My apologies for perhaps being a bit of a skunk at the picnic --- I will not specifically respond to the various postings from various comrades but instead state very simply what I believe the evidence shows ---
All the discussion about the Reconquista (the effects of which did not end in 1492 with the taking of Granada by Fernando and Isabella but with the forced conversion of the "moriscos" year later) seems to want to suggest that differences in nationality and religion were as much "racism" as the "color coded" racism that Virginia adopted over the course of close to 50 years of legislative tinkering to finally reduce black skinned "indentured servants" to chattel status while forcibly separating out the "white" indentured servants. The development of theoretical racism involving cataloguing the "races of mankind" with the hierarchical status developed in both Britain and France was, in my view, a direct result of the Atlantic slave trade. I am very skeptical that it has medieval or even early modern (15th century) antecedents ... the "right" to enslave captives goes way back into antiquity -- and there does not seem (in any of the "old texts" whether the Old Testament or the writings of the Greeks, etc.) to be EXPLICIT references to skin color --- LOTS of differences of course always existed (the word "barbarian" came from the linguistic sounds such people supposedly made -- ) About the relationship between New World slavery (and super-exploitation by other means of native peoples in the Americas by Spain and Portugal) and capitalism, I think the most important word in Marx's short statement are the words "rosy dawn" --- DAWN is the BEGINNING of the day --- and as one German speaking comrade pointed out, the translation into "primitive" accumulation in the first English translation of VOL I. of Capital was just wrong --- better one word rendering =- "primary". or "original" --- Capitalism doesn't function without an INITIAL accumulation out of which one can acquire the machines (or land for capitalist tenants in 17th century Britain) and hire the workers --- and (to again state the obvious) that initial accumulation PRE-DATES the self-perpetuating functioning capitalist mode of production. Slavery and pillage of the new world, India, etc. is part of the rise of capitalism --- but once it gets started, it has its own internal dynamic. I certainly see and respect the argument that without constant super-exploitation --- and that includes the intense super-exploitation of slaves in the cotton growing South --- the rest of the capitalist machine might have been less successful ---- but would it have been impossible? Southern planters took a very large "CUT" from the exploited labor of their slaves before the merchants got their hands on the raw cotton to deliver it to England and New England. Isn't it possible that American capitalists needed to DEFEAT the slave power to really succeed in getting the best (=lowest) price for agricultural inputs? Finally -- I would argue that until the Great Migration which one should date from the decade before WOrld War I -- until the integration of the Chicano population into industry and mining in the Southwest and (later) the opening of the air bridge from Puerto Rico to the mainland in the period after WW II, the US working class was basically a white (ethnically diverse to be sure) working class --- it is the 20th century that creates the US multicultural working class --- at least that's how I see the history. (why does that matter? I think it helps explain the unbelievable -- and very sad, awful,horrible, disgusting -- persistence of racism within large sections of the white working class. the divisions between the various European ethnic groups over the 19th century were used over and over again to break up unionization efforts -- By the 20th century, most of these folks had learned to "work together" and some had learned to "struggle" together --- but the black population had always been "in the South" or "on the margins" in the industrial heartland. --- YES, some white workers learned to welcome blacks (and Chicanos in the Southwest --- see the film SALT OF THE EARTH for some optimistic dreaming) but the great jobs machine that integrated all those waves of European immigrants into the working class over the course of the 19th century (and the 20th up to WW I) turned off in the 1950s --- just when the great migration had reached critical mass in many urban industrial centers. THere the internal migrants (including Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans moving to urban areas) found less opportunity as the 20th century progressed --- creating the competition for jobs that in the early 19th century led "native" workers to support exclusion of the Irish etc. from jobs.) [Side issue: The struggle of black Americans for full citizenship had an important side-effect -=== the 1965 reform of immigration law throwing out the old quota system and substituting family unification led to a big upsurge in immigrants of color which exploded the percentage of workers of color in the US population --- and the Reagan "reform" which gave citizenship for millions of previously "illegal" immigrants was an important step in that direction ... which of course gave the racists even MORE to complain about and be resentful about ...] Getting the working class to acknowledge itself as a multiracial class for itself has been the problem for American socialists since the first socialist made the first speech --- (and that sentence wins the award for obviousness --- for which I self-critically apologize --- I do have a habit of saying what is obvious too often!)_ 'Nuff said (for now) --- solidarity, stay safe, (Mike Meeropol) On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 2:57 PM Andrew Pollack <acpolla...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> Thanks to the comrades who've correctly cited alternative examples of >> when and how racism was constructed. >> > Another needed corrective: examples of countries and/or industries in > which capital did not rely primarily on race to structure its labor force. > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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