Post by cjm on Dec 20, 2015 8:12:26 GMT
One of the most important essays of the 21 st Century.
Why capitalism is the enemy of racism and class
Andrew Kenny |
15 December 2015
Andrew Kenny says that, by contrast, Marxists view themselves as our "natural superiors"
CAPITALISM, COMMUNISM, CLASS & RACE
The greatest fallacy in all considerations of race and class in South Africa is that capitalism promotes racism and class division. On the contrary, it breaks down race and class barriers with unparalleled efficiency. It does so because they are bad for profits. Capitalism is not only the greatest economic system that has ever existed but is the most powerful force for liberating mankind from the shackles and chains of past prejudice, including those of race and class.
The most fulsome ever praise for capitalism comes not from an American business school, not from Milton Friedman, but from a romantic philosopher of a poetic bent. Speaking of the creative energy unleashed by capitalism, he writes:
The bourgeoisie (capitalist class), during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
Speaking of the way in which capitalism liberated man from past servitude, he writes:
The bourgeoisie, whenever it has gotten the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”
...
Andrew Kenny |
15 December 2015
Andrew Kenny says that, by contrast, Marxists view themselves as our "natural superiors"
CAPITALISM, COMMUNISM, CLASS & RACE
The greatest fallacy in all considerations of race and class in South Africa is that capitalism promotes racism and class division. On the contrary, it breaks down race and class barriers with unparalleled efficiency. It does so because they are bad for profits. Capitalism is not only the greatest economic system that has ever existed but is the most powerful force for liberating mankind from the shackles and chains of past prejudice, including those of race and class.
The most fulsome ever praise for capitalism comes not from an American business school, not from Milton Friedman, but from a romantic philosopher of a poetic bent. Speaking of the creative energy unleashed by capitalism, he writes:
The bourgeoisie (capitalist class), during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalization of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground – what earlier century had even a presentment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?
Speaking of the way in which capitalism liberated man from past servitude, he writes:
The bourgeoisie, whenever it has gotten the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”
...