ABSTRACT
Capitalism is typically considered to operate independently of race; race is thought to be little more than a social characteristic of a worker, and workers of a given skill level are considered interchangeable. During the period of Jim Crow and slavery, contrary to Wood’s argument, great differences in juridical and political status existed between white workers and workers of color. Wood creates an imaginary world of labor, “abstracted from any specific identity”, in which capitalism is devoid of its deepest political contradictions. A contrary Marxian analysis of race was put forward by, among others, Jamaican-born British cultural theorist Stuart Hall. Hall attributed views such as Wood’s to “reductionism” in analysis of capitalism. Politics is constructed through discourse, and the ideas and culture informing discourse thereby acquire material force. Contrary to Wood’s argument that capitalism favors anti-racism, in reality without abolitionist opposition to slavery, and without slave insurrections and escapes, there would likely have been little business opposition to slavery.
