The Futures of Racial Capitalism, by Gargi Bhattacharyya

You may have come across the term ‘racial capitalism’ – perhaps in activist circles or in antiracist debate. It isn’t always used well, but like any debate, there are different levels of intelligent engagement. The noise usually comes from the shallow end, and there is some deeper thinking going on in books like this one.

For Bhattacharyya, racial capitalism is “a framework that seeks to understand the racialised division of populations as an element of capitalist development.” It’s not about identity politics, it’s not about who is or isn’t racist. It’s about race and economic structures.

If the term rankles for you, take a moment to consider a practical historical example: South Africa. Racial division had a specific role in the economic development of South Africa, and it still does today.

As Bhattacharyya writes, “there is no one trajectory of capitalism development”, and capitalism has taken different forms in different places. It’s also always on the move. Capitalism is a fluid thing, endlessly remaking itself around technology and resources, social movements and historical events. As the title suggests, the author here is following up an earlier book on racial capitalism and takes a particular interest in the future. What current trends in economic development have a racial dimension to them that we should be alert to?

With a chapter on each, the book deals with debt, borders, prisons and platform capitalism. In each of these we can see questions arising around who belongs and who does not, whose work is valued and whose is relegated to the margins. Who is important to the economy, and who is considered surplus to requirements?

All of these are complex topics, made more complicated by an unfolding climate crisis and turbulent politics. There’s a lot to argue about, though this is a book of theory rather than commentary on current affairs. It’s about how we think about these things rather what to think. As Bhattacharyya says right in the first line, “‘racial capitalism’ is a question, not an assertion or a doctrine.” It’s a way of thinking that illuminates things we might have missed. Using the ideas of racial capitalism, what risks can we identify about the new surge in importance in borders, or the rise of precarious work for online platforms? By spotting these risks, we can work to prevent further social divisions at a time when unity of purpose is so vital to the challenges we face in the 21st century.

The Future of Racial Capitalism isn’t light reading, and there are a lot of scholarly threads to follow. But one of the things that I like about the book is that Bhattacharyya isn’t interested in having the last word or winning an argument. “I’ve done my best to point out the shapes in the water,” she writes modestly about the book’s ambitions, but it’s important work nonetheless. It’s only when we can trace how divisions and injustices are perpetuated that we’re going to have any chance of finding solutions.

“Persuading us that ideas are useless or pretentious or irrelevant plays its part in limiting our ability to imagine and build another world. Unless we devise ways to understand how the evils of the world occur, how can we ever hope to resist? The attempt to understand how racial capitalism works is part of this quest.”