Why We Must Care About Immigrants and the Proletariat

It's impossible to separate race from class and class from race and it is equally impossible (and foolish) to separate white supremacy from the system of capitalism. I just posted up a blog post I did on my blog The Mustard Seed on the first two chapters of Capital Vol. I by Karl Marx. Thought I'd share an excerpt:

Another point I find worth mentioning was that Marx saw that there needed to be an alternate system of values in order to free men from the market. The destruction of capitalism had to lead to an alternate social and economic system other than the one in place now which was only in place since the beginning of the 17th century (capitalism is a relatively new concept). Marx saw that human beings were alienated from each other through the system of capitalism.

Harvey explains it as a religious person saying, "I care about having good face to face relations with my fellow man, with being a good person and living life to the fullest and respecting others."

But when asked about what this fellow thinks of the market economy. "I couldn't give a hoot about that."

That in turn is the folly. How could a person care about human beings he sees face to face but not about his fellow humans who cloth, feed, and shelter him? This is because the capitalist market hides this. If we trully knew what went into our breakfast and cared about how it went into our breakfast then we would demand that those who put our breakfast on our tables be paid good wages since we would care enough about those who feed us. That is: the workers at the supermarket, the truck drivers, those who make the trucks, those who pump the oil from rigs, those who pluck the eggs, slaughter the pigs, raise the pigs, work the farms, pick the strawberries, etc., etc.

Photograph by:
David Bacon