Jim writes: > my presumption is that racist and sexist > practices change due to impacts from capitalism which (1) disrupt the > power of the dominators and/or (2) strengthen the struggles of the dominated. First, thanks to Jim for emphasizing that these are *assumptions* -- simplifications imposed to make a particular model analytically tractable. Yet any set of assumptions can be criticized on grounds of realism. Moreover the act of simplifying to gain insights in one area inevitably creates blind spots in others, and we should be clear on what those are. The statement above omits the possibility that racist and sexist practices may change because of the impact of other modes of production beside capitalism. It omits from consideration sources of *change* that are not modes of production, including struggles by those dominated, and various cultural resources. The quote also highlights those impacts of capitalism on racism and patriarchy that weaken them, either by harming dominators or aiding the dominated, and not impacts that strengthen them, though Jim clearly believes that both kinds of effect are possible. It's easy to argue that in most of the world capitalism has tightened the bonds of racism and patriarchy. > Why? because racist and sexist practices aim to produce specific > use-values > for the dominating groups. These are typically use-values that cannot be > accumulated. In Marxian terms, it's a matter of C - M - C, production and > social relations for use. *Do* racist and sexist practices aim to produce mainly non-accumulating use values? Surely prestige and power can be accumulated -- ask anybody trying to break into an old boys' network. Similarly, white privilege has definite accumulating material benefits for those who dominate, as does patriarchal privilege. And if capitalist exploitation depends, in some cases, on racism and/or patriarchy, then untangling what produced the accumulation of use-values becomes difficult. Jim's formulation cuts that particular analytical knot by assuming that it's all due to capitalism. > On the other hand, capitalism is a process of M - C - M', where M' > M. > Money can be accumulated without limit (as long as crises don't intervene), > as can the kinds of use-values that capitalists amass (machinery, > factories, etc.) In India the types of values one can attain with an increasingly money-based system of dowry are definitely not non-accumulating, and it is under the system of accumulatable use-values of M-M' that the worst horrors of gender oppression around dowry death have been unleashed (dowry may be old, but the unfettered dowry leading to dowry killings is new and linked to the move to an M-M' system of accumulation of wealth and property). > I theorize racism or patriarchy as basically reflecting an "equilibrium" > between the efforts by the dominators to dominate and the resistance of the > dominated. If this is simply the truism that any structure of domination needs to maintain and reproduce itself over time otherwise it will disappear, then it is unclear why this applies just to patriarchy or to racial orders. If these are simply theoretical *definitions*, Jim's point about the conservatism of racism or patriarchy tautologically true because he has *defined* them that way. The theoretical formulation of progressive capitalism given in the bare-bones model in Jim's post assumes that such equilibria are stable and never challenged except by capitalism, which is the sole motor of history remaining in the model. Best, Charu and Colin (S. Charusheela wrote much of the above.)
