On Capitalist Economics and Blackfolk:

A Dialogue

[The dialogue occurred originally on the Usenet discussion group soc.culture.african.american.moderated. My interlocutor was Roger Brown. His remarks are shown in Courier font]

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And the Lord shall bring thee into Egypt again with ships...

and there ye shall be sold unto your enemies for bondmen and bondwomen,

and no man shall buy you.

-- Deuter 28:68.

Capitalism is about theft: the expropriation of the land and labor of others. Its engine is greed, and its brake is unemployment. For capitalism to "work," it has to be accepted as a concomitant that some of the people the system is supposed to serve will be degraded by it. It must also be accepted that the planet itself is endangered, through both over-exploitation of its resources, as well as pollution of the environment. In my view, these negatives outweigh any positives that may be claimed for capitalism. Laws cannot change the fundamental nature of the system. Nor can you neatly separate the moral issues posed by capitalism from the economic issues which, qua system, it seeks to resolve, namely who makes what goods and services, and who gets what (and how much) goods and services. That, at bottom, is a moral question.

: Capitalism CAN involve exploitation. It doesn't, necessarily.

If you examine capitalism from the bottom up, transaction by transaction, it may appear so. When you look at the totality of capitalism, it is not so. Capitalism is grounded on exploitation. Historically, it is based on the double theft of land and labor, enforced by arms. That was not coincidental. There is no other way for capitalism to get started, and there is no other way for capitalism to sustain itself: "labor" has to be manouevred into a state of dependency, either through outright theft, as with slavery, or extortion, as with colonialism. Once that initial theft has been assimilated into the would-be natural order of things, the descendants of those who suffered the initial displacement from ancestral lands, already dependent, may be seduced by wages and the promise of capitalist goodies. The original theft however remains fundamental to the system, if not to every individual transaction within it.

: Which is why you have the labor union movement that acts as a brake
: (remember brakes?) to the unfettered power of management, through the
: power of strikes, and political power through elected
: respresentatives. Witness the recent defeat of Clinton's "Fast Track"
: trade treaty intitiatives.

The existence of labor unions, no matter how strong, does nothing to change the fundamental nature of capitalism. All it may succeed in doing, is moderating the swings. It cannot turn capitalism into a perpetual full employment system. Nor can it remove the threat to the environment and to over-exploitation of the planet posed by capitalism. Even less does the labor movement guarantee equal treatment for non-whites under the racist (white supremacist) aspect of capitalism.

: >but lacking land, and lacking community,
: If they unionize, then they have community. Land is only an asset.

Correction. If they u-n-i-t-e, then they have community. Without land, they remain dispossessed, and not in control of their own economics, and would still be subject to capitalism. If you took away the land from the Pennsylvania Dutch, they too would become wage-slaves.

: What viable alternatives are there? This is a capitalist society. To
: change that system, you can change that society, but it would be a
: monumental task.

I do not seek to change the whole society, although I wish it. What I seek is for Blackfolk in particular to unite with a view to doing for self, and controlling our own economics. Capitalism is not a necessary part of that picture. The Penn Dutch operate on other than capitalist principles, and without having the statistics I can guarantee you that the level of sickness in that society is much less than that of the society as a whole.

: If labor is paid for, it isn't stolen. If land is paid for, it isn't
: stolen. I don't see the theft here.

Like so many white folk, you claim a short memory when it suits. One word should suffice to remind: REPARATIONS!

