[PEN-L:8721] Re: Re: re: Marx and 19th century racism

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rob Schaap wrote:

> Really, Chas.  You wouldn't get away with argument like that at the bar, and
> you shouldn't try it here.

Of course not.  I have learned to keep my mouth shut about anything in a bar
where physical power decides what is right.

> Exactly why is racism necessary for capitalism?
> Sure, it serves the purpose of dividing the working class, but I'm way off
> being convinced capitalism couldn't do without it just fine.  In the very
> theory that legitimates it, capitalism promises the same formal freedom to buy
> and sell labour power to all.

No it does not.  Capitalism only pretends there is a free market while it
manipulates the market to keep labor cost at its lowest.  And it uses racism to
achieve that aim by defusing resistance from white workers toward capitalists
and directing the hostility toward non-white workers who allegedly are willing
to work for inhuman wages.  Nonwhites want high wages too, it is available.
Racism condemns nonwhite workers to low wages, and nonwhite low wages justifies
racism from white workers toward nonwhite worker.  Very neat and convenient.

> As a world system today, it benefits from variations in labour costs and
> democratic clout, and those variations are a function of history.  In that
> sense they express racisms of yore, but not exclusively so.  It exploits the
> erstwhile 'second' world exactly as it does the 'third'.

That only proves there is hierarchical racism, not that racism does not exist.

> I suspect that the material base that brought us racism has been withering for
> a while now.

Are you from Mars?

> But from that we cannot argue that it might not persist.  It's our
> self-validating histories and the ever-present need for scapegoats in hard
> times that we have to worry about now, I reckon (as
> Engels told Bloch; the 'superstructure' can actually preponderate in shaping
> our struggles).

It ain't necessarily so, as they say in Summer Time (Black talk in white
musical).  Hard time and good time racism are the same, only the manifestation
is different.

> And to that extent, it may be argued that racism, now that
> it's with us, might attend our crisis-prone order unto the grave.  No longer
> necessary, but ever complicit.
>

Revolution is realism, not fantasy.

>
> BTW, when I pick my eldest up from primary school, I recognise racial
> diversity all over the playground, but I actually don't think my lad ever
> noticed it at all.  He's been getting some lessons at school on the evils of
> racism lately.  They've hit home with desired effect.  But he's suddenly begun
> to take an interest in who's from what race ...
>

He is learning racism the new way.

Henry