Alex Snowdon looks at the origins of racism to understand why it continues to persist

For socialists and anti-racists, it is abhorrent that racism is still very much with us. Indeed there are, in important ways, growing problems with racism in British politics, from Reform’s polling success to far-right street protests.

It is important to understand both the origins of racism and why it persists. This is essential if we are to combat it effectively.

There are a number of ways in which racism is often understood. It is frequently seen as a matter of personal attitudes. Often these ideas or prejudices are regarded as a hangover from an earlier era. The remedy is education or awareness raising in order to enlighten people.

Racism is also frequently framed as an expression of privilege. White people possess privilege when compared to other racial groups. This blinds them to prejudicial attitudes or discriminatory behaviours. A key part of the solution is, again, to become more aware.

These ways of framing racism focus largely on individuals and their ideas. Remedies are on the level of changing attitudes. There is little sense that racism may have a material basis (aside from a vague sense of ‘privilege’) or have structural roots. There is consequently little focus on a collective response to racism.

Racism is also generally seen as both timeless and universal. It is assumed to be a regrettable part of human nature.

The Marxist tradition provides an alternative to all this. Marx developed an historical-materialist method that roots people’s ideas in material reality. He understood that these ideas can change enormously over time, shaped by economic and social changes.

Class societies have been divided and unequal societies. This broader context can provide fertile soil for racism. Any deeply unequal society will, inevitably, develop an ideology that justifies some having massively more than others, and some lives being valued more than others.

Racism fits this context very well. It can intersect with attitudes of superiority and contempt rooted in economic inequality.

The growth of capitalism was inextricably bound up with the emergence of forms of racism. European capitalism depended upon the slave trade economically, while the slave trade required biological racism – the crude notion that some people are innately inferior to others – to justify it. The material reality of slavery in the US, meanwhile, was profoundly influential on American racism long after its abolition, though it was also sustained by ongoing economic problems.

A similar sort of biological racism accompanied the ‘Scramble for Africa’ in the last third of the nineteenth century. The massive expansion of European empires, subjugating and colonising entire populations in Africa and Asia, fuelled the notion that some racial groups were lesser (even sub-human), uncivilised and associated with backwardness. Economic exploitation was, again, the driving force for racism.

Antisemitism was re-fashioned in the same period for modern industrial capitalism. Often wrongly viewed as a legacy of earlier medieval prejudices, modern antisemitism was in fact shaped by a very modern capitalist society. Stereotypes about Jews were part of the same package as characterising black Africans as ‘backward’.

European ruling classes also discovered that Jews could prove convenient scapegoats for economic distress. The Nazis took this to the ultimate extreme, especially in the Holocaust, but antisemitic scapegoating – with a mix of ‘Jewish bankers’ and ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’ to blame for people’s woes – was widespread among European political elites.

While the Holocaust was humanity’s darkest episode, genocide was far from the preserve of the Nazis. It had been practised by all the ‘Great Powers’ on non-European populations during the period of imperialist expansion.

Similarly, genocide has been a characteristic of settler-colonial regimes from the extermination of indigenous peoples in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand through to Israel’s ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. Such genocides have been linked to economic factors like control of land and resources and have been deeply racist in character.

There have been many examples of ethnic or national groups being scapegoated by the ruling class to displace economic grievances onto those who do not deserve it. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels observed the phenomenon with Irish migrant workers demonised by the British establishment.

This could resonate with many working-class people, in particular at times of rising unemployment and economic insecurity, but there were also examples of British and Irish-heritage workers finding common cause in struggle.

These are recurring themes to this day: racism as a tool of division and class exploitation, but also anti-racism on the basis of class unity rooted in shared material interests.

From this month’s Counterfire freesheet