The issue is to my mind very stark, and very simple. It is that the Order which the European has established in the world is unjust, and moreover based on the enslavement of most of the peoples of the world. The enslavement is no longer of the chattel variety, but wage-slavery is none-the-less still slavery. The land and labor of most peoples of the world have been drawn under the command and control of the European through the devices of market capitalism, aided and abetted by the incessant propaganda and modern-day witchcraft of the Western media and of Western advertising. Contrary to the propaganda, Western market capitalism is not the best guarantee of freedom either for individuals or for societies. The architects and the main beneficiaries of market capitalism long ago captured the supposedly democratic processes of the Western democracies, and these are now effectively plutocracies. These same plutocrats organize and finance the disguised plunder that is neo-colonialist market capitalism that is foisted on unsuspecting societies everywhere in the world. Democracy is but a wedge used by the Western plutocrats to pry open doors to plunder that might otherwise remain closed to Western capital, and to the Western witchcraft that are the media and advertising. (This Western witchcraft, contrary to one of the fundamental assumptions of neo-classical economic theory, is capable of generating a demand where none existed before, for such useless products, also positively harmful, as Coca Cola, cigarettes, sugar-frosted flakes, antacids, and the like, but I digress.) Moreover, this "democracy" is purely optional, since a compliant and supine dictator (eg. Mobutu, Marcos) works just as well in terms of the true program of the Western plutocracies: the neo-colonialist plunder of the land, labor and resources of the former colonies, and the effective reduction of the masses of the people of these former colonies to the status of wage-slaves. The program is the same as it always has been, whether under feudalism, imperialism, slavery, colonialism, or neo-colonialism; only the means have now changed in keeping with changing exigencies, and finds expression now through market capitalism, with "democracy" serving the same purpose vis-a-vis market capitalism, as once did Christian missionaries vis-a-vis erstwhile colonialism: it provides a slim cover of virtue, for the plunder and rapine that is the true program at work. On this analysis, it is clear to me that the moral duty of anyone faced with this program is to resist. Whether you reach to an African-centered concept of truth, harmony, justice and balance (Maat) or a European-centered concept of "natural law"--aside: the very word "nature" derives from the Kamitian "neter," and Maat was one of the "neteru," but again I digress-- I do not really care. But the African principles are there, and need simply to be reclaimed. Accommodating oneself to an unjust order is not an acceptable moral option. If that causes Euro-asilic Blackfolk, especially those who think they have "made it," to squirm a little, so be it. And if it causes the European architects and/or collaborators and/or functionaries of this unjust order to react with furious denial, that is to be expected; but they too have a moral duty, whatever the asili from which it is to spring.

: A certain level of unemployment is expected due to movement in the
: work force, which is that irreducible level that your discuss. 

No. I do not refer to "frictional" unemployment. I refer to the kind of unemployment which is necessary to keep wages and prices from spiralling out of control. Even if there were zero frictional unemployment, that issue would remain. In brief, market capitalism relies on wages and prices to signal scarcity. In the labor market, if unemployment were ever driven to zero, the market mechanism by itself would act to bid wages up as employers try to bid away workers from each other, even if unions didn't use increased leverage in a tight labor market to do the same thing. This state of affairs is dynamically unstable: either inflation ensues, or the situation corrects itself through slowdown in growth, which reduces investor confidence, which leads to recession/downturn/depression as the case may be, which leads to unemployment again. In the case of run-away inflation, artificial means would have to be adopted to brake the economy, and again unemployment must be the mechanism used to effect the braking. In other words, capitalism, qua dynamic system, needs unemployment the way a car needs brakes: it is an instrument of control. That understood, I assert merely what is obvious for all to see, namely that as capitalism jerks along in this boom/bust fashion, white supremacy seeks to ensure that the burden of acting as the control brake on the economy is borne mostly by non-white folk, primarily Blacks.

This logic works on a global scale as well as a national one. To the extent the labor markets of other countries are integrated into the global capitalist system, they, also, become braking instruments for the global capitalist system. This materialist rat-race promises prosperity to those who join in it, but the promises are ultimately false. Some will no doubt benefit, but the system is incapable of bringing prosperity, let alone meaning and value, to the lives of all. And in the meantime, the rape and plunder of the planet which it encourages -- for greed and materialist excess are the engine of the system, even as unemployment is the brake -- are certain ultimately to be planet-destroying. Yet the madness continues.

: This burden falls most heavily on the least skilled, but it also occurs
: among the highly skilled and particularly the highly specialized when
: a certain sector of the economy falters or disappears altogether.

The burden falls most heavily on non-white people. White supremacy also seeks to ensure that non-white people are the least skilled.

: it isn't an instrument of control, it is a dynamic element of the
: process, which has many other dynamic elements that you just
: enumerated. You forget the most important point; nobody controls
: capitalism. Remember Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand" concept. Therefore,
: unemployment is not a brake, 

Adam Smith's atomistic model of the economy hardly fits today's reality where huge multinational companies have come to dominate markets, and sometimes whole countries. The "invisible hand" of Adam Smith has long since been replaced by the merely "hidden" hand. As to unemployment being a brake, I think the metaphor is apt: it is what stops the dynamic system from going into an out-of-control "wage-push" inflationary spiral. Another metaphor is often used, namely that of the "overheated" economy which may quickly be "cooled down" by unemployment. Take your pick of metaphor; it doesn't change the reality that unemployment is a necessary concomitant of capitalism.

though it may unequally affect
: minorities, it is not controlled by white supremicist agenda, but
: market forces, of course.

