“The discovery of gold and silver in America,” Marx wrote, “the uprooting, enslavement and entombment in the mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercialized hunting of black skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.” Capitalism, Marx concluded, “came into the world dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.”
Ancient or classical slavery was not justified by racist explanations or limited to people identified as “racially different.” Neither was the slavery that continued under feudalism. When capitalists reinstituted large-scale slavery in the 16th century, especially in the Americas, they soon justified it by skin color.
In the 15th through the 17th centuries, English lords enclosed the common land that peasant farmers had used for farming and forage, pushing peasant families into cities. Parliament passed laws punishing homelessness and begging. Some were forced into factory work. Others were forced into indentured servitude in Australia and the Americas.
Starving European laborers of Jamestown, Virginia, saw that Native American societies had no class divisions, state or private ownership of land. They worked cooperatively and had plenty of food. One in seven settlers deserted to the Powhatans. African slaves also fled to Indian communities. Every treaty the English made with Native American nations included a bounty for returning escaped slaves.
Early capitalism created a multi-ethnic maritime proletariat. English, Irish and African sailors worked together, and rebelled together. They saw indigenous people of the Caribbean living together in harmony, without wage slavery. Some sailors mutinied, some escaped. Thousands returned to Europe to spread the vision of a communalist life.
Most 17th century laborers in the British colonies were bound to years of servitude. Europeans and Africans often saw each other as natural allies. Planters feared this rebellious unity. They enacted servant and slave codes. Africans were defined as slaves for life. Those European servants who survived servitude were promised farmland and positions in the militia.
Capitalists developed racist ideology to justify the enslavement of darker-skinned people, particularly sub-Saharan Africans and indigenous people in the Americas. They invented the concept of “race” although there is only one human race.
Millions of Africans were torn from their homes and shipped to slave labor camps. They grew tobacco, cotton and coffee. The majority were sent to Brazil and the Caribbean.
African resistance to slavery began in the middle passage. Enslaved men and women, often speaking different languages, united to fight for their freedom.
The kidnapping of Africans combined brutal class oppression and super-exploitation. Enslaved persons produced the wealth that provided the capital for industrialization. As property, slaves constituted the largest capital reserve in the United States.
British capitalists also accumulated fortunes from the slave trade, from the profits of slave plantations and mines, and from the theft of native land.
Racist ideology justified enslavement and super-exploitation. In the US, it divided laborers of European, African and Native American ancestry. The division of labor and super-exploitation were enforced by the murderous police forces that came out of anti-Indian militias, slave patrols and strikebreakers.
At the same time, the creation of a working class composed of workers of different “races,” including immigrants from Asia, Europe and Latin America, meant that uniting in class struggle against the capitalist exploiters has required the working class to fight against racism. However, the final victory against racism will require an end to capitalism.
The European invasion of America accelerated the expansion of capitalism to every corner of the world. It created a world market for goods and labor. As it became dominant worldwide, racism became a global ideology and practice, a permanent and indispensable feature of capitalism everywhere.
This world market set the stage for the development of capitalism into imperialism. Imperialism intensified competition among capitalists. This intensified the exploitation of the working class in general, and the super-exploitation of workers with darker skin, especially black workers.
Imperialism rested on the racist super-exploitation of the working masses of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and the Pacific. Anti-imperialist movements in the 20th century combined a hatred of racist exploitation with nationalist illusions. The brutal exploitation of black workers in South Africa (see below) has revealed this to be a fatal error.