The Racial Contract

Capitalism refers to a political and economic system defined by private ownership of the means of production. While capitalism is today characterized by wage labor where an employee enters into a contract with an employer to receive payment in exchange for their labor, capitalism has roots in racial slavery whereby Indigenous Americans and Africans were forced into unpaid labor to build the capitalist economy of the Americas. Certain theorists also question the claim to the voluntaristic and consensual nature of employment contracts given that wages/income are required for people to meet their basic survival needs in a capitalist society. Capitalism is a point of discussion in Thesis 3, Thesis 4, and Thesis 5 where Mills explains its role in European global dominance.

The colonial contract refers to one of the subsidiary contracts of the Racial Contract that establishes and consolidates global white supremacy. In Thesis 2, Mills identifies it as the contract that “legitimated European rule over the nations in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific” (25), and he provides examples of its manifestations.

Contractarianism refers to the Hobbesian line of social contract theory that is concerned with the legitimacy of political and moral authority. In mainstream