{"id":3085,"date":"2020-05-31T16:20:49","date_gmt":"2020-05-31T15:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/?page_id=3085"},"modified":"2020-05-31T21:06:01","modified_gmt":"2020-05-31T20:06:01","slug":"racism","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/racism\/","title":{"rendered":"Racism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/spgb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Front-Cover-Racism-197x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-193307\"\/><figcaption>Pamphlet<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>Some people claim that human beings can be divided into races on the  basis of physical characteristics like skin colour, and racism is the  theory that one group of people, identified in this way as a \u201crace\u201d, is  superior to another. Racism results in hostility towards the group  thought of as inferior, the practice of discrimination and persecution,  and in some cases it has led to genocide.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the fact that there is no evidence to support racism it \ncontinues to cause suffering for those who are its victims. Today, as in\n the past, different ideas and theories have been used to support \nracism, and different groups have been singled out as the victims of \nracist oppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This pamphlet tries to understand the origins and causes of racism \nand also to demonstrate the emptiness of racists\u2019 claims. For, without \nan understanding of why, and in what circumstances, racism arises, we \nwill surely not be able to effectively eradicate it. Nor, without an end\n to racism will we be able to establish a system of society where \ndivisions and hostility between people are replaced by unity and \ncooperation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"contents\"><\/a><p><strong>Contents<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"contents\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong><a href=\"#ch1\">01&nbsp; Racism: A Historical View<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><a href=\"#ch2\"> 02&nbsp; What is Race?<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><a href=\"#ch3\"> 03&nbsp; Anti-Semitism<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch4\">04&nbsp; Racism in the United States<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch5\">05&nbsp; Racism in South Africa<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch6\">06&nbsp; Racism in Britain<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch7\">07&nbsp; The Migration of Workers<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch8\">08&nbsp; Why Racism?<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong><a href=\"#ch9\"> 09&nbsp; The Effects of Racism<\/a><\/strong><\/li><li><strong> <a href=\"#ch10\">10&nbsp; What Is To Be Done?<\/a><\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch1\"><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Chapter 1: Racism: A Historical View<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racism is the theory that people of one race are superior to another.\n It often results in hostility towards the race thought of as inferior \nand in the practice of discrimination, persecution, and, in some cases \neven genocide. Racism asserts that human beings are divided into races \nwhich are distinguished by their physical characteristics, their \ncultural patterns and their modes of behaviour. These characteristics \nare supposed to conform to a type and to be inherited and unchanging. \nBut such is the confusion of racism that the stereotypes are often \nwidely variable. For example when racists condemn blacks as lazy and \nfeckless, it is not unusual for the same people also to fear black \nworkers as a threat to jobs which, they argue, should \u201cbelong\u201dto white \nworkers. Asian immigrants to Britain are often criticised as primitive \nand anarchic but they are also seen as an alien influence on the \ncommerce of this country because in some areas they have taken over \nshops and petrol stations, which could hardly be operated by people who \nwere backward and disorganised. Some of the ideas that were first used \nto try to justify racism came from religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Religious Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is only during the past 150 years or so that attempts have been \nmade to put racism on a scientific footing. Before that discriminatory \npractices were usually justified, or condemned, on religious grounds. \nThe discovery of the Americas was something of a blow to believers in \nthe idea of the Creation; St. Augustine had written that humankind \u201chas \nsprung from one protoplasm\u201d, so that there needed to be something of a \nrethink to accommodate the people in the newly-discovered lands. One way\n out was to decide that they could not be descendants of Adam and Eve, \nwhich had the added \u201cadvantage\u201dof excusing such atrocities as the \nSpanish inflicted on the American Indians. In 1510 a Scottish professor,\n John Major, applied the doctrine of \u201cnatural slavery\u201dto the Indians, \narguing that using force against them was justified as a preliminary to \nconverting them to Christianity. The debate on this issue revolved \naround religious theories and was exclusively concerned with the \nAmerican Indians; the negroes were not considered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Religious theories were also used at first when negro slaves began to\n arrive in the West Indies in the 17th century. Slave trading had become\n big business when the demand for sugar and rum in England increased \ndramatically. In the years between 1663 and 1775 English sugar \nconsumption rose twenty fold and this led to a pressing demand for \nslaves on the sugar plantations. These two demands \u2013 for sugar and \nslaves \u2013 allied to the rise of British manufacture, made the elements of\n a triangular trading arrangement in which vast fortunes were amassed. \nFrom the ports of London, Liverpool and Bristol, ships carried goods \nsuch as textiles, cutlery, gunpowder and beer. These were exchanged on \nthe coasts of Africa for slaves who had been captured in the interior \nand who had been force-marched to the coast, often under fearsomely \nbrutal guards. The slaves were packed like sardines, rank upon rank, \ninto the ships and taken to the West Indies where they were exchanged \nfor sugar, molasses, rum and tobacco for transport to England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That part of the triangle in which the slaves were transported from \nAfrica to the West Indies was known as the middle passage and it soon \nbecame notorious for the conditions in which the negroes were \ntransported (the stench of a slave ship was said to be detectable almost\n a mile away) and for the brutality inflicted on them, although this was\n to some extent held in check by the fact that the slaves were a \nvaluable cargo. During the 1680s the death rate of slaves in transit was\n about one in four \u2013 a rate which could be matched, or even overtaken, \nby that for the seamen who were also subject to the cruelty of ships\u2019 \ncaptains and officers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is no exaggeration to say that this trade, and this cruelty, \nprovided the foundation for a significant part of the development of the\n British capitalist class. In 1788 the manufacturer, Samuel Taylor, \nstated that each year about \u00a3200,000 worth of goods was shipped from \nManchester to Africa, of which about \u00a3180,000 was spent on buying black \nslaves. The gun industry of Birmingham and the copper industry of \nSwansea were nourished on the trade and the ports of London, Liverpool \nand Bristol \u2013 especially the last two \u2013 prospered mightily on it. \nBetween 1630 and 1807 the slave merchants of Britain made an estimated \nprofit of \u00a312 million on the 2\u00bd million slaves they bought and sold, \nabout half of which accrued to them during the 40 years between 1750 and\n 1790. The profits accumulated in the triangular trade were often \nreinvested in rising industries such as coal and iron in South Wales, \niron in South Yorkshire, textiles in Lancashire, and the great rail \nnetworks. Funds were also used to set up banks some of which have been \nabsorbed into today\u2019s Big Five.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the cities where they operated, the people who profited from the \nslave trade were pillars of respectability and often staunch supporters \nof the church. They became members of Parliament and were given titles: \nThomas Johnson was knighted in 1708 and Ellis Cunnliffe was made a \nbaronet in 1767. For 35 of the years between 1700 to 1820, Liverpool had\n a Lord Mayor who was a slave merchant or was related to one. It was a \nsimilar story in other slave ports: William Beckford was an alderman of \nthe City of London, sheriff (1755-6) and Lord Mayor (1762-3 and 1769-70)\n apart from being MP for Shaftesbury and then London.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Beckford\u2019s wealth was based on his huge landholding in Jamaica and \nhis interests as a merchant in London. This cruelty, this trade, and \nthese riches, were at first justified on the grounds that the slaves \nwere heathens, which had the disadvantage for the slave owners that a \nslave could gain freedom -in theory at any rate \u2013 through conversion to \nChristianity. Another approach \u2013more satisfactory to the slave owners \u2013 \nwas to argue that the negroes were inferior and so quite proper subjects\n for ruthless exploitation by the colonising powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This argument was at first extremely crude, a compound of demonology,\n sexual fears and commercial interest. In the late 17th century Thomas \nHerbert speculated that negro women copulated with baboons and that \nnegroes practised cannibalism as an expression of friendship to the \nvictim: \u201cThey know no surer way to express true love than in making (not\n two souls) two bodies one in an inseparable union.\u201dLater, as the theory\n of the so-called Chain of Creation took root, negroes were assigned a \nplace between humans and animals. In 1757 a German surgeon stated that \nnegro blood was black and blackened bandages. Forty years later the \nManchester surgeon Charles White compared anatomical features of negroes\n and whites and concluded that in terms of bodily structure the negro \nwas the closer to the ape. (Although White held that negroes were \ngenerally equal to Europeans and was an opponent of slavery.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u201cScientific\u201d Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The debate moved onto a different, wider plane in the 19th century \nwhen there was a rash of publications which sought to explain not just \nthe slave trade but most of human history and culture on the basis of \nracial difference. Robert Knox, a Scottish doctor, published his \ntheories in 1850: \u201cWith me, race, or hereditary descent is everything; \nit stamps the man\u201d. Knox placed the races he classified as \n\u201cSlavonian\u201dand \u201cGothic\u201dat the top, above the \u201cSaxon\u201d, \u201cCelt\u201d, \u201cItalian\u201d.\n In 1853 the French aristocrat Count Gobineau produced his <em>Essay On the Inequality of the Human Races<\/em>,\n a complex theory which linked racial superiority with class: \u201cA society\n is great and brilliant only as far as it preserves the blood of the \nnoble group that created it, provided that this group itself belongs to \nthe most illustrious branch of our species\u201d, Gobineau was one of the \nfirst to put forward the theory of the superiority of the \u201cAryan\u201drace, \nidentifying the aristocracy with Aryans while the lower classes were \nmerely a confusion of the \u201cNegroid and the Semite\u201d, His ideas were \nsubsequently very influential in European politics, literature and \nhistory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Attempts to change the basis of racist thinking from religious \npersecution and sexual neurosis to something more scientific were given a\n new impetus by a misinterpretation of Charles Darwin\u2019s theory of \nnatural selection. The appearance of <em>The Origin of Species <\/em>threw\n a new light on the debate over race and some writers used Darwin\u2019s \nideas in formulating a general law of social development. This law \nbecame known as \u2018Social Darwinism\u2019 and can be most simply expressed as \nan application of the principle of \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d. One of \nthese writers was Walter Bagehot, an influential figure in politics, who\n argued in 1873 that \u201cthose nations which are strongest tend to prevail \nover the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend \nto be the best\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact Bagehot\u2019s words expose the basic problem of Social Darwinism,\n which is that the theory defines both fitness and survival in terms of \neach other. Thus: those who survived must be the fittest; how do we know\n they are the fittest? Because they survived. Of course Social Darwinism\n was useful in justifying the expansion of European capitalism into the \ncolonies of Africa, India and the Far East. The fact that European \nstates had conquered and occupied vast areas of the earth proved that \nthey were the fittest and should therefore dominate the subject peoples.\n And the fact that they were the fittest proved that they should survive\n and continue to subjugate others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second half of the nineteenth century was the heyday of \npseudo-scientific racism which produced a mass of \u201cevidence\u201d. It led to \nmany different and confused ideas about the dividing line between races.\n Some of this investigation was used in anthropology, by people like \nPaul Broca in France, John Beddoe in England and Otto Ammon in Germany. \nIt was partly based on the measurement of physical characteristics, \nparticularly the proportions and shape of the skull and the nose. By \nrelating these to social features such as the numbers of each group who \ntended to live in cities, it was possible to formulate a theory that \nlong-headed people (classified as Nordics) were superior to the \nflat-headed (Alpines and Celts). Nordics, ran the theory, were the more \naggressive and enterprising people while the Alpines and the Celts &nbsp;were\n more anxious and submissive; Nordics were also blonde while Alpines and\n Celts were dark or sallow. This was married to a concern that the \nNordics were threatened with being outbred by the fast breeding and \nimmigration of the others. In 1885 Beddoe warned that \u201cthe Gaelic and \nIberian races of the West, mostly dark-haired, are tending to swamp the \nblond Teutons of England by a reflux migration. At the same time, the \npossible effects of conjugal selection, of selection through disease, \nand the relative increase of the darker types through the more rapid \nmultiplication of the artisan class, should be kept in view\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact such anthropological investigations could be applied in any \nway that suited the prejudice of the user. While Beddoe pronounced on \nthe approach of the Gaelic menace, Broca deduced from his findings that \nthe French, who were part of the broad-headed Alpines or Celts, were the\n superior race. It was more than coincidence that Broca\u2019s superior \nassessment of the broad-headed came when France was in a fervour of \nnationalism after defeat in the Franco-Prussian war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of the 19th century, an Englishman living in Germany, \nHouston Stewart Chamberlain, repeated the claim that flaxen haired, blue\n eyed Nordics were distinguished by inherent qualities of strength, \nleadership and inventiveness. In his <em>Foundations of the Nineteenth Century<\/em>,\n published in 1899, he stated: \u201cThe amount of Nordic blood in each \nnation is a very fair measure of its strength and standing in \ncivilisation\u201d. Chamberlain\u2019s theories were very popular in Germany, \nwhich was at that time in transition into a modern, expansionist \ncapitalist state. Germany came late onto the scene of imperialism, with a\n need to compete in the scramble for what was left of areas like Africa.\n Theories of racial superiority such as Chamberlain\u2019s were useful \npropaganda for the German ruling class. The Kaiser ordered that \nChamberlain\u2019s book should be on display in libraries and bookshops \nthroughout the country and that it be distributed to all officers in the\n German army.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact Chamberlain, who was a fanatical anti-semite, had constructed\n a definition of a superior race which cunningly embraced a number of \nphysical types, so as to include all Germans except Jews. Extreme \nnationalists seized on these ideas, which made the Jews a particular \nscapegoat for the problems of the German people. A lot of what happened \nlater \u2013 the defeat of Germany in the 1914-18 war and the subsequent \neconomic and political crises \u2013 was analysed in terms of a Jewish \nconspiracy to undermine the purity of the Aryan people. This prejudiced \nneurosis was successfully exploited by the Nazis in their climb to power\n during the late 1920s and early 1930s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a result, the German state under the Nazis was characterised by an\n official policy of racism, backed by theories which plumbed new depths \nof absurdity and horror. To begin with, like Chamberlain, the Nazis \ndefined an ideal racial type which included all Germans who were not \nJews. When it suited their purpose \u2013 as in the case of the expansionist \nambitions of the German ruling class towards the Saar and Czechoslovakia\n \u2013 they claimed that all Germans everywhere had an essential affinity \nand must therefore be united into one nation. In contrast, the Jews were\n not just racially inferior; they were malignant as vermin and should be\n destroyed. \u201cAnti-semitism\u201d, said the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in \nOctober 1943, \u201cis exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is \nnot a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness. In just this \nsame way anti-semitism for us has not been a question of ideology but a \nmatter of cleanliness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nazi orators ranted about the bonds of German \u201cblood\u201d, as if it were \nin some way different from the blood of people in other countries. The \nNazis\u2019 preoccupation with such fallacies was typical of the prejudices \nthey disseminated. At times, the needs of the German leadership were \nsuch that the Nazis had to modify their racism, exposing it in the \nprocess for the bigotry that it was. So after the wartime treaty between\n Italy and Germany the Italians, who by the standards of Nazi theories \nwere an inferior racial group, were suddenly elevated into the ranks of \nthe superior. A more glaring example came with the entry of Japan into \nthe war in 1941. This was particularly difficult for the Nazis, who \nfound themselves in alliance with a racial group classified by them as \ninferior. They solved the problem to their satisfaction by effectively \ngranting the Japanese the status of \u201chonorary\u201dAryans and thus exempting \nthem from racial discrimination and repression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/a><p><strong>America<\/strong><strong>: The Melting Pot?<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The racism which originated and developed in Europe was used in \nAmerica to justify the system of chattel slavery which existed there. In\n the 17th century the southern states relied on an economy which might \nbe described as plantation capitalism. Money was invested with the \nobject of realising a profit for the investor, not only in the \nplantations of tobacco and cotton but also in the human beings who were \nput to work there as slaves. The American planters adopted the same \nsorts of justification for their ownership of slaves as had people in \nother countries, like Britain, who had also grown rich on the transport \nof slaves. At first they claimed that negroes were heathens, then that \nChristian teaching showed the black race to be inferior to the white and\n therefore fit for enslavement (a theory also held by the Ku Klux Klan) ;\n and finally that there was biological and anthropological evidence for \nthe blacks\u2019 \u201cinferiority\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But not all whites in America were happy with the slave system. In \nparticular the growing industrial capitalist interests of the northern \nstates wanted a free labour market throughout the country to be able to \ndevelop and expand those interests without the hindrance of slavery. \nThis led to the American Civil War which was not however fought \nprincipally about the emancipation of the slaves. At the outset of the \nwar, Abraham Lincoln declared: \u201cMy paramount object in this struggle is \nto save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I\n could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it\u201d. In \npractice, the negroes found that \u201cemancipation\u201dmeant that a whole \ncomplex of discriminatory and repressive barriers \u2013 economic, social, \nlegal \u2013 were erected against them. In public places such as parks and \nbeaches they were allocated separate, inferior facilities; on public \ntransport and in places like restaurants they were forced to sit apart \nfrom whites. Their children could only attend segregated schools and \ncolleges. In many states racism went beyond mere segregation; in the \nDeep South negroes were commonly murdered, out of simple malice, and the\n killers were allowed to go free, without arrest, trial or penalty. \nIndeed, in some cases the culprits actually boasted of what they had \ndone and were that much more popular locally as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This discrimination required the support of a legal system, for if \nblacks were to be excluded from certain places and opportunities it was \nnecessary to have a definition of a negro. In theory amendments to the \nFederal constitution freed the slaves. For example the 14<sup>th<\/sup> \namendment said: \u201cNo state shall make or enforce any law which shall \nabridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United \nStates.\u201dIn spite of this the southern states enacted what were called \nthe Black Codes, which effectively forced the negroes back into \nservitude.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When it became necessary to decide who was, and who was not, a negro,\n then the laws were exposed in all their absurdity. In 1904 in \nLouisiana, a court decided that the word \u201cnegro\u201ddid not necessarily \ninclude persons \u201cin whom the admixture is so slight that even a \nscientific expert could not be positive of its presence\u201d. That same \nyear, again in Louisiana, it was decided that an \u201cappreciable amount\u201dof \n\u201cNegro blood\u201dmade a person a negro within the law \u2013 without \nsatisfactorily defining \u201cappreciable amount\u201d. Most southern states \nsettled for \u201cany ascertainable trace\u201dof negro descent as a satisfactory \nboundary between black and white, which meant that anyone having any \nnegro ancestor, no matter how remote, was classified as a negro. In fact\n there were many cases in which people who were apparently white were \nsuddenly found to have a negro ancestry and then became ostracised as \nracially inferior. This meant that someone defined as white in one state\n might be classified as negro in another and could, therefore, \ndramatically change their status simply by crossing a state boundary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the last analysis, this repression depended on the negroes being \ndenied the vote, which meant that they were without any political \ninfluence. This was achieved by a multitude of tricks and deceptions. In\n some cases the vote was only available to people who could satisfy the \nlocal registrar that they understood the Constitution or were of \n\u201cgood\u201dcharacter \u2013 and the local registrar always took care that no \nblacks were so qualified. In Louisiana in 1898there was an attempt to \nrestrict the franchise to those who had voted in elections before 1867 \nand to their descendants; it was hardly likely that so soon after \nofficial emancipation any great numbers of negroes would have been able \nto vote in 1867. This meant that whereas in 1896 in Louisiana there were\n 130,334 registered negro voters, by 1904 this had fallen to 1,342. If \nsuch legal moves failed, then the whites could still fall back on the \ninformal pressure of terror, violence and lynchings to force negroes to \n\u201ckeep their place\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was possible for many southerners to deceive themselves about this\n repression \u2013 to tell themselves that it was not happening, or that the \nnegroes were not capable of anything better, or that they were content \nwith their lot. A letter to the Guardian as recently as 14 April 1960, \nfrom a judge in Burke County, Georgia (who described himself as \u201clawyer,\n plantation owner, public official\u201dand \u201ca friend sympathetic to the \nNegroes\u201d) stated that during 30 years experience of hearing complaints \nfrom black people he had never heard a single one about being denied the\n right to vote. Such insidious complacency tended to conceal the \nimportant fact that the whites were in a sense also disenfranchising \nthemselves. Political divisions within the dominant white group, and all\n types of reform movements, were stifled in order to achieve the unity \nneeded to deny the vote to blacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the party which had stood for the Union in the Civil War, the \nRepublicans suffered from this: for a long time the South was a Democrat\n stronghold, where the policies of candidates did not matter as long as \nthey wore the right party label. This situation was ended in the 1950s, \nwhen schools and other facilities were forcibly integrated and a \nlarge-scale, determined and courageous voter registration campaign \nenabled the American negroes to assert some political influence. \nNowadays it is common for the southern states to elect black people \u2013 \nand Republicans \u2013 to all sorts of political offices. After the riots and\n the use of the army in the 1950s there are officially no segregated \nschools or colleges.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Politicians can now make successful appeals to the idea of American \nnational pride, but this cannot hide the racial divisions and prejudice \nwhich still exist. For America is a country of immigrants. Besides black\n slaves, America has absorbed millions of people from most parts of the \nworld, particularly from Europe. They were all looking for a better deal\n for themselves as workers, often trying to escape from intolerable \nconditions in their country of origin, like the Irish who flooded into \nAmerica after the potato famine of the 19th century. They came to a \nhotbed of prejudice and the truth is there is still prejudice against \nimmigrants from the Caribbean such as Puerto Ricans, against Europeans \nsuch as Poles and Germans, against Jews and many others. In each case \nthe rejection stems from a fear of competition \u2013 for a job, for a home, \nfor a place in the queue. The racial mixing of America might have been \nan influence against prejudice. It might have convinced American workers\n of the essential similarity of all human beings and of the essential \nunity of the working class world-wide. Instead, because of the pressure \nof scarcity, competition and suspicion, this has not happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Colonial Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racism was also practised by white European people against those who \noriginated in Africa and Asia. During the century after 1815 almost the \nwhole of Asia, India, Africa and Australasia were colonised by the \ncapitalist powers of Europe. One particularly hectic episode was aptly \ncalled the \u201cscramble for Africa\u201d. In the 1870s only about ten per cent \nof the continent was colonised but by 1925 about 90 per cent of Africa \nwas under European rule.