Marxist theory reduces racial conflict to class conflict within production relations

Evidence

Despite their antiracist orientation, however, Marxists had difÏculties in explaining racial inequality and racial conflict. This was because of the primacy of class in Marxist theory. From. a Marxist standpoint, the key relationship in capitalism is that of production, the social relationship between the capitalist class and the working class, the owners and the producers. Marxism explains racial conflict as occurring within the “social relations of production,” that is, in terms of class conflict. So this form of class theory begins with a class reductionist model driven by what C. Wright Mills called a “labor metaphysic”: Racial conflict improperly ket theory, which emphasized white labor’s efforts to limit competition from lowerpaid minority workers (Saxton 1971; Bonacich 1972). — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 76

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains ‘class reductionism’ and Mills’s ‘labor metaphysic’ as technical targets of racial formation theory.
• XREF: connects to: Race relations theories must be subsumed into a broader theory of collective action — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 683