'capitalism is white privilege'?

[Casually Red]

I just switch off whenever I see the word privilege now

I reach for my carving knife

 

[camouflage]

"Capitalism is White Privilege"

I don't agree with the statement in the OP, or I don't think it's a useful thing to say and just confuses conversation about capitalism and about white privilege, but this pic of Zuma doesn't make a poi t as there are many people in positions of power who are black in a white supremacist worls order. In SA the overwhelming majority of crushingly poor people are black, meanwhile neoliberalism re8g s supreme over there and international corporations based in Europe and the United States have their preferences met. Don't be confused by compradors.

 

[Citizen66]

I think it's a fair point. The ruling class isn't race specific. That route leads to Jewish conspiracy shit. I think the House of Saud would have been a better example though.

 

[SpackleFrog]

I don't agree with the statement in the OP, or I don't think it's a useful thing to say and just confuses conversation about capitalism and about white privilege, but this pic of Zuma doesn't make a poi t as there are many people in positions of power who are black in a white supremacist worls order. In SA the overwhelming majority of crushingly poor people are black, meanwhile neoliberalism re8g s supreme over there and international corporations based in Europe and the United States have their preferences met. Don't be confused by compradors.

My point was as Citizen66 says; the ruling class isn't race specific and black politicians are just as happy to murder striking workers who threaten profits as white politicians. I thought Zuma proved that quite nicely.

More generally, the co-option of the ANC by capitalism and imperialism demonstrates how organisations which base themselves on race rather than class are particularly vulnerable to this.

 

[SpackleFrog]

Also there are just loads of good pics of Zuma laughing.

 

[camouflage]

I think it's a fair point. The ruling class isn't race specific. That route leads to Jewish conspiracy shit. I think the House of Saud would have been a better example though.

I agree, we shouldn't be distracted by all the shiny pretty colours for the reasons you said but there is a thing called 'White Supremacism' though, or was... now at least some of the same ends are served by 'Exceptionalism' imo. I guess I'm talking about the rational running in the background, slavery had ceased to be practised in Europe for hundreds of years after the fall of that despicable genocidal slave-driven culture the Roman Empire, but how to rationalize why it's ok to bring slavery back or assume ownership of a country where someone else already lives? We still have all the baggage built up for the purposes of colonialism/imperialism in the dominant culture, and the capitalism conversation is obviously a part of that. But it would definitely miss or even obscure the point of what that system is really all about to say something like "capitalism is white privilege". Look at the Irish famine, those that starved certainly weren't being privileged by capitalism... but tbf that was before the Irish became White.

 

[Idris2002]

I agree, we shouldn't be distracted by all the shiny pretty colours for the reasons you said but there is a thing called 'White Supremacism' though, or was... now at least some of the same ends are served by 'Exceptionalism' imo. I guess I'm talking about the rational running in the background, slavery had ceased to be practised in Europe for hundreds of years after the fall of that despicable genocidal slave-driven culture the Roman Empire, but how to rationalize why it's ok to bring slavery back or assume ownership of a country where someone else already lives? We still have all the baggage built up for the purposes of colonialism/imperialism in the dominant culture, and the capitalism conversation is obviously a part of that. But it would definitely miss or even obscure the point of what that system is really all about to say something like "capitalism is white privilege". Look at the Irish famine, those that starved certainly weren't being privileged by capitalism... but tbf that was before the Irish became White.

The title of How the Irish Became White refers specifically to the Irish experience in the United States.

 

[camouflage]

The title of How the Irish Became White refers specifically to the Irish experience in the United States.

Yeah I know.

 

[likesfish]

To the rich all poor people look the same

As much as it pains me not to shove a certain sort of middle class wanker in the ditch.
For all the shiny shiny they have they have no real poweran isa and a decent pension fund does make you better off than most but the pryramid of power they are only one or two steps above the rest of us

 

[MochaSoul]

The contention is that if we eradicated racism class privilege and capitalism wouldn't exist.

I agree that marxism is all too often framed in too much of a eurocentric way but what really has my gob truly smacked is the underestimation of capitalism and its "octopussian" reach. I suppose they haven't read much about black supremacy movements either.

 

[MochaSoul]

Are they aware of this kind of thing?:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4628960

 

[ManchesterBeth]

Are they aware of this kind of thing?:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4628960

I doubt it. Generally they're literature and humanities students who think they're something just because they've read a few poststructuralist texts. Says a lot when someone claimed that Gramsci's work is more useful than Marx's - the poverty of political economy.

It really fucking angers me though, the other day I got into a debate with some South Asians who said that they no longer dedicate as much time to rock music because its dominated by white people. Two months ago they were like yeah I'm punk, I'm totally proud to be British, I prefer rock over Hip Hop. Now they're totally hip hop, despite not being black. They have a word for it as well, the middle-class onanists. being 'racialised', as if racial awareness is something you wake up with at the university, rather than something us w/c coloured folks are the first to learn before we can string proper fucking sentences together.

