AfroAsianist Readings of Marx

The 1960s represented a conjuncture that gave rise to new readings of Capital and to identity-based epistemologies, or modes of critique that presented themselves antagonistically to each other. The 2010s presented another conjuncture. This time there were efforts at their unification or reconnection through ideas of racial capitalism which entailed a reopening of 60s thought, but one shorn of its AfroAsianist global context and, concomitantly, historical possibility. Through a reconstruction of the efforts of Grace Lee Boggs and Harry Chang to ply Marx’s critique of political economy toward a historical materialist account of race, I propose a way of connecting race and value that retains the utopian potential of the value form.