Letter: ‘White privilege”? (2025)

Letter to the Editors from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘White privilege”?

This letter is in response to the Pathfinders article in the May Socialist Standard, titled ‘Without Distinction of Race or Sex‘.

Firstly, I’m against the author’s argument that the capitalist system will always promote whites over more talented minority-ethnic candidates; it’s in the best interest of enterprises to hire the most talented worker for the job. Poor white people don’t see talk of ‘white privilege’ as an attack on their ‘rights’, they see it as being an attack on them due to their skin colour.

We shouldn’t fall into the bourgeois trap of fighting for equality among the proletariat (based on skin colour, etc), not that that’s achievable anyway. While certain groups of people (on average) and individuals undoubtedly have harder lives under capitalism than others, the entire capitalist class oppresses the entire working class. Our enemy is the capitalist class (they screw us all over, though some more than others).

None of us are free until we are all free.

Matthew Shearn

Reply:

The article was not advocating but explaining the critical race theory argument that ‘disadvantaged groups will never get a fair shake unless a little positive discrimination is introduced’ and that ‘as things stand, the system will always promote whites over more talented ethnic candidates’. It then goes on to make your exact point, that discrimination is not logical for employers, before adding that ‘prejudice is not logical’, a view with which you will hardly disagree.

The article refers in passing to ‘talk of “white privilege”’, but we ourselves don’t use the term as it could imply that all ‘white’ workers discriminate against all ‘non-white’ workers whereas such discrimination is an historical left-over from colonialist times which many workers today emphatically do not endorse. Much violence is perpetrated by workers scapegoating other workers, and there’s nothing ‘bourgeois’ about saying so. If, as we argue, the route to class emancipation is class solidarity, then the question is how best to achieve that solidarity. So we call out worker-against-worker discrimination and violence for what it is, in effect class betrayal. 

Editors

Talking About Race (2018)

Book Review from the August 2018 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race. by Reni Eddo-Lodge (Bloomsbury. £8.99.)

Most people will be familiar with the idea of institutional racism, whereby some organisation (the police, maybe) discriminates against part of the population on ethnic grounds. Eddo-Lodge widens this to the concept of structural racism, which goes far beyond traditional institutions to cover much of society: ‘It is not just about personal prejudice, but the collective effects of bias.’ 

 So black children do less well at school and are more likely than the general school population to be permanently excluded. Black university students are more likely than others to receive the lowest grade of degree. This discrimination continues into employment, with higher rates of unemployment among black people. Research has shown that applicants with African- or Asian-sounding names are less likely to be invited for a job interview. In contrast is white privilege: ‘if you’re white, your race will almost certainly positively impact your life’s trajectory in some way.’ 

 The author also deals with the concept of intersectionality, which may involve black women being subjected to two kinds of discrimination, racism and sexism. Some object to this as a piece of useless jargon, while Eddo-Lodge sees the backlash against it as ‘white feminism in action’, which claims not to see race but in fact positions whiteness as the norm. Feminism, she says, should not leave anyone behind, and the most popular current versions of feminism may not able to achieve this. 

 A chapter on race and class sounds as if it might be interesting. It starts off by considering the Marxist analysis of class, but completely misunderstands this by saying that, if you are paid monthly and own your own home, you are middle class. But then it adopts the seven-class analysis of the Great British Class Survey, with black people mainly found in the more impoverished groups. The author says: ‘if you are born not white in this country, you probably haven’t been born into wealth.’ But this misses the obvious point that the vast majority of the population are not born into wealth. There is nothing here about the capitalists and the privileges they and their children enjoy.

 Eddo-Lodge records that when she gave a talk about racism at a sixth-form college, one (white) girl asked, ‘When do you think we’ll get to an end point?’. Her response is that you cannot skip to the end point without having the difficult conversation first. But this is a very unsatisfying dismissal, and it is not even clear what she means by skipping to the end point. After all, you have to have an idea of what to aim for before having the difficult conversations that will help to get you there.

There is no doubt that racism is an important part of current British capitalism. This book says a great deal about how this plays out, but it does not go far in criticising the whole system.

Paul Bennett

What is Black Power (1968)

Book Review from the July 1968 issue of the Socialist Standard

Black Power. Stokely Carmichael & Charles V. Hamilton. Jonathan Cape. 30s.

