[PEN-L:8722] RE: Re: re: Marx and 19th century racism

["Craven, Jim" <jcraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

Response Jim C:

I believe that racism is a necessary but not sufficient condition for
imperialism and capitalism for several reasons: 1) the ideological
edifice--and whole "social capital" of imperialism and capitalism require
and are designed to promote, "necessary illusions", mystifications, lies etc
about how, for whom and with what consequences the system really works--in
order to forge a mass social base of false consciousness and individuals
"voting" to ratify parties and policies that could never serve their
objective interests. to do that, the imperialists and capitalists push "hot
button" single issues and feed off of and reinforce all sorts of racist
notions to get people to vote single-issue and thereby ratify all sorts of
other policies as part of the overall package they must accept to get their
pet "single-issues" addressed; 2)There is inherent congitive dissonance when
those purporting to be "Christians" promote, often in the name of
Christianity etc, barbaric and genocidal policies and
power/explotation/domination relations and structures of capitalism and
imperialism--"even as you have done it unto the least of these..."; one way
out of the dissonance is to promote racist notions that those who are being
exploited are indeed inferior and therefore they are not being exploited but
rather are merely operating at the level of their inherent and limited
potentials; 3) Imperialism and capitalism require and promote whosesale
commodification of everything expecially people and racism is used to
demean, objectify, reify and ultimate commodify people as necessary cogs in
the overall machine--cogs destined to play their "determined" roles in the
system; 4) racism is used to dive and conquer and to obstruct solidarity of
the oppressed thus mitigating class struggle, enhancing competition among
and between the oppressed, weaken bargaining power and to set victims
against victims rather than victims against oppressors; 5) racism is
essential to achieving and ratifying--at home--imperial power projections
and relations of exploitation/domination between the center and the
semi-peripheries and peripheries of the imperial system--national chauvinism
and jingoism; 6)...

That racism and a whole host of other "isms" pre-date imperialism and even
capitalism is certain. but this should not be taken that therefore there is
no necessary causal link between imperialism and capitalism on the one hand
and racism on the other hand; racism is continually incorporated into,
modified, "refined" and reinforced within the overall ideological edifices
and "social capital" of imperialism. As for racism being a Western
phenemonenon, of course we have examples like Imperial Japan's East Asian
Co-Prosperity Sphere as examples of "non-Western" racism and imperialism;
but most of the organized and theoretical foundations of racism have been
most "highly" developed in the West and by Western theoreticians/pimps of
imperialism and racism.

Jim Craven


-----Original Message-----
From: Henry C.K. Liu [mailto:hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, July 01, 1999 10:50 AM
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: [PEN-L:8717] Re: re: Marx and 19th century racism




Rod Hay wrote:

> This of course, is an idealist proposition. That the idea of racism lead
to
> imperialism. This runs directly counter to all Marxist or materialist
> explainations. It is of course also a racist proposition. But we can't
> discuss that here.
>

I regret that I have, in your view, advanced a racist proposition.
It was certainly not my intention.
Would you be kind enough to explain to me how that proposition: racism and
imperialism has a causal link, is racist, so that I will not make the same
mistake again?

Henry C.K. Liu

> ----Original Message Follows----
> From: "Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> I submit that imperialism is causally linked to racism.  When a European
> nation
> appropriates European territories with European population, its
occupational
> policies are very different than those on non-European territories with
> non-European population.
>
> Rod Hay
> rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx
> The History of Economic Thought Archives
> http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html
> Batoche Books
> http://members.tripod.com/rodhay/batochebooks.html
> http://www.abebooks.com/home/BATOCHEBOOKS/
>
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