Sanders: A Man with A Hammer, Who Sees Nails Everywhere

[kennetha]

66. They sure think they do.

They get higher wages if they don't have to compete with the black other, if they can exclude the black other, and can make the labor pool smaller and make labor a scarcer commodity.

The capitalist doesn't care about the color of the skin of the laborer. True, he wants labor to be completely atomized -- so he is opposed to worker solidarity. That's why he tries to break up unions. But he doesn't try to drive any workers out of the labor pool. He wants an infinite pool of atomized laborers.

The white laborer who wants to exclude blacks from the union, is, to be sure, acting against his long term economic interest. His long term interest is in not allowing the capitalist to atomize labor. No doubt about it. But his short term interest may seem to him to lie with excluding the black other, with whom he refuses to stand in solidarity not necessarily out of pure economic calculation, but out of radicalized consciousness.

But that's the point that economic determinist don't see. That humans are more than the sums of their economic interests. They have all sorts of antagonism that shape consciousness.