Transnational Capitalist Class: What's Race Got to Do With It? Everything!

Abstract

This article examines the use of race by the transnational capitalist class (TCC) to get globalizing politicians in office to execute the powers of the state to help shift from national obligations to labor to global obligations to capital. When it comes to controlling the White House and the Senate, there is no region of the country more important to the TCC than the US South, and this region, more than others, turns on the fulcrum of race. This article also examines the political impact of the South moving beyond a narrow black-white binary to a broad diversely racialized society for the TCC. Significantly higher in-migration and fertility rates among citizens of color constitute an indirect threat to the TCC politically by potentially terminating Republican domination of Southern electoral votes and Senate Congressional delegations. The TCC will attempt to counter the oncoming demographic transformation with voter suppression and other draconian measures.

Este artículo examina el uso de la raza por la Clase Capitalista Trasnacional (TTC, por sus siglas en inglés), para obtener políticos globalizados en el poder para ejecutar los poderes del estado, para que ayuden a cambiar las obligaciones laborales nacionales por obligaciones globales para el capital. Cuando se trata de controlar a la Casa Blanca y el Senado, no hay región del país más importante al TCC que el sur de los E.E.U.U., y esta región, más que otras, gira hacia el fulcro de la raza. Este artículo también examina el impacto político del sur que va por encima de un estrecho binario de negro y blanco, hacia una sociedad racializada y muy diversa para el TCC. La inmigración y las tasas de fertilidad entre los ciudadanos de color, significativamente mayores, constituyen una amenaza indirecta política a los TCC, al terminar potencialmente el dominio republicano de los votos electorales del sur y de las delegaciones del congreso y del senado. El TCC tratará de contrarrestar la transformación demográfica que se avecina, con la supresión de votos y otras medidas draconianas.

本文检讨跨国资本主义阶级（TCC）使用种族使全球化中的掌权的政客让民族国家的责任从倾向劳工到倾向资本转变。当TCC控制了白宫和参议院，没有比美国南方更加强大的地区。美国南方这一地区，变成比任何其它地区都更加是种族的支点。本文也检讨超越狭义的黑白二重、从更广义上的多样化的种族化了的社会分析对于TCC来说美国南方的政治影响力。在有色种族中，很高的迁入的移民和出生率构成在政治上对TCC来说的间接威胁，因为潜在地终结了在南方选区和参议院国会代表团的共和党主导。TCC将借助投票者压制和其它严厉措施来试图抵制正在进行中的人口结构的转变。

يناقش المقال استخدام مسألة العرق والعنصر من جانب الطبقة الرأسمالية متعدية القوميات لدفع السياسيين المتعولمين في السلطة لاستخدام سلطات الدولة للمساعدة في الانتقال من الالتزامات الوطنية إزاء قوة العمل إلى الالتزامات العالمية إزاء رأس المال. وفيما يتعلق بالسيطرة على البيت الأبيض والبرلمان بمجلسيه لا يوجد إقليم مهم للطبقة الرأسمالية متعدية القوميات مثل جنوب الولايات المتحدة الذي يتحول أكثر من أي إقليم آخر إلى نقطة ارتكاز للعرق والعنصر. كما يبحث المقال الأثر السياسي للجنوب من حيث التحرك إلى ما هو أبعد من ثنائية البيض- السود الضيقة إلى مجتمع عنصري ذي تنوع كبير؛ إذ ينظر إلى المعدلات المرتفعة بوضوح للهجرة الوافدة والخصوبة وسط المواطنين الملونين كتهديد غير مباشر للطبقة الرأسمالية متعدية القوميات بما ينذر بإنهاء السيطرة السياسية للجمهوريين على الأصوات الانتخابية للجنوبيين وممثليهم في مجلس الشيوخ. ويرى المقال أن الطبقة المذكورة ستحاول مواجهة التحدي السكاني المتزايد عن طريق قمع الناخبين وتدابير صارمة أخرى.

