1st Edition
The South African Tradition of Racial Capitalism
This book documents the emergence and development of the theory of racial capitalism in apartheid South Africa. It interrogates the specificity of this theory in the South African context and draws lessons for its global applicability.
Racism and capitalism have a long history of entanglement. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa, where colonial and apartheid regimes used explicit systems of racial hierarchy to shore up profit. It is therefore no surprise that South Africa has represented a key site for thinking about the role that racism plays in shaping state policy, labor markets, patterns of capital accumulation, and working-class struggle. Illuminating these dynamics, this volume develops a distinctive South African tradition of thought about the relationship between racism and capitalism.
The South African Tradition of Racial Capitalism contributes to a burgeoning literature on the concept of “racial capitalism,” the origins of which many commentators trace back to apartheid South Africa. It pays particular attention to the crucial role of anti-apartheid activists as theorists, whose important insights remain relevant for scholars and activists around the globe. This book was originally published as a special issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies.
Introduction: The South African tradition of racial capitalism
Zachary Levenson and Marcel Paret
1. The context of struggle: racial capitalism and political praxis in South Africa
Andy Clarno and Salim Vally
2. Merely liberals? Du Bois and Plaatje as radical critics of racial capitalism
Mosa M. Phadi
3. Articulating difference: reading Biko-with-Hall
Ahmed Veriava and Prishani Naidoo
4. Bernard Magubane on the political economy of race and class in South Africa
Bongani Nyoka
5. Whiteness and racial capitalism: to whom do the ‘wages of whiteness’ accrue?
Zine Magubane
6. Reproducing ‘racial capitalism’ through retailing in South Africa: gender, labour, and consumption, 1950s–1970s
Bridget Kenny
7. Geographies of racial capitalism: the July 2021 riots in South Africa
Ashwin Desai
8. Racial capitalism: an unfinished history
Robin D.G. Kelley
Biography
Zachary Levenson is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Florida International University, USA, and Senior Research Associate in Sociology at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City (2022).
Marcel Paret is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Utah, USA, and Senior Research Associate in the Centre for Social Change at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of Fractured Militancy: Precarious Resistance in South Africa after Racial Inclusion (2022).
