The Importance of Extra-Economic Identities in the Creation and Maintenance of the Modern Capitalist System
Introducing Ellen Meiksins Wood’s Arguments:
This essay challenges some of the arguments that were made in “Capitalism and Human Emancipation,” a lecture Ellen Meiksins Wood delivered in 1987 to the London School of Economics. Political Marxist and historian, Ellen Meiksins Wood (1942–2016), is known on the New Left for her explanation of the origins of modern capitalism. She defined it as the first economic system that locates the market at its center; the first era in which the markets “actually regulate production and exchange, and hence generate the social division of labour”.
At the beginning of the lecture, Meiksins Wood introduces the term, “extra-economic goods,” which refers to the goals socialists are committed to that exist beyond the realm of economics. These include, “gender emancipation, racial equality, peace, ecological health, democratic citizenship” and so on (Meiksins Wood 4). By placing these factors outside of the modern capitalist system, Meiksins Wood argues that capitalism is “indifferent to the social identities of the people it exploits” (5). Unlike earlier modes of production, which directly involved the home economy or an unpaid labour force, the “extraction of surplus value from wage workers” is the result of an agreement between formally free and equal individuals, detached from their extra-economic differences. She goes as far as to identify capitalism’s “positive tendency” to disregard such differences; its aim is to assimilate workers into the labour market (5).
However, capitalism also recognizes and makes use of extra-economic differences, such as race and gender. They “disguise structural realities” of the system and further divide the working class (6). Because extra-economic goods are indifferent to capitalism, Meiksins Wood claims that the achievement of gender and race struggles could not eradicate class oppression. Capitalism could evolve in such a way that issues of gender and racial inequality could be fixed. Capitalism may itself supply socialist’s need to focus on struggles of the economic system to abolish the structure, thus leading to universal emancipation. It thus follows that although very important to the socialist agenda, the struggle of gender and racial inequality could not pave the way for universal emancipation (20).
Problem:
While Meiksins Wood does not deny the fact that extra-economic factors like race and gender can add to the oppressions of the class system, she claims that the modern capitalist system was created and exists completely separate from them. In doing so, she draws a clear line between modern capitalism and the economic organizations that preceded it, which did make use of extra-economic factors. I locate the problem in this separation; in the fact that Meiksins Wood assumes that the capitalist system as we know it has no ties to what came before it. This problem trickles down to the way she classifies gender and racial inequalities as being “extra-economic.” In doing so, she fails to acknowledge how implicated these oppressions are in the overall construction and maintenance of the class system. I consider this a problem in Meiksins Wood’s text because it does not accurately capture the ways in which extra economic identities are not just exacerbated by, but are intertwined with the class system. In her line of thinking, it follows that struggles for emancipation derived from gender or racial oppression have no power to actually lead to universal emancipation, which I argue is untrue. Ultimately, Meiksins Wood fails to acknowledge the history of labour divisions in the development of modern capitalism as well as the current statistics proving that people of colour, women, and women of colour continue to be disproportionately represented in the working class. Considering the examples that follow, it seems clear that capitalism was in fact created by extra-economic oppressions.
Justifying the Problem:
Gender Inequality: The First Division of Labour:
In an attempt to demonstrate how modern capitalism is detached from extra-economic identities, Meiksins Wood delves into both the history of slavery and the history of the household economy to show that while they were once relevant to economic organization, capitalism as we know it does not function according to these factors.
By harking back to the household economy, Meiksins Wood demonstrates how gender inequality was baked into the system. The peasant household was itself the basic unit of production, thus the basic unit of exploitation. Within this dynamic, “the division of labour within the peasant family, then, [was] deeply and inevitably linked to the demands placed upon the household unit and by its role in the process of exploitation” (15). It was subjected to male dominance due to “physical strength, or the reproductive functions that occupy a woman’s time” (16). Here, Meiksins Wood shows how gender differences formed the base of this system and inequalities were unavoidable due to gender divisions in domestic and public life. She goes on to argue that the same is untrue of the modern capitalist system. In contrast, Meiksins Wood argues that capitalism has allowed women to escape certain socioeconomic and political oppressions within the modern capitalist system simply because it devalues extra-economic identities (14). In this way, Meiksins Wood states that although capitalism made use of gender inequalities, it has also created fertile ground for women emancipation as the system itself does not exist on the premise of oppressing her because she is a woman (15).
