Does Capitalism Breed Rascism? How?

[Aloysius]

Any ideas?

Include sources, please.

[MustCrushCapitalism]

The bourgeoisie uses racism as a means of dividing the working class. When on a more extreme level, it's meant to divert the class war with a "race war".

[Manic Impressive]

Capitalism forces worker against worker by making them compete against each other in the labour market.

Estranged Labour (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm) would be a good starting point but this is of course only one factor, the underlying cause if you like for why people like to look for differences between themselves and others. Must_Crush_Capitalism is equally correct to say that this is taken advantage of by the ruling classes of history.

[NewLeft]

The 'orthodox' Marxist approach to racism summed up nicely in this article:
http://academic.evergreen.edu/b/bohmerp/marxracism.htm

One thing that can be said beyond the orthodox Marxist approach is that capitalism carries the direct legacy of colonialism. Like capitalism, racism is international. Racist structures vary depending on the historic social necessities. Does capitalism breed racism? It requires it.

[jookyle]

Not only is it used to divide the working class, but it's used to promote the superiority of the bourgeoisie. The entire eugenics movement started around this idea.(Also it started in America) Being poor or a criminal was considered a genetic trait, one that the nords/anglo-saxons, later called Ayrans, did not have. And that's why WASPs were the main group of people who had money. And they funded research into this, Rockefeller and Carnigie were some of the biggest supporters of this research, before and after WWII

[hammer and sichel]

Not only is it used to divide the working class, but it's used to promote the superiority of the bourgeoisie. The entire eugenics movement started around this idea.(Also it started in America) Being poor or a criminal was considered a genetic trait, one that the nords/anglo-saxons, later called Ayrans, did not have. And that's why WASPs were the main group of people who had money. And they funded research into this, Rockefeller and Carnigie were some of the biggest supporters of this research, before and after WWII

can you blame the nords? nobody else gets +10 in two-handed :laugh:

[Jimmie Higgins]

Does Capitalism Breed Rascism? How?While there have been examples of xenophobia and sort of city or regional jingoism in various places throughout recorded history, capitalism not only relies on racism, but created the specific concept of race and racism as we know it today.

Capitalism created "scientific" race and in some places the constructed legacy of race and racism is pretty obvious when you look at it. Caribbean racial castes, for example, show how the colonizers divided up and created races such as "creole" and assigned each racial group different social roles: the more European you were the more rights you had. Racism in the US can be traced as a development through the laws that were added over time. Before slavery became more profitable than European servants, black and white slaves/servants kept the same quarters and had no legal differences in treatment, just differences in terms of service. Over time laws were passed to prevent inter-marriage (implying that it was common enough to need to have a law) and a racial caste system. It's often argued that Colonial Liberty ideologically necessitated ideological justifications for racial-based slavery. If all people are created equal, why don't slaves get the the same freedoms? Racism is an escape clause for that because it argues that all people not created biologically equal and so some must be "taken care of" or "controlled".

After post-Civil-war reconstruction, racism was re-branded in the US (although in the South, jim-crow still had a lot of connections to slavery-era racism until the civil rights movement). It was mostly used as a divide and rule scheme - particularly in labor battles - and there were anti-black pogroms and lots of anti-immigrant hysteria during this period. Not only does it divide the workforce, but racism helps the ruling class create scapegoats for economic inequality and other features of the system. During industrialization, slums were blamed on slum-dwellers and the poor morals of Irish or Eastern European immigrants just as today residents of "ghettos" are blamed for being "welfare queens" or living a "culture of poverty" or whatnot.

[SacRedMan]

There are a lot of companies who don't want people who aren't white. Dividing the working class is creating rascism. There are still people who get paid less because of their nationality or skincolor.

[cyu]

The only way they can win elections.

http://th08.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2012/123/c/5/occupy_wall_street___may_day_2_by_radio_schizo-d4ygdiv.jpg (http://radio-schizo.deviantart.com/art/Occupy-Wall-Street-May-Day-2-299735671)

Observation in the wild: Look in just about any modern "democracy" - which of the mainstream parties is more racist? Which of the mainstream parties is more pro-capitalist? They are almost always exactly the same. So we have correlation.

Who actually controls these parties? Every party has factions - what would make any individual within a party more powerful than any other individual? The power of their ideas? Their power to organize others behind something? In a society with large wealth gaps, both of those are affected by money. Ideas can be honed by paying for speech writers and focus groups. Organization can be paid for by hiring staff.

What was telling about the Bush administration was that when he won the election, his religious supporters were celebrating - they thought they were now going to get their way, much like how liberals were celebrating when Obama got elected. What actually happened in the Bush adminstration was that his religious backers were basically not taken seriously - instead, the attention was given mostly to Bush's financial backers - in much the same way Obama's financial backers are getting their way right now.

Why racism? By definition, plutocrats are a minority of the society. If you want to ensure you have a plutocracy while putting on the appearance of democratic legitimacy, you have to get the masses to vote for the ruling minority. It's generally pretty silly that people would stupidly vote for those who openly oppress them, so what is done instead is that the wealthy use their media power to distract the masses.

In order to gain majority votes, they attempt to focus attention on issues where they can win majority votes. If most people are heterosexuals, they attack homosexuals. If most people are native-born, they attack immigrants. If most people are Hindu or Catholic, they attack those who are not Hindu or Catholic. Spreading bigotry isn't so much part of the capitalist ideology - it is merely a tool they use on the general population to maintain their power.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

I think the problem is that this question supposes that capitalism is the starting point from which racism is generated, while, in reality, their relationship needs to be understood holistically, and historically. Racism and capitalism emerged together, during colonialism, and serve not only to "divide the working class" in ideological terms, but also as a technology of dividing and identifying the the working class in practical terms. Like, it's way easier to exercise social control if your proletarians are conveniently colour-coded.

As a starting point for this, I'd like to highly recommend, "When Race Burns Class: Settlers Revisited" an interview with J. Sakai (author of Settlers) available here (http://raimd.wordpress.com/2007/05/01/when-race-burns-class-interview-with-j-sakai/).