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The Invention
of the White Race: The Origin
of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America By Theodore
Allen Review By Greg Queen Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. Verso.
New York: 1997. Capitalism Karl Marx says
that the goal of any capitalist is to produce a commodity that not only has
a use and exchange value but a commodity that has the potential to create
surplus value. The creation of surplus values happens
in the following manner. Marx says that the value of a commodity is nothing
more than a way to measure the amount of labor consumed in its creation. Like a commodity, labor also has a value and that value
is the amount of material it takes to provide for the basic needs of the laborer
(material to sustain the life of the laborer). The
value of commodities, including labor, is its exchange value. However, surplus
value is “created” by the use-value of labor. According
to Marx’s assertion, when a person sells his labor, he is not only exchanging
value but handing over to the capitalist the use-value of the commodity,
labor. This, according to Marx, is the eternal law
of the exchange of commodities. That is, like the
seller of any other commodity, the seller of labor-power realizes its exchange-value
by selling it and parts with its use-value. Hence,
although it may only cost the capitalist a half-day’s labor to pay for the
labor, the capitalist can use that labor for a whole day.
The fact that a person labors beyond his exchange value and
is not paid for that special service is what causes the creation of surplus-value,
or capital. The labor used beyond the exchange value
is surplus labor. Since the nature
of exchange-values states that the purchaser has the right to use the commodity
he has bought in any way he sees fit, he can, therefore, use the labor for
as long as the laborer can work and still maintain existence. Thus, he is not violating the law of exchange values. However, the nature of the commodity (labor) which the
purchaser is buying has special limits to its consumption.
Therefore, the seller (laborer) maintains his right as seller
to “reduce the working day to one of definite normal duration.” This is a contradiction. Stated more simply, the struggle
is between the capitalist desire to create conditions of surplus labor (thus creating capital) and the laborer’s desire to consume
his own surplus labor (higher wages or less time working).
As Marx says, “between equal rights force decides (Tucker).” In seventeenth century colonial America, this contradiction
inherent in capitalism was being worked out. Capitalism creates
a non-productive elite who own the means of production. The
goal of this numerically small group is to create a social system that reproduces
and maintains its elite position. Politically and economically,
the social system is created through the legislature and the formation of
an intermediate buffer social control stratum respectively. The goal of this intermediate social control stratum is
to subordinate but align themselves to the elite and come into daily contact
with the majority of the population, whose position in society is dependency
and insecurity. In other words, the goal of the capitalist
is to hoard as much capital as possible through the creation of surplus labor
while facilitating enough room in society for a social group (artisans and
small landowners during early colonial America) who have some hope of not
being on the “bottom of the heap.” This social group,
although they perceive themselves as independent, they are dependent upon
the ruling class and generally support and enforce its values. During seventeenth century colonial America, this intermediate
buffer social control stratum did not immediately exist but was being created. Theodore W. Allen argues that the desire for surplus value
and the need to suck labor dry caused the ruling class to create an intermediate
buffer social control stratum in early colonial America that emphasized racial
over class oppression. This would become known as
the peculiar institution The peculiarity of the “peculiar institution” was
the fact that it was a social control system that was based upon the exclusion
of any non-European from the intermediate buffer social control stratum
and that a “major, indispensable, and decisive factor of the buffer social
control stratum maintained against the unfree proletarians was that it was
itself made up of free proletarians and semi-proletarians (Allen 12-13).” In other words, the ruling class capitalist constructed
racial oppression to divide the proletariat class; one portion (European-Americans)
was denied fewer freedoms than the other portion (African-Americans) creating
for the most part an appearance of privilege. Our
starting point is the early decades of the seventeenth century. Social and Historical
Context In early seventeenth
century colonial America, the capitalist were competing for survival. The survival of the capitalist depended upon his ability
to produce a commodity (tobacco) that “creates” surplus value. His ability to create surplus value depended upon his ability
to “force” his workers to labor beyond the amount of time it would take to
keep him alive and provide his basic amenities. Because
of the degree of competition, this dynamic became particularly exploitative. One of the critical shifts happened in the second quarter
of the seventeenth century. During the early
1620’s, the price of tobacco dropped precipitously. The
drop in tobacco prices acted upon the capitalist in two ways. First, even though there was not a rise in the absolute
or relative cost of labor, the drop in tobacco prices caused his overall profit
rate from tobacco production to decline. Secondly,
