Race and Capitalism

What is racism? This is clearly not a simple question. And there will be many different opinions. In my view, "racism" is a doctrine associated with the complex of  European imperialism, capitalism, and Christianity.

For the last 600 years, Europeans have rampaged around the world, stealing land (on a continental scale), plundering natural resources, and murdering or enslaving all those who resisted. And everyone resisted.

All that genocide, enslaving, and looting ought to have been seen as reprehensible and contrary to the religion that Europeans spread, along with smallpox, wherever they went. Three of the Ten Commandments of the Christian religion are:

• Thou shalt not steal
• Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house/as
• Thou shalt not kill

These commandments are not vague or ambiguous. They are not open to exceptions or interpretations. God said, Do not steal. They stole. God said, Do not covet. They coveted. God said, Do not kill. They killed.

So the European imperialist project was fundamentally immoral by European's own standards.  

However, the religious establishment (including the Protestants) that preached this morality was itself very much in favour of imperialism and made common cause with capitalists. The Christian establishment benefited in two ways. Firstly, the survivors of European invasion often converted, expanding the sphere of political influence of the church. And secondly, in return for absolution, the murderous, looting capitalists made lavish donations to the churches, making them unimaginably wealthy.

Still, all that covetousness, stealing, and murder required some kind of rationalisation. The brightest minds of the British Empire bent to the task, and the philosophy of liberalism was one product of this. But liberalism alone doesn't justify all that immorality. 

The idea that there are distinct "races" of human beings isn’t simply about difference. "Race" was always a hierarchy, with pale-skinned Europeans at the top and people with dark skin on the bottom. In the racist mind-set, dark-skinned people were human enough to be raped, but somehow not human enough to be protected by the Ten Commandments.

The irony of judging people by their skin colour in brought out in the many aphorisms that we have in English that counsel against superficial judgements:

• Don't judge a book by it's cover
• Beauty is skin deep.
• All that glitters is not gold.
• Appearances can be deceiving.
• All fur coat and no knickers
• Still waters run deep.
• The proof of the pudding is in the eating.

“Race” was never about race. It was always about justifying capitalist immorality. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount didn't apply if "the other races" were less than human. The "race" doctrine allowed Europeans to convince themselves that this was the case. Which in turn allowed them to act without any moral constraints: genocide, murder, rape, theft. There was no sin that European capitalists would not commit to in pursuit of profits.  

When it comes to European history, everything is about a handful of psychopaths greedy for wealth and power; using the rest of us as pawns in their vicious games.