The Entwined History of Capitalism and Race in the Americas and Beyond

Books & the Arts

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June 10, 2026

Begin in 1492

The entwined history of capitalism and race in the Americas and beyond.

Better to start the history of the United States in 1492 than in 1776.

“The New World,” c. 1546. (Getty Images)

I have grappled with the relationship between capitalism and race since I became a leftist. My path was far from direct, starting with developing an interest (and later becoming an activist) in the Black Freedom movement and then being exposed to the thinking of Malcolm X, whose autobiography I first read at the age of 13, in the fall of 1967. Both he and, later, the Black Panther Party refuted the notion that the development of “race” and capitalism were two fully independent processes, and they noted, significantly, that the resolution of racist (and national) oppression could not be accomplished in the absence of a direct confrontation with capitalism. That increasingly made sense to me, but an important unanswered question revolved around the strategic implications of such an understanding.

Books in review

Capital and Race: The History of a Modern Hydra

by Silvie Laurent; Ann Leroux, trans

Buy this book

Several years ago, I stumbled across a formulation by George Padmore, the onetime communist and leading member of the Communist International who would eventually become a noncommunist Pan Africanist, that captured both my concerns and my criticisms regarding how too much of the left failed to appreciate the strategic and practical implications of the link between race and capitalism. In 1937, Padmore was asked by the prominent socialist magazine Left Review to contribute to a symposium on the Spanish Civil War. Padmore stated without hesitation his solidarity with the Spanish Popular Front and the struggle against fascism, but he also expressed his frustration that his Spanish comrades had not included or recognized the centrality of what was then known as the “national-colonial question” in the context of fighting the fascist coup led by Gen. Francisco Franco. Specifically, Padmore took issue with Spain’s colonization and racialization of parts of Africa. “The sympathy of Africans and other colonial peoples naturally goes out to the toiling masses of Spain in their heroic struggle against Fascist-barbarism, for they have not forgotten Abyssinia,” he noted (referring to the Italian invasion of what is now Ethiopia under Mussolini). But “precisely because of this, it is so regrettable that democratic Spain, by failing to make an anti-imperialist gesture to the Moors, played into the hands of Franco. This should be a reminder to the European workers that: ‘No people who oppress another people can themselves be free.’”

Since discovering this quote several years ago, I have remained haunted by the larger story that it tells about radical politics. Linking the struggle against fascism to the struggle against empire and colonialism, Padmore made it clear that progressive forces had no choice but to engage with a politics of both anti-capitalism and anti-colonialism—a struggle for racial and national emancipation as well as an emancipation from the forces of exploitation and dictatorship. I have found few other statements that so succinctly summarize the dilemma facing much of the left in the Global North—a statement that kept returning to me as I read the compelling new book by Sylvie Laurent, Capital and Race .

The debate over the relationship between race and capitalism, anti-colonialism and national liberation, has been ongoing ever since 
the left was first called the left. Within socialist and progressive movements, the matter regularly emerges in late-night bull sessions and in white papers and policy programs. Is it possible to develop a unifying and universal class politics that focuses on emancipating all of the oppressed around the world that does not ignore or marginalize in some way the specific concerns of race, national oppression, and sex? Should class politics and economic programs be the priority, or should we focus on other injustices? And what are we to do about those movements of national liberation that uplift some groups within a region but not others? How does a politics that seeks to establish nation-states accord with socialism’s internationalist ambitions?

In the United States, this debate has existed, in effect, since the colonial era. It has also perplexed and divided the left around the rest of the world as republican and anti-colonial movements emerged, in particular in the Southern Hemisphere. The debate is integrally connected to larger themes, especially one that periodically arises as a source of controversy: the role that the European conquest of the Americas and the slave trade in Africans played in the development of capitalism as a global system. To paraphrase Padmore: To what extent can progressive movements in the so-called Global North be truly progressive, egalitarian, and committed to working-class emancipation if and when suc…