What about race and racism – in capitalism is racism really endemic?
There is nothing in capitalism’s defining institutions that says that people in one cultural community should be treated by the economy differently than people in any other any more than there is anything in capitalism’s defining institutions that says people of different heights, or with different pitch voices should be treated differently.
On the other hand, if you have none of the requisites of success in capitalism, regardless of your race, nationality, religion, etc., you get to sell yourself as a wage slave doing overwhelmingly rote and obedient work, taking orders and pocketing only small change.
The less derogatory presentation of this insight is made, for example, by the Noble prize-winning economist Milton Friedman when he says, “The great virtue of a free market system is that it does not care what color people are; it does not care what their religion is; it only cares whether they can produce something you want to buy. It is the most effective system we have discovered to enable people who hate each other to deal with one another and help one another.”
The first part of Friedman’s observation is true of capitalism per se, but not of capitalism amidst people who hate each other, which makes the second part of his statement a manipulative lie.
The wrinkle in Friedman’s analysis is that capitalism is not race blind, or religion blind, or ethnicity blind, or blind to any other cultural feature whenever a society’s broader social structures outside the economy consign the holder of the feature to a subordinate cultural position or convey to them a dominant cultural position. In such cases, the economic logic of capitalism will notice the extra-economic differentials and will operate in light of them rather than ignoring them. Hate outside the economy is not overcome by capitalism, as Friedman implies, but is reproduced and enlarged by capitalism.
If racism in a society, for example, or religious bigotry, or whatever else, consigns some community to having less status and influence, then in the capitalist economy members of that community will not in general be elevated above their “superiors” but will, instead, generally be made subordinate to them. The economy will use the existing expectations of community members such as the expectation that whites are superior to blacks to enforce and even where possible to enlarge its own economic hierarchies of exploitation. It will not instead violate those external hierarchies at the potential expense of its own operations.
Thus, the capitalist employer, even one who is personally free of racist beliefs or even personally hostile to racism, will, in general, if racism is ascendant in the broader society, to that extent not hire blacks to rule over whites as managers or in other positions of relative respect and influence, but will instead hire whites over blacks. The first choice is ruled out because it risks disobedience and dissension. Capitalism, in other words, uses accustomed patterns from cultural life to enhance desired patterns inside the economy.
Similarly, if due to its cultural position a community can be paid less, it will be paid less in light of market competition to reduce, again even against some employer’s personal preferences.
At the same time, it is also true that to the extent that growing opposition to racism begins to make racial hierarchies discordant with expectations and desires and conducive to dissent and resistance, capitalist employers will shy away from their more overt exploitation of race but will continue to try to extract any pound of flesh that they can get away with when selling products or when buying people’s ability to work. Thus in the case of heightened opposition to racism in society, we will see a shift from Jim Crow racism to James Crow Esquire Jr. racism, as noted by Sharpton earlier.
The statistics and other accountings of racism and of other cultural oppressions and economic life are well known and well revealed in countless studies and sources. How does a desirable economy reverse such phenomena?
What about in a parecon – racism?
If a parecon exists in a society that has cultural hierarchies of race, religion, etc., what does it contribute? If it instead exists within a society that has desirable communities without hierarchies, what then? In general, does a parecon’s needs regarding its own operations impose any constraints on cultures?
Change the U.S. economy to a parecon without altering the U.S. racial, religious, and ethnic landscape and you have a contradiction. Existent racial and other dynamics pit groups against one another and give people expectations of superiority and inferiority. The participatory economy, however, violates these predictions and produces solidarity.
Parecon provides income and circumstances inconsistent with cultural hierarchies. It tends to overthrow cultural hierarchies by the empowerment and means that it affords to those at the bottom of each.
People in a parecon won’t and indeed can’t systemically economically exploit racism and other cultural injustices. Individuals in a parecon could try to do this, of course, and they could harbor horrible attitudes, of course, but there is no mechanism for racists to accrue undo power or wealth even as individuals much less as members of some community.
If you are black or white, Latino or Italian American, Jewish or Muslim, Presbyterian or Catholic, southerner or northerner, or what have you–regardless of cultural hierarchies that may exist in the broader society, in a parecon you have a balanced job complex and a just income and self managing power over your conditions, all like everyone else.
Lingering or even continually reproduced racism or other cultural injustices could penetrate a parecon in the role definitions of actors, but they could not do so in a manner that would bestow economic power or material wealth or economic comforts unfairly. Thus, blacks, Latinos, Asians, etc. in a transformed U.S. might have statistically different characteristics in their balanced job complexes, but these differences could not violate the balance of those complexes. Such disproportionately distributed job features might have otherwise denigrating attributes, it is true, though one would think that if they did, the self managing dynamics of the economy would tend to undue those injustices.
