Slavery and the origins of racism

by Lance Selfa

IT IS commonly assumed that racism is as old as human society itself. As long as human beings have been around, the argument goes, they have always hated or feared people of a different nation or skin color. In other words, racism is just part of human nature.

epresentative !ohn L. "awson, a member of #ongress after the #ivil $ar, insisted that racial prejudice was %implanted by &rovidence for wise purposes.' Senator !ames "oolittle of $isconsin, a contemporary of "awson(s, claimed that an %instinct of our nature' impelled us to sort people into racial categories and to recogni)e the natural supremacy of whites when compared to people with darker skins.* +ore than a century later, ichard ,errnstein and #harles +urray produced The -ell #urve, an .//0page statistics0laden tome that purported to prove innate racial differences in intelligence. Today(s racists might don the mantel of science to justify their prejudices, but they are no less crude or mistaken then their *1th century forebears.

If racism is part of human nature, then socialists have a real challenge on their hands. If racism is hard0wired into human biology, then we should despair of workers ever overcoming the divisions between them to fight for a socialist society free of racial ine2uality. 3ortunately, racism isn(t part of human nature. The best evidence for this assertion is the fact that racism has not always e4isted.

acism is a particular form of oppression. It stems from discrimination against a group of people based on the idea that some inherited characteristic, such as skin color, makes them inferior to their oppressors. 5et the concepts of %race' and %racism' are modern inventions. They arose and became part of the dominant ideology of society in the conte4t of the African slave trade at the dawn of capitalism in the *6//s and *7//s.

Although it is a commonplace for academics and opponents of socialism to claim that 8arl +ar4 ignored racism, +ar4 in fact described the processes that created modern racism. ,is e4planation of the rise of capitalism placed the African slave trade, the 9uropean e4termination of indigenous people in the Americas, and colonialism at its

heart. In #apital, +ar4 writes:

The discovery of gold and silver in America, the e4tirpation, enslavement, and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of the continent, the beginnings of the con2uest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of black skins are all things that characteri)e the dawn of the era of capitalist production.; +ar4 connected his e4planation of the role of the slave trade in the rise of capitalism to the social relations that produced racism against Africans. In $age Labor and #apital, written twelve years before the American #ivil $ar, he e4plains: $hat is a <egro slave= A man of the black race. The one e4planation is as good as the other. A <egro is a <egro. ,e only becomes a slave in certain relations. A cotton spinning jenny is a machine for spinning cotton. It only becomes capital in certain relations. Torn away from these conditions, it is as little capital as gold by itself is money, or as sugar is the price of sugar.>

In this passage, +ar4 shows no prejudice to -lacks ?%a man of the black race,' %a <egro is a <egro'@, but he mocks society(s e2uation of %-lack' and %slave' ?%one e4planation is as good as another'@. ,e shows how the economic and social relations of emerging capitalism thrust -lacks into slavery ?%he only becomes a slave in certain relations'@, which produce the dominant ideology that e2uates being African with being a slave. These fragments of +ar4(s writing give us a good start in understanding the +ar4ist e4planation of the origins of racism. As the Trinidadian historian of slavery 9ric $illiams put it: %Slavery was not born of racism: rather, racism was the conse2uence of slavery.'A And, one should add, the conse2uence of modern slavery at the dawn of capitalism. $hile slavery e4isted as an economic system for thousands of years before the con2uest of America, racism as we understand it today did not e4ist.

3rom time immemorial=

The classical empires of Breece and ome were based on slave labor. -ut ancient slavery was not viewed in racial terms. Slaves were most often captives in wars or con2uered peoples. If we understand white people as originating in what is today 9urope, then most slaves in ancient Breece and ome were white. oman law made slaves the property of their owners, while maintaining a %formal lack of interest in the

slave(s ethnic or racial provenance.' Cver the years, slave manumission produced a mi4ed population of slave and free in oman0ruled areas in which all came to be seen as % omans.'6 The Breeks drew a sharper line between Breeks and %barbarians,' those subject to slavery. Again, this was not viewed in racial or ethnic terms, as the socialist historian of the ,aitian evolution, #.L. . !ames, e4plained:

D,Eistorically it is pretty well proved now that the ancient Breeks and omans knew nothing about race. They had another standardFcivili)ed and barbarianFand you could have white skin and be a barbarian and you could be black and civili)ed.7 +ore importantly, encounters in the ancient world between the +editerranean world and black Africans did not produce an upsurge of racism against Africans. In -efore #olor &rejudice, ,oward Gniversity classics professor 3rank Snowden documented innumerable accounts of interaction between the Breco0 oman and 9gyptian civili)ations and the 8ush, <ubian, and 9thiopian kingdoms of Africa. ,e found substantial evidence of integration of black Africans in the occupational hierarchies of the ancient +editerranean empires and -lack0white intermarriage. -lack and mi4ed race gods appeared in +editerranean art, and at least one oman emperor, Septimius Severus, was an African. Snowden concluded: There is little doubt that many blacks were physically assimilated into the predominantly white population of the +editerranean world, in which there were no institutional barriers or social pressures against black0white unions. In anti2uity, then, black0white se4ual relations were never the cause of great emotional crisesH.The ancient pattern, similar in some respects to the +ahgrebian and the Latin American attitude toward racial mi4ture, probably contributed to the absence of a pronounced color prejudice in anti2uity.I -etween the */th and *7th centuries, the chief source of slaves in $estern 9urope was 9astern 9urope. In fact, the word %slave' comes from the word %Slav,' the people of 9astern 9urope. In the +iddle Ages, most people sold into slavery in 9urope came from 9astern 9urope, the Slavic countries. In 9astern 9urope, ussia stood out as the major area where slaveholders and slaves were of the same ethnicity. Cf course, by modern0 day racial descriptions the Slavs and ussian slaves were white.. This outline doesn(t mean to suggest a %pre0capitalist' Bolden Age of racial tolerance, least of all in the slave societies of anti2uity. 9mpires viewed themselves as centers of the universe and looked on foreigners as inferiors. Ancient Breece and ome fought wars of con2uest against peoples they presumed to be less advanced. eligious scholars interpreted the ,ebrew -ible(s %curse of ,am' from the story of <oah to condemn Africans to slavery. #ultural and religious associations of the color white with light and angels and the color black with darkness and evil persisted. -ut none of these cultural or ideological factors e4plain the rise of <ew $orld slavery or the %modern' notions of racism that developed from it.

The African slave trade

The slave trade lasted for a little more than A// years, from the midJ*A//s when the &ortuguese made their first voyages down the African coast, to the abolition of slavery in -ra)il in *.... Slave traders took as many as *; million Africans by force to work on the plantations in South America, the #aribbean, and <orth America. About *> percent of slaves ?*.6 million@ died during the +iddle &assageFthe trip by boat from Africa to the <ew $orld. The African slave tradeFinvolving African slave merchants, 9uropean slavers, and <ew $orld planters in the traffic in human cargoFrepresented the greatest forced population transfer ever.1

The charge that Africans %sold their own people' into slavery has become a standard canard against %politically correct' history that condemns the 9uropean role in the African slave trade.*/ The first encounters of the Spanish, &ortuguese, and later the 9nglish with African kingdoms revolved around trade in goods. Cnly after the 9uropeans established <ew $orld plantations re2uiring huge labor gangs did the slave trade begin. African kings and chiefs did indeed sell into slavery captives in wars or members of other communities. Sometimes they concluded alliances with 9uropeans to support them in wars, with captives from their enemies being handed over to the 9uropeans as booty. The demands of the plantation economies pushed %demand' for slaves. Supply did not create its own demand. In any event, it remains unseemly to attempt to absolve the 9uropean slavers by reference to their African partners in crime. As historian -asil "avidson rightly argues about African chiefs( complicity in the slave trade: %In this they were no less Kmoral( than the 9uropeans who had instigated the trade and bought the captives.'**

Cnboard, Africans were restricted in their movements so that they wouldn(t combine to mutiny on the ship. In many slave ships, slaves were chained down, stacked like firewood with less than a foot between them, as this account describes:

The space was so low and they sat between each other(s legs, and stowed so close together, that there was no possibility of lying down, or at all changing their position, by night or by day. As they belonged to, and were shipped on account of different individuals, they were all branded like sheep, with their owners( marks of different forms.*; Cn the plantations, slaves were subjected to a regimen of *.0hour workdays. All

members of slave families were set to work. Since the <ew $orld tobacco and sugar plantations operated nearly like factories, men, women and children were assigned tasks from the fields to the processing mills. Slaves were denied any rights. Throughout the colonies in the #aribbean to <orth America, laws were passed establishing a variety of common practices: Slaves were forbidden to carry weapons, they could marry only with the owner(s permission, and their families could be broken up. They were forbidden to own property. +asters allowed slaves to cultivate vegetables and chickens so the master wouldn(t have to attend to their food needs. -ut they were forbidden even to sell for profit the products of their own gardens. Some colonies encouraged religious instruction among slaves, but all of them made clear that a slave(s conversion to #hristianity didn(t change their status as slaves. Cther colonies discouraged religious instruction, especially when it became clear to the planters that church meetings were one of the chief ways that slaves planned conspiracies and revolts. It goes without saying that slaves had no political or civil rights, with no right to an education, no right to serve on juries, no right to vote, or to run for public office.

The planters instituted barbaric regimes of repression to prevent any slave revolts. Slave catchers using tracker dogs would hunt down any slaves who tried to escape the plantation. The penalties for any form of slave resistance were e4treme and deadly. Cne description of the penalties slaves faced in -arbados reports that rebellious slaves would be punished by %nailing them down on the ground with crooked sticks on every Limb, and then applying the 3ire by degrees from 3eet and ,ands, burning them gradually up to the ,ead, whereby their pains are e4travagant.' -arbados planters could claim a reimbursement from the government of ;6 pounds per slave e4ecuted.*>

The African slave trade helped to shape a wide variety of societies from modern Argentina to #anada. These differed in their use of slaves, the harshness of the regime imposed on slaves, and the degree of mi4ing of the races that custom and law permitted. -ut none of these became as virulently racistFinsisting on racial separation and a strict color barFas the 9nglish <orth American colonies that became the Gnited States.*A

Gnfree labor in the <orth American colonies

<otwithstanding the horrible conditions African slaves endured, it is important to underscore that when 9uropean powers began carving up the <ew $orld between them, African slaves were not part of their calculations. $hen we think of slavery today, we think of it primarily from the point of view of its relationship to racism. -ut planters in

the *Ith and *.th centuries looked at it primarily as a means to produce profits for them. Slavery was a method of organi)ing labor to produce sugar, tobacco, and cotton. It was not, first and foremost, a system for producing white supremacy. ,ow did slavery in the G.S. ?and the rest of the <ew $orld@ become the breeding ground for racism=

3or much of the first century of coloni)ation in what became the Gnited States, the majority of slaves and other %unfree laborers' were white. The term %unfree' draws the distinction between slavery and servitude and %free wage labor' that is the norm in capitalism. Cne of the historic gains of capitalism for workers is that workers are %free' to sell their ability to labor to whatever employer will give them the best deal. Cf course, this kind of freedom is limited at best. Gnless they are independently wealthy, workers aren(t free to decide not to work. They(re free to work or starve. Cnce they do work, they can 2uit one employer and go to work for another. -ut the hallmark of systems like slavery and indentured servitude was that slaves or servants were %bound over' to a particular employer for a period of time or for life in the case of slaves. The decision to work for another master wasn(t the slave(s or the servant(s. It was the master(s, who could sell slaves for money or other commodities like livestock, lumber, or machinery.

The <orth American colonies started predominantly as private business enterprises in the early *7//s. Gnlike the Spanish, whose con2uests of +e4ico and &eru in the *6//s produced fabulous gold and silver riches for Spain, settlers in places like the colonies that became +aryland, hode Island, and Lirginia made money through agriculture. In addition to sheer survival, the settlers( chief aim was to obtain a labor force that could produce the large amounts of indigo, tobacco, sugar, and other crops that would be sold back to 9ngland. 3rom *7/I, when !amestown was founded in Lirginia to about *7.6, the primary source of agricultural labor in 9nglish <orth America came from white indentured servants.