Or, how about differences in "hard work and commitment"? Look, the simple truth is that white wealth under white supremacy requires that non-whites bear disproportionately the burden of being the unemployment brake on the system. To use yet another metaphor: white folk get the gold mine, non-whites get the shaft.

: >That understood, I assert merely
: >what is obvious for all to see, namely that as capitalism jerks
: >along in this boom/bust fashion, white supremacy seeks to ensure
: >that the burden of acting as the control brake on the economy
: >is borne mostly by non-white folk, primarily Blacks.
: Whoops, there it is. This is not the case, actually. The boom and
: busts are highly modified, obviously, by Federal intervention, for one
: thing, via dear Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve right there on
: Constitution Avenue, and various safeguards built into the stock
: markets after the different crashes.

That is true, but Mr. Greenspan hasn't yet figured out a way to do away with the necessity of unemployment as a brake to the system; federal intervention succeeds only in dampening the swings, it doesn't change the fundamental character of the economy, qua dynamic system.

: >This logic works on a global scale as well as a national one.
: >To the extent the labor markets of other countries
: >are integrated into the global capitalist system, they, also,
: >become braking instruments for the global capitalist system.
: Oh, no they don't. Some times these other countries brake us, or break
: us, as the case may be. The most important economic trend in the past
: 20 years is the globalization of the world's economy, which has
: resulted in manufacturing in many US industries moving overseas.

That is true, but it doesn't refute my broad contention. Up in Canada they say that when Uncle Sam sneezes, Canada catches a cold. Economic swings in the U.S are magnified in economies tied to the U.S economy through trade and investment. When there is a downturn in the U.S, this can induce recession or depression in dependent economies. In the Caribbean, for example, tourist dollars dry up, and workers are laid off. Likewise, commodity prices fall, causing lay-offs in countries, eg. in Africa, which depend on raw material exports to earn foreign exchange. Therefore, taking the global economy as the system under view, it still is the case that unemployment provides the brake on the system. As to the white supremacy aspect, it still remains the case also that non-whites are made to carry the main burden of acting as the brake on the system.

: And who lost jobs? Many white men lost jobs. Minorities did, too, as
: various northeast cities became the "rustbelt."

I do not claim that whites never face unemployment. I claim merely that as a group, they suffer less unemployment than non-whites, and I attribute that to the workings of white supremacy. It is under white supremacy that we have come to expect that non-whites, Blacks especially, are the "last hired, and the first fired."

: In the relatively high-paying blue collar work in the steel industry
: that was devastated by the Japanese. I've seen this firsthand, having
: worked in US Steels second largest plant. Consumer electronics moved
: overseas. We almost lost the computer industry. Most clothing is now
: made overseas. Even software engineering has moved offshore, to India,
: among other places. The auto industry lost many jobs, and sales to
: imported cars from overseas that didn't employ one American worker.

I do not claim that under capitalism, only white people work, produce, trade and invest. I claim rather 1) that unemployment is a necessary instrument of control under capitalism, and 2) that white supremacy seeks to place that particular burden on non-white folk as far as possible. Within the U.S and other Western countries white supremacy succeeds, albeit imperfectly, in that quest. Taking the economy as global, it succeeds there as well, again imperfectly.

: >This materialist rat-race promises prosperity to those who
: >join in it, but the promises are ultimately false.  Some
: >will no doubt benefit, but the system is incapable of bringing
: >prosperity, let alone meaning and value, to the lives of all.
: And why is that? Do you have a system to improve on it? Most
: alternative socialist, communist and other command economies have been
: incredible failures. Nothing gives the flexibility and the efficiency
: of capitalism.

