“You can’t have capitalism without racism.” These simple words were delivered in a speech in 1964 by the great revolutionary martyr Malcolm X. More than sixty years later, they are as true as the day they were spoken.
Formally, we live in a democracy where all have access to equal opportunity, and where racial discrimination is prohibited by law. The truth is far uglier. Far from being an unfortunate legacy of a barbaric past, systemic racism is not only alive, but thriving. And the marks of this scourge are everywhere.
Immigrants and racialized workers are some of the worst paid and most hyper-exploited in society. They are over-represented in temporary, contract, or part-time positions, are more likely to be unemployed than whites, and face higher levels of poverty, food insecurity, and illness.
They are also the targets of a racist state. In Toronto for example, police are twice as likely to use force against Black people. For Indigenous people, things are even worse. They represent only five per cent of the general population but account for 28 per cent of federal inmates, and they are over ten times as likely to be shot and killed by police than white people.
The most appalling manifestation of racism in Canada is the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people, which is part of a bloody legacy stretching all the way back to the beginnings of Canadian capitalism. Today, many Indigenous people live in conditions rivaling third-world countries, where dilapidated housing, chronic hunger, and boil-water advisories are facts of life. These barbaric conditions have led to an ongoing suicide crisis on one reserve after another.
Liberal politicians love to cry crocodile tears and pretend like Canada is a country with a checkered past slowly moving toward equality. In reality, as the crisis of capitalism intensifies, the ruling class is doubling down on oppression. Carney’s Liberals have spent their first months attacking immigrants with Bill C-2, stripping due process for migrants and refugees, and steamrolling Indigenous land rights with Bill C-5 so corporations can plunder natural resources.
Given all this, it is no surprise that powerful mass movements have sprung up like Idle No More and Black Lives Matter, with young people at the forefront of the struggle.
Despite the breadth and strength of these movements, each has come and gone and systemic racism remains. Why is this? Some have drawn pessimistic conclusions—that racism is just part of “human nature”.
This sentiment is understandable, but it is wrong. Racism has not always existed, and it will not always exist in the future. But in order to end it, it is first necessary to understand it correctly.
The roots of racism
Racism didn’t fall from the sky. It is connected to and conditioned by the society it springs from.
Capitalism is a system based on inequality, exploitation, and oppression. The overwhelming majority of the population is working class, and it is we who create the wealth of society through labour. And yet, society is dominated by a tiny group of billionaires, who own most of this wealth and reap its benefits, while the rest are threatened with poverty and starvation. How is this possible?
In order that the few can dominate the many, capitalism needs the state: the legal system, the courts, and above all, force, in the shape of the police and military. However, the millions of oppressed people massively outnumber the ruling class. A united revolutionary movement of the masses could topple this entire rotten edifice in an instant. Therefore, it is not possible for capitalism to rule using force alone: it also requires ideology that justifies its rule and facilitates exploitation.
This is the real role of racism. It justifies inequality and divides workers along racial lines. It is the age-old tactic of “divide and rule”: they want us fighting over the scraps from their table so that we won’t unite and fight against the real class enemy.
It also justifies capitalism’s drive toward imperialist domination and war. Every new intervention in the Middle East is combined with politicians whipping up Islamophobia at home.
And when the system inevitably enters into crisis, the ruling class has a convenient scapegoat to take the blame. We are told it’s the immigrants who take all the jobs and drain social services dry so that we won’t place responsibility where it really belongs—on the capitalists and their system that creates unemployment and austerity.
A product of capitalism
Of course, racism is hardly new. But this does not mean racism is simply “human nature”. Before capitalism, concepts of race like we have today did not exist. Racial ideology is a product of capitalism, and the two were born together.
The colonization of the Americas from the 16th century onward was an essential part of capitalism’s rise. Profits and resources from the colonies fuelled the growth of industry back in Europe.
The colonizers developed new ideologies to justify their rule. The “Doctrine of Discovery” formulated by the Catholic Church declared that lands not inhabited by Christians were terra nullius, or “nobody’s land”, available to be discovered and claimed. European scholars and clergymen created racial theories that “proved” that the Indigenous peoples were subhuman, thus justifying mass murder and plunder.
In the U.S., racism was used to strengthen the bonds of slavery. In the early 17th century, plantations in the Southern colonies were worked by a mixture of white and black slaves and indentured servants. The whole period was one of intense class struggle, with periodic uprisings challenging the rule of the nascent bourgeoisie. In the greatest of these, Bacon’s Rebellion of 1676, black and white slaves and indentured servants united to fight against their common exploiters, and even burned down the Virginia state capital. Though the rebellion failed, the spectre of a united class struggle shook the exploiters to their core. Eventually, they began showing preferential treatment to whites—to make slaves more easily identifiable, but also as a “divide and rule” tactic to prevent future rebellions along the same lines. Racist ideology flowed from this.
These examples show how racism is not simply the product of abstract ideology divorced from material reality. Racism serves the interests of the ruling class.
This is what makes the words of Malcolm X so profound. There can be no such thing as an anti-racist capitalism.
Today, millions of workers of all races face the same problems: low wages, skyrocketing housing costs, and crippling debt. If workers united in a militant class struggle, it could raise living standards for all—and threaten capitalism with its overthrow. This is why the ruling class promotes this poison.
It’s also why communists are—and always have been—militant fighters against racism, as well as any other attempt to divide the working class along ethnic, gender, religious or national lines.
If we want to end racism, then superficial tweaks to the system will not suffice. We have to tear it out from the roots—and that means socialist revolution. This revolution will finally deprive racism of the conditions in which it festers, and lay the basis not just for better living standards for all, but for genuinely human relations free from prejudice, bigotry, and racial hatred.