in order to get a higher rate of return on his investments, the capitalist
overall needed to reduce the cost of production. Since
the primary cost of production was labor power, the goal was to reduce its
cost. Thus, the capitalist class acted collectively
in shifting from using tenant farmers (who got more “entitlements”) to using
indentured servants (who got fewer “entitlements”) as the primary source of
labor. (Allen 63-64). This was possible, in part, because an attack upon colonist
by Indians in 1622 severely disrupted life in Virginia. The Indian attack
and laboring class debt completely disrupted property relations. The laboring class (tenant farmers) was in a precarious
position and the “plantations bourgeoisie [had] opportunities for direct capitalist
expropriation of land and labor power in the furtherance of the alteration
of labor relations to that of chattel-servitude (92).” The
elite used their position of power and forced the tenants into debt by restricting
the amount of tobacco they could grow, applying a fixed rate for their rent
and forbidding them to plant corn causing them to pay extortionate prices
to the corn elite. This undermined any economic power
the tenant farmer may have had. Because of these changes,
there was an increased concentration of the means of production and laborers. Although it may appear that this shift in power between
the laboring and capitalist class was temporary and primarily caused by the
Indian attack, the planter class was able to maintain this superior position
of power in labor relations. Altering Labor’s Relationship
to Capital Although one of
capitalism’s underlying assumption is that both the worker and the capitalist
have the “right” to end the relationship with one another, in colonial Virginia,
because of the planter class’ superior position, they were able to alter labor’s
relationship to capital by converting the laboring class from tenants to
indentured servants. They first started by being able
to use “tenant” workers as property/wealth. In other
words, tenant workers could be used to pay debt, avoid bankruptcy, as hereditary
property and as liquidation of an estate. In addition
to being able to “buy and sell” tenants, the London Company said that “[T]he
shedding of this blood [in reference to the Indian attack] wilbe the Seed
of the Plantation, for the future…instead of Tentants[,] sending you servants.” By the undermining of tenants and the London Company’s
desire to trade in indentured servants would indicate the beginning of the
end of tenants and the start of indentured servants as the primary source
of labor. However, by choosing the indentured servant
route, the elite were choosing a potentially disastrous set of circumstances
for their interests. Because they did not create an
intermediate buffer social control stratum but destroyed the only potential
for one (the tenants), their disregard for history would lead them into trouble
as will be seen later. The planter class
used many methods to squeeze surplus value from the indentured servants. Again, this was possible because of the submissive relationship
of labor to capital. This was accomplished primarily
by increasing the length of the workday and intensifying the effort of each
worker. Some servants came to the plantation colony
with a contract that stated their length of service in return for transportation,
but most did not. For indentured servants lacking a
specific contract, the duration of bondage of was specified in law. In 1666, the Virginia Assembly changed the law so that
the normal duration of bondage increased from four to five years. In addition, prior to legislative change, if an individual
was less than sixteen when originally sold into bond-labor, you were bound
to the master until the age of twenty-four. In 1666,
the legislature changed the law so that it said bond laborers under age
nineteen would have to serve the master until age twenty-four effectively
increasing the length of free labor for the planter. In
addition, as punishment the courts frequently lengthened the time a servant
was in bondage. For example, a 1643 Virginia law made
it illegal for indentured servants to marry, fornicate and/or have children. When they did and were caught, the consequence was an increase
in their length of the servitude. Of particular interest
in terms of the reproduction of the laboring class is the relationship of
children in this exploitative system. During seventeenth
century colonial Virginia, the scarce labor supply led the planter class to
find ways to create a permanent laboring class. The
problem that indentured servants posed for the elite was that they were eventually
freed which required the capitalist class to find replacements. This can be difficult when the main supplier was thousands
of mile away in England and the native inhabitants refused to partake in such
an absurd system (this is not entirely accurate statement but good enough
for this paper). The planter class looked to children
born to mothers who were servants as the continuous supply of labor. Prior to 1662, bastard children could eventually receive
their freedom either by just doing their time or by their fathers purchasing
them out of servitude. In 1662, the planter class created
a law that changed English common law tradition in that they imposed
lifetime hereditary bondage on African-Americans by instituting the
principle that a child would be “bond or free according to the condition of
the mother.” In 1681, a child born to a European mother
and African father would be in bondage until the age of thirty (Allen 133-134). In addition to these changes in law, there were other
oppressive measures taken by the elite to ensure a certain amount of capital
accumulation. The laws protecting
