We live in a racist society. In Britain and other Western countries black people are paid lower wages, live in worse housing, suffer abuse and harassment from racist police officers. To oppose racism, and ultimately abolish it, we must first understand it.
The dominant view sees racism as an irrational prejudice, to be opposed with education and legislation. Alternatively, racism is seen as a natural part of 'white' society, to be opposed only if blacks set up their own separate organisations. Both views are inadequate. Neither explains the origins of racism, nor why it varies from one period of history to another. Both strategies have been tested over the past thirty years - the years of Race Relations laws, of Civil Rights and Black Power movements, of 'positive discrimination' - but neither strategy has solved anything.
Racism can be properly understood only by looking for its material causes, both in history and in society today. As this book demonstrates, racism has not been a universal feature of all societies; it developed four hundred years ago out of capitalism's need for slaves for its plantations of the New World, was consolidated in order to justify Western domination of the rest of the world, and flourishes today as a means of dividing the working class and maintaining the rule of the few.
If racism has material causes, it has a material solution. White workers have no interest in preserving racial oppression, which divides and weakens their class. Black workers and white workers together, therefore, have a material interest in defeating the social system which depends on racism, and in so doing also abolishing racism itself. This book argues for a strategy which will achieve this.