Re: Race Matters

        Thanks for this post, with which I concur completely.  Capitalism
enslaved Europeans first, and has used every social and cultural 
distinction to its advantage, creating all sorts of problems that can
easily distract us from what is really happening.  But one caveat:  we
should not ignore the fact that capitalism has shared some of the surplus
value it extracts from non-Europeans with its working class in the West,
which leads to such anomalies as U.S. African-American workers benefitting
from the child labor of Bangladesh and the prison labor of China and the
wage-slave labor of Africa.  And this sharing of surplus value has helped
lead to such political anomalies as U.S. working-class voters casting
their ballots for Bush and Gore.  So long as this co-optation continues to
happen and continues to work, and so long as the radical fringe is free to
fulminate against it (futilely), all talk of the "destruction" of
capitalism, racism, patriarchy, nationalism, etc., is therapeutic but 
close to useless.  Now excuse me while I go cash my state pay check.

        Warren
        STATE University of New York


On Sat, 24 Mar 2001, Peter Grimes wrote:

> 
> Friends,
> 
>      Gert's good observations and some of the reactions posted to
> them overlook an elementary but crucial point:  before the Europeans
> conquered and enslaved the world in the service of Capitalism, they
> were its first victims.  It enslaved THEM first.  
>      The entire process was like the spread of a disease, where
> Europeans played the role of a disease vector.  Like most vectors
> (e.g. mosquitos) they were largely ignorant of their broader historical
> role.  
>      Also, we must not forget that capitalism is a social relation of
> exploitation that uses race even as it is blind to it, just as it uses ALL
> social categories ("ethnicity," "class," "gender," "nature").  Each of
> these are opportunities for exploitation and unequal exchange.  Every
> distinction imaginable between humans offers that opportunity.  And,
> once drawn, such distinctions--precisely because they *ARE* social
> relations--become incorporated and reproduced across generations.  In
> short they become reified and take on a life of their own.  But it would
> be a profound error to confuse the vehicle of exploitation with its
> cause, which has always lain with capitalism.  As Wallerstein himself
> has pointed out, to follow a class analysis leads one to socialism, but
> at the end of the road of race analysis lies fascism.  
>      Having voiced that fear, I do not want to say that class is the
> only thing that matters.  Our goal needs to be a society that seeks the
> elimination of exploitation (="unequal exchange") in ALL of its forms, a
> prerequisite of which is the elimination of capitalism itself. 
> Simultaneously we must recognize and destroy patriarchy, racism,
> nationalism, etc.   The fact that capitalist imperialism started in
> Europe has stuck us all with the waning legacy of European privilege. 
> But we must be vigilant against the prospect that some might confuse
> the project of privilege elimination with racial elimination.
> 
> Peter
> 
>