Retheorizing (Racial) Justice: A Conversation with Charles Mills

Race was central to the foundation of the country…any adequate theorization of U.S. social dynamics needed to acknowledge this, and…the Marxism I had learned was not really up to the job.

Disaggregate the white population and make a pitch to those in its lower echelons that they’d be better off in a non-white-supremacist social order, insofar as race has historically functioned to stabilize a racial class system that is now disadvantaging them also.

What are the avenues to pursue for ending white supremacy and all forms of domination? This is one of several questions that Michael Dawson asked Charles Mills when they sat down and spoke in New York City in September 2019. This conversation accompanies the New Dawn podcast episode that Mills appeared on.

You repeatedly mention that a historical-materialist account of race might be "most fruitful" but that you are putting it aside--why is that? Is there anybody who does that kind of work today?

I did my dissertation on Marxism, and I certainly thought of myself theoretically as a Marxist in the early years following my graduation. My putting aside, or bracketing, a specifically historical materialist approach was the result of a number of factors. One was the decline, indeed collapse, of the left in the period (late ‘80s onward), so that one found oneself talking to an audience small to non-existent. (In more than one autobiographical essay I have described the experience in 1993-94 of being on the planning committee for a meeting of the American Philosophical Association Central Division and pushing for a “market socialism” panel, and then at the conference visiting the panel to see how it was going and finding four panelists and a single audience member! An enlightening moment, believe me…) Reinforcing this was my belated recognition on coming to the U.S. to work—I’m from Jamaica and had done my PhD in Canada—that race was central to the foundation of the country, that any adequate theorization of U.S. social dynamics needed to acknowledge this, and that the Marxism I had learned was not really up to the job.

Increasingly I also felt that—and here you must take my discipline, philosophy, into account—a philosophical investigation into race need not take a stand on many of these causal questions. The crucial theoretical insight was the recognition of the reality of white supremacy. For some issues, admittedly, it would be important to commit oneself to a particular sociological explanation of the origins of white supremacy, but not for all. For example, a lot of my work has focused on the moral implications of white supremacy, how it denies equal personhood to people of color, and what questions this raises for theories of social justice. You can explore these matters in the normative sphere without getting into competing social scientific theoretical disputes. (Admittedly, the truth or falsity of different social science explanations of race might have implications for how likely it is that social justice prescriptions are going to be realized.) So that contributed to my theoretical decision to bracket certain questions.

Finally, it has traditionally been the case that Marxism/historical materialism has been weak on issues of morality and justice. There is often a dismissiveness in Marx’s own writings about these questions, and in the 1970s-80s you find philosophical debates in the literature over the issue of whether Marxism can even accommodate a theory of justice. Since increasingly in recent years I’ve been trying to engage with the social justice literature in general, and the work of John Rawls in particular, you can see why I began to feel that I needed to draw on the resources of liberalism rather than Marxism. And remember that though particular liberal theorists have had theories of history, liberalism as such is not a theory of history, unlike historical materialism. It’s primarily a set of norms and values about how people should be treated and how society should be structured. So endorsing liberal values leaves open, in my opinion, a lot of these causal social science questions; it doesn’t foreclose them.

In terms of people in philosophy, the names that would come to mind are John McClendon and Stephen Ferguson, both of whom consider themselves “Marxist-Leninists,” and have written and continue to write on race from this distinct political perspective.

What is your current account of capitalism?

My account, which certainly has no particular originality to it, would draw on that well-established body of literature documenting (in the U.S., say) the growth of the service sector, the shift from manufacturing/productive capital to finance capital, the related flight of blue-collar jobs, the decline of unionization, the consolidation of plutocracy and the “New Gilded Age,” and the radically diminished prospects of class mobility even for white workers, let alone people of color. The U.S. used to represent a sharp contrast with European nations in this respect, while I believe we’re now at or near the bottom in comparison with other Western countries. And in terms of race, as I don’t have to tell anyone, we’re witnessing the attempt to turn the clock back and reverse the gains, limited as they were, of the civil rights movement. So this background context obviously presents both a threat and a potential: the threat of the exacerbation of social oppression and the potential for a broad-based alliance with an agenda for social reconstruction. The very fact that some Democratic candidates are calling for structural and institutional change—as against the centrism of the recent past—is an indication of how serious things have become.  

