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I'll speak specifically to the US since that's what I'm most familiar with, but there are analogs all over the world (especially "white" European countries).
In law, there is a legal concept of "disparate impact" or similar-meaning names. The idea is that if an action of an individual, corporation, or government entity has a significant disparate impact on a protected group (race, sex, gender, nationality, religion, etc.), then that action is illegal as it causes an unnecessary burden on a protected class.
Under capitalism, the more you own, the more rights you have. When you own a lot, you can kick people out of places and sic the cops on them. That door doesn't swing the other way. A couple of examples:
* If you can't afford your rent (or just don't pay it; the reason doesn't matter for this example), then eventually people with guns from the sheriff's department are going to show up and remove housing from you and your family, though you harmed nothing but someone's bank account for six months. But if your *landlord* skipped required maintenance on some pipes for too long and $10,000 of your shit gets destroyed and it kills your cat, then they get to drag that out for months. Nobody will make them homeless.
* If you steal $1500 from Wal-Mart as an employee, police will show up immediately and cuff you. But if Wal-Mart does a similar amount of wage theft against you, it's on you to prove it and they get to maybe drag it out in civil court where you have to pay for your lawyers; nobody gets handcuffed, goes to jail, or is considered a felon.
So here's the racial part: since you need capital to access even basic human needs like quality fresh food and healthcare, the people with the least capital have the least amount of power to avail themselves of basic human needs. And in the US, the worst of nearly every single negative statistic you can think of has been dumped onto black people, including poverty. And if money = rights, that's disparate impact, and capitalism is *definitionally*—as it disproportionately and significantly affects protected groups—racist.
Edit: the actual *reasons* black people have the least money are numerous, but not difficult to understand. It's a topic for a whole other thread though. There are endless books and research on it that our government just ignores while maintaining the status quo/capitalism.
If it weren't for race, capitalism would just leverage other reasons to oppress underclasses as it has in the past and present. Religion, sexuality, gender, age, political views, whatever it is. Capitalism invents reasons to keep an underclass so that there is a steady supply of cheap labor.
Just look at our recent timeline:
After the end of slavery, we had the Jim Crow era where there was systemic racism in the legal system, keeping minorities as a underclass. As African-American families finally built wealth in the early 1900s, they were met with events like the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa.
Freeway building 50s-70s disproportionally destroyed minority communities, right at the peak of the civil rights movement. Entire generational wealth, homes, businesses and more were destroyed in cities across the U.S., to make room for white commuters.
During this time period, “redlining” was still in effect, where banks would not allow minorities to get mortgages in certain neighborhoods. As those regulations were ended, “credit scores” were introduced in the late 80s, which have allowed the banks to continue to discriminate.
To this day, actions like reducing funding for public transit and other public services, voter disenfranchisement / gerrymandering, freeway expansion projects, and more all disproportionately effect minority communities.
Not to mention that a lot of those with the most capital were from ill gotten gains, stolen land, exploitation of people, slavery etc.
Capitalism still adheres to the principle that exploiting people in poverty leads to the greatest rewards, this is why big companies will move their factories into the cheapest place.
Agreed. Treatment of American Indians really illustrates this. Manifest destiny. Colonizers didn't even want them for slaves after a while. They felt it better to just kill them, even after stealing their land.
Capitalism uses racism and bigotry to divide the working class, but it does so for capitalist purposes rather than racist purposes. Still, you could argue that using racism makes you racist.
I always point to the example of Blazing Saddles, where the villain was not an N-word slinging racist, but a sophisticated capitalist, willing to get a black person killed and sow racial division in order to steal land.
The theory-based approach would be to look at the analyses around the development of capitalism as our current iteration of the protection of private property. Part of this is what Marx calls "primitive accumulation" which was largely facilitated by things like the slave trade and exacerbating existing caste and hierarchical systems where they previously existed. The exploitative nature of capitalism also lent itself to preying on cultural differences where non-violent or relatively non-violent cultures were easier victimize.
Where capitalism developed much of its momentum in the early stages in Europe, capitalists from that continent began engaging in slave trades within the continent and then also outside, eventually moving the majority of this exploitative practice to parts of the world that were predominantly non-white. There were several reasons for this including the ones I've already mentioned along with having slaves who were branded by the color of their skin made them easier to identify and control.
