What is racism and how can we end it here ♦ South Africa: To defeat all types of bigotry we must win the fight for communism here ♦ Did racism exit before capitalism? here ♦ Capitalism: the material basis of racism here ♦
What Is Racism and How Can We End It?
Red Flag Note: A letter in the last issue asked: “What exactly is racism and what does it mean to end racism? What is the plan to get from here to 0% racism? How close can we get to 0% racism right now, before communist revolution? What concrete steps would you take to eliminate racism? What could interfere with this plan?”
We tried to answer some of these questions in our pamphlet To End Racism: Mobilize the Masses for Communism (available here). A group is now working on a new anti-racism pamphlet. We hope that more readers will send in their answers, comments, questions, and suggestions.
To Defeat All Types of Bigotry We Must Win the Fight for Communism
GQEBERHA (South Africa), March 19— Racism, xenophobia, and nationalist ideology are alive as capitalism is alive in South Africa. Recently a Foreign Ministry spokesperson gushed on Twitter about denying eight Afghan asylum seekers entry to South Africa. This, he hopes, will buy him and their government sympathy from the emerging right-wing racist movement that says #putsouthafricafirst.
Politicians always use such racist slogans whenever the capitalist crisis intensifies. They do this to divide the working class by race, nationality, and religion. To put the blame on immigrant workers to divert us from uniting against capitalism. Their fear is that the masses will unite to end their rotten system.
As communists we must fight against this right-wing racist ideology. We cannot end this racism without winning the masses to communist revolution. However, we need to expose it now to lay bare the real enemies of the working-class: the capitalists and their politicians. And in a way that forges communist relations among workers.
In South Africa, as in many other parts of the world, there is a direct connection between capitalism, organised crime, anti-immigrant racism, drugs, wars, migration, human trafficking, and xenophobia. Not only do bosses win because these ills divide the working class, preventing us from uniting and fighting against our real enemies. The capitalist bosses also drive —and profit from —wars, human trafficking, slavery, lower-paid migrant labour, and crime.
Most immigrants in Africa are running from horrible conditions created by capitalist wars for resources on different parts of the continent. Some who are looking to feed their families are forced to pay gangs to take them to different countries.
The conditions created by capitalists enable local criminals to traffic members of our working-class family to different regions, where they are killed or super-exploited. They are used as slave labour in the factories and farms of capitalist bosses in Asia, Africa, and elsewhere.
Organised criminals, particularly operating in South Africa, are cooperating with elements in police departments, senior politicians, and other organised groups. They send immigrants brought here illegally to lower-paying factories and to brothels run by organised crime groups.
Local mafia politicians in places like Durban and Johannesburg fund fascist propaganda to exert political pressure against their rivals who run drug cartels and brothels in different Central Business Districts. Other politicians fuel the xenophobic sentiments, expressed and caused by frustration resulting from the massive joblessness, poverty and overall desperation engulfing the country.
To prevent us from blaming capitalism for these attacks, politicians seek to divert the masses’ anger towards our working-class siblings from other African countries and religious or ethnic backgrounds. It is the capitalist bosses who pay lower wages to some workers to make super-profits and then lower wages of all workers.
We can and must forge serious ties with our working-class siblings from all over in order to fight against this racism and to defeat nationalism. Immigrant workers have a key role to play in the fight for communism.
As the saying goes “we only have our chains to lose.” We must reject this racist ideology in theory and in practice to unite the working class to destroy wage slavery.
A few comrades from our collective are neighbors with immigrants and also work with them. We plan to invite those we know to our collective discussions and mass events. There we can create a dialogue and forge communist working-class bonds and relationships. This will help overcome divisions, xenophobia and racism.
Ultimately, to defeat crime, racism, and xenophobia, we must defeat capitalism which feeds and fuels these social ills. Ultimately, to win against all types of bigotry we must win the fight for communism—a world without borders. Aluta continua!
Did Racism Exist Before Capitalism?
The answer is “yes,” because racism has existed in all class societies as an excuse for slavery and conquest.
Ancient empires made claims of inferiority of those they wanted to conquer or enslave. They did this to justify war and slave hunting. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle argued that some people ought to be slaves because they were so inferior mentally that they were only able to recognize that the master was rational but were not rational themselves. He said that people this inferior are better off as slaves. Aristotle said slave hunting wars are naturally “just” if their victims refuse to submit to slavery. (Aristotle, Politics, written about 2400 years ago).
There was an active slave trade in Europe during the Middle Ages, especially in Venice, and in Arab countries. A huge revolt of enslaved African people took place in Iraq in 869. Not all the slaves that were traded were Africans, but they were almost always of some other ethnicity or religion other than those that captured them. The Vikings, for example, enslaved Irish people and sent them to Iceland.
During slavery in the U. S., pro-slavery intellectuals often cited Aristotle’s justification of slavery and applied it to enslaved Africans. His idea that those conquered and enslaved would actually benefit from it became the main justification of European colonizers. They then brought the horrors of massive exploitation to Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Japanese imperialists were racist as well, regarding the Chinese and Koreans they conquered as racially inferior.
Racism is always a product of class rule, whether the rulers be slaveowners, feudal lords or capitalists. Their laws and their ideology divide those they rule and try to dehumanize those they want to conquer. They often do the same thing with religion. Rulers do this because a minority class can’t hope to exploit the masses for very long without dividing them and violently repressing those they treat the worst and exploit the most.
Because racism is always produced by class rule, the only way to eliminate it is to end classes forever with communism. Only then can the battle to destroy the ideology and culture of racism finally be won.
—Comrade in San Diego (USA)
Capitalism: The Material Basis of Racism
The letter “Questions about racism” asks interesting questions, but it seems to me that it is focused on racism as a problem separate from capitalism. This approach limits us to thinking that racism is only ideas and keeps us from considering its material base—capitalism.
Capitalism with its social relations: On one hand the bosses and their exploitation of the working masses; on the other, the workers and their status as wage slaves.
The material base of an idea is always primary. Without capitalism there will be no more racism. Racism, sexism, and the wage system are the lifeblood of capitalism. If we destroy the system and replace it with a communist system, within a certain period, life for the working masses will be completely different from what we see in the capitalist system.
I asked a friend in Mexico, “What do you think racism is?”
He answered, “It’s the hatred between people motivated by ethnic origins, skin color, usages, and customs.” A very common response in many places.
I let a few days go by and then asked him the same question, but now focusing on his work. He lives in Monterrey. He replied, “Racism is more directed towards people from rural communities. They are labeled with an insult, and they are the workforce in many factories.”
In big Mexican cities, labor is badly needed to do the toughest and lowest-paid jobs. But that work is reserved for workers from small towns and villages, who leave in search of a salary to feed their families.
In this situation, the bosses benefit from racism by labeling these workers as “uneducated” to justify paying then low wages and no benefits. At the same time, they divide them from those already established in the cities. Capitalism does not create work for everyone.
Thus we can see that only by organizing for communist revolution to eliminate wage slavery will the material basis of racism be eliminated, and at the same time capitalism will be eliminated from human history.
It is important that we understand the philosophy of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, so as not to fall into erroneous assumptions that may lead to defeat for the working masses. Our practice in putting forward communist ideas will inspire workers to fight for communism.
—Comrade in Los Angeles (USA)