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Dr. David Kelley's thesis was a defense of his theory of perception which he described as direct realism. That any version of representationalism requires an homonculus inside to do the real perceiving is a critique that he made there. His book "The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception" is an overview of the topic of perception in philosophy and a presentation of his defense of direct realism. Dr. Kelley was tutored in Objectivism at the feet of Rand herself (figuratively speaking, mostly) and is most definitely to be counted among "Objectivist philosophers". He completed this work while he was in her social circle. Rand had no interest in doing the kind of dry scholarly writing that Kelley did here, so this treatment of the subject is as good as it may ever get as far as an Objectivist theory of perception. I'm fairly disappointed no one else here remembered Kelley. The Evidence of the Senses: A Realist Theory of Perception at Amazon.com.

"All human beings, whatever their position in society, are suffering from this process of deterioration. . . . they feel insecure, lonely, and deprived of the naive, simple, and unsophisticated enjoyment of life. Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society."* Speak for yourself, Professor. Did not apply to the millions of God-vested people all around him at the time of that writing. Does not apply to lots of atheistic, rational people I know today. Does not apply to me (and I'm not a subscriber to ethical egoism, SI, in case you'd care to avoid presumptuousness concerning audience at this site). In this, Prof. Einstein was stuck-in-a-rut, without a shred of originality or profound insight into human nature.

I haven't done much reading in this forum (I have a learning impairment), but I have an argument. Capitalism cannot be inherently racist because Capitalism is not an individual person. We might invoke the concept of structural racism, as being a disembodied phenomenon. But in order to understand structural racism, we need to understand that every structure is constructed by individuals. Structural racism is a legacy of the work and actions of individuals. Capitalism is actually not conducive to racism, because the primary activities in Capitalism are production and circulation. Production is not racist because commodities are made for everyone. Circulation is not racist because if you have money you can buy commodities. If some companies will not hire racial and ethnic minorities, because they are racist, there will be others who do not discriminate. If some stores will not sell to racial and ethnic minorities, there will be others who do. If all companies and stores are discriminating, this does not mean capitalism is racist. It simply means that all current existing companies and stores discriminate. Capitalism actually does a lot to destroy racism. It was the capitalist north that offered jobs to freed slaves who moved from the south to the north. It was the capitalist manufacturing sector which employed large numbers of black people in the fifties and sixties. Capitalism is not inherently racist. People are racist.