I mean if someone decided to act all yeah I'm Kurdish and post quotes from Kurdish protest songs on Facebook to make a point whilst not being Kurdish it'd kind of piss me off. I'm not saying that the protest culture can't be appreciated, but don't fake others experiences for the sake of impressing your mates. Coloured people aren't one homogeneous bloc.

 

[ManchesterBeth]

I agree that marxism is all too often framed in too much of a eurocentric way but what really has my gob truly smacked is the underestimation of capitalism and its "octopussian" reach. I suppose they haven't read much about black supremacy movements either.

Well, these people want marxism to continue to be framed in a eurocentric framework (if such is a meaningful division to begin with.) It's been a few weeks now but I remember the person I was arguing with claiming that Marx wouldn't have appreciated Fanon - therefore Fanon's work is invalid and he was (essentially speaking) a native informant.

But then, if you argue, like the post-colonialists do that capitalism is specifically a cultural phenomenon that has a liberal bourgeoisie, democracy and individual liberties then you can argue anything. The East for these people is non-capitalist. So what is it?

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

It really fucking angers me though, the other day I got into a debate with some South Asians who said that they no longer dedicate as much time to rock music because its dominated by white people. Two months ago they were like yeah I'm punk, I'm totally proud to be British, I prefer rock over Hip Hop. Now they're totally hip hop, despite not being black. They have a word for it as well, the middle-class onanists. being 'racialised', as if racial awareness is something you wake up with at the university, rather than something us w/c coloured folks are the first to learn before we can string proper fucking sentences together.

I think they might have been taking the piss out of your earnestness mate.

 

[hipipol]

Ok, granted, I concede that sometimes I can float off in a marxist/communist bubble of my own making but this from the why is my curriculum white facebook group puzzled me. The contention is that if we eradicated racism class privilege and capitalism wouldn't exist. Now I know this is a re-run of the whole Maoist Third Worldist shtick but this person was arguing that marxism is a eurocentric discourse and anything useful in Marxism can be ascertained from that semi-critical Stalinist Gramsci. What are the intellectual reference points for such bizarre thinking?

I'm thoroughly

no

 

[Idris2002]

My point was as Citizen66 says; the ruling class isn't race specific and black politicians are just as happy to murder striking workers who threaten profits as white politicians. I thought Zuma proved that quite nicely.

More generally, the co-option of the ANC by capitalism and imperialism demonstrates how organisations which base themselves on race rather than class are particularly vulnerable to this.

An old African student of mine has been referring on twitter to "1% Pan-Africanism".

 

[MochaSoul]

New interview with these two in the jacobin today with specific emphasis on the dolezal case (really useful thoughts on the difference between identity and identification esp - disappointed by the private school though):

How Race Is Conjured: The fiction of race hides the real source of racism and inequity in America today.

Too many good bits to pull a few emblematic quotes from.

Thought this would be a good one for the discussion here.

 

[MochaSoul]

"Black capitalism, black against itself. The silliest contradiction in a long train of spineless, mindless contradictions. Another painless, ultimate remedy: be a better fascist than the fascist. Bill Cosby, acting out the establishment agent — what message was this soul brother conveying to our children? I Spy was certainly programmed to a child’s mentality. This running dog in the company of a fascist with a cause, a flunky’s flunky, was transmitting the credo of the slave to our youth, the mod version of the old house nigger. We can never learn to trust as long as we have them. They are as much a part of the repression, more even than the real live, rat-informer-pig. Aren’t they telling our kids that it is romantic to be a running dog? The kids are so hungry to see the black male do some shooting and throw some hands that they can’t help themselves from identifying with the quislings. So first they turn us against ourselves, precluding all possibility of trust, then fascism takes any latent divisible forces and develops them into divisions in fact: racism, nationalism, religions."

-- George Jackson

 

[butchersapron]

-- George Jackson

Fan-tastic.

Don't do likes, but you picked that right.

 

[MochaSoul]

I'd been racking my brain for how it went the other day as I ranted over winifred. Just now, a light went on in my head. It couldn't go better anywhere else.

ETA: It's older than I am too. 1970

 

[tim]

More generally, the co-option of the ANC by capitalism and imperialism demonstrates how organisations which base themselves on race rather than class are particularly vulnerable to this.

The direction taken Chinese Communist Party would, perhaps suggest otherwise.

 

[butchersapron]

The direction taken Chinese Communist Party would, perhaps suggest otherwise.

How?

 

[tim]

How?

They've been corrupter and compromised to a much greater degree than the ANC.

 

[butchersapron]

They've been corrupter and compromised to a much greater degree than the ANC.

How does that show that how organisations which base themselves on race rather than class are particularly vulnerable to becoming capitalism and imperialisms catspaws?

 

[frogwoman]

The Chinese Communist party can also said to be 'based on race' or at least to the idea of Chinese nationality given its treatment of the Uighurs, the Tibetans, etc ...

