MANNING MARABLE
by Jonathan Blum (2023)
In his review of How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Cornel West (1986) wrote: “Manning Marable is the most visible and well-known black Marxist in the country. His syndicated column—the lone black socialist voice—appears in over 140 black and white newspapers in the USA and Britain.” However, over thirty-five years later, in the era of Black Lives Matter and the mainstreaming of democratic socialism—Manning Marable’s insights into the relationship between race, class, gender in modern capitalism has yet to saturate into the daily discussions of contemporary academics and activists.
Manning Marable was born in Ohio in 1950. Growing up during the civil rights movement, Marable turned to Black Nationalism following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In 1976, Marable was awarded a PhD in history from the University of Maryland. Marable increasingly grew closer to Marxism, viewing Black Nationalism as ultimately limiting in producing revolutionary social change. In 1982, Marable was elected as a vice chair of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Though he departed DSA after the organization did not support Jesse Jackson in his 1984 campaign in the Democratic primary.
Marable launched Columbia University’s Institute for Research in African-American Studies in 1993 at Columbia University where he served as professor of public affairs, history, and African American Studies. He passed away in 2011 at the age of 60 years old.
In How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America ([1983] 2000: 43), Marable applies Walter Rodney’s analysis of How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) “to the oppressed situation of Black people in the United States.” In doing so, Marable interrogates the class structure of Black America, the political economy of the United States, and the future possibilities of authoritarianism, genocide, and a socialist America. Rather than a “declining significance of race” as proposed by William Julius Wilson (1978), for Marable race is just as if not more important for the maintenance and reproduction of contemporary capitalism.
THE CLASS STRUCTURE OF BLACK AMERICA
For Marable the class structure of Black America is separated by two spatial-relational divisions. One is the Black Majority: The Domestic Periphery that consists of the working class, poor (ghetto class), women, and prisoners. Second is the Black Elite: The Domestic Core that consists of entrepreneurs, politicians (Black Brahmins), church leaders, and educators.
The Black Working Class
The modern industrial Black working class consolidated during the years of the Great Migration from the South to the North following the First World War (Marable [1983] 2000: 108). Thanks to labor leaders such as A. Phillip Randolph, labor unions played a more central role in the lives of the Black working class (Marable [1983] 2000: 109). However, as a result of the conservative and increasingly de-militant nature of union leadership, Black workers received lower wages and worked more dangerous jobs compared to their white counterparts (Marable [1983] 2000: 110).
The country’s biggest unions such as the AFL-CIO continued to operate under the premise of supporting a ‘whites only’ labor strategy. The aim of this strategy was to improve the conditions of white workers as much as possible, compensating these gains via the exploitation of the Black working class (Marable [1983] 2000: 114).
Of course, this did not mean that unions are merely a white supremacist tool, as some members of the Black middle class believe. In many ways the opposite is true. Marable finds that “in industries with heavy union representation, the income disparity between Black and white males is relatively low…in industrial sectors dominated by craft unions, or in industries that remain largely unorganized, the median income gap between Black and white males is more severe” (Marable [1983] 2000: 116).
In fact, racism in many ways conflicts with the interests of the white working class. Obviously, no better place proves in this fact more than the South. There, the conditions of the working class, including the white working class, are the poorest at the same time as the power of racial segregation is strong and the power of organized labor is weak (Marable [1983] 2000: 118). Marable cites a study which found that the lack of Black-White unity in union organizing reduces the total labor income share. Thus, in the long run, the white working class loses as a result of white supremacy too. Marable also reasons that the negative effects of white supremacy on the white working class is no more clearly displayed than of the election of election of Ronald Reagan and his subsequent cuts to public spending on foods stamps, public housing, and Medicare (Marable [1983] 2000: 119).
