Anti-Racism as Communism

In the United States there have been brilliant examples of anti-racist struggle-black soldiers in the Civil War, coal miners of Alabama, and especially the anti-racist working-class struggles led by the Communist Party. Yet racism persists: Jim Crow replaced racial slavery, and mass incarceration has replaced Jim Crow. Why? Paul Gomberg argues that racism is functional for capitalism, supplying low-wage, vulnerable labor and driving down conditions for all workers. How can anti-racists put an end to racist society? Gomberg argues for race-centered Marxism: anti-racism must lead working-class struggle, but racism will end only in a communist society that creates opportunity for all.

Paul Gomberg retired as Professor of Philosophy at Chicago State University, where he taught for twenty-nine years. He is currently Research Associate in the Philosophy department at the University of California at Davis. He is the author of How to Make Opportunity Equal: Race and Contributive Justice (2007) and has participated in fifty years of anti-racist activism.