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 WULF D. HUND

MARX AND HAITI

TOWARDS A HISTORICAL MATERIALIST
THEORY OF RACISM

LIT RACISM ANALYSIS

 Wulf D. Hund

Marx and Haiti

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 RACISM ANALYSIS
edited by Wulf D. Hund

Series A: Studies
Volume 5

LIT

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 Wulf D. Hund

Marx and Haiti

Towards a Historical Materialist
Theory of Racism

LIT

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 Cover: Wulf D. Hund and Stefanie Affeldt
using a photograph by Sibylle Bergemann
© Sibylle Bergemann / OSTKREUZ

Layout and image editing: Stefanie Affeldt

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
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ISBN 978-3-643-91518-4 (pb)
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© LIT VERLAG Dr. W. Hopf Berlin 2022

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 Contents

Preface 7

1 Dehumanization and Social Death 23

Fundamentals of Racism
1.1 ›Wild Monsters‹ and ›White Chimpanzees‹ 25
1.2 ›Mindless Bodies‹ as ›Animated Tools‹ 29
1.3 ›Religious Heresy‹ by ›Impurity of Blood‹ 37
1.4 ›Perfectibility‹ or ›Extinction‹ 43
1.5 ›Herrenvolk‹ against ›Untermenschen‹ 50

2 ›Racism‹ 61
The Birth of a Concept
2.1 Truly French Racism and
Reactionary Dutch Racialism 64
2.2 Biological Nazi Racism and
Cultural Fascist Racism 69
2.3 Anti-Black Racism and
Black Radical Racialism 75

Noxious Racist Ideology 82

3 Marx and Haiti 87

Note on a Blank Space
3.1 Engagement in St. Domingo 90
3.2 ›A Negro is a Negro‹ 97
3.3 ›The Jewish Nigger Lassalle‹ 102
3.4 ›Poor Whites‹ and ›Black Slaves‹ 108
3.5 Coda and Codetta 115

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 4 A Historical Materialist Theory of Racism 121
Introduction
4.1 Accumulation and Subordination:
Racism as Social Relation 124
4.2 Construction plus Conversion:
The Blueprints of Race 140
4.3 Barbarization to Racialization:
The Diversity of Racisms 161
4.4 Inclusion by Exclusion:
Racism as Negative Societalization 181

Bibliography 203

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 Preface

Title and subtitle of this book are ambivalent. One suggests a Marxist
attempt, the other downplays the venture by a cautious preposition
and a modest article.
In post-modern times aiming at more than ›a‹ theory would be
risky anyway. In addition, the task of a historical approach goes
beyond individual capacities because of the mere necessity to include
research on the past of a wide variety of non-European class soci-
eties. With my deliberations, I accordingly consider myself on the
way ›towards‹ a theory that, alongside criticism, will require joint

Lastly, I am free of illusions. This is, in fact, the second of my

than forty years ago. It dealt with a materialistic critique of what

traditional scholarship called ›mass communication‹ and was subse-
1

I, therefore, refrain from presenting an exhaustive theory and,

for now, content myself with its introduction. But this is still not an
unpretentious endeavour. First of all, it plays on the allusion to two
›introductions‹ by Marx. Second, it is based on my intensive engage-
ment with the history and theory of racism for nearly thirty years.

»radical«, which means »to grasp the root of the matter«.2 In the
present case, this includes targeting Marx himself and analysing his
attitude towards the racisms of his time. This is no risk-free inten-
tion. Even today, there are enough Marxists who would prefer to have

in German, one Marxist journal beseeched me not to submit the text.

Another at least gathered some votes on the text. A central reason

1 Cf. Horst Holzer: The Forgotten Marxist Theory of Communication and

2 Karl Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, p. 182.

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 8 Preface

for the rejection was the argumentum ad spiritum temporum. One of

the commentators got agitated about the »anachronistic madness« of
demanding that »Marx should have taken his morals from the dis-
course of a future epoch«.3
In the discussions of racism, this is the favoured argument of those
who otherwise outdo themselves demonstrating that their intellectual
heroes or heroines were ahead of the times or, at least, confronted the

by the argumentum ad ignorantiam and the -

um. One feigns ignorance or even ignores primary sources; the other
4

sets up a charivari to drown out unwelcome arguments.