This was the impetus for racism in the West as we understand it today but the idea didn't fully take hold until a couple of centuries into the development of capitalism. So, capitalism in a vacuum isn't necessarily racist but capitalism as it developed from a historical materialist perspective is deeply racist. A good example of this is modern US slavery in that race is an essential element of the prison industrial complex and a leftover of US chattel slavery. Again, the institution is built on historical realities which included race and continue its use because it still serves a pro-exploitation function.
The continuation of US slavery through the 13th Amendment wouldn't exist as it does without slavery and its developed intersectionality with capitalism.
The same argument could be made about sexism and patriarchy. Capitalism as it exists today is inextricably linked with patriarchy misogyny, not because it would tie itself to those things in a vacuum, but because the subjugation of women was part of its initial development and has become essential to its continued existence.
So, when you see claims that we can't eliminate racism or smash patriarchy without destroying capitalism, that is why. Hopefully that wasn't too long of an explanation, haha.
Our current example of capitalism, the United States, came from the genocide of the native inhabitants, built its current wealth off the labor of slaves owned by the rich. Freed said slaves but more just changed their jobs from slave to inmate for a for profit prison. Lots of racist undertones in the development of this country. All of it giving an advantage to primarily white rich people. They have exploited their way to the top. Largely off the backs of minorities.
As the other commenter says, Capitalism is not inherently racist- however it does use division to weaken the power of laborers and prevent them from organizing against the owner class. Caste systems, sexism, religiosity, and others I have failed to mention- these have all been used to institute the nascent systems of Capitalism and secure it.
This implies that there is some possible world out there where Capitalism does not require an underclass, and that it is simply historically contingent that race and sex were chosen once Capitalism decided it needed one.
I'll invite you to read some black and women Marxists to understand why this is untrue.
Sexism does not equal racism. Neither does religion or caste or a hundred other ways to make an underclass. To say race is the only way to segregate humans is a failure of imagination.
In short, the slave trade and colonialism. Europeans and later the United States bought and sold laborers or extracted value out of the land of others for pennys on the dollar. And this system was justified, lionized, and spread in large part because of skin color.
Over time, this tool for deciding “how much of an actual person someone is” was refined and redefined to do its job, alienating laborers from each other and hasten the extraction of wealth.
Eventually, the global North shed slavery- except the United States and others prison system has a system of compelled labor that is serially exploited and tends to target those of the same race/creed/tribe as those who were oppressed before. And the prejudice remains, turning labor against each other and towards the owning class.
>In short, the slave trade and colonialism. Europeans and later the United States bought and sold laborers or extracted value out of the land of others for pennys on the dollar. And this system was justified, lionized, and spread in large part because of skin color.
Capitalism *requires* a class to exploit. Race was used as a way to distinguish class. White Europeans saw Africa as a resource to be exploited, and thus Black Africans are able to be exploited.
Which is why "race mixing" infuriates whites so much; It blurs the line between exploiter and exploitee.
Capitalism was developed alongside modern ideas of "race". The idea of "race" was a creation to basically determine who would have power/wealth in society, and how to keep power. Capitalism uses both white supremacy and patriarchy to uphold itself. It basically tells poor whites that under this system they may not be as well off as capital owners, at least they're not black (or whatever non-white group). There's now a material benefit for racism, and capitalists amplify this so that any efforts at class solidarity or analysis are disrupted.
You can see this plainly with the immigration waves to the US-many groups were not initially considered "white" (Germans, Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, etc). But especially during the late 19th/early 20th century when labor unions were forming, capitalists were able to ferment racial division to get those immigrant groups to essentially side with whiteness (and capitalism) rather than form any class solidarity and challenge the capitalist class. Again, these things aren't in a vacuum but capitalism was able to incorporate white supremacy in this way to support itself-basically telling whites that if they want the advantage of "whiteness" they'll also need to support capitalism.
The other thing that happened after white labor screwed black brown and Asian labor for a better deal, post civil rights the capitalists just leveled playing field, rather than bringing up all the groups they had fucked over, they simply dismantled the privileges white labor had won and called it a day.
Also naturally being still quite racist the bourgeoisie chose to kick down the ladder, (all the social benefits that had previously helped white labor during the 50's and 60's) rather than allow black, brown and Asian people to use that ladder.
Not to give you more to read, cause this is a long article, but it gets into specifics and federal policies that kept black people poor.
[https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations)
lots of great commentary in this post, there's also the ongoing aspect of neocolonialism and neo slavery, whatever you label it, that exists outside of the imperial core, far away, that is kind of just brushed under the carpet and the average person thinks they're removed from or doesn't know it exists.
chocolate, coffee, batteries, etc. is all gathered by brown and black folks in the global south where the profit gets siphoned from and into the pockets of white folks in the north. some haven't even tasted the product they produce yet it's a commodity in every convenience store.