The colonists first attempted to press the indigenous population into labor. -ut the Indians refused to be become servants to the 9nglish. Indians resisted being forced to work, and they escaped into the surrounding area, which, after all, they knew far better than the 9nglish. Cne after another, the 9nglish colonies turned to a policy of driving out the Indians. They then turned to white servants. Indentured servants were predominantly young white menFusually 9nglish or IrishFwho were re2uired to work for a planter master for some fi4ed term of four to seven years. They received room and board on the plantation but no pay. And they could not 2uit and work for another planter. They had to serve their term, after which they might be able to ac2uire some land and to start a farm for themselves. They became servants in several ways. Some were prisoners, convicted of petty crimes in -ritain, or convicted of being troublemakers in -ritain(s first colony, Ireland. +any were kidnapped off the streets of Liverpool or +anchester and put on

ships to the <ew $orld. Some voluntarily became servants, hoping to start farms after they fulfilled their obligations to their masters.*6

3or most of the *7//s, the planters tried to get by with a predominantly white, but multiracial workforce. -ut as the *Ith century wore on, colonial leaders became increasingly frustrated with white servant labor. 3or one thing, they faced the problem of constantly having to recruit labor as servants( terms e4pired. Second, after servants finished their contracts and decided to set up their farms, they could become competitors to their former masters. And finally, the planters didn(t like the servants( %insolence.' The midJ*7//s were a time of revolution in 9ngland, when ideas of individual freedom were challenging the old hierarchies based on royalty. The colonial planters tended to be royalists, but their servants tended to assert their %rights as 9nglishmen' to better food, clothing, and time off. +ost laborers in the colonies supported the servants. As the century progressed, the costs of servant labor increased. &lanters started to petition the colonial boards and assemblies to allow the large0scale importation of African slaves.

-lack slaves worked on plantations in small numbers throughout the *7//s. -ut until the end of the *7//s, it cost planters more to buy slaves than to buy white servants. -lacks lived in the colonies in a variety of statusesFsome were free, some were slaves, some were servants. The law in Lirginia didn(t establish the condition of lifetime, perpetual slavery or even recogni)e African servants as a group different from white servants until *77*. -lacks could serve on juries, own property, and e4ercise other rights. <orthampton #ounty, Lirginia, recogni)ed interracial marriages and, in one case, assigned a free -lack couple to act as foster parents for an abandoned white child. There were even a few e4amples of -lack freemen who owned white servants. 3ree -lacks in <orth #arolina had voting rights.*7 In the *7//s, the #hesapeake society of eastern Lirginia had a multiracial character:

There is persuasive evidence dating from the *7;/s through the *7./s that there were those of 9uropean descent in the #hesapeake who were prepared to identify and cooperate with people of African descent. These affinities were forged in the world of plantation work. Cn many plantations 9uropeans and $est Africans labored side by side in the tobacco fields, performing e4actly the same types and amounts of workM they lived and ate together in shared housingM they sociali)ed togetherM and sometimes they slept together.*I A white servants( ditty of the time said, %$e and the <egroes both alike did fareNCf work and food we had e2ual share.' The planters( economic calculations played a part in the colonies( decision to move towards full0scale slave labor. -y the end of the *Ith century, the price of white

indentured servants outstripped the price of African slaves. A planter could buy an African slave for life for the same price that he could purchase a white servant for ten years. As 9ric $illiams e4plained:

,ere, then, is the origin of <egro slavery. The reason was economic, not racialM it had to do not with the color of the laborer, but the cheapness of the labor.HDThe planterE would have gone to the moon, if necessary, for labor. Africa was nearer than the moon, nearer too than the more populous countries of India and #hina. -ut their turn would soon come.*. &lanters( fear of a multiracial uprising also pushed them towards racial slavery. -ecause a rigid racial division of labor didn(t e4ist in the *Ith century colonies, many conspiracies involving -lack slaves, servants, and white indentured servants were hatched and foiled. $e know about them today because of court proceedings that punished the runaways after their capture. As historians T.,. -reen and Stephen Innes point out, %These casesHreveal only e4treme actions, desperate attempts to escape, but for every group of runaways who came before the courts there were doubtless many more poor whites and blacks who cooperated in smaller, less daring ways on the plantation.'*1 The largest of these conspiracies developed into -acon(s ebellion, an uprising that threw terror into the hearts of the Lirginia Tidewater planters in *7I7. Several hundred farmers, servants, and slaves initiated a protest to press the colonial government to sei)e Indian land for distribution. The conflict spilled over into demands for ta4 relief and resentment of the !amestown establishment. &lanter <athaniel -acon helped organi)e an army of whites and -lacks that sacked !amestown and forced the governor to flee. The rebel army held out for eight months before the #rown managed to defeat and disarm it.;/

