kaylapocalypse:

candidlyautistic:

tariqah:

Feudalism in the past and capitalism now have tinged our outlooks in life and are parts of literally each and every part of society, from social interactions to academia. The fact that we cannot imagine a “human nature” without cruelty and greed is because those that have power have fed us lies that we or someone else would have replicated their cruelty. Don’t fall for the lie.

For historical reference if you want the sociology 101 version of this… Capitalism was more or less constructed to maintain the power base of feudalism. It was the means by which dissent and rebellion was quelled by ceding the perception of power and control to the lower class. Capitalism is just feudalism with the promise that if you “work hard” you can become the ruling elite. When you look it whether or not that actually happens, though? Crossing class lines rarely happens. Statistically, it is never going to happen to you.

Capitalism, like feudalism, requires the presence of a social construct to create the class divide. In feudalism, it was blood line (nobility). In capitalism, it is wealth. It serves the same purpose. The overwhelming majority of wealth in a capitalist society passes along blood lines – it has to in order to maintain stagnation of class mobility.

This deliberate social construct, this class divide, this enforcement of inequity that literally kills people can be solved. It isn’t a wealth problem. It isn’t a resource problem. It is a how do we convince the nobility upper class to give up their wealth problem.

But instead we say these problems are human nature and can never be fixed. Thieves will always steal. Murderers will always kill. Dictators will always rule. But the number of actual pathological thieves, murderers, or dictators is really low. Most of these things that happen are out of perceived need. Most thieves don’t steal because they want to take something, they steal because they perceive that they need to – because they need to eat, or because it is seen as the easiest path to vertical movement in the class structure.

When we say that it is human nature to steal so we will always have this problem, it is a refusal to examine the systemic structure that created the problem in the first place. That is how an institution enacts violence. It creates a system where violence is required for survival, and then discourages examining the reason.

So what does this violence look like in practice? What is a concrete example of this systemic violence?

This is a long answer that has been studied, written about, and summarized by black scholars whose knowledge on the topic far exceeds mine. For one of those summaries read this link, which take you through the deliberate social construction of race in the mid 1600s in Virginia and the subsequent and equally deliberate social construction of whiteness as a means to marginalize others – both a violent act of capitalism that affects us today.

When OP says we are fed lies, this is what it looks like in practice.

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/racecraft-racism-social-origins-reparations/

to read later