>>> Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> 12/23/99 10:57AM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>CAPITALISM is racist to the core, always has been.
Does it have to be? If we're supposed to be paid according to our marginal product, isn't discrimination opposed to basic capitalist principles? I really don't know the answer to this, but it seems to me you could argue there are anti-racist tendencies within capitalism too, and to declare it as essentially racist is to overstate the case.
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CB: In my opinion racist and colonial division of labor is as definitional of capitalist relations of production as is wage-labor. In other words, to modify Marx, based on the empirical and historical evidence we have now, capitalism = wage-labor + racist/colonialist division of labor. Both wage-labor and a racist/colonialist division of labor are necessary conditions of capitalism as it has actually existed. This racist/colonialist division within countries and internationally is part of capitalism's unique accumulation regime. So, yes I am saying that capitalism is essentially racist.
I don't believe workers are paid according to their marginal product. They are paid enough to reproduce their labor power, with the capitalists constantly pressing to pay less than that. From the capitalist standpoint, workers are supposed to be paid as low as the capitalists can get away with. Discrimination is not against some capitalist basic principles, which are to maximize profits, a goal which is necessarily dependent upon dividing and conquering the working class and enhanced by superprofits from racism and colonialism.