Meiksins Wood fails to consider that gender division is itself a division of labour, and should been be considered the very first division of labour, as is explained in The Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone. In the first chapter, Firestone points to biological evidence that suggests that the first class distinction is that of man and woman, as the two were created differently, not equal. It is the “reproductive functions of these differences’’ that have led to the development of the class system (Firestone ch 1). For Firestone, “the seizure of control of reproduction” is the way that the woman (or in her words, the “underclass”) could take ownership of her body to combat gender inequalities. This is now made possible because of birth control. She is ultimately arguing that the elimination of the distinction between sexes is the end goal of the feminist movement; it is a sexual revolution that we need in order to eradicate all class systems. Although perhaps a bit extreme in her line of thinking, Firestone highlights that the capitalist system is itself dependent on this division between the sexes. Rather than relegating this dynamic to the pre-capitalist society, she demonstrates how women’s subordination to men threads through our current system. Her argument thus disproves Meiksins Wood when she argues that capitalism did not create gender inequality, or that capitalist can function without gender inequality.
Racial Inequality: A Product of Capitalism:
Meiksins Wood takes a closer look at the history of slavery, an institution that has always been part of civilization. She explains that there had never been the need to justify slavery in previous pre-capitalist systems because they fundamentally did not exist on the pretence of equality, like the present one does (Meiksins Wood 7). Meiksins Wood acknowledges racial oppression as both relevant and present in the capitalist system and provides a justification for slavery. She does not deny the fact that the most recent iteration of slavery (and the legacy it left) accompanied the expansion of capitalism (6). Racial oppression is a product of the 17th and 18th centuries, and was used as a “pseudo-scientific reinforcement of biological theories of race, and continued to serve as an ideological support for colonial oppression even after the abolition of slavery” ( 7). Because capitalism structurally rejected the “unfreedom” and fundamental inequality, there was an ideological need for a justification of natural inferiority. It classified slaves as non-persons (7–8). By placing them outside of the system altogether, this made subordination based on race a possible tool of oppression.
This explanation suggests that in order for the act of slavery to fit into the capitalist system, the terms just had to be changed. This justification for slavery does not actually discount the fact that modern capitalism would not have existed without it. In fact, racism can even be considered a product of capitalism given when such ideas were developed and for what reasons they systematically implemented.
The group of scholars who contributed to Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (2016) edited by Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, address the centrality of slavery in the development of American capitalism. Rather than placing the institution of slavery outside the modern capitalist system as Meiksins Wood puts forward, this book identifies the peculiar institution as “the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market.” Rather than considering the plantation and the factory as separate entities, Beckert and Rockman insist that they be discussed together. They state that “the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist (an older debate) but rather the impossibility of understanding the nation’s spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and centre” (Beckert and Rockman 27). Considering the importance of slavery as a driving economic force, the arguments of this book disprove Meiksins Wood’s justification of slavery. Because the American economy was, in large, based on the institution of slavery, it is simply incorrect to claim that racism exists from without capitalism.
Historical Justification: The Slave Revolt:
Now that we have looked at a few examples which destabilize Meiksins Wood’s claim that modern capitalism exists separate from extra-economic identities, let us turn to her argument which suggests that extra economic struggles, like race and gender struggles, cannot eradicate the class system. For Meiksins Wood, they can actually be worked on and achieved within the bounds of capitalism and that class oppression would continue to exist (Meiksins Wood 5–6). I argue, however, that history has proven otherwise.