Why do you assume that the only alternative is some form of "command" economy? There is indeed an alternative. The Iroquois had it. Traditional Africa had it. The Pennsylvania Dutch today have it. It is a communal system. It does not offer the materialist excess that capitalism does. But capitalism is doomed ultimately to fail for the simple reason (1) that its engine, which is greed, will lead to unsustainable exploitation of both the planet, and of at least some of the people subject to it, and (2) that its control mechanism--unemployment--requires the degradation of at least some of the human beings that the system is supposed to serve. Therefore, capitalism is unsustainable, and will lead either to the destruction of the planet, or to its replacement by a system that is more humane and more in harmony with nature. Communalism, for lack of a better word, is one such system.

: We as a nation, down to the poorest citizen in this nation, are an
: incredibly prosperous place, compared to the poverty of much of the
: world. This proves the success of the capitalist system, as a means of
: generating wealth for all. 

No. It proves the success of the capitalist system as a means of generating wealth for some, while causing the degradation of yet others. Even the wealth that it generates does not provide fulfillment for the wealthy, who often do not realize that true prosperity derives, not from ever-increasing numbers of gadgets and toys, but from an abundance of family and friends. Rugged individualism, which seems to go along with capitalism, is highly overrated.

: There are tremendous income disparities,
: but nothing likes what many oligarchic economies in other countries
: have.

I do not advocate oligarchy, and I note that capitalism lends itself to capture and subversion by oligarchical interests.

: And, I don't expect to get my meaning and value from an economic
: system.

The trouble is, capitalism seems to require the de-communalization of life. The erstwhile village that it took to raise a child is long gone. The extended family is a distant memory resurrected once or twice a year on certain holidays. Even the nuclear family is pretty much under siege. Capitalism and its attendant value systems caused all that. So today, in the Black community, which has been most negatively impacted by capitalism because it is denied its materialist fruit while being forced to bear the brunt of being an economic brake, we have unguided, misguided fatherless children of unemployed men reduced to the status of sperm donor. Without the supports and restraints of functioning communalism, unguided and misguided children tend to turn destructive, which is what we see happening all over America.

: >And in the meantime, the rape and plunder of the planet which
: >it encourages -- for greed and materialist excess are the engine
: >of the system, even as unemployment is the brake -- are certain
: >ultimately to be planet-destroying.  Yet the madness continues.
: Capitalism reflects the basic nature of man; self-interest. This is
: why the system succeeds. That self-interest can certainly manifest
: itself as greed, which is why it needs to be regulated, and it is.

It succeeds only partially. Its failings constitute the fatal flaw that will guarantee its ultimate collapse.

: The environmental movement has widespread support among society at
: large, with an ever increasing sphere of influence, so I won't be
: greatly worried about the planet's plundering. Some of the worst
: environmental disasters happened under the communist governments of
: East Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Indeed so. But I am attacking capitalism, not proposing communism, which I think to be much worse.

: And since those non-white Asians have been socking it to us
: economically, capitalism is really only concerned with market
: efficiencies, not the color of the marketeer.

That you use the phrase "socking it to us" proves that "efficiency" is not the sole value at work. There is something else going on besides pure capitalism, and a good part of that is white supremacy. To their credit, the Japanese and the Chinese recognized the game early on, and have been playing as good a game as they can given the cards that they were dealt. For the moment, white supremacy has the upper hand. But China's GDP is due to surpass that of the U.S sometime soon in the next century, and, guess what, they are already being referred to in the U.S as a "threat."

: I suggets you take an economics course to learn how wealth is created.
: Then get back to me, because I haven't the time to go through the
: industrialization of the West and the wealth and the power it
: developed, something completely missing in your analysis. I don't
: disagree that the above crimes occured; I do dispute it as the primary
: cause of this nation's success. Wealth is created by creating value,
: not simply through access to cheap labor and raw materials.

You say above that wealth is created by creating value, which logically would seem to require the equation: wealth = value. All well and good, but as neither the left-hand nor the right-hand side of the equation has been defined, we are no further ahead. But you go on to attempt the clarifcation that wealth is not created "simply through access to cheap labor and raw materials." In other words, if I understand you correctly, the land that white folks stole from the First Peoples had little "value" before the theft, and acquired "value" only afterwards, a "value" moreover to be attributed to that which was "created" by white folk. Likewise, the labor that white folk stole from Blackfolk had no "value" beforehand, only acquiring it after white folk "created value." How absurd!