Yet, given these facts, why does the white working class not see how white supremacy harms them - and goes out of their way to support racial violence and segregationist politicians? Marable ([1983] 2000: 123) argues this is due to the “cultural and psychological satisfaction” (as opposed to material satisfaction) one earns from being “normal” in a white supremacist society. Thus, the white working class compares themselves in relative terms with other inferior groups, and thinks that at least they are not them. If one were ‘abnormal’ and preach for racial equality and point the finger at their bosses, they would deprive themselves of this satisfaction, and find few allies in their struggle to change the consciousness of the white working class.
Marable concludes his thoughts on Black working class by noting some harrowing trends within the political economy of the United States. He notes that “Blacks are being concentrated in exactly those industries that are undergoing rapid decline and conversely are excluded from the sectors of the economy targeted for growth” (Marable [1983] 2000: 126). He predicts that into the 1980s, Black unemployment, and especially Black youth unemployment will continue to rise. This feeds into the development of the reserve army of labor, the Black “ghetto class.”
The Black Poor
In a white supremacist society, Marable argues, it is not surprised that the distribution of poverty by racial group is uneven. Nearly a third of African Americans are in poverty compared to less than a tenth of white Americans (Marable [1983] 2000: 133). Compared to poor whites, poor Blacks tend to be younger, urban, and female (Marable [1983] 2000: 137). This subproletariat faces immense challenges as they are deprived from meaningful employment as well as education and healthcare services. These conditions fuel the growth of the lumpenproletariat that exploit the subproletariat to support their pimping, drug dealing, and other illicit petty enterprises (Marable [1983] 2000: 146). To survive, the Black poor more broadly participate in lumpen-like activities like creating markets for stolen goods. Gangs provide means of survival for the youth, both for the material and protective benefits.
Crucially, the social conditions of the Black poor create a culture of fear. This culture rips the fabric of trust within society, preventing the formation of a collective consciousness to advance their material and cultural interests (Marable [1983] 2000: 148). This effectively removes a substantial chunk of Black Americans from organizing with the Black working class, blunting any cohesive movement towards radical social change (Marable [1983] 2000: 149). To the Black working and middle class, the Black poor is mere underclass deserving of their shame, and are an embarrassment to the development of Black society.
Black Women
Marable brings focus to the condition and of Black women—noting how they face a triple oppression between class, race, and gender (Marable [1983] 2000: 151). However, this triple oppression has not been taken with great sincerity by Black men (with the exception of notable figures such as Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois). In part, this is due to the “evolution of patriarchal institutions within Black civil society” (Marable [1983] 2000: 158). For many Black men, Black liberation became synonymous with “Black manhood” (Marable [1983] 2000: 159). Patriarchal relations within the household solidified in the late nineteenth century. Men delegated household and care work to women, while women strived to take on the roles of womanhood that were inscribed to them in a white supremacist capitalist society (Marable [1983] 2000: 160).
Yet, Black women as a whole never reached the same degree of housewifization compared to white women. By the mid-twentieth century, they were twice as likely to be employed (Marable [1983] 2000: 165). As educational opportunities expanded, more and more Black women joined the labor force. This reinforced patriarchal attitudes both among Black men and Black women. Black men reasoned a conspiracy that white men favored hiring Black women over Black men. Meanwhile, Black women even bought into patriarchal views—seeing Black men who did not take on the patriarchal role in the household as “selfish, lazy, and irresponsible” (Marable [1983] 2000: 170).
The question of male domination also took the backseat during the rise of the Black Power movement. Patriarchal values were rarely in conflict with Black nationalism. This was quite revealed when black nationalists exposed their socially conservative views such as their opposition to abortion and contraception (Marable [1983] 2000: 177).
Of course, for hundreds of years Black women in the United States have been resisting their oppression. From Sojourner Truth to Angela Davis, Black women have provided sharp critiques of patriarchy, capitalism, and racism. The formation of “militant Black feminism” in the 1970s grew out the frustrations of patriarchy within the Black Power movement. One of the most powerful examples of this project was the creation of the Combahee River Collective in Boston that aimed to combat interlocking “racial, sexual, heterosexual, and class oppression” (Marable [1983] 2000: 189).
