"You can't have capitalism without racism and you can't have racism without capitalism." -- Malcolm X
Socialism is government by the working class where the interests of people and society are paramount rather than the pursuit of profits by a wealthy elite. It is the working class struggle against the poverty and other evils inflicted upon them by capitalism.
The interests of the wealthy capitalist minority are diametrically opposite to those of the majority working class. The wealthy resolve this problem by dividing the working class in the age-old divide-and-rule attack.
The real division of society is class, not race, gender or religion. This can be easily understood as the capitalists make more as workers toil harder and longer for less and less, as good-paying jobs are "off-shored" to cheap-labor locations, as benefits are slashed or eliminated, as public funds are diverted to bank rescues and imperialist wars. The only way for a wealthy, capitalist minority to maintain power and promote their own financial pursuits is to divide the working class majority. This is done in a number of ways and racism is one of those ways.
Racism also provides an easy way to rally the public for imperialist war. We constantly heard right-wing propagandists railing against "towel heads" in the run up to the current war in the Middle East. There is a long history of such name calling and demonizing of foreign peoples as the ruling class beats the drum for imperialist conquest.
The fundamental social division is class, not race or gender
28 May 2009
World Socialist Web Site
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/may2009/pers-m28.shtml
Excerpt:
The American ruling class has gone further than any other in the world to suppress any public discussion of class. From the late 1940s on, the anti-communist witch-hunting associated with Senator Joseph McCarthy spearheaded a drive to effectively outlaw any public discussion of socialism, Marxism or the class divisions in American society.
In response to the social eruptions of the 1960s—the civil rights struggles and urban riots, the mass movement against the Vietnam War, and major struggles by the labor movement—the American bourgeoisie began to utilize identity politics to divide and confuse the mass opposition to its policies and block the emergence of the working class as an independent social force.
Black nationalism, “Chicano” nationalism, women’s liberation and gay liberation all emerged, to name only the most heavily promoted forms of identity politics. In each case, real social grievances of significant sections of the American population were divorced from their connection to the socio-economic foundation—the division of society between the relative handful of capitalist owners of the means of production, and the vast majority of the population who must sell their labor power to make a living.
The Democratic Party became the principal vehicle for peddling the politics of race and gender, recruiting a layer of black, female and Hispanic politicians who engage in populist demagogy that uses race and gender to counterfeit an orientation to the interests of the oppressed masses of American society. But Republican administrations have learned how to engage in such posturing as well.
For the past 12 years for instance, under two Democratic presidents and one Republican, the post of US Secretary of State has been occupied by, in succession, a white woman, a black man, a black woman, and a white woman. This exercise in “diversity” has not the slightest progressive significance. It has not democratized American foreign policy or made it one iota more conciliatory to the interests of the oppressed, either internationally or within the United States. Madeline Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton are all representatives, not of “blacks” or “women,” but of the most rapacious imperialist ruling class on the planet.
Barack Obama is the culmination of this process. Celebrated as the first African-American president, he has overseen the greatest handover of resources to the billionaires and Wall Street speculators in history. In the restructuring of the auto industry, with ever-escalating demands for cuts in jobs, pay and benefits for auto workers, he has set the stage for the greatest assault on the working class since the Reagan administration smashed the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981 and gave the signal for a nationwide campaign of wage-cutting and union-busting. In this, Obama demonstrates that the class he serves, not the color of his skin or his social origins, is the decisive political factor.