The Political Economy of Racism by Melvin Leiman

“The scholar who accepts no harsh judgment because it does not do justice to the entire complex truth can really accept no judgments about society because all are simplifications of the complex. The result is scholarly detachment from the profound ethical conflicts of society and from that human concern without which scholarship becomes a pretentious game” - Howard Zinn

Having taken me a thoroughly long time to read, I finished The Political Economy of Racism the same day I went to the Macomb Juvenile Justice Detention Center to workshop some poetry with the students attending the facility’s subcontracted school. These were young men whom the system had failed at every level of their lives, regardless of the scope of their “crimes”. Some of these students were going to go straight to prison to serve 20 years, 30 years, or life and they were 14 -16 years old. There is not a society on earth that can deem itself a success while condemning children to lifetimes in prison. What can a book as dense and academic (not to mention a terrible “summer read”) as Melvin Leiman’s offer in the face of utter societal failure?

A lot.

Leiman’s is a challenging read, making this a hard book to recommend, but what he has to offer is critical. He works out two distinct lines of discourse; 1) a hard look at the economy of discrimination ranging from slavery to redlining (the book was written in the 70s so mass incarceration was really only starting to ramp up) and 2) an absolutely savage Marxist takedown of any school of thought that avoids branding capitalism as public enemy number one.

In his first line, Leiman makes it very clear his interest does not lie with the petty racism of individuals. While he feels any degree of racism is grotesque, it is obvious he places the emphasis on systems designed to hold African Americans down for any number of reasons. Slavery was, after all, an institution of value that was justified by evoking the perceived inferiority of black people. The argument is that racism maintains the underclass necessary for capitalism. It is a smart line to take, some Marxists receive criticism because they feel that racism would disappear if capitalism was toppled. Leiman makes no such guarantee, but he is very adamant that racism can never be abolished under capitalism as it is far too necessary; we need to justify exploitation by labeling those at the bottom as deserving of their place in society, the best way to do this is fostering the idea of race based inferiority. While this underlying premise seems obvious, Leiman’s scope is complicated (and arduous). He covers monopolistic economies where companies rely on disadvantaged communities - ones that may be ravaged by over policing and redlining - for cheap labor (think of Wal-Mart or McDonald's) and competitive economies where discrimination and racism help keep wages low across the labor market. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Every dissection is thorough and complete with hard numbers and analysis. Have I mentioned this book was dense?

The second half of the book examines radical critiques of racism, Orthodox critiques of racism, and hybrid positions such as Black Nationalism or Black Capitalism. To many, taking on the conservative school of thought is the easiest to swallow. Libertarian and conservative ideologies often pay lip service to a certainly palatable repulsion to discrimination and racism, but will not endorse government intervention to prevent it. The idea is that discrimination does not benefit the participants of a market system in the form of profits, stock prices, and/or publicity, in fact, it may harm them. Even where that is true, libertarians and conservatives fail to address the larger political economy that benefits more generally from the existence of an underclass perpetuated by systemic discrimination and racism. These were among some of the most buoyant and fun sections to read, Leiman’s take on liberalism and class-centric leftism are more complicated but no less crucial. The orthodox liberal ideology - say, of your Clinton variety - warrants criticism because it is a full endorsement of a class based system with a welfare state to mitigate the condition of the lowest classes. It attracts well-meaning people who don’t believe suffering should be so prolific but doesn’t truly offer them an answer for eliminating its necessity for America to maintain its decadence. Every examination of critical theory on racism that Leiman explores is vital for understanding the limitations of our system as a whole.

It is important to understand the persistence of racism in America, why the students I taught poetry in Juvenile Detention live in an entirely different world than the students I teach in the suburbs. This divide is entirely manufactured. Leiman’s solution to toppling capitalism is black and white labor unity, something he feels racism is also employed to stop. There isn’t a single element of racism that Leiman cannot prove the absolute utility of in his book. It’s worth stating again; the decline or abolition of capitalism will not guarantee the the decline or abolition of racism, but there will be no such thing under capitalism. Reading The Political Economy of Racism can help elevate the conversation against racism to much needed heights.