What are the strengths and weaknesses of the concept of racial capitalism?

Historically, class-based accounts of race have relied on the functionality of racial subordination for capitalism. One can distinguish at least three aspects: (i) Economically, the possibility of greater profits for the dominant classes given diminished labor costs—in the most extreme case, for example, in some periods of racial chattel slavery, there is no need to maintain a “living wage,” as with the white working class, since it’s cheaper simply to work slaves to death and then buy replacements. In addition, you often find a pattern of wages for white workers being lower in regions of the country where there’s slavery, since apart from plantation labor, other kinds of jobs can be given to slaves if white workers are becoming too “demanding.” And in the postbellum period, even after the abolition of slavery, we have in the South the institution of convict lease labor, and the use of black workers as scabs to break strikes, so that wages continue to be lower. (ii) Politically, in terms of disrupting possible anti-capitalist coalitions, a racially divided work force is obviously going to be less likely to be able to organize together to create a strong oppositional force demanding changes in the existing order, so a higher degree of stability is the more probable outcome. And (iii), ideologically, “whiteness” becomes an overarching set of norms and aspirations, a central identity, that militates against transracial class consciousness. So for all these reasons, you can see why the explanation has a prima facie plausibility. Some accounts would also claim that racism only originates in modernity—in the pre-modern period one has ethnocentrism, nationalism, xenophobia and religious bigotries, but not racism—and that the rise of capitalism and the expansion of Europe then explains why racism develops then and becomes so pervasive.

Criticisms of possible weaknesses would, for example, raise the question of why these beliefs and values are accepted by white workers, given that (by hypothesis) it’s not in their interest to sign on to them. (Rejoinders would point to socialization by the dominant classes—the role of white elites and ideologues—and the perceived benefits in at least the short term to white workers.) Another line of critique would argue that Marxism is generally weak on questions of consciousness and psychology, and that there are, for example, psychosexual dimensions to racism that are ill-explained in a Marxist “racial capitalism” framework. Think of the ritualistic character of lynchings in the South, for example, and their practices of torture, castration, and bodily dismemberment. Don’t we need a richer psychological picture to explain what’s going on there, one that involves issues of the construction of the (white) self and the relation to the (nonwhite) Other?

Then there’s the challenge to the historical picture itself. Explanations of racism should presumably be able to account for racial anti-Semitism (some anti-Semitisms are ethnic and religious rather than “racial”). Does “racial capitalism” really explain the racialization of the Jewish population in Nazi Germany? And what about the growing body of work in classics and medieval studies arguing that the conventional periodization of the emergence of racism is wrong, and that in fact you can find race and racism in the pre-modern world? The supposedly deep link between capitalism and racism would then be put into question, though of course you could still argue that it’s capitalism in its expansionist phase that makes racism a “world-historical” phenomenon in a way that it would not have been in pre-modernity. But still, it would be a challenge to the capitalist origins thesis. Some of these works argue for Aristotle as the pioneering racist theorist in the Western tradition, insofar as his “natural slave” category is ethnically marked (Persians in particular are the people he had in mind). Clearly this can’t be explained by “racial capitalism.” 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)? Medievalist Geraldine Heng, for example, claims in a book published this year that the first racial state in the history of the West is not, as one might think, in the colonial world, but 12th century England’s governmental oppression of its Jewish population. Can this be explained in terms of medieval class dynamics?

There’s also the issue, though the left are often reluctant to deal with it, or even admit it, of racism in states that are or were, at least self-conceivedly, post-capitalist. Certainly, it will not usually be the case that racist policies in these countries have official government backing. But if everyday practices, and de facto governmental norms of treatment, continue systematically to disadvantage specific national racial groups, and we also find that these racial groups are significantly under-represented in governing bodies and leading institutions, doesn’t this raise the question of whether capitalism is really the central issue, or whether we need to be considering a more general ”group domination” model, in which racism can be developed and instrumentalized in a range of politico-economic systems?

