Capitalism is not racist. Sorry not sorry.

in #critical4 years ago

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I'm going to apologize in advance for spending some time in clarification mode before making my point; but, well, a lot of you are kinda forcing me to do this.

Neither capitalism nor socialism are words with specific meanings anymore. I'm a supporter of capitalism in terms of what it's supposed to be which is the free and voluntary exchange of capital between consenting persons. A lot of opponents of capitalism try to draw supporters of capitalism into the arguments about corporate welfare and bailouts whilst seemingly not realizing that no libertarian worth his or her salt supports anything resembling the bailouts; in fact, we were the most vocal opponents.

The definition of capitalism has been broadened. Still, when socialist and critical race theorists condemn capitalism, they condemn it as a whole. I don't see many people specifically condemn crony-capitalism or corporatism; they just generally attack capitalism and that implies that they're attacking the definition of capitalism that I believe in.

Here's the problem...

When the acolytes of critical race theory insist that capitalism is racist, as many have, they're making one of the most disgustingly racist statements that you can make. They're saying that certain people of certain races will necessarily be at a disadvantage if they're given freedom. "If we allow people to live free, you will fail if you're black."

"Oh...no..." they might say, "... That's not what we're saying. It's because of the discrimination of individual racist actors within the system."

Well, no, you've spent years explicitly insisting that this is about racist systems and that it's not about individual racist actors. You're saying that people of color can't live in a system of freedom.

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I agree that capitalism is not racism and it's goal is not to promote racism. Just like many systems and tools, concrete and abstract, it can be used for or against racism.