Is capitalism racist?

Historically, racial capitalism has been at the centre of division among the working class. Photo: Collected

By 1917, African-American workers from the American South, bereaved and battered by the Jim Crow laws, had begun northward migration seeking better employment opportunities in industrialised American cities in the North. And so did the white immigrants coming from Southern European nations like Italy. 

St Louis was one of these cities. But what had been a dream come true for Black immigrants to simply reach St Louis would soon turn into a nightmare. 

During an aluminium ore processors' strike in 1917, the owners of the factory decided to hire Black replacement workers instead of listening to the demands of their predominantly white labour base. Most of these white European immigrants previously excluded the incoming Black immigrants from any workers' rights processions or unions to supposedly strengthen their bargaining position with the owners, leaving little opportunity for Black folks to get employment. 

But when the company hired Black replacement workers, instead of blaming the company, the white workers blamed the Black workers for taking their jobs. What followed was a year-long, intermittent massacre of the Black community in St Louis, now known as the East St Louis Massacre. 

"The white workers of East St. Louis kept on somehow believing that the city belonged to them rather than their corporate overlords," wrote Walter Johnson, one of the leading historians today on race relations, racism and capitalism.

Johnson cited in his book "The Broken Heart of America: St Louis and the Violent History of the United States" that the massacre of St Louis in 1917 had not been a one-off incident. Rather, around the same time, similar riots had taken place across the industrialised North, for very similar reasons. 

Johnson and many other historians believe that white capitalists have always pitted the white working class against the coloured to foster cultural segregation and benefit from it themselves. Although very similar in nature to the British 'Divide and Rule,' American historians have named this technique 'racial capitalism.' 

Some even went further to claim that the capitalist system itself was racist.

That racism is an integral part of capitalism seems quite an intuitive proposition, especially given that the history of capitalism, from European imperialism to modern-day mass incarceration of Black folks in the United States, has been embroiled in racism. 

However, wholesale labelling of something or someone as racist comes with its own pitfalls. Without the essential nuances, neither do these accusations fare well against criticism nor can an all-encompassing, comprehensive and sometimes oversimplified account of history (like many modern revisionist historians who make an attempt to link every capitalist endeavour to everything that was racist) guide us towards a more egalitarian path. 

Hence, the hypothesis that capitalism, in itself, is racist involves a few other questions. Is racism structurally and systematically ingrained in the capitalist system? Was the purpose of capitalism always to oppress marginalised communities or had it been an inevitable byproduct of a profit-maximising capitalist system? 

It is difficult to argue that racism is not structural. But it's also untrue that the sole purpose of capitalism is and always has been to oppress minorities. Rather two things seem to be true at the same time. 

First, racism has indeed put a fraction of white Westerners on a pedestal and allowed them to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth. For instance, plantation owners in the South, given their high returns and nearly non-existent cost of labour, could later diversify even in the absence of slavery. Second, racial capitalism has in the past and continues to sow seeds of division among the working class, often along racial, ethnic, sexual or religious lines, to pit the working class against one another while the ruling elite continues to enjoy their pointless bickering from their ivory tower.

How racists benefitted from capitalism

Proponents of capitalism have always touted how the economic system provides one the opportunity to attain upward social and economic mobility simply when one picks him/herself up by the bootstrap and works hard towards achieving that goal. What this oversimplified neoliberal narrative carefully ignores is the fact that the initial endowment of resources (wealth, assets, land ownership, and skin colour (!)) is often not the same for people of different races. 

Expanding on my first point, the descendants of the original sinners, the slave owners and the imperialists, kept benefiting from the sins of their forefathers through inheritance, persisting impact of slavery through concurrent segregatory Jim Crow laws, as well as redlining in districts which prevented African Americans from purchasing property in predominantly White neighbourhoods. 

Given the extreme scarcity and therefore, exponential appreciation of land value, this also meant that white American elites could more easily climb the so-called capitalist ladders of upward mobility, while black communities rot in ghettos with access to substandard education and scarce jobs that paid subsistent wages. 

