Understanding the Purpose of the System
It should be perfectly okay and normal to assert that trying to understand capitalism is nearly impossible, let alone trying to provide a definition that makes sense. I happen to think it is nearly impossible and I really tried to come up with a definition of capitalism that would somehow capture the amount of fuckery it brings to people’s lives, however, all of that is after-the-fact.
Everything we understand about capitalism is after-the-fact. Capitalism, more like crapitalism, am I right? No, but for real, here’s what I came up with:
Capitalism is the commercialization of human bodies.
I found a definition of racism that really resonated with me, I wish I could say exactly where I got it, but I cannot. I was just really cruising through some research and closed
a few tabs but I wrote it down and it’s important to see the connection to racism, to see how much this definition of capitalism makes sense.
Because we live in the USA or, if you don’t live in the USA, this definition of racism applies to how capitalism functions in our society today:
Racism is a ‘socio-attitudinal facilitation’ of capitalist exploitation of Black & Brown men’s labor.
Sexism works the exact same way:
Sexism is a ‘socio-attitudinal facilitation’ of capitalist exploitation of Black & Brown women’s labor.
Putting all of that together, we can see that capitalism function by extracting certain labor from certain groups for the comfort of the white community and those who
intergrate into white patriarchal capitalist life.
Capitalism is the root of white dominance and the point of this essay is the following: the people who argue the most about ‘the means of production’ are focusing on the wrong
thing, factories and such, they need to focus on body autonomy for all.
The capitalist system cannot function when people have their full body autonomy.
Our society imposes barriers to autonomy because it needs our bodies to get its money.
Our society needs the labor from our bodies to create wealth. Our society is paid for by taxes from our wages.
From our lifestyle, USA society needs us to be prejudice.
We have to correct the uses of prejudice and racist.
To be racist is to knowingly support and contribute to the system of racial capitalism while finding pride in it.
To be prejudice is to impose one’s thoughts about who a person or group of people should be. Within this context, people who are prejudice believe only certain people
should hold positions and prefer a Jim Crow-style segregated community. That community is only good for the white community.
We can’t control what the white community will do. There’s about 260 million white people in the USA and they own the keys to our future.
As stated in the introduction to this project,
from the inside out, we can bring change about.
We have to change.
We have to change the way we see white people.
We have to change the way we see Black people.
We have to understand what Indigenous and Native mean.
We have to better understand how to support the East Asian & South Asian communities as we rely on them to begin interrogate their relationship to and perpetuation of white dominance.
We have to do all these things.
From the inside out.
Understanding Identity Politics
Everybody has to engage in identity politics in the USA. Identity politics is how the capitalist system divides us because, largely, our political power often stems from our
community power in labor or industry, etc.
Black is an identity Politic.
Asian-American is an identity politic.
White is an identity politic.
Brown is an identity politic.
Poor is an identity politic.
Middle Class is an identity politic.
There’s way more layers to this that won’t be explored because understanding the foundation of the structure is what’s most important because, and this is a rare
opportunity to use this phrase for good, the slippery slope is that prejudice people can take the nuances of identity politics as they exist today and should because communities deserve representation and use them in ways that further divide.
In this case, the prejudiced person will have to refute the overall system of identity politics as the main way we cultivate our political identity and, from there, we engage in
politics with other like minded people and our civc engagement is motivated by our political identity.
For me, this brings up free speech and people deserve the right to express their political opinions, which they should be free to do. Again, we reach an impasse with the USA
white community in that they have no discernible standard of what is free speech and what is hate speech.
Just like before, rather than slippery slope my way to a debate loss, let’s focus on the language that is required to hold bigotry to a standstill.
We have to develop a language that first creates the common ground of ‘people deserve to be able to express their political opinions’.
Hardly anyone disagrees with that, however, there must be a language of rejection we can use when expressed politics is not politics, it’s hatred, stemming from bigotry, which ultimately seeks to erase certain populations of people, decimate sacred areas of earth, destroy cultures, impose sanctions on women’s bodies, further colonize the colonized, perpetuate anti-Blackness for white wealth accumulation, etc.
We have to meet them with their outcomes and make them agree to said outcomes, then reject their speech as being able to exist within political free speech, they are
speaking hatred.
Hatred is not free speech.
White is the most protected identity within the USA. At this current time, Zionism is trying to advance their cause to be seen as politically white adjacent, where they will
being to reap the benefits of USA nationality and a homeland that serves them, exclusively, as Zionist Jews, not to be connected to the other true Jews that are
oppressed by Zionist Apartheid politics.
Will white people give up power? All we know is that some will.
Some white people doing the work is not enough! We need roughly 6% of the 265 million white people in the USA.
Understanding the Function of Feminism
We, meaning all men and many, if not most white women, some women of color, need to start making sure that Black Feminist Analysis drives a fair amount of our political
beliefs. Most people have heard of ‘nobody is free until Black women are free’, sometimes it will be expressed as ‘nobody is free until Black Trans women are free’.
We have to take these sentiments to the voting booth. If we did the intellectual work to ensure those above statements are our outcomes, we have a better standard by which to hold elected officials and those who seek to get elected. What are these people doing to lift the violence off of Black women and Black Trans women?
I think where people get confused is that is has to stop there, the above is the central question to the problem facing all women and we are acknowledging through Black
Feminist Analysis the plight of Black women needs to be addressed in the USA with more than symbolic gestures, but real political protection and bodily autonomy.
There is no reason real political protection and bodily autonomy cannot be extended to all women, especially those in other marginalized communities.
Men need to play a way bigger role in this, we can surely exact some change by really forcing the conversation of misogyny and misogynoir in politics with the men in our life, really challenge them intellectually to interrogate their views and find ways to get educated about how to become voter that supports elected officials and those seeking
to be elected that have a plan of action on how to address and codify women’s reproductive rights, reproductive rights overall, etc.
We need to get away from debates about women’s bodies and head toward making sure they are free to make choices about their bodies without fear of state violence or
being policed or hounded by organizations seeking to criminalize women to justify their opposition to bodily autonomy for all women.
So, with feminism, we need to make sure that the analysis leads to the ultimate desired outcome of release all women, especially all Black women, from the grip of white
patriarchal capitalism.
When aligned with feminist analyses that, again, serve the above desired outcome and supporting and contributing in ways that make sense for us, we are honoring feminism
for what it is; an analysis that challenges our solidarity with white patriarchal capitalism.