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David McNally is a radical socialist activist and award-winning scholar. Authoring over 60 research manuscripts, seven books, and countless public lectures and articles, he currently holds the Cullen Distinguished Professorship of History & Business at the University of Houston, having recently moved from Toronto, where he taught and organized at York University for over thirty years.

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David McNally stands in front of an Occupy Toronto banner, addressing a rally
Book jacket for Blood and Money: War, Slavery, Finance, and Empire by David McNally

Praise for Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History

"With rich and well-chosen evidence, McNally establishes the ways in which the history of enslavement is best understood within Marxist categories. He writes of unspeakable exploitation and human drama in a frame that never loses track of constant resistance."—David Roediger, author of An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education

"David McNally's deft application of Marx's theory and method not only unearths the hidden dynamics of slavery's political economy but radically broadens our understanding of modern capitalism and its class struggles. The result: a new history of slavery that centers the enslaved—the chattel proletariat—not as 'constant capital' or fungible cogs in the machine but as its gravediggers."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

"What a remarkable book. Grown from the theoretical soil of C.L.R. James, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Sylvia Wynter, Slavery and Capitalism nourishes readers with example after thrilling example of how to think dialectically. McNally’s archival evidence tells stories he uses to make a compelling, cumulative argument about class composition centered on the chattel proletariat."—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography

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ARTICLES & MEDIA

COURSE

MATERIALS

Mutiny on the Amistad by Hale Woodruff, 1938.

Slavery and Freedom

Syllabus and Selected Readings

Book jacket for Racecraft: the Soul of Inequality in American Life by Barbara and Karen Fields

The Political Culture of Race and Racism

Syllabus and Selected Readings

Doris Salcedo – Untitled, 2003, 1,550 wooden chairs, approx. 10.1 × 6.1 × 6.1 m (33 × 20 × 20 ft.), 8th International Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, 2003

Marxism, Feminism and Poststructuralism

Syllabus and Selected Readings

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SOLIDARITY

David currently serves on the editorial board of Spectre: A Journal of Marxist Theory and remains active in a variety of organizing projects in Houston, Toronto and beyond.

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