 

[tim]

The Chinese Communist party can also said to be 'based on race' or at least to the idea of Chinese nationality given its treatment of the Uighurs, the Tibetans, etc ...

The ANC was founded as a national liberation movement,specifically focused on establishing equal rights for the black majority; the Chinese Communist Party was founded to bring into existence a socialist society. So I think it's acceptable to say that the focus of the former was for racial justice and the latter, whilst it clearly was involved in the fight against the Japanese occupation, focused on the class struggle.

As to the position of minorities, whatever the realities, the Communist party took a line similar to that of the USSR that China was a multinational state in which the rights of minorities were respected and promoted.

 

[SpookyFrank]

As to the position of minorities, whatever the realities, the Communist party took a line similar to that of the USSR that China was a multinational state in which the rights of minorities were respected and promoted.

That may have been the party line but that wasn't how things turned out, in China or the USSR. Most of the peripheral soviet republics were effectively colonies, or at best client states.

 

[tim]

That may have been the party line but that wasn't how things turned out, in China or the USSR. Most of the peripheral soviet republics were effectively colonies, or at best client states.

Of course, this is what always happens regardless of the ideals.

 

[seventh bullet]

Tim is right in a vague way, the Marxist-Leninist concept of internationalism didn't just involve hollow rhetoric masking imperialist intentions, but relations with other countries where Communists came to power were fraught with difficulties in terms of that and nationalism and national sovereignty. Within the USSR there are differing periods in which a sophisticated nationalities policy was formulated and implemented and what was meant by 'respect' and 'promotion' of national minorities. There was also the later process of 'Russification' (although never a policy of complete assimilation, which Stalin was always against) as the multinational bureaucracy grew and with it the associated problems and requirements of its smooth running.

Are you confusing the Mongolian People's Republic and post-WWII People's Democracies (adapted stagist M-L theory of bourgeois rule followed by socialist construction) in central and eastern Europe for the USSR? See also Mao's refitting of New Democracy into a more advanced hybrid but still lower-stage People's Democratic Dictatorship after Soviet policy changes altered the content of People's Democracy in Europe in the late 1940s, when the new Chinese government still followed the Soviet Union's lead. Back to the SSRs, they weren't client states, if we were to mean the Central Asian republics, for example, as 'peripheral.'

There were client states beyond the USSR that resisted the Moscow-driven 'international socialist division of labour' in the Communist-ruled world after Stalin, when such states were to gear their economies to the benefit of the Soviet Union, develop and specialise in certain industries and neglect others, synchronise the national economic plans with those of the USSR etc. Three examples of smaller states going Hang on, err... Nope are DPRK, Albania and Romania. Off the top of my head, the earliest client state (since 1921), Outer Mongolia, was in regular political conflict with Moscow over developing particular industries while being encouraged to concentrate on modernising animal husbandry.

 

[Casually Red]

Well, these people want marxism to continue to be framed in a eurocentric framework (if such is a meaningful division to begin with.) It's been a few weeks now but I remember the person I was arguing with claiming that Marx wouldn't have appreciated Fanon - therefore Fanon's work is invalid and he was (essentially speaking) a native informant.

But then, if you argue, like the post-colonialists do that capitalism is specifically a cultural phenomenon that has a liberal bourgeoisie, democracy and individual liberties then you can argue anything. The East for these people is non-capitalist. So what is it?

Fanons work is pretty good though . Although I'd argue it's incomplete . Him dying young probably didn't help matters . There's good insights there that Marx simply didn't possess . But there's still big gaps and unresolved ponderables that can make it a bit frustrating .
There's an argument to be had for the perspective of capitalism being a "white " thing , in that the native bourgeoisie retain much of the same system . In third world terms that means capital is concerned almost solely with raw materials for export to western manufacturers , just as it was under direct colonialism . Who then process them . So very little actually changes in the post colonial context by the very nature of the post colonial economy . White westerners remain at the top of the pyramid . But even were that to change and the materials were to be processed at home you'd still have a capitalist class and system . Although in fairness the white westerners would see that as a threat to their interests too and probably find an excuse to drop bombs or start coups . Or both .
China is naturally enough replacing the white western market as an export destination . However at least with their model they tend to install national infrastructure and the like , roads and hospitals . Rather than the usual one train track that leads directly from the mines to the capital, to the docks that the whites tend to prefer . There's at least a major nod to not doing things the white mans way and acknowledging the locals as human beings .

We're I agree strongly with fanon is on the issue of national consciousness . If you don't achieve that ..despite all it's pitfalls..then the post colonial world is doomed to tribalism . Class consciousness won't ever have a hope . I find the more euro centric left just can't seem to grasp that , having no experience of proper tribalism themselves for over a millennia . And it seems pretty self evident you can't have class consciousness ...and therefore socialism..until you have capitalism in some developed form .

Personally I'm unsure you can get concrete absolutes on this one . Marx , Fanon etc ..they've brilliant insights and some solutions but Im of the opinion we still have to figure it out . Nobody's come up with the definitive answers yet .