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This process often involved the creation of separate countries as the\n imperialist powers drew arbitrary frontiers to mark off their gains. \nContact between these powers and the people they had subjugated was \nrarely easy and frequently violent and bloody. For it was a matter of \nthe theft \u2013 more diplomatically known as annexation \u2013 of vast areas of \nland, dispossessing a native population who had lived off it for \ncenturies. Of course they resisted \u2013 and of course they were crushed by \nthe armed forces of the annexing powers. As Hilaire Belloc put it: \nWhatever happens, we have got The Maxim gun. And they have not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This expansion was a very different matter to the development of the \nplantations of America and the West Indies through the transport of \nslave labour. The European powers took over Africa, Asia and the Far \nEast in their quest for the raw materials and markets demanded by their \nexpanding industrial economies. In the process they committed \natrocities, which they excused as necessary acts in the face of a native\n population who were unwilling to accept the alleged benefits of \nEuropean civilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Those \u201cbenefits\u201dincluded such things as the settlement of farms by \nEuropeans on the most fertile land, the opening up of mines, the \nconstruction of roads, bridges, railways, ports, schools, hospitals, \ntownships . . . It was easy to represent this as a marvellous gift of \nenlightenment from a civilised people to a bunch of ungrateful savages \nand to conclude that white Europeans were inherently superior to the \npeoples they had forced into submission. The decimation of a tribe or \ntwo was a small price to pay for the \u201cbenefits\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This suppression was especially urgent and ruthless because it was \nbeing applied by a small minority against vast numerical odds. At its \npeak the British Empire contained some 372 million people of whom only \n50 million were white. Such a minority could hardly have operated at any\n level of efficiency or commitment had they not been bolstered by a \nstrong conviction of their own innate superiority. They could hardly \nhave condoned \u2013 or participated in \u2013 the massive cruelty of colonialism \nhad they not been persuaded that their mission was to uplift a lower \npeople.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The colonial administrator of Victorian times, with his high, stiff \ncollar, his pig-headed condescension and his mannered habits, is now \nsomething of a figure of fun. But in his time he represented an \nextremely powerful force. He stood for the ideology from which sprang \nthe racism that played so large a part in the history of Africa and \nAsia. Although we may laugh at him now, he had the Maxim gun. From the \nideology he stood for came the apartheid of South Africa, racist \ngovernments in places like Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and the political and\n military repression which has attempted to hold at bay the rising tides\n of African nationalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In most places that nationalism has won because it outgrew the \ninterests which stood in its way. Colonialism in most cases degenerated \ninto agricultural exploitation and held back industrial development in \nthe interests of maintaining markets for the exports of the colonial \npowers. Colonies were often easy outlets for emigrant workers, who found\n they could command very much higher standards of living than in their \ncountry of origin. Inevitably these workers were among the bitterest and\n most prejudiced opponents of the black nationalist movements; some of \ntheir theories were extreme even for racists, their racial anecdotes \nunlikely enough to strain the most elastic credibility. The triumph of \nthe nationalists was a bitter blow to white workers for they no longer \nhad a privileged position in the labour market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Many of the nationalist movements called themselves socialist, \nimplying that they stood for revolutionary change in society which would\n dispossess the owning class. What actually happened was the replacement\n of the old colonial ruling class by a new one. Property society \ncontinued, with its privileges, its inequalities and its corruption. In \nthe case of many new African states the transition took place on the \nbasis of an ideology of black nationalism. But the victory of black \nnationalism in Africa has the promise, not of freedom but of the more \nrapid development of industrial capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>British Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally we can consider the more recent examples of racial prejudice \nwhich have been the response of British workers to the post-war \nimmigration of people from the West Indies, Asia and Africa. This \nimmigration has been represented by some people \u2013 for example Enoch \nPowell \u2013 as an act of madness which is undermining the basis of \ncivilised life in Britain. In fact it was a perfectly normal episode in \ncapitalism \u2013 the movement of a pool of unemployed workers from one area \nto another. This happens all the time. For example the London area is \nthickly populated with workers who came, or whose parents came, from \nWales, Ireland and Scotland. They travelled to London to escape from \nunemployment in their home area, in the hope of finding work in the \ncapital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When the black immigration began in the 1950s capitalism was in a \nperiod of boom, with industries in this country generally suffering from\n a shortage of labour. Firms where the work was particularly hard or \ndirty or badly paid were experiencing special difficulty, as were \nservices like public transport and hospitals where the hours and other \nconditions were unattractive. Capitalism\u2019s classic remedy to this \nproblem is to call on its pool of unemployed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But at that time there was no such pool in Britain. Between 1950 and \n1960 the average percentage unemployment in the United Kingdom was under\n 1.7. So industry here had to look abroad for workers to do the jobs \nwhich, in a time of relatively full employment, were difficult to fill. \nCitizens of British colonies were granted United Kingdom citizenship \nunder the Nationality Act of 1948, which meant that workers from the \nWest Indies and Pakistan could come to Britain and stay for as long as \nthey liked. At the same time conditions in those countries were a strong\n encouragement to emigrate. In the West Indies there was widespread \nunemployment, unrelieved by any system of dole or social security. One \ntraditional outlet \u2013 the United States \u2013 had been blocked by the \nMcLarran-Walter Act of 1952. The Indian sub-continent had suffered \npersistent impoverishment under British rule and the upheaval of the \npartition into India and Pakistan deprived millions of their jobs and \ntheir homes. These factors, together with the ever-present threat of \nnatural calamities such as floods and crop failures and unnatural ones \nsuch as religious massacres, made the prospect of emigration especially \nattractive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first immigrants \u2013 about 500, from Jamaica \u2013 came in 1948. The London <em>Evening Standard <\/em>(21\n June) headlined the event \u201cWelcome Home\u201d and the new arrivals were \nquickly found work. For the next few years the annual inflow was \nnumbered in hundreds, until 1952 when it reached about 2,000. Thereafter\n it increased rapidly: 24,000 in 1954, 22,000 in 1957, until by 1958 \nthere were some 125,000 West Indians in this country. By that time there\n were also about 55,000 immigrants from India and Pakistan. Many had \nbeen actively encouraged to come here by the concerns which were \nsuffering a shortage of labour. London Transport (as it then was) set up\n recruiting offices in the West Indies, and West Indian nurses were \nwelcomed to work in National Health hospitals by none other than the \nthen Minister of Health, Enoch Powell. Some companies which had \nrecruited immigrant workers encouraged them to persuade their friends \nand families back home to come and join them on the production line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the trickle of immigration became a flood it exerted the \npredictable pressure on the limited resources in housing, schooling, \nmedical care and social services. Competition brought its reaction of \nprejudice, and not just from openly racist organisations. In many cases \ntrade unions opposed the employment of black workers. In a \ncounter-reaction the immigrants tended to congregate in areas like \nBrixton and Southall, Wolverhampton and Smethwick. As prejudice against \nthem hardened these were often the only places where a black skin was \nnot a bar to finding a home or friendship \u2013 which further accentuated \nthe tendency to congregate in particular areas. And, as is usually the \ncase, the immigrants were particularly vulnerable to landlords, \nemployers and others who were in a position to exploit their plight to \nthe limit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This situation contained all the elements of explosive racial \nprejudice. The immigrants\u2019 skin colour made them easily identifiable. \nThey were concentrated in certain industries and areas, which promoted \nthe prejudice that they were a threat to the local worker\u2019s chances of \nfinding a job and a home. They brought with them their own established \ncustoms, language, culture and their own attitudes on sensitive issues \nsuch as sexual relations and the family, all of which were liable to \ndistortion as an assault on established morals. It was not difficult to \nexpand these prejudices into a rampant neurosis which could effortlessly\n multiply one black face in a hospital waiting area into a room full of \nimmigrants clamouring for immediate attention for all manner of exotic, \ndesperately contagious diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the 1958 riots in Nottingham and Notting Hill suggested, and the \n1964 parliamentary election in Smethwick confirmed, racial prejudice had\n become something of a political issue in Britain. Since then both \nLabour and Tory governments have implemented racist immigration laws and\n controls; the freedom of immigration of the 1948 Nationality Act has \ndisappeared into history. Prejudices have been inflamed and exploited by\n the speeches of politicians like Duncan Sandys and Enoch Powell and by \nthe activities of groups like the National Front and British Movement. \nThese prejudices have not been supported by any scientific argument or \nevidence: the racist case has usually been based on an imagined assault \non the \u201cBritish way of life\u201d. Racism continues to this day and \npoliticians continue to use it to distract the attention of workers away\n from the real problems facing them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch2\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 2: What is Race?<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The word \u201crace\u201dwas first used in the 17th century, as mercantilist \nexplorers from Europeencountered groups of people who were clearly of a \ndifferent physical appearance. Since then the word has been widely and \nindiscriminately used \u2013 and abused \u2013 to the point at which any useful \nmeaning it ever had is in danger of being obscured. Today there are \nscientists who will argue that the whole concept is incorrect, that \nracial divisions do not exist in any valid sense. There are others who \nargue the opposite case, and some who assert that not only do the \ndivisions exist but they also determine human behaviour, cultural \ntraditions, achievements and the like.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If we are to use the word \u201crace\u201dat all we must first do so as a \nclassification of human beings on the basis of physical characteristics.\n We must be aware that we are discussing a human sub-group and that that\n is the limit of the concept of race. In other words, human beings as a \nwhole are of one species; whatever their separate physical traits they \ncan all mate with each other and thereby produce offspring who are \nthemselves fertile. Thus humans with a black skin can mate with those \nwhose skin is white and their children can go on to produce offspring of\n their own, and so on. This may seem too obvious to need spelling out, \nexcept that racial prejudices can be so wild and extensive that at times\n they bring this sort of demonstrable fact into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Suppose a race is defined, then, as a human sub-group distinguishable\n from other sub-groups through some inherent physical characteristics. \nIf this is at all valid, a race must have physical characteristics which\n are passed from one generation to the next and which are not present in\n other races. At first sight this seems to fit in with the existence of \ngroups of people who can be classified as separate on the basis of \ndiscernible physical features. To begin with the obvious, there are \npeople with black skin and people with white. Then there are others \nwhose skin might be described as yellow or brown. Whites tend to think \nof blacks as having crinkly hair and broad, flat noses; of yellow people\n as having slant eyes; of brown people as having straight, black hair \nand brown eyes. On the other hand whites are thought of by the Chinese \nas being hairy and having big noses. On this type of classification it \nhas been customary for investigators to divide human beings into five \nmain sub-groups \u2013 the European or Caucasian, the Asiatic or Mongoloid, \nthe American Indian or late Mongoloid, the African or Negroid and the \nAustralasian or Australoid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But if these divisions are valid, it must be possible to draw \nboundaries between races and to place all humans in one sub-group or \nanother. This brings us up against a number of problems. Firstly, there \nare wide differences between individuals within each group; there are \nmany variations of skin colour and very few people who can properly be \ndescribed as \u201cblack\u201d. There are very few, too, who can properly be \ndescribed as \u201cwhite\u201dwhile many who are categorised as \u201cwhite\u201dhave skins \nwhich are darker than many described as black. Then there are variations\n in other characteristics, like brown people whose hair is thick and \nwavy. And on the basis of physical appearance, in which race would we \nplace a person with a sallow skin, brown eyes, crinkly fair hair, \nfreckles and a snub nose?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such questions as these make the whole concept of racial boundaries \u2013\n and therefore that of race itself \u2013 distinctly shaky. Investigators in \nthis field have also experienced this difficulty; such has been their \nuncertainty over the whereabouts of racial boundaries that they have not\n been able to agree on the number of races in existence. Their estimates\n have varied from the four racial groups which were defined by Carl \nLinnaeus to the 150 amassed by the American anthropologist George R. \nGliddon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To resolve this difficulty we must take into account the fact that, \nfor all practical purposes, there is no such thing as a \u201cpure\u201drace. \nRacial \u201cpurity\u201dwould depend on a group of people existing in conditions \nof rigid and complete isolation, over centuries of exclusive inbreeding.\n There may somewhere be such groups but the mass of humanity has not \nexisted in this manner. Since prehistoric times, as people began to be \nable to protect themselves against natural forces, they have wandered \nall over the world. The people we might classify as Celts spread out \nfrom Western Europe to Asia Minor; the Teutons from the Black Sea area \nto Spain, Italy and North Africa; the Slavs northwards to Russia and the\n Balkans. The American Indians are descended from Mongoloid people who \ncrossed into America a long time before the first settlers arrived from \nEurope. The American negro originated partly from a mixing of native<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>American Indians and Africans. Wherever humans have moved across the \nworld they have interbred, mixing their stock again and again. As human \nsociety has developed \u2013 in particular with the shrinking of the world \nthrough faster communications \u2013 the process of mixing has become \nestablished and has accelerated. So the concept of a \u201cpure\u201drace is not \nvalid. If any such races exist they would be in very small, isolated \ngroups, absolutely untypical of the mass of the world\u2019s people. In the \nmodern world, where the racists peddle their doctrines of racial \n\u201cpurity\u201d, it simply does not exist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The science of biology has been important in the matter of race \nbecause of the evidence that it provides to refute racist arguments. In \nparticular, increased understanding about the mechanisms of heredity \u2013 \nthe way in which physical characteristics are passed on from parents to \nchildren through the transfer of genes that takes place at the moment of\n conception \u2013have shown the extent to which all human beings are \nbiologically alike. The physical characteristic of skin colour, to which\n racists attach so much importance, is determined by only four genes out\n of a total of about 100,000. In other words, whatever differences there\n are between one racial group and another, people within anyone racial \ngroup are genetically more different from each other than from people in\n other racial groups. Humanity is&nbsp; biologically one and all racial \ngroups have far more in common than they have differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The work of Charles Darwin, however much his conclusions have had to \nbe modified, provides a basis for an understanding of why there are \nracial differences. All types of life, animal and plant, show variations\n between individuals some of which may be progressive because they help \nthe organism to adapt and survive in its environment and others \nregressive, in the sense that they hinder that adaptation or even \nprevent it. So, in the case of racial differences, the dark skin of \npeople in Africa may have developed and dominated there through the \nprotection which that pigment in the skin gave against the tropical sun.\n In places where the sun rarely, or never, reaches such intensity a \npale-skinned person can not only survive but actually benefit from the \nfact that the sun can more easily penetrate, so providing essential \nvitamins. This is not the orderly process it may seem, for human \nevolution has been a lengthy and complex business, proceeding through a \nrandom and profligate biological scattering. Each human reproduction is \nmarkedly random for there are enormously high odds against the female \negg being fertilised by anyone of millions of male sperm and therefore \nagainst the birth of any individual. We are all of us, in a sense, here \nby a very lucky chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Racial Mixing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racial mixing is part of the same biological development as that \nwhich brought racial differences. Racists will argue that for races \u2013 or\n at least certain races \u2013 to interbreed is disastrous for the quality of\n the resultant offspring. Fascists warn about the debasement of human \nstock, the pollution of blood, the corruption of cultural values and so \non. All of this is supported not by scientific evidence but by bigotry. \nThere is no evidence to prove that the child of a mixed colour parentage\n is in any way inferior to one born of single colour parents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indeed, there are specialists in this field who argue exactly the opposite:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThose who deliver themselves of unfavourable judgements concerning \n\u201crace crossing\u201dare merely expressing their prejudices . . . . The truth \nseems to be that far from being deleterious to the resulting off-spring \nand the generations following them, interbreeding between different \nethnic groups is from the biological and every other standpoint highly \nadvantageous to mankind . . . Indeed, if there were any truth in the \nsuggestion that hybridisation results in degeneration or decadence man \nshould have died out long ago or else sunk to the level of a deformed \nidiot, for he is one of the most highly hybridised creatures on \nearth.\u201d(Ashley Montagu, <em>Mans Most Dangerous Myth<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is abundant evidence to support this view. A prime example of \nracial mixing is the United States. That country is often referred to as\n one of the world\u2019s great racial \u201cmelting pots\u201d, with a population \noverwhelmingly descended from immigrants \u2013 some voluntary, some forced \u2013\n from all over the world. In particular, the United States has seen a \nfusion between black people and white with their physical differences \nbeing slowly eroded with time. If racial mixing were detrimental to a \nsociety, causing it to stagnate or regress, then America would be among \nthe most backward nations in the world. In fact, as we know, it is among\n the most advanced and highly developed \u2013 probably the most powerful \nstate in the world. Many modern technological achievements originated \nthere making the USA one of the two space powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Militarily, economically and politically it dominates much of the \nearth. This is not to argue that imperialism, backed by immense armed \nforces, is a socially useful or progressive feature, but in capitalist \nsociety it is the measure of a nation\u2019s power and capability. The United\n States could not have achieved such a position if it were true that \nracial mixing undermined or hampered a state\u2019s development. In any case,\n interbreeding is an established fact of human life; to unravel it would\n be an extremely difficult and prolonged business, to all intents and \npurposes impossible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Race and Culture<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So far we have discussed the issue of race mainly from the biological\n angle. But if we accept that there are inherent physical differences \nbetween groups of people, it is fair to ask how far this can be taken; \ndoes it have any useful application to human affairs? The racist \nargument is that it can be taken a very long way -in some cases to \njustify a policy of genocide \u2013 and that it is of vital significance to \nhuman society. This case is based on the argument that physical features\n such as colour of skin also determine behaviour, affecting a person\u2019s \nmental and physical capacities in different ways. Negroes, for example, \nare often insultingly caricatured as capable of great physical strength \nbut of limited mental ability. From that standpoint the racist argument \nis that race determines cultural standards, so that people of one skin \ncolour (that of the racist) are able to erect a civilisation of a higher\n standard than those of another colour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is in fact a circular argument, with racists believing that just\n as race determines culture so also does culture determine race. Race \ncan be identified by their cultural standards and those standards can \nalso be identified by reference to race. There is little scope in this \nargument for reason or logic to break into the circle, except that the \nfacts simply deny the truth of the racist case. The earlier \ncivilisations \u2013 for their time of an exceptionally high standard \u2013 were \nbuilt up by groups who would now be classified by racists as inferior, \nin South America, around the Mediterranean, in Africa and on the Indian \nsub-continent. In the modern world there are many groups of white people\n whose way of life is so depressed that, to be consistent, the racist \nwould need to recategorise them \u2013 the poor whites of America, for \nexample, or the most deprived slum dwellers of Britain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We can now look at this issue in more detail. We have already seen \nthat a person\u2019s physical features are determined by their genetic \nmake-up. A person\u2019s genes can be observed, counted -even caused to \nmutate. But nobody has yet discovered any genes which inherently \ndetermine human personality or a person\u2019s cultural preferences. Nobody \nhas yet unearthed any evidence that such features are passed on from \ngeneration to generation in accordance with the laws of genetic \ninheritance. Still less has anyone embarked on the task of not only \nfinding such genes but linking them to those which determine physical \nfeatures, so that racial characteristics could be seen to be \nbiologically connected to cultural ones. In fact there is no prospect of\n such a connection being made, for if race is anything it is a \nbiological concept, confined to dividing human beings on the basis of \ngenetically inherited bodily features while culture is an expression of \npeople\u2019s response to the material conditions in which they find \nthemselves. Race is a matter of biology while culture is a welter of \nhistorical and social influences. Real material evidence denies any link\n between the two. Cultural changes can, and do, happen with great speed.\n A country can develop out of a primitive condition into that of a \nmodern state within a very short time but the study of genetics shows \nthat biological changes happen very much more slowly \u2013 certainly too \nslowly to explain changes in cultural achievements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One example of this is what happened to Japan in the late 19th \ncentury. Before the 1850s Japan was an insular feudal country which \nresisted any contact with the developing capitalist world outside. The \npopulation of about 30 million had hardly varied over 150 years; no \nships were allowed to be built of more than 50 tons and anyone who left \nthe country faced the death penalty if they returned. At a time when in \nEngland the Stockton and Darlington railway had been open for 28 years, \nJapan had virtually no highways and few wheeled vehicles. In 1853 the \nAmerican President approached the rulers of Japan with a request to open\n up the existing meagre links with a few Dutch and Chinese traders into a\n contact with world commerce. At that time, observers of the Japanese \nmight have concluded that their backwardness was a racial, biological \nfeature. Their ruling class apparently had no ambition, nor capacity to \nexpand into the world outside and Japanese ideas, assumptions, laws and \nmorals \u2013 in other words culture -were fashioned by this timeless \nclaustrophobic existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racists might have argued that this was because the Japanese were \nincapable of behaving in any other way. A year later the Japanese rulers\n signed a treaty of Peace and Amity with America, which signalled the \ncountry\u2019s transformation. Within 40 years Japan had developed into a \nchallenging economic and military power in the Far East. People who only\n recently had been feudal peasants were schooled into fighting a \nvictorious modern war against China and ten years later they astounded \nthe world by defeating the great power of Tsarist Russia in the \nRusso-Japanese war of 1904-5. Japan played a comparatively minor part in\n the First World War but after 1918 became a major threat to the \neconomic dominance of American and European powers in the Far East. This\n was emphasised by the powerful and sophisticated war machine which was \nsuccessful for so long during the second world war. Since 1945 Japan has\n rebuilt its industries, and developed new industries in electronics, \nmotor cars, cameras and so on. It remains a powerful competitor to the \nolder states of world capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>None of this would have been possible, had the Japanese people been \nbiologically retarded, as a racist might have claimed in the 1850s. Nor \ncan the rapid advance of capitalism in Japan be explained by a \nbiological adjustment among the people there, since, as we have said, \ngenetic changes simply cannot happen at such a pace. The social \nrelationships in Japan, and the country\u2019s culture, have changed in step \nwith its economic development and its people have had no difficulty in \nadapting to the rapid changes. There is only one way to explain this \nlogically \u2013 that culture is a product of society and is not linked to \npeople\u2019s biological features.