In “Of the Ruling of Men” (1920), W.E.B Dubois refers to the slave revolt in the United States as an act of self emancipation: “it was at this time that the lowest labourers, who worked the hardest, got least and suffered worst, began to mutter and rebel, and and among these were the American Negroes…In truth the Negro revolted by armed rebellion, by sullen refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and Canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many civilian helpers in the civil war” (Dubois 6). Rather than being an act of benevolence of the South, Dubois draws our attention to the fact that the enslaved people themselves used their own agency to emancipate themselves. How could history account for this act of freedom if enslaved people were not even considered people (but rather three fifths of a person to be exact)?
The slave revolt serves as an instance in which the capitalist system was threatened as it led to the uprooting of the class system in the South which led to economic problems. Although the history of Black people in America is turbulent, freedoms and laws were nonetheless granted as a result of abolition. This example disproves, first, the claim that racism exists as a separate entity from capitalism and, second, the fact that extra economic movements could not lead to changes in the capitalist system.
From this point forward, the system would consistently change its measures in order to subordinate African Americans and maintain a wage gap. In his article, “Why the Racial Wealth Gap Persists, More than 150 years after emancipation” Calvin Schermerhorn states that “for every gain black Americans made, people in power created new bundles of discrimination, largely hidden from sight, that thwarted, again and again, the economic promise of emancipation.” Slavery was replaced by legal enslavement such as convict leasing, sharecropping, disenfranchisement and legal discrimination. It is interesting to consider that 1% of America’s wealth belonged to African Americans in 1863 and only 1.5% of it belongs to them now (Schermerhorn). Racial discrimination, which was once a justification for slavery, continues to live on through legal measures which aim to keep people of colour oppressed within the economic system. From this, it is clear that Meiksins Woods is incorrect in stating that racial inequality exists separate from capitalism. In addition, the fact that labelling racism an ‘extra-economic identity’ is false: capitalism is itself the oppressor of Black America.
A Closer Look at The Current Situation:
As we have seen, Meiksins Wood’s definition of capitalism separates the system completely from extra-economic oppression and is even considered to be indifferent to it. How does it make sense to claim that capitalism is both indifferent to but also makes use of these oppressions? How can this explain the disproportionate statistics of women, people of colour and especially women of colour, who make up an overwhelming proportion of the working class and continue to suffer injustices in the workforce?
It seems contradictory to claim that capitalism both assumes all people to be formally equal and works against extra economic differences, yet also has the power to make use of them for the purposes of further dividing the working class. Let us consider some recent statistics that demonstrate how gender and racial oppression are present in the capitalist system and continue to exacerbate inequalities in the workforce. In 2019, women made up 47% of the American labour force. Of that 47%, 20.3% were women of colour. Of the total percentage of women in the workforce, only 40% of working women held managerial positions. Of that group, Asian women represented 2%, Latina women 4.3% and Black women made up 4%.
As the chart suggests, the percentages of women of colour get smaller and smaller going up the corporate ladder. Women of colour are disproportionately represented in low wage positions and as essential workers. Approximately 60% of housekeepers, 50% of nursing assistants and 46% of personal care helpers are women of colour, and among all employed women of colour, the overwhelming percentage work as primary and secondary school teachers, nurses, and cashiers. In addition, women of colour experience a larger wage gap than white women, as is indicated in the graph below. Where the white woman in America earned 79 cents on the white man’s dollar in 2018, the black woman was only earring 62 cents. It is important to acknowledge these statistics, which serve as proof that the labour force is not“structural[ly] [indifferent] to the social identities of the people it exploits” as Meiksins Wood suggests (Meiksins Wood 20).
Another factor to consider the way motherhood has an impact on the woman’s position in the workforce. Meiksins Wood addresses motherhood as a factor that would have affected the woman’s position in the pre-capitalist economic system, however she does not acknowledge its relevance within the modern capitalist system. She argues that the cost of maternity leave or day-care centres does not differ from the costs of old age pensions or employment insurance in the eyes of the capitalist system (Meiksins Wood 8). When we consider the statistics, however, it is clear that maternity or parental leave disproportionately disadvantages women, especially in places like the United States where paid maternity leave is oftentimes not even available, nor is it protected by federal laws. Maternity leave thus does not concern or affect women and men equally, and serves as a factor that alludes to inherent gender inequalities within the capitalist system. This contradicts Meiksin Wood’s claim that capitalism has a positive tendency to undermine extra-economic differences as it clearly exacerbates such differences.