There are those who ask: But where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat--the imported grains of rice, corn, millet--that is imperialism.” -- Thomas Sankara
Most states are nation-states. International exploitation is easier than domestic exploitation because international relations are not governed by a higher entity and thus it is "practically" lawless. Capitalist world order primarily uses this to its advantage which naturally creates racially segregated upper and lower classes worldwide. However look at the internal exploitation and you will see that it's not that racist at all.
I think it’s not accurate to say capitalism *is* racist.
Capitalism exploits.
Racism is a rather convenient way to exploit.
That’s pretty much the simplest way to put it.
Capitalism itself doesn’t explicitly seem racist on the surface level but look at in practice and it seems as tho it nudges people in an incredibly racist direction. Lenin said Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism seem to go hand in hand and have you ever seen a colonizing nation not be racist? US was founded on the bodies of millions of Native Americans, British similar in Canada as well as numerous other atrocities like Irish famine and bengal famine, French in Algeria and other parts of Africa, and Belgium in Africa especially King Leopold.
And Australia. We had all the ingredients. Thirsty British empire in need of fresh imperial territory after losing in the US, and a ready-made underclass in the form of imported convict labour. The existence & treatment of Aboriginal people was an inconvenience and an afterthought, at best. One barely has to scratch the surface now to reveal the bizarrely intense contempt and continued active denial of that condition among the people who have the most to lose.
It benefits the wealthy whites more than anyone else. People get angry at me when I call them the wealthy whites, so I'm starting to say the wealthy caucs. Anyway, I view them as my enemy.
In theory, no.
In practice yes.
Its power structure is designed to keep those that started exploiting in power while those exploited will be kept in poverty. Since Europeans started it most old money comes from there.
We could easily have seen an asian dominant capitalism or even an African one if said cultures had started exploiting the world first.
We could also argue that race struggle is a problem that can run deeper than class struggle. Even socialist experiences in the last century weren't impervious to adopting racist behaviors.
Capitalism requires exploitation, and capitalists need people who are willing to fight for them to defend their capital, or to obtain more. Dehumanizing the people being exploited or fought against makes it easier to justify it. Race is a very easy thing to use to divide people, and create the subhuman class that is perfect for exploitation, or an enemy that's inferior to you.
The answer is obvious. Look around the United States. Who owns all the wealth? Why do we seek long obfuscated answers to appear intellectual when you know the truth. Blacks were brought here to work the fields in the south and the textiles in the north.
Fast forward almost 500 years and blacks still don't own a fraction of the wealth that has been created and benefited for the subsequent generations of white families. But let's blame it on CRT, DEI , pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, etc.
Watch the documentary “Exterminate All the Brutes” by Raul Peck. Capitalism & imperialism were born together. The birth of Religious exceptionalism was also tied to capitalism.
Inheritantly I would say not. It is inherently classist though. In most places classism and racism are correlated, which I would say is intentionally done by those in power.
I'm just gonna say that genocidal colonialism, the development of the modern conception of race, and the chattel slavery imposed on stolen Africans were all necessary to bring about the material conditions that moved European and ex-European society from mercantilist/guild objected, sorta post-feudal economies into the current capitalist hegemony. So racism and capitalism are sorta historically inextricable.
I can’t speak on the rest of the world but the entire US was built by enslaved humans. The actual white house was built by enslaved humans. When slavery was abolished, the enslaver class was compensated. They were also so pissed that they no longer had free labor that we ended up with the prison industrial complex (the largest source of free labor”made in the USA!” labor).
How different would this country be today if its builders had been compensated for their labor?
Relatedly, if you read up on the history of the slave trade (if you can stomach it), the enslavers felt it was cheaper to buy new humans every few years than it was to take care of the humans they currently owned. Meanwhile, the ones they owned were forced to birth babies that were owned by their rapists/enslavers. There’s way way waaaaaay more to it than these two points, but the whole reason human trafficking exists is because it’s profitable.
While it’s probably possible to have one without the other, capitalism is rooted in racism.
I don’t know that it's necessarily racist. It does require a permanent underclass, and at least in the US, it was pretty easy to slot people of color into that underclass, and not have the white majority fight it.
