Theorist Ignored: Hubert Harrison and the Birth of Racial Capitalism Theory

Abstract

Hubert Henry Harrison (1883–1927) was an early twentieth-century writer who engaged Marxist theoreticians and conventional American sociological theory in his writings, but he remains unknown to social theorists and histories of American social science. This article shows that Harrison was a social theorist offering valuable insights into the relationship between racial inequality and capitalism. Across his writings, Harrison developed a nascent theory of racial capitalism that anticipated contemporary debates while offering distinct contributions. He conceptualized capitalist production as racially bifurcated and asserted the relative autonomy of race; he offered a structuration theory of racism and capitalist reproduction, showing how racial capitalism is a system co-constituted by racism and economic imperatives; he theorized the role of imperialism and its different forms, explaining how racism globalizes; and he explained agency and resistance as necessary outcomes of the logic of global racial capitalism.