이 글은 현직 정치인들이 노동에 대한 국가적 의무에서 자본에 대한 초국가적 의무로 전환하는 것을 돕기 위해 초국적 자본가 계급이 인종을 이용하는 것을 분석한다. 초국적 자본가가 백악관과 상원을 통제하게 될 때, 초국적 자본가 계급에게 미국 남부보다 더 중요한 곳은 없고, 무엇보다 인종이라는 지렛대에 눈을 돌린다. 또한 이 글은 초국적 자본가계급을 위하여 협소한 흑인 백인 이분법을 넘어 더 다양하게 인종화된 사회로 이동하는데 남부의 정치적 영향력을 검토한다. 유색인종 시민들 사이에 훨씬 더 높은 이민과 출산율이 잠재적으로 남부 유권자들과 상원 의석의 공화당 지배를 종결시킴으로써 초국적 자본가들에게 간접적인 위협이 된다. 초국적 자본가 계급은 유권자 탄압과 다른 엄청난 억압적인 방법으로 지속되고 있는 인구학적 전환에 대응할 것이다.

Keywords:

• transnational capitalist class
• race
• globalization
• South

Notes

My views on race are aligned with those of the evolutionary biologist Joseph Graves (2001) and many others, who note that race is a social construction, not a biological truth. While authors who hold such views tend to put ‘race’ in quotation marks, I will italicize the word ‘race’ in recognition that it is a social construction based on politico-economic interests, not a biological truth. ‘Racism’ and ‘racialization’ are not italicized since they are not social constructions. As Fanon (1967) notes, racialization is tantamount to dehumanization.

Unfortunately, many progressive scholars and analysts err in their attempt to make the case that Republican and Democratic officeholders are completely one and the same. On balance, such Republican–Democratic distinguishing outcomes are as consequential as any that are cited as illustrations of Republican–Democratic unifying outcomes. It is in the TCC's interest for the Democratic Party not to be a 100% replica of the Republican Party. If labor thinks and feels that both parties are completely and equally controlled by global capital, the system is then much more brittle and people would be more likely to countenance ‘revolution’ as the only recourse. Having complete domination of one party and significant influence over the other, but with some room for labor and Americans of color to feel and think that they have a voice and can win meaningful elections, the TCC is more secure.

The role redistricting has played in increasing the number of Southern Republican Congressmen and women must also be acknowledged. The 1990 decennial census resulted in nine additional seats allocated to the South starting in the 1992 electoral season, and Republicans picked up nine additional seats during that cycle. Additionally, the Department of Justice under President George H. W. Bush pushed for maximizing wherever possible the number of majority–minority Southern districts that would result in more black members of Congress. A greater gain redounded to Southern Republicans since the outcome also included more districts that were whiter and more conservative. Due to the redistricting and Southern whites increasingly trending toward identification with Republicans, the GOP picked up an additional 16 seats in the 1994 election, thereby controlling the US House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years (McKee, 2010). Southern states gained six additional seats in the wake of the 2000 census and an additional seven after the 2010 census. These additional seats are not necessarily all Republican since many in-migrants from the industrial Midwestern and New England states and members of the expanding Latino population are noticeably less enamored with Republican ideology and agenda. In Florida, between 2008 and 2010, the Latino voting-age population expanded eight times faster than the voting-age white population. Similar demographic changes are occurring in other states.

Bringing blacks into the economic mainstream also served as a check on white labor's unending demands for higher wages and better working conditions. Those demands accompanied America's command of most of the industrial markets around the world in the 1950s, as industrial infrastructures in Europe and Japan were destroyed in World War II. Rising global markets in an era of pre-automated production and robotics required enormous and ever-expanding labor pools, and if the pools of labor are artificially limited due to racial discrimination, the cost of white labor would be at a premium. Moreover, as blacks also moved into the economic mainstream, they also served to expand the market for larger-ticket consumer items, which further expanded corporate profits.

