Colonisation is intertwined with capitalism.
Colonisation has existed since antiquity, but the arrival of Europeans in the Americas marked a significant escalation and played a crucial role in the rise of capitalism. This early European colonisation stole the resources and land of Indigenous peoples, creating opportunities for colonisers and the emerging merchant class in exchange for the genocide of Indigenous populations. This wealth extracted from the Indigenous peoples of the Americas fueled industrialization and the rise of the capitalist class.
Colonialism comes in two primary forms: extractive and settler. Extractive colonialism is characterised by the exploitation of resources from a colonised territory and peoples with minimal investment in establishing permanent settlements by the colonisers. Early Spanish colonisation in the Americas serves as an example of extractive colonisation. Meanwhile, settler colonialism is a structure not an event, that is founded on the logic of elimination of the Indigenous population. It enacts a foreign rule- including forms of government, laws, economic systems, and policing - over the land at the expense of First Nations. Australia is an example of a settler colony.
The ongoing genocide of First Nations people is foundational to Australia, where white supremacy has been a policy since the arrival of the First Fleet. Despite presenting itself as a land of equal opportunity, Australia grapples with pervasive racism, which manifests today as a system of complex oppressive social relationships. True liberation requires addressing these injustices and dismantling racist social structures such as settler colonialism.
The need for colonists to take and retain First Nations land and the justification of that act has fueled enduring bigotry against Aboriginal people. Any attempt by the Aboriginal people to claim their land is a challenge not only to an individual capitalist occupier but also to the capitalist system as a whole. Aboriginal relations to land go beyond simple assertions of ownership and are incompatible with capitalist social relations. Consequently, the Australian government has employed genocidal tactics, initially aiming for complete eradication and later attempting assimilation. This ongoing strategy sought to integrate Aboriginal people into the colony, severing their cultural ties to the land.
Racism against other, non-Indigenous, groups fluctuates, influenced by the changing demands and attitudes of Australian capitalists and the class struggle. The White Australia policy, established in 1901, aimed to exclude non-British immigrants to align white workers with their national ruling class. Although this policy was abolished in 1973, multiculturalism has not eradicated racism. Immigrant groups still face social isolation, exploitation, and vilification.
Immigration has been pivotal in developing Australian capitalism, with different factions within the ruling class having distinct needs. The state sometimes intervenes with immigration to ensure system durability, occasionally at the expense of individual capitalists' short-term interests or to address working-class demands.
Racism's targets evolve to reflect capitalism’s needs. As prejudice against Asians lessened and non-Anglo Europeans became seen as white, racism against Muslims intensified. This shift provided justification for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, the brutalisation of refugees, and the imposition of oppressive anti-terror laws.
Racism is intertwined with capitalism.
There is a common assumption that racism was the primary motivation for slavery. However, slavery, like colonialism, predates capitalism and the concept of race, with ancient empires like Greece and Rome utilising slave labour without racial distinctions. In the 17th and 18th centuries in the United States, plantation owners viewed slavery primarily as a means for profit, not as a tool to perpetuate white supremacy. Frustrated by the lack of relevant skills among indentured servants from Europe and the need for more workers, planters advocated for the widespread importation of African slaves. Initially, these slaves worked alongside white servants, leading to numerous multiracial uprisings. Efforts to quell and break up this resistance gave rise to laws codifying slave status based on parenthood, paving the way for white supremacy and racial slavery.
Under capitalism, wage labourers are considered "free," and the labour market is portrayed as a realm of formal equality. However, capitalism critically benefited from slavery during its development, forcing a reconciliation between capitalism's supposed ideals of freedom and its association with colonisation and slavery. The concept of separate and unequal races facilitated this, with the evolving idea of "whiteness" serving to encourage identification with whiteness over class.
Racism has taken on an autonomous, self-perpetuating existence.
Racism has evolved to continue serving the interests of the ruling class. Although slavery in the United States has long been abolished, racism persists. Even though many acknowledge that there is no biological basis for racial inferiority, racism has become so ingrained that it self-perpetuates. This system is global, involving ideological, political, legal, and repressive aspects.
Racism supports capitalism by keeping certain regions impoverished and subject to invasions and wars. This genocidal system periodically “changes its face” to appear different, such as electing a Black president like Obama. Yet under his administration, police violence against Black people surged. Despite placing a few in privileged positions, “liberal capitalism” remains fundamentally racist.
