This is what gets me about a lot of left politics. We need to start talking more about what we can do right now to make things happen. All I've got so far is a very abstract "build relationships...
At some point, we have to realize we can't just keep talking about change, we have to actually make change, which will focus future discussions around the practical questions raised by an initial attempt at social change, and so on, until the change is successfully implemented.
This is what gets me about a lot of left politics. We need to start talking more about what we can do right now to make things happen. All I've got so far is a very abstract "build relationships with people and try to help people who are struggling".
Title changed because it made no sense outside of the original context
In a recent article for Dissent, editor emeritus Michael Walzer wonders aloud what “racial capitalism” means. Its conclusion stops graciously short of calling for a ban of the term, but does suggest that “the phrase should always be queried by the editors,” since he has failed to pin down a satisfactory definition of the term.
But why was Walzer spitballing about what “racial capitalism” means in the first place? He could have just asked.
Title changed because it made no sense outside of the original context
This article is eager to insist that counterfactuals are not important, and that what matters is critiquing and reshaping the global society we do live in rather than the ones we could've lived in...
This article is eager to insist that counterfactuals are not important, and that what matters is critiquing and reshaping the global society we do live in rather than the ones we could've lived in under some alternative history. Yet such counterfactuals are necessary to interrogate the authors' argument that capitalism and racism were both fostered by 'European social forms', and thereafter spread by colonialism.
While I don't dispute that this is to some extent true, it leaves open the implication that had some other society - perhaps, to invert history to the most extreme degree, West Africa - been the first to project power across oceans and thus colonise vast swathes of the globe, their colonial empires could plausibly not have been racist, for the kernels of racism may not have been present in their societies. This, I find very hard to believe. It is necessary to consider such counterfactuals if only to expose where certain outcomes, such as racism, are wrongly attributed to the special case - i.e. European society - rather than the general case to which they are better suited - i.e. Humanity.
Do you think it's not worthwhile to distinguish capitalism from mercantilism? Mercantilism had a lot of the same problems as capitalism, sure, and I think it's fair to describe them both as...
Do you think it's not worthwhile to distinguish capitalism from mercantilism? Mercantilism had a lot of the same problems as capitalism, sure, and I think it's fair to describe them both as abstract forms of feudalism, but the rise of the industrialist replacing the merchant as the dominant economic force is a pretty critical component in the history of capitalism, and that could not have happened without the industrial revolution. And really what the Wealth of Nations is all about is Adam Smith's observations of how the economy was changing with respect to the first industrial revolution. The Wealth of Nations does not contend that " banking, capital investment, labour vs capital relations, a bourgeois merchant class, empire building based on resource exploitation, landlords" did not exist prior to the development of the thing Adam Smith called capitalism, or that it was even unique to capitalism. Just how these things work when the industrial capitalist is the principle driver of economic activity (and again, industrialists did not exist prior to the 18th century).
Without getting into a thesis, the first nations to industrialize were the ones who had the most abundent resources due to colonialism. The (fairly rigid) class structure in those nations was the...
capitalism is not a product of European colonialism.
Without getting into a thesis, the first nations to industrialize were the ones who had the most abundent resources due to colonialism. The (fairly rigid) class structure in those nations was the foundation of the (apparent or hidden) class structures under capitalism, of which the victims of racism were placed squarely at the bottom.
This is what gets me about a lot of left politics. We need to start talking more about what we can do right now to make things happen. All I've got so far is a very abstract "build relationships with people and try to help people who are struggling".
Title changed because it made no sense outside of the original context
This article is eager to insist that counterfactuals are not important, and that what matters is critiquing and reshaping the global society we do live in rather than the ones we could've lived in under some alternative history. Yet such counterfactuals are necessary to interrogate the authors' argument that capitalism and racism were both fostered by 'European social forms', and thereafter spread by colonialism.
While I don't dispute that this is to some extent true, it leaves open the implication that had some other society - perhaps, to invert history to the most extreme degree, West Africa - been the first to project power across oceans and thus colonise vast swathes of the globe, their colonial empires could plausibly not have been racist, for the kernels of racism may not have been present in their societies. This, I find very hard to believe. It is necessary to consider such counterfactuals if only to expose where certain outcomes, such as racism, are wrongly attributed to the special case - i.e. European society - rather than the general case to which they are better suited - i.e. Humanity.
Do you think it's not worthwhile to distinguish capitalism from mercantilism? Mercantilism had a lot of the same problems as capitalism, sure, and I think it's fair to describe them both as abstract forms of feudalism, but the rise of the industrialist replacing the merchant as the dominant economic force is a pretty critical component in the history of capitalism, and that could not have happened without the industrial revolution. And really what the Wealth of Nations is all about is Adam Smith's observations of how the economy was changing with respect to the first industrial revolution. The Wealth of Nations does not contend that " banking, capital investment, labour vs capital relations, a bourgeois merchant class, empire building based on resource exploitation, landlords" did not exist prior to the development of the thing Adam Smith called capitalism, or that it was even unique to capitalism. Just how these things work when the industrial capitalist is the principle driver of economic activity (and again, industrialists did not exist prior to the 18th century).
Without getting into a thesis, the first nations to industrialize were the ones who had the most abundent resources due to colonialism. The (fairly rigid) class structure in those nations was the foundation of the (apparent or hidden) class structures under capitalism, of which the victims of racism were placed squarely at the bottom.