Indeed, one can imagine and even anticipate that in a parecon members of minority communities would in workplaces have means to meet together in what are typically called caucuses to assess events and situations to collectively guard against racial or other denigrating dynamics that might otherwise tend to arise, or to fight against those that are present as residues from the past or as outgrowths from other spheres of social life. This would seem to be about the best one can ask of an economy regarding it obstructing the continuation or emergence of cultural injustices.
But what about parecon and desirable cultures in a desirable society? There is no reason why cultural norms established in other parts of society cannot impact economic life in a parecon and we can predict, I think, that they will. The daily practices of people from different cultural communities who have different customs, religions, ways of celebrating, and moral beliefs, could certainly differ not only in what holidays their members take from work, say, but in their daily practices during work or in consumption such as arranging periods of prayer, or disproportionately engaging in particular types of activity that are culturally proscribed or culturally preferred. There could be whole industries or sectors of the economy that members of a community would culturally avoid, as with the Amish in the U.S., for example.
In a parecon the limits on such cultural impositions on the economy would be that the special economic needs of cultural communities would have to be consistent with the self managing desires of those outside those communities as well as of those within them.
Alternatively, a workplace may incorporate members of many diverse communities, as will larger and sometimes also smaller consumer units. In such cases here may be very minor mutual accommodations–some members celebrate Christmas and others celebrate Hanukkah or some other holidays, and schedules are accorded–or perhaps there are more extensive accommodations having to do with more frequent differences in schedule or with other practices affecting what type work some people can undertake.
The point is, parecon’s workplaces, consumer units, and planning processes are very flexible infrastructures whose defining features are designed to be classless, but whose details can vary in endless permutations including accommodating diverse cultural impositions due to people’s community practices and beliefs.
A culture could exist, say, that would elevate some small sector of priests or artists or soothsayers, or elders, or whoever else and that required all other members to obey them in particular respects, or to shower them with gifts, etc. But the likelihood that such a cultural community would long persist would likely be quite low in a parecon.
The reason is because the people involved will be spending their economic time in environments that produce inclinations for equity, solidarity, and self-management, as well as diversity and school them in respecting but not obeying others. Why would they then submit to inequitable conditions and skewed decision making norms in another part of their life?
Assuming that in a good society people will be free to leave cultures, and it is hard to imagine a parecon arising in a society that forbid such personal freedom, since people would have both economic wherewithal and education and disposition to manage themselves, we might guess that many would exercise that freedom to leave any cultural community that denied them the fruits of their labors or denied them their self managing say. That, at least, would be my expectation.
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Here is a talk from Justin Podur on this topic…
Ubomi Emva Kobuhlanga?
Intetho elungiselelwe i-Life After Capitalism Conference kwiWorld Social Forum, Porto Alegre, January 2003 by Justin Podur
Ubunzima beMbali
Amazwe aseMerika akhiwa ngokubulala abemi bomthonyama belizwe nokuzisa amakhoboka avela eAfrika ukuze asebenze loo mhlaba. Loo mbali ineminyaka engama-510 ubudala. Isizathu sokuba sibe nobuhlanga kumazwe aseMelika, kwaye into esiyibiza ngokuba 'yigunya labamhlophe' kuMntla Melika, kungenxa yokuba ubunzima baloo mbali abuzange bususwe kwabo banyanzelwe ukuba bawuthwale.
Are cultures discrete and bounded? Do cultures have a history or are they static? Who defines the boundaries of culture or allows for change? Do cultures leak into each other? … To respect the fetish of culture assumes that one wants to enshrine it in the museum of humankind rather than find within it the potential for liberation or for change. We’d have to accept homophobia and sexism, class cruelty and racism, all in the service of being respectful to someone’s perverse definition of culture.
A polyculturalist sees the world constituted by the interchange of cultural forms, while multiculturalism (in most incarnations) sees the world as already constituted by different (and discrete) cultures that we can place into categories and study with respect. What would history look like from a polycultural perspective? Well, rather than see Hong Kong business exclusively as a hybrid of an ancient Confucianism and a modern capitalism, as in the work of Tu-Wei Ming, we might take heed of the Jesuit role in the making of early modern “Confucianism”, as in the fine work of Lionel Jensen… Rather than treat Indian students at Yale as aliens, we might consider that the university received seed money from Elihu Yale, one time governor of Madras, whose wealth came from the expropriated labor of Indian peasants.
“This proposal was accused of balkanizing the country, ignoring that the country is already divided. One Mexico which produces wealth, another which appropriates that wealth, and another which is the one which has to stretch out its hand for charity. We, the indigenous, live in this fragmented country, condemned to shame for being the color we are, for the language we speak, the clothes which cover us, the music and the dance which speak our sadness and joy, our history.