Key conditions for ongoing racism include economic competition and the division of labour among workers, both locally and globally, and class collaboration among white workers. Racist ideology appeals to white workers by offering a psychological wage that compensates for their low economic status. This creates a distinct identity, aligning them with white capitalists, forming an imagined community that perpetuates oppression by suggesting common interests between workers and capitalists of the same race.
As popular nationalism developed in advanced capitalist countries, workers were encouraged to align with their ruling classes, resulting in the creation of more pseudo-scientific racial ideas, which justified Western imperialist domination and framed conflicts as racial survival struggles.
Modern racism also arises from advanced capitalism's conditions, such as the technical division of labour and reliance on immigration controls. It facilitates the exploitation of cheap labour from racially oppressed groups through beliefs that they are worth less, or that certain races are suited to certain jobs. It tells workers that workers of a different race are the cause of their economic anxieties, diverting attention from capitalism itself.
While racism is not always consciously pushed by the capitalist class, it benefits from racial division diverting attention from the inherent inequalities and contradictions of capitalism. By pitting different racial and national groups against each other, capitalists maintain a fragmented working class, less likely to unite and challenge the capitalist system.
Abolishment
Correcting these injustices and demolishing racist beliefs are essential to a successful revolution. We cannot demand the right of labour to its creations while the land remains stolen; such a contradiction prevents true emancipation. If the consequences of colonialism are overlooked and not fully removed, they will definitely generate a new class system, perpetuating oppression and exploitation.
The working class is not solely driven by economic interests, and class existence is not limited to immediate economic concerns. The disparities between some sections of the working class are so large that uniting over workplace issues is impossible. Oppression often takes such extreme, brutal forms that it profoundly shapes a person's existence. Attempting to sideline movements against oppression in favour of workplace organisation under the guise of 'real class struggle' is simplistic.
We, therefore, do not view the struggle for non-industrial demands as secondary. For example, the disproportionate incarceration of Aboriginal people in Australia is morally abhorrent and a working class issue. This is not just because most Aboriginal people are members of the working class, making any issue affecting them relevant to the entire class, but also because this form of oppression serves a specific function for the capitalist system as a whole.
We reject positions that ignore the specific ways that racial oppression distinguishes the experiences of racially-oppressed peoples from whites regardless of other commonalities. The idea that anti-racist struggles are a diversion is thoroughly incorrect. Because racism and capitalism are so intertwined, anti-racism and anti-colonialism must be at the centre of our activity.
While racism from the ruling class is expected as it is in their class interest, it is the racism among the white working class that poses a major obstacle to ending both oppression and exploitation. Merely uniting around common demands that ignore race is insufficient. Racial oppression is a reality within the working class that must be directly challenged. The demands of racially oppressed people must become the demands of the entire working class for any attempt at unity to succeed. Without this direct confrontation of racism, attempts at common demands will fail, as they ignore a major part of capitalism's foundation and function.
Racism represents a situation where working-class individuals act against their own interests. Support for irrational racist ideas is fueled by a variety of factors, including capitalist control over ideas, the working class's material conditions, the global composition of capital, and belief in racial superiority.
While a racially ignorant false universalism is doomed to failure, so are attempts to deny any universality whatsoever amongst the working class. Liberal anti-racism strategies that imply that the immediate political task is wealth redistribution among workers rather than a class struggle against capitalism are a dead end. A strategy framing racism solely as a zero sum distribution problem between white and all other workers conceals the class antagonisms within all these racial groups. Liberal anti-racism treats racism as purely a matter of misguided ideas amongst an ignorant working class, rather than a real material object.
Racism is undermined by the inherent powers of class struggle and organisation. Strengthening our organisations raises the probability that the working class will recognise that we are a multiracial class with more in common with one another than with “our” racial or national capitalists. When our class is weak and disorganised, workers are more likely to gravitate towards class collaborationism. White workers, in particular, become more prone to siding with their racial or national ruling class against non-white workers, further undermining unity.
Conversely during such times, immigrant workers' exploitation worsens as they lose faith in workers' self-organisation. When it isn’t feasible to rely on organs of working class power and they are marginalised by the racism of white workers, they must instead rely on members of their racial community's exploitative ruling class for basic necessities such as housing, jobs, and visas.
Given the international character of the working class, the abolition of racism and colonialism is essential for any hope of liberation for humanity. This means that, while we know capitalism is the source of these issues and that eradicating them is impossible under capitalism, we cannot expect them to magically vanish after a revolution. Revolutions are continuous processes, not one-time events. Any plan that ignores the current realities of racism and colonialism, delaying any struggle against them to some idealised future, assures that this future will never arrive.