Must capitalism be racist?

James Farmelant farmelantj at juno.com
Fri Dec 24 13:31:34 PST 1999


On Fri, 24 Dec 1999 09:59:19 EST JKSCHW at aol.com writes:
>Doug asks: 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.
>
>* * *
>
>Milton Friedman and libertarians like Robert Nozick and Richard
>Epstein argue
>that capitalism, or anyway neoclassical economics, is antiracist for
>the
>reason stated by Doug. Economist in this vein try to explain
>economically
>irrational racism by positing a "taste" for discrimination that
>racists are
>willing to pay for.
>
>A different approach is suggested by John Roemer, who has theorem
>supporting
>the "divide and conquer" thesis, that racism is economically rational
>for
>capitalists because if you divide the working class you can pay
>everyone
>lower wages. This is in the Bell Jour. of Econ 10: 695-710 (1979). I
>believes
>Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have some empiricalw ork supporting
>this
>sort of hypothesus. It's waht Amrx believed, for what that's worth.

Out of curiosity, given Roemer's rational choice theory approach to political economy, how would he counter the objection that neo-classicals would put up against this argument - that if indeed racial discrimination created pools of cheap say black labor then capitalist would immediately start hiring up all these cheaper workers which would eventually drive their wages back up to their levels of marginal productivity? And how would Roemer counter the related objection that the "divide and conquer" thesis requires some enforcement mechanism within the capitalist class to make sure that the capitalist all act to do what is in their collective interest which is to discriminate when at the same time each capitalist would be faced with incentives to stop discriminating in order to take advantage of the resulting pool of cheaper black (or Hispanic or female etc.) labor?


>See his
>letter on the Irish question.
>

Jim F.


>
>--jks
>
>
>
>
>
>

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