Racial anticapitalism during the Great Depression

Bibliographic Data

ID23310958
AuthorsTristan Hughes (0000-0002-7356-6000, University of British Columbia, corresponding author)
Year2026
Publication date2026-07-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-8851 • E-ISSN: 1741-2730
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14748851261465341
OpenAlexW7171504037
LanguageEN
References cited21

This article is about a critique of capitalism I call the politics of racial despair, which sought to resurrect a racially defined culture against the impersonal domination of capital. This argument helps us understand an underlying logic behind racist critiques of markets, and I show how the politics of racial despair appealed to white racial identity to reenchant capitalism's decontextualized social relations. I discuss an example of the politics of racial despair forged in the Depression-era American South: the political theory of Donald Davidson, a member of the Southern Agrarians. Drawing on archival material, I show how the Southern Agrarians were part of a transnational politics of racial despair that sought to counter impersonal domination with a return to allegedly concrete forms of life—subsistence production and mythologies of race. Today, we see the stirrings of this racialized critique of capitalism. Davidson's political thought serves as a reminder that not all critiques of capitalism stem from a concern with equality or freedom, but can also serve malign ends.

Argument (complex analysis) · Capitalism · Great Depression · Identity (music) · Politics · Race (biology) · Racial politics · White (mutation) · American History and Culture · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Race, History, and American Society

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