Let's be clear. The capitalist market economy does not so much create value as assign market valuations. Those market valuations reflect scarcity more than intrinsic value, or intrinsic wealth or prosperity. A simple example will show this: without clean air, you die in minutes. Without clean water, you die in a few days. Yet the capitalist market valuation of air is zero (we don't have to pay for it... yet) and clean water is one of the cheapest commodities available to a consuming public. Why? Because these things are relatively (still) abundant. As capitalist excess leads to the pollution of the air and water, we will of course see these valuations change. We may yet have to carry around oxygen tanks on our backs, and we already have to resort to Evian to supply our clean water. Under capitalism, the once-free air, and once- free water, could yet become scarce and expensive commodities. But what value would capitalism have created thereby? Under capitalist valuation, we have the perversity that all the billions spent on "health care" by what are arguably the sickest people on the planet count as adding to "value," as do all the billions spent on lawyers and the "justice" system, not to mention prisons, law enforcement, and defense. Is all of this... "value"? Or mere valuation?

Let me come at it from another angle. When the British first went to Zululand, they tried mightily to get the Zulus to labor for them working in the mines. They did not succeed until they instituted the notorious "head tax," payable only in English currency. What was the "value" of English currency? Think about it. What is the "value" of a shilling, a paper dollar? At any rate, the Zulus could acquire the shillings needed to pay the head tax only by, guess what?, working in the mines for a wage paid in, guess what?... shillings. Pretty soon, the Zulu economy, self-reliant and abundant as it was, was wrecked, labor having been withdrawn from it, and replaced by a shilling-mediated dependency. This extortion was enforced by the gun. An early example of the Mafia-style "offer that you can't refuse."

In India, they used the salt tax to the same effect.

In America, slave labor was, in capitalist terms, presumably "cheap." That is a capitalist valuation; it is not any measure of intrinsic value. Left to themselves, Blackfolk found ways to feed, clothe, shelter, and entertain themselves. Rosewood is an example; the Black Wall Street is another. Under capitalism, backed necessarily by force, and in the service of white supremacy, such an arrangement would appear unacceptable. Chattel slavery was only an extreme example of that. But there are other variants of stolen labor that have been employed. Like the Zulu head tax and the Indian salt tax that forcibly integrated Zulu labor, and Indian labor, into service to the British Empire, America forcibly integrated enslaved African labor into service to whitefolk. After slavery, "sharecropping" achieved the same goal. Through the artifice of capitalist "valuations," sharecroppers were made so indebted that it took all of their labor just to stay financially in one place. Was that chattel slavery? No. But the sharecroppers' labor was stolen from them just as surely as the labor of kidnapped and enslaved Africans was stolen from them.

By your analysis, "value" is "created" by the thief, and the victim, who is impoverished by the theft, is merely "cheap" labor, or the former masters of "cheap" land who had added no "value."

Calculate the REPARATIONS! owed from this theft, using purely capitalist notions of "valuation" (ie. including allowance for interest and inflation) and you'll soon see the illusion of your capitalist "created value."

: You seem to overlook that outside of frictional unemployment, that a
: very, very small percentage of people are unemployed. 

No. You seem to miss the point completely, though it could not be plainer. It is that unemployment goes in cycles, along with boom/bust cycles of the economy. That does not happen by accident. It is intrinsic to the way the economy, qua dynamic system, is controlled.

: You also believe
: in some system of guaranteed work, which you haven't deliniated, and
: doesn't exist anywhere outside of a communist country. What is your
: ideal economic system, anyways?

You seem to believe that "guaranteed work" is an unnatural condition, a favor somehow to be granted. I come at it from an entirely different angle. The Zulus had full "employment," to use a capitalist concept in a non-capitalist context, before the white man came to Zululand. The Iroquois likewise. The Indians in India. Etc. I don't know about the feudal serfs of Europe. And I gather from Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo that capitalism, already then, led to a fairly miserable condition for at least some of those subject to it. If capitalism had stayed bottled up in Europe, I would have no complaint, and the rest of the planet might have escaped that particular cancerous blight. The trouble with capitalism, though, like cancer, is that it must either grow, or die, there is no in-between. And like cancer, beyond a certain point, its growth means that the host itself, in this case the planet, is threatened with extinction. I just want to beat the cancer back into remission before it's too late.