Many of them took the easy way out as organised crime paid more than any other available opportunities. But the high risk-high return nature of organised crime also meant that many of them, mostly Black men, would end up behind bars, leaving the family without a father figure while also allowing racists to brand them as thugs. 

People like Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell and other right-wing pundits would then go on to blame this 'Black culture' as the primary factor responsible for the deplorable conditions in Black communities — a position driven by the wholesale ignorance of the racist history of the US.

On top of that, Nixon and Reagan's so-called 'Law and Order' manifesto would eventually lead to defining African American males as 'super-predator' and at a macro scale lead to the mass incarceration of African-Americans; thanks to other racially motivated policies like the plea bargain. Sidenote: Many of these incarcerated individuals now provide unpaid labour in private prisons, which has become a $2 billion industry.  

Going beyond the African-American experience, racism had also been ingrained in imperialist strategies of the past. 

Imperialism and colonialism, often the ultimate stage of capitalism, were primarily driven by the incentive to expand markets beyond the national borders, as production exploded in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. 

However, back at home and even to the locals being oppressed, whether they were the Indians or the indigenous communities in modern-day Latin America, it was touted to be about civilising the uncivilised, backward communities. Regardless, the plunderers and the looters of the colonial era eventually became the most developed economies of the world. 

On top of that, even as nation-states were being formed in the post-WW2 landscape, it was their previous imperialist overlords who set up the modern global economic system, which made sure the developed and least-developing countries would have to adhere to the rules set by their colonisers to have any shot at economic development.

Racism adopted more subtle forms in the latter decades, as Western nations would rather subscribe to the 'White Savior' narrative to launch unlawful invasions in the Middle East. Case in point: the Iraq War. Again, under the guise of freedom, it was really about satisfying the capitalist overlords at corporations like Haliburton and extracting vital natural resources like oil at a cheaper price which kept the capitalist machine running in the West. 

Pitting the working class against one another

The most innovative and subtle way in which racism is used as an instrument is racial capitalism. And it appears that racial capitalism is one of the most favourite weapons in the arsenal of an unjust economic system. 

From the St Louis massacre to desensitising the American MidWest to the racism experienced by Hispanics, and African Americans historically, racial capitalism has been at the centre of division among the working class. More specifically, many argue that the priority on identity politics, from the feminist movement to the LGBTQIA+ movement, funded by corporations with their pinktober and whatnot is nothing but an elaborate ploy to divide the population among so many different lines that they never can truly unite under a common umbrella to achieve one common goal. 

That is, racial capitalism is the reason why non-college graduate working-class white men in the American Midwest voted for Donald Trump and why they had previously favoured old man Bernie Sanders over an 'electable' Hillary Clinton. It is also why most left-wing progressive politicians try to decouple themselves from identity politics and try to avoid the pitfalls it often comes with. 

Racial capitalism also puts individual minority leaders like Barack Obama on a pedestal, who came through the capitalist system and use them as reference points to prove the fairness of the system. Interestingly, most of these minority icons have not done much for their communities, either because the very racist capitalist system prevents fruitful reform or simply because they are, regardless of the colour of their skin, representatives of the corrupt system they benefitted from. Barack Obama, himself, made a mockery of the people of Flint Michigan while drone-striking the Middle East to oblivion. 

Most importantly, racial capitalism prevents the working class, regardless of their race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation, from realising that they all suffer from the same economic problems. They all want to put food on the table, want a roof over their head and want free, universal health care. In their heated discourse over whether one should be compelled to identify another with a certain pronoun, their capitalist overlords make a mockery of the political and economic system that was supposed to protect them from harm. 

So yes, while the sole purpose of capitalism is not to be racist, it sure is the greatest weapon in its arsenal against any fruitful attempt at collective pushback from the diverse modern-day working class.

Sheikh Rafi Ahmed. Illustration: TBS