Colonialism and the emergence of the capitalist mode of production
What do racism and sugar have in common? Nowadays, both are on the tip of everyone’s tongue. The history of capitalism is intimately related to the emergence of racist beliefs and structures. Given that we demand Routes Sucrées, it is necessary to suss out the history of this colonial product. As you will realize, the history is anything but sweet.
People in Europe have only known about the existence of sugar for 1,000 years. The history of the sweetener cost not only many teeth, but lives. The technology to cultivate sugar cane was originally developed in Persia. Since the 8th century sugar cane was cultivated in the Middle East and Mediterranean regions. Spanish and Portuguese colonialists established sugar cane plantations in the violently conquered areas of the ‘New World’ from the 16th century onwards.
Carrots and Sticks, Sugar and Whips
In Europe, sugar’s evolution from a status symbol of luxury to a mass product was only enabled by colonialism. Portuguese conquerors founded the first sugar cane plantation in Brazil in 1532. The riches of merchants dealing in ‘white gold’ directly depended on the labour of slaves. But slavery as a form of labour organisation became common not only in sugar production, but in other trade sectors as well. It subsequently became a crucial element in the growth of capitalism. Enormous profits were generated by the toil of millions of enslaved people. Slaves received no wages and were often captured into lifelong dependence on the colonial rulers. As with sugar, most other goods were also produced for export. Instead of nourishing the local people and growing food corresponding to their needs, the sugar was shipped and sold mainly to Europe. The fruits of colonialism were produced as mass consumer goods and therefore became available to European workers. They became the main consumers of, among others, sugar, tobacco, tea and rum. In this sense colonial slave labour was economically integrated: European workers reinforced their own capacity to work by consuming affordable groceries. Among the most important were bread and, since the 1650s, colonial goods. Taken together, the establishment of plantations became decisive for the institution of an international division of labour spanning from colonial sugar produced by slaves directly to the stomachs of European workers. European wage labourers were separated from the slaves geographically and socially. Both groups were forced to work for the profit of others, yet under very different conditions. But cheap slave labour not only provided sugar capitalists with an enormous competitive advantage on the emerging world market; the slave trade itself became an enormously profitable business.
Trilateral trade
The first colonial enterprises undertaken by European rulers and trading companies led to the extermination of up to 95% of the population in parts of South America, North America and the Caribbean. The most frequent causes of death, apart from targeted homicide, were the condition of labour and new diseases Europeans imported from their homelands. After this massive depopulation, plantations were worked by imported African slaves. Since the end of the 17th century a transatlantic flow of trade developed. Within the triangle of Europe, West Africa and the Americas, goods were exchanged and enslaved people rendered mere commodities. Starting in Europe, the merchants filled their ships with weapons, textiles, alcohol and manufactured goods. The ships sailed the West African coastline, where they exchanged those goods for slaves. Only one in four African captives survived the way to the ships. From Africa the ships went west to the Caribbean and Brazil. There, the abducted humans were auctioned off at slave markets. The number of enslaved people systematically deported to America who survived the crossing can be estimated at 20 million. Altogether, in 400 years of transatlantic slave trade, at least 40 million humans were abducted and sold as slaves. On their way back to Europe the merchants’ ships were primarily loaded with sugar, which became one of the most important colonial export commodities. It was the product of the labour of people enslaved on the sugar cane and cotton plantations, where they toiled under the most modern and, simultaneously, the most hellish conditions.
‘Barbarians’ everywhere
Another product of European colonialism is the belief that the white ‘race’ is superior to all others. What began in the 16th century as conquest and robbery was expanded into an exploitative colonial system of forced and slave labour. Racism provided the ideology for legitimizing this exploitation. Like today, those racist beliefs were rather adaptable already in their early phase of existence. The alleged inferiority of the enslaved was labelled ‘natural’, by pointing to their differing skin colour. Violence was justified by ‘white people’ who did not recognize ‘black people’ as human beings. In South America and in the Caribbean, for instance, colonialists in 1640 enacted racist laws in order to entirely disenfranchise enslaved people. Killing them became the right of their ‘white’ masters. Against this, slaves quite often offered resistance. Yet a slave rebellion in the French colony of Saint-Dominique, later known as Haiti, led to revolution. Enslaved people killed the ‘white’ rulers, destroyed their sugar cane plantations and thus inflated sugar prices in Europe. This slave rebellion led to attempts to produce the ‘white gold’ in Europe, which reinforced and eventually stimulated the industrial processing of beet sugar.
From colonialism towards the regime of capital
The brutal violence the colonial system was built upon was a primary force in the early emergence of capitalism. Taking the example of food production, the difference from the preceding feudal economy is clear: In feudalism, serfs provided compulsory labour to their lord and were living in a state of need-oriented but inadequate self-sufficiency. However, within capitalism wage labourers work to enlarge the profits of an already rich minority and have to pay for their food themselves. And yet today, one in eight people on this planet is starving, while every three seconds one person dies of hunger or malnutrition. And slavery continues to exist; capitalism as of yet has still not been able to establish itself as a global mode of production without it. Originating in Europe, the development of modern public debt and tax systems promoted the global establishment of capitalist conditions. The seed capital for the construction of factories in Europe derived to a great part from colonial profits. Factory industrialization secured technical progress as it also degraded the labour and living conditions of many Europeans. With regard to this, Karl Marx stated that unconcealed slavery in the ‘New World’ enabled concealed slavery in wage labour. European colonialism was not only the foundation for competition within the global market to be distributed unequally, but also rendered the colonies economically, socially and culturally dependent for centuries to come. In spite of their detachment from political foreign rule, primarily attained through independence movements after the Second World War, many ex-colonies are still dependent today. Notwithstanding their respective governments and administrations, some of the former colonies are fully excluded from the global market. The international division of labour is still accompanied by unequal exchange, forcing poor countries into sustaining their “underdevelopment”. Be it an unfair global division of labour, inhumane labour conditions, or modern slavery: all are inseparably linked to capitalism and continuously explained and glorified through racism. Against this, to do away with the worldwide regime of capital means achieving a new world in which nobody is conquered and nobody conquers.
For further reading
Etienne Balibar & Immanuel Wallerstein: Race. Nation. Class: Ambiguous Identities.
