GM for AA

Jim heartfield jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk
Mon Jul 24 01:35:57 PDT 2000


In message <p04310103b59b5d5b734f@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>[What does this do to the theory that racism is essential to US capitalism?]
>
>Chronicle of Higher Education - web daily - July 19, 2000
>
>General Motors Files Court Brief Defending Affirmative Action at U. of Michigan

I think it calls into question the theory that race discrimination is essential to capitalism.

For many years I campaigned against South Africa's colour bar in the belief that apartheid was essential to South African capitalism. I guess the moral is never say never.

The best thing is to wind the film back a bit and ask what is essential to capitalism. In the first instance capital accumulation seems to be fairly essential. In the second, an exploited class to yield up the surplus value for that accumulation. In the third, a reserve army of labour to absorb the fluctuations in the labour market. In the fourth a national organisation of production. In the fifth a popular identification with the state on national lines. Sixth, a national reformist labour movement.

All of those conditions add up to a racially divided society in which minorities are racially constructed as external to acceptable society and marginal to production.

However, some of those conditions no longer obtain. Most importantly, the popular identification with the state is in abeyance, as reformism no longer creates the conditions for working class national identification.

Social division is still intrinsic to capitalism, I think, but it need not necessarily assume the form of identifications on the basis of colour.

In Britain, and I guess most of Europe, right now, East Europeans are the 'lowest of the low', in the most menial jobs and heavily persecuted by the authorities. By contrast, the official politics is self- consciously anti-racist as far as prejudice against people on the basis of colour holds.

-- James Heartfield

Great Expectations: the creative industries in the New Economy is available from Design Agenda, 4.27 The Beaux Arts Building, 10-18 Manor Gardens, London, N7 6JT Price 7.50 GBP + 1GBP p&p



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