Racially conscious working-class nationalism emerged from English class formation

Evidence

It would appear that the ideological and social response of the English working classes to the immanent domination by a new social order was not restricted to class-specific or economistic behaviors. The class consciousness of English workers did not strictly adhere to the logic of working-class formation premised on capitalist exploitation and modeled by Marx from the histories of the French and English bourgeoisies. Indeed, the more profound reaction to an industrial capitalist order found among English “producers” in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, largely deterred those political and social consequences of proletarianization that had already become the dogma of English radical thought and expectation in the years immediately following the Great Revolution in France. The development of Anglo-Saxon chauvinism, the earliest form of English nationalism, and the appearance of rather extreme forms of racism among the English working class determined the form and characteristics that English working-class consciousness assumed. The parochialisms of ethnocentrism and race hostility constituted a response that was both a native of and a consequence to the loss of precapitalist social integrations. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 234

Categorization

• XREF: Core to this reader’s project: the Black radical tradition’s analytic move — race consciousness arising from proletarianization — parallels how the English case produced chauvinism rather than orthodox Marxism. — connects to: Thatcherism fused free-market individualism with ethnic nationalism and authoritarian policing; Working-class recreation was saturated by popular imperialism rather than autonomous — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 997; Fascism arose where national bourgeoisies formed late and marshaled social forces through race ideology. (+23 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 234

Broader Connections

• English racial order prevented workers from separating class universality from racial particularism #expands (0.75)
• Supranationalist class identity among English workers retreated before nationalism #corroborates (0.60)
• English racialism predated ruling class divisions and shaped proletarianization itself #complicates (0.60)
• English racial ideology predated proletarianization rather than being invented to divide workers. #contradicts (0.60)
• Racism and nationalism predate capitalism and shaped its development. #complicates (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 122
• English nationalism displaced class solidarity after Chartism’s defeat. #corroborates (0.55)
• Racial hierarchy and whiteness were invented inside Europe before modern capitalism #corroborates (0.50)