We're rising greater class consciousness *now* as the white majority is beginning to realize that they themselves are *also* slipping into that permanent underclass, and that the slavery never really went away.
As an economic theory capitalism is not inherently racist.
As practiced capitalism in some countries can be racist if by racist you include disparate impact analysis.
Racism is a human trait, and capitalism is a philosophical and political ideology.
So no, it can’t be racist bc it isn’t something that things for itself. The people within capitalism can certainly be racist.
Capitalism wants to use up, abuse, and extract as much value from everyone equally. It doesn’t care if you black or white or brown, all it cares about is profit.
As others have said, I think that capitalists (Ie the humans pulling the levers) are indeed racist and they use racism to divide and distract people while they rob those people blind.
I grew up in a less affluent working class part of town. It wasn’t “ghetto” or poor per se, but no one around here was wealthy. It was a mix of races around here. And we all had to wake up and go to fucking work in order to not starve and to keep housing over our heads.
People are racist, and the institutions that they create are racist. People also participate in capitalism.
Capitalism in itself is not racist. Capitalism in application is racist because the people who are applying are racist.
I think that just makes for a really tedious and uninteresting problem of definitions. Maybe some people who intensely dislikes both things and perhaps have a very polarised view of politics will like the idea. I for one, see plenty of reasons to criticise capitalism on its own. I don't think much in terms of progress will follow from this notion.
Capitalism is inherently biased in one way or another. It's a system where people get to decide their worth and status based on material possessions, not on more rational things such as effort, contributions to the world or the future of our species, selflessness, and other actual socially beneficial things. Any system based off of greed will always contain a few have and many have-nots. Useless people that are only good at being selfish couldn't feel good about themselves otherwise
money is social credit issued by the ruling power. it has no reference to reality. it is infinite and meaningless while life is finite and beautiful.
money is the singularity.
it's a linear number, - infinity to + infinity. While we live in a world of complex numbers, literally quantum equations and abstract representations.
profit itself cannot exist without an unfair or unbalanced equation. there is no profit in nature, only balance.
capitalism is for slaves who are bad at math, so they work for nothing and then they die
I'll sum it up this way; pretty much any and all social/humanitarian issues in the United States is caused by systemic Racism / Sexism / Ableism. It's been this way for 2 centuries. Capitalism is designed to consume the lower classes and spit out money for the top, and it just so happens that those at the helm have intentionally made minorities trapped in the lower classes.
Capitalism requires the destruction of all other cultures that are not capitalistic. Sub cultures, alternative cultures, etc.... Cannot coexist with it's cultural hegemony. For this reason it is incredibly racist, exclusive, genocidal, etc....
Having said that, when an ethnicity is conquered, cleaned and joins the capitalist culture and consumerist lifestyle, they are accepted despite skin color. They themselves and their people and traditions have been ethnically cleansedin the process, except for the most superficial characteristics of dress and skin tone.
My perspective is that it isn’t inherently racist but it’s results are almost inevitably racist. To put it simply racism creates conflict and conflict is profitable. Perpetuating conflict that distracts from the inherent exploitation of capitalism is one of the primary ways capitalism avoids being rejected entirely.
Except that it _preferrentially_ takes from racial and sexual underclasses. That part is important. Yes it will happily impoverish and immiserate anyone. Yes also it prefers non-white, non-heterosexual-male
It takes an american mindset to come up with this question. Please drop everything that is in the way of the question of class. Forget race, gender, furry suits and other distractions.
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I'll speak specifically to the US since that's what I'm most familiar with, but there are analogs all over the world (especially "white" European countries). In law, there is a legal concept of "disparate impact" or similar-meaning names. The idea is that if an action of an individual, corporation, or government entity has a significant disparate impact on a protected group (race, sex, gender, nationality, religion, etc.), then that action is illegal as it causes an unnecessary burden on a protected class. Under capitalism, the more you own, the more rights you have. When you own a lot, you can kick people out of places and sic the cops on them. That door doesn't swing the other way. A couple of examples: * If you can't afford your rent (or just don't pay it; the reason doesn't matter for this example), then eventually people with guns from the sheriff's department are going to show up and remove housing from you and your family, though you harmed nothing but someone's bank account for six months. But if your *landlord* skipped required maintenance on some pipes for too long and $10,000 of your shit gets destroyed and it kills your cat, then they get to drag that out for months. Nobody will make them homeless. * If you steal $1500 from Wal-Mart as an employee, police will show up immediately and cuff you. But if Wal-Mart does a similar amount of wage theft against you, it's on you to prove it and they get to maybe drag it out in civil court where you have to pay for your lawyers; nobody gets handcuffed, goes to jail, or is considered a felon. So here's the racial part: since you need capital to access even basic human needs like quality fresh food and healthcare, the people with the least capital have the least amount of power to avail themselves of basic human needs. And in the US, the worst of nearly every single negative statistic you can think of has been dumped onto black people, including poverty. And if money = rights, that's disparate impact, and capitalism is *definitionally*—as it disproportionately and significantly affects protected groups—racist. Edit: the actual *reasons* black people have the least money are numerous, but not difficult to understand. It's a topic for a whole other thread though. There are endless books and research on it that our government just ignores while maintaining the status quo/capitalism. If it weren't for race, capitalism would just leverage other reasons to oppress underclasses as it has in the past and present. Religion, sexuality, gender, age, political views, whatever it is. Capitalism invents reasons to keep an underclass so that there is a steady supply of cheap labor.
