Based on this historic analysis, the author concludes that blacks in the American social formation have been part of a process of wealth accumulation for others. As slaves, they were accumulation machines for cotton plantation owners. That relation substantially continued until they became part of the northern industrial proletariat. There, through the 1960's, they represented a reserve army of unemployed: a group of mostly low- skilled laborers who did menial, low-paying jobs. When those jobs disappeared, so did their place in the labor market. The creation of an underclass can be understood as the end product of a massive redistribution of wealth. A 1983 survey of wealth distribution in the United States found that it was "remarkably uneven" and that such maldistribution has been increasing in the past 20 years, as the wealth has moved upward from the poor to the rich. The multiple roadblocks in the way of black accumulation of wealth act also as collection points for a transfer of wealth from poor blacks into richer hands. By using the capitalist process of accumulation as the point of inquiry, this study argues that all resources, whether found in government policy, corporate enterprise, market forces inside and outside the inner city, or in their own racial group at a higher level on the "hill," have some interest in keeping a certain number of young black males at the bottom, or have no interest in them at all. Those in the group at the bottom have constructed their own hierarchy to obtain power and wealth within their environment through gangs, violence, and drug-dealing. Alienated from the capitalist means of obtaining power and wealth, young black males of the underclass, infused with capitalist values of power and materialism, have turned to the only other victims available in their segregated world, other blacks. 20 notes and 150 references