Contextualizing Modern Capitalism in its Relationship to Racism
Collage by Jas Calictas
Capitalism in its modern manifestation, as neoliberal, takes a unique form as the dominant economic system across the globe. It co-evolved in Europe alongside ideas about race through the European ‘age of exploration’ involving colonial missions and the transatlantic slave trade.
In a society saturated by inequalities (like those created by European medieval feudalism), a system that prioritizes the unbridled economic freedom and growth of the individual without first remedying existing oppression, inherently benefits the existing dominant classes within a society. Simply, these are, and have been throughout modernity, the European middle to upper class. Therefore, capitalism is also inherently eurocentric.
This article does not aim to argue a causal relationship between capitalism and racism, but simply to express how both as we observe them today, and as these ideas developed throughout modern history, are intertwined. Tackling racism feels like a futile feat when businesses, public figures, and average people alike continue to participate in and vote for the systems that continue to sustain racism in the first place.
Origins of Capitalism
Before the early stages of capitalism, feudalism in medieval Europe created a tiered society in which essentially everybody had a superior, but the majority of people were peasants. Much in the same way that the world’s richest 1% own half of the world’s wealth, the privileged through time have remained within top percentiles.
The rise of the merchant class in the seventeenth century marked a key capitalist development. Merchants linked consumers with producers, but soon started dominating the latter; they began supplying the raw materials and paying wages. The class of ‘primitive capitalists’ accrued power over the new class of waged workers. The emergence of capitalism in Europe, therefore, didn’t mark a huge departure from its earlier feudalist system, but merely created an updated version of class hierarchy.
As Europe engaged in profitable trade with other regions, capitalism became further integrated into the global exchange. The increased wealth of Western nations depended on the cheaper provision of raw materials by colonized nations and profits from the transatlantic slave trade. This gave the West an economic leg-up around the globe based on the exploitation of other nations and their peoples.
An important distinction to make is that European colonial expansion did not propel global exchange, but merely created a more capitalist type of exchange which inflated Europe’s position and power in the world. The roots of global exchange date back as early as the second century BC Silk Road: a network of land and sea routes between Europe and Asia that linked both to trade. If we consider the re-orientation of power from Asia to Europe as marking the emergence of modern capitalism, then it becomes clear how other eurocentric ideas like racism and white supremacy would be inevitably spread by colonial missions.
Racialization and the Division of Labour
The role of race became integral to the development of capitalism worldwide as scholars in Europe devised pseudo-scientific, racist theories to justify colonization and the profits of chattel slavery in particular. While it is contested whether different concepts of race existed in pre-modern times, race as a biological classification is modern.
Race was used as a tool to divide labourers in order to dissipate their power in numbers. Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676 in West Virginia serves a prime example: European and African farmers united against their governor when he refused to finance a militia to attack Native Americans for their ancestral lands. In fear of another rebellion, the British colonial government promoted white privilege, as clearly seen in the Virginia Slave Code 1705.
As far away from Virginia as Malaysia, a similar narrative played out: British colonial officers converged with the Malaysian monarchy to indenture labourers and divide them among racial lines. Still, today there exist manifold tensions between racial groups in Malaysia. These examples show the clear ‘divide and conquer’ sentiments held by modern capitalist thought.
All this is not to say that racism benefits white workers; racializing them as white and instilling a sense of privilege would placate budding revolutionary sentiment and therefore merely impede their class-consciousness. Union between workers across racial groups has historically shown that class is more divisive than race: the Grunwick dispute of 1976, taking place in London, involved strikers of mostly South Asian and East African descent as well as white workers.
It is clear that unless we tackle racism systemically, and from a position which recognises the integrality of class in the ongoing oppression of peoples by those in power, then it will continue to prevail. A system born of the oppression and exploitation of peoples will simply continue to birth different and more complex forms of oppression.
Sources
Racism and the Logic of Capitalism: A Fanonian Reconsideration by Peter Hudis, Historical Materialism vol. 26, no. 2. 1 July 2018.
What Could it Mean to Say, “Capitalism Causes Sexism and Racism?” by Dr. Vanessa Wills, Philosophical Topics. 2018.
Is Capitalism Working? by Jacob Field, Thames and Hudson. September 2018.
Richest 1% own half the world’s wealth, study finds by Rupert Neate, The Guardian. 14 November 2017.
The Origins of Capitalism, Solidarity Foundation. 29 October 2012.
The Emergence of Modern Europe by Marie-Louise Stig Sørensen, N. Geoffrey Parker and others, Encyclopedia Britannica. 4 February 2020.
Is ‘race’ modern? by Adam Hochman, Aeon. 12 March 2020.
Eurocentrism and the Origins of Capitalism by Kristin Plys, Review (Fernand Braudel Center). September 21, 2020.
Malaysia’s dangerous racial and religious trajectory by Amy Chew, The Interpreter. 25 September 2019. \
Prisons - 10 key facts, Institute for Government. 21 February 2019.
Grunwick dispute: What did the ‘strikers in saris’ achieve? by Bethan Bell and Shabnam Mahmood, BBC News. 10 September 2016.
Why America’s First Colonial Rebels Burned Jamestown to the Ground by Erin Blakemore, History. 8 August 2019.