[lbo-talk] corporate rationality

Somebody Somebody philos_case at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 11 18:23:40 PDT 2009


Chris Doss: I hereby suggest that any slave system in which the slaves looked appreciably different from the masters would result in a racist ideology.

Somebody: Yet, can we say the same thing about capitalism? To a certain extent only. A large immigrant population as part of the reserve army of labor can foster racism, but the whole point about capitalism after the civil rights revolution, is that inevitably the next generation will be more widely diffused among the different classes. People can talk meanly of Mexicans or Arabs or whoever, but their assimilated children are increasingly accepted and incorporated into the rainbow panoply of corporate advertising. This is precisely because people are interchangeable under capitalism. It's hard to see racism as being anything integral to the system here, considering that even the recurring effect discussed above is *rapidly* diminishing, as evidenced by a certain biracial president. Racism is declining, but is it taking capitalism down with it? If not, it's hard to argue that it's an essential component thereof.

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