Issue Analysis #3 - Abolish Capitalism: The Solution to Institutional Injustice

                                    

                                          
Drew Gaither
                          
Professor Brown 
                          
Honours Global Issues 
                          
7 October 2020
                          
Issue Analysis 3 – Abolish Capitalism: The Solution to Institutional Injustice
                          
First and foremost, the issue of slavery cannot be overstated. The very moral nature of kidnapping people from their homeland, chaining them up, and forcing them to work against their will is so perverse and appalling that it should make the blood boil of anyone listening to the recounts of it. Colonialism, mercantilism, and capitalism were fundamental economic driving forces in this institution. After the end of slavery, freed slaves and their decedents were BARRED from amassing ANY sizeable amount of wealth, capital, or political power; this, coupled with racial attitudes and violence and bigotry to justify such an injustice, became the plight of people of colour in America. That being said, should America pay reparations to the decedents of slaves? No, and here is why: the very nature of our ECONOMIC SYSTEM—capitalism—should be CHALLENGED as an "ethical" and "legitimate" system and thus renders null and void the idea of CONVENTIONAL reparations (to be unconventional conventionalists you must think OUTSIDE of the BOX - Harry Houdini). When the United States broke away from Great Britain, ending the mercantilist system (and by relation colonial feudalism), it adopted in the vein of the French the capitalist system we now live in today. 
                          
Capitalism requires the concept of capital, capital being the total sum of the value of a labour output (surplus) and the value of the means of production used to create it. What this means for slavery has to do with the origin of this capital. A capitalist, i.e. the investor or owner of the means of production (stockholders, CEOs, Bankers, et cetera) had to have gotten their money from somewhere, be it through hard work (a rarity if even a possibility), the luck of the draw (more likely), or inheritance (most likely). Inheritance by in large is the MOST EXTENSIVE WAY of incurring capital in America. Throughout the generations of a family, each member passes down accumulated capital to the next. While yes "new" capital can be accumulated in a lifespan, the people who typically possess the most in society, that is the top 1%, and definitely, the 0.01% get most of their wealth via inheritance: the Waltons, the Rothschilds, the Rockefeller's, House of Saude, et cetera. Alternatively, they use their parent's influence/capital to jumpstart their capital portfolios: Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, Kylie Jenner, et cetera. A combination of these two methods is also common. It is easier to incur larger amounts of capital IF YOU HAVE MORE to invest from the START (OLD MONEY, HONEY). These high profile examples are only the tip of the iceberg if you analyse every small business, corporation, real estate market, private university, and so forth in the United States from their inception. These investors invest capital that is directly linked to slavery, and all their employees (who do not get to keep most of their surplus or have control over it) are employed, at least indirectly, by American slavery hundreds of years before. 
                          
For example, the PBS video Professor Brown assigns us highlights Georgetown University, a highly profitable private university that incurred its capital and ability to grow via slave labour. In this case, inheritance is institutional, not familial. To this point, though, both familial and institutional inheritance is highly entangled with American Slave Labour, as well as exploited sharecroppers and women. In the 1600-1700s, only well-to-do white men with connections got to receive the massive amounts of frugal land shares, and many exploited the labour of slaves (people working for nothing but providing a surplus). It was not until the 1830s that even all white men could vote, many sharecroppers and tenant farmers were enslaved to conditions akin to their African counterparts, albeit they at least could walk freely at the end of the day (Nine to Five versus 24-HOUR servants. Only an 8-hour difference!) Their landlords, however, reaped both their surpluses and the surpluses of the African slaves, and then PASSED IT DOWN their PRIVATE river through the generations. Karl Marx highlights that a capitalist's legitimacy is invalidated by the fact that "their" capital is merely someone else's exploited labour surplus. Thus to be able to produce more surplus requires the continual exploitation of a person's labour. While you may contribute to the revenues of $1,000,...(ʬ) USD depending on where you work, you may only get to see a meagerly $7-10 USD go back to your pocket. The rest is paid OUT to the CAPITALIST, who is only in such a position because they had the capital from SOMEONE ELSE'S exploitation. By in large in America, slavery was the most pervasive form of exploitation as instead of a meagrely $7-10/hr (today), you worked for NOTHING except the necessary FOOD, CLOTHING, and SHELTER to keep you alive long enough to CHURN UP THE SURPLUS. 
                          