What is your current take on the Oppression Symmetry Thesis?

I put this idea forward (the “Oppression Symmetry Thesis”) about 20 years ago, not as something I believed myself, but as a thesis to which I thought many self-conceived progressives at the time were committed. My contrasting position was that it was an empirical question whether such a symmetry obtained, not a conceptual truth, and you had to look at the actual history of the country, and the patterns of group consciousness and group solidarity, to determine what the overall configuration of oppressions was. I suggested that in the U.S., for example, an Oppression Asymmetry Thesis was more plausible, and that race historically tended to trump other identities and alignments, in that white workers and white women generally lined up with white elites and white men rather than nonwhites. Nor is there anything mysterious about this: it’s a straightforward consequence, in my opinion, of the distinctive formation of the nation as a white settler state, in which race assumes overwhelming significance as a defining identity tied to inclusion within or exclusion from full membership in the polity. In the two decades since then, of course, we’ve seen much more scholarship, in part coming out of indigenous studies, on settler colonialism as a distinct mode of political formation and how it shapes the overall social dynamic. So I think I’ve actually been vindicated (there was fierce pushback at the Radical Philosophy Association conference where I first proposed this heretical notion).   

In a 2014 Political Theory article titled "What is Liberalism," Duncan Bell sketches the extremely broad contours of historical and contemporary liberalisms. He buys into the idea liberalism is broadly accepted in the West, an idea you have alluded to in your recent work. You also argue though that liberalism is expansive enough to encompass an agenda that eliminates the injustices of white supremacy (and by extension I presume you include patriarchy). Is his understanding of liberalism useful?  What vision of liberalism do you think we should strive for?

One of the consequences of the pace of events of the times we’re living in is that in some respects (not all, I hope!) the book already needs to be updated, though it only came out in 2017. It’s a collection of essays that were published previously, in some cases many years ago, so it predates the alt-right and ethno-nationalist challenge. The opening line of chapter 3, “Racial Liberalism,” for example, says matter-of-factly that “Liberalism is globally triumphant,” which is far less true today, though arguably it was true when the essay first appeared in 2008.

Bell’s point was, I think, that in looking at past Western political theorists and categorizing them as “liberals,” we are, in a sense, often being anachronistic, since many of them would not have been thought of that way at the time. But assuming our current definition, then yes, I would agree that liberalism has been the dominant political ideology of modernity. And though it’s now under strong pressure from the right, not just in the U.S. but elsewhere also, it obviously has not yet been globally replaced by ethno-nationalism. It goes without saying that progressives who are critical of liberalism are not attacking it from the same angle as the ethno-nationalists. Rather, I assume it’s uncontroversial to assert that we want to retain the historic gains of liberalism, while indicting it for its non-delivery of advertised and promised others. The controversial issue, then, is whether these promises can in fact be fulfilled within a liberal framework or whether we need to abandon it and adopt another political ideology.

My own argument, as outlined in various chapters in the book, is that we need to recognize that liberalism is not a monolith, but needs to be pluralized. Think of the obvious difference, for example, between patriarchal liberalism and feminist liberalism. They’re both “liberal” in their ostensible commitment to liberal principles, but patriarchal liberalism denies equal personhood and individuality to women while feminist liberalism affirms them both. So as a result they look radically different. Similarly, though the terms here are not familiar, consider the difference between white-supremacist liberalism, which has been the dominant variety of liberalism of modernity, and what I have called “black radical liberalism,” or, more broadly, “anti-racist liberalism.” How would European liberalism have developed if, rather than signing on—as it did—to racial slavery (both African and Native American), colonialism, imperialism, and expropriative white settlement, it had condemned them all? How would it have had to be restructured if racial justice and the equitable treatment of people of color had been made foundational rather than ignored altogether? Obviously, it would be a liberalism very divergent from the variety hegemonic over the past few hundred years. So my general claim would be that we need to strive for an inclusive transformed vision of liberalism that overcomes the deficiencies of actual historic liberalism. Critics would retort that such a liberalism is not possible, but my reply would be that there’s no inconsistency between such a liberalism and foundational liberal principles, once de-racialized, purged of sexism, etc.