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another example, which deals with what was once a rampant prejudice, \nis that of the state of Israel. At a time when Jews were the most \nprominent butt of racist propaganda there was a popular theory that they\n were biologically averse to becoming involved in a modern military \nmachine. Racists asserted that Jews were shifty, insidious and cowardly \u2013\n inherent features which would enable them to avoid being recruited into\n the armed forces or, if they were recruited, would angle them into \ncushy, safe jobs a long way from any combat. If there were any substance\n to this prejudice, the founding of the state of Israel in 1948 would \nhave meant a nation which was economically and militarily feeble, an \neasy prey to the hostile states which surrounded it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, the opposite has been true. The country\u2019s population \u2013 \nfemale as well as male \u2013 are conscripted into the armed forces and, as \npart of Israel\u2019s military machine, have proved to be exceptionally \nefficient and ruthless combatants. Israel has been engaged in a \nsuccession of wars which have established it as a dominant military \npower in the Eastern Mediterranean. Its soldiers have been tough and \npitiless in combat. Its leaders and militarists, like Moshe Dayan and \nMenachem Begin, have proved to be single-minded in their assertion of \nthe interests of the Israeli ruling class. A state which was founded \nwith propaganda promises stressing the horrors of the Nazi holocaust has\n itself perpetrated atrocities and massacres. All of this has been a \nresponse to the needs of the Israeli capitalist class to defend their \ninterests from the encroachment of hostile neighbouring states and, \nwhere necessary or possible, to expand their hold over the area. The \nculture of Israel is that of a modern capitalist military power and the \nworkers of the country, just like those of other countries, have \naccepted and absorbed it as the Israeli ruling class needed them to. \nAgain, this has not been a matter of biology but of social and \nhistorical factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The evidence of Israel as well as Japan leads to the conclusion that \nrace does not determine culture. If it did it would be necessary to \nargue that there had been a massive, fundamental genetic change in the \ncase of Israel, over the space of some 20 years, and in the case of \nJapan, over some 50 years. Genetic changes simply do not happen at such a\n speed; they are a very gradual process with numerous diversions and \nreversals. Racists who talk of \u201cBritish\u201dor \u201cwestern\u201dor \u201cAryan\u201dculture \nbeing under threat from an \u201calien\u201dinfluence are dealing in \nunsupportable, unscientific myth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Race and Intelligence<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in spite of all the evidence, racialism \u2013 the making of policies \nand the enforcement of them on the basis of alleged racial differences \u2013\n continues to flourish. Inevitably, there has to be a continuous effort \nto justify this, just as there was when slavery and colonial repression \nwere bolstered by theories of religion and later of craniology and \nsocial Darwinism. In their time, these were considered to be powerful, \nconclusive evidence; nowadays, of course, they are exposed as baseless. \nWe should remember this when we are confronted with the current attempts\n to justify racism \u2013 same of them palpably malicious and to that extent \nflimsy, and some rather more sophisticated and thoughtful and perhaps, \nat first glance, scientifically argued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A recent example of this, which received widespread publicity and was\n the subject of heated debate, is the work of the American educational \npsychologist, Arthur Jensen, in assessing the Intelligence Quotient (IQ)\n of American children. In 1969, in the <em>Harvard Educational Review<\/em>,\n Jensen published an article \u201cHow Much Can We Boost IQ and Scholastic \nAchievement?\u201d, which concluded that it was not unreasonable to say that \n\u201cgenetic factors are strongly implicated in the average Negro-White \nintelligence difference\u201d. Jensen\u2019s argument was that about 80 per cent \nof what determines intelligence is genetic \u2013 a matter of inheritance \u2013 \nand about 20 per cent environmental \u2013 fashioned by social, historical, \nmaterial factors. As he found that on average black children scored \nlower in IQ tests than whites, he concluded that they must as a group be\n genetically inferior in terms of intelligence. This work was seized on \nby racists, who claimed that it provided objective scientific proof of \nwhat had long been obvious to the casual observer and therefore \njustified their case that social policies and decisions should be based \non this proven black inferiority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But the racists\u2019 excitement was distinctly premature, Jensen\u2019s work \ncame under a sustained assault from other investigators in this field \nwho questioned his conclusions, the basis from which he began, and the \nargumentative links between the two. But his ideas, in however crude a \nform, are common enough in popular racial prejudice to justify a brief \nexamination of race, intelligence and IQ. The concept of an Intelligence\n Quotient emerged in the early years of this century when Alfred Binet \nand Theodore Simon invented an \u201cintelligence scale\u201d. At the time they \ndisclaimed any notion that there could be any precise measurement of \nthis thing called \u201cintelligence\u201d, aiming only to \u201cmeasure the useful \neffects of adaptions and the value of the difficulties overcome by \nthem\u201d. The idea of a precise gauge of intelligence, which could be used \nin the formation of laws and social policies, the allocation of \nresources and so on, came from later investigators, Among these was \nLewis M. Terman, who in 1916 coined the term Intelligence Quotient, The \nconcept of ID attracted a lot of excited support and interest, This was \nparticularly so in America, where racists saw much wisdom in Terman\u2019s \nopinion that \u201cthe major differences in the intelligence test scores of \ncertain races, as Negroes and Whites, will never be fully accounted for \non the environmental hypothesis\u201d, (Terman was not troubled by the racial\n structure of his IQ test, nor was he daunted by the task of computing \nIQs for dead people, producing them for Napoleon, Lincoln, Galileo and \nso on.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever the confidence of people like Terman, the fact is that the \nconcept of an IQ really settles nothing and leaves a great many \nimportant questions without an answer. What is intelligence? Is it a \nfixed entity? Can it be measured? Is it measured by IQ tests? Does it \nhave any connection with hereditary factors and in particular with \nracial differences? To begin with, there is no certainty about the \nnature of intelligence. Is it an ability to absorb and usefully process \nlarge amounts of knowledge so as to develop and innovate \u2013 to expand \nknowledge? Or is it a highly practical memory, a capacity to store and \nretrieve facts? Or do we agree with Jensen, that it is \u201ca capacity for \nabstract reasoning and problem-solving\u201d? If the matter is so uncertain \nit seems doubtful that intelligence can be a fixed entity; it is as \nfraught with difficulties as the concept of race and must be treated \nwith a similar caution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A problem-solving ability is not an absolute; it develops in \naccordance with the problem itself. For the greater part of its life on \nearth humankind has survived by means of hunting and gathering food; the\n more advanced productive techniques which we now take for granted are \nin fact only about 15,000 years old. What might have been regarded, \nduring the hunting\/gathering phase, as intelligence was determined by \nthe problems which had to be solved then in order to survive. It would \nhave been very different from what is called intelligence in today\u2019s \nindustrial capitalist society. A person from a primitive food gathering \neconomy might do poorly in a modern IQ test against an industrial worker\n but the result would be different if the test were structured to the \nneeds of primitive society. Each person would have a different \n\u201cintelligence\u201dbut one could not be rated as superior to the other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This throws a different light on the variations in IQ scores not just\n between, but within, defined groups such as whites, blacks, Puerto \nRicans, Mexicans. To form the basis of any valid judgement or decisions \nabout relationships between such groups, and to be able to pronounce on \ntheir inherited intelligence, the tests would need to be completely \nseparated from all historical, social and environmental influences. \nThere would need to be a test based on absolute equality of opportunity,\n incentive, motivation, expectancy and ambition. There would need to be \nan unquestioning trust in the tester by the subject and in the subject \nby the tester. Of course these conditions are unattainable; it is not \nsurprising that IQ tests cannot come up to them. The conclusion must be \nthat IQ tests really tell us little more about a person than their \nability to perform in IQ tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This leaves us with the question of whether \u201cintelligence\u201dis \ngenetically conditioned \u2013and therefore not susceptible to change by \nenvironmental influences \u2013 and in particular whether it has any \nconnection with racial divisions. Although no genetic link has been \nfound between physical characteristics and intellectual performance \u2013 \nand no gene which would determine the latter \u2013 the work of people like \nArthur Jensen is taken to suggest that there might be such a link: \nJensen found that on average blacks scored lower in IQ tests than whites\n yet what does this really mean? The test was based on grouping by skin \ncolour. But since blacks are genetically mixed and in many cases include\n a white ancestor this means that it would be as accurate to describe \nthem as genetically, or inherently, white as it would be to describe \nthem as black. If we argue that a person\u2019s skin colour makes them \ngenetically of lower intelligence, how do we know that it is the black \nskin gene which is responsible for this and not the genes for the white \nskin which they may carry? If we take as our definition of a black \nanyone with an identifiable black ancestor, do we also define as white \nanyone with an identifiable white ancestor, which would include many \nblacks? On such uncertain grounds are racial divisions based, which \ndeprives them of usefulness in any scientific assessment. At one time it\n may suit the assessors to classify as black someone with a coloured \nskin but at another they may need to modify their classification; the \nresults of the assessment as a whole would then be different without the\n individual results changing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We must also consider the fact that skin colour is only one of many \nracial features. If the assessors based their groups on some other \nfeature, such as hair texture, they would have different groups, \nprobably of mixed skin colour. There are numerous possibilities, all of \nthem equally valid and each carrying its own effect on the average, \noverall result. But why should it be \u201cconvenient\u201dto make a division on \none basis and not on another? The answer is that Jensen\u2019s \ninvestigations, like much more work in this field, is by no means the \nobjective, purely scientific enterprise which racists claim it to be. It\n is heavily influenced by the same historical, social and environmental \nfactors as affected the performance of the children whom Jensen \nassessed. Jensen\u2019s work was all about the allocation of educational \nresources, about whether it was worthwhile to invest in attempting to \nraise the IQ of black children if they were inherently incapable of \nresponding. In other words its basic assumptions were those of \ncapitalist society \u2013 its priorities, its frames of judgement, its \nstandards of success and failure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So there is no objective biological evidence to link a person\u2019s \ngenetic make up with their mental abilities. Any attempts to test those \nabilities cannot be objective and are therefore not scientifically \nvalid. There is no case for saying that intellectual capacity is \ndetermined by race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>What is Race?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have seen the dangers of treating the concept of race with any \ncertainty. Although there are obviously differences between one group of\n human beings and another, once we try to draw rigid divisions between \nthem we quickly realise that it is impossible to be specific or \nconsistent. The boundaries between races are obscure and arbitrary, \nvarying according to the convenience of the investigator or to which \nfeature is chosen as the arbiter of the race a person belongs to. The \nmixing of human stock has resulted from the interbreeding caused by \nmigration all over the earth; the evidence is that this is leading to a \ngradual smoothing out of whatever differences there might be so that, \nwith time, there will truly be only one \u201crace\u201d\u2013the human \u201crace\u201d. The \nracist argument, that racial mixing is harmful, is scientifically \nbaseless; in truth the evidence is that if anything it is beneficial to \nhuman beings. We have also seen that whatever differences there are \nbetween human groupings, these are vastly outnumbered by our \nsimilarities. We come then to the conclusion that, although there may be\n much profit for racists in inventing biological differences, or in \nexaggerating and misinterpreting those which actually exist while \ndenying the essential sameness of all human beings, there is in fact no \ncase for basing social and political action on racial factors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If it is anything, race is a biological concept. It is not \npsychological, social, behavioural, cultural or political. It does not \nexplain social status, achievements, ability or human behaviour. These \nthings are fashioned by material conditions and the social developments \nwhich arise from them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch3\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 3: Anti-Semitism<br>\n<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racial prejudice is a widespread feature of modern society; it is so \ndiverse in character that it can be applied to explain almost any \nproblem, deal with almost any emergency, satisfy almost any panic. It is\n not simply a matter of colour, for prejudice can operate between groups\n of people who have the same colour. A good example of this is \nantisemitism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Is there a Jewish Race?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since anti-semitism is a sort of \u201cbread-and-butter\u201dracism \u2013 rather \nlike a staple diet of prejudice \u2013 it figures prominently in racist \ntheory. We should, then, first discuss the question of whether Jews can \nproperly be described as a race. In the terms of their religion they are\n in fact not only a race but \u201cthe chosen people\u201d; in scientific and \nbiological terms, however, they cannot be defined in this way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jews do not conform to any uniform recognisable physical type. They \ndo not all have dark hair and dark eyes; in some parts of Europe such as\n Alsace and Poland there are substantial numbers who are blonde in \nappearance and in other areas there are many varieties of skin, hair and\n eye colour. There are Jews with black skins \u2013 for example the Falashas \nof Ethiopia. And the famous Jewish nose, so beloved of anti-semitic \ncartoonists, is a characteristic of only a minority. As is the case with\n other groups, it is wrong to talk about \u201cJewish blood\u201dfor they share \nthe same blood groups with the rest of the world\u2019s population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The explanation is that the Jews \u2013 again like other human groups \u2013 \nare not \u201cpure\u201d. They were not \u201cpure\u201dwhen they left the desert over 3,000\n years ago and since then, in spite of all the efforts \u2013 voluntary as \nwell as compulsory \u2013 to segregate them into an exclusive body, they have\n become even less so. At least three distinct strains can now be \ndiscerned in their make up \u2013the Ashkenazi or German; the Sephardic or \nSpanish; and the Oriental. All these groups differ from one another and \neach contains wide variations in physical type. If anything, their \nmigratory history has had the effect of making the Jews resemble the \ngroups among which they live. Nevertheless, over centuries they have \nmanaged to preserve something of a separate identity for themselves. \nThis means that they might best be described as a socio-religious group \nwhich, we should add, has in its struggle to survive often become as \nmarkedly racist as its own detractors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jews and the Nation State<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To understand the reason for anti-semitism and its catastrophic \nconsequences we must refer to one of the essential features of property \nsociety \u2013 a feature which in fact existed before the emergence of \ncapitalism. Property society brought the concept of the nation-state. \nPeople were encouraged \u2013 indeed often forced \u2013 to identify their own \ninterests with those of the state and to regard the nation as a \nseparate, independent entity often hostile to other states. This \nbaseless and inhuman idea is called patriotism \u2013 a nationalistic \nprejudice which feeds on contempt for, and hostility towards, people in \nother nations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Modern capitalism raised the setting up of nation-states to a fine \nart. As the first capitalist states expanded, they grew accustomed to \ndefining national boundaries which were based on acts of forcible \nannexation, as happened when Africa was carved up between the colonising\n powers of Europe during the 19th century. Capitalism is also accustomed\n to redefining frontiers, setting up new states, or amalgamating or \ndissolving others, usually as part of the \u201cpeace\u201darrangements after a \nwar. In this way, to give some recent examples, the state of \nCzechoslovakia was established after the first world war and the \nseparate nations of East and West Germany after 1945. In each case the \npeople in the new state were pressured to regard themselves as having a \nnew, different, national identity, to develop a new patriotism and to \ndirect it against those who had recently been their compatriots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The motive of this propaganda is the protection of the interests of \nthe dominant class in a nation-state. Workers who are patriotic will \nreadily sacrifice themselves when called upon to do so, either by \nallowing themselves to be exploited more intensely at work or by \nparticipating in a war against a group of foreign exploiters. But just \nas nationalism is important to the interests of a ruling class, so are \nthere problems when within a nation-state there is a group which fosters\n its own identity and traditions and which therefore may be perceived to\n owe its loyalty \u2013 or at least a greater loyalty \u2013 to the group rather \nthan to the state. Historically these problems have arisen with many \ngroups including the Jews, who themselves have not lessened the \nantagonism by defending their separateness and being conspicuous through\n their religious rites and customs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Jews in History<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>From what is known of their history, the Jews were originally one of a\n number of racially and culturally similar tribes who came to the \nEastern Mediterranean area from the desert region to the east. They \nentered Palestine as nomadic cattle breeders \u2013 a life-style which \nencouraged the retention of old-fashioned customs and rituals. At that \ntime \u2013 about 1400 BC \u2013 Palestine lay on an important trade route between\n the empires of the Babylonians and the Assyrians to the north and the \nEgyptians to the south. Although their uncomfortable position as a \nbuffer between other more powerful groups may have fostered feelings of \ngroup identity in the Jews \u2013 bolstered by their distinctive religion \u2013 \ntheir constant contact with traders and merchants would have acted \nagainst any tendency for them to be separate and exclusive. This latter \nfact would also have encouraged them to abandon the harsh, precarious \nexistence of nomadic herdspeople for the ranks of merchants. But as they\n emigrated and settled in other countries they encountered the hostility\n of the established merchants there, which they met by banding together.\n The sacking of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD caused the virtually \ncomplete dispersal of the Jews from Palestine, leaving them to survive \nas separate groups wherever they could, the subject of widespread and \nunrelenting hostility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By the Middle Ages the Jews were scattered throughout the world, but \nwith most living in Europe. Their persecution was mainly justified on \nreligious grounds, the prejudices born of Christian teaching being \nluridly elaborated by such bizarre fantasies as the Jews having horns \nand a tail or being responsible for the Black Death. At the least they \nwere subject to restrictions such as a ban on employing Christians. In \nmany places they were disqualified from owning land and denied \nmembership of the Guilds which were so integral a part of the feudal \neconomy. One effect of this discrimination was to confine Jews to trade \nand moneylending, which stimulated the accusation that they were mean, \ngrasping and swindling. In many countries Jews were forced to identify \nthemselves publicly by wearing a prominent badge {the Nazis were not, \nthen, the originators of this idea} and feelings against them often \nboiled over into physical attacks, at times reaching the scale of \nmassacres. When it suited the purpose of the ruling class they would \ntake the Jews under their protection; many kings of England, for \nexample, declared them to be \u201cservants of the king\u201d, which gave powerful\n protection to their persons and property. The price of this was to be \nmilked to top up the royal coffers and if they were unable to pay they \nwere liable to be expelled by their protector, as happened in England \nunder Edward I in 1290. They were not allowed back into England until \n1664.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the time of the French Revolution there was something of a respite\n in the persecution of the Jews and in many European countries \nrestrictions against them were lifted. But by the end of the 19th \ncentury the situation had changed, with a number of serious anti-Jewish \ncampaigns \u2013 or pogroms \u2013 notably in Russia and eastern Europe. These \ncampaigns led to a large scale exodus of Jews: between 1905 and 1908 \nover 200,000 a year fled and it has been estimated that some 47 million \nleft Europe, mostly for the United States, between 1844 and the start of\n World War One.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Jews in Britain<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Britain in 1850 the Jewish population amounted to about 35,000; by\n 1939 this figure had increased tenfold, most of the immigrants being \nrefugees from Russia and eastern Europe. They were overwhelmingly urban \nsettlers, concentrating in the East End of London (where about \ntwo-thirds of them settled), in the Strangeways district of Manchester \nand the Leylands in Leeds. Like many a large, concentrated, desperate \nimmigrant population the Jews were cruelly vulnerable to an especially \nharsh exploitation, in some cases by their fellow immigrants. They were \ncompelled to work in the sweatshops of the ready-made clothing trade, \nwhich had then only recently been established. In cramped, hot, dirty \nworkrooms, side by side with similarly desperate English workers, the \nJews laboured long and hard to the profit of their employers. They were \nalso employed, under similar conditions, in small workshops producing \nfurniture and footwear. These workshops could be set up with very little\n capital, which meant that some workers could, and did, start one up \nknowing that the worst that could follow failure would be to return to \nthe sweatshop. Here we have the origins of the Jewish stake in \nentrepreneurial business and of the few Jewish businesses which later \nexpanded into huge tailoring combines, chain stores, property \ndevelopment companies and entertainment empires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The prejudice against Jews was, then, rooted in historical rather \nthan racial factors. They were seen as an alien group of sojourners, \nowing no allegiance to their place of settlement and unwilling to give \nany. Because workers commonly came into contact with them at the point \nof retail trade, it was easy for them to have a reputation as \nunproductive \u201cmiddlemen\u201d, most comfortable when they were wheeling and \ndealing. Their identity as a separate, exclusive group fostered a \nvariety of theories of subversion which held Jews responsible for an \ninternational conspiracy to undermine the culture and stability of \nwhichever country they lived in. Between the wars fascist propaganda \nplaced great emphasis on the alleged evil doings of something called \n\u201cinternational finance\u201d, by which was meant an imaginary world-wide \nJewish plot to subvert modern civilisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jewish influence was supposed to be at work in the Marconi scandal, \njust before the first world war, which concerned British government \ncontracts to establish a chain of naval wireless stations throughout the\n British Empire. At about the same time there was the Indian silver \nscandal, which arose from a proposal that the India Office should \nsecretly buy silver through the bullion dealers Samuel Montague, instead\n of through the usual method of the Bank of England operating on the \nsilver market. Although it was of absolutely no concern to working class\n interests that one company rather than another should profit from a \ngovernment rearmament drive, or from state purchases of precious metals,\n workers were angry at these underhand deals, which they saw as evidence\n of Jewish clannishness and devious fixing. The South African war, which\n was actually fought over which sections of the ruling class would \nprofit from that country\u2019s mineral wealth, was blamed on Jewish \ninfluence. The journalist J.A.Hobson, who was sent to South Africa in \n1899 by the <em>Manchester Guardian<\/em>, declared: \u201cThe Jews are <em>par excellence <\/em>the international financiers . . . they fastened on the Rand as they are prepared to fasten upon any other part of the globe\u201d(<em>Contemporary Review<\/em>, no.77, 1900).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even the Social Democratic Federation newspaper <em>Justice <\/em>(which\n claimed to be stating a Marxist, internationalist analysis of \ncapitalism) argued that \u201cthe Jew influence\u201dwas dragging Britain into the\n war and that the Prime Minister, Salisbury, was unable to master \u201ca \nJewish clique\u201d(7 October 1899). The effect was to inflame British \nworkers\u2019 paranoia and confusion. In this way they could forget their \npoverty and the fact that it was their lives which were to be lost in \nthe war to protect the capitalists\u2019 interests and could instead turn \ntheir wrath onto the Jews. No theory was too outrageous if it lent \nweight to the concept of Jews as sly, greedy and subversive. It was very\n similar to the malicious hysteria which is vented on black workers \ntoday. One writer, for example, in a London daily newspaper, described \nJewish immigrants in these words: filthy, rickety jetsam of humanity, \nbearing on their evil faces the stigmata of every physical and moral \ndegeneration, men and women who have no intention of working otherwise \nthan in trafficking. (<em>Standard<\/em>, 5 January 1905).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Attacks on Jewish people and on their homes and shops were \ncommonplace, notably in the East End of London, and there were other \nserious incidents in Ireland and Wales. Antisemitism was firmly rooted \nin working class demonology. Between the wars conditions in Britain \nprovided a fertile breeding ground for all types of prejudice and social\n scapegoating. On the one hand the capitalist class were disquieted by \nthe progressive erosion of their standing in the world and by the \napparently unstable attitudes of the working class who, for their part, \nwere bewildered and cynical at the exposure of the politicians\u2019 promises\n to build a land fit for the heroines and heroes returned from the war. \nThis was the type of situation in which racial prejudice could flourish.