However, I did not write the essays in this volume as debut studies
or anti-Marxist invectives. On the contrary: I began writing about
racism after having done research on other topics from a historical
materialist perspective. Amongst the published outcomes of this
work are books, book chapters, and journal articles on structuralism,
mass communication, culture, the concept of labour, and class strug-
gles in German history.
My engagement in racism analysis was a result of political cir-
cumstances. At the beginning of the 1990s in Germany, racist attacks
against former contract workers from Africa and Asia, asylum
seekers, refugees and migrants, Sinti and Roma, Muslim citizens,
and Jewish institutions drastically rose and had murderous con-
sequences.5

urgently demanded seminars on racism. But there was no one in the

faculty engaged in teaching or even researching this topic. I decided

3 Mail by *** from 29 October 2018 to the author. This is an utterly conservative
argument that uses an alleged zeitgeist as an excuse for not studying the sources,

and suppressed by racism. ›Haiti‹ is just a menetekel for such an attitude and
conduct. In the end, my paper was published elsewhere – cf. Wulf D. Hund: Der
›jüdische Nigger‹ Lassalle.
4 Obviously, I owe the naming of the last argument to Tristram Shandy.
5 In this context, Audre Lorde, the American writer, feminist and civil rights
activist who at that time lived in Germany, wrote in an open letter: »These
acts raise the fundamental questions of racism, anti-semitism, and xenophobia«
(Gloria I. Joseph, Audre Lorde: [Letter to the German Chancellor Helmut

germany«. And Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in

Germany, stated in an interview: »Antisemitism is presentable again« (Ignatz
Bubis: ›Antisemitismus ist salonfähig‹).

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 Preface 9

to focus on it and soon realized that the analysis of racism was, to say
the least, in a pre-paradigmatic state. From the outset, I was startled

and to present it as a right-wing project starting in the 19th centu-

ry.6 And I was almost as perplexed by the fact that racism against
people of colour and antisemitism were frequently treated separately
or only additively.7 Moreover, rereading some ›big names‹ with par-
ticular attention to potential starting points for a theory of racism
was decidedly sobering. On top of this, I realized that I would have
to work through my library of great minds again (including progres-
sive thinkers).
Eventually, I felt thrown back to a maxim the old Friedrich Engels
sent to a young economist. Accompanied by a scolding for »academ-
ics of vaguely socialist complexion« who use »the word ›materialist‹
[...] as a mere cliché«, he declared: »The whole of history must be
studied anew«.8 Finding myself on the horns of the dilemma between
delving into this vast amount of data and lecturing on the issue, I
decided to start with the pivotal topoi of racist discrimination. This

historic background, the social foundation, and the ideological man-

ifestation of some principal racist stereotypes (coloured ›races‹,
›savages‹, ›Jews‹ in antisemitic imputations, ›gypsies‹, the socially
›undesirable‹, and the long history of philosophical racism from
antiquity to modernity).9

for further research as well: racism is not only directed against exter-
nal victims, ›race‹ is not its only benchmark, capitalism is not its
only epoch, reactionaries are not its only producers. For the next
half-decade, I was intensely engaged in expanding my understanding

6 This served above all to exonerate the philosophers of the Enlightenment, who
invented the principles of race thinking, from the accusation of racism.
7 This became apparent in two texts that were available in German translations
and could easily be used as introductions to the topic. One, George L. Mosse:
Die Geschichte des Rassismus in Europa, was focussed on the development
of modern antisemitism; the other, Robert Miles: Rassismus, disregarded
antisemitism to a great extent. The only introduction addressing antisemitism
and race-centred racism together, Imanuel Geiss: Geschichte des Rassismus,
was highly problematic insofar as the author assumed the validity of race as a
biological category.
8 Friedrich Engels: Letter to Conrad Schmidt, p. 8.
9 Cf. Wulf D. Hund: Rassismus (1999).

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 10 Preface

of the various approaches to the analysis of racism and my knowl-

societies and discourse). The results were published in two books: a

literature survey concerning the various areas of racism and the dif-
ferent approaches to their discussion; and an essay trying to restruc-
ture the analytical systematization of racisms.10
Over the following decade, I employed my time in deepening
my knowledge regarding the multifaceted characteristics of the
diverse historical forms of racism. Two circles, in particular, proved
extremely helpful in the course of this. One was the discussion group

of racism from a socio-historical perspective.11 The other was the

communication with colleagues from an international background
while acting as general editor of the ›Racism Analysis Yearbook‹.12
During this time, the form of research on racism changed notice-
ably – not only in Germany. It broadened, deepened, and gained in
-
structivist position in respect of race to a race-centred approach right

