Modes of Domination: Racial Capitalism, Colonial Conjunctures and Liberation Struggles
Ongoing
Modes of Domination: Racial Capitalism, Colonial Conjunctures and Liberation Struggles is an online reading circle examining how capitalism has been constituted through colonial conquest, slavery, imperial expansion, racialisation, dispossession and struggles over land and labour. Moving between Marxist political economy, Black radical thought, anti-colonial theory, decolonial and Indigenous scholarship, the circle asks how different traditions have understood the relation between capitalist accumulation and colonial power and where their concepts converge, conflict or fail to account for particular histories.
The programme begins with Marx’s account of so-called primitive accumulation and colonialism and Lenin’s theory of imperialism. It then turns to slavery, cotton, plantation economies and British rule in India; theories of neo-colonialism, dependency and coloniality; anti-colonial revolution and liberation; settler colonialism; racial capitalism, and the Black radical tradition; and the general strike, Black Reconstruction and Black communist feminism. The sequence is comparative, but it does not treat colonialism, slavery, racial capitalism and settler colonialism as interchangeable formations.
Each meeting centres on approximately 50-60 pages, selected from the works listed below and circulated in advance. We will read closely, situate arguments in their historical and political contexts, examine the sources and evidence on which they rely, and distinguish between historical claims, conceptual analysis and political judgement. Rather than seeking a single correct theory, we will ask what problem each text addresses, what it makes visible, what it leaves unresolved and what happens when its concepts travel across times and territories.
No ideological alignment or prior familiarity with the literature is assumed. Critical disagreement is welcome. The circle follows principles of academic freedom, good research practice, equal treatment and respectful conduct. Harassment, discrimination, personal intimidation and degrading treatment are not accepted. No participant is expected to disclose personal experience, represent a community or educate others about an identity. Historical texts may contain racist, colonial or otherwise harmful language; such language will be contextualised and discussed critically rather than reproduced casually.
Participation is free and registration is required. No previous familiarity with the readings is required.
Link to the online meeting together with the reading material will be sent out in advanced to registered participants.
Meetings and readings will be in English.
Preliminary Programme
Eight online meetings, October 2026 - May 2027
19:00–21:00 CET
Autumn 2026
Session 1 - Thursday, 15 October 2026
Origins of Capitalism: Primitive Accumulation, Colonialism and Imperialism
The first introductory session focuses on how colonialism, slavery and dispossession is situated within the history of capitalist accumulation. Colonialism is understood here not as external to capitalism but an inherent part of its historical formation. We will also look at Lenin’s transformation of Marx’s account into a theory of imperialism and the role of imperial expansion in the development of global capitalism.
Reading
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. Vol. 1. Translated by Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin Books, 1976. Chapters 31–33, “The Historical Tendency of Capitalist Accumulation” and “The Modern Theory of Colonisation.”
Lenin, V. I. Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism: A Popular Outline. 1917. Reprint, New York: International Publishers, 1939. Selected passages.
Optional further reading
Luxemburg, Rosa. The Accumulation of Capital. 1913. Selected chapters on imperial expansion and non-capitalist economies.
Patnaik, Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik. Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2021. Selected chapters.
Anderson, Kevin B. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Amin, Samir. Accumulation on a World Scale. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974. Selected passages.
Session 2 - Thursday, 19 November 2026
Colonial economies 1: Slavery, Cotton and Industrial Capitalism
The second session focuses on racial slavery as a system of production, trade, reproduction and accumulation.
Reading
Williams, Eric. Capitalism and Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1944. Selected excerpts.
Beckert, Sven. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. New York: Vintage Books, 2015. Selected excerpts.
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London: Verso, 2010 [1997]. Selected excerpts.
Optional further reading
Morgan, Jennifer L. Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021. Selected chapters.
Hartman, Saidiya. Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Johnson, Walter. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013. Selected excerpts.
Smallwood, Stephanie E. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
Session 3 - Thursday, 17 December 2026
Colonial economies 2: Plantation Systems, Colonial Rule and Uneven Development
The third session focuses on colonial rule in India and on the transfer of resources from colonised societies to metropolitan centres. Marx’s writings on British India will be read alongside later analyses of colonial extraction.
Reading
Marx, Karl. “The British Rule in India.” New-York Daily Tribune, June 25, 1853.
Marx, Karl. “The Future Results of British Rule in India.” New-York Daily Tribune, August 8, 1853.
Morgan, Jennifer L. Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2021.
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800. London: Verso, 2010 [1997]. Selected excerpts.
Optional further reading
Lowe, Lisa. The Intimacies of Four Continents. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Selected chapters.
Patnaik, Utsa and Prabhat Patnaik. The Drain of Wealth: Colonialism before the First World War. Selected passages.
Banaji, Jairus. Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation. Leiden: Brill, 2010. Selected essays.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. Selected excerpts.
Anderson, Kevin B. Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Selected chapters.
Naoroji, Dadabhai. Poverty and Un-British Rule in India. London, 1901. Selected passages.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Gopal, Priyamvada. Insurgent Empire: Anticolonial Resistance and British Dissent. London: Verso, 2019. Selected chapters.