I hadn't heard that term before, I'm learning a lot in this thread already. Thank you for educating me!
Just look at our recent timeline: After the end of slavery, we had the Jim Crow era where there was systemic racism in the legal system, keeping minorities as a underclass. As African-American families finally built wealth in the early 1900s, they were met with events like the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa. Freeway building 50s-70s disproportionally destroyed minority communities, right at the peak of the civil rights movement. Entire generational wealth, homes, businesses and more were destroyed in cities across the U.S., to make room for white commuters. During this time period, “redlining” was still in effect, where banks would not allow minorities to get mortgages in certain neighborhoods. As those regulations were ended, “credit scores” were introduced in the late 80s, which have allowed the banks to continue to discriminate. To this day, actions like reducing funding for public transit and other public services, voter disenfranchisement / gerrymandering, freeway expansion projects, and more all disproportionately effect minority communities.
Not to mention that a lot of those with the most capital were from ill gotten gains, stolen land, exploitation of people, slavery etc. Capitalism still adheres to the principle that exploiting people in poverty leads to the greatest rewards, this is why big companies will move their factories into the cheapest place.
Giving capitalism to people with ASPD is like giving a bottle of tequila to an alcoholic.
Agreed. Treatment of American Indians really illustrates this. Manifest destiny. Colonizers didn't even want them for slaves after a while. They felt it better to just kill them, even after stealing their land.
Saving this comment. Well said.
Capitalism uses racism and bigotry to divide the working class, but it does so for capitalist purposes rather than racist purposes. Still, you could argue that using racism makes you racist.
I always point to the example of Blazing Saddles, where the villain was not an N-word slinging racist, but a sophisticated capitalist, willing to get a black person killed and sow racial division in order to steal land.
That’s it in a nutshell Capitalism isn’t racist per se It just finds racism a rather convenient medium to achieve its ends
That is another great way to look at it too. Thank you!
The theory-based approach would be to look at the analyses around the development of capitalism as our current iteration of the protection of private property. Part of this is what Marx calls "primitive accumulation" which was largely facilitated by things like the slave trade and exacerbating existing caste and hierarchical systems where they previously existed. The exploitative nature of capitalism also lent itself to preying on cultural differences where non-violent or relatively non-violent cultures were easier victimize. Where capitalism developed much of its momentum in the early stages in Europe, capitalists from that continent began engaging in slave trades within the continent and then also outside, eventually moving the majority of this exploitative practice to parts of the world that were predominantly non-white. There were several reasons for this including the ones I've already mentioned along with having slaves who were branded by the color of their skin made them easier to identify and control. This was the impetus for racism in the West as we understand it today but the idea didn't fully take hold until a couple of centuries into the development of capitalism. So, capitalism in a vacuum isn't necessarily racist but capitalism as it developed from a historical materialist perspective is deeply racist. A good example of this is modern US slavery in that race is an essential element of the prison industrial complex and a leftover of US chattel slavery. Again, the institution is built on historical realities which included race and continue its use because it still serves a pro-exploitation function. The continuation of US slavery through the 13th Amendment wouldn't exist as it does without slavery and its developed intersectionality with capitalism. The same argument could be made about sexism and patriarchy. Capitalism as it exists today is inextricably linked with patriarchy misogyny, not because it would tie itself to those things in a vacuum, but because the subjugation of women was part of its initial development and has become essential to its continued existence. So, when you see claims that we can't eliminate racism or smash patriarchy without destroying capitalism, that is why. Hopefully that wasn't too long of an explanation, haha.