Eisenhower was following the work of Truman, who had formed an elite blue-ribbon commission known as the Presidential Commission on Civil Rights in 1946 to advise on advancing with civil rights for blacks—again, such advancements were seen as a necessity of the Cold War. In addition to Charlie Wilson, CEO of General Motors and who headed the commission, some of the prominent individuals who served were the president of Dartmouth College, the president of the University of North Carolina, the secretary general of the Congress of Industrial Unions, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, and the president of Lever Brothers.

White working-class voters who were ‘Reagan Democrats’ and those moved by Southern strategy campaigns wanted the government to end affirmative action, outlaw abortion, introduce a constitutional amendment outlawing same-sex marriages, support prayer in school, and strengthen protection of the second amendment. While many white voters were voting Republican on these wedge issues, with hopes of rolling back the gains of the civil rights movement, the TCC were supporting such votes in pursuit of different goals that would aid and abet their globalizing agenda, such as Class Action law suit and tort reform, bankruptcy changes, and fostering a new social ethos that no longer embraced health care and retirement security as public responsibilities. Many Democrats also support the TCC project of ending New Deal measures, just not as categorically as Republicans since Democrats also target labor and Americans of color as part of a broader coalition to win elections. Unlike Republican candidates, Democratic candidates can win primaries and make it to public office over multiple cycles without following all of the principal dictates of the TCC. The two parties are different, but they are not parallel opposites. In other words, Republicans are united in lockstep against the New Deal agenda and the social welfare state, whereas Democrats primarily defend these programs, but in varying degrees.

I will cite two of many strategic reasons why Obama's election was good for the TCC: interest convergence and the deleveraging period. Derrick Bell (2004) labels those inflection points in history when the interest of black progress converges with the interest of corporate America. The two prominent cases were the ending of slavery and fighting the Cold War. The election of Obama was the third prominent instance of interest convergence. Under George W. Bush's presidency, the world had begun to devalue reputed American values and institutions. Before Barack Obama's election, the United States, along with Israel during the Bush years, was regularly regarded as the greatest threat to world peace. Being so reviled was undermining both the image of US-branded corporations and the US state's ability to provide legitimacy to the global capitalist-supporting architecture of which the United States took primary command. Image-making is important to institutions and societies seeking to assume and leverage legitimate authority and leadership, which was clearly at work leading up to the civil rights era under Truman and Eisenhower. Fighting the Cold War, which was a battle for the allegiance of the largest share of the world's population, depended, in part, on America's domestic image abroad. Producing and enforcing civil rights and voting rights for blacks were largely about burnishing America's long-tarnished history with the racial oppression of African Americans. Another advantage of an Obama presidency for the TCC after the 2008 market crash was that Obama could simply preside over a period of deleveraging. Whereas household debt to income in 1990 was 83%, by 2007, before the crash, household debt was 130% of household income (Krugman, 2010). In other words, Americans were borrowing money from abroad to buy goods often produced abroad and with lower interest rates as a result of unspent earnings from abroad buying up US government debt. One of the reasons why unemployment remained in the 8% and above vicinity for so long was that deleveraging had to occur before American workers would be able to consume again, though not like they did in the 1990s and 2000s. In light of Americans’ shallow political knowledge and ahistoricism, Americans would blame Obama and the Democrats for the decline of the quality of life in the country. Total household debt to income has come down to under 105% by the end of 2012. It will take years before Americans will have and feel that they have money to spend to buoy the economy to pre-Great Recession levels. The housing woes wiped out $7 trillion of homeowners’ equity: ‘Homeowners’ equity as a share of home values has fallen to 38.6% from 59.7% in 2005’ (Timiraos, 2011, p. A1). Since 2005 through 2015, Americans will likely face a housing market that can be characterized as a lost decade. In short, it is convenient for the TCC to have the non-swaggering black president who improves America's image and to double as the deleveraging president.