bond-laborers were weak. There was no minimum level
of food, clothing, housing, etc. Thus if the planter
wanted to reduce his cost of production, he would reduce the cost of maintaining
the existence the workers. In terms of food, the planter
class primarily forced the workers to survive on corn. The
other advantage of indentured servants was you did not have to “pay” them. In other words, they did not get a paycheck until the day
of their release from bondage usually about five years later. “Spurred on by the all-or-nothing nature of monocultural
economy, and subject to the vagaries of a generally glutted market, Virginia
employers pushed matters to the limit to secure the highest possible return
on their investment in laborers.” These laws and actions
especially those governing women, children, marriage and family were an “indispensable
condition for the preservation of that particular form of capitalist production
and accumulation.” However, it denied the planter class
“the benefits of the patriarchy as a system of social control over the laboring
people (137-147).” The increased oppression lead to
resistance. Racial Oppression Did
Not Exist, Yet Allen says: Where there is oppression, there is resistance,
insufficient though it may be. When resistance is enough
it becomes rebellion. Where the intermediate buffer
social control stratum becomes dysfunctional, rebellion breaks through…Attenuate
the intermediate social control stratum; and at an
opportune moment, they would join en masse in armed rebellion
(149). Allen argues that a significant number of the acts
of resistance and plots against the planter class were interracial and that
the few decades prior to Bacon’s Rebellion, the relative status of African-Americans
to that of European-Americans can be determined to have been indeterminate. The “reduction of all members of the oppressed group to
one undifferentiated social status, a status beneath that of any member of
any social class within the oppressor group” did not exist. Thus, “a system of rule, designed to deny, disregard, delegitimate
previous or potential social distinctions that may have existed or that might
tend to emerge in the normal course of development of a class society,” in
other words, racial oppression did not yet exist. Although
Allen provides many cases to demonstrate his point, I will explain two. Elizabeth Key In 1660, the Virginia legislature implemented a
law that restricted the length of indentured servitude to a maximum of five
years if you came from a Christian country. Although
this does not explicitly state that African-Americans would not be “protected”
by this law, it was aimed towards them. However, this
law was “only” aimed at bond-laborers which is class oppression and not racial
oppression. In contrast, there existed African-Americans
like Anthony Johnson who were not denied the elite privilege of owning large
tracts of land and/or servants. In the case of Anthony
Johnson, he purchased an African-American bond-laborer. In
fact, Allen interprets the fact that the elite passed a law in 1670 denying
African-Americans the privilege of importing bond-laborers as evidence that
it was an accepted practice (177-183). However, as
we have already seen, there was increased pressure from planters to increase
unpaid labor time by trying to change the status of African-Americans bond-laborers
into lifetime servants (187). Although this is the
case, there are elements within the ruling class that did not operate with
the assumption that African-American bond-servants should serve for life but
rather made sure the freedom was “guaranteed” like European-American bond
servants (193-194). The case of a women named Elizabeth
Key is critical to this argument of Allen. Elizabeth Key was the child of an African-American
bond-servant and European-American father. Her father
made arrangements before moving back to England that Elizabeth’s godfather
would have possession of Key for nine years. Messing
up this arrangement was the fact that both the father and godfather died before
the nine years passed. The executioners of the godfather’s
estate (who died second) did not grant Elizabeth her freedom on the grounds
that because her mother was a lifetime bond-servant, Elizabeth was the same. However, a jury of twelve did not agree and granted Elizabeth
her freedom. The case was appealed to the Virginia
General Assembly who appointed a committee. The committee
agreed with the twelve men basing their decision upon two ancient common
law principles. First, English common law says that
you trace your status through the condition of the father who in regards
to Key was a free European-American. Secondly, because
key was a Christian, she could not be held for life for that would be slavery
and illegal. There was an appeal to the governor but
because there are no records it is assumed that the matter was resolved. Other evidence to support this assumption is the fact
that Key later married her lawyer and if you are a bond-laborer and get married
you must have the support of your master. Thus the
estate executioners felt they had no legal ground to prevent the marriage
(194-196). Allen believes that their is more to this
story than what appears on the surface. He says that
the Elizabeth Key case was a confrontation between factions within the elite
over whether “owners can impose lifetime servitude on African-Americans”
or whether African-Americans right to freedom on the basis of Christian principles
and English common law is more important then profit rates. In 1656, when the case was being heard, the traditional
English common law of patriarchy and Christianity applied.
Allen states that if the principles applied to this case had
prevailed, than racial slavery would have been prevented.
