Nancy Fraser

Capitalism as Structurally Racist

The claim that capitalism inherently generates and depends on racial oppression due to its core organizing processes, not merely through contingent historical factors.

Exploitation

The extraction of surplus value from wage laborers who are formally free but must sell their labor power to survive.

Expropriation

The coercive or violent seizure of labor, land, or resources from politically vulnerable populations without equivalent exchange.

Two Exes (Exploitation and Expropriation)

The dual processes that structure capitalist accumulation, which are distinct but mutually dependent and historically intertwined.

Structural Basis of Racism

The idea that racism arises from capitalism’s division of populations into those who are exploited versus those who are expropriated.

Expropriability

The condition of being vulnerable to confiscation, violence, or domination, which Fraser identifies as the core meaning of racialization.

Political Subjectivation

The process by which states and institutions assign different legal and political statuses (e.g., citizen vs subject), enabling exploitation for some and expropriation for others.

Citizen-Worker

A formally free, rights-bearing individual who is primarily exploited through wage labor rather than expropriated.

Dependent Subject

A politically unprotected individual or group that is vulnerable to expropriation and coercion, often racialized.

Exchange Perspective

The view that capitalism is defined by market exchange and is inherently colorblind, thus treating racism as external and contingent.

Exploitation Perspective

The Marxist view that capitalism is fundamentally about class domination through wage labor, which reveals inequality but underplays racialized expropriation.

Expropriation Perspective

The view that capitalism depends on conquest, plunder, and coercion, highlighting its violent and racialized underside.

Hidden Condition (of Exploitation)

The claim that exploitation depends on expropriation to supply cheap labor, resources, and conditions that make profit possible.

Racial Marking

The process by which populations are categorized as vulnerable or violable, distinguishing those subject to expropriation from protected workers.

Historical Regimes of Racialized Accumulation

The idea that capitalism has gone through phases in which the relation between exploitation and expropriation—and thus racism—takes different forms.

Mercantile (Capitalism)

Early capitalism dominated by expropriation (e.g., slavery, colonial plunder), where most non-elites were subjects rather than free workers.

Liberal-Colonial (Capitalism)

A phase where exploitation (in the core) and expropriation (in the periphery) are more clearly separated and mapped onto racial divisions.

State-Managed (Capitalism)

A mid-20th-century phase where welfare states partially protect workers, but racialized groups remain more exposed to expropriation.

Financialized (Capitalism)

The current phase in which exploitation and expropriation increasingly overlap, especially through debt, austerity, and precarious labor.

Exes Hybrid

The condition in which individuals are simultaneously exploited and expropriated, increasingly common today.

Debt as Expropriation

The idea that modern financial systems extract wealth through mechanisms like predatory lending, sovereign debt, and austerity.

Universalized Precarity

The condition in which large segments of the population are exposed to instability, insecurity, and partial expropriation.

Divide and Rule

The tendency of capitalism to maintain racial divisions to prevent solidarity among exploited and expropriated populations.

Right-Wing Populism (form of Marxist false consciousness)

A political response to widespread insecurity that channels grievances into racial antagonism rather than systemic critique.

Nonracial Capitalism (Critique)

The idea that even if capitalism became formally nonracial, it could still perpetuate inequality and “equal-opportunity” exploitation and expropriation.

EOO Cannibalization

Fraser’s critique of superficial inclusion, where all groups are equally subjected to exploitation and expropriation rather than being liberated from them.

Abolition of the Two Exes

The argument that overcoming racism requires dismantling both exploitation and expropriation, not just reforming their distribution.

Cross-Racial Solidarity

The political project of uniting exploited and expropriated populations across racial lines to challenge capitalism itself.