“Black Power” is an umbrella term for a whole range of political ideas and this short book is a readable account of what is probably the mainstream outlook. It contains little that is new but it is a compact statement of the aims and ideology of the bulk of the movement.

There is no point in repeating our analysis of “Black Power” which has already appeared in Socialist Standard (February 1968) but two points can be emphasised. The first is that although men like Stokely Carmichael loudly claim to “reject the goal of assimilation into middle-class America”, the fact is that—despite all their noise— their doctrine does fit in neatly with capitalist concepts. Thus:

  “Black Power means, for example, that in Lowndes County, Alabama, a black sheriff can end police brutality. A black tax assessor and tax collector and county board of revenue can lay, collect, and channel tax monies for the building of better roads and schools serving black people.”

Secondly, given the right time and place. Carmichael and his associates will attempt to tart up their theories with the usual pseudo-Marxist jargon. At the OLAS conference, for example, he argued that it was the people of “the third world” who were being super-exploited by Western imperialism and that white workers in the imperialist countries were in the ranks of the exploiting class.

    “The American working class enjoys the fruits of the labour of the Third World workers.”
    “The proletarian has become the Third World; the bourgeoisie is white, Western society.”
    “Thus did the United Slates anticipate the prophecy of Marx and avoid the inevitable class struggle within the country by expanding into the Third World and exploiting the resources and slave labour of people of colour.”

The basis for this line of thinking is the obvious fact that workers in the “underdeveloped countries” (and in the underdeveloped areas of the metropolitan countries) do have a lower standard of living than workers in Western Europe and the United States. But Carmichael then proceeds to the quite false assumption that there must inevitably be a direct relationship between poverty and degree of exploitation, that the more destitute a section of the working class is the more heavily it must be exploited. The influence of Lenin’s theory of imperialism is clearly very strong here but to drag in the name of Marx as a prop for this unscientific view is dishonest. In Capital Marx made it quite plain that he understood that there was no automatic link between low wages and intensity of exploitation. Apart from the often-quoted statement in volume I that “as capital accumulates, the lot of the labourer, be his payment high or low, must grow worse”, Marx deals with this issue specifically in volume III- in the theoretical section on the different composition of capitals.

Marx’s method here is to compare a European and Asian country and he suggests that in an advanced industrial state the rate of surplus value (the ratio of surplus value to wages) may well be 100%, i.e. the worker may well work one-half of the working day for himself and one-half for his employer. On the other hand, under more primitive conditions of production, it may well be necessary for a labourer to work for, say, four-fifths of the working day in order to produce an equivalent to his wages, leaving only one-fifth for his employer. In this latter case the rate of surplus value would then only be 25%.

However, this condition of the better-paid worker being more heavily exploited can be masked by a lower rate of profit in the European country, due to the different compositions of the national capitals.

But the point which socialists would stress is that it isn’t a question of which section of the working class has the edge on other workers in terms of being exploited, anyway. Working men and women all over the world are confronted by a situation where the international capitalist class monopolises all the important means of producing wealth. The only way out of this dilemma is for the working class to convert the means of production into the common property of a world socialist community. If the ideas of the Black Power merchants are theoretically unsound, this is a sure sign that, as a guide to working class action for socialism, they aRe equally bankrupt. Against the call for “Black Power”, socialists will continue to advance the slogan: “Workers of the World, Unite”.

John Crump

Proper Gander: Nutters and Putters (2017)

The Proper Gander column from the December 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Television programmes (and magazine articles) about Donald Trump are rarely in short supply, thanks to his knack for being a symptom of just about everything wrong with society. The upcoming anniversary of his presidency starting has given another opportunity to try and explain how on earth he got where he is. For starters, Channel 4 have broadcast an epic four-part account of his life called 'Trump: An American Dream', although 'nightmare' would be a better description. Other shows have focused on particular aspects of his rise, such as who his supporters are and his relationship with Scotland.

