Another strong condemnation of capitalist reality has been written by Lynn Parramore on the AlterNet website which is well worth re-posting;-
Women did not exist at the dawn of colonial America from a legal perspective, they had no existence apart from their husbands'. They mostly couldn’t own property. They couldn’t inherit. Their babies did not belong to them, and neither did their bodies. They were chattel, much like a cow or a utensil.
Some of the first white women to set foot in Virginia were placed on auction blocks and sold for tobacco. Men paid the London Company for these “tobacco brides” and walked away with a combination sexual partner/farm worker. Other colonial women —as many as 75 percent of the early Chesapeake white female population — came to America (sometimes through kidnapping) as indentured servants who performed rough work for masters who might prefer to see them die rather than pay them at the end of servitude. Indentured women could not marry, and were subject to sexual exploitation.
The worst oppression of all was reserved for African women brought to the colonies on slave ships. The year 1662 turned their fate bitter for centuries to come when colonial slave law broke from English precedent and set forth that all children born to enslaved mothers would follow the condition of their mother regardless of paternity. This made the paternity of the women’s child legally irrelevant. Slavery could now pass from one generation to the next. Breeding programs forced women to become pregnant by enslaved men, overseers, or slave owners. As Thomas Jefferson recorded of his attitude toward the women he viewed as property that is brutal in its calculation of economics and reproduction: "A woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm for what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labor disappears in mere consumption."
Slavery contorted the characters of otherwise admirable human beings and fueled the harmful qualities of the worst. As David Wilson, a lawyer and New York state legislator.interpreted, “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one.”
Today African Americans living in Louisiana, hunger rates are twice the national average, and the poverty rate is 45 percent. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, Louisiana is the worst place to be a woman in the nation. Women get paid 67 cents on the dollar compared to men, their jobs are more insecure, they hold fewer public offices, and they fare worse in health outcomes. Louisiana ranks ninth in the rate of women murdered by men.
During slavery, many Americans justified oppression by claiming that black people were naturally inferior and thus deserved their condition. Today, conservative Republicans suggest that the poor are poor because of their own inferiority, and do not deserve any better than what they have. The ideology of slavery posited a false God who instated a natural order in which some human beings were made to suffer at the hands of others. The ideology of capitalism proposes the supernatural force of the "market," which can never be wrong. Those whom the invisible hand crushes deserve their fate.
The full unedited article can be read here
Women did not exist at the dawn of colonial America from a legal perspective, they had no existence apart from their husbands'. They mostly couldn’t own property. They couldn’t inherit. Their babies did not belong to them, and neither did their bodies. They were chattel, much like a cow or a utensil.
Some of the first white women to set foot in Virginia were placed on auction blocks and sold for tobacco. Men paid the London Company for these “tobacco brides” and walked away with a combination sexual partner/farm worker. Other colonial women —as many as 75 percent of the early Chesapeake white female population — came to America (sometimes through kidnapping) as indentured servants who performed rough work for masters who might prefer to see them die rather than pay them at the end of servitude. Indentured women could not marry, and were subject to sexual exploitation.
The worst oppression of all was reserved for African women brought to the colonies on slave ships. The year 1662 turned their fate bitter for centuries to come when colonial slave law broke from English precedent and set forth that all children born to enslaved mothers would follow the condition of their mother regardless of paternity. This made the paternity of the women’s child legally irrelevant. Slavery could now pass from one generation to the next. Breeding programs forced women to become pregnant by enslaved men, overseers, or slave owners. As Thomas Jefferson recorded of his attitude toward the women he viewed as property that is brutal in its calculation of economics and reproduction: "A woman who brings a child every two years is more profitable than the best man on the farm for what she produces is an addition to the capital, while his labor disappears in mere consumption."
Slavery contorted the characters of otherwise admirable human beings and fueled the harmful qualities of the worst. As David Wilson, a lawyer and New York state legislator.interpreted, “There may be humane masters, as there certainly are inhuman ones—there may be slaves well-clothed, well-fed, and happy, as there surely are those half-clad, half-starved and miserable; nevertheless, the institution that tolerates such wrong and inhumanity as I have witnessed, is a cruel, unjust, and barbarous one.”
Today African Americans living in Louisiana, hunger rates are twice the national average, and the poverty rate is 45 percent. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, Louisiana is the worst place to be a woman in the nation. Women get paid 67 cents on the dollar compared to men, their jobs are more insecure, they hold fewer public offices, and they fare worse in health outcomes. Louisiana ranks ninth in the rate of women murdered by men.
During slavery, many Americans justified oppression by claiming that black people were naturally inferior and thus deserved their condition. Today, conservative Republicans suggest that the poor are poor because of their own inferiority, and do not deserve any better than what they have. The ideology of slavery posited a false God who instated a natural order in which some human beings were made to suffer at the hands of others. The ideology of capitalism proposes the supernatural force of the "market," which can never be wrong. Those whom the invisible hand crushes deserve their fate.
The full unedited article can be read here
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