Conventional thinking tends to follow the line that the development of capitalism should eliminate racism. People holding this position argue that racism is an unfortunate leftover from more traditional social systems. Capitalism, based on rational criteria such as efficiency, should gradually eliminate the irrational features of the past. The market is ‘colorblind,’ it should only select on the basis of merit.
For example, in the area of job allocation, selecting on the basis of such irrelevant criteria as skin color or the race of one’s great grandparents, would lead those firms that so choose to perform less well than those that select purely on the basis of ability, and they would go out of business. Only the rational, colorblind firms would survive and racism would disappear in the labor market.
Unfortunately, this idealized theoretical model of the way capitalism works has not proved true in practice. We continue to live in a highly segregated society, with a continuing racial division of labor, and with a high degree of racial inequality on every social and economic dimension.
The continuation of racism within advanced capitalist societies requires further explanation. Whereas cultural differences have served as a basis for intergroup conflicts for the entire history of humanity, the expansion of Europe, starting in the sixteenth century, set the stage for a new form of intergroup relations. Never before was conquest so widespread and thorough. Nor was it ever associated with such a total ideology of biological and cultural inferiority. Modern racism, with its pseudoscientific claims of inferiority, is a unique phenomenon.
An understanding of global imperialistic expansion, and its impact on people of color, begins with an analysis of capitalism as it developed in Europe. Capitalism is a system that depends on the private ownership of productive property. In order to earn profits on property, the owners depend on the existence of a no owning class that has no alternative but to sell its labor-power to the owners.
The owners accumulate wealth through profit, that is, the surplus they extract from labor. Hence, a class struggle develops between capitalists and workers over the rights of capitalists to the surplus. In Europe, labor came to be ‘free,’ that is, people were no longer bound by serfdom or other forms of servitude but were free to sell their labor-power on an open market to the highest bidder. Being free in this sense gave European workers a certain political capacity, even though they were often driven to conditions of poverty and misery.
Capitalism is an expansionary system. Not only does it unleash great economic growth, but it also tends to move beyond national boundaries. The expansionist tendencies lie in a need for new markets and raw materials, a search for investment opportunities, and a pursuit of cheaper labor in the face of political advances by national labor forces.
Capitalism thus developed into an imperialistic system. European imperialism led to a virtually total conquest of the globe. Europe carved up the entire world into spheres of influence and colonial domination. The idea and ideology of race and racism emerged from this cauldron. Europeans constructed a kind of folk-scientific view of human differences, dividing the world’s human population into semi-species or ‘races.’ Of course, this division has no basis in fact, and racial categorization has been completely discredited.
Nevertheless, the idea of race, and its use in structuring societies along hierarchical lines, remains exceedingly robust. In sum, race is strictly a social construction, but one with profound implications for the way society is organized. European domination took multiple forms, from unequal treaties, unfair trade relations, conquest, and the establishment of alien rule to annihilation and white settlement in places where once other peoples had thrived.
Imperialism received ideological justification in beliefs that non-European cultures were primitive, uncivilized, barbaric, and savage, and their religions were pagan and superstitious. Europeans were convinced that they had the true religion in Christianity and that all other peoples needed to be ‘saved.’
The denigration of other cultures was accompanied by beliefs in natural, biological inferiority. Dark skin color was a mark of such inferiority, while white skin was viewed as more highly evolved. Africans, in particular, were seen as closer to the apes. These kinds of ideas received pseudoscientific support in the form of studies of cranial capacity and culturally biased intelligence tests.
European economic domination had many aspects, but a major feature was the exploitation of colonized workers. Unlike white labor, which was free (in the sense of unbound), colonial labor was typically subjected to various forms of coercion. As conquered peoples, colonized nations could be denied any political rights and were treated openly as beings whose sole purpose was to enhance white wealth.
Throughout the colonial world, various forms of slavery, serfdom, forced migrant labor, indentured servitude, and contract labor was common. Not only did European imperialists exploit colonized workers in their homelands, but they also moved many people around to other areas of the colonial world where they were needed.
The most notorious instance was the African slave trade, under which Africans were brought in bondage to the Caribbean area and sections of North and South America. However, other examples include the movement of contract workers from China and India all over the colonial world.
Britain, as the chief imperialist power, moved Indians to southern Africa, Fiji, Trinidad, Mauritius, and other places to serve as laborers in remote areas of the British Empire. These movements created ‘internal colonies,’ where workers of color were again subject to special coercion.
Even seemingly free immigrants of color have been subject to special constraints. For example, Chinese immigrants to the United States in the late nineteenth century were denied naturalization rights, in contrast to European immigrants, and as a result, were subjected to special legal disabilities. In the United States, Australia, Canada, and elsewhere, Chinese were singled out for ‘exclusion’ legislation, limiting their access as free immigrants.
African slavery had the most profound effects on the shaping of racial thought and racial oppression. Even though slavery contradicted the basic premise of capitalism as based on a free labor market, it nevertheless flourished within world capitalism, and was an essential feature of it.
Many scholars argued that capitalism could not have developed without slavery. The coerced labor of African slaves enabled the western European nations to accumulate capital and import cheap raw materials that served as a basis for industrialization.
(Author is a lecturer working in HED)