: >Look, the simple truth is that white wealth under white
: >supremacy requires that non-whites bear disproportionately
: >the burden of being the unemployment brake on the system.
: This is not a truth, but only your opinion, based on your personal
: economic theory. No more, no less. You haven't substantiated this
: theory yet.

This is not asserted as theory; it is asserted as fact. To see its validity, just look around you. (Or pull the unemployment statistics if you prefer).

: Federal intervention is the chief brake to the system, not
: unemployment.

That's like saying that the chief brake in the car you drive is yourself.

: I attribute to lower skill levels to historical discrinaion against
: blacks as the reason for higher unemployment levels. 

Ie, you attribute it to white supremacy.

: I don't account
: CURRENT white supremacy for any of these problems.

... But you seek to make the case that that's all in the past. I don't buy it. Why? Let's see... Texaco, Eddie Bauer, Rodney King, Abner Louima. Etc, etc. White supremacy is still alive and well.

: Not necessarilly, and I wouldn't accept current proof without current
: data. Most corporations are far too sensitive to the issue of
: discrmination suits.

Texaco.

: >I do not claim that under capitalism, only white people work,
: >produce, trade and invest.  I claim rather 1) that unemployment
: >is a necessary instrument of control under capitalism, and
: >2) that white supremacy seeks to place that particular burden
: >on non-white folk as far as possible.
: I know you claim this. It would be nice if you offered some evidence
: of this.

As to 1) look at cyclical unemployment data. Also, just think through the consequences of a control system that relies on wage levels to signal scarcity in the labor market, and assume that full employment has been reached. What then happens to wages? Well, in a freely functioning labor market, wages would rise, no? If there is no increase in real output, what then happens to profit, to prices? With what consequences? This thought experiment is not too difficult to run through. The mathematics of it can get hairy if you want to work it through (see Goodwin and Punzello, The Dynamics of a Capitalist Economy, 1987) but the idea is fairly simple. And again, the data support the boom/bust scenario to which the thought experiment leads.

As to 2), look also at the data. Then, again, look around you.

: All non-industrial societies, I might point out. And, you have no
: details for how it would work. Where are the communal experiments in
: the United States now? And how can you live communally on a massive
: scale, with hundreds of millions of people?

Er... I believe there were hundreds of millions of people in Africa before the white man came. Also in India, China, and the Americas. As to their having been "non-industrial," you seem to assume that industry requires capitalism. That is clearly not the case. Industry is also a feature of communism and socialism, and can be adapted to communalism also. Although I would hope and expect that industry under a communal system would be a far cry from the materialist excess that it is under any of those systems, not to mention capitalism.

: Not proven, at all. Capitalism can be regulated, and is. The
: environmental and labor laws and anti-trust laws are all proof of
: that.

Regulation does not remove the fundamental flaws of capitalism.

: >and (2) that its control
: >mechanism--unemployment--requires the degradation of at
: >least some of the human beings that the system is supposed
: >to serve.
: Is unemployment the only form of degradation? 

No, but it is sufficient for me to draw a moral conclusion about capitalism. That unemployment is intrinsic to the functioning of capitalism leads me to conclude that capitalism, as a social arrangement, is a priori wrong.

: Or is being stuck in a
: deadend job with no hope of advancement, and the knowledge that you
: are in a make-work positon with no productive outlet harmful to your
: self-esteem? That you aren't better than that?

I don't see your point, unless it is to add to mine.

: >replacement by a system that is more humane and more in
: >harmony with nature.  Communalism, for lack of a better
: >word, is one such system.
: It sounds like a delightful fantasy, and fantastic it is. I myself
: wish mankind were this way, but human beings are also evil and mean
: and selfish. 

Speak for yourself.

: Communal systems can be as evil as any other.

Are you talking about the system, or the people. I condemn capitalism, qua system. If communalism, eg. the Pennsylvania Dutch, does not work, is it because of the system, or is it because evil individuals came to subvert it?

: It is quite possible to generate wealth and NOT degrade others.

Quite so. But capitalism, in its totality, seems to preclude that possibility.

: I don't disagree with your ideal world, at all. The issue of community
: is an important one, and one that we have to face as a nation.
: Communalism as an economic system, though, is another matter, and
: hasn't succeeded anywhere except in small, agrarian communities, for
: limited periods of time.

You need to reexamine your definition of "success," if what you are asserting is that capitalism is a "success."