10 Cf. Wulf D. Hund: Negative Vergesellschaftung (2006) and Wulf D. Hund:

Rassismus (2007).
11 Cf. Sören Niemann-Findeisen: Weeding the Garden; Thomas Gondermann:
Evolution und Rasse; Iris Wigger: Die ›Schwarze Schmach am Rhein‹;
Anja Hense: Verhinderte Entschädigung; Sabine Ritter: Facetten der Sarah
Baartman; Stefanie Affeldt: Consuming Whiteness; Malte Hinrichsen:

of Darkness‹.
12 Cf. Wulf D. Hund, Jeremy Krikler, David Roediger (eds.): Wages of Whiteness
& Racist Symbolic Capital (with contribution by Stefanie Affeldt, Dagmar
Engelken, Elisabeth Esch, Anja Weiß, and the editors); Wulf D. Hund,
Christian Koller, Moshe Zimmermann (eds.): Racisms Made in Germany (with
contribution by Boris Barth, Claudia Bruns, Ulrike Hamann, Gudrun Hentges,
Stefanie Michels, Arno Sonderegger, Wolfgang Wippermann, and the editors);
Max S. Hering Torres, María Elena Martínez, David Nirenberg (eds.): Race
and Blood in the Iberian World (with contributions by María Eugenia Chaves,
Karoline P. Cook, David Graizbord, Tamar Herzog, Thomas C. Holt, Laura
A. Lewis, David Sartorius, Ângela Barreto Xavier, and the editors); Wulf D.
Hund, Michael Pickering, Anandi Ramamurthi (eds.): Colonial Advertising &
Commodity Racism (with contribution by Katharina Eggers, Robert Fechner,
Malte Hinrichsen, Emma Robertson, Robert W. Rydell, Kalpana Wilson, and
the editors); Wulf D. Hund, Alana Lentin (eds.): Racism and Sociology (with
contributions by Marta Araújo, Les Back, Sirma Bilge, Barnor Hesse, Felix
Lösing, Silvia Rodríguez Maeso, Maggie Tate, and the editors); Wulf D. Hund,
Charles W. Mills, Silvia Sebastiani (eds.): Simianization (with contributions

Kahn, Jean M. McMahon, Ioana Panaitiu, David Livingstone Smith, Susan C.

Townsend, and the editors).

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 Preface 11

up to the demand of a »racial turn«.13 This was, on the one side,

accompanied by an urgently required critique of white supremacy.
On the other side, however, it went along with an inconsistent use
of the category racism, which was restricted to race and whiteness.
Especially in Germany, with its long history of antisemitism
and anti-Slavonic racism and a spreading anti-Muslim racism, this
restriction was downright counterproductive, leading either to an
abridgement of the history of racism or to the retroactive racializa-
tion of the manifold racisms made in Germany.
I decided not to react to this development with a rejection of its
unhistorical use of the race concept (just because I did not feel like
picking to pieces the often shallow, mostly one-sided, frequently
false, and scarcely instructive argumentation of a range of contri-
butions to the German-language discourse). Instead, I have tried to
interlink the analysis of whiteness and other racisms with regard to
their development in the course of German history. The resulting
book has the title ›How the Germans Became White‹.14 It deals with

paralleled by other forms of racism.

Although I do not engage in a meta-theoretical discussion in this
book, its material reasoning is, en passant, a critique of the shift of
racism analysis from a deconstructionist point of view to race-based
approaches that emphasize the social construction of race but cannot
avoid its naturalistic essentialism. This implies that the critical poten-
tial of the category racialization tacitly changes and even serves as an
instrument of racializing the past and ascribing race consciousness to
times when races did not exist.
I condensed my opinion on this development into the diagnosis
that racism analysis has manoeuvred itself into the »race trap«.15
Considering my study on the medusa-headed racism made in Ger-
many in this light, I was convinced that it was time for a theoretical
intervention. Again, and in respect of its knowledge gain (not least
for myself), I thought it more fruitful to realize this project in the

13 Cf. i.a. David Roediger: The Racial Turn in Ethnic History; Natasha A. Kelly:
Why Germany is in Need of a Racial Turn.
14 Cf. Wulf D. Hund: Wie die Deutschen weiß wurden. In parallel, I have
systematized the historical deliberations of this study in a more theoretically
oriented book – cf. Wulf D. Hund: Rassismus und Antirassismus.
15 Cf. Wulf D. Hund: Rassismusanalyse in der Rassenfalle.