Concluding, Marable affirms that white supremacy nor capitalism cannot be successfully challenged without the destruction of patriarchy. He declares: “no road toward the ultimate emancipation of the U.S. Black working class exists outside of a concomitant struggle…to destroy every vestige of sexual oppression within the Black community” (Marable [1983] 2000: 191).
Prisoners
According to Marable Marable [1983] 2000: 193): “American capitalism is preserved by two essential and integral factors: fraud and force.” Fraud is the hegemonic structure of ideology and culture that promotes the virtues of private property, bourgeois democracy, and so called “equal opportunity.” Force is the coercive elements of a capitalist society that are “generally disguised” but becomes much more visible during times of crisis. African Americans receive a disproportionate share of force relative to whites due to three factors: their location in the lowest paying, lowest skilled occupations; their relative size in the reserve army of labor— “the last hired and the first fired” (Marable [1983] 2000: 194); and as existing in a racist/capitalist state, they are the “historic target” of violence to maintain the racial hierarchy. Thus, “to be Black in capitalist America is to be a prisoner to the reality of coercion” (Marable [1983] 2000: 195).
Of course, this coercion stretches as far back as slavery, and developed further in the Jim Crow South where the peonage system and convict leasing were carceral institutions to regulate African American labor and enforce their inferior position in the social structure (Marable [1983] 2000: 199). Lynching served a particular “psychosocial and economic function” (Marable [1983] 2000: 208). Along with other sudden acts of violence, lynching was designed to create an environment of terror to produce “the omnipresent fear of fate worse than death itself…” (Marable [1983] 2000: 209). As the Great Migration led to the decline of lynchings and other spontaneous acts of violence, the state became the central coercive force—most directly through the criminal justice system—which “became the modern instrument to perpetuate white hegemony. Extra-legal lynchings were replaced by ‘legal lynchings’ and capital punishment” (Marable [1983] 2000: 211).
The expansion of the state’s coercive role in the 1960s and 1970s had two functions. The first was via mass incarceration to keep a high share of African Americans within the reserve army of labor, and second was to expand the surveillance state and “police-state apparatus” to crush voices of dissent against white supremacy and capitalism (an effort that especially targeted the civil rights and Black Power movements) (Marable [1983] 2000: 218).
Black Entrepreneurs
Black entrepreneurs serve a particular role in the class structure of African Americans—to legitimate capitalism and “perpetuate the illusion that anyone” can climb the economic ladder (Marable [1983] 2000: 231). At the core of this idea is that capitalism in itself is not structurally upholding white supremacy and that the condition of African Americans can dramatically improve merely through the accumulation of capital that is concentrated among a few (Marable [1983] 2000: 233).
The growth of Black capitalism in the late 19th century was in part the result of segregation which, with the ideological support of Booker T. Washington, fomented the creation of a Black consumer market (Marable [1983] 2000: 238). Into the 1980s, most Black businesses shared the following characteristics: low capital intensity, few employees, and concentrated in low value-added sectors (human services and retail trade) (Marable [1983] 2000: 248-254). A more recent trend, coinciding with the dismantling of racial segregation, was the growing presence of white companies in the Black consumer market (Marable [1983] 2000: 257). Due to the low incomes of much of the Black consumer market, extending credit to low-income families became a more favorable tool for attracting business to white companies (262). This trend blunted the growth of Black capitalism in post-segregation America—a period when the opposite trend would have been expected (Marable [1983] 2000: 263).
However, rather than suggest that this indicates the Black Capitalism has failed due to the logics of a white supremacist capitalist social system, Marable reasons that this may push (as is the tendency historically with the petty bourgeoise) Black capitalists “into the political camp of the most racist and conservative forces of white America…the politics of authoritarianism” (Marable [1983] 2000: 267).