: Industrialization has had destructive effects on families by taking
: the father out of the home, and now the mother, too. There are,
: however, many happy, healthy functioning communities in this
: capitalist country of ours, whose lives have made much easier by
: industrialization.

You do not judge the system by those most favored under it; you judge it by those least favored.

: Linking it all to white supremacy, though, is rather fantastic. Such
: linkage is coincidental, not intrinsic. 

Try that one on alt.white.power. Not here.

I also doubt your idealized
: view of the African past, in a continent with 3000 different languages
: and a wide variety of different cultures, that things were so
: communally wonderful. 

Chancellor Williams and Cheikh Anta Diop long ago demonstrated the cultural unity of Black Africa, surface differences notwithstanding. And I suppose you picked the number "3000" out of your hat, so I'll just say that that's a wild exaggeration and leave it at that.

: Certainly things are not that way now; I'm sure
: you ascribe it all to the colonial influence, the source of all evil
: in your too-simple universe.

What with the slave trade, and the colonial plunder of Africa, the African Holocaust was far greater and more devastating than the white-supremacist history books recount. The true magnitude of this Holocaust is a tale just now being told as Africentric authors research these issues for themselves. You should read about the internal migrations and the "trail of tears" precipitated by white conquest within Africa. Leopold of Belgium alone accounted for about 20 million people slaughtered. The AIDS pandemic in Africa was engineered (see Len Horowitz, AIDS, Ebola and Emerging Viruses) in an attempt to continue the genocide that was begun last century. The same happened to the First Peoples of America, a story with which you should be familiar, although I'm sure it's glossed over in the history books. The genocide of the First Peoples in this country was near-total. Look also to Australia, where the so-called aborigines also were nearly completely wiped out, to Tasmania, where the genocide was complete. In the Caribbean, the Arawak indigenes were completely wiped out also.

: Every one of us posseses the capability for great good and great evil.
: It is not a color-coated charateristic.

I'm still waiting for whitefolk, as a collective, to demonstrate the great good of which you believe them to be capable. I'm still not joining Promise Keepers. And I still believe that any Black man who joins them is a fool.

: not necessarily. I don't buy this thesis, either. Often things have
: both intrinsic value and scarcity.

My point remains. Our most valuable commodity is the air we breathe, because without it we are dead in minutes; yet its market-assigned valuation is zero. I do not dispute the fact that every commodity has intrinsic value, otherwise no one would want it; I merely point out that market valuations are driven, ultimately, by a calculus of scarcity, ie. demand vs. supply.

: >Under capitalist valuation, we have the perversity that all the
: >billions spent on "health care" by what are arguably the sickest
: >people on the planet count as adding to "value,"
: much of the spending is very worthwhile.

Indeed. But the point is that if the society gets you sick, the amount that you must pay to get well again should not count as adding to overall wealth, but should be subtracted from it. Then of course there are all the chronic illnesses which capitalist medicine "treats" at great cost, while studiously avoiding the simple cures that are known to be available. In this way, billions of dollars are "made" every year pushing drugs and medications for such chronic illnesses as high blood pressure, arthritis, asthma, allergies, diabetes, etc. (see F. Batmanghelidj, 1995, Your body's many cries for water: you are not sick, you are thirsty), all of which, if caught soon enough, may be cured, costlessly, by drinking more water. In my case, I spent thousands of dollars on blood pressure medication before stumbling across this book and finding the cure. What "value" did medical science "create" in keeping me ignorant of the true cause of my condition and misleading me into thinking that I would have had to keep taking this medication for the rest of my life, moreover that it would do me no harm. I was later to discover that prolonged taking of high blood pressure medication leads to other medical complications notably involving heart disease.

Then of course there are all the capitalist drug dealers and other purveyors of street medication, licit and illicit, chemical and psychic: they make billions of dollars under capitalist valuation, but at what cost in terms of the degradation of the society and in terms of wasted lives?

: I don't understand this point at all. Please elaborate. How does
: society get you sick?