\n In 1920, the publication of an English version of <em>The Protocols of the Elders of Zion<\/em>,\n with its apparent revelation of a Jewish plot to dominate the world, \nwas regarded by some people as justification for a policy of \ndiscrimination and repression against Jews. The exposure of the work as a\n forgery \u2013which did not take long \u2013 reduced its believers to a small \nlunatic fringe, among them members of Oswald Mosley\u2019s British Union of \nFascists (BUF). Formally the BUF denied anti-semitism; Mosley always \ninsisted that fascists attacked Jews, not on the grounds of race or \nreligion, but for their actions or political opinions. But a typical \nstatement of his was in a telegram he sent to the notorious Nazi Jew \nbaiter, Julius Streicher, in May 1935: \u201cThe forces of Jewish corruption \nmust be conquered in all great countries before the future of Europe can\n be made secure in justice and peace.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mosley could be provoked into even cruder expressions of his views \nand so could his followers, like William Joyce, who once complained that\n swimming in a public pool also used by Jews was likely to result in \nbeing \u201cpositively anointed in Jewish grease\u201d. When war broke out in \n1939, the BUF were in a dilemma. As an organisation &nbsp;expressing a \nfervent patriotism they could hardly fail to play an enthusiastic part \nin defending the interests of the British capitalist class (one of whom \nwas Oswald Mosley). But they had reservations -to put it mildly \u2013 about \nfighting against Nazi Germany whose methods in dealing with political \nopponents and anyone classified as racially inferior they so much \nadmired. They resolved the problem \u2013 at least to their own satisfaction \u2013\n by attributing the war to their old enemy, an international Jewish \nconspiracy. So the BUF sent its members to war reluctantly, telling them\n that they had been manoeuvred into a conflict which set one lot of \nAryans against another (which said little for the stability or the \nperceptiveness of these alleged Aryan superpeople).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All this amounted, in the view of some people, to something called \n\u201cThe Jewish Problem\u201dwhich, had the BUF ever come to power, would \nundoubtedly have been dealt with in a way having scant regard for \npolitical freedom or for human feelings. This, of course, was the way of\n the Nazis who applied to the \u201cProblem\u201da \u201cFinal Solution\u201d- the \ncold-blooded, deliberately organised murder of millions of people. This \nwas in fact the quintessential logical expression of racism and it did \nmuch to boost the Zionist response to it and cause the bloody conflict \nin the Middle East ever since the establishment of the state of Israel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If, since the Second World War, the Jews have largely been replaced \nas the principal target of European racists, this is not to say that \nanti-semitism is dead. It still exists in Britain and sometimes bursts \ninto violence elsewhere in Europe with bomb attacks on synagogues. It is\n notably strong in Russia, where so many Jews were once forced to flee \nfrom the last of the Tsarist pogroms. Now, under a \u201ccommunist\u201d \ngovernment, the lot of many Jews in Russia remains one of enduring \npersecution \u2013 and this in a country which claims to operate on the basis\n of human interests and equal standing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>For a long time the Jews have been one of capitalism\u2019s handier \nscapegoats, liable to suffer most when the system is in crisis, as it \nwas towards the end of the last century and during the 1930s. At such \ntimes, when working class suffering becomes especially acute, workers \nwho need an explanation \u2013 any explanation \u2013 for their problems can be \nvulnerable to the racist urgings to blame a scapegoat rather than \nconsider how capitalism works and why it imposes such problems on them. \nThey are liable to ignore the fact that the majority of Jews are also \nmembers of the working class, enduring the same poverty, poor housing, \nsub-standard food and clothing and so on. They go through the same \nstruggle for survival but Jews are no more aware of their class \ninterests than are any other group of workers. In their ignorance they \nsupported the establishment of the state of Israel and, if they live \nthere, they serve the interests of the ruling class in the same way as \nworkers everywhere \u2013 by acquiescing in their own exploitation, by \nparticipating in their rulers\u2019 wars, by voting for one capitalist party \nor another at election time. Israel is now a powerful, militaristic \ncapitalist state \u2013 perhaps a nuclear power in the near future. It might \nhave been hoped that the Jews\u2019 terrible history would have encouraged \nthem to something more hopeful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch4\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 4: Racism in the United States<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To some extent we dealt in Chapter I with the origins of racism in \nthe United States, seeing it develop from the institution of slavery. \nOne problem in considering racism in the USA is that it operates in so \nmany directions with so many different groups as its targets. Racial \nprejudice exists not just against blacks but against people of Chinese, \nJapanese and Filipino origin. Then there is the discrimination against \ngroups like Mexicans and Puerto Ricans. Nor is possession of a \n\u201cwhite\u201dskin any protection, for racism reaches out to people whose \norigins are in Europe, whose ancestors emigrated to America from such \ncountries as Italy, Poland and Russia. And, of course, there is \nprejudice \u2013 as there is almost everywhere \u2013 against Jews. At the same \ntime these groups may erect barriers against each other. All of this \nmakes the United States \u2013 which its politicians and its patriots \ndescribe as \u201cGod\u2019s own country\u201dand \u201cLand of the Free\u201d- the world\u2019s \nclassic case of the complexity and absurdity of racism. It is a \nsituation to tax even the racists\u2019 vocabulary of insults; human beings \nare sneeringly labelled as \u201cWops\u201d, \u201cYids\u201d, \u201cPolaks\u201d, \u201cNips\u201d. . . . But \nabove all other forms of discrimination there has always been that \nagainst black people and this is the aspect we shall consider in this \nchapter. The analysis we present, and the comments we make about \nprejudice against blacks, can also be applied to the other groups we \nhave mentioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Slave Economy<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first slaves were imported into America from Africa in 1619, \ntwelve years after the arrival of the first settlers from England. At \nfirst only a few hundred slaves were imported, to work alongside the \nnative Indian population who had also been enslaved. Treatment of the \nslaves was much the same as for white people who worked as indentured \nservants; in most cases they could earn their freedom and were given \nland of their own to cultivate. Slavery became uneconomic in the \nnorthern states and it was quickly abolished there. This might also have\n happened in the South had not the whole situation been dramatically \nchanged by the cultivation of tobacco. This crop needed a large, \nhard-working labour force and the tobacco growers looked to the slave \ntrade to supply it. By the 1660s slaves were arriving in America at the \nrate of about 6,000 a year. Alongside tobacco some cotton was also \ncultivated but this was not very profitable, largely owing to the \nlaborious, inefficient and costly process of manually separating the \ncotton fibres from the rest of the plant. In 1794, just as the tobacco \nplantations were at a low ebb and the whole future of slavery was \nconsequently in question, the cotton gin was invented. This machine, \nwhich separated the cotton seeds and fibres mechanically, had the effect\n of stimulating a profitable cotton industry. As plantations turned from\n the cultivation of tobacco to cotton the demand for slaves increased \nenormously, reviving the trade in them and giving a new lease of life to\n slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The system which developed may be called \u201cplantation capitalism\u201d; \nmoney was invested in cotton production, just as it might be in an \nestablished industrial enterprise of capitalism, but the workers \ninvolved were not the \u201cfree\u201dwage earners characteristic of industrial \ncapitalism but chattel slaves. At about the same time another invention \nallowed the mechanical granulation of sugar, which created a sugar \nempire, also dependent on slave labour, in the south. As the demand for \nslaves grew more urgent their price rose and the vastly profitable, \nvastly cruel, slave trade was born again, with a body of nonsensical \ntheory to prove that it was all in accordance with Christian principles,\n or biological fact, or was essential to American prosperity or even in \nthe slaves\u2019 best interests. By the 1830s the plantation system was \nentrenched in the South and so was the planters\u2019 determination to defend\n the institution of slavery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, in the North things were different. That was the scene of a\n developing industrial capitalism so that in one formally united country\n there were two economic systems, and their respective dominant classes \ncompeted for control over the new land. The dispute was settled in the \nCivil War of 1861-65, which was fought over this issue and over the \nunity of the United States. The southern aim of secession, which would \nhave virtually set up a separate nation with its own economic style, was\n defeated and among the terms imposed by the victorious Union was the \n\u201cemancipation\u201d of the slaves. For some years after the war, during the \ntime known as the Period of Reconstruction, the South was occupied by \nnorthern troops and the freed slaves were given certain civil and \npolitical rights. However, when the northern occupation ended in 1876, \npolitical power was restored to the plantation owners, which set the \nscene for the erosion of the \u201cemancipation\u201dmeasures, for the slaves, \nalthough no longer legally owned by the planters, were still \neconomically dependent on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Formal Emancipation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the 18605 and the 18705 a series of constitutional amendments \nand new Acts theoretically guaranteed blacks an equal place with whites \nin American society. But in 1883 the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil \nRights Act of 1875 was unconstitutional and this opened the way for a \nmass of minor legislation, known as the Jim Crow laws, which undermined \nthe slaves\u2019 \u201cemancipation\u201d. The rights and voting facilities nominally \nextended to blacks became dead letters and in the South separate (and \ninferior) schools, parks, transport and the like were allocated to them.\n In buses, for example, blacks were confined to a very few seats at the \nback; where there was a beach it was either denied to blacks or divided \ninto white (better) and black (worse) sections; there were separate \nschools and colleges for whites and blacks. The segregation mania went \neven further than that, for in the South there were very few hospitals \nwhich would admit a black; they would \u2013 and did \u2013 see blacks die rather \nthan offer them treatment. Many of these measures were challenged in the\n Supreme Court but were upheld on the specious grounds that the \nfacilities, although separate, were equal; they did not imply that \nblacks were inferior and so could not be held to be discriminatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So it was that at the turn of the century the blacks in the south \nwere almost as much under subjection as they had been under slavery. \nChattel slavery had been legally abolished, from above, but it was \nanother matter to make emancipation work against the opposition of the \nmajority of people on whose cooperation its success depended. Laws do \nnot change social conditions and the resulting attitudes. In spite of \nthe \u201cemancipation\u201dmeasures the basis of the southern economy was still \nthe plantation, which could be worked by the most elementary form of \nlabour, with no need for the wages system of industrial capitalism. \nSlavery was succeeded by a system in which those who worked the land \nwere additionally robbed, by force and fraud. And the black was deprived\n of even the element of security implied by the status of slave, which \ngave the owner a direct interest in the slaves being well fed and \nadequately housed \u2013 often to the envy of the \u201cpoor white\u201dfarmers. \n\u201cEmancipation\u201din fact depressed the blacks to the lowest rungs of the \noccupational ladder, where half-starved sharecroppers scratched the \nmeagrest of livings from the poorest of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The blacks were \u201ckept in their place\u201dby an unrelenting campaign by \nthe whites, carried on by both legal and illegal means. Intimidation, \nbeatings and lynchings became part of the southern way of life. It was \ncommon for blacks to be arrested, convicted and punished on trumped-up \ncharges, particularly those alleging some sexual misdemeanour against a \nwhite person. The law enforcement agencies \u2013 the police and courts \u2013 \nwhich were in theory concerned with an unbiased administration of the \nlaw, were often corrupt, enthusiastic participants in the denial of \nrights to blacks. It was not unknown for the police to connive openly, \neven take part in, fearful acts of terrorism and murder against blacks. \nTerrorist organisations like the Ku Klux Klan were allowed to go about \ntheir grisly business virtually unhindered. What was theoretically the \nlaw of the land was resisted and ignored in a display of what might be \nseen as white solidarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation might have been different had the blacks been able to \nexercise a political influence. They were numerous enough, had they been\n able to take part in elections, to have exerted significant pressure on\n the politicians who stood for racial discrimination. Again, however, \nthey were thwarted, for the whites were able to place insurmountable \nobstacles in the way of a black trying to vote. Some of these were \nillegal, such as the threat, and the actual use, of violence and murder.\n Others simply adjusted the law, for example the imposition of a poll \ntax which no black could pay, or the use, as a voting qualification, of \nthe \u201cgrandfather clause\u201dof Louisiana. For almost a century after the \nCivil War the Democratic Party had a political stranglehold on the \nSouth, where they continued to be associated in the popular mind with \nthe Confederacy, with slavery and the subjection of the black. From this\n racist repression, and this political stranglehold, some exceedingly \nugly and menacing politicians were to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Blacks as Industrial Workers<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was the first world war, which had so lasting an effect on the \nface of world capitalism, that began to change things for the American \nblacks. The industrial boom of the war brought a demand for labour from \nthe industries in the North and the consequent migration of blacks from \nthe South to the northern industrial cities. At about the same time \nindustries such as textile processing, coal mining and steel production \nopened in the South, attracting both blacks and whites from the rural \nareas into the cities. At the beginning the blacks were much like any \nother migratory labour force \u2013 unskilled, bewildered by the speed and \npressures of urban survival and very much at the mercy of employers, \nlandlords and traders who had few scruples about making the most of the \nimmigrants\u2019 plight. These problems have dogged all large-scale \nimmigrations but in the case of the blacks coming to the North from the \nSouth<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>there were also two other, particularly aggravating, factors. The \nfirst was the excessively backward and repressive situation they had \nleft, which made adapting to an industrial city that much more \ndifficult. The second was their skin colour, which made them readily \naccessible targets for other workers\u2019 frustration, confusion and \ndespair. So in the case of the blacks there was an extra impetus to the \nnormal tendency of migratory workers to gravitate towards certain parts \nof a town. It was very much a defensive move for the blacks to \nconcentrate in places like Harlem in New York and Watts in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But escaping from the South did not release the blacks from \nprejudice. The assimilation of a non-industrial people into a modern \ncapitalist economy always produces its own stresses, which are easily \nstimulated and aggravated by the insecurity and the frustrations already\n being suffered by the established, \u201cnative\u201dworkers. The blacks\u2019 arrival\n in the North met an informal, tacit segregation which effectively \nconfined them to inferior jobs and homes. Two styles of colour \ndiscrimination developed. In the South it was open and explicit, a part \nof the legal system \u2013 blacks simply did not have access to certain \nthings and there were notices and other declarations to remind them of \nit. In the North and East the rules of segregation were implicit and \nwere silently accepted by both sides. In the northern and eastern cities\n blacks did not even try to enter certain restaurants or hotels or move \ninto certain parts of town. The only jobs open to them were labouring or\n menial. In this way was born that popular film character -the genial, \nmusical black servant or railway porter with a heart of gold untroubled \nby ambitions to be equal. Overall, then, segregation still ruled; mixed \nmarriages were illegal in almost half the states and in about one third \nof them blacks were officially denied access to the best schools, \nrestaurants, parks and similar amenities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The absorption of blacks into industry was accelerated by the second \nworld war, when American factories needed workers too much to be able to\n discriminate on grounds of colour. It was estimated that in July 1943 \nthere were about 1,300,000 blacks working in war plants; in shipbuilding\n the number of blacks employed in March 1944 exceeded that for all \nshipyard workers in 1940. In many important ways, this situation was \nincompatible with a system of racial segregation, which began to be \nbroken down by the demands of industrial capitalism. The American armed \nforces, even though they were segregated into units by colour, were also\n affected; in 1942 a southern senator suggested that black troops from \nthe North should be stationed only in that part of the country, but this\n was peremptorily rejected as it conflicted with the military needs of \nAmerican capitalism. This decision neatly represents the reality that \nthe demands of Industrial capitalism cannot be endlessly denied by the \nprejudices and restrictions of a pre-industrial society. That the spread\n of capitalism in the South was hampered by racial discrimination, and \nin particular by the segregation laws, was amply illustrated by the \nexperiences of the war. After 1945 the Federal authorities, in the \noverall interests of the American capitalist class, acted to limit \nsegregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Desegregation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the armed forces, segregation was abolished in 1948, which allowed\n black American workers to join the same units as whites, to become \nofficers commanding whites and to die alongside whites in the wars of \ntheir ruling class \u2013 as they did in Korea and Vietnam. In 1954 there was\n a more significant and far-reaching decision, when Chief Justice Warren\n ruled that \u201cseparate educational facilities are inherently unequal\u201dand \ntherefore unconstitutional and that desegregation of all schools and \ncolleges must proceed \u201cwith all deliberate speed\u201d. The southern \nsegregationists realised the implications of this and how fatal it would\n be to their position as oppressors. Their first tactic was to delay \nimplementation of the ruling, which was resisted by some states by a \nseries of ingenious constitutional arguments which in turn were defeated\n by equally ingenious responses from the courts. In the end the success \nof the ruling rested on two things: the existence of a black person, or \ngroup of black people, courageous and persistent enough to claim this \nnew constitutional right in the face of determined resistance and \nintimidation; and the willingness of the Federal authorities to enforce \nthe ruling, by protecting those people, above the heads of the state \npoliticians. In places like Little Rock, Arkansas and Oxford, Missouri, \nthe people came forward to take their place in the schools and colleges.\n The government sent federal agents and the National Guard to ensure \nthat the schools were desegregated and, amid scenes of mob hysteria and \nviolence, the ruling was enforced. The effect has been lasting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An important measure was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, at first \nproposed by President Kennedy and then pushed through by Lyndon Johnson \nwith the combination of wheedling and arm-twisting in which he excelled.\n The Act was aimed against private discrimination, whereas all previous \nmeasures had been limited to discrimination in public. The Federal \nGovernment could prosecute local governments which discriminated, and \ndeny them federal funds. It forbade the exclusion of blacks from \nschools, restaurants, hotels, sports facilities. The Act also proved \ndifficult to implement against entrenched racial bigotry. But in the end\n modern industrial capitalism cannot settle with slavery nor with the \nprejudice which goes with it. It is a long process but the face of \ncolour prejudice in the United States has changed and is continuing to \nchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the 1960s the blacks began a campaign of physically asserting \ntheir right to use public facilities equally with whites. They sat in \nthe seats customarily reserved for whites in buses, they insisted on \nusing, and sometimes staging sit-ins at, snack-bars, restaurants and \nlunch counters. They boycotted some services, as they had boycotted the \nbuses in Montgomery, Alabama in 1954. In 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama \u2013 \nwhere the governor, George Wallace, was a typically populist, racist \npolitical manipulator \u2013 they opened a wide campaign to desegregate snack\n bars, jobs, stores and churches. {Southern racists had their own \nspecial interpretation of the theory that we are all god\u2019s children.) In\n 1963 there was a gigantic march on Washington DC to demand civil rights\n for blacks; 200,000 people were there at the end of the demonstration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps more significant than these activities was the voter \nregistration drive organised during the 1960s by the civil rights \nmovement. At the time blacks were still denied the vote, by intimidation\n or by an obstacle course of impossible severity. In 1965 President \nLyndon Johnson (who had not always been in favour of racial equality) \nlisted a few of the artifices which were used: the black would be told \nthat it was the wrong day to register, or too late in the day, or that \nthe registrar was temporarily absent. Any black who was allowed to apply\n would have their application refused because they had not spelled out \ntheir second name, or had abbreviated a word. Sometimes a test would be \nenforced \u2013 perhaps to recite, word perfect, the American Constitution \u2013 \nwith the registrar the sole judge of success or failure. No such \nobstacles were put in the way of white applicants. The voter \nregistration drive, which began in Selina, Alabama in 1965, required a \ngreat deal of courage and persistence in face of the fiercest hostility,\n and several civil rights workers were murdered. This was a crucial \nissue to white domination; in Alabama, for example, blacks made up 40 \nper cent of the population and were potentially a powerful voting lobby \nwhich any hopeful politician would need to assuage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The effect of the registration drive was quickly apparent. In the \n1964 presidential election the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, \ncarried only those states where less than 45 per cent of eligible blacks\n were registered to vote. The other states were won by Lyndon Johnson, \nwho was pledged to push on with a civil rights programme. In the \nelections of 1976, 46 per cent of southern blacks went to the polls, \ncompared to 57 per cent of southern whites. Blacks now number some 26 \nmillion in the United States \u2013 about 12 per cent of the population. Once\n they had established the right to vote, blacks began to be elected to \npolitical office; by 1978 more than 2,200 held elective office in the \nSouth and there were black mayors even in Alabama and New Orleans. The \nDemocratic Party no longer dominates southern politics; Republican \ncandidates are often elected there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Equality as Wage Slaves<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fact that this had been achieved in the teeth of fierce \nopposition, coupled with the realisation that the loosening of \nsegregation did little to ease the blacks\u2019 burden of poverty (the \nunemployment rate for blacks is about twice that for whites) has \npersuaded many blacks that integration is not the answer. In frustration\n and disillusionment black workers set up their own, exclusive \norganisations such as the Black Panthers and the Black Muslims, \nsignalling also their disenchantment with the tactic of non-violence. \nThe result has been a series of large scale riots in inner city areas, \nwhere poverty for whites as well as blacks is especially harsh. It is in\n these areas that the new flashpoints of racial tension are to be found;\n industrial, urbanised capitalism has added its own bilious flavour to \nracial prejudice. The black workers\u2019 anger and frustration is \nunderstandable but misguided. The capitalist system must condemn its \nworkers to repression, impoverishment and an alienated existence. This \nis not confined to workers of anyone colour; moves towards racial \n\u201cequality\u201dhave eased some of the American blacks\u2019 burdens but have left \nuntouched their status as workers \u2013 degraded, exploited, harassed, \noppressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In that way \u201cemancipation\u201dand the triumph of \u201ccivil rights\u201dhave \nclarified a number of issues for the American black. They have shown \nthat workers everywhere are subject to the same problems whatever their \nskin colour or \u201crace\u201d. In other words, all workers have a unity of \ninterests against the interests of the capitalist class. Although the \nprocess has been hampered by the blacks\u2019 historical background, a black \ncapitalist class is now emerging in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are \u201cblack\u201dbanks and money lending firms with assets which in 1980 totalled over $2,000 million. On 17 June 1974 <em>Time <\/em>magazine\n profiled a black family living in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, in \nwhich the husband was \u201clawyer, businessman, politician\u201dwith a Cadillac \nand a Buick garaged at their ranch home. In 1980 Herman J. Russell, a \nblack, was president and chairman of the board of a group whose annual \nsales then exceeded $32 million. One result of this is to set in motion a\n reverse migratory trend, as blacks return to the South where business \nprospects are more promising. Another is in its effect on black people\u2019s\n unity, which is now anything but solid on social, economic and \npolitical issues \u2013 the same story as for white workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black capitalists are ready to exploit all workers, whatever their \nskin colour. Unfortunately neither black nor white workers have yet seen\n the need to act in conscious unity to solve their problems by \nabolishing capitalism, and only when they do so will they be truly in \ntouch with the possibility of their own emancipation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch5\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 5: Racism in South Africa<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Socialist Party\u2019s pamphlet <em>The Racial Problem<\/em>, which \nwas published in November 1947, the section dealing with race prejudice \nin South Africa closed with these words: \u201cThe logical end of the road \nwhich the South African white worker is treading can only be bloody \nviolence and destruction. No group can permanently hold down another \nmany times more numerous than itself, and sooner or later the working \nclass, particularly the white section, will have to face up to the \nsituation and make their decision.