room for the peculiar post-Emancipa-tion status of blacks, simultaneously citizens andnon-citizens. The black philosopher of law AnitaAllen remarks on the irony nf standard Americanphilosophy of taw texts, which describe the universein which 'all humans are paradigm righl.s holders'and see no need to point oui ihal the actual USrecord is somewhat dirterent."12. Lipset (1996) makes the point that the US state andnation are basically conservative. He says that ihisconserrdtism during the New Deal period look on asocial dem


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2 1 . The idea of whi te Americans as chosen people is nmadequate to meet the ideo log ica l needs o f r i s ingAmerican impt-r ial is in . To appeal to progress ivismand American opt imism there was a need for a rat io-na l o r s c i ent if i c add en du m to ihe chos en peop lemythological narrative to justify Lhe white A me ricannat ion 's sutus in the worid . Hence, Manifes t Dest inyand scientific racism combine to produce a credibleexplanat ion of the r ightsof whi te Americans to dom-inate "lesser" peoples.

2 2 . The notion of a Keynesian neo-classical synthesis Itake from Irina Osadchaya, From Keynes lo Neihrtassi-cal Synthesis: A Critical Analysis (1974) . She a rguesthat neo-Kcyiiesianism. or the Keynesian iieuclassicalsynthesis attempts to take the static Keynesian modeland malcf i t d\Tiamic by merging macro theory withmicro, or market , economic theories . Robert Skidel-sky in hh John Maynard Keynes, The Econom ist asSavior, 1920-1937, (1992) insisu that Keynes' GeneralTheory was as much vis ion as economic logic andthat the disconnect ion between economic logic andvision has left his followers attempting to sort outwha t Keynes ianism is in term s of s tate pol icy, ormacroeconomic theory and pol icy . In th is respect ,w h i l e K e y n e s i a n i s m c a n b e c o n s i d e r e d a wa y o fth ink ing a bou t the econ om y in new ways , j u s t asNietzsche thought about morality in new ways, theactual modeling of the post Worid War II economywas left to neo-Keynesians and tbose who promoteda Keynesian neoclassical .synthesis.

2 3 . In th i s reg ard the v iews o f Cla ren ce J . M unford(1996, 2001) and Bernard Magubane (1996) are cri t -ical . Both are "revisionist" theorists of the state andboth draw upon Marxist class notions, but supersedetbem by arguing that tbe racial ized dynamic is thecore or central dynamic in s tate format ion in theWest . M unford a sserts , " the m od er n Western s tatehas legi t imized whi te racism whi le constant ly mod-ern iz ing i t " (2001 :111) . Magubane as ser t s tba t t heSou th Afr i can example l eads h im to concur wi thFanon and Cesaire who regard fascism "not as anabe r ra t ion , bu t as a log ica l ou tco me o f Eur opea ncolonial ism brought home to roost ,"

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monteiro - race and empire

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