2017/12/12 by Nancy Fraser · 2 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Health Professions · Social Sciences · #Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism #Homelessness and Social Issues #Political Economy and Marxism
paper · doi:10.1080/00130095.2017.1398045
Familiar, exploitation-centered conceptions of capitalism cannot explain its persistent entanglement with racial oppression. In their place, I suggest an expanded conception that also encompasses an ongoing but disavowed moment of expropriation. By thematizing that other ex, I disclose, first, the crucial role played in capital accumulation by unfree and dependent labor, which is expropriated, as opposed to exploited; and second, the equally indispensable role of politically enforced status distinctions between free, exploitable citizen-workers and dependent, expropriable subjects. Treating such political distinctions as constitutive of capitalist society and as correlated with the color line, I demonstrate that the racialized subjection of those whom capital expropriates is a condition of possibility for the freedom of those whom it exploits. After developing this proposition systematically, I historicize it, distinguishing four regimes of racialized accumulation according to how exploitation and expropriation are distinguished, sited, and intertwined in each. I end by making the case for combined struggles against both exes and against the larger social system that generates their symbiosis.