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 12 Preface

form of material studies instead of a perhaps spectacular but in the

end sterile theoretical tightrope debate.
However, the project began rather inconveniently because I was

of Marx and Engels with the racism of their time and even to some
extent their entanglement with it. To pave the way for this excursion
into the obscurities of my own analytical background, I remembered
Marx’s favourite sport: »Kritik im Handgemenge«, »criticism in
hand-to-hand combat«.16 Just to remind myself of the range of varia-
tion in which the word ›race‹ was used in Marx’s days, it was applied
in this context in connexion with a denunciation of the »division of
society into the most manifold races opposed to one another«.
The relations of class and race would have to be the core of my
deliberations anyway. But prior to this, I would have to re-read most
of Marx’s works from the vantage point of racism analysis. This
comprised the debate over frequently quoted passages, which are

but famous sentences: »A Negro is a Negro. He only becomes a slave

in certain relations«.17 One might think that there is only one pos-
sible reading of this statement: »Blackness is naturalized«.18 But,

asserts exactly the opposite. Even Raya Dunayevskaya considered

only one side of the argument and alleged that it was meant as a
critique of »racist language«.19 This pertains until today – with the
claim that, with these sentences, Marx »anticipated the tradition of
black radical scholarship, including the works of W. E. B. Du Bois
[...], C. L. R. James [...], and Eric Williams [...], that connected race,
racism, and slavery«.20
This is, to use a vintage German expression, pure -
terung. Instead of reading Marx as unrelentingly as he as a critic
21

16 Karl Marx: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law, p. 178;

for the following quote, see pp. 177 f.; the German version of the quote is from
Karl Marx: Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie. Einleitung, p. 381.
17 Karl Marx: Wage Labour and Capital, p. 211.
18 Sara-Maria Sorentino: The Abstract Slave, p. 26.
19 Raya Dunayevskaya: Humanism and Marxism, p. 155; for the background
see Ndindi Kitonga: Raya Dunayevskaya on Race, Resistance, and
Revolutionary Humanism.
20 Sandro Mezzadra, Ranabir Samaddar: Colonialism, p. 259.
21 Literally: history written with blots instead of proper letters – scrawled
or scribbled history. The term was invented by Johann Fischart to entitle

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 Preface 13

would have done, the authors indulge in embellishments. For a his-

torical materialist theory of racism, however, quite the opposite is
required to increase the awareness of the fact that the early history
of Marxism is by and large dissatisfying in respect of a theory of
racism (in fact, for a whole century, if we take the publication dates
of the ›Communist Manifesto‹ and of ›Class, Race and Caste‹ as
aiming points).22
This does not mean that there were no decided and resolute
anti-racist initiatives and politics. But the engagement with two cen-
tral problems of this period (then called the ›Jewish question‹ and the
›Negro question‹) did not result in the development of the foundations
for a historical materialist theory of racism. If rudimentary questions
were addressed, it was mainly descriptively and did not lead to axio-
matic theoretical considerations.
In 1935, W. E. Burghardt Du Bois – who, by this time, had
resigned from the ›National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People‹, accepted a professorship in Atlanta and worked
his way through some of Marx’s writings23 – published his ›Black
Reconstruction‹. He noted that »in the South, [...] the theory of race
was supplemented by a carefully planned [...] method, which drove
such a wedge between the white and the black workers that there
probably are not today in the world two groups of workers with prac-
tically identical interests who hate and fear each other so deeply and
persistently and who are kept so far apart that neither sees anything
of common interest«.24
A few years earlier, Otto Heller – a co-founder of the German
section of the Communist Party in Czechoslovakia, writer for the
›Rote Fahne‹ (›Red Flag‹) and teacher at the ›Marxistische Arbeit-
erschule‹ (›Marxist Workers’ School) in Berlin25 – had published his
comprehensive study ›Der Untergang des Judentums‹ (›The Down-
fall of Judaism‹). He stated that »[t]he slogan of ›Volksgemeinschaft‹

his translation of François Rabelais’ pentalogy on the lives of Pantagruel

and Gargantua.
22 Cf. Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels: Manifesto of the Communist Party [1st ed.
1848] and Oliver C. Cox: Caste, Class, and Race [1st ed. 1948].
23 For Du Bois, Marx, and Marxism see i.a. Patrick Anderson: Pan-Africanism
and Economic Nationalism and Michael J. Saman: Du Bois and Marx, Du Bois
and Marxism.
24 W. E. Burghardt Du Bois: Black Reconstruction, p. 700.
25 See Konstantin Baehrens: Antisemitismus als ›Fetischisierung‹; Leonard
Wilhelm: Biography of Otto Heller; Tom Navon: Otto Heller.

