The author of the influential The Racial Contract (1997) has gathered together a provocative collection of his essays. These disparate papers do not form an argument for an overarching thesis. Nor do they converge on a single theme, for example, the need to shift away from a focus on class toward race, as the title might suggest. Rather, the essays reveal the recent changes in Charles Mills's philosophical interests, away from core problems in orthodox Marxism toward the project of developing a critical race theory. One constant throughout is Mills's attempt to demonstrate that the methods of analytic philosophy are not inherently “bourgeois,” as many radicals have supposed, but can be usefully applied to problems that concern leftists. Yet unlike much of analytic philosophy, these essays are never boring but instead are generously laced with the author's characteristic biting sarcasm and bold humor.

The essays are divided into three parts. In the first, Mills offers a revisionist interpretation of the Marxist concept of ideology. He argues that Marx and Engels used the concept solely for purposes of attacking the idealist belief that the ideational superstructure has primary causal efficacy in determining the course of social development. Relying on this interpretation, he dissolves the familiar paradox of Marx's amoralism: Marx can consistently claim that morality is ideological and that capitalism is unjust, provided that we understand the former assertion as a claim, not about the objectivity of moral judgment, but about the ineffectiveness of moral suasion to bring about radical social change. Also of interest is Mills's critique of G. A. Cohen's technological determinist interpretation of historical materialism. Mills mounts powerful textual evidence to show that, contrary to Cohen's contention, Marx means to include both productive forces and relations of production within the category of “material factors,” so that historically contingent social developments, in particular coordinated resistance, can play a crucial role in epochal social change.

In Part Two, Mills tackles the vexing race–class nexus. It includes an insightful review essay that critiques recent neo-Weberian analyses of the urban “underclass” from a Marxist point of view. It also contains an essay, “European Specters,” which is not only the most provocative in the volume but also the one that most clearly displays his departure from orthodox Marxist treatments of race. He argues that “race” should be understood not as mere ideology or false consciousness but as a material reality that is a primary social force shaping the structure of modern societies. And he insists that “it is (perceived) racial group interests, not class interests, that have been the most important motivator in shaping people's decision making [in the modern era]” (p. 170; original emphasis).

Part Three further clarifies and develops Mills's approach to race, an approach that he maintains has its roots in the neglected black radical tradition. Following such black activists as Martin Delany, W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Malcolm X, the author urges that we analyze problems of race within a theoretical framework that treats “global white supremacy” as a sociopolitical system in its own right, just as Marxists regard capitalism and feminists regard patriarchy. Moreover, he maintains that “it is politically illuminating to see whites in the United States as ruling as a group, thus constituting the ‘ruling race’ of what was originally—and is in some ways still—a ‘Herrenvolk democracy’” (p. 183).

From Class to Race closes with a lengthy reply to a critique of The Racial Contract by Jorge Garcia (“The Racial Contract Hypothesis,” Philosophia Africana 4 [March 2001]: 27–42). He explains that, contrary to Garcia's mischaracterization, the “racial contract” framework is a methodological stance within political philosophy, not a social-scientific hypothesis about the origins of racial domination. The racial contract trope is not to be taken literally but, rather, is an attempt to exploit a familiar idea from liberal theory in order to reveal the centrality of racial domination to modernity, a tragic history that Mills claims is too often evaded or glossed over by mainstream political philosophy. Further, he maintains that we should operate with a social ontology that replaces the idea of “raceless” individuals standing in relations of equality with one that features socially constructed racial groups facing each other in asymmetric relations of institutional power. These theoretical shifts will, according to Mills, yield better prescriptions for handling questions of racial justice than does liberal contractarianism.

Yet it is on this last point that the book is somewhat disappointing. The author emphasizes that the problem with liberal theory is not its basic values—for example, autonomy, equality, and tolerance—but its failure to appreciate the pervasiveness of race-based exploitation and exclusion. But even if liberal theorists have not (fully) appreciated the facts of race, he has not shown that liberal principles of social justice would need to be altered or supplemented were white supremacy to be regarded as an independent sociopolitical system. It is surprising that there is no sustained critical engagement with John Rawls's theory of justice—certainly the best-known and most influential contemporary liberal theory. An effort to show where or how Rawls's two principles of justice should be revised to take into account the legacy of white supremacy would certainly help the reader to better assess the force of Mills's argument.

Rather than question liberal conceptions of justice, perhaps he would contend that if (white) liberals were to acknowledge the pervasiveness of white supremacist practices, they would have to recognize that, on their own principles, radical race-based redistributive measures are called for to realize social justice. But it is not clear that this implication holds. Reasonable, well-informed people can disagree over what concrete institutional arrangements and policy initiatives would be required or sufficient to bring about a fully just society, and such disputes can persist notwithstanding agreement on the normative criteria of evaluation. Even prominent figures in the black radical tradition, for example, Garvey and Du Bois, have sharply disagreed about such matters. Thus, one burden of Mills's argument, which so far as I can tell has not here been fully discharged, is to show how conceptualizing white supremacy as an independent sociopolitical system will help us better understand what racial justice demands, not just in principle but in practice. Yet despite this weakness, this is a valuable set of essays that further articulates one of the most exciting research agendas in the growing field of critical race theory.