Capitalism is White Privilege, White Privilege is Capitalism.

[Ken Burch]

Last edited Thu Jul 23, 2015, 03:43 AM - Edit history (4)

Each depends on the other. Each preserves the other.

POLICE TERRORISM AGAINST PoC EXISTS TO PRESERVE CAPITALISM AND TO KEEP IT MAINLY WHITE.

We will never be purely socialist, as we have never been purely capitalist, but the ultimate defeat of racism, sexism, homophobia, trans phobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism and all other forms of bigotry and group hatred, personal and structural requires the restructuring of our economic model so that everyone feels a deep, basic sense of economic security and everyone has a real say in the major decisions that affect us all. We can only end hatred when we end fear, and we can only end fear when we end want and the possibility of being kept in want or forced into it.

The struggle against lethal structural hate goes on nonetheless, and we need to all be a part of it, we need to work to STOP POLICE TERRORISM NOW, but that struggle will most likely continue as long as "market values" call the tune in this land...because the market wants the police to kill people, and wants as many of us as possible to hate and fear each other...to fight each other(and if need be, to be driven to kill each other) rather than to unite WITH each other in a Majority For Justice.

#JusticeForSandra
#SayHerName
#BlackLivesMatter
#LatinoLivesMatter
#FirstPeoplesLivesMatter
#WorkersLivesMatter
#JoblessLivesMatter
#JusticeAndUnityMatter
#WeAreOnTheSameSide

[LWolf]

1. STOP POLICE TERRORISM NOW

Yes. While we want candidates to address this, in reality, we shouldn't be waiting another 2 years for a newly elected president to somehow solve it from the top. Too many lives are being lost while we wait for an election. Candidates might have great ideas, and promise great things, but we need to stop it NOW, not in 2017.

While I think there is not just one source of racism, the economic model based on haves and have nots, and on competition in less than friendly arenas, to put it mildly, is a definite structural support for distrust and hate.

This is a strong foundation to moving forward in the bigger picture: "We can only end hatred when we end fear, and we can only end fear when we end want and the possibility of being kept in want or forced into it."


Meanwhile, what do we do now? Where does it start? On the streets, with witnesses paying attention, I hope, but where does the process of restructuring law enforcement start, right now? Probably it needs to happen at local levels, with people showing up to city council meetings, demanding that changes begin in their local police departments.

[Cheese Sandwich]

3. ^This

This is an emergency. People need to hear action and solutions up front.

If we want to end police terror then we will need a sort of revolutionary change to make it happen. It does need the local movements. And we also need to raise consciousness with a national movement.

And smash capitalism all day. Yes the capitalist system does enforce a racial caste system.

[apnu]

2. Capitalism, by definition, has nothing to do with white privilege. But people do

Capitalism: noun: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state.

The above has nothing to do with white privilege.

The people functioning as capitalists, talking for and about capitalism however, have a lot to do with white privilege. They are the embodiment of it actually. Turn on CNBC on any given day and see. These same people like to run to Capitalism for cover from their own greed and selfish exploitation. They're at the top and want nothing more than to stay there and they'll pervert anything, including and especially capitalism, to keep their status.

They like to run to cover on every subject saying the "free market" says its OK. Its a crock of nonsense.

The problem is the people.

[Ken Burch]

4. The problem is rich white people, a tiny minority of the American population

using fear of PoC (hatred and fear are always essentially the same)to preserve their power as capitalists and to keep capitalism, on the corporate level, a largely white(and overwhelmingly cis male and heterosexual) superstructure(with a handful of PoC, female and gay and lesbian capitalist "success stories"-we haven't had any major examples of trans capitalists as yet, though a few will no doubt emerge or be invented by the system in the years to come-being tolerated by the straight white overlords in the name of perpetuating the "anyone can make it-so nobody has any excuse for NOT making it" canard).

Even the situations where wealthy PoC still face day-to-day oppression-the "Chris Rock still gets pulled over for DWB even though he's CHRIS FREAKING ROCK!" examples that get brought up here over an over again, and whose validity nobody here has actually challenged, despite what sometimes gets implied-are part of the connection between white privilege and capitalism. Those incidents happen because the white capitalist power structure will always use any means at its disposal to remind the "successful" prominent non-white figures, even the wealthy ones, that their success "doesn't count"-that, no matter what, they will always be kept in a subordinate position even among the other successful people. This is tied to race, yes, but also to greed and to power. If PoC, women, LGBTQ people and people of other minority status are allowed to feel as fully comfortable in their success, this ultimately endangers white cis male heterosexual capitalist power-it threatens to open the doors to the mansion too wide. This is why efforts at creating successful widespread PoC, LGBT, female and other oppressed group capitalism will always be crushed-something Malcolm X realized in the last two years of his life, when he saw the futility of Elijah Muhammad's notion of liberation through black separatist capitalism and sought alternatives to "market values" in the struggle for freedom from oppression.

There is an intersection of race, gender and class-we may have different Venn Diagrams for it, but it's there. And that intersection has to be addressed if we're ever to have an oppression-free country-which is, after all, the goal I think we all share

[cprise]

5. Definition isn't really accurate, ignores history

Capitalism isn't the same thing as private trade. They overlap, but the former has a specific goal of amassing wealth to get the artisans and the public to work for large projects and business ventures; This is done using abstractions like money and corporations that insulate a capitalist class from personal liability and hardship. Meanwhile, any non-corporate structures that would drive hard bargains are de-legitimized -- dealing with individuals in the labor pool is 'hard enough'.

And yet, aren't individuals also a threat if they cannot be bought? Maybe ownership of people is the ultimate tool of 'investor confidence', enough to spur a new system into being.

An argument can be made that capitalism was founded on slavery and invented racism to enhance capitalism's social structure - A demographic wellspring of individuals that have no negotiating ability at all. So if capitalism replaced feudalism, racism replaced the serfdom aspect. Eventually, technology and fossil fuels allowed the system to ban overt slavery, but people are still attracted to racist tropes as a source of identity. (Another way of putting it is that if people were no longer serfs 'married to the land', the new mobility of capitalism would create a void in people's sense of identity that racism seems to fill.)


Another take on this...

Are corporations persons or property? You see, those two things are still not mutually-exclusive in the system today. The buy-able corporate "person" has lead to the rewarding of capitalist sell-outs while wealth is extracted from the pensions of people who labored for those bought corporations.