-acon(s ebellion was a turning point. After it ended, the Tidewater planters moved in two directions: first, they offered concessions to the white freemen, lifting ta4es and e4tending to them the voteM and second, they moved to full0scale racial slavery. 3ifteen years earlier, the -urgesses had recogni)ed the condition of slavery for life and placed Africans in a different category as white servants. -ut the law had practical effect. %Gntil slavery became systematic, there was no need for a systematic slave code. And slavery could not become systematic so long as an African slave for life cost twice as much as an 9nglish servant for a five0year term,' wrote historian -arbara !eanne 3ields.;* -oth of those circumstances changed in the immediate aftermath of -acon(s ebellion. In the entire *Ith century, the planters imported about ;/,/// African slaves. The majority of them were brought to <orth American colonies in the ;A years after -acon(s ebellion.

In *77A, the +aryland legislature passed a law determining who would be considered

slaves on the basis of the condition of their fatherFwhether their father was slave or free. It soon became clear, however, that establishing paternity was difficult, but that establishing who was a person(s mother was definite. So the planters changed the law to establish slave status on the basis of the mother(s condition. <ow white slaveholders who fathered children by slave women would be guaranteed their offspring as slaves. And the law included penalties for %free' women who slept with slaves. -ut what(s most interesting about this law is that it doesn(t really speak in racial terms. It attempts to preserve the property rights of slaveholders and establish barriers between slave and free which were to become hardened into racial divisions over the ne4t few years.

Taking the +aryland law as an e4ample, 3ields made this important point:

,istorians can actually observe colonial Americans in the act of preparing the ground for race without foreknowledge of what would later arise on the foundation they were laying.H DTEhe purpose of the e4periment is clear: to prevent the erosion of slaveowners( property rights that would result if the offspring of free white women impregnated by slave men were entitled to freedom. The language of the preamble to the law makes clear that the point was not yet race.H ace does not e4plain the law. race.;; ather, the law shows society in the act of inventing

After establishing that African slaves would cultivate major cash crops of the <orth American colonies, the planters then moved to establish the institutions and ideas that would uphold white supremacy. +ost unfree labor became -lack labor. Laws and ideas intended to underscore the subhuman status of -lack peopleFin a word, the ideology of racism and white supremacyFemerged full0blown over the ne4t generation.

%All men are created e2ual'

Oithin a few decades, the ideology of white supremacy was fully developed. Some of the greatest minds of the dayFsuch as Scottish philosopher "avid ,ume and Thomas !efferson, the man who wrote the "eclaration of IndependencePwrote treatises alleging -lack inferiority. The ideology of white supremacy based on the natural inferiority of -lacks, even allegations that -lacks were subhuman, strengthened throughout the *.th century. This was the way that the leading intellectual figures of the time reconciled the ideals of the *II7 American evolution with slavery. The American evolution of *II7 and later the 3rench evolution of *I.1 populari)ed the ideas of liberty and the rights of all human beings. The "eclaration of Independence asserts that %all menQare created

e2ual' and possess certain %unalienable rights'Frights that can(t be taken awayPof %life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'

As the first major bourgeois revolution, the American evolution sought to establish the rights of the new capitalist class against the old feudal monarchy. It started with the resentment of the American merchant class that wanted to break free from -ritish restrictions on its trading partners. -ut its challenge to -ritish tyranny also gave e4pression to a whole range of ideas that e4panded the concept of %liberty' from being just about trade to include ideas of human rights, democracy, and civil liberties. It legitimi)ed an assault on slavery as an offense to liberty, so that some of the leading American revolutionaries, such as Thomas &aine and -enjamin 3ranklin, endorsed abolition. Slaves and free -lacks also pointed to the ideals of the revolution to call for getting rid of slavery.

