This quote from Karl Marx should be read by every black man and woman in America.

[I Really Mean It]

woke yourself right into communism - ask other countries how that went

this quote isn’t even about communism. it just happens to come from marx. yall are weird.

 

[I Really Mean It]

You perfectly explained why no economic model will ever be perfect and a mix of ideas is best for society. Humans suck

i believe a socialism/capitalism hybrid - essentially, democratic socialism, like several mixed economies in europe - is the only current answer to the class problem in this country.

the only thing standing in the way of us transitioning to it is racism.

 

[OneManGang]

i believe a socialism/capitalism hybrid - essentially, democratic socialism, like several mixed economies in europe - is the only current answer to the class problem in this country.

the only thing standing in the way of us transitioning to it is racism.

Some of the most successful models in this countries history are examples of that. Theyre overwhelmingly popular with almost everyone. Social security, Medicare/Medicaid, etc. people are stupid though

 

[I Really Mean It]

My idea is with AI we could literally remove the human equation from resource management. Everyone is allotted a base living standard and free to pursue excess capital at their leisure.

AI, as it advances, will make most of the underclass superfluous. the push for ai is arguably driven by a eugenicist agenda.

 

[Amo Husserl]

how is capitalism working for black people?

Capitalism is not oppressing Black people independent of a white infrastructure that is racist in character.
You're trying to make a relationship between capitalism and racism like one follows from the other when they intersect.
Change the economic model and you got a different dimension of class working, but oppression will remain.
Fact is you lookin' at how the money get divided instead of the people mentality.

Capitalism is not the problem for black people.

Racists at all levels of various institutions with a collective desire to disenfranchise Black people as a collective is the problem for Black people.
Capitalism is only what they workin' with as the economic model. Communism won't stop racism.
Communism won't suddenly make racists throw away racism.
Racism is a mentality of perceived superiority of a race of people. Capitalism is an economic system where successful market competition rewarded.
They intersect when the mentality of perceived superiority enters the market and competes on the assumption of determinism in the favor of the racist.

And the racist has the advantage of multiple institutions, that's why it's systematic. Systematic racism can be capitalist, socialist or communist.

Black people pooling their resources and human capital, successfully managing and being strategic in their efforts to preserve and grow their institutions and community, to develop stronger bonds within their community, is what any group correctly acting in any economic system sees: power.
That don't mean if Black people pooled their resources together like racists that they will be racists, it means the racism that oppresses them be met with an equal or greater force that is not based on a mentality of perceived superiority.

One.

 

[franknitty711]

this quote isn’t even about communism. it just happens to come from marx. yall are weird.

your right, definitely took more of the thread than what the post is meant to be.

 

[MischievousMonkey]

The establishment of settled communities can be repeated throughout the historical record. The collapse of slavery only happened once. To have a hypothesis become theory you need to demonstrate it over and over again. Human chattel slavery has been endemic to human history. Hammurabi’s code codified the price of the capture of an escaped slave. Not easy new world slavery wholly different than old world slavery.

Pliney the Elder discusses “Latifundium” aka plantations, where he laments that Romans are longer employed in farming but instead vast estates are solely worked by slaves. Where rich landowners massively outnumbered the local populace. In Sicily this form of labor persisted to the 20th century.

If slavery was the driving motor of the development of capitalism it should be demonstrated multiple times throughout human history, instead what we see is a despised merchant class, lack of innovation, technological stagnation and political and social instability as free men are essentially forced onto state welfare.

Christopher Colombus didn’t invent slavery or colonization or world trade and Spain for that matter largely missed the industrialization train primarily for its over reliance on wealth extraction out of the colonies instead of development like GB.

Thank you for your developments. But to be honest, I'm not sure we're talking about the same things. I think I got your thesis but I'm lost when it comes to how your arguments support it or how they address my initial take you quoted.

My point is that marxists and marxist dissidents/neo-marxists/a whole bunch of flavors of marxists have argued for a long time about two connected topics:

• Whether or not the discovery of America and the events that followed it could be considered as the birth of capitalism how we know it;
• How foundational race/racism was to this birth.

That's my account of the Marxist debate.

What I understand your position is, is that "slavery was not a driving motor of the development of capitalism"/"slavery was not the foundation of capitalism". That's fine, but I just want to make clear that you're arguing against a position I haven't supported and that the neo-marxists I mentioned themselves don't necessarily support (see the two points above and the fact I was just describing an ideological dispute).

But even if I were to pretend to have the opposition position to yours, I don't understand how your arguments support it.