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We cannot claim that this statement (which could equally have been \napplied to the issue of race prejudice and rising nationalism in several\n other African countries) was particularly perceptive or original. Even \nin those days, before the National Party came to power with the policy \nof overt racism and apartheid, the future of South Africa was \nfrighteningly predictable to all but the most bigoted or blinkered. It \nis a classic case of racism which, in the face of mounting opposition \nand pressure from a developing industrial capitalism, has retreated only\n slowly, putting up a stubborn rearguard action. This clash, in essence \nbetween the needs of an industrial society and the restrictions imposed \nby a pre-industrial ideology, has indeed been expressed in bloody \nviolence, destruction and atrocities. The working class, particularly \nthe whites, have had to face reality and accept concessions which go \nagainst their bigotry. The end result is as inevitable as anything can \nbe; apartheid will die, South Africa will become another developing \nAfrican capitalist state (perhaps one of the more powerful and \ninfluential) where the ruling class is predominantly black.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Apartheid: How It Works<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whites make up only 20 percent of the population of South Africa; \nthere are a little over four million of them. There are about one \nmillion Asians, mainly Indians, about 2.25million Coloureds (mixed race)\n and over 18 million black Africans or Bantus. Nevertheless the European\n minority have for a long time controlled the economic and political \nstructure of the country \u2013 in contrast to many of the other examples of \nracism we have considered which involve the repression of a minority by \nthe majority. At a time when countries like the United States were \nmoving towards dismantling their official racism, South Africa was \nenergetically putting together its system of apartheid. This also \nhappened in some other African states, for example Southern Rhodesia \n(now Zimbabwe), but South Africa\u2019s system of discrimination has proved \nthe most durable of them all. The blacks have been confined to supplying\n abundant and cheap labour under the control of, and to the vast benefit\n of, the whites. This system was deliberately erected and systematically\n kept in being; the first laws denying Africans any legal right to land \nownership were passed in the 19th century and were followed by a series \nof Acts which restricted their freedom to travel, to hold skilled jobs \nand to organise in unions and political parties and denied them the \nright to vote. The National Party government which was elected in 1948 \nrearranged these laws into one coherent code under the general name of \napartheid \u2013 or separate development \u2013 which attempted to segregate the \nraces with the eventual object of their living in separate, clearly \ndefined, parts of the country. This policy was set out in 1979 when the \nNational Party government laid before the parliament a national \nconstitution which, typically, set a divine seal on its theories:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIN HUMBLE SUBMISSION to Almighty God, Who controls the destinies of \nnations and the history of people . . . We DECLARE that whereas we ARE \nCONSCIOUS of our responsibility towards God and man; BELIEVE that the \nblack nations of the Republic should each be given separate freedom in \nthe land allotted to them for the exercise of the political aspirations \nof all the members of those nations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By \u201cseparate freedom\u201dthis preamble means the establishment of the \nBantustans, which are essential to the ultimate object of apartheid. The\n Bantustans \u2013 also known, ironically, as Homelands \u2013 are intended to \nconfine the Africans to some 13 per cent of the land, normally the least\n fertile, located in scattered units on the borders of the \nindustrialised areas. The rest of the land \u2013 87 per cent \u2013 is allocated \nto the whites. There is very little for the Africans to go to the \nBantustans for, so the South African government has enforced their \ntransfer and has also foisted on the areas the status of \u201cindependence\u201d.\n Outside the Bantustans, it is intended that blacks may live in the \n\u201cPrescribed Areas\u201d- those allocated to the whites \u2013 only under strict \ncontrol, in other words if they are economically productive, or to put \nit another way, if they are contributing to the privileged standing of \nthe whites. Anyone who does not come into this category is forcibly \nconfined to the Bantustans. This has two noticeable effects: it means \nthat the stable population of the Bantustans consists mainly of the old \nand the sick or of mothers and their children; it also means that the \nproductive blacks are turned into a migrant labour force, existing in \nbleak misery in places where they can most readily meet the demand for \ntheir labour and supporting as best they can their families in the \n\u201cHomeland\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The life-style of most whites is far superior. They hold the highest \npaid jobs, many live in large houses with swimming pools, televisions, \nfreezers and the like. They own cars, their children go to the best \nschools, they have access to all the best in services like hospitals. \nThey are able to employ blacks as servants. In contrast, the blacks have\n suffered extremes of deprivation. In mid 1985 almost a quarter of the \nblack labour force was unemployed. A United Nations publication \nsuggested that infant mortality for black children is 25 times that for \nwhites. Many of the whites emigrated to South Africa to take jobs which \nin their country of origin would have yielded them a life-style a lot \nless luxurious; perhaps correctly, they see their privileges as \ndependent on a rigid control and repression of the blacks. Such people \nare, therefore, among the most ardent supporters of apartheid and will \ncondone all manner of inhuman excesses in that cause.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Inevitably, the policies of the South African government need to be \n.enforced through restrictions on the residence and movements of black \npeople and essential to this are the infamous Pass Laws. These require \nevery African over the age of 16 to carry a pass which indicates whether\n the holder is authorised to be in a prescribed white area as either a \nwork seeker or an employee or because they have lived in the area \ncontinuously since birth. If a black person without this type of \nauthorisation is found in a \u201cprescribed area\u201dthey are arrested (during \nthe most recent year \u2013 1982 \u2013 for which records are available, some \n200,000 such arrests were made) and are liable, apart from other \npenalties, to be deported to their \u201cHomeland\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It would not be possible for all of this to exist without a powerful \nsecurity system and police force. The South African government has \ndictatorial powers of arrest and detention without trial and the courts \nthere are not averse to handing out savage sentences. A person whose \nactivities are embarrassing to the government can be banned from taking \npart in &nbsp;political activity or even from engaging in discussion with \nmore than one other person at a time. The South African police are not \nfamous for any reticence in using these powers. They often respond to \nprotest demonstrations with a frenzied savagery and their interrogating \nofficers are notorious for torturing suspects and for the sudden death \nof people under their detention through \u201cjumping out of a window\u201dor \nexpiring unexpectedly through \u201cnatural causes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, all this horror has been kept in operation by the fact that,\n in spite of their lower numbers, the whites have been able to keep \npolitical control in their hands. The blacks have no effective voice in \nnational government; they can only vote for members of their \n\u201cHomeland\u201dadministrations while the Coloureds and Indians can elect \nrepresentatives to the \u201ctri-racial\u201dparliament. These recent concessions \nare cosmetic and meaningless for at the very most they concede some say \nin the affairs of only a small and insignificant segment of the country \nwhile the whites control, and live off, the rest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The racism of South Africa has sometimes been defended on the grounds\n that it at least enables the blacks to know where they stand. Their \nstatus and their \u201crights\u201d- such as they are \u2013 are set down in laws and \nthey know that if they stray outside the law they risk repercussions. \nThere can be no argument about the fact that an attempt has been made to\n compose such laws but this brings us up against the fact that a legally\n defined racism must rely on a sound, consistent definition of race. In \nthis the South African government has been no more successful than the \nothers who have tried to compose such a definition and, of course, \nunless they can compose it the basis of apartheid is exposed as \nunscientific nonsense. The Population Registration Act of 1950 was the \noriginal main instrument for classifying the South African population in\n four main groups \u2013 Bantu, Coloured, Asiatic and White. The Act\u2019s \ndefinition of a white person is someone who in appearance is obviously \nwhite or who is generally accepted as white; but it excluded any person \nwho, although in appearance obviously white, is generally accepted as \ncoloured. This obviously unsatisfactory definition, under which a person\n can be white and coloured at the same time, caused a great deal of \nconfusion. The South African government, which had to take its own \nnonsense seriously, set up a racial classification authority to decide \non a person\u2019s race, which at least provided a lot of work for lawyers to\n argue the nuances of racist madness in \u201cborderline\u201dcases. Sometimes \nreality has had to be conveniently reshaped to fit in with the \ndefinitions; Japanese people have been known to bleach their skin and a \nchild of white parents who in appearance was coloured was reclassified \nas coloured which was, to put it mildly, confusing and distressing for \nthe family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Apartheid: How It Developed<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The background to apartheid lies in the 17th century. In 1652, the \nfirst Europeans \u2013 the Dutch \u2013 arrived at the Cape to set up a station to\n service ships of the Dutch East India Company on their voyages to and \nfrom the Far East. At the time the place was inhabited by Hottentot \nherdspeople, and bush people who lived by hunting and gathering. The \nfirst distinctions between the settlers and the natives were based on \nreligious grounds, the Dutch being ardent Christians who regarded the \nnatives as heathens (the term Kaffir, which now has such derogatory \nimplications, originally meant non-believer). In 1700 slaves were \nintroduced from West and East Africa, Madagascar, India, Ceylon and \nMalaysia. The Dutch interbred often with the Hottentots and the slaves, \nwhich resulted in the \u201chalf-caste\u201dgroup known as the Cape Coloureds. \nOver the next 150 years a pattern of racial discrimination, based on \nwhite s upremacy, began to emerge. As they developed sheep and cattle \nfarming the settlers moved away from the coastal areas in search of more\n fertile grazing and came into conflict with Bantu tribes from the \nNorth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1806 the British came into control of the Cape and attempted to \nintroduce radical changes in the social structure there. Apart from \nreorganising the governmental machine, the British freed the slaves and \ntheoretically gave the Coloureds the same status as whites (by that time\n the Bush people had been almost eliminated). These measures, and the \narrival of immigrants from Britain, persuaded the Dutch \u2013 the Boers \u2013 to\n move away from the Cape, in the exodus known as the Great Trek, and set\n up the two inland republics of the Orange Free State and the Transvaal.\n As they moved, the Boers met up with the Bantus, who saw the incursion \nas a threat to their existence. There were many clashes, in which the \nBoers were usually victorious and the Bantus became reduced to servitude\n as labourers or as squatters on the land grabbed by the Boers. Both the\n Transvaal and the Orange Free State were later annexed by the British \nbut were then given an \u201cindependent\u201dstatus under British rule. In the \n1860s the Indians arrived, brought in to work as indentured labourers on\n the sugar plantations. Many of them, against the original intention, \nstayed on after the expiry of their time to become another segment in \nSouth Africa\u2019s racial make-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The situation might have remained like that for a long time, or \nchanged only very slowly, had not diamonds and gold been discovered in \nthe Rand in 1867 and 1884. Without its gold and diamonds South Africa \nmight have become a sort of agrarian appendage to the rest of the \ncontinent. The new industries changed things dramatically, for South \nAfrica was no longer just of strategic importance to the capitalist \npowers of Europe. The Rand demanded cheap labour \u2013 which meant black \nlabour \u2013 and the growth of urban settlements near the mines. As the \nmines fell into the hands of big capitalists like Cecil Rhodes and \nBarney Barnett the small independent prospectors were rapidly reduced to\n the status of employees \u2013 the \u201cpoor whites\u201dof the gold and diamond \nfields, who tried to soften the discomfort of their lowly position by \nensuring that the higher paid jobs went to them rather than to the \nAfricans and by refusing to be stripped to see if they were stealing \ndiamonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The blacks were confined to the low paid, unskilled jobs and this \ntransference of the caste system of the farmlands into industry, and \ninto the developing towns, brought a whole complex of problems which \nhave disfigured South African society ever since and which have brought \nit to its present crisis. In 1890 a native miner could earn as much as \n63s (\u00a33.15) a month, which was reduced through the concerted efforts of \nthe mining companies to 41s 6d (\u00a32.09) a month. At the same time a white\n person, working as a junior mill hand in the mine could earn from \n\u00a320-\u00a325 a month and it was a general pattern that white workers (who, as\n we have said, were in any case usually in the more skilled or \nsupervisory jobs) were ten times better paid than the blacks. The \nowners\u2019 attempts to force down black miners\u2019 wages led them to set up \ncompounds where the natives were compelled to live and to enforce this \nby a system of \u201cpassports\u201dwhich were the modern Pass Laws in embryo. \nWorking conditions, especially for the blacks, were dreadful and \nextremely dangerous and the mining towns were ugly places of pitiless \nrapacity. The big capitalists prospered through ruthless trickery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The introduction of capitalist production had a marked effect on the \nself-sufficient pastoral Boer communities. Many Boers, like the Africans\n they had themselves dispossessed, became landless squatters. In the \nTransvaal they mounted a stubborn resistance to the disintegration of \ntheir way of life, which in 1899 resulted in the Boer War, a classic \nimperialist conflict in which workers on both sides gave their lives to \nprotect their masters\u2019 interests in the gold and diamond fields. When \nhostilities ended in 1902 the Boer leaders signed the Treaty of \nVereeniging, which gave Crown Colony status to the Transvaal and the \nOrange Free State. After the first world war many of the landless Boers \ndrifted into the towns where, unskilled and unaccustomed to the rigours \nof industrial wage slavery, they would have made a poor showing in \ncompetition for work with the Africans had not the government introduced\n various measures to discriminate in their favour. One of these was an \nemployment colour bar, which effectively reserved the best for the \nwhites. Between the world wars South African governments, without \ndeclaring a coherent long term policy on the issue, enacted a batch of \nlegislation which attempted to protect the pre-industrial racist \nideology of white dominance. Africans were forbidden to strike or join \ntrade unions; a system of residential segregation was enforced through \nthe Pass Laws; Africans were denied the vote. To some extent the South \nAfrican capitalists were dissatisfied at what was {from the point of \nview of their profits) the wasteful and illogical practice of apartheid,\n but any protests from them were muted by their hopes for change in the \nfuture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The election of the National Party government in 1948 marked a \nradical change, for what had previously been a somewhat haphazard \ncollection of laws became coordinated into a powerful policy of \nsegregation. The new government, with its unrealistic vision of an \neternally white South Africa denuded of all blacks except those allowed \nthe status of temporary sojourners to serve the whites, quickly passed a\n series of laws the titles of which speak for themselves \u2013 Prohibition \nof Mixed Marriages Act, Native (Urban Areas) Consolidated Act, \nPopulation Registration Act, Group Areas Act and so on. The farmers were\n given substantial concessions, including tax allowances and fixed \nprices for their produce and the constituency boundaries were arranged \nso that a vote in a farming area was worth about 1.5 times one in a \ntown. Inevitably these laws met opposition, which the government \nresponded to with ever fiercer repression. Laws such as the Suppression \nof Communism Act and the Sabotage Act were wielded to stifle opposition.\n The government took powers of arbitrary detention and were not averse \nto massacre in the face of mass protest, as happened at Sharpeville in \n1960, Soweto in 1976 and Uitenhage in 1985.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Apartheid Under Attack<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But of course the opposition has not been crushed. From outside South\n Africa there have been campaigns for boycotts and sanctions. One of the\n more successful has been the move to break sporting links; the denial \nof international class competition in sports like rugby football, \ncricket and athletics has been more than an irritant to those South \nAfricans who regard the sports field as a place to express an \naggressive, often male-oriented, nationalist arrogance. From outside \nthere has also been support for an increasingly organised and militant \nguerrilla movement, which has engaged a large part of South Africa\u2019s \nmilitary power. The strength of African protest has sometimes succeeded \nin making its townships almost ungovernable. Many hundreds of people, \nalmost all of them black, have been killed over a short period of time \nand the government has been forced to reform some aspects of apartheid. \nMany of these changes are obviously cosmetic: the recruitment of \nAfricans into the police; the &nbsp;encouragement of black small business \npeople who might think they have a stake in the stability of South \nAfrican society; the relaxation of strict apartheid in sport. In 1985 \nthe laws prohibiting interracial sex and marriage were abolished. These \nreforms were not gifts from the South African government; they were \nprised from them and were conceded as an appeasement, designed to keep \nthe basis of their racist policies intact. For example the concessions \nunder which the different races can elect their own councils were in \nreality worthless, for the councils can only administer the apartheid \nsystem \u2013 they can do nothing to abolish or even modify it. One result of\n this is that Africans who serve as councillors and in the police are \nregarded as traitors and many of them have been horribly murdered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Alongside the protests and the guerrilla warfare, pressure of a \ndifferent kind has been exerted by industrial capitalists in South \nAfrica. One of the most established and outspoken of these has been \nHarry Oppenheimer, head of the mining combine Anglo American \nCorporation. As early as May 1976, Oppenheimer set out his views clearly\n to the London Stock Exchange: \u201cthose of us who believe that private \nenterprise is the system best calculated to widen the areas of \nindividual choice \u2013 to open up new opportunities and raise the standards\n of life \u2013 have to show very clearly that this private enterprise system\n is not something which bears the label \u201cfor whites only\u201d, and he went \non to say: \u201cthe migrant labour system becomes less and less appropriate \nfrom an economic point of view as well as, of course, from a social and \nmoral point of view.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Oppenheimer spoke about \u201cnew opportunities\u201dand \u201craising \nstandards of life\u201dhe was clearly referring to the interests of his \nclass. The migrant labour system adequately suits a farming economy and \nto some extent even a mining industry but it cannot be applied \nefficiently in a modern industrial state which needs a settled, skilled \nlabour force which can be hired and fired, or which will move \n\u201cfreely\u201dfrom one place to another, to meet the demands of commodity \nproduction. This is recognised not only by the likes of Oppenheimer, for\n there are now rising Boer capitalists who are also becoming frustrated \nat the restrictions of apartheid. During the 1970s South African \nindustry changed from a labour intensive, low wage and low productivity \neconomy to a capital intensive and high productivity one. This should \nalso mean a higher wage economy \u2013 in other words higher wages for \nAfrican industrial workers, which is incompatible with the assumptions \nof apartheid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>These combined pressures have brought the South African government up\n against the reality that is developing industrial capitalism cannot \noperate within the letters of a pre-industrial racism and that a \nminority cannot forever repress a majority. In July 1985 the South \nAfrican government-financed Human Services Research Council reported \nthat \u201cclassical apartheid\u201dwas a failure, urged a \u201cbroadening of the \ndemocratic base of the current power structure\u201dand warned that \u201cdelays \nin addressing the issue could have catastrophic consequences\u201d. Some \nreports indicate that the National Party leadership are themselves aware\n that apartheid is obsolete but they also know how difficult it is to \npersuade their followers of this. Various further reforms are being \nconsidered \u2013 a federal structure which would bring the \u201cHomelands\u201dback \ninto the South African state, the abolition of the Pass Laws, the \nfreeing of political prisoners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The government\u2019s dilemma is that they must offer reforms if white \nSouth Africa is to have any hope of survival; but the reforms themselves\n must add impetus to the blacks who now feel that they are close to \nwresting the political initiative from the whites. The shift in National\n Party policy, away from their traditional constituency among farmers \nand white mining workers towards the urban working class \u2013relatively \nwell-off and more open to ideas of reform \u2013 left something of a \npolitical vacuum. Over recent years this has been filled by a number of \nparties which have split from the National Party, each adopting a more \nextreme and more assertive \u2013 and uncompromising \u2013 white racism. (The \nNational Party was itself a creation of just such a split from the \nUnited Party, which it defeated in the 1948 election). In 1969 there was\n the Herstige (reconstituted) Nasionale Party; in 1982 the Conservative \nParty which is now the second largest opposition party after the \nProgressive Federal Party; in 1974 the Afrikaner Volkswag (People\u2019s \nGuard). On the fringes, but very much in evidence, is the Afrikaner \nResistance Movement, a terrorist organisation some of whose members \u2013 \nincluding its leader, Eugene Terre Blanche \u2013 have appeared in court on \ncharges of possessing arms and plotting assassination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The significance of these organisations can be seen in the extent to \nwhich they have eaten into the National Party\u2019s electoral standing. In \nOctober 1985 the distribution of seats in the South Africa parliament \nwas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>National Party \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.. 127<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Progressive Federal Party \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.. 