Yet, empirically more and more people in the US are skeptical of capitalism and some polls show that a small majority of black folks even in the current period are supportive of socialism, and the capitalist social order remains at its core exploitative. Why then, should the black radical tradition evolve to embrace both liberalism and capitalism? Can we have a liberalism without capitalism (or vice versa)? Can we have capitalism without white supremacy and patriarchy? Some scholars working in the racial capitalism and indigenous studies genres are skeptical of both claims.

The revival of the left in the U.S. has been wonderful, and I’m delighted I lived to see it. But precisely because the left has been marginalized for so long (on top of the general political illiteracy in the country), you find terms being used in a very uninformed way. If you’re a citizen of a Western nation so right-wing that national health care can be successfully represented by the political right as the advance fifth column of totalitarianism, then obviously the entire political vocabulary is going to be skewed and distorted. As various online essays have pointed out, what many young Americans today mean by “socialism” is just government intervention in the market. They’re not even thinking of social democracy, let alone (to use the classic Marxist definition) working-class ownership of the means of production. So it is a positive development, but we need to be careful about not overstating its implications.   

As I’m using “liberalism,” it’s in the broad sense that includes left-liberalism and social democracy. It also extends to “socialism,” but a “socialism” that respects key liberal values. So a black radical liberalism as I conceive it would be a liberalism of the left. It’s not actually necessarily tied to the endorsement of capitalism, as dominant varieties of liberalism have been, since it doesn’t take private ownership of the means of production to be a key liberal value. It leaves open the question of whether these values can in fact be achieved under capitalism, and in that respect, it is potentially an anti-capitalist liberalism. The question of what kind of economic system would best safeguard and enhance liberal values would have to be investigated in part by looking at the historical record of both capitalist states and supposedly post-capitalist states, what was termed at the time “actually existing socialism.”

In other words, I’m saying that the economic and human rights histories of the former Soviet Union and the former East Bloc, and of the People’s Republic of China, need to be objectively studied and taken into account in the debate. One can’t just ignore them as if they have no relevance to the question of how best to realize “socialism.” And likewise, of course, for the history of white supremacy and patriarchy under capitalism. We justifiably find it absurd when defenders of capitalism make reference only to an idealized capitalism in making their case, while ignoring capitalism’s historic involvement in racial slavery, imperial conquest, indigenous genocide, and colonial forced labor (sometimes also having genocidal consequences, as in King Leopold II’s Belgian Congo). It’s a death toll in the tens of millions. But it is no less absurd to ignore the death toll, also in the tens of millions, of the real-life attempts to create post-capitalist states, as in the Soviet Union under Stalin in particular and in the People’s Republic of China. In the case of both systems we have, on the one hand, inspirational advertised ideals and, on the other hand, radically deviant historical realities, and arguments for the superiority of one over the other need to take both into account.    

What are the intellectually and politically most promising avenues to pursue for ending white supremacy and all forms of domination?

Obviously, it’s going to have to be some form of coalitional politics that unites crucial constituencies across multiple identities of class, race, gender, sexual orientation, and so forth. (Actually, even as I say this, I realize how my age shapes my reflexive listing—the survival of the planet has to be in there as well!) The political platform will need to combine moral appeal (the injustice of the existing order, the greater possibility of realizing justice under an alternative order) and the appeal to group interests. So enough people are going to have to be convinced that by some important metric they’re going to be better-off—I phrase it that way to leave open the possibility that this metric might include other factors besides material economic interests. In the case of planetary sustainability, one would like to think that here, at least, a direct appeal to “material” interests can be made, without worrying about other variables! But the problem for certain folks, of course, is convincing them that the threat is indeed real.