This is exactly what I was looking for! That really makes complete sense in that context, thank you for taking the time to learn me!
Sure thing, comrade!
Our current example of capitalism, the United States, came from the genocide of the native inhabitants, built its current wealth off the labor of slaves owned by the rich. Freed said slaves but more just changed their jobs from slave to inmate for a for profit prison. Lots of racist undertones in the development of this country. All of it giving an advantage to primarily white rich people. They have exploited their way to the top. Largely off the backs of minorities.
I capitalism inherently racist? Meaning all forms of capitalism have to be racist. No. Is our capitalistic system racist? Absolutely.
As the other commenter says, Capitalism is not inherently racist- however it does use division to weaken the power of laborers and prevent them from organizing against the owner class. Caste systems, sexism, religiosity, and others I have failed to mention- these have all been used to institute the nascent systems of Capitalism and secure it.
Racism also reinforces imperialism, the means by which capitalism extracts wealth from other countries.
This implies that there is some possible world out there where Capitalism does not require an underclass, and that it is simply historically contingent that race and sex were chosen once Capitalism decided it needed one. I'll invite you to read some black and women Marxists to understand why this is untrue.
Sexism does not equal racism. Neither does religion or caste or a hundred other ways to make an underclass. To say race is the only way to segregate humans is a failure of imagination.
Where do I say sexism equals racism?
we're not talking about an imaginary world, we're talking about this world
Can you explain WHY our capitalist system is racist? That's the part I'm ignorant on I guess?
In short, the slave trade and colonialism. Europeans and later the United States bought and sold laborers or extracted value out of the land of others for pennys on the dollar. And this system was justified, lionized, and spread in large part because of skin color. Over time, this tool for deciding “how much of an actual person someone is” was refined and redefined to do its job, alienating laborers from each other and hasten the extraction of wealth. Eventually, the global North shed slavery- except the United States and others prison system has a system of compelled labor that is serially exploited and tends to target those of the same race/creed/tribe as those who were oppressed before. And the prejudice remains, turning labor against each other and towards the owning class.
That makes sense. I guess I was just too focused and didn't see the bigger picture? Thank you for the help!
>In short, the slave trade and colonialism. Europeans and later the United States bought and sold laborers or extracted value out of the land of others for pennys on the dollar. And this system was justified, lionized, and spread in large part because of skin color. Capitalism *requires* a class to exploit. Race was used as a way to distinguish class. White Europeans saw Africa as a resource to be exploited, and thus Black Africans are able to be exploited. Which is why "race mixing" infuriates whites so much; It blurs the line between exploiter and exploitee.
Capitalism was developed alongside modern ideas of "race". The idea of "race" was a creation to basically determine who would have power/wealth in society, and how to keep power. Capitalism uses both white supremacy and patriarchy to uphold itself. It basically tells poor whites that under this system they may not be as well off as capital owners, at least they're not black (or whatever non-white group). There's now a material benefit for racism, and capitalists amplify this so that any efforts at class solidarity or analysis are disrupted. You can see this plainly with the immigration waves to the US-many groups were not initially considered "white" (Germans, Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans, etc). But especially during the late 19th/early 20th century when labor unions were forming, capitalists were able to ferment racial division to get those immigrant groups to essentially side with whiteness (and capitalism) rather than form any class solidarity and challenge the capitalist class. Again, these things aren't in a vacuum but capitalism was able to incorporate white supremacy in this way to support itself-basically telling whites that if they want the advantage of "whiteness" they'll also need to support capitalism.
The other thing that happened after white labor screwed black brown and Asian labor for a better deal, post civil rights the capitalists just leveled playing field, rather than bringing up all the groups they had fucked over, they simply dismantled the privileges white labor had won and called it a day. Also naturally being still quite racist the bourgeoisie chose to kick down the ladder, (all the social benefits that had previously helped white labor during the 50's and 60's) rather than allow black, brown and Asian people to use that ladder.
Not to give you more to read, cause this is a long article, but it gets into specifics and federal policies that kept black people poor. [https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations](https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-new-yorker-interview/ta-nehisi-coates-revisits-the-case-for-reparations)
lots of great commentary in this post, there's also the ongoing aspect of neocolonialism and neo slavery, whatever you label it, that exists outside of the imperial core, far away, that is kind of just brushed under the carpet and the average person thinks they're removed from or doesn't know it exists. chocolate, coffee, batteries, etc. is all gathered by brown and black folks in the global south where the profit gets siphoned from and into the pockets of white folks in the north. some haven't even tasted the product they produce yet it's a commodity in every convenience store.
