this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2024
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That's ridiculous. So many explicitly racist movements have also been explicitly capitalist. Racism is a tool of tribalism and collectivism. Capitalism is an individualistic system.
Probably forgot an 'anti' in there, judging by the rest of your comment, but your typo is very right.
Yep
xd
Name some, including the substance of them being anti-capitalist. The KKK aren't anti-capitalist. The Nazis aren't anti-capitalist. The Confederates weren't anti-capitalist. Mind you, all of these groups and other racist movements oppose some version of "globalization," something the developed capitalist forces push, but they are not thereby rejecting all of capitalism, because the system that they call for is still capitalist, just degenerated to earlier forms, the national or local depending on which movement it is.
I think individualist/collectivist is a much less helpful way of analyzing ideologies than a lot of liberals think it is, but that's partly because it question-begs the supremacy of liberal ideology, which means I don't think we'll come to an agreement.
Anyway, pretending they were useful terms, I still think this is a bad argument. When you live within a capitalist society and aren't looking to overthrow it, it is a coherent idea to create collectives within a system that is philosophically oriented around the individual power of property-owners, that's what labor unions are. Most fascist movements are theoretically a racial version of this, white people (or whoever) collaborating to fuck over minorities to save themselves that much competition. That's what Krystalnacht was, for instance, a white-German community effort to drive out the competition represented to them by Jews.
The unavoidable fact of capitalism is that it relies on pushing most of society into the same general social class (workers, as contrasted with owners; employees vs employers) and likewise makes production a massive group effort, though that group effort is dictated by an individual or an oligarchy who own the instruments used in that production. You can try to appeal to these workers who make up most of society on an atomized, liberal basis, sure, but it's no less coherent to draw lines of common interest between them, most often something like race or religion that is convenient to capitalists, because the capitalists can say "look, I'm white (or whatever) too, I'm on your side!" even if they truly aren't because they are only seeking their own profits.
This is about a third of an explanation of the material basis for fascism. Probably the most critical element is that capitalist expansion hits some limitation, be it international competition or just all of the market already being claimed. The reason, the real motivation, for the racial terrorism I described above despite merely deflecting worker ire, is that by "clear cutting" more space open for your market share by slaughtering competitors, people sitting on land you want, etc., you can gain more room to grow, although this too only lets you grow temporarily until you bump into your new limits, so you need to keep killing inconvenient people to keep growing, and that's more or less how the Nazis worked, both internally by picking out minority after minority, and externally with their continuous invasions and "lebensraum" and so on.
Except all of these groups were, although the Nazis were much more explicit about it- that is indisputable so I'll focus on the others. The Confederacy was simply a plantocracy near oligarchy, not to mention slavery which is incompatible with capitalism(already explained in another comment, but a brief breeze over it- slave masters act as entities of the state by the very nature of them having a monopoly on regulation of other humans). As for the KKK, much of what it and other racist organizations of its era did was try to "protect white jobs", and lobbied heavily for state intervention to that effect- such as targeting immigrant and black "scabs" and pushing for minimum wages aimed at driving them out- though the KKK also explicitly opposed a lot of unions and other organized labor activities(often because they weren't white enough or included Catholics). Fundamentally though, the KKK viewed their goals of white-protestant supremacy as greater than an economic system, and were more than happy to destroy private property and private individuals- or use private property when it benefited them. Similar to what the Nazi's believed- its private profits are okay as long as they are working in the interest of the greater goal, but the second its not they're more than happy to steal it and kill you. Capitalism doesn't require private profit from the means of production, it requires private control of it- and if it can be seized if not following exactly what the state wants, that's not private control.
That's what unions are to some people. To other people unions are a convenient organization of people with similar and/or parallel goals on a specific matter(and not necessarily others) so that by collaborating they can achieve their individual goals.
No, that's not true. Capitalism doesn't ascribe the distribution or organization of labor, just that it is privately controlled. A society of independent agrarian farmers could still be capitalist, or a commune of people who voluntarily donate their labor to each other.
Yeah no doubt, though I think it is a little perverse to use "capitalist" to refer to owners/employers when they themselves are often not ideological capitalists, although it is still a correct use of the word I think it leads to intentional confusion(though not by you, just in general).
I don't think business owners are that generally competent to have orchestrated the total destruction of black and jewish owned businesses, I think the Nazis and KKK were both more than motivated enough to do that themselves, but I agree there definitely were some to supported it when they saw it happening and benefited from it.