Western society is toxic. It not only can get you sick, it can kill. That it can kill should be clear enough. The First Peoples were killed off in massive numbers, men, women and children, including by the considered and deliberate military deployment of biological weapons, namely smallpox infected blankets. The aim was to dispossess the First Peoples of their land. The Zulus, similarly, were dispossessed of their land and their labor. Enslaved Africans in America were dispossessed of their labor. Etc. I cite these examples to establish the core idea that animates capitalism, which is that wealth can be secured for self by the simple expedient of expropriating the land and/or labor of others. That it is no longer necessarily enforced by the whip and the gun does not diminish the truth of the core animating idea; what was once enforced by the whip and the gun may now be enforced by the market: the indirect threat of destitution is as compelling a motivator as the direct threat contained within an "offer you can't refuse." So the program is the same. Now, how does this program make those subject to it, sick? Think about it. Degradation and despair are dis-eases that require treatment. Those suffering from it will turn to chemical, psychological, psychical and other "treatments" to numb the pain. Addictions follow: food, sex, gambling, alcohol, cocaine, crack, heroin, saviour theology, saviour politics, etc. If degradation and despair do not make you sick directly, they make you sick indirectly through addictive self-treatment and various and sundry errors of living. That is why the much-vaunted wealth of capitalism is accompanied by a much- vaunted health system which however merely reflects the mountain of sickness and disease created by capitalism itself.

: I don't believe this to be true at all. Natural medicines and remedies
: have been given a great boost in the past twenty years in the
: understanding of medical cures. Many natural cures don't work
: particularly well, though, and western medicines drugs and treatments
: have saved many millions of lives.

Western emergency medicine is quite good. My contention is that the chronic ailments -- hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, asthma, acid stomach, ulcers, stress, depression, etc. -- are not well treated by Western medicine, and are caused by the society itself and the stressors inherent in the capitalist set-up.

: >By your analysis, "value" is "created" by the thief, and the victim,
: >who is impoverished by the theft, is merely "cheap" labor, or the
: >former masters of "cheap" land who had added no "value".
: It is not thievery; it is economic exploitation. Cheap labor does add
: value, and I never said that it didn't; manhours are manhours. 

"It is not thievery; it is economic exploitation." If that is the best defense of capitalism you can muster, then I will send you out to argue on my behalf against it. In typical white supremacist fashion, you hide truth behind deceptive words. Thievery is "economic exploitation," which is made out to be such a "good thing," that the only thing Labor fears is not to be economically exploited. This is of course the quintessential "offer you can't refuse." The Mafia at least is quite plain about it. The British also were quite plain about it when they went about imposing taxes everywhere they went so that recalcitrant "natives" would be forced into wage-servitude and capitalist dependency. Call it "economic exploitation" if you want. I prefer to be plain. And the plain truth is that capitalism is based upon the theft of labor. Under slavery, the theft is plain. Under colonialism, the theft is again plain, and enforced by the gun as under slavery. In the post-colonial, post-slavery era, there is still theft, though it is now better disguised: wage-slaves are deemed free to take their labor elsewhere if they don't like it where they are, but lacking land, and lacking community, they have no control over their own economics, and so, also lacking capital, they may choose between this or that employer, but they may not choose between capitalism and an alternative.

: Not all
: capitalism is exploitation, which you seem to thing that it is, it is
: people willing to do work for a certain wage. It is a transaction
: where sometimes the laborer has great leverage, and sometimes very
: little.

At the time the atomistic worker chooses between a job and being possibly destitute, the question of choosing capitalism vs. some other system is not on the table. Transaction by transaction, I quite agree that the worker exercises "free" choice, as does an employer, or would-be entrepreneur. But looking at the system in its totality, the unrecompensed double theft at its base--of land and labor--still infuses the nature of every employment transaction carried out within it.

: And, I would point out that supply and demand is not necessarily about
: scarcity. Something can be extremely scarce, and have little value
: despite it's scarcity, because it has no usefulness to us. So,
: scarcity alone is not the issue. There has to be demand for the
: commodity. Without demand, no value.

I repeat from up above: "I do not dispute the fact that every commondity has intrinsic value, otherwise no one would want it." The point is that a market-determined price or valuation, under market capitalism arises from a "calculus of scarcity," hence something as valuable as the air we breathe and without which we die in mere minutes, can have a zero valuation under market pricing. It is on the basis of that observation that I dispute your earlier assertion that capitalism "creates value." Not necessarily. Not even usually. It is because capitalist valuations are out of alignment with more fundamental basic values that the planet itself is threatened by capitalism, and the greed unleashed by it, even as certain people are systematically devalued by it.

Grisso

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