Colonial conquest generates race war dynamics irreducible to class struggle alone.

Evidence

At a metatheoretical level, the focus on apartheid helps clarify the differentia specifica of the South African case. The peculiarity of its deviations from the classical capitalist path of development helps demonstrate that the society cannot be understood simply in terms of classical Marxism’s concept of the class struggle but also requires attention to the particular forms of what John Rex calls “the race war” engendered by colonial conquest. While the racial dynamics cannot be understood without reference to its economic structure, economics provides only the necessary—rather than the sufficient—conditions, if we are to understand the specific forms of social relations developed in South Africa. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 36

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Rex’s ‘race war’ as a distinct category engendered by colonial conquest, separate from economic class struggle.
• XREF: The colonial-conquest origin of racial domination maps onto Fanon’s colonial psychology and later Islamophobia theory on how colonial encounter constructs the racialized Other.