The question of capitalism’s relationship to issues of race, racism and processes of racialisation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary debates. This special issue of Historical Materialism on ‘Race and Capital’ seeks to intervene in these debates. In this Introduction, we situate the special issue within this wider political, historical and theoretical context. We begin by reconstructing some of the key tensions and fault lines within contemporary discussions of race and racism, particularly in relation to the Marxist tradition. Against those (...) who claim a primarily oppositional relationship between the Marxist tradition and anti-racist thinking, we chart a historical account of key moments in which Marxist movements and thinkers have attempted to articulate distinctively historical-materialist accounts of race and racism. We then situate the key themes of the special issue – and the various articles that compose the issue – against this background. (shrink)

This paper presents a new perspective on British free traders’ economic thought in the first half of the twentieth century. Former studies have exclusively focused on the aspect of consumerism and idealistic internationalism as the characteristics of British free trade ideology. In so doing, they have overlooked another important aspect of British free traders’ thought. That is, especially within the tradition of left-leaning liberals or New Liberals, the discourse of producerism and a kind of economic nationalism emphasising the home market (...) rather than the external market paradoxically coexisted with fervent support for free trade. This paper elucidates that overlooked tradition of producerism and economic nationalism within liberal economic thought, mainly based on the analysis of the works of J. A. Hobson and J. M. Keynes. Both Hobson and Keynes are known to have frequently changed their opinions on external economic policy, and there has been controversy over how their changing economic thought should be interpreted. This article also suggests an original coherent interpretation regarding this matter by observing the contradictory coexistence of economic nationalism and free trade ideology within the liberal tradition and sheds new light on both Hobson’s and Keynes’s economic thought. (shrink)