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 14 Preface

-
nisms neither for the petty bourgeois nor for the workers. To camou-

divide the working masses, fascism has to make use of racial hatred,
hatred against Jews, antisemitism«.26
Both authors drafted elements of a concept of racism as negative
societalization but they neither elaborated it nor tried to develop an
encompassing view integrating the varieties of racism. The inter-
national Marxist discussion, of course, recognized the parallels
between antisemitism and colour racism.27 In May 1933, the ›Harlem
Liberator‹ wrote: »What Negroes may expect of the developing fas-
cist dictatorship in this country is clearly indicated in the monstrous
persecution of the Jewish minority by German fascism«.28 But a
descriptive comparison is not yet a theoretical analysis.
At the same time, this also became obvious in connection with the
focal problem of the discussion: the relation between class and race.
It was not only controversial between black and white authors, but
also between black nationalists and black socialists and even between
two black delegates to the Congress of the Communist International
1922 in Moscow. Both had an African-Caribbean background, were
members of the African Blood Brotherhood, and were joint authors
of the ›Theses on the Negro Question‹ presented to the Congress. But
Otto Huiswoud declared that »[t]he Negro Problem is fundamentally
a class problem and not a race problem«, whereas Claude McKay
was convinced that »all-white supremacy [...] places the entire race
alongside the lowest section of the white working class«.29

26 Otto Heller: Der Untergang des Judentums, p. 129; in the same context, Franz
Neuman: Behemoth, p. 125, would write: »racism and Anti-Semitism are
substitutes for the class struggle«.
27 By translating ›Farbrassismus‹ as ›colour racism‹, I am using the technique
of German composites (of which Mark Twain: The Awful German Language,
p. 277, has said that they are »alphabetical processions«, some of them »so
long that they have a perspective«). I do so deliberately (and am, in fact, not
alone in using the term ›colour racism‹ – cf. e.g. Harry M. Bracken: Essence,

Anti-Racism, p. 169; Anne Phillips: Multiculturalism Without Culture, p. 57).

In the following, I will argue that racism already had a very long history of
non-racial discrimination before ›races‹ were invented. Colour coding became
the most popular version of the new race-based racism. Hence, to distinguish it
from other forms of racism, instead of ›colour racism‹ I could have even used a
more irritating composite, say ›race racism‹.
28 Quoted from Cathy Bergin: Race/Class Politics, p. 101.
29 Otto Huiswoud (1929) as quoted in Holger Weiss: Framing a Radical African

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 Preface 15

The relation between class and race, ignored by Marx and in the
First International, sidelined by the theorists and politicians of the

during the Third International, remained controversial in the second

half of the twentieth century. This also applies to the relation between

varieties of discrimination.
The two problems are closely linked as, for example, some ques-
tions recently asked by Charles Mills show: »Explanations of racism
should presumably be able to account for racial anti-Semitism (some
anti-Semitisms are ethnic and religious rather than ›racial‹). [...] And
what about the growing body of work in classics and medieval stud-

world? Some [...] argue for Aristotle as the pioneering racist theorist
in the Western tradition, insofar as his ›natural slave‹ category is
ethnically marked [...]. Clearly this can’t be explained by ›racial cap-
italism‹. Can it be explained by class theory more broadly, in terms
of the class dynamics of Athenian slave society? Then, again, what
about the distinctive challenge of explaining anti-Semitism in its
pre-modern racial form (assuming it existed)?«30
I would give these questions a historical materialist twist from
which Mills has moved away.31 This does not mean that my critique
of Marx’s racism is less radical than his. I also share his critique of
»the theoretical failings of black separatists and the traditional white
left«. And I agree with his statement that if »racial identities are
seen as historically constructed«, this understanding must consider
that »this ›construction‹ is not arbitrary and purely ›discursive‹« but
»motivated, materially enabled and objectively rationally intelligi-
ble«. At the same time, I think that historical materialism provides
exactly the framework for a version of racism analysis that has the

Atlantic, p. 140 and Claude McKay (1921), as quoted in Minkah Makalani: In

the Cause of Freedom, p. 88; for the Comintern background, see Hakim Adi:
The Negro Question, p. 158 f.; for the general context, see Joy Gleason Carew:
Blacks, Reds, and Russians and Paul M. Heideman: Class Struggle and the
Color Line.
30 Charles W. Mills: Retheorizing (Racial) Justice.
31 He has thoroughly documented this transition in Charles W. Mills: From Class
to Race; for the following quotes see ibid., p. 128.