Black Brahmins
The Black Brahmins—or politicians—serve a critical role in American society. By politician, Marable considers a wider definition that not only includes elected officials but any “person who is directly involved in making, carrying out, or influencing state policies” (Marable [1983] 2000: 229). Thus, this expanded definition can include unelected figures such as Booker T. Washington. Rather than real power, Black politicians possess a “symbolic power” that “promises much but delivers nothing” (Marable [1983] 2000: 270). This could be clearly seen in the opposition of Black politicians to Reaganomics—a lack of an alternative consensus and no challenge to the capitalist system (Marable [1983] 2000: 271).
In fact, a particular political phenomenon emerged at this time: Black Reaganism (Marable [1983] 2000: 272). Articulated most famously by economist Thomas Sowell, Black Reaganism included a broad coalition of African Americans from corporate executives to former, now disillusioned radicals. Ultimately, they believed that racism was largely a thing of the past, that socialist nor liberal programs were the answer, and that true answer for the prosperity of African Americans was in the embrace of capitalism and Reagan’s right-wing agenda (Marable [1983] 2000: 277). This was a noted change in what typically defined Black conservatism. What differentiates Black Reaganism is not that it merely accommodates to living in a white supremacist society, but fully capitulates to it. Hence, Marable concludes: “Sowell does not even merit the mantel of Washington” (Marable [1983] 2000: 299).
The Black Church
The Black Church is rather unique in its “ambiguous” political tendencies. At times, Black ministers played a progressive, if not, a radical role in challenging capitalism and white supremacy such as Martin Luther King Jr. However, there were also countless times when ministers failed to take a clear collective stand against social injustice such as their muted criticisms of the Jim Crow South and their silence during McCarthy’s anticommunist crusade which targeted prominent Black activists such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Paul Robeson (Marable [1983] 2000: 307-308). Yet, if more Black ministers turn towards Martin Luther King’s vision and take a more militant stance in advancing social justice, they may become an important ally with the working class in the quest for democratic socialism (Marable [1983] 2000: 326).
Black Education
Historically Black colleges and universities have been central to the production and reproduction of Black intellectuals and the Black elite as a whole. When access to education at predominantly white institutions expanded in the civil rights era, Black student activism became essential in challenging the pedagogical and organizational structure of these institutions (Marable [1983] 2000: 332). The influx of Black students into predominantly white colleges and universities combined with the 1973 recession and dwindling government funding, left many Black colleges and universities in a state of financial distress (Marable [1983] 2000: 336). This was taken advantage of by the Reagan Administration, which made a deal with state officials in North Carolina to slow down progress on desegregation in exchange for modest investment in Black colleges (Marable [1983] 2000: 340). Not long after the agreement, dozens of junior faculty instructors at Black colleges and universities were told to finish their doctoral programs within a few months or find a job elsewhere.
Marable’s vision for higher education includes a commitment towards desegregating predominantly white institutions and protecting the status of historically Black colleges and universities “to fulfill their historic mandate of providing quality education to Black people” (Marable [1983] 2000: 341). He speaks for the potential of higher education to live up to the Du Boision vision of being “fundamentally subversive” (Marable [1983] 2000: 342).
TOWARD A SOCIALIST AMERICA
Recognizing that “the symbiotic processes of institutional racism and capital accumulation affect all American working a poor people,” Marable ([1983] 2000: 375) reasons that “the road to Black liberation must also be a road to socialist revolution." To transition to a socialist society, Marable ([1983] 2000: 375-83) suggests ten points:
1) An “authentic social revolution” must be supported from “a clear majority of American people, with a large base in the working class” (Marable [1983] 2000: 375). This majority may be indicated electorally, but it may or may not be made under the current electoral system.
2) The social movement must contest the state by running candidates for office as well as taking on bureaucratic roles within the state. Importantly, a new political party should be constructed that is foremost antiracist, antisexist, and anticapitalist.
3) A revolution in Russian Revolution sense is likely not capable of succeeding in the United States (at least in the early stages of revolutionary change). Other means need to be taken to advance a revolutionary agenda.