In 'Angry, White and American' (Channel 4), reporter Gary Younge goes on a road trip through Maine, Pennsylvania and Mississippi to speak with people who aren't ashamed to admit on camera they voted for Trump. Younge wants to learn what experiences and mindsets led people to wave the flag and cast their vote for the dangerous demagogue. He's interested in the extent to which economic deprivation has undermined the sense of identity which many white working class (by which he means blue-collar) Americans have had. In places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania, heavy industries used to provide local employment until the markets turned and they stopped being profitable. As factories closed down and jobs were lost, the little financial security felt by many communities fell apart. Trump found support from those struggling financially who believe that he'll revitalise industry back to some mythical golden age. But, as Younge points out, most of Trump's supporters are white, so if economic deprivation was a main driver for his support, then why didn't poor black and Latino people tend to vote for him? Younge speaks with Erin McClelland, a Democrat congressional candidate who suggests that non-white Americans have always felt dissatisfied by the system, but dissatisfaction among white people is a new thing: black people haven't had wealth and prosperity taken away from them, as white people have. While McClelland is obviously wrong about white people not being alienated by capitalism up to now, it may be that expectations have changed and this has led some voters towards Trump and his allies on the far right.

Trump and the far right have a reciprocal relationship. His most rabid supporters can be found here saluting and chanting 'Heil Trump', and in turn his rise to power has emboldened the movement. According to Younge, the far right and Trump's advisers 'swim in the same pool'. Prominent white supremacist Richard Spencer (who coined the term 'alt right', an odious attempt to rebrand fascism) is visited by Younge at a rally. Spencer's sharp suit and fixed smile can't disguise his abhorrent views, such as promoting a 'white only' ethno-state. Other opinions rattling around inside his tiny brain are just as vile and ridiculous, like 'Africans have benefited from their experience with white supremacy' and 'if Africans had never existed, world history would be almost exactly the same as it is today'.

Those who voted for Trump to 'make America great again' seem to fall into two types: those who explicitly connect him with the narrow-minded racism of the far right and those who choose to ignore the bigotry which comes with nationalism. The latter, when interviewed by Younge, downplay America's slave-owning history and the connotations of the confederate flag.

Over in Britain, we're sadly not immune to Trump's influence. In 'Donald Trump: Scotland's President' (BBC1), reporter Glenn Campbell looks at the links (including golfing ones) Trump has with Scotland. His mother was born on the island of Lewis before leaving its rugged tranquillity for the bustle of 1930s Manhattan. According to those interviewed by Campbell, she taught Trump the value of getting attention, as well as traits like respectability and a sense of community which may have transferred less well to his adult life. When Trump visited Lewis in 2008 he reportedly spent 97 seconds in his mother's birthplace before jetting off to Aberdeen for an inquiry into his plans for a golf resort north of the city. This inquiry was held after local councillors had turned down his proposal, fearing that two golf courses, a hotel and conference centre, 950 holiday homes and 550 houses would ruin the area's natural habitats. The then-First Minister Alex Salmond stepped in and following the inquiry the Scottish government granted the planning application. A few locals have stoically refused to sell their homes to make way for the development, including one who flies a Mexican flag in solidarity with others threatened by what Trump wants to build. Those who agreed the development thought that the promised billion pound investment would justify an area of special scientific interest being built on. However, five years after the project opened, the second course and houses haven't been built and an area which used to be a wilderness now looks manicured. Many regret the decision.

The development of Trump's golf course ('the greatest golf course ever built', according to him) shows that if you wave enough money at something, you tend to get your own way in the end. His rise to power highlights other features of our capitalist society, such as how economic struggles and finding scapegoats in other groups fuel support for the far right, as it did in 1930s Germany. Far from being the trailblazer which his supporters want him to be, Donald Trump represents capitalism at its worst.

Mike Foster

Letter: Does Everywhere Have To Pass Through Capitalism? (1994)

Letter to the Editors from the July 1994 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Newell’s informative account of the history surrounding recent events in Chiapas, Mexico (Socialist Standard, February) started me thinking about the different political responses to this indigenous uprising. In Vancouver where I live, these ranged from the predictable bandwagon-jumping escapades of various Leninist sects to a more interesting - but equally flawed - attempt to create an alliance of "leftist" inspired groups with the aim of supporting the Zapatista-led rebellion primarily by drawing links with "democratic struggles" here in Canada. The latter response, while moving beyond the insulting vanguardism of many groups on the left, was nevertheless typical of the kind of political strategy endorsed by many self-styled "post-Marxist" intellectuals currently resident in University departments. While the democratic decision-making processes of such alliances are, in my view, to be applauded, this post-Marxist political strategy remains mired in the rhetoric of failed projects of social democracy. Instead of challenging the profit-system in its entirety, the talk here is largely of smoothing the rough edges of capitalism by supporting social and environmental, justice and human rights incentives as ends in themselves.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that Peter Newell’s conclusions to his otherwise excellent article takes us a great deal further. According to him the uprisings were based on "backward-looking" ideas which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor the long run". This euro-centric view ignores the fact that for generations of First Nations’ peoples "violent rebelling" has been pretty much the only course of action available to them in the face of Euro-sponsored slavery and genocide. To sit back and regard their conversion into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable is to be complicit in their extinction. It also forgets that what is at stake for indigenous peoples is not simply higher wages or better working conditions but whole civilizations and ways of life. Do we really want one day to inherit a border-less world with a homogenous global culture where indigenous cultures have been reduced to quaint museum relics or trendy clothing styles for white people?

