#inquality

The word capitalism tends to cause immediate confusion. For most people it calls to mind things like businesses, markets and trade: the ability of people to produce and sell things to one another. Who could possibly be against this? But in fact businesses, markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is a relatively recent system, having emerged in Western Europe only about 500 years ago.  If one was to point to the single most important defining feature of this particular economic system, it would be that it is fundamentally anti-democratic. 

Let me clarify what I mean. Yes, many of us live in electoral systems where we select political leaders from time to time.  We have something approximating political democracy, as corrupt and imperfect as it may be.  But when it comes to the economy, thesystem of production, not even the shallowest illusion of democracy enters. Production is controlled overwhelmingly by capital, meaning large corporations, the major financial firms, and the 1% who own the lion’s share of investable assets.  Capital determines what gets produced, how our labour and resources shall be used, and for whose benefit. And for capital, the purpose of production is not to meet people’s needs, or to achieve social progress.  The purpose is to maximize and accumulate profit – that is the overriding objective.

Capital seeks constantly increasing accumulation. To achieve this, it needs to cheapen the prices of inputs as much as possible (labour, land, energy, and materials), and maintain those prices at a low level. It also needs a constantly increasing supply of these inputs.  This process cannot go on for very long within a bounded national economy.  If you over-exploit your domestic working class, sooner or later you are going to face a revolution, or a crisis of overproduction. And if you over-exploit your domestic environment, eventually you will degrade the ecological base upon which all production relies.

To overcome these contradictions, capitalism always requires an “outside,” external to itself, where it can cheapen labor and nature with impunity and appropriate them on a vast scale; an outside where it can “externalize” social and ecological damages, where rebellions can be contained, and where it does not have to negotiate with local grievances or demands. This is where the colonies come in. From the origins of capitalism in the late 15th century, growth in the “core” of the world economy (Western Europe, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan) has always depended on the mass appropriation of labor and resources from the “periphery” (Latin America, Asia and Africa). There was no lag between the rise of capitalism and the imperial project. Capitalism has always required an imperial arrangement.

This was obvious during the first several hundred years of capitalist history, which I detail in this book. European colonizers went about destroying self-sufficient industries in the periphery and forcibly re-organizing production to serve consumption and accumulation in the core. Historians have documented that extraordinary quantities of value were siphoned out of the periphery and into the core, subjecting the former to deprivation, misery, and mass mortality while furnishing the latter with unprecedented wealth.

Yesterday, a friend of mine gave me a link to “If I Were a Poor Black Kid,” in Forbes ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2011/12/12/if-i-was-a-poor-black-kid/) , spawning a debate lasting one or two hours. Apparently this article has spawned a bit of criticism all over the web. I must have been living under a rock all that time, because this was my first time hearing about it. In my defense, it was finals week, but all that really means is that I’ve had time to try to finish Numb3rs and Jericho on Netflix before visiting my parents over winter break, since my parents live in a place that still doesn’t have access to unlimited internet. Yes, places like that exist. This is a fact. In 2011.

I agree with just about every sentiment express in this article, largely because it is the story of my life. No, I was not raised in the inner city, but in the rural South, a place whose poverty and disadvantages often get ignored in the popular debate over America’s social and economic shortcomings. I was born to a lower-income black family (my parents never accepted the word poor) whose income revenue straddled the poverty line.

I didn’t have a computer until the 8th grade, and it was a slow, used computer connected to the outside world through a dial-up connection. Even after my parents replaced the computer with something speedy, the internet connection remained the same until after I left for college, when they were able to make the jump to HughesNet, a decently fast ISP that provides its customers with 200 or more mb of internet a day, depending on their plan. Yes, mb, as in megabytes, as in a couple YouTube clips and an album before getting throttled.

Neither my parents nor the vast majority of my relatives had graduated from college, meaning my parents knew nothing about the college application process and which colleges to strive for. While other students were concerned about getting into a school good enough to please their family, I was educating my parents on the difference between a four-year college and a community college and how, no, they can’t give me the same thing (after first having to look up the difference myself).

It’s clear, since meeting people at college, that most students here have never seen, or given any legitimate thought to, life in communities like that which I was raised in. Most cannot fathom an existence where there are no stores within walking distance (unless you feel like walking for the entire day, that is) and the nearest mall is over an hour away. Even career advisors assume that students live in a place where they can reasonably apply for internships and on-the-job shadowing experience (understandably, since most students do). It would cost me a small fortune in gas money and hours traveling back and forth between where my parents live and where the nearest likely job internship may be, so it feels like a slap in the face to be asked to hunt for unpaid internships. I’d rather not run my savings dry.

Anyways, I have digressed. In high school, I was acutely aware of the advantage my white classmates had over me (and I say white classmates not because only the white classmates had anything over me, but because in the advanced classes, nearly all of my classmates were white). Most came from a legacy of people who expected some degree of college education, and it’s easier to get into college when someone like you going to college is the rule, not the exception. Even now, most of my cousins who have gone to college have dropped out for one reason or another.

Yet somehow, I managed to make it into the College of William and Mary, one of the best colleges in the United States, and thus, the world. I have been given a liberal arts experience that only a vast minority of people ever get to experience, and I am immensely grateful.

How did I get here? Well, because opportunities for success exist, even for those who are disadvantaged. Like the article mentioned, universities want to attract academically strong, hardworking people from low economic backgrounds, and many are willing to offer them full scholarships. My teachers in high school wanted to see me succeed. My parents expected no less of me, even if they didn’t know entirely how to help me get there.

A person who tries their very best, regardless of the hand they’ve been dealt, will be in a better place than they would be if they never tried. Is it harder for some than others? Yes. For some, are the odds of success basically zero? Yes. But people can find success and escape from a bad beginning. They can and they do every day.

The friend who gave me the article criticized the author for ignoring the impact race has on their odds for success. I didn’t see this at all. For one, what the author says is applicable in countries all over the world, where the difference between suburban and urban life isn’t as racially coded as it is here. But even then, he repeats multiple times that a poor black kid is going to have it much more difficult that his own kids have and will. He acknowledges, and even emphatizes with, the parents who would want to push their children harder, if only they didn’t have to work two jobs to survive. But as hard as it is to get out of the inner city, the fact doesn’t change that there are opportunities out there for these kids, and that there are institutions waiting to pull them out. It’s on us to help them find them and survive long enough to make it through. I’m thankful to everyone who did as much for me.

Just from reading the title, I can tell that a lot of these so called feminists are gonna start spamming in my inbox with hate mail, just for providing a different opinion. Before I begin, I just want to say that not all feminists are bad, since I do support some of them who takes their action in the right way instead of using violent actions or spreading inaccurate information without any evidence given to the public. For example the infamous “Anita Sarkeesian”, where she tends to FAIL in providing accurate information that makes no sense and creates a lot of confusion for her audience. I have a VIDEO to showcase these fails, which was done by “NateTalksToYou”

Actually, I’m gonna stop here because I’m gonna get a lot of death threats from these feminazis if I continue further. (lol)

But, I will say this last thing....A real feminist is someone who believes in equal rights for both genders (Male and Female). Those kind of feminists do not believe that one gender should be superior to the other !

Videos of Terrible Feminists:

1.) "Anti-Fascist" Feminists pour Human Urine over Lauren Southern for saying "There are only 2 Genders"

2.) Feminists Rely on "Men Shouldn't Hit Women" To Get Away With Hitting Men - Compilation