4) A counter-hegemonic movement must emerge in civil society to advance the socialist cause. Here, a Common Program will be developed from a range of classes, racial groups, and social movements to form “a mass revolutionary bloc which would explicitly call for the transformation of the system as it now exists. It would wage a ‘war of position’ for state legitimacy, for the majoritarian mandate to overturn the State” (Marable [1983] 2000: 377)
5) The initial objective of this movement is to advance “nonreformist reforms” within the state (e.g., abortion rights, LGBTQ rights, universal healthcare, etc.).
6) The language of the movement must be easy to understand for the masses and the attention of the movement must focus on systems and structures rather than on people and countries.
7) The Common Program must emphasize its opposition to racism, capitalist, sexism, and imperialism. It must support national liberation struggles and be against imperialist wars.
8) Acknowledging that “racism and patriarchy are both precapitalist”, the abolition of these oppressions in a socialist society can only come about through the establishment of anti-racist and anti-patriarchal structures (such as organizations “solely of Blacks, Hispanics, and/or women”) within the revolutionary movement.
9) Deeper into the struggle, a “war of maneuver” will need to be strategized. It is highly unlikely; the ruling elite will easily submit to a socialist revolution without “raw” coercive power. Thus, compromise is impossible. For African Americans it is either socialism or genocide and for the broader proletariat it is either democracy or authoritarianism.
10) The only thing that will be known about the future is that the people will make their own history. The new organizations, institutions, and structures that will emerge over the course of this struggle may be far from contemporary understanding.
Marable ends the book with a final call to action:
"A final word: progressive white Americans must succeed in overturning their own racism, in theory and practice, if a successful revolution can be achieved in this country, which will in the process write the final page on Black underdevelopment. Nothing short of a commitment to racial equality and Black freedom such as that exhibited by the militant white abolitionist John Brown will be sufficient. Nothing less than the political recognition that white racism is an essential and primary component in the continued exploitation of all American working people will be enough to defeat the capitalist class. And to the Black working class, the historic victim of slavery and sharecropping, rape and lynching, capital punishment and imprisonment, I leave the advice of C.L.R. James: ‘Marxism is the doctrine which believes that freedom, equality and democracy are today possible for all mankind. If this (book) has stimulated you to pursue the further study of Marxism, we will have struck a blow for the emergence of mankind from the darkness into which capitalism has plunged the world.’" (Marable [1983] 2000: 382).
MARABLE AND WILSON
While both William Julius Wilson and Manning Marable agree that there has been a significant divide between the Black elite and an underclass, Marable paints a more complex picture of the class structure of African Americans. Additionally, rather than race declining in significance (Wilson 1978), for Marable racism has only intensified, raising concerns of a potential Black genocide if there is not a concrete movement towards a socialist society.
For Wilson, much of his argument rests on the idea that the Black middle class has largely assimilated with the white middle class, and thus racial barriers are less of obstacle towards material advancement than they were in the past. Though, Marable would not take issues that there has been a growth in the Black middle class, Marable would argue that racism still plays a fundamental role in the divide between the Black and white middle class and these racial conflicts are ever present.
Take the position of Black entrepreneurs and educators as an example. Black entrepreneurs, though successful at concentrating the wealth of African Americans, face more challenges than their white counterparts in creating a steady path towards capital accumulation. The lack of capital and social connections among Black entrepreneurs produces opportunities to compete with white businesses that are few and far between. Crucially, these obstacles do not push these entrepreneurs into a reform agenda that would concentrate on the binds between white supremacy and capitalism. Rather these frustrations throw them into the hands of the white elite, intensifying racism.
For Black educators the position is similar. The reproduction of the hegemonic structure requires that education be used to propagate a culture that defends private property and upholds white supremacy. Marable would point to the precarity of Black faculty both at Black colleges and predominantly white institutions as well as the efforts of Black students in both settings to push for a radical pedagogy and a campus environment cleared of white supremacy. These examples indicate the struggle that exists even among more middle class African Americans in asserting their right to exist and deconstruct racism. And if the North Carolina agreement is any indication, the influence of white supremacy in the education system is still strong and the survival of historically black colleges and universities is at increased risk.