This proposal is accused of created Indian reservations, ignoring that we indigenous are already in fact living apart, separated from the rest of the Mexicans, and, in addition, in danger of extinction.
This proposal is accused of promoting a backward legal system, ignoring that the current one only promotes confrontation, punishes the poor and gives impunity to the rich. It condemns our color and turns our language into crime.
This proposal is accused of creating exceptions in political life, ignoring that in the current one the one who governs does not govern, rather he turns his public position into a source of his own wealth, and he knows himself to be beyond punishment and untouchable as long as term in office does not end.”
“It was a nightmare… you have to understand someone who comes from a city, with a university education, coming to a place where everyone is saying to you, ‘leave. This is not the place for you.’ The earth says this to you, the weather says it, the ground when it turns into mud, the rain… all of it says ‘this is not your place’, and it says so in a language you don’t even understand.”
In Colombia, the afro-Colombians and the indigenous organize for territorial autonomy. The Colombian constitution recognizes rights of territorial autonomy to the afro-Colombians and the indigenous—but on the ground, the people get massacred. They struggle in spite of this. The conception of organizations like the PCN, (Black People’s Processes) and the ONIC (National Indigenous Congress), territory and culture are key to the defense of their people and livelihoods from the onslaught of war and global capitalism. War and capital seek to remove these peoples from their lands, whether for the minerals underneath them or for the rent that can be extracted from them.
There are movements that bring Israelis to Palestine to protect Palestinians from attacks from Israeli settlers and soldiers. A movement that brings more and more ordinary people from all over the world to watch, to be on the ground, and use their presence as a human shield to protect Palestinians from the violence of a state that is trying to ‘transfer’ them. There are peace movements in Israel, dissident journalists like Amira Hass or academics like Tanya Reinhart, soldiers like the 500 seruvniks who refuse to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories, Israelis and Palestinians who, after facing soldiers together, after the mere presence of Israelis and internationals reduced the violence that the army unleashed on Palestinians tremendously, would sit together and joke about how ‘Arabs and Jews… we’re cousins’.
“On a worldwide scale, it is said there are 5,000 nations of indigenous people; 500,000,000 indigenous people in the world; 5,000 nations. These nations have existed for thousands of years as nations. We share under international law the recognition as nations in that we have common language, common territory; governing institutions, economic institutions and history, all indicators under international law of nations of people. Yet the reality is that on an international scale most decisions are not made by nations and people. Instead they are made by states. There are about 170 states that are members of the United Nations. Most of those states have existed only since World War II.”
Ward Churchill’s proposal for North America, described in his ‘I am Indigenist’ is more traditionally nationalist in outlook. He argues, citing Guillermo Bonfil Batalla, that
Churchill is making an argument similar to Jawarhalal Nehru’s in his ‘The Discovery of India’. That book was written from a jail cell in British India which he was placed in for his nationalist activities. Nehru surveyed India’s vast, diverse history and concluded that there was a unity of civilization there. By writing about it, he was seeking to strengthen that unity in the face of a colonial oppressor, and Churchill’s intentions are similar. But like LaDuke and Alfred, not arguing for creation of more states on the old model, nor for a return to the past:
“I mean, what are people worried about here? Do all of you really foresee Indians standing out on the piers of Boston and New York City, issuing sets of waterwings to long lines of non-Indians so they can all swim back to the Old World? Gimme a break.”
“My own inclination… tends to run toward complete sovereign independence, but… I have no more right to impose my preferences on indigenous nations than do the colonizing powers; each indigenous nation will choose for itself the exact manner and extent to which it expresses its autonomy, its sovereignty.”[11]
“One-third of all African-American households today has a negative net wealth. The average black household’s wealth is less than 15 percent of the typical white household’s. Most of our people are trapped in an almost bottomless economic pit from which there will be no escape-unless we change our political demands and strategy from liberal integrationism to a restructuring of economic resources, and the elimination of structural deficits that separate blacks and whites into unequal racial universes.”
This assessment is as valid globally as it is in the US. The demand for Black Reparations, like the demand for reparations for the 3rd world, is a demand to unmake the plunder that the poor have suffered over centuries and bring about equality. In order to win restitution, it will be necessary to build solidarity across lines of nation, culture, or colour.
Polyculturalism because there is no such thing as ‘pure culture’. H.L. Mencken wrote in the 19th century that ‘purity of race does not exist. We are a race of energetic mongrels’. The same goes for culture—humans are all ‘energetic mongrels’, and trying to force us into some ‘pure’ notion of the nation—or of the religion—or of the race, is a nightmare worthy of fundamentalists like George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden.
What about race and racism – in capitalism is racism really endemic?
What about in a parecon – racism?