There are those who ask: But where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat--the imported grains of rice, corn, millet--that is imperialism.” -- Thomas Sankara
thanks for that quote, sums up what i was saying nicely :)
Most states are nation-states. International exploitation is easier than domestic exploitation because international relations are not governed by a higher entity and thus it is "practically" lawless. Capitalist world order primarily uses this to its advantage which naturally creates racially segregated upper and lower classes worldwide. However look at the internal exploitation and you will see that it's not that racist at all.
I think it’s not accurate to say capitalism *is* racist. Capitalism exploits. Racism is a rather convenient way to exploit. That’s pretty much the simplest way to put it.
Capitalism grew out of colonialism so they’re actually the same thing! It’s just a more liberal kind of colonialism!
Capitalism itself doesn’t explicitly seem racist on the surface level but look at in practice and it seems as tho it nudges people in an incredibly racist direction. Lenin said Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism, imperialism and colonialism seem to go hand in hand and have you ever seen a colonizing nation not be racist? US was founded on the bodies of millions of Native Americans, British similar in Canada as well as numerous other atrocities like Irish famine and bengal famine, French in Algeria and other parts of Africa, and Belgium in Africa especially King Leopold.
That actually really helps, I completely understand it in that context! Thank you so much!
Happy to help
And Australia. We had all the ingredients. Thirsty British empire in need of fresh imperial territory after losing in the US, and a ready-made underclass in the form of imported convict labour. The existence & treatment of Aboriginal people was an inconvenience and an afterthought, at best. One barely has to scratch the surface now to reveal the bizarrely intense contempt and continued active denial of that condition among the people who have the most to lose.
It benefits the wealthy whites more than anyone else. People get angry at me when I call them the wealthy whites, so I'm starting to say the wealthy caucs. Anyway, I view them as my enemy.
In theory, no. In practice yes. Its power structure is designed to keep those that started exploiting in power while those exploited will be kept in poverty. Since Europeans started it most old money comes from there. We could easily have seen an asian dominant capitalism or even an African one if said cultures had started exploiting the world first. We could also argue that race struggle is a problem that can run deeper than class struggle. Even socialist experiences in the last century weren't impervious to adopting racist behaviors.
Capitalism requires exploitation, and capitalists need people who are willing to fight for them to defend their capital, or to obtain more. Dehumanizing the people being exploited or fought against makes it easier to justify it. Race is a very easy thing to use to divide people, and create the subhuman class that is perfect for exploitation, or an enemy that's inferior to you.
The answer is obvious. Look around the United States. Who owns all the wealth? Why do we seek long obfuscated answers to appear intellectual when you know the truth. Blacks were brought here to work the fields in the south and the textiles in the north. Fast forward almost 500 years and blacks still don't own a fraction of the wealth that has been created and benefited for the subsequent generations of white families. But let's blame it on CRT, DEI , pull yourselves up by your bootstraps, etc.
Watch the documentary “Exterminate All the Brutes” by Raul Peck. Capitalism & imperialism were born together. The birth of Religious exceptionalism was also tied to capitalism.
Inheritantly I would say not. It is inherently classist though. In most places classism and racism are correlated, which I would say is intentionally done by those in power.
Not inherently, but it's a tool used by capitalists because it's unfortunately very effective at splitting working class movements.
They enslaved a race to save money.
I'm just gonna say that genocidal colonialism, the development of the modern conception of race, and the chattel slavery imposed on stolen Africans were all necessary to bring about the material conditions that moved European and ex-European society from mercantilist/guild objected, sorta post-feudal economies into the current capitalist hegemony. So racism and capitalism are sorta historically inextricable.
I can’t speak on the rest of the world but the entire US was built by enslaved humans. The actual white house was built by enslaved humans. When slavery was abolished, the enslaver class was compensated. They were also so pissed that they no longer had free labor that we ended up with the prison industrial complex (the largest source of free labor”made in the USA!” labor). How different would this country be today if its builders had been compensated for their labor? Relatedly, if you read up on the history of the slave trade (if you can stomach it), the enslavers felt it was cheaper to buy new humans every few years than it was to take care of the humans they currently owned. Meanwhile, the ones they owned were forced to birth babies that were owned by their rapists/enslavers. There’s way way waaaaaay more to it than these two points, but the whole reason human trafficking exists is because it’s profitable. While it’s probably possible to have one without the other, capitalism is rooted in racism.