Just like the middle class, Wilson sees little separation in the conditions of poor and working class African Americans and whites. While Marable would agree that the material conditions and social location of the white and African American poor and working class necessitates a common movement towards social change, white supremacy is still a crucial factor in mediating the divide between the two racial groups, and plays its own unique role in regulating the everyday existence of African Americans. Marable would point to how cultural narratives and the media still push ideas that African Americans, or any other racial group threatens the interests of white workers. He would point to the particular efforts of the state via mass incarceration and under investment in urban areas to produce a culture of fear that regulates the reserve army of labor and prevents unity between the poor and working class.
It should come as little surprise that when African Americans broke into the political elite in metros such as Atlanta in 1970s, these cities were quickly met with white flight into the suburbs and capital flight out of the communities and municipalities that needed investment the most—leading to the disproportionate impoverishment of African Americans and increases in urban crime (Marable [1983] 2000: 349). Additionally, he would point to efforts by the state to squash efforts made by African Americans to resist white supremacy and push for revolution.
Thus, for Marable, you cannot separate race and class in a white supremacist capitalist society. There is no “declining significance of race.” In fact, the role of race is becoming more acute. The Reagan presidency is no better symbol of this. Here was a president, two decades after the civil rights movement, that launched an all out assault the socio-economic standing and civil societal institutions of Black life. In 1981, Michael A. Donald was lynched by Klan members in Alabama (Marable [1983] 2000: 347). More Black men in the Deep South were mysteriously found dead hanging from trees, in which these deaths would be ruled a suicide. But as one Black resident in a Mississippi county stated, “if they say it was suicide, it was probably a lynching” (Marable [1983] 2000: 348).
Central to Marable’s argument is that “the current outbreak of racist attacks is a manifestation of a profound and fundamental crisis within the political economy of monopoly capitalism” (Marable [1983] 2000: 357). This is reflected in a fierce competition between the petty bourgeoisie, working class, and poor “of different ethnic groups…over increasingly scarce resources” (Marable [1983] 2000: 358). Deindustrialization, stagflation, bankruptcies all caused an immense disruption in the political economy of the United States in the 1970s. This crisis turned a period in what was supposed to be a period of social and economic prosperity for African Americans into the reverse, as the hegemonic institutions of society turned attention on the unfair freebies and benefits minorities (“racism in reverse”) were receiving to turn the anxieties of white people away from the elite (Marable [1983] 2000: 360).
And no better political figure funneled this message to white America better than Ronald Reagan. The incorporation of Black Reaganism was brilliant addition to his coalition that allowed him to appoint African Americans to influential positions in his administration while attacking the foundations of Black life and working class as a whole (Marable [1983] 2000: 361). Ultimately, for Marable: “it is in the interests of capital…that permits the climate of racist terrorism to continue. It is the desire to restructure modern capitalism and to accumulate profits at the expense of Black, brown and white labor that is at the root of the current crisis” (Marable [1983] 2000: 367). This includes the continue peddling of narratives to divide the working class, as well as the possibility of the capitalist class accepting authoritarianism as a more preferential political model to support the accumulation of capital.
In summary, the increased racist polarization, the assault on Black civil society, the growth of unemployment among the Black working class, the emergence of an urban underclass are all symptoms of a capitalist crisis that demands a change in the organization of political economy to promote the interests of capital accumulation. The state is compelled to engage in vicious austerity and protect capital (Marable [1983] 2000: 369). Yet, what makes this crisis particularly unique is the white supremacist ideology of the New Right that has seen tremendous growth since the 1960s.
Thus, comes the question of genocide. When the objective “to save capitalism at all costs…conflicts with the survival of millions of people who are now permanently outside the workspace,” what will happen to those part of the Black working class and poor (as well as Hispanics and whites) that meet the greatest brunt of this new social structure of accumulation? (Marable [1983] 2000: 372). Marable ([1983] 2000: 373) warns: “Without gas chambers or pogroms, the dark ghetto’s economic and social institutions might be destroyed, and many of its residents would simply cease to exist.”