• Developing theory about specific historical events, even those that have not been repeated throughout history, is common historiographic practice. If historians couldn't develop theories about specific or unique instances, they wouldn't be able to talk about or try to explain the advent of the Holocaust or the 2nd World War. Maybe part of the confusion is that you think Marxists & Neo-Marxists are talking about capitalism as a concept, in a vacuum. They're not (at least not in the discussion I'm reporting). They're talking about history
• I don't understand why you're talking about the collapse of slavery since it doesn't concern neither my position nor yours (if yours is indeed the one I quoted above)
• Other historical instances of slavery are irrelevant here (see first point of this section). The Neo-Marxists are discussing how foundational racism was to the advent of capitalism given its birth circa 1492. Again, it doesn't mean slavery necessarily leads to capitalism, notably because you'd need to assume it was the sole important factor involved for that. It was absolutely not, according to Neo-Marxists. It's a combination of factors (among which race was one of the means), just as I was trying to illustrate with the example of agriculture and the emergence of cities.
• I'm not arguing, me nor Neo-Marxists, that Christopher Colombus invented slavery/colonialism/the world trade. Their point is that capitalism as we know it was birthed through slavery, colonialism and world trade. Which leads to my last point:
• Spain was not touched by the rise of capitalism in Europe in the XVIIIth century for several reasons: it used the treasure pillaged from the American continent to reimburse the debt accumulated during its battle against the Ottomans, suffered from inflation and was held back by old feodal production methods that couldn't rival with its neighbors'... BUT,

BUT, meanwhile, the massive capital accumulated by the Iberians benefited the rest of Europe, via their banks, which were able to not only buy Spain's debt but also finance their own expeditions and use the sea routes opened by Colombus. This permitted the development of credit notably and the many investments leading to all the technical and financial innovations that allowed capitalism to take its run-up. This also allowed Europeans to organize and benefit from a world trade allowing the distribution of American merchandises in Asia.

So the constitution of this launch pad towards widespread capitalism and the industrial revolutions was in more ways than one the result of 1492. And why is race at the center of it?

Because it is the principle that permitted and ordered the theft of that immense capital. The theft of lands from the Natives, for its mineral resources, was justified by their racialization (as well as the reduction of land to simply capital to extract). The exploitation of the Natives, enslaved and forced to mine the stolen lands, was justified by and a consequence of their racialization. Race was at the heart of this enterprise, as a principle and as a mean, and this enterprise led to capitalism as we know it.

At least that's what some Neo-Marxists believe.

 

[Secure Da Bag]

So the streets say that Karl Marx was a racist, if not a raging racist. Is that not true now?

 

[I Really Mean It]

Capitalism is not oppressing Black people independent of a white infrastructure that is racist in character.
You're trying to make a relationship between capitalism and racism like one follows from the other when they intersect.
Change the economic model and you got a different dimension of class working, but oppression will remain.
Fact is you lookin' at how the money get divided instead of the people mentality.

Capitalism is not the problem for black people.

Racists at all levels of various institutions with a collective desire to disenfranchise Black people as a collective is the problem for Black people.
Capitalism is only what they workin' with as the economic model. Communism won't stop racism.
Communism won't suddenly make racists throw away racism.
Racism is a mentality of perceived superiority of a race of people. Capitalism is an economic system where successful market competition rewarded.
They intersect when the mentality of perceived superiority enters the market and competes on the assumption of determinism in the favor of the racist.

And the racist has the advantage of multiple institutions, that's why it's systematic. Systematic racism can be capitalist, socialist or communist.

Black people pooling their resources and human capital, successfully managing and being strategic in their efforts to preserve and grow their institutions and community, to develop stronger bonds within their community, is what any group correctly acting in any economic system sees: power.
That don't mean if Black people pooled their resources together like racists that they will be racists, it means the racism that oppresses them be met with an equal or greater force that is not based on a mentality of perceived superiority.

One.

capitalism is a problem for black people, by virtue of its inherent priorities, as evidenced by its name. black people, due to centuries of generational theft, have no capital to compete in this system.

our enslavement was the literal foundation for the american empire, its economy and society, both of which imported across the globe and used as the template with which the world order in which we now reside was formed. without the institution of slavery, the american wealth that was the engine of capitalism would not have existed.

there was no other means of capitalist expansion than the wealth that centuries of free agricultural labor produced. the untold riches generated by fields of tobacco, cotton, rice, corn and other crops sowed the seeds of the global industry, the framework of what we call capitalism.