Solution: Bridge the Gap
By bringing awareness to the above examples, I attempt to illustrate why it is incorrect to claim that the modern capitalist system is “indifferent to the extra economic identities of the people it exploits” (Meiksins Wood 5). Instead, the examples indicate that it is a product of extra economic identities, thus challenging the nature of the term ‘extra-economic’. I demonstrate that it is untrue to claim that modern capitalism exists completely separate from what came before it, and show that it is contradictory to claim that capitalism both abstracts the worker from their extra economic identities and further oppresses the worker on the basis of these extra economic identities. I also show how it is untrue to claim that extra-economic revolts have made no impact on the capitalist system. In what follows, I suggest a solution to the problems I have uncovered.
To reiterate, the overarching problem is that Meiksins Wood fails to recognize that extra-economic identities did in fact create and continue to sustain the capitalist system. Because much of the problem seems to stem from the separation she creates between pre-capitalism and capitalism, I argue that the issue could be fixed simply by recognizing the trends that unite the two. Take gender oppression. As explained earlier, Meiksins Wood claims that while systemic gender oppression was very present in the pre-capitalist labour divisions, this is not the case in the modern system. By doing this, she fails to acknowledge that the gender divide is a labour division in and of itself, which is thus inherent in the development and maintenance of the modern class system. By acknowledging the linkages between the systems, her text could acknowledge this initial class divide of the sexes, as a predecessor of the current modern capitalist system, and lend to the fact that capitalism does not actually regard all workers as equal. It would also account for continued legacies of oppression and subordination that are still felt by women in the working class, and could also account for the fact that things like maternity leave and child care are not equal to things like employment insurance and pensions, but do come from legacies of women’s biological oppression.
The same sort of thing could be said about the racial inequality argument. As discussed, Meiksins Wood argues that slavery was not a product of racism, but rather racism because a pseudoscientific justification for slavery, which allowed it to fit into the capitalist mandate of equality and freedom, as it diminished the black slave to a fraction of a person, pushing them outside of the realm of capitalism. By acknowledging slavery’s roots, it becomes obvious that this retroactive reclassification of the slave as a non-person does not justly discount the presence of unpaid, forced labour in the capitalist system. It reveals that capitalism is thus not as equal and free as Meiksins Wood describes it. Linking pre-capitalist to capitalist systems would require only a slight change in the understanding of the text, however it makes a huge difference in the way divisions of labour are recognized in the creation and maintenance of modern capitalism. Essentially, it would acknowledge the fact that the capitalist system is not separate from but in fact directly intertwined with racism and sexism, fixing this ideological error, which the examples above have disproved. From there, race and gender could be removed from the ‘extra-economic’ category and instead be addressed as factors directly tied to the economic system.
It is interesting to acknowledge that Meiksins Wood claims that “while capitalism cannot guarantee emancipation, from, say, gender or racial oppression neither can the achievement of these emancipations guarantee the eradication of capitalism” (20). In other words, the elimination of the class system could not presume the “destruction of historical and cultural patterns of women’s oppression or racism” (20). Since the socialist agenda aims to combat all of these issues, it would make sense for the class struggle to recognize the other struggles. By taking them out of the extra-economic category, such struggles could be more implicated in the movement towards universal emancipation. Ultimately, this solution would recognize that the working class is overwhelmingly made up of people who are oppressed by extra-economic factors, and that the struggle for the eradication of the class system requires the revolt against these other oppressions in the process — oppressions that are directly implicated in the fabrics of the modern capitalist system.
Works Cited:
Meiksins-Wood, “Capitalism and Human Emancipation” (1987), Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (1970), Dubois, “Of the Ruling of Men” in Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920), Beckert and Rockman, Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development (2016).