-ut because the revolution aimed to establish the rule of capital in America, and because a lot of capitalists and planters made a lot of money from slavery, the revolution compromised with slavery. The "eclaration initially contained a condemnation of 8ing Beorge for allowing the slave trade, but !efferson dropped it following protests from representatives from Beorgia and the #arolinas. ,ow could the founding fathers of the G.S.Fmost of whom owned slaves themselvesFreconcile the ideals of liberty for which they were fighting with the e4istence of a system that represented the e4act negation of liberty=

The ideology of white supremacy fit the bill. $e know today that %all men' didn(t include women, Indians, or most -lacks. -ut to rule -lack slaves out of the blessings of liberty, the leading head0fi4ers of the time argued that -lacks weren(t really %men,' they were a lower order of being. !efferson(s <otes from Lirginia, meant to be a scientific catalog of the flora and fauna of Lirginia, uses arguments that anticipate the %scientific racism' of the *.//s and *1//s. $ith few e4ceptions, no major institutionFsuch as the universities, the churches, or the newspapers of the timeFraised criticisms of white supremacy or of slavery. In fact, they helped pioneer religious and academic justifications for slavery and -lack inferiority. As #.L. . !ames put it, %DTEhe conception of dividing people by race begins with the slave trade. This thing was so shocking, so opposed to all the conceptions of society which religion and philosophers hadHthat the only justification by which humanity could face it was to divide people into races and decide that the Africans were an inferior race.';>

$hite supremacy wasn(t only used to justify slavery. It was also used to keep in line the

two0thirds of Southern whites who weren(t slaveholders. Gnlike the 3rench colony of St. "omingue or the -ritish colony of -arbados, where -lacks vastly outnumbered whites, -lacks represented a minority in the slave South. A tiny minority of slave0holding whites, who controlled the governments and economies of the "eep South states, ruled over a population that was roughly two0thirds white farmers and workers and one0third -lack slaves. The slaveholders( ideology of racism and white supremacy helped to divide the working population, tying poor whites to the slaveholders. Slavery afforded poor white farmers what 3ields called a %social space' whereby they preserved an illusory %independence' based on debt and subsistence farming while the rich planters continued to dominate Southern politics and society. %A caste system as well as a form of labor,' historian !ames +. +c&herson wrote, %slavery elevated all whites to the ruling caste and thereby reduced the potential for class conflict.';A

The great abolitionist 3rederick "ouglass understood this dynamic:

The hostility between the whites and blacks of the South is easily e4plained. It has its root and sap in the relation of slavery, and was incited on both sides by the poor whites and the blacks by putting enmity between them. They divided both to con2uer each.HDSlaveholders denounced emancipation asE tending to put the white working man on an e2uality with -lacks, and by this means, they succeed in drawing off the minds of the poor whites from the real fact, that by the rich slave0master, they are already regarded as but a single remove from e2uality with the slave.;6 Slavery and capitalism Slavery in the colonies helped produce a boom in the *.th century economy that provided the launching pad for the industrial revolution in 9urope. 3rom the start, colonial slavery and capitalism were linked. $hile it is not correct to say that slavery created capitalism, it is correct to say that slavery provided one of the chief sources for the initial accumulations of wealth that helped to propel capitalism forward in 9urope and <orth America.

Throughout the *I//s, what was called the %triangular trade' developed between the colonies, 9uropean mother countries ?in this case 9ngland@, and the $est African coast. Ships carrying slave0produced sugar, indigo, tobacco, or rice departed the colonies to 9ngland, where they were e4changed for manufactured goods. Ships carrying manufactured goods, fabrics, guns, and other finished products traveled from 9ngland to Africa where their cargoes were traded for slaves. Then the ships carrying slaves sailed to the colonies, where they were sold for a cargo of colonial produce to be taken back to 9nglandFand to start the circuit all over again. -y *I6/, hardly any trading town in the colonies or in 9ngland stood outside the triangular trade. The profits that were s2uee)ed

out of the triangular trade formed that capital that led to the boom that made -ritain the first major capitalist power.