Blackburn, Robin. The Making of New World Slavery. London: Verso, 2010 [1997]. Selected excerpts.
Session 4 - Thursday, 21 January 2027
Neo-colonialism, Dependency and Coloniality/Gender
The fourth session focuses on how colonial relations persist and are reorganised after formal political independence.
Reading
Nkrumah, Kwame. Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1965. Selected excerpts.
Davis, Angela Y. Women, Race & Class. New York: Random House, 1981. Chapters on slavery and women’s labour.
Mignolo, Walter D. The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2011. Selected excerpts.
Optional further reading
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses.” 1984.
Marini, Ruy Mauro. The Dialectics of Dependency. Selected excerpts.
Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́. The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Lugones, María. “Toward a Decolonial Feminism.” Hypatia 25, no. 4 (2010): 742–759.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972.
Session 5 - Thursday, 18 February 2027
Anti-Colonial Revolt and Liberation
The fifth session focuses on anti-colonial liberation as a political, economic, social and cultural transformation rather than simply the achievement of national independence.
Reading
Césaire, Aimé. Discourse on Colonialism. Translated by Joan Pinkham. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000. Selected excerpts.
James, C. L. R. The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. 2nd ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1989. Selected excerpts.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox. New York: Grove Press, 2004. Selected excerpts.
Optional further reading
Kanafani, Ghassan. The 1936–39 Revolt in Palestine. Selected excerpts.
Djebar, Assia. Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade. Selected excerpts.
Vergès, Françoise. A Decolonial Feminism. London: Pluto Press, 2021.
Mbembe, Achille. “Necropolitics.” Translated by Libby Meintjes. Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 11–40. Selected passages.
Session 6 - Thursday, 18 March 2027
Settler Colonialism: Land, Property, Indigeneity
The sixth session focuses on settler colonialism as a structure organised around land, property, sovereignty and the displacement or containment of Indigenous populations.Sayegh, Fayez A. Zionist Colonialism in Palestine. Beirut: Research Center, Palestine Liberation Organization, 1965. Selected excerpts.
Reading
Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. “‘A Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity.” Lateral 5, no. 1 (2016).
Bhandar, Brenna. Colonial Lives of Property: Law, Land, and Racial Regimes of Ownership. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018. Selected excerpts.
Wolfe, Patrick. “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (2006): 387–409.
Sabbagh-Khoury, Areej. Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023.
Optional further reading
Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014. Selected excerpts.
Shalhoub-Kevorkian, Nadera. Selected writings on settler colonialism, surveillance and Palestinian life.
Simpson, Audra. Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2014.
Kauanui, J. Kēhaulani. “‘A Structure, Not an Event’: Settler Colonialism and Enduring Indigeneity.” Lateral 5, no. 1 (2016).
Coulthard, Glen Sean. Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.
Said, Edward W. “Zionism from the Standpoint of Its Victims.” Social Text 1 (1979).
Session 7 - Thursday, 15 April 2027
Racial Capitalism and the Black Radical Tradition
The seventh session focuses on racial capitalism as an account of capitalism and racialisation as historically interconnected processes rather than independent systems that subsequently intersect.
Reading
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. London: Bogle-L’Ouverture Publications, 1972. Selected excerpts.
Robinson, Cedric J. Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Selected excerpts.
Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” In Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism, 305–45. Paris: UNESCO, 1980. Selected excerpts.
Melamed, Jodi. “Racial Capitalism.” Critical Ethnic Studies 1, no. 1 (2015).
Optional further reading
Harris, Cheryl I. “Whiteness as Property.” Harvard Law Review 106, no. 8 (1993).
Kelley, Robin D. G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
Day, Iyko. Alien Capital: Asian Racialization and the Logic of Settler Colonial Capitalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016.
Session 8 . Thursday, 20 May 2027
The General Strike: Black Reconstruction, Abolition and Black Communist Feminism
The final session focuses on abolition not only as the destruction of oppressive institutions but as the construction of new social relations, institutions and forms of collective life.
Reading
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1935. Chapter 4, “The General Strike.” Passages from Chapter 14, “Counter-Revolution of Property”
Jones, Claudia. “An End to the Neglect of the Problems of the Negro Woman!” 1949.
Boyce Davies, Carole. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Selected excerpts.
Optional further reading
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation. London: Verso, 2022. Selected excerpts.
Davis, Angela Y. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005.
Davis, Angela Y. Are Prisons Obsolete? New York: Seven Stories Press, 2003.
Kaba, Mariame. We Do This ’Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2021.
Boyce Davies, Carole. Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007.
Kelley, Robin D. G. Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002.
The programme is provisional. Options for further reading will be provided. Readings and questions may be revised collectively while maintaining the circle’s focus.
Registration
Participation is free, but registration is required. Complete the online registration form. Registered participants will receive the meeting link and readings in advance.
No previous familiarity with the readings is required. Meetings and readings will be in English.
The reading group is convened by Michele Masucci and researcher Majsa Allelin, Associate Professor of Social Work at Södertörn University.
Majsa Allelin is Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Social Work at Södertörn University. Her research engages political economy, education, welfare institutions, and the social and organisational conditions of knowledge and technological change.
Please contact Michele Masucci for more information.