The most promising avenue for ending white supremacy specifically is, in my opinion, to disaggregate the white population and make a pitch to those in its lower echelons that they’d be better off in a non-white-supremacist social order, insofar as race has historically functioned to stabilize a racial class system that is now disadvantaging them also. One would point, for example, to the aforementioned consolidation of plutocracy, the growth in student debt, the recent fall in white life expectancies, the stagnation in real wages (once adjusted for inflation), the diminution of any realistic prospects of class mobility, the dramatic degree of under-representation of working-class folks in the student bodies of elite academic institutions. You would ask the white poor, the white working-class, where do you think your kids and your grandkids are going to be in the future in this system if things continue to develop as they have been doing? Wouldn’t it be better, rather than holding on to an exclusionary “whiteness,” to form a transracial class alliance to bring about a more equitable United States, a United States more equal in opportunities for everybody, a society that is both more just and more in the interests of everybody?

So that would be the strategy: to embed the racial justice project in a broader social justice project. I say “embed” to emphasize the contrast with dissolving the racial justice project into a supposedly all-inclusive “universal” social justice project, which the white left in particular (to the extent that they have been willing to notice race) have historically done. The point is that racial oppression is not just a spin-off from class oppression, but has distinctive features of its own (segregation, disenfranchisement, political under-representation, the wealth gap, more systematic police brutality, the prison-industrial complex, institutional disrespect, and so on) that will need to be specifically targeted. Ideally, then, you would be developing a political vision that genuinely encompasses these diverse sections of the population, and appeals, as I said, both to justice and group interests. And as I don’t have to tell you, the main obstacle to this program is that too many white workers define their interests in a way that precludes such an alliance precisely because an exclusionary “whiteness,” regardless of its actual cash value, has become so important to them. So this is the challenge that progressives are going to face: how to get white workers to rethink their group identities and their corresponding group interests in such a way as to facilitate rather than obstruct egalitarian social change.

What projects are you working on now?

I am currently working on a book, The White Leviathan: Nonwhite Bodies in the White Body Politic, that can be seen as a kind of companion volume, or complementary text, to my most recent book, Black Rights/White Wrongs. Black Rights/White Wrongs focused on the racialization of liberalism, and the corresponding need for its deracialization. The White Leviathan will be looking at the racialization of the body politic, and, similarly, how it should be deracialized. The metaphor of the body politic goes back hundreds of years and has become a standard figure of representation for us. But contemporary liberalism (as against the liberalism of the pre-civil rights epoch) pretends that this “body” is colorless when in fact it’s white. For the overtly racist liberalism of the past, of course, it was taken for granted that the body politic was normed by the white male body, but we’re now in a period of greater circumspection on these issues. Or at least we were in the Obama era of “post-racial” delusions. You could say that under our new President we’re well on our way back to that time of more overtly racial discourse.

Anyway, under that overarching metaphor I explore in part one of the book the “whiteness” in time, space, and colonial character of the unacknowledged racial “materiality” of the body politic. Then in part two I turn to the issue of racial justice, and what would be required for deracialization. One of the most clear-cut manifestations of the “whiteness” of philosophy is that there’s this huge literature on social justice in which racial justice as a topic is almost completely ignored. A term that has been part of public discourse for so many decades has not been deemed worthy of analysis by philosophers, who are supposed to be the professional justice theorists. So I try to develop a conceptualization and periodization of racial justice, and what some useful guiding abstract principles of racial justice would be.

Beyond that, I’ve been doing some preliminary work on another book that would bring together my replies to various theorists’ critiques of me over the years, and my own critiques of them. Happily, there’s now much more work being published in Africana Philosophy and Critical Philosophy of Race than used to be the case. So a set of lively debates is under way among philosophers of color and a few white progressives about such questions as how best to analyze racism; whether, and if so how, can liberalism as a political ideology be salvaged; what our attitude should be towards “rights” discourse; what is the most useful apparatus for theorizing racial justice, and so forth. The guiding assumption is that whether people agree with me or not (and many don’t) we will all benefit from having these issues critically discussed. So I am hoping to get to that project next once The White Leviathan manuscript has been sent to the publisher.