Economic structure explains racial dynamics only as necessary conditions, never sufficient ones.

Evidence

At a metatheoretical level the focus on apartheid helps clarify the specificity 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; the society also requires attention to the particular forms of what John Rex calls “the race war” engendered by colonial conquest. While the racial dynamics of the society cannot be understood without reference to its economic structure, this provides only the necessary—rather than the sufficient—conditions, if we are to understand the specific forms of social relations developed in South Africa. As Stuart notes, this approach alerts us to the importance of refusing classical Marxism’s Euro-centeredness, “based as it is on extrapolating to other social formations forms of development, paths, and logics peculiar to, and illegitimately generalized from, European cases.” — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 298

Categorization

• XREF: Directly connects to Hall’s later analysis of new ethnicities/non-essentialist black subjectivity in Volume 2, which the reader is reading these essays to understand.