Basically I had this shower thought while cooking some ultra-edgelord material when I decided to think about sweatshops. So how are they racist?
White people (especially petty booj) got fucked over by capitalism so they look for alternatives and/or coping mechanisms. Consooming is one such example. Where the race card comes in is when you realize that the west deliberately keeps these countries poor where possible to protect their bottom ine, sweatshops are one such tool because they are being used to distract their domestic masses THEY THEMSELVES fucked over as opposed to being used to improve their own countries of origin. As a result the target countries are kept poor while the domestic masses in the imperial core and their puppets are pacified to prevent revolution. Terrifyingly genius I must say.
For liberals/capitalists in the West, “sweatshops” are what exists in “the third world”, if such a factory exists in the West, then it is a “factory with poor working conditions”, e.g. Amazon warehouses, Tyson chicken processing plants, and so on. The difference is in the perceived essence, a sweatshop will forever be a sweatshop, while a factory with poor working conditions can always improve those conditions to become a factory with good working conditions.
Yes, racism (negative perception of other countries) is the underlying cause of it.
Hilariously enough every sweatshop has poor working conditions.
Surprised I managed to figure it out while drafting some edgelord material.
Sweatshops would also work in countries with a majority of white people. Or do you think a capitalist wouldnt establish such factory in a country only because the skin colour of the people their is white? They dont care.
The rest of your writing is good
Aye but they usually use migrant labor for that in USA from Latin America
They will use any labour for it, as long it is cheap. If migrant labour is cheap, they will do anything to keep it cheap like spreading racism into the working class. Remember how they were opposed to ban child labour. An Latin American bourgeois would do the same thing as a bourgeois from Germany. The individual bourgeois can be racist, but the actions of this class are not driven by racism. If the migrant labour from Latin America were more expensive then those in the USA country, they would do anything to keep it that way, as long it is profitable.
They can use racism to reach their goals, but can also became anti-racist if there is need for it. Racism, sexism, xenophobia etc. is “just” a usefull tool.
Edit: Wording
I’m not sure how much I agree with this. I agree in part but it seems to presuppose an idealist version of racism. Maybe I’m wrong but I’ll explain my thinking.
Capitalism is racial capitalism. That’s why liberal anti-racism is doomed to fail. Capitalists can pretend to be anti-racist but they will not fundamentally disturb racist social relations. Liberal anti-racism appears more as a marketing gimmick or a diverse hiring policy, etc. These do represent progress. But capitalists never mean that they plan to stop extracting so much value from the global south.
Racial capitalism means sustaining a global colour line to justify super exploitation of the global south. As the OP alludes, sweatshops are justified in the global north by racist logic.
Sweatshop workers and the countries in which they are generally found are called ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, ‘developing’, ‘backwards’, ‘uneducated’, etc. The same descriptions are used to argue that e.g. African states are unable to govern themselves and need careful guidance through the IMF, World Bank, etc.
Yes, capitalists don’t really care which workers they exploit, and when they do it to the extreme ‘at home’ we call it fascism. But they have also spent 400 years creating the material basis for a global racial capitalism. We do see that logic turned inwards, occasionally, with the creation if internal colonies of marginalised workers. But the main distinction(s) are still race (and gender). They might happily force white German men to make clothes under the same conditions that they currently force women in Bangladesh but the world isn’t generally set up to facilitate that change.
So I would change this quote:
The individual bourgeois can be racist, but the actions of this class are not driven by racism.
To this:
The individual bourgeois can be [anti-]racist, but the actions of this class [rely on] racism. [Racism cannot be overcome under capitalism as it is historically contingent to the capitalist mode of production even if super-exploitation doesn’t have to be racially based.]
And this quote:
They can use racism to reach their goals, but can also became anti-racist if there is need for it. Racism, sexism, xenophobia etc. is “just” a usefull tool.
To this:
They … use racism to reach their goals, but … also … sexism, xenophobia etc. [These horrors are not] “just” … useful… tool[s. They go to the essence of capitalist exploitation. Just as racism cannot be abolished under capitalism, neither can sexism or xenophobia. Hence the slogan, ‘Freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody’].
Capitalism is racial capitalism
What do you mean with that? Does it mean there is such thing like non-racial capitalism?
