1776 in Light of 1876: W.E.B. Du Bois on the Rise of Racial Monopoly Capitalism

A reading of the American Revolution and the post-Civil War Reconstruction period through the lens of W.E.B. Du Bois’s early writings provides new insights into his theory of racial monopoly capitalism. Many Americans saw the 1776 revolution as an idealistic fight for liberty, for the slaveholding elite who held disproportionate power within the revolutionary coalition; however, consolidating power and defending their property and expansionist ambitions were primary objectives. For them, the Revolution was a strategic move to establish racial nationalism and preserve slaveholder control over economic growth and national power. A century later, Du Bois’s analysis of the “bargain of 1876” revealed a similar consolidation of power, influencing both his research on the revolutionary period and his writings on Reconstruction. The political deal in 1876 abandoned the promise of Reconstruction’s “abolition democracy,” restoring white supremacist rule. Du Bois saw this as the victory of monopoly capital, which used racism to weaken interracial labor solidarity and enforce a system of super-exploitation. By linking 1776 to 1876, Du Bois demonstrated that U.S. capitalist development had been shaped by racial oppression from its settler-colonial roots through the rise of monopoly capitalism, consistently blocking the achievement of a true, non-racial democracy.