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 16 Preface

ability to interlink class, race and other forms of racist discrimina-

tion and thus simultaneously keeps clear of a hypertrophy of race.
Accordingly, answers to Mills’ questions would include a ›yes‹ for
»the class dynamics of Athenian slave society« as the foundation of

in its pre-modern racial form« (because these forms were racist but
not racial), a ›yes‹ for the statement that early antisemitism was »reli-
gious rather than ›racial‹«, and a ›no‹ plus a ›yes‹ for the assumption

The foundations for these and other answers are expounded in the
following chapters. They have all been written as individual studies

scope of the topic in mind. This means that issues are only addressed
as outlines now and then because they have been discussed in detail
in another chapter. Nonetheless, a few of them appear twice (albeit

Chapter 1 on treats both cat-

egories with regard to racism and, accordingly, as social relations.32
It is without a doubt that they have other dimensions. David Liv-
ingstone Smith, for instance, suggests that »[w]e dehumanize others
when we conceive of them as subhuman creatures«. For him, »dehu-
manization is a kind of attitude. It is something that happens inside
people’s heads«.33 For my part, and in the given context, I discuss
dehumanization as a relation between humans. In this sense, Aris-
totle had already conceded that his ›slave by nature‹ is a subhuman
just because he or she is exploited as a slave and could be treated as
a human and even become a friend if manumitted. The same applies
to social death. Orlando Patterson has described slavery as »a kind
of ›social death‹« and »[t]he slave eunuch« as »the ultimate slave«.34
But commonly, racistly35 degraded people live in segmented and

32 A substantially abridged version of this chapter is published as Wulf D. Hund:

Dehumanization and Social Death as Fundamentals of Racism.
33 David Livingstone Smith: Making Monsters, p. 9.
34 Orlando Patterson: Slavery and Social Death, pp. 38 (›death‹), 329 (›eunuch‹).
35
Analysis Yearbook‹ more than ten years ago, I had a little discussion with my
American and English co-editors who informed me that it does not appear in
the anglophone dictionaries. As a result, I added a footnote to my essay: »This
which are racially oriented and racist actions, which could be connected with

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 Preface 17

to their racist oppressors, who refuse them the acceptance of their

mass of amorphous others.

development of racist dehumanization. En passant, it applies princi-

ples of a historical materialist analysis to the discussion of racism
and demonstrates its connection with classism. Beyond that, it points

discrimination in the course of its development, that ›race‹ is a rela-

tively new reference point, and that even in modernity racism is not
exclusively based on race. Although the chapter is focused on the

that the triad of dehumanization, social death, and racism must be

studied in a broad, world-historical approach that also comprises the
histories of non-European societies.
Chapter 2 on The Birth of a Concept addresses the curious fact
that the conceptual history of racism is still to be written. When, in
1970, Michael Banton wrote about the ›concept of racism‹, he was
not at all interested in the history of this concept. The same is true
for the engagement in ›Marxism and the concept of racism‹ by John
Gabriel and Gideon Ben-Tovim.36 Like these authors, most of the

racism, but did not inquire into the history of the concept. This is
not a peripheral neglect: the preponderance of ideology was not least

in the development of the concept of racism – just as the doubling

of anti-racist critique was quite certainly a consequence of the ina-
bility and unwillingness of Marxist theorists to concentrate on the

the race stereotype as well as with the stereotypes of the barbarian, the impure,
the outcast, or the savage« (Wulf D. Hund: Negative Societalisation, p. 64).
When Charles Mills read the present preface, he, again, suggested substituting
›racially‹ for ›racistly‹. Although the usage of the latter form has increased
during the last decade, it was predominantly adopted as a surrogate for ›racially‹

historical manifestations of racism throughout history. Hence, I repeat my

explanation: in this book, ›racistly‹ characterizes all forms of racist relations,
behaviour or phrasing, ›racially‹ merely refers to modern manifestations of
such conditions in so far as they are related to the race stereotype, which did
not exist in former times.
36 Michael Banton: The Concept of Racism; John Gabriel, Gideon Ben-Tovim:
Marxism and the Concept of Racism.