27<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Conservative Party \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026.18<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>New Republic Party \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026 5<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Herstige Nasionale Party \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026 \u2026.1<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But more ominous for National Party leader Botha and his reforms was \nthe projection into the next election of current by-election results, \nwhich give a total of 54 seats to the extremist opposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How seriously Botha took this was demonstrated in August 1985 when he\n was expected to make a speech outlining some major reforms of apartheid\n but in the event caved in to the pressure not to be seen to be giving \nin to influence from abroad. About a month before, a State of Emergency \nwas declared under which it was an offence, amongst other things, to \ndisclose the identity of anyone arrested under the regulations before \nofficial confirmation of the arrest; to make any statement calculated to\n subvert the government; to advise or incite anyone to stay away from \nwork. The police powers of detention were extended and while in \ndetention nobody was allowed to sing or whistle or \u201cbe a nuisance\u201d; the \nonly book they were allowed to read was the bible or some other \u201choly \nbook\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Draconian measures were taken against the press, which gave the \ngovernment full powers of censorship. Television crews were prevented \nfrom recording incidents which might reflect badly on the South African \ngovernment, such as the way the police dealt with demonstrators. The \npredictable response to this was an increase, not a lessening, in the \nviolence of black protests, in particular against those blacks who were \nconsidered to be collaborating with the government. The use of the \n\u201cnecklace\u201d- a tyre hung round the neck and set on fire \u2013 was the \ngruesome result in many cases. Violence between blacks was frequent. At \nthe funeral of Nonyamezelo Mxenge, an anti-apartheid lawyer who was \nmurdered in August 1985 (her husband was also murdered in 1981) the \nmourners clashed with members of the Zulu dominated Inkatha, who were \nsuspected of being in collusion with the police to attack the \ndemonstrators. The violence spread over onto local Indian shopkeepers \nuntil, after four days of fighting, over 50 people were killed and some \n2000 Indians had fled from their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is reason to believe that the police colluded in the activities\n of the group known as the \u201cvigilantes\u201d- who might be called the \ndefenders of the \u201cblack establishment\u201d, One of the more horrific actions\n of the \u201cvigilantes\u201dwas their clearance of the squatters camp at \nCrossroads in early 1986, when 32 people were killed and over 20,000 \nmade homeless. Opposed to the \u201cvigilantes\u201dwere the \u201ccomrades\u201d, in \ngeneral younger and more militant and feeling they had nothing to lose \nin the struggle against apartheid. The ruthlessness of the \u201ccomrades\u201d- \nthey were responsible for the use of the \u201cnecklace\u201dagainst police \ninformers and collaborators \u2013 rivalled that of the \u201cvigilantes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Outside South Africa the state of emergency and the increase in \nrepression resulted in a campaign for economic sanctions. This was \nespecially favoured by the left wing, where \u201cSanctions Now\u201dbecame a \npopular slogan. The idea was that cutting off South Africa economically \nfrom the rest of world capitalism could persuade the government there to\n change course. The history of similar campaigns against other countries\n in the past does not encourage such a theory; in fact, as happened in \nthe case of Rhodesia, the very countries which are supposed to be \nimposing the sanctions are often surreptitiously active in circumventing\n them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>South Africa was also subjected to a certain amount of what might be \ncalled diplomatic pressure. The French withdrew their ambassador and the\n Americans their envoy \u2013which at most could have made the normal \nintercourse between the two countries just a little less efficient. The \nadvocate of sanctions claimed major victories when some big \ninternational companies announced that they were pulling out of South \nAfrica. Sixty American companies took this line, the most famous being \nEastman Kodak in Britain, the loudest applause was for the announcement \nthat Barclays Bank, so long the target of demonstrators and boycotters \nplanned to withdraw. However, these were no precipitate, \nmorally-inspired decisions; in both cases the companies had protected \ntheir shareholders\u2019interests by a carefully planned withdrawal. The \nchairman of Kodak said they had taken a \u201cbusiness decision\u201dto pull out \nfor apartheid was responsible for South Africa\u2019s economic \u201cunder \nperformance\u201d. Barclays chairman said the bank\u2019s reasons for selling up \n(not closing down) were \u201cbasically commercial\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Apartheid then has been very much on the defensive. The South African\n capitalists have had to recognise black trade unions; the migrant \nlabour system can hardly avoid breaking down; separate development \ncannot operate efficiently in an industrialised society; political \nrights for all South Africans must follow all these other changes. And \nwhat then? The people of South Africa will have passed abruptly into a \npowerful capitalist economic and social order. They will have thrown off\n the shackles of apartheid to become \u201cfree\u201dwage workers. The chains they\n will then have will be those of wage slaves all over the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch6\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 6: Racism in Britain<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When we discuss racism in Britain today we almost always mean racial \nprejudice based on skin colour. Other types of discrimination exist \u2013 \nfor example against the Irish and the Jews -but the brunt of the \nracists\u2019 disfavour is now felt by black people. It is rare now to hear \nIrish immigrants blamed for unemployment or for creating slums; very \nrare to hear of Jews accused of importing and spreading diseases, of \nimposing an alien culture on a neighbourhood or of wangling themselves \npriority in social and medical services. These types of accusation are \nnow levelled against black immigrants and it must first be said that \nthey spring from the concrete reality of people\u2019s everyday lives. There \nare slums and other inadequate housing; there is unemployment; people \nare suffering from avoidable illnesses; personal and social stress \ndisfigure human life; for the majority there is insufficient access to \nsocial and medical services. The experience of these problems breeds \ninsecurity and fear and promotes a dangerous cynicism about the future. \nBut this does not justify the racist case that social problems are \ncaused by immigrant groups, for the problems existed a long time before \nthe immigrants arrived, whether they are Irish or Jews or West Indian or\n whatever, and they also existed in the places the immigrants came from.\n This can be explained in only one way. The problems are inseparable \nfrom the present social system and will persist as long as that system \nlasts. The one thing which does change is the identity of the group \nwhich is condemned as the supposed cause of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the past 150 years or so, immigrant groups coming into Britain \nhave included Irish, Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Cypriots, Italians, \nSpaniards, Greeks, Maltese and Chinese. Those who came from the West \nIndies and the Indian sub-continent during the 1950s and from the \ndecolonised African states in the 1960s are the latest in a long \nhistorical line. Irish immigration peaked during the years 1850-1880 \nand, as a group distinguishable through their accent and cultural \nhabits, they were quickly confronted with a hostility which was \nsharpened by the competition they represented in the employment market. \nThis hostility was justified by a spurious concept of the Irish which, \npopular in Victorian times, has by no means died out today. They were \nregarded as childish, ignorant, unstable, lazy, dirty and savage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>During the late 19th century the tendency was for the role of \nprincipal scapegoats to be thrust on the Jews, assisted by opportunists \nwho hoped to make racism a political issue. In 1892 the Conservative \nParty was planning to introduce controls on Jewish immigration and in \n1902 the British Brothers\u2019 League (BBL), the forerunner of many an \nodious racist movement, was formed. It was BBL theory that Jewish \nimmigrants were overcrowding parts of the cities, forcing up rents and \nrates which in turn caused further overcrowding. In fact the areas, such\n as the East End of London, where the Jews tended to concentrate had \nlong suffered from overcrowding and general decay. The Jews were also \nblamed for the high unemployment in the docks, when this was due to a \ncyclical economic depression; in the tailoring trade, although this was \ncaused by a combination of more internal competition and the \nintroduction of machinery; and in the shoemaking industry which in any \ncase was in decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The reality is that large scale immigration is attracted to areas of \nindustrial expansion or to places where a multiplicity of small \nproductive units promises a lot of jobs, albeit with poor pay and \nconditions. Industrial expansion aggravates the existing pressure on \nhousing and other resources. Most industrial towns have an area where \nimmigrant workers, of whatever origin, have tended to congregate and set\n up communities, which then attract more immigrants. The impermanence of\n these inhabitants often ensures that the areas will remain in a \ncondition of slumdom, and other decline comes as changes in housing \npatterns put a blight on older properties. In <em>The Alien Invasion <\/em>(1892),\n W.H.Wilkins complained that immigrants \u201cadd in a manner altogether out \nof proportion to their numbers to the miseries of our poor in the \ncongested districts of our great towns, to which they invariably drift\u201d.\n The point is that Wilkins could not accuse the immigrants of creating \npoverty, or its miseries, or urban congestion \u2013 only of aggravating \nproblems which already existed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Black Immigration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In their early days, the black immigrants in Britain were met, along \nwith other groups, with explicit and overt discrimination. \nAdvertisements for flats and rooms, for example, often stated \u201cNo \ncoloured or Irish\u201dand similar restrictions were placed on vacant jobs. \nIn 1960, to give just two of many instances, six black women were forced\n out of their jobs in a West Bromwich factory because their white \nworkmates threatened to strike if they were allowed to continue. A \ncouple of months later the dustmen in Westminster objected to the \npromotion of a Jamaican to driver\/dustman on the grounds that such jobs \nshould be reserved for whites. The passing of the various Immigration \nActs, which effectively limited entry to Britain on racial grounds, was \nfollowed by the Race Relations Acts in 1965, 1968 and 1976. These latter\n laws theoretically prohibited discrimination on grounds of race against\n people who were legally in this country and the Commission for Racial \nEquality was set up to oversee their application.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But they were at best timid measures, sops to soften the blows of the\n Immigration Acts and in any case took no account of the fact that ideas\n cannot be changed just by passing legislation. One effect of the Race \nRelations Act was to stimulate resentment against immigrants, who were \nnow seen as a favoured group protected from legitimate criticism. \nAnother effect was simply to drive discrimination under cover. Property \nowners no longer publicly state that black tenants are not welcome but \nsimply do not accept them. It is the same with employment; although it \nis illegal to advertise that blacks need not apply for certain jobs \nthere have been numerous examples of white applicants being accepted \nafter a black applicant has been told that the post had been filled. The\n end result is that black people are still more likely to be unemployed \nthan white people, more likely to be in lower paid jobs and lower \nstandard accommodation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Whatever the professed intentions of the Race Relations Acts, they \nhave not prevented organisations like the National Front and British \nMovement, and others even more sinister, from stepping up their racist \ncampaigns. Nor have they protected black people from persistent, serious\n violence. In areas where many blacks live, like the East End of London,\n racist harassment and assaults are now commonplace. Some have involved \ndetermined acts of arson causing a number of deaths. In one incident an \nAsian mother and her three small children perished. Figures for racial \nattacks in the Metropolitan police area increased from 1,280 in 1983 to \nabout 1,450 in 1984. The police tend to minimise the significance of the\n figures by pointing out that they originate in the victims\u2019 own \nperception of the motive for the attacks; they do not confirm them all \nas racial. On the other hand the black community in places like Tower \nHamlets, where racial harassment is rife, insist that victims are \ndiscouraged from reporting attacks precisely because they fear the \npolice will not take them seriously. What cannot be doubted is that \nracially motivated violence is flourishing; the Commission for Racial \nEquality has received reports to this effect from Community Relations \nCouncils all over the country and a Home Office study has concluded \nthat, on the basis of incidents reported to the police. Asians are 50 \ntimes more likely than whites to be physically attacked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Black people have reacted to this in self-defence, responding to \nviolence from whites with their own. Their sense of alienation and \nexclusion from even the accepted norms of working class poverty has bred\n a restlessness among inner city blacks which can all too easily be \nstimulated into a riot. Brixton, St. Pauls, Handsworth and Tottenham are\n recent examples of this and there is no reason to suppose that there \nwill not be more. Racists like Enoch Powell find some comfort in the \nriots, claiming that they justify warnings about the tensions caused by \nintroducing an \u201calien\u201dculture into Britain. In fact the riots are no \nmore than another example (and working class history is full of them) of\n workers exploding, volcano-like, against the intolerable frustrations \nof repression, impoverishment and insecurity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Racist Complaints<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the first elements in the racist case against immigration is \nthat it causes overcrowding in an already over-populated country. This \ncomplaint, however, never seems to be made against white immigrants, who\n for some reason are not judged guilty of increasing \u201covercrowding\u201d. It \nshould be remembered that the first large scale black immigration, from \nthe West Indies, India and Pakistan, was actively encouraged to remedy a\n shortage of labour in public transport, the National Health Service \n(including the period when Enoch Powell was Minister of Health) and the \nlike. Since the early 1950s the population of this country has increased\n relatively slowly, from about 50 million to about 56 million in 1985. \nThis has happened in spite of immigration, because in almost every year \nmore people leave the country than are allowed in. About 4.5 per cent of\n the population of England and Wales live in homes whose \u201chead\u201dwas born \nin the New Commonwealth; if all these people were black it would amount \nto a total of something like 2.5 million. This hardly represents a \nthreat of \u201covercrowding\u201dor, in Margaret Thatcher\u2019s words, \u201cswamping\u201d. If\n there is a problem of absorption, it is not in the fact of black \nimmigration but in the prejudiced reaction of the racists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another point of racist attack is that black immigrants cause \nunemployment among white workers through a willingness to do \u201cwhite\u201djobs\n for less pay. The National Front publication <em>Spearhead <\/em>of April 1970 alleged that:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cthe Department of Employment has been extending special treatment to\n unemployed coloured immigrants; that is, going to extra pains to secure\n jobs for immigrants that would otherwise go to Britons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But this theory simply does not fit the facts. During the 1920s and \n1930s, when the average annual rate of unemployment was almost 13 per \ncent, there were virtually no black migrants to this country. Between \n1948 and 1962, when the first Commonwealth Immigration Act was passed, \nunemployment averaged 1.7 per cent a year. Whatever arguments were \nadvanced to support the 1962 Act they could not have included the smear \nthat immigrants caused unemployment. In fact unemployment has risen as \nmore stringent restrictions on immigration have been imposed; as \nimmigration has fallen the jobless figures have risen. In 1984, an \nall-time low of 51,000 people were allowed entry to the United Kingdom \nfor settlement, of which nearly 25,000 were from Africa and Asia, while \nunemployment reached up to the 3.5 million mark. The fact is that \nunemployment rises and falls with the level of economic activity within \ncapitalism \u2013 in accordance with the cycle of boom and slump. This \nprocess is endemic in capitalism and it operates all the time and all \nover the world, regardless of any migratory workers. Rather than being \nthe cause of unemployment, migrants are usually on the move to escape \nfrom it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is over housing that the prejudices of racism operate most \nblatantly and fearsomely; the arson attacks we mentioned earlier were \naccompanied with the daubing of slogans against rehousing black workers.\n When the <em>National Front News <\/em>announced in October 1976 that \n\u201cthousands\u201dof Asian immigrants were being given \u201cimmediate priority\u201dover\n homeless British families, it was echoing a prejudice which is pretty \npopular. Black people are also supposed to take over entire \nneighbourhoods and then, with exotic cooking, deafening music and \nunhygienic habits, terrorise the remaining few whites, who always seem \nto be elderly widows whose frailty is accentuated through regular \nmuggings. What actually happens is that immigrants in the mass usually \ngravitate towards the more run-down parts of a town and, as they become \nable to move out, they come into competition with other workers for \nhousing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This happens with any large scale population movement, regardless of \nthe colour of the migrants. Even more, it has nothing to do with \nimmigration as such; basically it is an effect of the competition among \nimpoverished workers for scarce resources, which is an unavoidable part \nof working class life. It is not true that a large influx of black \nworkers brings disturbance and decay. In the case of Southall, in West \nLondon, the immigrants went some way to revitalising a place which \nseemed doomed. Apart from their effect on the economy of the place, the \nAsians established in Southall a comprehensive network of community \ninvolvement and support. It was only racist bigots who objected to such a\n rise in social morale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It will also be useful to consider two other examples of the effect \nof black settlement. In the 1960s a great many people from India and \nPakistan were encouraged to make their way to Bradford where the textile\n industry, at a time of labour shortages, was looking for \nlow-wageworkers. At first intending to be temporary sojourners, the \nimmigrants had little choice but to move into areas of dilapidated \nhousing which were being abandoned by white workers. But whether they \nwanted to or not the immigrants were prevented from returning home by \ntheir low pay. They now make up about 50,000 of a total city population \nof 450,000 and they are overwhelmingly clustered in four of Bradford\u2019s \nwards, where in some places they represent two-thirds of the population.\n A prejudiced observer might see this as a premeditated take-over when \nin fact it is a typically stressful stage in capitalism\u2019s process of \nworker exploitation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Willesden, in North West London, is another area which received a \nlarge influx of immigrants from the West Indies and the Indian \nsub-continent. This part of London sprouted as a typical dormitory \nsuburb with the laying down of the railway in the 19th century and with \nthe erection of a large estate of munitions factories during the first \nworld war. It was, then, an area with a constant demand for labour, \nattracting immigrants who placed extra pressure on resources such as \nhousing. The early arrivals were from Wales and Ireland \u2013 especially the\n latter \u2013and during the 1950s the black workers came. In the Borough of \nBrent, which includes Willesden, nearly 54 per cent of all households \nare \u201cheaded\u201dby people born overseas, mainly Asia, East Africa, the \nCaribbean and the Irish Republic. Willesden is not an attractive place \nand its problems existed a long time before the first black immigrants \nset foot there. It has had what is officially admitted to be a housing \nproblem for some 60 years; during the 1930s the local council reported \nthat overcrowding was a substantial, persistent concern.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nowadays over half the rented properties in some parts of Willesden \nare overcrowded or lack what the census-takers regard as basic \namenities. The economic down-turn of the 1970s has hit the nearby \nindustrial estates on which the area depends. Between 1971 and 1973 \nabout 6,000 jobs in manufacturing were lost in the Borough of Brent, \nmost of them in Willesden; in 1985 unemployment in Brent had quadrupled \nover five years to 14 per cent of the workforce. The Borough is \nofficially assessed as the eighth poorest in Britain and three of its \nwards as among the eight most deprived in London. The depth of poverty \nwhich typifies and disfigures Willesden cannot have been eased by the \npressures of large scale immigration but it was not caused by it. The \nimmigrants were enticed to the area by industries which needed to \nexploit their labour, and in the hope that they would find employers to \nexploit them. Similar poverty \u2013 slums, unemployment, urban decay, \nemotional despair, cynicism \u2013 is experienced in many cities, such as \nGlasgow and Belfast, which have hardly any black immigrants. They are \ncommonplace in life under capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Crime is another social malaise often laid at the door of the black \nimmigrants. Black people, runs the prejudice, are heavily involved in \nprostitution, drug trafficking, and the style of street robbery known as\n \u201cmugging\u201d. First of all it must be stated that there are all manner of \npitfalls for anyone trying to draw conclusions, and formulate policies, \nbased on criminal statistics. It is not even possible to judge the rise \nand fall of the incidence of particular offences from official figures, \nlet alone arrive at any picture of social change from them. The reason \nis that criminal statistics stem from many variable and dubious factors \nsuch as the victims\u2019 perceptions of what happened to them, their \nresponse to it (masses of crime never gets reported to the police), the \ncurrent official definition of an offence, the decision of the police as\n to which category an offence belongs in and whether to proceed with a \nprosecution and so on. It might just be possible, after great \ndifficulty, to establish that there has been a genuine increase in \ncertain types of offences in areas which have a high proportion of black\n immigrants, as the police once said was the case with street offences \nin Brixton. Even so, this would not establish an essential link between \ncrime and skin colour. As we have seen, immigrants gravitate towards the\n very places where depressed conditions breed crime. Once there, they \nare subjected to a bigotry which positively discourages them from \nidentifying with the concept of an orderly, disciplined capitalist \nsociety. Deviance from the compliant norm \u2013 delinquency \u2013 is inevitable,\n whatever the skin colour of the deviants. Glasgow, as stated before, is\n a city with few black immigrants but it has long established problems \nof alcoholism, gang warfare and extreme violence. All the evidence \nindicates that crime is not racially or genetically linked but is caused\n by social factors, a response to repressive and hopeless conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Finally, we come to the argument that black immigrants impose an \nunacceptable culture on Britain. Leaving aside the fact that British \nimperialist expansion of the 18th and 19th centuries was one of \nhistory\u2019s greatest examples of the imposition of an \u201calien\u201dculture, we \nmust question the nature of this \u201cculture\u201dwhich is under threat and \nwhether it is worth defending. To begin with, is there such a thing as a\n \u201cBritish way of life\u201d? Surely how people live is determined not by \ntheir nationality but by which class they belong to? Capitalists live \ncomfortably on the proceeds of the surplus value contributed through the\n labour of the workers. On the other side of the class line, workers \nsurvive at varying levels of poverty and restriction. How workers live \u2013\n their \u201cway of life\u201d- is made up of their homes, clothes, food, \nrecreation, education, prospects, ambitions and all of these are \nconditioned by their social relationships as members of the working \nclass. This also applies to workers abroad, so that any immigrants to \nthis country bring with them the same basic elements of \u201cculture\u201das \nBritish workers are already experiencing. Of course there may be \nincidental differences in things like food, clothes and language but \nthese are modified and absorbed, or accepted, without any evident social\n damage. Second and third generation black immigrants are growing up in \nidentical terms to the children of \u201cnative\u201dBritish people, whose \n\u201cculture\u201dis, in any case, itself the outcome of centuries of mingling \nand cross-fertilisation. We must not forget either that British workers \nhave been among the world\u2019s prime migrants. Very often they have left \nthis country under the illusion that once they get abroad they will not \nsuffer poverty and stress. But poverty and stress are common to workers \neverywhere. Clearly, the need is for international working class unity \nto abolish the cause of the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch7\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 7: The Migration of Workers<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In previous chapters we have considered some racist theories. All of \nthese assert that they are dealing with an urgent human problem, that \nthe existence of different groups of people is a threat to the group \nwhich the racist defines as superior. But of course this threat operates\n only when there is the potential of racial mixing, so that the racist \nsolution has to be one aimed at separation. In its most extreme form, \nthis solution is one of genocide, such as the Nazis attempted. In less \nextreme forms it is a policy like the apartheid of South Africa, or the \nrepatriation advocated by British organisations like the National Front.\n These less extreme policies are based on the theory that human beings \nshould not stray from their place of origin and that those who do stray \nshould be sent back as quickly as possible. The argument is that it is \nperfectly efficient and desirable for people to stay forever in \nclosed-off communities, never mixing for fear of modifying each other\u2019s \ncultural habits, never inter-breeding because this would lead to the \ndevastation of racial purity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There is absolutely no basis in reality for these ideas. There are \nvery few examples of groups of people being able \u2013 or being forced \u2013 to \ncarry on a separate, exclusive existence. Human beings have needed to be\n migrants, under the pressure of whichever social system they lived in. \nIn primitive society, when life was precarious, humans had to move \naround to find new sources of food. Slavery introduced another style of \nmigration, albeit one of brutally enforced transport of humans. Other \nepisodes of enforced migration have happened through acts of conquest or\n of expulsion, as with the Jews and the Huguenots, or as attempts to \nescape from persecution or famine. If human history can be seen as a \nchain reaction, sparked off by changes in the mode of production, human \nmigration has its place as one of the energising impulses. Capitalist \nsociety in particular provides not only the means of rapid and \nworld-wide migration, but also a pressure to migrate, by its very nature\n as a social system. To attempt to stand apart from this is to stagnate;\n indeed the consequence of separation and exclusiveness has been \nbackwardness. On the other hand, as we have seen, the evidence is that \nsocial and cultural mixing is progressive and advantageous for human \nbeings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The rise of capitalism, displacing the social relationships of \nfeudalism \u2013 a society of small agricultural communities producing for \nthemselves and a surplus for barons, priests and warriors \u2013 has provided\n the most powerful impulse yet to migration. It would be true to say \nthat the capitalist industrialisation of the 19th century could not have\n happened but for migration \u2013 the free movement of reserves of labour \npower. Economic growth was fertilised by this labour, for it offered the\n prospect of lower wages and a consequent downward influence on wages in\n general, with an upward pressure on rates of profit. To begin with, the\n reserves of labour power were to be found in rural areas, in the \nevicted peasants and the artisans whose living had been undermined by \nthe new production methods. These desperate people poured into the \nexpanding towns to join the proletariat who were already experiencing \nlife under capitalist terms of employment. As the more local reserves of\n labour were exhausted the employers turned their attention further \nafield \u2013 to abroad. Over four centuries there was a massive movement of \npeoples, concentrated especially in the century from 1830 to 1930, \nconsisting mainly of emigration from Europe to America. During that time\n over 60 million people left Europe, 40 million of them to settle \npermanently in North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This was not entirely a movement of people from a primitive area to \nan advanced one, for up to 1860 about two-thirds of emigrants originated\n in Britain, then the most industrially advanced country. Throughout the\n 19th century European people migrated both overseas and within Europe, \nin response to the demands of capitalist industrialisation. During the \ndecades before the First World War hundreds of thousands from Italy, \nSpain and Poland went to the Americas but large numbers also went to \nGermany, France and Switzerland. In the case of Italy, nearly half the \n15 million who left between 1876 and 1920 migrated to other European \ncountries. Of course it was not accidental that this &nbsp;&nbsp;all happened at a\n time of a rapid advance in productive techniques creating the demand \nfor migratory labour and the means of transport to enable that demand to\n be satisfied. But however it happened and in whichever direction, it is\n clear that human migration is an established fact of life. Even if it \nwere useful to do so, it cannot now be undone; it cannot be unravelled \nso as to return everyone to their place of origin (even supposing this \ncould be determined).