The triangular trade stimulated the development of whole new industries in 9nglandF rum distillation, sugar refining, cotton manufacturing, and metallurgy ?for producing guns and shackles@. The profits from these industries, as well as from slave trading itself, helped underwrite some of the biggest names in -ritish capitalism. Two slave traders, "avid and Ale4ander -arclay, used their profits to establish -arclay(s -ank. Lloyds of London started as a coffee import house dependent on the slave trade. It later became one of the biggest insurance conglomerates in the world. The well0known sugar0refining corporation Tate R Lyle, made its first profits from slavery. &rofits from the slave trade also helped finance !ames $atts( invention of the steam engine.;7

The clearest e4ample of the connection between plantation slavery and the rise of industrial capitalism was the connection between the cotton South, -ritain and, to a lesser e4tent, the <orthern industrial states. ,ere we can see the direct link between slavery in the G.S. and the development of the most advanced capitalist production methods in the world. #otton te4tiles accounted for I6 percent of -ritish industrial employment in *.A/, and, at its height, three0fourths of that cotton came from the slave plantations of the "eep South. And <orthern ships and ports transported the cotton.

To meet the boom in the *.A/s and *.6/s, the planters became even more vicious. Cn the one hand, they tried to e4pand slavery into the $est and #entral America. The fight over the e4tension of slavery into the territories eventually precipitated the #ivil $ar in *.7*. Cn the other hand, they drove slaves harderFselling more cotton to buy more slaves just to keep up. Cn the eve of the #ivil $ar, the South was petitioning to lift the ban on the importation of slaves that had e4isted officially since *./..

+ar4 clearly understood the connection between plantation slavery in the cotton South and the development of capitalism in 9ngland. ,e wrote in #apital:

$hile the cotton industry introduced child0slavery into 9ngland, in the Gnited States it gave the impulse for the transformation of the more or less patriarchal slavery into a system of commercial e4ploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage0laborers in 9urope needed the un2ualified slavery of the <ew $orld as its pedestal.H#apital comes dripping from head to toe, from every pore, with blood and dirt.;I

acism after slavery The close connection between slavery and capitalism, and thus, between racism and capitalism, gives the lie to those who insist that slavery would have just died out. In fact, the South was more dependent on slavery right before the #ivil $ar than it was 6/ or *// years earlier. Slavery lasted as long as it did because it was profitable. And it was profitable to the richest and most %well0bred' people in the world.

Slave production was inefficient from the point of view of industrial capitalism. The comparison between the industrial <orth and the #onfederacy illustrates this. As capitalism developed it had less need to use slave labor. In -ritain in the *.th and *1th centuries, for instance, representatives of some the biggest industrial capitalists called for an end to the slave trade and even abolition. This wasn(t because industrial capitalists opposed slavery on principle, but because they didn(t like the degree to which planters won government policies favorable to them. In *./I and *.>>, the -ritish &arliament passed laws outlawing slavery.;.

In the Gnited States, the #ivil $ar abolished slavery and struck a great blow to racism. -ut racism itself wasn(t abolished. Cn the contrary, just as racism was created to justify colonial slavery, racism as an ideology was refashioned. It now no longer justified the enslavement of -lacks, but it justified second0class status for -lacks as wage laborers and sharecroppers.

acist ideology was also refashioned to justify imperialist con2uest at the turn of the last century. As a handful of competing world powers vied to carve up the globe into colonial preserves for cheap raw materials and labor, racism served as a convenient justification. The vast majority of the world(s people were now portrayed as inferior races, incapable of determining their own future. Slavery disappeared, but racism remained as a means to justify the enslavement of millions of people by the G.S., various 9uropean powers, and later !apan.

acism also remained one of the main ways that the ruling class used to keep -lacks and white workers divided. 8arl +ar4 remarked on a similar division between 9nglish and Irish workers in -ritain, comparing it to the division between -lacks and poor whites in the G.S.:

9very industrial and commercial center in 9ngland now possesses a working class

divided into two hostile camps, 9nglish proletarians and Irish proletarians. The ordinary 9nglish worker hates the Irish worker as a competitor who lowers his standard of life. In relation to the Irish worker he feels himself a member of the ruling nation and so turns himself into a tool of the aristocrats and capitalists of his country against Ireland, thus strengthening their domination over himself. ,e cherishes religious, social and national prejudices against the Irish worker. ,is attitude toward him is much the same as that of the %poor whites' to the %niggers' in the former slave states of the G.S.A. This antagonism is artificially kept alive and intensified by the press, the pulpit, the comic papers, in short, by all the means at the disposal of the ruling classes. This antagonism is the secret of the impotence of the 9nglish working class, despite its organi)ation.;1 In his famous passage on the antagonism between 9nglish and Irish workers in -ritain in the end of the *1th century, +ar4 outlined the main sources of racism under modem capitalism. -y its nature, capitalism fosters competition between workers. -osses take advantage of this in two ways: first, to deliberately stoke divisions between workersM second, to appeal to racist ideology.

Oapitalism forces workers to compete for jobs, for affordable housing, for admittance to schools, for credit, etc. $hen capitalism restructures, it replaces workers with machines and higher0paid workers with lower0paid workers. Throughout the late *1th and early ;/th centuries, G.S. bosses used the surplus of cheap labor immigration provided to substitute unskilled workers for skilled ?generally white, native workers@, %triggering a nativist reaction among craft workers.'>/ Today, restructuring in G.S. industry makes many G.S. workers open to nationalist appeals to %protect their jobs' against low0wage competition from +e4ico.

-osses seek to leverage this competition to their advantage. %8eep a variety of laborers, that is different nationalities, and thus prevent any concerted action in case of strikes, for there are few, if any, cases of Laps, #hinese, and &ortuguese entering into a strike as a unit,' advised ,awaiian plantation managers in the early *1//s.>* ,ere was a fairly stark e4ample of the bosses( conscious use of racism to divide the workforce. Today, bosses continue to do the same, as when they hire nonwhite strikebreakers against a strike of predominantly white workers. And politicians never stand above playing %the race card' if it suits them.

Oacism serves the bosses( interests and bosses foster racism consciously, but these points do not e4plain why workers can accept racist e4planations for their conditions. The competition between workers that is an inherent feature of capitalism can be played out as competition ?or perceived competition@ between workers of different racial groups. -ecause it seems to correspond with some aspect of reality, racism thus can become

part of white workers( %common sense.' This last point is important because it e4plains the persistence of racist ideas.

-ecause racism is woven right into the fabric of capitalism, new forms of racism arose with changes in capitalism. As the G.S. economy e4panded and underpinned G.S. imperial e4pansion, imperialist racismFwhich asserted that the G.S. had a right to dominate other peoples, such as +e4icans and 3ilipinosFdeveloped. As the G.S. economy grew and sucked in millions of immigrant laborers, anti0immigrant racism developed. -ut these are both different forms of the same ideologyFof white supremacy and division of the world into %superior' and %inferior' racesFthat had their origins in slavery.

$hat does this discussion mean for us today= 3irst, racism is not part of some unchanging human nature. It was literally invented. And so it can be torn down. Second, despite the overwhelming ideological hold of white supremacy, people always resisted it Ffrom the slaves themselves to white anti0racists.

Gnderstanding racism in this way informs the strategy that we use to combat racism. Antiracist education is essential, but it is not enough. -ecause it treats racism only as a 2uestion of %bad ideas' it does not address the underlying material conditions that give rise to the acceptance of racism among large sections of workers.>;OThoroughly undermining the hold of racism on large sections of workers re2uires three conditions: first, a broader class fightback that unites workers across racial linesM second, attacking the conditions ?bad jobs, housing, education, etc.@ that give rise to the appeal of racism among large sections of workersM and third, the conscious intervention of antiracists to oppose racism in all its manifestations and to win support for interracial class solidarity.

The hold of racism breaks down when the class struggle against the bosses forces workers to seek solidarity across racial lines. Socialists believe that such class unity is possible because white workers have an objective interest in fighting racism. TheSinfluence of racism on white workers is a 2uestion of their consciousness, not a 2uestion of some material bribe from the system they receive. Struggle creates conditions by which racism can be challenged and defeated.

acism and capitalism have been intertwined since the beginning of capitalism. 5ou can(t have capitalism without racism. Therefore, the final triumph over racism will only come when we abolish the source of racismFcapitalismFand build a new socialist

society.