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 18 Preface

dialectics of classism and racism and continues to have its bearing on

the controversies on racism until today.
I do not discuss these impacts on current discussions. But the
problems certainly cannot be solved with the consideration that
»Marxism has bifurcated into a ›white Marxism‹ and a ›black Marx-
ism‹« and thereby »produce[d] a racially essentialized approach to
Marxism«: it »fails to appreciate Marx’s own commitment to under-
standing race, class and nationalism and his own anti-racism« and
eventually »feeds into an anti-Marxism«.37 The reverse imputation is
just as little helpful. Here, the slogan »Although Marxism is radical,
it is not Black« ends up in the voluntarist smashing of a self-generated
aporia: »Marxism remains a fundamentally Eurocentric paradigm«
38

In any case, a key to the current debates on blackness and white-

ness lies in the historical development of the concept of racism. In
this context, it makes sense to call to mind an insight formulated by
Charles Mills at a time when he still was »cannibalizing« his disser-
tation (on the Marxist concept of ideology) »to develop a historical
materialist account of racism«: »White racism and black nationalism
cannot be understood in isolation from one another, for they are dia-
lectically interconnected«.39
Chapter 3 on ›Marx and Haiti‹ refers to the silence of Marx (and
Engels) concerning the revolution in Haiti as a manifestation of their
non-existent awareness of and engagement with the relevance of
racism for the cohesion of class societies.40 The principal reason for
this muteness was their uncritical handling of and entanglement in
the main racisms of their time.

away to the tray of the zeitgeist – as, for example, the narrative of
Wilhelm Liebknecht that »Marx [...] was not such a zealous devotee
of phrenology [...], but he believed in it to some extent, and when I

37 Vishwas Satgar: The Anti-Racism of Marxism, pp. 11 (›white‹/›black‹), 13

(›Marx‹, ›anti-Marxism‹).
38 Kehinde Andrews: Black to Black, pp. 123 (›not Black‹), 210 (›Eurocentric‹),
211 (›Black radicalism‹).
39 Charles W. Mills: Race and Class, p. 100; for the previous quotes, see Charles
W. Mills: Red Shift, p. 164.
40 A slightly shorter version of this chapter is published as Wulf D. Hund:
Marx and Haiti.

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 Preface 19

-
seur’s style«.41
However, Marx’s and Engels’ dealing with antisemitism and colo-

such« and that »most of the inherited Marxist tradition does not deal
with racism adequately«.42 In fact, Marx was obviously able to bring
antisemitism and colonial racism together as racist disparagement
(when he branded Ferdinand Lassalle as a »Jewish nigger«).43 But
he was apparently incapable of integrating both (and other) forms of
racism in a critical analysis of classist societalization.

socialist and communist parties and the international socialist and

communist movement. This was one of the main reasons for the
development of a separate black nationalism and internationalism
and for the slogan ›Race First‹. When Hubert Harrison used it in
1920, he made it unmistakably clear that it was developed not least
against the white racist attitudes inside the ›Socialist Party‹: »We say
Race First, because you have all along insisted on Race First and
class after when you didn’t need our help«.44
»Harrison’s black nationalism was the last resort of a black socialist
in a racist land«.45 The process of coming to terms with this past must
start with an unyielding discussion of the topic of racism in the works
of Marx himself.
Chapter 4 on deliber-

of the topic exceeds individual capacities. The text is also methodo-

logically limited insofar as it focuses on central points of reference in
Marx’s works (such as ›character mask‹, ›commodity fetishism‹ and
›class relations‹), which can be used as basic elements for a historical
materialist theory of racism. Proceeding from here, racism can be

41 Wilhelm Liebknecht: Karl Marx, p. 64; the report humorously continues with
the following remarks: »Later on, he arranged for a regular investigation by the

was found that would have prevented my admission into the Holiest of Holies
of the Communist Alliance« (pp. 64 f.). Cf. Marco Duichin: Marx ›frenologo‹.
42
(›Marxist‹), 33 (›Marxist tradition‹).
43 Karl Marx: Letter to Friedrich Engels, 30 July 1862, p. 389.
44 Hubert Harrison: Race First Versus Class First, p. 81.
45 Winston Jones: Holding Aloft the Banner of Ethiopia, p. 128.

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 20 Preface

analysed as negative societalization and class can be linked to race

(and other modes of racist discrimination). At the same time, this

racism analysis.
This essential connection of a historical materialistic theory of
racism with the socio-economic basis of class societies does not
mean that the spheres of politics and culture are of lesser relevance or
even secondary. But it does not imply exemptions from the necessity
to analyse them in connection with the material social foundations of
46