Capitalists can pretend to be anti-racist but they will not fundamentally disturb racist social relations. Liberal anti-racism appears more as a marketing gimmick or a diverse hiring policy, etc. These do represent progress. But capitalists never mean that they plan to stop extracting so much value from the global south.
Full Ack.
Racial capitalism means sustaining a global colour line to justify super exploitation of the global south. As the OP alludes, sweatshops are justified in the global north by racist logic.
Justification is one thing. But the bourgeois does not exploit the south because they are racist, but rather because it is profitabel.
Sweatshop workers and the countries in which they are generally found are called ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, ‘developing’, ‘backwards’, ‘uneducated’, etc. The same descriptions are used to argue that e.g. African states are unable to govern themselves and need careful guidance through the IMF, World Bank, etc.
Yes, every justification and narrative is fine, as long it can sustain the status quo in the global south. I agree with that.
Yes, capitalists don’t really care which workers they exploit, and when they do it to the extreme ‘at home’ we call it fascism.
Yes, fascism means the annihilation of every organ of the working class. Extreme exploitation “at home” also means to apply all other means of division towards the working class. I agree.
But they have also spent 400 years creating the material basis for a global racial capitalism.
What would non-racial capitalism mean? They use any means of oppression and anything to divide the working class. The developed the material basis for an extreme exploitation, yes. But maybe you can specify what you mean or my english skills are lacking.
They might happily force white German men to make clothes under the same conditions that they currently force women in Bangladesh but the world isn’t generally set up to facilitate that change.
Yes, and that is what I am trying to say: They might do it if they can. Different skin colours and cultures are not necessary in capitalism to establish sweat shops. This is how I understood OP, that you need a form of racism for it.
The individual bourgeois can be [anti-]racist, but the actions of this class [rely on] racism.
Replace racism with “the division of the working class”. Racism is a part of it. I agree with the continuation of your quote.
They … use racism to reach their goals, but … also … sexism, xenophobia etc. [These horrors are not] “just” … useful… tool[s. They go to the essence of capitalist exploitation. Just as racism cannot be abolished under capitalism, neither can sexism or xenophobia. Hence the slogan, ‘Freedom for everybody or freedom for nobody’].
I dont see any dissens. You extended my quote. I agree with it. “They go to the essence of capitalist exploitation.” is exactly as I said, that the division of the working class very important for capitalism.
I dont see any dissens at all, only what racial capitalism should be. This sounds like pleonasm.
Remember Das Kapital Chapter 15 ? (Note that before the third world was fully dominated into a bunch of plantations, sweatshops, the western capitalists ate at their own ‘white’ race)
I do agree that sweatshops have a racially-tinged nature, but I think it is placed as a post-hoc justification by the industrialist capitalists to enforce unequal exchange upon the global south
Also, congrats, you’ve learned about unequal exchange enforced upon the Global South; here are some resources.
Unequal exchange
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X22002169 (Poverty and Capitalism)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802200005X (Unequal exchange)
2.2 trillion$ worth in money gone from the Global South per 2017
Furthermore Global South countries lose far more through unequal exchange than is made up by Aid by a factor of 30”
“The results show that in the year 2015 the North’s net appropriation from the South totalled
12 billion tons of raw materials,
822 million hectares of land,
21 exajoules of energy (equivalent to 3.4 billion barrels of oil), and
188 million person-years equivalents of labour (equivalent to 392 billion hours of work).
By net appropriation we mean that these resources are not compensated in equivalent terms through trade; they are effectively transferred gratis.”
Industrial ecologists hold that global extraction and use of materials should not exceed 50 billion tons per year (Bringezu, 2015). In 2015, the global economy was using 87 billion tons per year, overshooting the boundary by 74% and driving ecological breakdown. This overshoot is due almost entirely to excess resource consumption in global North countries. The North consumed 26.71 tons of materials per capita in 2015, which is roughly four times over the sustainable threshold (6.80 tons per capita in 2015).
Our results indicate that most of the North’s excess consumption (58% of it) is sustained by net appropriation from the global South; without this appropriation, material use in high-income nations would be much closer to the sustainable level.
P.S
Just remember to not always focus on idpol, but modern geopolitics and the neoliberal economy western-dominated capitalism has taken the form of…