Part of the problem, I would argue, lies in the apparent unwillingness of many contemporary socialists to move beyond the sterile orthodox Marxist analysis of the effects of global capitalism on First Nations’ peoples. While there is nothing inherently euro-centric about socialism — there are countless historical examples of people the world over who have rejected wage labour and capital in favour of a cooperative, needs-based economy — there is clearly the need for contemporary socialists to be aware of the ways in which commitment to the goals of "scientific socialism", "reason", and the "positive aspects of capitalist development", contributes to the silencing and continued suffering of non-Western peoples. Even Marx himself acknowledged the extent to which capitalism was built on the oppression, slavery, and genocide of people of colour. It would seem to make sense, then, to see the abolition of capitalism as tied up with the overturning of euro-centrism, the elimination of white privilege and continuing opposition to newly emerging forms of colonialism and slavery.

For those socialists who would dismiss this as reformist and nationalist nonsense, I would ask you to consider what the Zapatistas of Chiapas, the Mohawks of Kahnesatake, or the East Timorese are fighting for. For the most part these autonomous struggles are anti-Statist, grass-roots and non-hierarchical movements calling for the return of communal land holdings. They have involved degrees of active participation by women on a scale that puts socialist parties to shame. Furthermore, are there not parallels to be drawn between the struggles of First Nations’ peoples for self-determination, and the economic and political struggles of wage-workers in the West?

Showing critical support for the Zapatista rebels does not imply a step-backwards for socialists; it merely acknowledges the extent to which the abolition of wage-slavery and the emergence of a world community of different cultures is inextricably linked to the self-determination of indigenous people worldwide.

Julian Prior, 

Vancouver, 

Canada 

Reply:
Julian Prior makes a number of interesting points, many of which I do not dispute. Nevertheless, I did not say that the uprisings in Chiapas, at the beginning of this year, were based upon "backwardlooking" ideas, which "can achieve nothing of value, neither in the short nor long run"; although, earlier in the article, I did suggest that, if he was anything, Emiliano Zapata, some 80 years’ ago, "was a rather backward-looking utopian communist".

What I did say was that such a movement will fail against the power of a modern state which, I should think, is obvious (I encountered units of the Mexican army when they were mopping-up the remnants of the "party of the poor" in the state of Guerrero); and that violent rebelling against such a state can achieve nothing of value (to the oppressed Indians) neither in the short nor the long run, although I did comment that it is not surprising that some of the Indians rebelled. Indeed, it is true that, over the last 90 years, almost all struggles and land occupations in Mexico, and elsewhere in Latin America, began peacefully and only became violent following state intervention and repression. Recent reports from Chiapas appear to confirm my view that the Indian masses of Chiapas will have achieved no more, and probably less, than if they had used various forms of non-violent strikes, and non-cooperation, against the large cattle ranchers and the pro-government village bosses.

Julian Prior seems to imply that socialists "sit back", and regard the conversion of the Indians "into good little proletarians as somehow inevitable". We do not, of course, sit back, but actively encourage people — all people — in London, Vancouver and Chiapas, to strive for a socialist world, not of conformity and uniformity, but of diversity. Sadly, or otherwise, it is more than true that capitalism is rapidly destroying pre-capitalist culture, some of which, at least in part, may well have been worth preserving — although we should not idealise some of their practices and mores.

Lastly, I agree with Julian Prior that both the original, and the recent Zapatista, movements have involved degrees of "active participation by women that puts socialist parties to shame". Hopefully, however, this is beginning to change.

Peter E. Newell