Reviewing Black Capitalism

By SETH SANDRONSKY

Mass protests across the U.S. against Jim Crow drove the rise of the Black Power and Civil Rights movements generations ago. The impacts were far reaching across the lines of class, color and gender. Ruling circles in and out of the federal, state and local governments responded, the backdrop to Earl Ofari Hutchinson’s “The Myth of Black Capitalism” (Monthly Review Press, 2023). 

His new edition of TMOBC is as relevant now as when the book first published in 1970, two years after GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon coined the term “black capitalism.” The author views Nixon’s deeds and words as a political bid to redirect freedom movements away from their radical character, e.g., system change. 

In 2024, one could view the “opportunity economy” of Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party presidential nominee, as a kind of Nixonian angle. However, Nixon sought to derail Black Americans and their allies seeking radical social change, not the current situation in 2024.

In five crisp chapters, plus the first and new introductions, Hutchinson makes his case, empirically, that Black capitalism has been and is a mistaken idea and practice for African Americans as a historically oppressed population. Metrics that Hutchinson deploys underscore his thesis. 

One is the fate of Black businesses. “A 2019 NBC study found that Blacks represent less than one percentage point (0.8%) of Fortune 500 CEOs,” Hutchinson writes. “The number is even more damning when one considers that Blacks make up 10% of college graduates. Proportionately, Blacks then should make up at least fifty Black CEOs. There were only four at the time.

“In 2020, Blacks owned less than 3% of American businesses. Even this was misleading. The bulk of them were still mom-and-pop sole proprietorships, with one or two employees.”

Another metric is the jobless rate of blacks. They experience unemployment rates that are double that of whites in and out of economic contractions and expansions. 

In 1970, TMOBC published as the postwar economy was ending. Meanwhile, a corporate counteroffensive against the expansion of Great Society programs that helped black Americans and working class citizens generally emerged, with funding from corporate America and big business advocacy groups such as the US Chamber of Commerce. Think tanks such as the Heritage Foundation (enabler of Project 2025, the GOP’s neo-fascist playbook) funded with Coors Family greenbacks went on the ideological and political offense against the interests of working Americans. 

Currently, U.S. global hegemony is in decline. The economic competitiveness of China’s economy is proof of that. Hundreds of millions of Chinese people became wage laborers for that nation’s economy to become the world’s workshop, exporting commodities for sale at the people’s republic of Walmart. 

These geopolitical processes have failed to eliminate the ideology of Black capitalism. A Black elite, notably President Barack Obama, boosted this ideology. Black figures, such as NBA superstar Lebron James and performer/entrepreneur Rhianna, both billionaires, have further strengthened the ideology of Black capitalism. 

In contrast, critically, Hutchinson argues that the liberation of Blacks and workers generally lies in the direction of a socialist society that meets the needs of human beings, universally, from decent healthcare and school to food, shelter and work. To this end, TMOBC remains a must-read for a new generation struggling for better living and working conditions that shape African Americans and the US public generally. 

Seth Sandronsky lives and works in Sacramento. He is a journalist and member of the Pacific Media Workers Guild. Email sethsandronsky@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 1, 2024

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