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Migrant flows<\/strong> (1): by age and citizenship in thousands<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>British \/ Old Commonwealth \/&nbsp; New Commonwealth and Pakistan (NCWP)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Indian sub continent (2) \/ Other \/ European&nbsp; Community (3) \/ Other foreign \/ All countries<br>\n___________________________________________________________________________<br>\n<strong>Into the United Kingdom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1971 92 17 18 18 13 41 200<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1976 87 16 21 21 12 34 191<br>\n1981 60 11 21 14 10 36 153<br>\n1984 95 15 18 17 15 41 201<br>\n1985 110 19 17 18 20 48 232<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Out of the United Kingdom<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1971 171 13 6 11 14 26 240<br>\n1976 137 15 4 10 15 29 210<br>\n1981 164 13 2 14 13 26 233<br>\n1984 103 10 4 12 8 28 164<br>\n1985 108 12 3 12 10 28 174<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>1 Excludes the movement between United Kingdom and Irish Republic.<br>\n2 India, Bangladesh and Pakistan.<br>\n3 Excludes Denmark and Irish Republic in 1971 and Greece in 1971 and 1976.<br>\n<em>Source: Office of Population Censuses and Surveys.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Nevertheless repatriation still finds support among people who \nobserve some of the effects of immigration and draw incorrect \nconclusions. For example workers who depend on state benefits have been \nknown to vent their insecurity and frustration on black workers who are \nforced to submit themselves to the same humiliating process. The same \nthing can happen when workers have to wait for treatment at a hospital, \nor when they go to plead their case at the Housing Department of their \nlocal council. At such times, they have an understandable resentment \nagainst all competition for scarce resources. When the competition can \nbe distinguished by some physical characteristic such as skin colour, \nthe resentment may lead to false ideas about the characteristics of \nblack workers which compel them to be indolent and demanding, to the \ncost of white native workers who should have first pick of \n\u201cour\u201dhospitals, \u201cour\u201dhousing, \u201cour\u201dsocial security benefits. The \ndevelopment of this prejudice is that we need only send the black \nworkers back to their country of origin for all to be well \u2013 for there \nto be plenty of medical attention, housing and money for everyone. In \nfact, bad housing, difficulty of access to medical treatment, lack of \nmoney are typical \u2013 and chronic \u2013working class problems. They are a \nconsequence of the essential poverty of all people who depend on being \nemployed in order to live. There was never a time when life was easy for\n workers. Immigrants did not create the problems; they came here in the \nfalse hope of avoiding them but found they had to share them. And if we \nlook at an example of large scale migration of white people, we shall \nsee that it produced the same kind of effects \u2013 and the same kinds of \nresponses \u2013 as are now attributed, on grounds of racial character, to \nblack workers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Irish Migration<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Britain was involved in a considerable intake of migrants during the \n19th century. The reserves of labour from the rural areas were quickly \nexhausted by the Industrial Revolution and the employers had to turn \ntheir attention to Ireland, where economic conditions had created a \n\u201csurplus\u201dof labour power. Domestic Irish industry had been damaged by \nthe 1800 Act of Union. In addition there was a pyramidical system of \nownership in agriculture under which less than one per cent of the total\n population held 80 per cent of the cultivated land and below them the \nleaseholders, the middlemen and finally the tenants. This ensured that \nlife for those at the base of the pyramid was precarious in the extreme.\n The tenants themselves were divided into three groups; none of them \nwere secure and those at the bottom \u2013 the labourers -were condemned to \nlive in desperate squalor. To make matters worse, the repeal of the Corn\n Laws, which was to the benefit of the industrial capitalists of \nEngland, encouraged the Irish landlords to turn their estates to \ngrazing, which meant enclosing the land and evicting the tenants. For \nsome time, there had been a steady trickle of emigrants trying to escape\n from those conditions \u2013 by the year 1770 about 9000 were leaving \nIreland each year for America -and the famines of 1822, 1846 and 1847 \nwere enough to turn this into a flood. During 1846-47 one million Irish \npeople died of starvation. By 1851 there were 727,326 Irish in Britain, \nmaking up almost three per cent of the population of England and Wales \nand over seven per cent of the population of Scotland. The immigrants \nsettled in the cities \u2013 Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow \u2013 and constituted\n a significant part of the labour force in the less skilled jobs in the \ntextile and building trades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fact that the staple food of the Irish was potatoes enabled them \nto live more cheaply than English workers (in a normal season in Ireland\n an acre of potatoes was enough to feed six children and their parents \nfor nine months of the year) and the resultant downward pressure on \nwages caused a great deal of resentment among English workers. Many \nemployers were obliged to keep the two groups apart for fear of trouble \nbetween them. There were numerous riots and some pitched battles between\n the English and the Irish which could rage for several days. The lower \nwages of the Irish workers condemned them to the most fetid slums, which\n were worsened by poor public hygiene facilities in a cramped urban \nenvironment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was no happier story for those Irish who went further afield to\n America. The immigrant ships were notorious for their accommodation, \nwith the passengers in some cases so packed in that it was necessary for\n some to die before they could all have a sleeping berth. Fever raged \nand rats swarmed in the steerage accommodation, shut in from the light \nand the air as it was. A medical officer at Grosse Isle, where the \nimmigrant vessels were held in quarantine, saw from one \u201ca stream of \nfoul air issuing from the hatches as dense and as palpable as seen on a \nfoggy day from a dung heap\u201d. These conditions, combined with a deficient\n diet (each immigrant passenger was allowed 7lbs. of provisions a week),\n were responsible for a terrible death rate; typical figures for voyages\n in the late 1840s were on the <em>Larch<\/em>, where 108 of 440 passengers died at sea, and on the <em>Virginian<\/em>,\n which lost 158 out of 476. Those who survived the crossing landed in a \ndesperate plight: \u201cspectre-like wretches\u201d, \u201ccadaverous\u201d, \u201cfeeble\u201d; the \nships reached the end of their frightful journey with \u201cnot one really \nhealthy person on board\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Perhaps their experiences on the voyage prepared the immigrants for \nwhat was awaiting them on shore. Their predecessors, although not \nexactly welcomed to America, had at least been in comparatively good \nhealth and, as had happened in England, they had supplied much of the \nphysical muscle to cut the canals and lay down the railways and the \nroads. But the famine refugees were in no state to do such work; they \nhad little choice but to make for the cities like Chicago, New York and \nBoston. Not a very attractive prospect to the employers, they rapidly \nsettled into the most squalid of living conditions. To some extent their\n background as impoverished peasants had hardened them to such \nprivations \u2013 which was to the advantage of speculative builders. \nUntrammeled by any laws about space or light or drainage or water \nsupply, the builders covered any available ground \u2013 gardens, backyards, \nalleyways \u2013with tumble-down shacks, which at times completely encased \nthe original house. The houses themselves were partitioned into tiny \ncubicles and untold numbers of wretched Irish people were crammed into \nthese spaces. Even worse were the cellars, entirely below ground and \nwithout light, air or drainage. In Boston, many of the cellars were \nflooded with every incoming tide, and others from time to time, with the\n waters of Back Bay, which was no better than a scum-covered cess pit. \nYet the cellars too were crowded with immigrants; indeed one opinion was\n that without the cellars Boston could not have accommodated its new \npopulation. In 1894 a Committee of Internal Health reported on how the \nIrish were living in Boston: \u201cwithout comforts and mostly without common\n necessaries; in many cases huddled together like brutes . . . sullen \nindifference and despair, or disorder, intemperance and utter \ndegradation reign supreme\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is useful to consider the history of Irish migration for what it \ntells us about the movement of workers around the world and about racial\n prejudice. Living in relative backwardness, fleeing from intolerable \nimpoverishment, starvation and disease, they represented either an \nopportunity or a threat, depending on which side of the class barrier \nthey were viewed from. For the landlords and the employers they were an \nopportunity; desperate for employment and somewhere to live, they were \nvulnerable almost to the point of being defenceless and could be \nmanipulated for a more intense exploitation of the \u201cnative\u201dworkers. In \nthat way they were a threat, for they were competitors for jobs, housing\n and for scarce public resources. Inevitably their presence exerted a \nretrograde influence on working class conditions and, just as \ninevitably, they became feared and hated and the butt of a prejudice \nflavoured with ogreish myths. We have already described some of the \nfeatures which these myths attributed to Irish people as ineradicable, \nhereditary disadvantages. But the passage of time has exposed the myths;\n Irish workers have been absorbed into the general process of working \nclass existence under capitalism. They no longer live a cess-pit \nexistence; they no longer dispose of their rubbish out of the windows, \nor drag themselves about the streets half-naked and half-starved. There \nare no longer anti-Irish riots or running battles with them, lasting for\n days on end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Shifting Prejudices<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To some degree, many of the fears, myths and prejudices which were \nonce directed against the Irish are now turned on black immigrants with \nthe same justifications given \u2013 that they are an alien, primitive people\n who are biologically incapable of adaptation. The history of the Irish \npeople shows that there is no scientific reason for these theories, that\n the living conditions associated with Asian and West Indian immigrants \nare not racially determined but the product of historical, social and \neconomic influences. In other words, these conditions have nothing to do\n with skin colour. They are the inexorable product of capitalism\u2019s \ninadequacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It is not then unusual for migrant groups to be blamed for extreme \npoverty, slum housing, rampant disease and the like, even though they \nare trying to escape from those very problems. Established workers in \nthe \u201chost\u201dcountries resent the immigrants as competitors, taking no \naccount of the fact that the things they compete for are scarce only to \nworkers. People who are in the capitalist \u2013 the privileged \u2013 class do \nnot need to be rivals for housing, or a place in the queue for social \nsecurity benefit. Working class problems did not arrive with the arrival\n of immigrants; they are part and parcel of the class division of \ncapitalist society. The resentment against immigrants which is expressed\n as racial prejudice is, then, a class matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch8\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 8: Why Racism?<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We have been concerned with an examination of the background of \nracism, its history (or parts of it) and its theoretical basis. We have \nalso looked at some examples of racism in operation. It is clear that no\n supportable case for racism exists and that what arguments are advanced\n in its favour are little more than a misguided interpretation of, or \nresponse to, social and historical factors. Racism is not rooted in \nbiological fact; it is an idea which human beings impose on themselves, \nat considerable cost to their own interests. This leaves us with an \nimportant question: if racism is neither logical nor useful, why is it \nso popular and widespread?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are, of course, innumerable ideas and theories which are \npopular but which have no basis in fact and are quite useless in \nexplaining and understanding reality. Capitalism abounds in them; as a \nsocial system which operates in the interests of a parasite minority it \ncannot justify itself in any logical way. To understand such ideas \u2013 in \nthis case, racism \u2013 we need to refer to the basis of capitalism, the \nsoil where they take root and which nurtures them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Capitalism and Class<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We use the term capitalism to describe the social system which \noperates on the basis of capital or wealth invested in order to produce \ngoods and services for sale at a profit. This mode of production results\n from the private, or class, ownership or monopoly of the means of \nproduction and distribution. It gives wealth the particular social \ncharacter of the commodity -things which are produced for sale with a \nview to profit. Some of these features existed in social systems before \ncapitalism, but capitalism is distinguished by the fact that such \nfeatures are dominant. Class ownership means that a minority live by \ntheir monopoly of the means of life, leaving the rest, who are the \noverwhelming majority, to live through being employed by the minority. \nThis is usually called \u201cwork\u201dbut it is more accurately called \n\u201cemployment\u201d, a social relationship involving the majority selling their\n mental and physical abilities to the owners for a wage or a salary and \nthen applying those abilities in the production of commodities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A person\u2019s class is determined, not by the size of their income or by\n their accent or by where they went to school, but by their ownership or\n non-ownership of the means of production and distribution. The class \nbarrier marks a line of conflict, for the interest of those on one side \nare opposed to those on the other. As long as capitalism lasts, this \nconflict will be over the division of wealth and will be expressed in \nthe industrial field in strikes, working to rule, lock-outs and the \nlike. But the ultimate expression of class conflict is on the political \nfield, to dispossess the capitalist minority and establish socialism \u2013 a\n society based on the common ownership and democratic control of all \nthat is involved in the production and distribution of wealth. Socialism\n will be in glaring contrast to capitalism for it will be the most \nefficient and humane society possible, making the maximum use of human \nproductive abilities to the benefit of the whole community. Its wealth \nwill be produced solely to meet human needs and the whole of society \nwill have free access to that wealth, each individual according to their\n self-determined needs. It will be a world of one people, without \nnational frontiers or other artificial barriers. It will be a \ndemocratically administered society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The propaganda for capitalism asserts that it is the best system the \nhuman race can design. It denies the class struggle and argues that \neveryone has the same interest in making capitalism run smoothly as a \nprofit-based society. So what are the facts? According to the Inland \nRevenue, in Britain in 1982 the top five per cent of the population \nowned 41 per cent of the marketable wealth \u2013 that is things which can be\n bought and sold such as housing, land, stocks and shares \u2013 while the \nbottom 50 per cent owned only 4 per cent of that wealth. Put another \nway, the top one per cent of the population owned more than the bottom \n75 per cent put together. It is the same in other countries; the <em>Wall Street Journal <\/em>of\n 12 December 1985 quoted Federal Reserve Data which showed that in 1983 \nthe ownership of American government and corporate bonds was confined to\n four per cent of all households and that the richest two per cent of \nall households owned 71 per cent of all outstanding shares. There are, \nof course, countries such as Russia which claim to be socialist because \ntheir industry is not capitalised through stocks and shares. But the \nfact that in some cases it is not possible to express the class monopoly\n of the means of life through such exact percentages does not prove that\n monopoly does not exist. In Russia there is a privileged class who have\n access to the highest standard of living and another class who have to \nsell their working abilities in order to live; there is, in other words,\n wage labour and capital. It makes no difference that investment, \nproduction and distribution are carried out through the state; it only \nmeans that such countries are more accurately described as state \ncapitalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Wealth and Poverty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Capitalism exists throughout the modern world. Its inequalities can \nbe seen in the contrasting life styles and expectations of the members \nof each class. The British Royal Family, for example, display their \nenormous wealth partly by owning four palaces, four other stately homes,\n a yacht, three helicopters and three aircraft and by employing over 300\n staff to wait on and work for them. One of the richest people in \nBritain is the Duke of Westminster, who owns some 138.000 acres of the \nworld\u2019s most expensive land, including highly valuable areas like \nBelgravia, Mayfair and Westminster. One estimate puts Westminster\u2019s \nincome at \u00a33 every second \u2013 or getting on for \u00a3100 million a year. The \nCavendish family, whose head is the Duke of Devonshire, own a collection\n of stately homes and estates \u2013 Chatsworth, Hardwick Hall, Bolton Abbey,\n Lismore, Compton Place, Devonshire House. Landed aristocrats form only \npart of the ruling class; there are others whose wealth comes more from \nindustry, such as the Guinnesses, the Vesteys, the Cowdrays. The \nattitudes of this class were succinctly stated by Alan Clark, M.P. and \nmillionaire estate owner, who is noted for his open contempt for the \nworking class:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI don\u2019t need to get any richer. Once you have a certain amount of \nmoney you are really better off living on the income \u2013or preferably on \nthe income of the income. (<em>Guardian <\/em>1 February 1986)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other side of the class divide are the wage and salary \nearners. How do they live in today\u2019s society? According to the 1983 \nDepartment of Health and Social Security <em>Family Expenditure Survey<\/em>,\n some 15 million people were living \u201con the margins\u201dof the official \npoverty line. At the same time the Child Poverty Action Group found 3.75\n million children living at that level and half a million actually \nexisting below it \u2013 below the level of Supplementary Benefit. A 1983 \nsurvey by Market and Opinion Research estimated that about 7.5 million \npeople have to do without some essential item of clothing; seven million\n do not have enough for their food needs; about ten million cannot \nafford any sort of holiday other than staying with relatives. For these \npeople \u2013 who are members of the useful, productive class in society \u2013 \nthere can be very little ambition or security. In contrast to \ncapitalists like Alan Clark their lives are a ceaseless struggle to make\n ends meet interspersed with desperate crises such as being homeless. A \n1986 report \u2013 <em>Children Today <\/em>\u2013 by the National Children\u2019s Home,\n described the lives of some members of the working class in a typical \ntown: Poverty in this area is relentless \u2013 there is no light at the end \nof the tunnel. Families live in damp, sub-standard housing that they \ncan\u2019t afford to heat properly. They survive on the basics and there is \nno comfort. Sometimes the pressures overwhelm them. They haven\u2019t the \nenergy to be angry about it \u2013 their energies go into surviving.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The fact that these are examples of the lower strata of working class\n existence should not obscure the fact that poverty, in some measure, is\n a problem for the entire class. As we have said, workers depend for \ntheir living on employment by the capitalists. The worst poverty is \nusually suffered by those who for some reason \u2013 unemployment, old age, \nsickness, single parenthood \u2013 are unable to get a job and a wage. But \nthis does not mean that those who have a job are secure and prosperous. \nIn order that surplus value \u2013 which is the source of the capitalists\u2019 \nprofit \u2013 may be produced, wages must be restricted by the value of the \nworkers\u2019 labour power. In general terms, wages must amount to what is \nrequired in prevailing social conditions to reproduce labour power. \nWages enable workers to buy food, clothes, housing and to have access to\n education, entertainment and health care. When these have been paid for\n there is very little left and the vast majority of workers die as poor \nas they were born.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The irony of this situation is that the workers are condemned to this\n restricted access to lower quality goods in spite of the fact that they\n produce the world\u2019s wealth, including goods of the highest quality. \nThey live in slums or neurotic estates of semis while they design and \nbuild palaces. They turn out the finest food and clothes for exclusive \nshops but themselves scratch around in the humiliation of mass \nproduction chain stores and supermarkets. They are raised in the \nexpectation that life will be harsh and competitive and they will have \nto struggle against each other for jobs, housing and essential services \nsuch as medical care. They are conditioned to assume that this \ncompetition is a natural fact of life; there is very little awareness \nthat the problem could be eradicated through a basic change in society. \nInstead the tendency is to blame the need to compete on the competitors \nand to argue that if they could be eliminated the problem would go away.\n For these reasons male workers have resisted the employment of women or\n have attempted to surround female workers with all sorts of barriers or\n to confine them to the more menial, repetitive, less demanding jobs. \nFor the same reason the miners objected, just after the war, to the \nintroduction of foreign workers into the mines and, in the 1950s, \nworkers in several industries took action against the employment of \nimmigrants from Asia and the West Indies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Nationalism and Racism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Such prejudices are by no means discouraged by the ruling class \npropaganda which, in general terms, asserts that British exports (or in \nAmerica, American exports; in Japan, Japanese exports and so on) could \ndominate world markets. During economic and financial crises, foreigners\n are often blamed for sabotaging the prosperity of \u201cthe nation\u201d. Just \nafter the second world war, for example, the Labour government told us \nthat they were prevented from giving us the prosperity they had promised\n by something called the \u201cdollar gap\u201d- in other words by the domination \nof world markets by American exports. A few years later the culprit had \nbeen widened into the less specific \u201cbalance of trade\u201d- the generally \npoor competition offered by British exports against those from other \ncountries. After that the villains became foreign currency speculators \nwho were manipulating a decline in the exchange rate of sterling and who\n were immortalised in the menacing shapes of the Gnomes of Zurich.