CLASS, RACE & MARXISM
by David R. Roediger
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Founder of whiteness studies surveys the race/class relationship
Seen as a key figure in the critical study of whiteness, US historian David Roediger has sometimes received criticism, and praise, alleging that he left Marxism behind in order to work on questions of identity. This volume collects his recent and new work implicitly and explicitly challenging such a view. In his historical studies of the intersections of race, settler colonialism, and slavery, in his major essay (with Elizabeth Esch) on race and the management of labour, in his detailing of the origins of critical studies of whiteness within Marxism, and in his reflections on the history of solidarity, Roediger argues that racial division is not only part of the history of capitalism but also of the logic of capital.
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“No contemporary intellectual has better illuminated the interwoven social histories and conceptual dimensions of race and class domination. With this stunning new collection of essays, David Roediger once again demonstrates that he is a vital thinker for all of us seeking to bridge the imperatives of economic and social justice.”
Nikhil Singh, New York University
“David Roediger’s work is always as learned as it is profoundly engaged with the pursuit of social justice. From his signature study of the ‘wages of whiteness,’ to the analysis of links between settler colonial dispossession, gendered social reproduction, plantation management, and immigrant labor in the making of modern racial capitalism—Roediger’s bold commitments to demonstrating the historical and ongoing implications of race and class in the United States are timely, and more necessary than ever.”
Lisa Lowe, Tufts University
“These bracing essays express hard truths and grounded hopes as they help us to rethink a past too much with us still. Portraying a history of oppression and resistance made at the intersections of social identities, Roediger makes sophisticated analyses of culture and political economy accessible to scholars and to activists.”
Kimberle Crenshaw, Columbia University School of Law
“When it comes to thinking about the history of racism, anti-racism and the US working class, David Roediger has no peer. Incisive, provocative, and uncannily timely, Class, Race, and Marxism reckons honestly with the challenges of building class solidarity across the fissures of race, the difficulties of writing about it, and the ways in which the two are entwined. If there is a single lesson here, it is that solidarity is not forever—it is elusive, fragile, and hard as hell.”
Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression
“David Roediger's work is always as learned as it is profoundly engaged with the pursuit of social justice. From his signature study of The Wages of Whiteness, to the analysis of links between settler colonial dispossession, gendered social reproduction, plantation management, and immigrant labor in the making of modern racial capitalism – Roediger's bold commitments to demonstrating the historical and ongoing imbrications of race and class in the United States are timely, and more necessary than ever.”
– Lisa Lowe, author of The Intimacies of Four Continents
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HARDBACK: June 2017 / 208 pages / 9781786631237 / $26.95 / £19.99 / $35.99 (CAN)
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