You Can’t Have Capitalism Without Racism
Many people assume that racism is an inherent aspect of human nature. That we are naturally hostile to those who do not look like us. If this were true however, then throughout history we would see examples of racism in every human society that has ever existed. Of course, it isn’t true at all.
‘Human nature’ is not something that is born unto us, but something that is shaped through our growth by the environment, society and culture that surrounds us.
Racism as we know it, and the idea of a white superior race are all modern concepts that have only existed after the dawn of Capitalism and more notably, the birth of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Prior to this, even in studies of the first white settlers in North America, there was no comprehension among the settlers of even the concept of a white race, never mind a superior one.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade therefore, was not a consequence of racism, but rather racism was a consequence of the Slave Trade. Slavery has existed throughout human history. Prior to the birth of Capitalism, slaves were typically captured as prisoners of war and held to serve their captors. Roman law regarding slaves maintained a “formal lack of interest in the slave’s ethnic or racial provenance”. Ancient Greece would differentiate between ‘civilised’ peoples (those who could speak Greek or follow Greek customs) and ‘barbarians’. Civilised peoples could be black, barbarians could be white and vice versa. The concept of race as we understand it today didn’t exist.
In addition to this, racism as we know it was also non existent in high society throughout the so called ‘civilised world’. Many ancient African empires integrated with southern European monarchies and inter racial marriages were not uncommon. Septimius Severus, the Roman Emperor in the 3rd Century was a black African. His son would also later become Emperor of Rome after him.
When the first colonies were established in North America, the majority of those forced into free labour on plantations were white, because they were cheaper. Many of whom were sent from Britain’s colony in Ireland with sentences of indentured servitude for a certain period of time. However, by the end of the 17th Century, the price of a white indentured servant for 10 years, could buy an African slave for life. For the slave owner, this was more economically convenient as African slaves were now cheaper, and didn’t carry the burden of being freed after a number of years. Thus began the complete transition into the African Slave Trade as the primary source of free labour in North America. The reason for this was again, economic, not racial. African slaves were now cheaper and thus produced more profit than White servants. Therefore, the confinement of Black Africans to slavery and the freedom of White Europeans was not a product of ‘human nature’, but rather a manifestation of the basic principles of Capitalism.
In an act to protect the property of Slave Owners, a law was passed in the late 17th Century in Maryland that secured the children of female slaves as property of the slave owner. This allowed the slave owners to rape their slaves, in order to produce more slaves without the need to purchase and ship them from Africa. However, this meant that if a male slave was to have a child with a free, white woman, the slave owner would have no ownership of that mixed race child. It is because of this, that we see the first changes in law that would denote race. Free labour became Black labour and the confinement of purchased African slaves became the confinement of Black people. This again, was to protect the property of slave owners, their markets and thus the interests of Capitalism, not the inherent belief in whites as a superior race. That of course would come later as a consequence of these actions.
Throughout the 18th Century, similar laws were brought in to further enrich the rights of slave owners and capitalists and in turn, further the segregation between white and black people. This came to a head during the American Revolution when the revolutionary leaders seen a clear contradiction in their demands; “All men are created equal”. Of course, the very country was built on the enslavement of men, not the “inalienable right to liberty” that their revolution seemingly granted them. After all, the American Revolution was a Capitalist Revolution. The overthrow of the English King with American Capitalism, and it was off the free labour of slaves that this capital was built. To combat this contradiction, revolutionary leaders reinforced the idea that Black people were not ‘men but less than men, ‘inferior beings’ and therefore the Declaration of Independence did not apply to them. The idea of white supremacy was now fully developed, and all in the interests of capital.
As America, and with it, Capitalism expanded, white supremacy proved a useful tool for the Capitalist Class. As with all capitalist societies, the workers by far outweighed the capitalists and that naturally was considered a threat to its survival. White supremacy helped to divide the workers. Poor white farmers seen themselves as an elevated class and superior to Black slaves, and therefore would never unite with them to fight the very system that made them poor in the first place. As the abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass put it:
“They divided both to conquer each. [Slaveholders denounced emancipation as] tending to put the white working man on an equality with Blacks, and by this means, they succeed in drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave-master, they are already regarded as but a single remove from equality with the slave.”
Since then, Capitalism has continued to depend on racism to divide the Working Class, whether that be the illusion of the higher status of whites over Black communities in Chicago, Arab refugees from Syria or Hispanic immigrants from Mexico.
The Capitalist Class not only knows the benefits of racism, but literally invented it. It knows that the unity of the Working Class proves as an existential threat to the survival of capitalist society. The world is watching this unfold today as people of every race and background are coming together to resist the systematic racism in America and are being met with the full force of the State to defend it.
But it is not enough to only combat racism. The fight must be taken to the very thing that fosters it. As Malcom X famously stated, “You can’t have Capitalism without Racism”.
In order to destroy one, you must destroy the other. And so, if you claim to be anti-racist, you must then by its very nature be anti-capitalist.
