"See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist—it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism isn't built into it. Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist—just because it's anti-human. And race is in fact a human characteristic—there's no reason why it should be a negative characteristic, but it is a human characteristic. So therefore identifications based on race interfere with the basic ideal that people should be available just as consumers and producers, interchangeable cogs who will purchase all the junk that's produced—that's their ultimate function, and any other properties they might have are kind of irrelevant, and usually a nuisance."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Chapter 3: Teach-In: Evening, § Business, Apartheid, and Racism
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Understanding_Power
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Understanding Power
16 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Understanding Power →
Related Quotes
"You can't just come before the electorate and say, "Vote for me, I'm trying to screw you." So what they've had to do …"
"Well, law is a bit like a printing press—it’s kind of neutral, you can make it do anything. I mean, what lawyers are …"
"See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."
"The United States is deeply in debt—that was part of the whole Reagan/Bush program, in fact: to put the country so de…"
"… so long as power remains privately concentrated, everybody, everybody, has to be committed to one overriding goal: …"
"… there are no two points of view more antithetical than classical liberalism and capitalism—and that's why when the …"
"In a traditional society like the feudal system, people had a certain place, and they had certain rights—in fact, the…"
"See, the "science" [of political economy] happens to be a very flexible one: you can change it to do whatever you fee…"
"Nothing in these abstract economic models actually works in the real world. It doesn't matter how many footnotes they…"
"In fact, just take a look at the history of "trucking and bartering" itself; look at the history of modern capitalism…"