Capitalist Convictions

Perhaps the most blatant example of the evil potential of capitalism is the former American institution of slavery. Slavery was able to take root in America because of the need of capitalists to complete their projects at the lowest possible cost. While slavery ended with the Civil War, the unfair exploitation of African American labor continued on for decades after, according to a PBS documentary I recently viewed called Slavery by Another Name. Following the abolition of slavery, former slave holders turned to peonage as a way of industrializing cities like Birmingham, Alabama, without having to pay their laborers any money. Peonage is a system of debt slavery. The 'peon' signs over his labor and his freedom, in order to repay a debt. Of course, in the case of these American peons from the decades following the Civil War, their debts were fictitious. They were simply accosted at gunpoint and dragged off to work sites to suffer conditions as bad as that faced by concentration camp workers in World War Two. The death rate among these workers was atrocious. In fact, peonage was even crueler than slavery. Since this was all done in the name of the Almighty Dollar, the federal government did not effectively prosecute the wealthy former slave holders for this extreme violation of human rights. I'm sure that if the people of this time had had our current president, those monsters would have all died in prison. Peonage was not entirely confined to the exploitation of African Americans. A few whites also strayed in from cities like Detroit, or perhaps even from Canada, and were swallowed up by this evil enterprise by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Speaking of debt, if you owe money to a capitalist, they want to enslave you for it, but if they owe money to you, they refuse to acknowledge it. I am owed millions of dollars for my work and look how they have treated me so far.
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© 2007, 2014. Statements by David Skerkowski. All rights reserved.