Re: [Marxism] The State of Racism

[Jim Farmelant <farmelantj@xxxxxxxx>]

On Sun, 12 Aug 2007 11:45:24 -0400 "Sayan Bhattacharyya"
<ok.president+marxmail@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On 8/12/07, Joaquin Bustelo <jbustelo@xxxxxxxxx> wrote
> >
> > To survive, capitalism MUST BE a system NOT JUST of capitalist 
> CLASS
> > supremacy, but also of MALE and WHITE supremacy. Because, to 
> prevent the
> > coherence among sellers of labor power, the worker must enter not 
> just as a
> > seller of abstract human labor, but as the seller of white labor, 
> or male
> > labor or even Black or Latino labor but within an imperialist 
> country. If
> > labor power is allowed to become generic, then the worker --all 
> workers--
> > really have nothing to lose but the identical chains they all 
> wear. Hence
> > the KEY QUESTION -- how do you stop labor power from becoming 
> generic? And
> > that, it seems to me, requires making certain goods and services, 
> or sectors
> > of the economy, monopolies of the imperialist countries, which 
> allows for
> > superprofits. And, of course, it is absolutely essential to 
> prevent the
> > emergence of a world market for labor power.
> 
> Joaquin,
> 
> It certainly seems reasonable to suggest that for capitalists _as a
> class_ this is important to achieve (i.e. preventing labor power 
> from
> "becoming generic").
> 
> But, in order to achieve this, capitalists would need to coordinate
> this among themselves. Why? Because this is something that matters 
> to
> capitalists _as a class_, but does not matter so much to individual
> capitalists.
> 
> The _individual_ factory owner is better off hiring and paying any
> skilled labor they can find, be it black, white, male or female, as
> long as the job will get done well.
> 
> So, you'll probably have to posit some mechanism whereby the 
> necessity
> for capitalists to maintain racial discrimination _as a class_
> translates into  hiring decision patterns of _individual_ companies.
> 
> There is an incentive to discriminate at the level of capitalists as 
> a
> class. We will need to figure out how that incentive (absent a  
> wilful
> conspiracy) translates into incentives to discriminate, for 
> individual
> firms.

The economist John Roemer has been working on
this issue for a number of years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Roemer

http://econpapers.repec.org/article/rjebellje/v_3A10_3Ay_3A1979_3Ai_3Aaut
umn_3Ap_3A695-705.htm

http://ideas.repec.org/p/ums/papers/2005-15.html




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