The reality was that within six years of the Key case, the General
Assembly enacted a law stating that the status of a child would be determined
by the status of the mother not the father. Five years
late, in 1667, the General Assembly stated that whether a person was a Christian
or not did not alter the person’s condition as it related to bondage. Coincidentally and concurrently, the English government
re-chartered the Company of Royal Adventurers to Africa and the British Navy
fought with the Dutch to open up trade in Africa. Although
the planters generally wanted a continuous low cost labor force, the problem
was managing this low cost labor force, or creating social control mechanisms
that would enforce the increasingly racially oppressive laws. The problem of control was exemplified through Bacon’s
Rebellion. Bacon’s Rebellion Allen breaks Bacon’s Rebellion into two parts, one
“controlled” by the elite and the other controlled by the interracial proletariat. The Virginia ruling elite divided over frontier Indian
policy and Nathaniel Bacon, cousin of Governor Berkeley, wanted to push the
Indians further west whereas the more traditional elite did not see the necessity
in doing this so immediately. This faction within
the elite were the more established elite who had more land than they could
currently use whereas Bacon represented the less established faction seeking
more land. At any rate, Bacon gathered up a group
and attacked the Indians and then turned towards Jamestown. The rebels had gathered around the Assembly in Jamestown
and forced the group to raise an anti-Indian army of 1,000 men and forced
Berkeley to sign. At this point, the reality was that
rebels were in “control” of the colony. In fact, one
of the initial rebel leaders from the elite class would become critical is
reestablishing ruling class control. Until then, there
was not much support for the elite. The rebels were
demanding a redistribution in land and that the colony be broken down into
smaller more diversified farms. Meanwhile, in England,
Virginia’s representatives said that the best hope of ending the insurrection
was in “a speedy separation of the sound parts from the rabble.” The elite were extremely frightened that this rebellion
was going to destroy the oligarchic rule and monocultural economy that they
had created for themselves at the expense of the chattel bond-laborers. Retrospectively, the Virginia Assembly declared that “many
evill disposed servants in these late tymes of horrid rebellion taking advantage
of the loosenes of the tymes did depart from their servince and followed the
rebells in rebellion.” The significance of this rebellion
to Allen’s argument is that African-American and European Americans “fought
side by side for the abolition of slavery.” In so
doing, they provided the supreme proof that the white race did not then exist. In addition, Allen argues that at this historic point,
there still did not exist an intermediate buffer social control stratum as
evidenced by the lack of enthusiasm to support the colonial elite in suppressing
the rebellion. In the end, During and immediately following
Bacon’s Rebellion, the Lieutenant Governor of Maryland said that what the
leaders need in Virginia is a “new” way of governing that preserves the ruling
elite but would accommodate enough people so that it could rule. In other words, the elite needed to divide the proletariat
so that some would support the elite rather than having most of the proletariat
not supporting the elite as shown in Bacon’s Rebellion.
The answer was the invention of the white race (203-222). The Invention
of the White Race The ruling elite did not want to alter the underlying
labor relations that caused Bacon’s Rebellion. In other
words, they were not interested in paying out more surplus value to create
a intermediate buffer social control stratum. Rather,
to “maintain the degree of social control necessary for proceeding with capital
accumulation on the basis of chattel bond-labor,” the elite decided to use
race consciousness in order to supersede class consciousness. This racial oppression was used to create a social distinction
between the poorest of the oppressor group from any member of the oppressed
group. According to Allen, because of the number of
laboring class European-Americans, the creation of a categorical exclusion
of African-Americans from the intermediate buffer social control stratum
was necessary. In other words, unlike the West Indies,
there were too many European-Americans to become “petty Bourgeoisie.” Thus, the elite substituted racial oppression for class
oppression to create the intermediate stratum. The
conclusion that once the gentry class created a ‘yeoman’ class, they could
ignore the rest of society is wrong because although the poor European-Americans
were not in lifetime bond servitude, their inability to compete with the gentry
class would naturally cause them to align themselves with the lifetime bond
servants despite race was evident in Bacon’s Rebellion. Thus,
instead of social mobility and altering labor’s relation to capital, the
ruling class by denying all African-Americans of their liberties was
able to say to the poorest European-American in Virginia that although they
did not own bond-laborers, they were still part of the elite in that they
“enjoyed” privileges that were denied to African-Americans, free
or slave. As Allen says “the solution was to establish
a new birthright not only for Anglos but for every Euro-American, the white
identity that ‘set them apart at a distance….’” The
announcement of the new legislative birthrights, passed during the generation
following Bacon’s Rebellion, were required at the end of church twice a year
and twice in the summer at the county courts. In other
words, people heard that no free African-American dare raise his hand to
a white Christian; that English and Negroes should not mate; and that any
white person who is illegally congregated African-Americans would be fined; So, in the end, the laboring whites had in their heads
the socially constructed concept that they were privileged and that to maintain
their privilege, they need to deny African Americans their freedoms and not
fight against the elite (247-251). So there
we have it. The elite’s desire to create a very inexpensive
permanent laboring class, one portion enslaved to the planter class and the
other enslaved to white superiority, was achieved. The
capitalist ruling elite entrenched their power and created an institutional
superstructure to enforce their “right to rule.” [Author’ Note: Although I would recommend reading
the two volumes, Theodore Allen has written a summary of The Invention of the White Race and made it available on
the World Wide Web at http://eserver.org/clogic/1-2/allen.html.] Allen, Theodore. The Invention of the White Race: The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America. Verso.
New York: 1997.
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