Racism is a product of capitalist society

“Competition is the completest expression of the battle...which rules in modern civil society. This battle, a battle for life, for existence, for everything, in case of need a battle of life and death, is fought not between the different classes of society only, but also between the individual members of those classes. Each is in the way of the other, and each seeks to crowd out all who are in his way, and to put himself in their place.” Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England

The Socialist Party has long pointed out that the fight against racism is an indispensable element in, and part of, the struggle for working-class emancipation. The capitalist class can be effectively challenged only by the economic and political strength of a united working class. If white workers are to free themselves from capitalist exploitation, they must contribute to the building of a labor movement that embraces the struggles of minority workers against racism.

That the vast majority of blacks and whites are workers is the key to understanding racism as a social problem. Job competition and class divisiveness, rather than class consciousness and unity, are an old story. The real conflict today is not between blacks and whites, but between the social classes, between the capitalist class and the working class.

There is, in the conditions laid down by capitalism, a constant competition between all workers, individually and collectively, for access to the jobs they need to secure a livelihood. The demarcation of black and white is a false and deliberately nurtured breach in the ranks of the working class. It is used to distract workers from the ultimate source of their employment problems under capitalism.

White workers who heretofore have been quiet on the subject of race, but who are increasingly threatened with layoffs and other ramifications of capitalism's present economic crisis, are becoming resentful not of the economic condition, along with the economic system that generates the condition of insecurity, but of black workers who, like themselves, merely want the opportunity to live healthful and decent lives.

Blacks are not alone in trying without success to secure economic security for themselves and their families. Lack of it is not a condition peculiar to the black worker. It is a condition common to the entire working class. Millions are unemployed, and millions more will follow them as the economy of capitalism is faced with worsening crises. If workers, black and white alike, are to achieve the economic and social well-being all working people desire, they will have to come to recognize that not a race, not a color, stands between them and their realizable dreams. What stands between them and what we all want is a social class, the capitalist class, that controls the means of wealth production and utilizes labor like any other commodity. All workers, some with more success than others at given times, must sell their abilities to the owners of industry and the social services. No race, as such, controls the tools and jobs. It is a class, the capitalist class.

Capitalism will promote racism and discrimination everywhere. The solution to inequality is not to share it or spread it around, but to root out its capitalist cause. Capitalism cannot deal with these problems. Indeed, capitalism is the source of many of them and can no more eliminate these social byproducts of its existence than a leopard can change its spots. Few problems demonstrate more graphically the vicious and antisocial characteristics that the present social system engenders and prolongs than racism. Moreover, that problem has, time and again, exposed the hypocrisy and opportunism of politicians and various reformers. Decades of lip-service and legislative action have had only limited impact on some of the more overt effects of racism. The record of failure that marks decades-long efforts to eliminate racism attests to the impossibility of overcoming that evil by a narrow and contrived approach to any or all of its manifestations. It illustrates the need to treat those manifestations, not in isolated frameworks, but in their full social context. Bluntly stated, the negative results to date are due to the fact that the basic cause of racism hasn’t been admitted, let alone addressed. One thing is certain. So long as the destructive competitive spirit generated by capitalism continues to permeate every aspect of society, racism will not only prevail, in many respects it will grow worse. For it is primarily a product of the conflicts generated among workers of all races as a result of the competition for jobs, housing and social services, all of which are steadily falling further below the need and the demand.

Capitalism is providing the social context for an upsurge in naked racism. All workers are hurt by—and thus have an interest in actively resisting—racism. The capitalist class that controls and profits from the wealth produced by working people clearly benefits from racism because it enables employers to impose lower wages on minority workers and thus increases capitalist profits. Further, racist ideology among the working class divides it, weakening its ability to resist the austerity now being imposed by the ruling class. In fact, racism has in the past, and will continue in the future, to pit worker against worker and to prevent them from taking collective action against capitalism. In this way, U.S. racism acts as a powerful force militating against working-class solidarity and is as such one of the main pillars of capitalism. In implementing the austerity aimed at boosting profits at the expense of workers generally, the ruling class has not hesitated to fan the flames of racism. Capitalism is generating a social atmosphere in which racist ideology and racist violence can grow.

All workers have a stake in fighting racism. The lower wages paid minorities and high minority unemployment rates increase job competition and thus exert a downward pressure on all workers’ wages. As a result, capitalists reap every higher profits from the working class as a whole. The fight against racism must challenge the capitalist status quo that reinforces it. For example, under capitalism, there are a limited number of jobs. Accordingly, white workers tend to see gains for minorities as coming at white workers’ expense. At the same time, the disproportionate share of unemployment borne by minorities and the failure of the labour unions to fight on their behalf has left millions of jobless minority workers without access to the economic power they might otherwise have to defend themselves.

A movement to defeat racism once and for all must seek to replace the racist social institutions, artificial economic scarcity and profit motive of capitalism with a collectively owned and democratically administered economy that produces on the basis of satisfying human need. In the face of the upsurge in racism, workers must link the demand for an end to the more intense exploitation and oppression suffered by minorities to the class struggle for socialism. For the struggle against racism cannot be successful unless and until it is transformed into a force for building the working-class unity needed to end exploitation generally. If workers want to end the misery engendered by the capitalist system, it is necessary that they recognize that racial antagonisms are a tactical measure of capitalism to prevent working-class unity. A working class, conscious of its potential and the means to achieve a livable world for all, can put an end to economic insecurity and the interracial distrust it breeds by putting an end to capitalism.

"Capitalism has ever striven to keep the workers divided. Without division in their ranks capitalism could not and cannot preserve its rule of human ruination. Nothing was more effective to that end than the fomenting of racial animosities and racial conceit. These means capitalism employed and still employs. The successful use thereof has kept labor a dislocated giant." Daniel De Leon