I think part at least of the problem is a difficulty over what can awkwardly be termed "levels of abstraction." Racism does not, I think (nor does male supremacy, etc.) enter into the basic definition of capitalism as a mode of production. But I think it can be argued both theoretically and (obviously) in concrete historical terms that the political conditions that capitalism by its very nature requires cannot be developed or maintained without fundamental divisions within the working class. And *historically* (contingently?) "race" has fulfilled that necessity.
A second source of difficulty can revolve around the relationship between a fundamental theoretical understanding of capitalism and strategic theory for the struggle against capitalism. Charles Brown and I perfectly agree that (for the u.s.) any working class strategy that does not forefront the fight against racism *within* the working class is a strategy doomed to failure. I don't happen (at least provisionally) to believe that that strategic principle is in any way dependent on the proposition that, by its nature, "CAPITALISM is racist to the core." In principle, I don't think it would *have* to be. In fact, as it exists, it is (and will remain so).
I do believe that one of the most serious forms of opportunism in the United States is the illusion that, *whatever* the immediate issue, it can be adequately confronted without factoring in the necessary struggle against racism. I find personally offensive statements saying that in this or that context the fight against racism is a diversion.
Carrol
Patrick Bond wrote:
> This is a debate that really waylaid the SA Left for many years!
>
> Conclusion by most radical intellectuals here after several false
> starts: the apartheid-capitalism bedfellow relationship was
> "contingent" not "necessary." But that too doesn't satisfy. SA
> capitalism is still unbelievably racist, but unevenly so.
>
> I think many of us still search for a coherent Line on this.
>
> Patrick
>
> On 23 Dec 99, at 10:57, Doug Henwood wrote:
> > 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.
> >
> > Doug
> >
>
> Patrick Bond
> (Wits University Graduate School of Public and Development Management)
> home: 51 Somerset Road, Kensington 2094, Johannesburg
> office: 22 Gordon Building, Wits University Parktown Campus
> mailing address: PO Box 601 WITS 2050
> phones: (h) (2711) 614-8088; (o) 488-5917; fax 484-2729
> emails: (h) pbond at wn.apc.org; (o) bondp at zeus.mgmt.wits.ac.za