My Article On Racism And Capitalism

[daniel]

Hi,

For my student newspaper I have produced the article below. What do you think of it? What improvments can i make? Am i missing any good examples or good arguments for this issue? Also does it flow well? How can i improve style? Structure?

Many thanks

Capitalism: The Cure for Racism

In the wake of the London bombings racially motivated attacks have risen six-fold across the UK’s capital. The cause of this racism comes from the left: collectivism. The likes of the BNP and communists are merely different sides of the same coin. After all the Nazis weren’t called National Socialists for nothing. Whereas the left cause racism, the right offer a cure. Individualists offer the best solution for defeating racism.

Racism is a form of collectivism; it judges a person not by their own character and actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors. In order to defeat it we must know its causes. Racism is motivated by the desire for the unearned. Just like socialists desire to steal wealth through taxation, racists desire success because of their skin colour. Both want a free ride and of course this is always at the expense of others. In a pure capitalist society all that one receives one has earned.

Theoretically the left and racism share the same premise. Socialists, like racists, judge people by a collective, whether it be ‘worker’s rights’, ‘gay rights, women’s right, anything but individual rights. Both racism and socialism advocate collectivism. The socialists may respond ‘so?’ just because they support it, does not make it a bad idea’. Every time a socialist advocates collectivism they help the racist, they help legitimise the premise on which racism stands.

Not only do they share identical roots but the lefts anti-free speech views drive racism underground where it breeds. Individualists believe racists should be allowed to speak, and we are allowed to defeat them in the public forum. As JS Mill rightly argued it is through conflict that society progresses.

In practice collectivists/the left have produced regimes which have committed immense racial crimes. The lefts favorite antidote to problems – big government – has institutionalised racism, for example segregation in the south of the United States, apartheid in South Africa and anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. However the Socialist Worker argues that racism originated with the slave trade and thus capitalism is to blame. Such an accusation rests on an erroneous conception of capitalism. Capitalism is, as Ayn Rand writes, ‘a social system based on the recognition of individual rights’. It holds that all agreements must be voluntary; in this respect capitalism is the antithesis of slavery. In the US it was agrarian Statists who supported slavery while and it was the capitalists of the northern states who abolished it. It is no coincidence that it was Britain, the birthplace of classical liberalism and free trade, which was the first to outlaw slavery while Sudan and other tribalism and collectivist societies still practice it.

Thus whereas collectivists have insututionlaied and helped spread racism, individualists offer a cure.

It is due to global capitalism that more people are more accepting of people of different races. Whereas 50 years ago no one could go to a British supermarket and buy sushi, now they can. Generally people hate something that is different, with globalization a variety of foods, clothes, products and ways are becoming the norm, no longer are they so different, consequently a more accepting attitude has been created. Furthermore if left free, businessmen will seek profits by hiring the most competent workers and by accepting every paying customer, regardless of race. That's why government regulations, such as forbidding businesses from serving customers of a particular race—were required to prop up racism.

The closest state to ever become a pure capitalist state was the United States of the late19th and early 20th century. This was also the time when people from all over the world left for the land of opportunity. Capitalism brought people together, over time this has led to greater acceptance. The collectivist will point out that racism still exists in the most capitalist states today, such as the USA, however the US is not a capitalist state, it is a mixed economy and even though racism exists it is not institutionalized or prevalent unlike in big government collectivist regimes.

The left complain about the ‘Americanization’ of culture. Of course we can buy McDonalds and Coco Cola but we can also buy Peking Duck, Tex-Mex and French cheeses. The left’s economic policies would do away with this cultural mix. Socialism leads to only the rich having cultural choice, after all only the rich can afford to fly to Tokyo for sushi and than onto Bollywood for a flick. The left claim to value other cultures, yet they would deny us the chance to experience them, not only detrimental to our own development but to these cultures after all Moroccan folk art has a much better chance of surviving when demand for it is aggregated worldwide. The more people are aware of different foods, ideas, ways of life, music, the less they fear them and the less they hate.

Individualism and capitalism abolished slavery, they will also do away with racism because the only colour we capitalists care about is green – dollar green.