Hence, Marable would be highly critical over Wilson’s notion of the “declining significance of race.” Through a more intensive inquiry into the class structure of African Americans, the nature of current crisis of capitalism, and the intensifying of racial violence, and the possibilities of authoritarianism and genocide, Marable is clear that far from declining, racism plays an instrumental role in the day to day lives of contemporary society. And ultimately, the only way forward is not merely a broad coalition towards social reform, but a broad coalition towards revolution.
CONCLUSION
In a preface written twenty years after the initial publication of How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America, Manning Marable offered a “critical reassessment” of his analysis. Marable writes that he believes the main fault of his book was the overemphasis on the division between Black Majority and the Black Elite—questioning that the latter’s “contradictory and accommodationist behavior” was central to the underdevelopment of Black America. While still recognizing the necessary implications of the division, Marable ([1983] 2000: 56) acknowledges that the “real problem…[is the] exploitive policies and practices of the capitalist ruling class.” And the number of African Americans “in these elite groups is insignificant at best.”
Marable also adjusts his thinking on electoral politics. He confesses that he “grossly underestimated the importance to Black people of the democratic rights they had achieved through great sacrifices over several centuries of struggle” (Marable [1983] 2000: 56). This is especially important with regards to Jesse Jackson’s campaign for president in 1984.
In addition, Marable revises his thoughts on the analysis of the state. One observation is that “the capitalist ruling class has never been politically monolithic” (Marable [1983] 2000: 59). The division between national and multinational, big and small, and so on all produce different visions of the capitalist state. Especially with the rise in globalization, questions can be raised about whether the authority of the state itself is declining. According to Marable the new popular ideology of capital is “corporate multiculturalism” where capitalism is governed by international bureaucracies such as the World Trade Organization. Therefore, “any oppositional movement that largely or exclusively focuses on the political developments within nation-states will not be successful.”
In addition to his revisions, I would add a few other shortcomings to his analysis with regards to his plan to transition to a socialist America. One is the obvious contradiction between point (3) and (9) on the war of maneuver (WOM). Marable seems to separate the two temporally with the WOM occurring at a later period. But the question comes on how does this revolutionary movement prepare for it? Arms, soldiers, war strategy, are all missing? How can a war of maneuver be won?
Another question comes in combining point (7) and his updated analysis on global capitalism, the state, and transitional organizing. It’s one thing to show solidarity with people across borders. It’s another thing to collectively organize with them for a transitional agenda against transnational targets. How should Marable’s strategy be updated to account for these new structural and geographical shifts in the global economy?
Despite these shortcomings, Marable produces one of the most ingenious works on the political economy of the United States. He carefully explores how economics, cultural, and other social processes interact with class, race, and gender to explain the past, present, and future of American society. His analysis of mass incarceration as means to control the Black population and regulate their labor power is quite sophisticated for something that was developed in still the early years of the explosion of the modern carceral state. I think his points on a transition to a socialist America provide some valuable insights and frameworks for social movements, particularly those seeking to overcome interlocking oppressions and create a new justice-oriented, sustainable global society.
Lastly, the sheer amount of theorists Marable draws on to create his analysis is also something to behold. From Marx to Du Bois to Davis to Fanon to Gramsci to Rodney, this book alone is an incredible methodological display of how to integrate social theory. Thus, it is rather shocking from both an academic and an activist point of view this book is not discussed nearly enough in understanding the organization of contemporary society and what to do about it.
REFERENCES
Marable, Manning. [1983] 2000. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy, and Society. South End Press.
Rodney, Walter. 1972. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. East African Publishers.
West, Cornel. 1986. “Book Review: How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy and Society, by Manning Marable, Boston: South End Press, 1983.” Critical Sociology 13(3):114–15.
Wilson, William Julius. 1978. “The Declining Significance of Race.” Society 15(2):56–62.