This is not the place for a discussion of the various notions of ›his-
torical materialism‹. The ideological battles are fought through and
ended in a question mark which Erik Olin Wright punctuated behind
the tripartite question of whether Marxism is really functionalist,
class reductionist, and teleological?47 Already Marx’s handlings of
the class question in the structural analysis of his economic writings
and the action-centred discussion of his political writings show the
contrary. And, related to the Eurocentric elements of the philosoph-
ical starting point of his studies, Kevin Anderson has shown how
Marx gradually overcame a number of these restrictions.48
However, this development did not include any consideration of
the problems of racism. This especially applies to Marx’s consti-
tutive critique of the fundamentals of capitalist economy. The key
issue with it is not that it must be just supplemented by a cultural
dimension. First of all, it should be examined in terms of the links
for racism analysis, which Marx ignored or, at least, missed. In this
chapter, I show this for the emergence of racial thinking, the main
expression of modern racism. At the same time, I emphasize that
this can be only a starting point because the history of racism is not

46 This diction might need a brief explanation. The translation »societalization«

represents the German »Vergesellschaftung«, used from Marx via Weber to
Habermas and beyond as explained by Volker H. Schmidt: Eight Theories of
Societalization, p. 414: »Societalization, a feature common to all societies, is a
process whereby humans enter into, establish and sustain cooperative relations
with one another«. I use the term in the Marxist sense as referring to the
formation of societies through the collective (although not deliberate) action
and relations on the development, consciousness, and behaviour of these
individuals.
47 Cf. Erik Olin Wright: Review Essay.
48 Cf. Kevin B. Anderson: Marx at the Margins.

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 Preface 21

absorbed in capitalism but goes hand-in-hand with class societies

in their manifold manifestations and forms. A historical material-
ist theory of racism has to be embedded in various material social
conditions and must analyse the diverse racisms as social relations.
To this end, I have tried to develop some basic considerations – no
more, no less…
As chance would have it, this condition of a work in progress
is perfectly epitomized in a famous photograph by Sibylle Berge-
mann.49 It shows the lower part of the statues of Marx and Engels
by Ludwig Engelhardt, created for the Marx-Engels Forum in Berlin

national identity of the German Democratic Republic as a socialist

society. Only three years later, the political events made clear, that
this was an ideological phantasm. But Bergermann’s photograph,
shot in Usedom, where the statues had been modelled and, at that
moment, were prepared for transport, not only symbolizes a dawning
collapse in retrospect. It also opens a chance to recall Marx’s (and
Engels’) understanding of their theoretical work as ongoing critique.
Like the bottom part of their monument, the essentials of their histor-
ical materialist approach to social analysis provide sustainable basics
for an advancement of the theorization of racism.

As this book was written in Germany, I wanted to leave a genuine

trace of this origin (apart from my rustic handling of the English
language). So I decided to keep my usual usage of a local version of
quotation marks as »double quotes« and ›single quotes‹, especially
used in printed literary texts. Their origin is French, but to make a

the guillemets and turn their tips inwards. Anyway, I just love the
design of these characters and can only hope that my readers will put
up with them.
The same goes for my mode of closing quotations: they end with
the quotation mark. Because all characters inside double quotation
marks should be from the respective source and quotes often do not

49 Vgl. Heiner Müller, Sibylle Bergemann: Ein Gespenst verläßt Europa.

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 22 Preface

end with a full stop in the original, I put the full stop (or other punc-
tuation) after the closing quotation mark. Likewise, I strictly distin-
guish quotes (in double quotation marks) from mere highlighting,
marking, or paraphrasing as well as from quotes inside quotes (all in
single quotation marks). Moreover, I have usually removed all italics
from quotations. I use this formal device only cautiously and have
dedicated it to my own emphases.

During the long period of time that I have been engaged in analysing
racist social relations, many people have contributed (through oppo-
sition or support) to the development of my thoughts. Actually, the

to thank all those who have supported the writing of this special book
with their comments, critique, and suggestions for improvements

Finzsch, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Maria Kronfeldner, Antje

Kühnast, Alana Lentin, Felix Lösing, Benjamin Opratko, Stefanie
Plage, David Roediger, and David Livingstone Smith.
Special thanks are due to Stefanie Affeldt. She not only critically
commented on all chapters of this book but also realized the comple-
tion of the graphics and arranged the layout.
Saddened thanks commemorate Charles Mills, who has annotated
some of the following chapters. His untimely passing has silenced an
urgently needed critical voice and deprived the international scien-

Finally, loving thanks go to Philipp Moritz Hund, who frequently

saved me from the shoals of modern information technology, and
-

also given advice and support for this study. And, what is more, she
frequently reminds me that the maxims of Joan Dark and Shen Te
belong together: »Take care that when you leave the world | You have
not merely been good, but are leaving | A better world«; and: »To let
none go to waste, not oneself either | To bring happiness to all, even
oneself, that | is good«.

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