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In wartime we are bombarded with remorseless racialist and \nnationalist propaganda to regard the current \u201cenemy\u201das inhuman savages \nand the current \u201cally\u201das peaceable and humane. During 1939-45 the \nGermans and Japanese were considered deserving victims of any degree of \nhorror; their battle casualties were gleefully reported (and often \nexaggerated) and the indiscriminate slaughter of their civilian \npopulation in air raids was justified on the grounds that it was their \njust deserts. A few years after the war, when the capitalist powers had \nformed themselves into different alliances, the propaganda changed to \nfit in with the new \u201callies\u201din Japan and West Germany and the new \n\u201cenemies\u201din Russia and China. More recently, British ruling class \npropaganda vilified Argentinian workers, in the most offensive and \nprejudiced terms, as fit for any depths of butchery that British workers\n could be misled into inflicting on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Myth of Scarcity<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Workers who accept this type of propaganda are allowing themselves to\n be diverted from the real reasons for their problems. A lot of \nnationalist paranoia is stimulated by the idea that poverty is caused \nthrough there not being enough to go round, and therefore each nation \nmust compete for the wealth available. But the scarcities of capitalism \nbear no relation to the productive potential of the world; they are \nartificial, imposed on us by the profit priorities of capitalism. There \nare huge \u201csurpluses\u201dof food in the world. In the EEC countries in early \n1987 there were stockpiles of 1.5 million tonnes of butter, one million \ntonnes of skimmed milk powder, 0.6 million tonnes of beef, and 18 \nmillion tonnes of grain. In some cases, financial subsidies are on offer\n which actually persuade farmers not to produce food; in 1982 in the \nUSA, 82 million acres were taken out of production in this way. These \n\u201csurpluses\u201dof land and produce do not exist because human needs are \nalready fully satisfied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Each year tens of millions die from, or suffer the effects of, \nmalnutrition to the despair of organisations like Oxfam which aim to \neradicate hunger. In the same way the problem of &nbsp;homelessness and of \nunsatisfactory housing continues, keeping bodies like Shelter and CHAR \nin activity, while there is a \u201csurplus\u201dof bricks and while skilled \nbuilding workers languish on the dole. The coal strike of 1984-85 was \nfought over the issue of pit closures and after the miners\u2019 defeat the \nNational Coal Board carried on apace with the programme of closures, \naiming to cease production at 26 more pits and put some 20,000 miners \nout of the industry. The motive for this was not that everyone was able \nto heat their homes adequately, for each winter tens of thousands of \nworkers -especially old age pensioners \u2013 confront the choice of a warm \nhouse or food to eat. Many old people \u2013 the exact figure is difficult to\n judge but some authorities say it runs into thousands \u2013 actually die of\n cold. Of course British Coal is aware of all this; their argument for \ncutting back production is not based on human need but on the need for \n\u201ceconomic\u201d(i.e. profitable) pits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Poverty represented as scarcity, combined with the pressure to \ncompete for those \u201cscarce\u201dresources, is a recipe for prejudice and \ndiscriminatory conflict \u2013 for nationalist pride, for racism. Of course, \nas we have seen in previous chapters, the advent and development of \ncapitalism has in many ways worked against racism and reacted against \nthe restrictions which racism puts on the free movement and availability\n of wage labour. But the capitalist social system may also at times be a\n fertile breeding ground for racism. This may seem like a contradiction \nbut that is how it is, for capitalism is riddled with contradictions and\n inconsistencies. It cannot be a system of human harmony; division and \nconflict are in its very nature. It has to try to explain away its \nshortcomings. In wartime, for example, it would not be possible to admit\n that workers were being urged to kill each other in the interests of \ntheir&nbsp; exploiters. It would not be possible to concede that capitalism \nis anarchic, that it moves from boom to slump to boom out of all control\n and that the politicians\u2019 promises to do something about it are obvious\n deceit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The combination of these ingredients produces a prejudice like racism\n but it does not end there. As long as the working class reject the \nlogical analysis of capitalism which exposes how it operates they will \nnot only subsist intellectually on a diet of prejudice but become \ndependent on it. Racism has its own momentum and can become hardened \nalmost into permanency, beyond the original intentions of its \ninstigators. In Nazi Germany a working class driven to cynical despair \nby the crises of capitalism, and the impotence of the conventional \npolitical parties to ease them, were prepared to condone and \nenthusiastically support a prolonged act of genocide which in the end \nwas quite foreign to the needs of the capitalist system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racism is an issue for the working class. They must deal with it, as \nan obstacle to their progress to a sane, free, humane social system. \nHaving no basis in biology or any other physical science, in concept and\n operation it is a social matter. Like all the other ailments of \ncapitalism it has a political solution and will disappear with the \nsocialist revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch9\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 9: The Effects of Racism<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An easy, perhaps instinctive, reaction to capitalism is moral \nindignation at what it does to people. Much of the apparent opposition \nto the system has that kind of basis, as well as perhaps a feeling that \ncapitalism has destroyed an older and more harmonious way of life. Such \nattitudes are far from correct. Capitalism could not have been avoided \u2013\n it has been an essential stage in social evolution. Its results have \nincluded a massive expansion in productive power giving us the potential\n to meet all human needs and a development in the means of \ncommunication, which has made it possible to think of world unity in \nimmediate terms. Yet at the same time capitalism has divided humanity \nand has been unable to satisfy people\u2019s needs. It is a society of \nconflict between classes, nations and peoples, often exacerbated by the \nvery technical developments which we have mentioned. While providing the\n material means to unite all people, capitalism works against that \nunity. Its wars, for example, are international affairs, often fought \nacross vast areas of the world with weapons manufactured a long way from\n the battle zones or which travel immense distances to reach their \ntarget.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Racism too is a similar painful contradiction thrown up by \ncapitalism. Historically it has not simply meant one group of people \nbeing less well-treated or provided for than another. All too often it \nhas led to genocide, to deliberate policies of wiping out people for the\n single reason that they belong to a particular group. This policy was \nnot born with the Nazis in Germany; it was practiced long before that, \nin the name of imperialist expansion, economic advantage and \nappropriation of land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Colonising of Australia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An important episode in the British mercantile expansion into the Pacific of the 18th and 19<sup>th<\/sup>\n centuries was the colonising of Australia. The centre of that country \nwas a place where Europeans could not easily survive but on the coasts \nthe colonists prospered. It was a ruthless, sordid, get-rich-quick \nepisode. After about 50 years the place began to conform to the European\n pattern, as the native bush was ripped out to make way for \nEnglish-style farms where English crops and animals could be raised. \nHowever, the native inhabitants \u2013the aborigines \u2013 could not be torn out \nso easily. As the tribal hunting grounds, which had been theirs to use \nfreely, were taken from them, they had the choice of resisting or of \ndeclining into apathy. The theft of their land caused the collapse of \ntheir tribal culture and they could not conform to the new European \nculture which replaced it. Some aborigines were killed by imported \ndiseases; others by violence inflicted upon them when they tried to stop\n their land being taken away. In 1788, according to one estimate, there \nwere 1500 aborigines in Sydney; soon after 1840 there were only a \nhandful of desperate beggars. Charles Darwin mournfully commented that \n\u201cwherever the European has trod, death seems to pursue the aboriginal\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bad as this was, it was outdone by the pitiless massacre of the \naborigines in Tasmania. The cooler climate of that island attracted many\n of the new settlers and by the 1830s they numbered (including the \ntransported convicts) about 13,000. All of them wanted to grab land and \nthey were not disposed to let the aborigines stand in their way. But the\n Tasmanian natives did not succumb like those on the mainland. As their \nland was taken over, they responded with attacks on the settlers and on \ntheir homes. One settler warned: \u201cThe natives have become very \ntroublesome and treacherous, spearing and murdering all they find in the\n least unprotected . . . .the only alternative now is, if they do not \nreadily become friendly, to annihilate them at once\u201d. By \u201cfriendly\u201dhe \nmeant, of course, compliant to being forcibly deprived of access to the \nland and accepting a completely different legal and moral code.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The meaning of \u201cannihilation\u201dis all too clear and that was exactly \nwhat happened, with no attempt to disguise the fact. Martial law was \ndeclared in 1830 and a manhunt began, with the object of eliminating the\n aborigines. A line of armed beaters was formed across the island; a \nsurgeon on a French whaler described the aborigines being \u201ccontinually \nhunted and tracked down like fallow deer\u201d. Those who survived through \nbeing able to slip through the cordon were demoralised by the savagery \nof it all. In 1835 the last of them \u2013 a couple of hundred of the \noriginal 5,000 \u2013 were shipped out. Away from their hunting grounds they \ncould not sustain any sort of existence and the last of them died in \n1876.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Rape of the Congo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As that genocidal episode closed, another began. In that same year, \nin Brussels, a \u201cconference of humanitarians and travellers\u201dmet at the \ninitiative of the Belgian King Leopold II. As a result another \norganisation, with an equally euphemistic name, was formed \u2013 the \nInternational African Association \u2013 with the professed aim of opening up\n the Congo to \u201ccivilisation\u201d. In truth the Association was mainly an \norganisation of the Belgian ruling class, with Leopold as its president.\n It was not recorded how the innocent natives of the Congo regarded the \napproaching promise of \u201ccivilisation\u201d; in any case they soon found out \nwhat this meant to them. The real object of the \u201ccivilising\u201dmission was \nto grab the Congo\u2019s rubber and, such were the profits promised, that \nyears of bestial atrocities were committed. The justification for those \nunspeakably horrible acts is by now terrifyingly familiar \u2013 that the \nCongo natives were racially inferior, stupid and lazy, and therefore fit\n subjects for repression and exploitation by the \u201csuperior\u201draces of \nEurope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Piece by piece, through a series of dubiously negotiated treaties, \nthe land of the Congo was stolen by the Belgian capitalists. It was no \nlonger in tribal communal ownership but in the ownership of the \nAssociation. In 1885, in another outburst of euphemisms, the Belgian \nPrime Minister Beernaert declared that the newly established Congo Free \nState would ensure \u201cabsolute freedom of commerce, freedom of property, \nfreedom of navigation\u201d. These words foretold an unhappy future for the \nnatives of the Congo, who were robbed, degraded, tortured, mutilated and\n murdered on a massive scale in order to extract from them the maximum \nproduction of rubber. By any standards it was a shameful story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The production of rubber was administered through a network of agents\n who were not only under some powerful material incentives to gather as \nmuch as possible but were allowed to do much as they liked to ensure \nthis happened. \u201cI give you carte blanche\u201dstated one circular from a \nDistrict Commissioner to the agents, \u201cto procure 4,000 kilos of rubber a\n month . . . Employ gentleness at first, and if they persist in \nresisting the demands of the State, employ force of arms\u201d. In practice, \nthis meant the wholesale slaughter of natives who failed to bring in \ntheir quota and ferocious reprisals against any retaliation from them. \nIn one typical incident, in the village of Mummumbula, an agent was \nresponsible for the killing of 150 men and the crucifixion of the \nvillage women and children. Another described being \u201csent into a village\n to ascertain if the natives were collecting rubber, and in the contrary\n case to murder all, including men, women and children\u201d. From such \nexpeditions, to discourage wastage of ammunition, it was required that \nfor every expended cartridge a right hand would be brought back. Agents \nmade their way through the jungle, along the rivers, accompanied by \nbaskets full of severed hands. And when they shot animals they covered \nthe deficit in cartridges by cutting the hands off living people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By 1909 the riverside population of the Congo had fallen from 806,000\n to under 50,000. Villages such as Ikoko and Irebo lost thousands of \ntheir inhabitants; in the <em>Men\u2019s Magazine <\/em>of January 1916 \nE.D.Morel described the devastation: \u201cCompared with 30 years ago, the \nCongo is a desert\u201d. There is another statistic by which the misery of \nthe Congo may be measured. Between 1896 and 1905 Leopold II personally \nwrung some \u00a32.8 million from the country. The horrors of the Congo \nresulted in an international protest which led to some control and so to\n a measure of improvement in the lives of what natives remained. But \nracist genocide continues to disfigure human history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Genocide on Biafra<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When Nigeria was declared independent from British rule in October \n1960 it was widely expected it would assume a position of considerable \npower and influence among the emerging states of Africa. In fact the \nhistory of the country worked against this. During the late 19th and \nearly 20th century it had been taken over piecemeal by the British \ncapitalist class which enforced the amalgamation of several antagonistic\n tribal groups. The final stage in this was on 1 January 1914 when, on \ngrounds of \u201ceconomy\u201d, North and South Nigeria were joined in an \narrangement which gave most of the power to the tribes of the North. \nAfter independence Nigeria quickly proved to be seriously unstable. It \nwas harassed by one crisis after another, was a turmoil of ethnic \nfriction and riots and riven by corruption. In January 1966 a military \ncoup took place, followed by a counter coup in July by a group of \nNorthern army officers. In that year there was also a series of pogroms \nagainst the Eastern Nigerians, in which some 30,000 of them were killed \nand thousands more maimed and wounded. A million Easterners became \nrefugees from the terror. As a climax to this crisis, in May 1967, the \nleaders of Eastern Nigeria declared it a sovereign and independent state\n -Biafra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In response the North declared what proved to be a genocidal war and \ngradually, over the next 2\u00bdyears, the borders of Biafra were pressed \ninwards until in January 1970 the state ceased to exist. Millions of \nBiafrans died in the war, in combat, through being murdered or by \nstarvation or disease. The North\u2019s pitiless war of attrition was \nsupported by arms from Russia and from Britain, which was at the time \nunder the Wilson Labour government. The plight of the Biafrans aroused \nplenty of protests and charitable efforts aimed at tinkering with the \nscale of the suffering. But the Labour government resisted all the \nprotests. Biafra has become another episode in capitalism\u2019s wretched \nhistory of human suffering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The Nazi Holocaust<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The act of genocide to which all others are compared is that of the \nNazis against the Jews -well documented if imperfectly understood. The \n1939-45 war, it was said, was fought to ensure that such outrages would \nnever happen again but, as we have seen, this promise has not been kept.\n Racist ideas were rife in Europe as the Nazi movement was born. It was a\n time of economic and social chaos, of post war cynicism and of \nfrustrated nationalist delusions among the workers of the different \npowers. Compared to other parts of Europe, Germany did not have a large \nJewish population \u2013 some 400,000 against 700,000 in Hungary, one million\n in Romania and three million in Poland. But such was the chaos in \nGermany that the Nazis could successfully blame it all \u2013 Germany\u2019s \ndefeat, the Treaty of Versailles, the post war economic and financial \ncrises \u2013 on the Jews. A campaign of boycotts, discriminatory laws, fines\n and levies against the property of Jews, harassment, imprisonment and \nbrutality came to a climax in the \u201cFinal Solution\u201d. At first this seemed\n to entail expelling all Jews to somewhere like Madagascar but after \n1941 it developed into a coldly organised, large scale campaign in which\n six million were put to death simply because they were Jews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d\u066d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It should not be necessary to do more than describe such episodes as \nthese. They condemn themselves. Mass murder and repression, which are \nthe logical outcome of racism, result in a massive burden of pain and \ndistress. They are simply indefensible and even more so when, as we said\n in the opening of this chapter, they happen when society has the means \nto unite humanity. For the present, what must concern us is that racism \ndenies the real division of capitalist society \u2013 the class division \u2013 \nand the opposing interests which it sets up. It denies the urgent need \nfor workers everywhere to cooperate in the overthrow of capitalism. \nWorkers who are racist, or patriotic, are erecting artificial barriers \nto human progress while they ignore those which actually exist and which\n must be dismantled. Racism feeds off the problems of capitalism while \nit diverts attention from the pressing need to abolish the cause of \nthose problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The solution to those problems, and the dismantling of the barriers \nwill mean the abolition of capitalism and the end of racism. It will \nmean the establishment of a social order based on common ownership of \nthe means of life, in which every human being will have free access to \nwealth according to self-determined needs. That society must operate on \nthe basis of human unity and cooperation for the common benefit. Its \nvalues and morals will stand in direct contrast to those of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"ch10\"><\/a><p><strong>Chapter 10: What Is To Be Done?<\/strong><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One explanation for racism is that it thrives when capitalism is in \nphase of retrenchment. There is something to be said for this: at times \nof economic boom and expansion, as we have seen, capitalist industries \ncall on the reserve army of unemployed. There is a demand for migrant \nlabour and a pressure on workers in the host area to accept the influx \nof workers from another part of the country or from the abroad. In a \nslump it is rather different. There is a further competition for jobs, \nhousing and services and a more intense insecurity bears down on \nworkers. Their reaction, in an absence of understanding, is defensive \nand divisive. Scapegoats are there to hand, a relief for the paranoid \nconfusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One merit of this sort of theory is that it presents racism as an \nidea with social roots, to be related to and explained by the economic \nanarchy of capitalism. Its fault is that it is only a partial \nexplanation, encouraging the delusion that racism can be eliminated by \nironing out the humps and troughs of capitalism\u2019s economic cycle, \nperhaps through some skilful juggling by clever politicians and \n\u201cexperts\u201d. But the roots of racism, as this pamphlet has attempted to \nshow, go deeper than that. This has been an exercise in diagnosis and it\n has reached certain conclusions. There is no scientific foundation for \nracism, which is groundless prejudice diverting the working class from \nfacing the real cause of modern society\u2019s problems; racism is a response\n to social ailments but it is irrelevant to those ailments and therefore\n is neither useful nor supportable; to get to the root cause of racism \nwe must consider the basis of capitalist society, which leads to the \nconclusion that the only cure for racism is the abolition of capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The abolition of capitalism will be followed by the establishment of a\n different social system. Just as capitalism is founded on the private, \nor class, ownership of the means of production and distribution, so \nsocialism will be based on common ownership. Just as capitalism\u2019s wealth\n takes the form of commodities \u2013 things produced for sale and profit \u2013 \nso socialism\u2019s wealth will be use values, things made solely to meet \nhuman needs. Just as capitalism is a society of class privilege, so \nsocialism will be one of equal rights of free access. Just as capitalism\n is a coercive, repressive society so socialism will be democratic, with\n full participation by its people. Just as capitalism promotes and \naggravates conflict such as racism so will socialism be organised on the\n basis of human co-operation for the common benefit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Capitalism is an inefficient and wasteful society. Although it has \nthe immediate potential to satisfy human needs, its social organisation \nand relationships make it incapable of doing so. Production for profit \noften means that production is cut back, or even stopped altogether, \nbecause of an \u201coverstocked\u201dmarket or of legal restrictions like patent \nlaws. It means that all sorts of things which by any reasonable \nstandards ought to be done \u2013 like feeding starving people, or ensuring \nthat old people do not die of cold in the winter \u2013 are not done because \nit is not \u201ceconomically viable\u201d. Capitalism wastes resources on an \nimmense scale. It wastes them in building up armed forces and huge \narsenals of weapons, whose only function is to kill and destroy. It \nwastes the abilities of tens of millions of people who are in jobs which\n may be necessary in a society of commodity wealth but which are \nunproductive and socially useless \u2013 for example, jobs in the police and \narmed forces, as accountants, salespeople and bank workers. Capitalism\u2019s\n slumps are obscenely wasteful for they make millions of workers idle \nand cause masses of materials and productive forces to lie unused when \nthere is an obvious human need for them to be working. Land is taken out\n of cultivation and food destroyed while millions are starving; \n\u201csurplus\u201dbricks are stockpiled and building workers are on the dole \nalthough in this country alone tens of thousands are homeless and many \nmore live in unfit housing. Finally, capitalism cannot be a democratic \nsociety. It cannot allow freedom of information and a full, active \nparticipation in decision-taking. It is a competitive society and must \nbe secretive, private and coercive, for only in that way can the \nprocesses of commodity production and sale, and the privileges of the \nruling class, be protected.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The other class in society, who have no significant ownership in the \nmeans of life and who endure all the problems of capitalism, are the \nworking class \u2013 the class who depend on employment for their living. \nCapitalism works against working class interests but, although they are \nexploited, repressed and degraded by the system, the workers give \nsupport to capitalism and actually co-operate in their own degradation. \nAt election after election millions of workers vote for one or another \nof the parties pledged to run capitalism; they base their electoral \n\u201cchoice\u201don trivial differences between the parties\u2019 plans to tinker with\n some unimportant aspects of the way the system is organised and \noperated. They do this because they do not think there is an alternative\n to capitalism. Furthermore they see escape from the miseries of working\n class life as an individual matter \u2013 winning the pools, getting \npromotion, building up their own business. However this idea ignores the\n fact that the working class are the vast majority under capitalism and \nthat it must be they who run the system, who &nbsp;design, make and operate \neverything in it and who even administer their own exploitation. \nSocialism will come about when the working class realise such facts and \nunderstand that they have the power to change society through \ncooperative, revolutionary political action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Socialism will be a basically simple society for it will operate \nsolely and completely on the basis of human needs. Everything which \nsocialist society makes and does will be related to those needs and will\n therefore be to everyone\u2019s benefit. Socialism will be free of \ncapitalism\u2019s profit motive, which causes the demands and capacities of \nthe market to take precedence over human need. It will be a society in \nwhich people can behave just as humans would were it not for the \nrestrictions and insecurities of capitalism. Human talents will be set \nfree, to design and make the best that is possible, on the single \nincentive of satisfying human needs and so of benefiting the community. \nSocialism will mean the greatest flowering of imagination, creativeness \nand achievement in history. The nature of socialism will mean that \nunavoidable natural disasters or extremes of climate will be dealt with \nin the most urgent and efficient way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Will all this be possible? Can we really have a world where abundance\n and freedom are taken for granted? Capitalism has brought scientific \nand technological advance to the point at which the plentiful production\n of wealth is a possibility. It is only the social relationships of this\n system, stemming from the class ownership of the means of production, \nwhich prevent abundance and instead condemn millions to poverty, \nmalnutrition and famine. Not only socialists point out the absurdity of a\n world where computers are commonplace and which can probe out to Saturn\n and Mars yet also allows tens of millions to die every year of \nstarvation and untold millions from avoidable diseases. Capitalism\u2019s \nproductive resources are actually used in such a way as to place extra \nstress on people \u2013 in polluting the atmosphere, in the demands of the \nproduction line and in the alienation of the worker. Socialism\u2019s \nproduction will harmonise with human interests because, free of the \nanarchies and restraints of commodity production for the market, the new\n society will be able to plan its work, what it makes and how it must be\n distributed to meet human needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>An essential part of that planning will be the democracy which \nsocialism will introduce into human society. Socialism will not happen, \nand cannot work, unless the world\u2019s people want it. They must understand\n how and why it operates and must opt for it in that understanding. It \ncannot be imposed on society by a minority or by a group of political \nleaders. By the same token when a majority of people have established \nsocialism no minority will be able to take it away from them. Having set\n up socialism the majority will not lose interest; they will continue to\n operate society on the same basis of informed democratic decisions. \nThis is again something which has been facilitated by capitalism, \nthrough the development of things like satellite communication which \nenable opinions to be assessed worldwide literally in hours. Decisions \ncould be taken only when everyone is fully informed; socialism\u2019s \ndemocracy will entail the free availability of all information and \nknowledge. It will be a society vibrant with debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>All these things will contribute to socialism\u2019s values. From one \ngeneration to another the assumptions and the strengths of a society of \ncommunal ownership, free access, co-operation and harmony will be handed\n on. People will relate to each other as equals, as caring sisters and \nbrothers. Co-operation will be the norm and not an eccentricity; \nsecurity will be an everyday, established reality and not an impossible \ndream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is all possible, virtually at once, if the working class were to\n recognise their own immense power to transform society. At present they\n deny themselves this power, effectively handing it over to the \ncapitalist class by their support for capitalism and cruel delusions \nsuch as racism. Socialism will be the end of racism; it will be a world \nfree of social conflict in which human beings live and work in unity \nwithout distinction of sex or race.<\/p>\n\n\n<p><a href=\"#top\">^ Top ^<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some people claim that human beings can be divided into races on the basis of physical characteristics like skin colour, and racism is the theory that one group of people, identified in this way as a \u201crace\u201d, is superior to another. Racism results in hostility towards the group thought of as inferior, the practice of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3086,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"magazine_newspaper_sidebar_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3085","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3085"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3094,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3085\/revisions\/3094"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldsocialism.org\/wsm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}