There is so much which is conspicuously wrong with Fraser's address that it is almost a waste of text here to try to address the flaws we all can see and which Rand has specifically refuted throughout her work. As for addressing "specifics advanced" in the paper... what stands out to me is actually what is NOT specifically advanced in the paper. Although I feel a sense akin to the futility of disproving an arbitrary claim and the impossibility at pointing at traces left by that which does not exist, I realize that pointing out what should have been investigated, presented, and argued and was not, is possible and shall suffice. First, I note that her approach does not critically distinguish between the system, capitalism, and the people participating in that system, nor the causal interrelationships therebetween. If she were serious about determining whether "capitalism is racist", or necessarily so, wouldn't she be concerned with controlling variables... i.e. serious about determining whether the people themselves are racist and how can one tease apart racism on the part of the people and purported "racism" of the system or caused by the system? In this vein, would a population of non-racists, in a non-racist culture, (let's say individuals of multiple races kidnapped from a perfect Marxist Utopia of Fraser's making), if "made" (or allowed) to run (or participate) in a capitalist system, become racist? Or would the people remain devoid of any racism, and the system itself exhibit racism, quite independently of the lack of racism of any of its individuals? Moreover, what constitutes "racism" BY a system? Any system or organization or activity including people who are racist has "racism" occurring in proximity to it, but if one's concepts of "racism by people" and "racism by systems" are distinguishable according to any rational standard, such kinds of racism must not to be attributed to the system as such. Whatever the system under investigation, some interaction between the racism of individuals and the system must be investigated in order to determine whether or not the system itself is "racist". For example, does the system tend to decrease racism, increase it, or tends to leave it at the same level? How does the system interact with the psychology of its participants such that it does give rise to this tendency? But all this depends on a valid concept of race and racism. Fraser's concept of "racism" is just as problematic than her concept of capitalism. Her implicit definition and characterization of racism is severely lacking and quite frankly IS racist. She focuses on one particular form of racism, namely, white or European racism against people of color in the recent historical context caused in part by the slave trade in Africa. Such a concrete is not racism as such but only an example of it. A psychological remnant of exploitation (which slavery was) which survives in a uniquely historical culture and context, and exists. To assume racism only takes that form, no matter where or when capitalism is instituted, is to attribute an intrinsic hierarchy of domination (implicitly, an intrinsic imbalance of capability, intellect, merit) of whites over blacks which is a highly racist idea. If her thesis is about capitalism as such, and racism as such, it cannot be focused only on historical and geographical happenstance. Accordingly, it would seem her ability to distinguish between concepts in the abstract versus concrete examples thereof is lacking. Would the capitalism in Japan, for example, refute or corroborate her theory about the relationship between race and capitalism? Are whites in Japan extorted in the same way and for similar reasons blacks are in the US? Are whites in Japan extorted at all? What happens (or would happen) in African capitalist systems? Are whites extorted, how and why? And once again is it the system which is racist or is it the people and what is the relationship? Is her so called racial extortion simply an echo of the technological extortion (conquest and slavery), causally linked and persistent in the minds of each population generations later merely because race is easily visible and distinguishes people as descendants of that technological extortion? If so, then rather than tending to show any particular system is racist, her ideas should lead her to the conclusion that the remnants of technological extortion and conquest persist psychologically in populations and arguably any system, where people can be identified as uniquely descendant from those groups, the conquered and the conquerors. But such would require original investigation into psychology, tribalism, historical conquest, and how systems in general work, which do not necessarily fit well with her already determined outcome, and would take her far afield from her desired narrative. Fraser makes no serious inquiry. She makes no attempt to investigate the ideas of racism and capitalism and their actual causal interrelationships on a fundamental level. She assumes her premises about exploitation and power, observes the historical accident of race correlating with technological advancement at around the time of the African slave trade (Europeans who happened to be white were more advanced technologically than those inhabiting Africa who happened to be black) in particular (while ignoring slavery crosses all racial boundaries and has existed for millennia and possibly since the dawn of man), and observes outcomes for certain populations compared with others as supporting her already held beleifs about capitalism (an incredibly new and never fully realized system), and asserts (essentially in a vacuum) moreover that capitalism is itself racist and implicitly magnifies and/or causes racism. Perhaps Fraser's has unintentionally discovered that her implicit belief that white people or people of European descent (I single them out because she does) are or tend to be racist against people of color due to history, combined with her implicit knowledge that capitalism is the system which provides freedom (whether admits she knows it or not), leads, at first analysis, to the conclusion that the system does not serve to attenuate or directly stamp out that racism, but on the surface only leaves people to be free to commit the same errors. In the grand scheme of things, even this is wrong, certainly for any actual capitalist who wants to succeed, and knows that doing so requires judging people on merit and not by skin color. A laissez faire government does not stamp out gross errors of judgment, it allows reality to do so and reality does so, even if only at a rate much slower than those who would rather force things to resolve themselves more quickly. And as always, for those who see no problem with force, the relative timelines serve as a strong justification for its use. Finally, I must state I get the very strong sense that the paper is not, by any stretch, an impartial investigation into causal links or relationships between her concepts of "capitalism" and "racism", so much as it is a juxtaposition of language meant to fit or resemble a narrative, and ring true to her long ago ossified world view. Such an approach and goal cannot abide serious, dare I say "critical", and open inquiry. She decided on the "answers" before she set out to "find" them, and found the answers she wanted to find by "finding" the connections and congruencies she needed in various "sacred texts" of her ideology, not unlike how a prophet motivated to influence his village might "find" and reveal a prophecy of imminent disaster which had always been hidden in the old books of wisdom. There really is nothing new to see here. Nothing at all.

If you've never encountered this piece before, I can't recommend it highly enough. Particularly the part about how the UK (and if you'll allow, by extension, capitalism) ended slavery. Which is different from racism...though probably not from Fraser's perspective.

Fraser gives three perspectives on capitalism: exchange, exploitation, expropriation. That implicitly sweeps production under a rug or reduces it to exploitation and/or expropriation. She says nothing about using reason, how markets form or change, the role of knowledge and information (such as described by F. Hayek), entrepreneurship, innovation, supply and demand, prices, goal setting, resources, and organization or management. All these are subsumed under exploitation or expropriation. She remarks that using the exchange perspective, others could say that capitalism is indifferent to color, but she says this delinks capitalism from racism by definitional fiat. She similarly delinks production from capitalism by definitional fiat. Fraser uses “power” a few times. The first four times are “labor power.” The rest are in the sense of the power to coerce or subjugate. None are really about the power to create. The term “labor power” was coined by Karl Marx and plays a large role in his view and critique of capitalism. It basically views laborers as “tools” for doing what’s demanded by capitalists.