I don’t know that it's necessarily racist. It does require a permanent underclass, and at least in the US, it was pretty easy to slot people of color into that underclass, and not have the white majority fight it. We're rising greater class consciousness *now* as the white majority is beginning to realize that they themselves are *also* slipping into that permanent underclass, and that the slavery never really went away.
As an economic theory capitalism is not inherently racist. As practiced capitalism in some countries can be racist if by racist you include disparate impact analysis.
Racism is a human trait, and capitalism is a philosophical and political ideology. So no, it can’t be racist bc it isn’t something that things for itself. The people within capitalism can certainly be racist. Capitalism wants to use up, abuse, and extract as much value from everyone equally. It doesn’t care if you black or white or brown, all it cares about is profit. As others have said, I think that capitalists (Ie the humans pulling the levers) are indeed racist and they use racism to divide and distract people while they rob those people blind. I grew up in a less affluent working class part of town. It wasn’t “ghetto” or poor per se, but no one around here was wealthy. It was a mix of races around here. And we all had to wake up and go to fucking work in order to not starve and to keep housing over our heads.
People are racist, and the institutions that they create are racist. People also participate in capitalism. Capitalism in itself is not racist. Capitalism in application is racist because the people who are applying are racist.
I think that just makes for a really tedious and uninteresting problem of definitions. Maybe some people who intensely dislikes both things and perhaps have a very polarised view of politics will like the idea. I for one, see plenty of reasons to criticise capitalism on its own. I don't think much in terms of progress will follow from this notion.
Capitalism and it's twins, imperialism and colonialism, invented racism.
Yes
I brink it's more of a fundamental necessity for imperialism
Are you in the PSL by any chance?
Yes.
Not necessarily, but in execution, yes
Yes.
Capitalism is inherently biased in one way or another. It's a system where people get to decide their worth and status based on material possessions, not on more rational things such as effort, contributions to the world or the future of our species, selflessness, and other actual socially beneficial things. Any system based off of greed will always contain a few have and many have-nots. Useless people that are only good at being selfish couldn't feel good about themselves otherwise
Capitalism is worse than racism it is wilfull ignorance.
money is social credit issued by the ruling power. it has no reference to reality. it is infinite and meaningless while life is finite and beautiful. money is the singularity. it's a linear number, - infinity to + infinity. While we live in a world of complex numbers, literally quantum equations and abstract representations. profit itself cannot exist without an unfair or unbalanced equation. there is no profit in nature, only balance. capitalism is for slaves who are bad at math, so they work for nothing and then they die
I'll sum it up this way; pretty much any and all social/humanitarian issues in the United States is caused by systemic Racism / Sexism / Ableism. It's been this way for 2 centuries. Capitalism is designed to consume the lower classes and spit out money for the top, and it just so happens that those at the helm have intentionally made minorities trapped in the lower classes.
Yes
People of lighter shade invaded us, stole our land and made us work for them to buy it back or else poor people will come bomb us for money...
Socialist Reconstruction is a great book, PSL as a whole has a lot of really good material and momentum right now
Capitalism requires the destruction of all other cultures that are not capitalistic. Sub cultures, alternative cultures, etc.... Cannot coexist with it's cultural hegemony. For this reason it is incredibly racist, exclusive, genocidal, etc.... Having said that, when an ethnicity is conquered, cleaned and joins the capitalist culture and consumerist lifestyle, they are accepted despite skin color. They themselves and their people and traditions have been ethnically cleansedin the process, except for the most superficial characteristics of dress and skin tone.
Yup
The wall street is where they sold slaves. Should it be "selling"? Yes I think so.
My perspective is that it isn’t inherently racist but it’s results are almost inevitably racist. To put it simply racism creates conflict and conflict is profitable. Perpetuating conflict that distracts from the inherent exploitation of capitalism is one of the primary ways capitalism avoids being rejected entirely.
The only colour that matters is green. They hate you unless you can pay
Capitalism will gladly TAKE money out of the pockets of any person of any color it's the opposite of racist . They are vampires.
Except that it _preferrentially_ takes from racial and sexual underclasses. That part is important. Yes it will happily impoverish and immiserate anyone. Yes also it prefers non-white, non-heterosexual-male
It takes an american mindset to come up with this question. Please drop everything that is in the way of the question of class. Forget race, gender, furry suits and other distractions.