While the idea of writing blank checks to decedents of slaves does somewhat account for the lack of accumulated wealth over time for African Americans, it accepts the PREMIS of capitalism. You are merely GIVING capital, taken from someone else's EXPLOITATION (A NEW GENERATION'S EXPLOITATION), and giving it to a percentage of PAST-EXPLOITED people. This (A) does not challenge the very nature of the economic system itself, and (B) does not address exploited immigrants, other oppressed groups, indigenous groups, the LGBTQ  community, AND by-in-large all MOST OF THE AMERICAN CITIZENRY (the proletariats—ALL WORKERS in the U.S.). I disagree with the economist in the video who is against reparations when he ascribes that the only reason black people are poor is because of poverty itself. There is INDEED a direct correlation between African Americans being locked out of economic capital and political power; and their disproportionate rates of poverty, incarceration, deaths, and discrimination. I do, however, agree with his statement that it is POVERTY AS A WHOLE that should be addressed, not THEIR specific poverty. I think we can recognise the FACTORS (the mechanisms of THE MACHINE) that went into why things are the way they are while simultaneously seeking broader solutions. 
                          
A system that allows for the exploitation of people, to the far extreme of physically enslaving people to the softer extent of wage slavery, is fundamentally IMMORAL and ANTIQUATED. The only reason slavery arose was because it was profitable; it was because capital could be incurred that such practices were permitted. Still to this day, black Americans are PHYSICALLY, MORALLY & SEXUALLY ENSLAVED (at a disproportionate rate to white people); it is called the PRIVATE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. The THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT allows FOR SLAVERY as a means of PUNISHMENT. Companies like JcPenny's, Victoria's Secret, McDonald's, Wendy's, Walmart, Starbucks, Sprint, Verizon, and American Airlines use PRISON LABOUR to produce part of their surplus (to name a few corporations). Here they pay cents an hour while raking in much much more in revenue capital.  More and more laws are written just so that these companies can have more labourers. The only way to make actual reparations to decedents of slaves, and all those still exploited, is to ABOLISH CAPITALISM and REPLACE IT with a socialist/communist/Marxist/anarchist/FORWARD system. 
                          
Despite the inaccurate description of such a system in the Realist modules for this year's course (I was not happy about that), these systems at their core seek to put the OWNERSHIP of both the means of production and the labour surplus in THE HANDS of the PEOPLE themselves. After all, WOULD YOU EXPLOIT yourself? Instead of a shareholder using their slavery-tainted capital to determine what a company does and how much to pay you out of your own profits, you yourself use your own capital to DETERMINE via DEMOCRATIC ELECTIONS what should be done. This is not the U.S.S.R., or China, or Venezuela or any other STATE-CAPITALIST country (where capital and the means of production is CONCENTRATED in the hands of state bureaucrats, not the people), and it is not any bourgeois socialist country like Sweden, Germany, or Canada (which STILL EXPLOIT LABOURERS via capitalism). The system I speak of is not yet ENTIRELY CONCEIVED as capitalism has yet to be overthrown/die; although we are in latent-stage capitalism, so the END IS SO SERIOUSLY NIGH. THE ALTERNATIVE is there, but it has yet to WARD OFF its IMPOSTERS and the MENANCING ARMS of the STATES PROTECTING CAPITALISM (the United States is the most pervasive, stubborn, and idiotic of Capitalism's protection). A socialist system WOULD TRULY EQUALISE decedents of slaves and slaveowners; there would be NO UNEQUAL DISTRIBUTION of capital because CAPITAL itself would CEASE TO EXIST. That mixed with an honest acknowledgement of the grave moral depravity of American slavery would serve society FAR BETTER than some CHECK written to only DIRECT DESCENDENTS of slaves with money TAKEN from the EXPLOITED WORKERS OF TODAY.