--- On Sun, 10/11/09, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 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.
That's why I said that racism is precapitalist. It implies a caste hierarchy, which is antithetical to capitalist ideology. It is compatible with feudalism, or any other system in which birth gives you rights, but not capitalism.
By some strange coincidence, the leading capitalist countries all have antiracist (and antisexist) official ideologies. I wonder why that might be.