The use of Racism by Imperialism

Vanguard September 2011 p. 6

In recent days we have heard a State minister of Aboriginal Affairs express distress at the level of racism Aboriginal people in Australia experience as part of their daily lives.

At the same time, NAIDOC week, meant to celebrate Aboriginal culture, was taken over by the mainstream press and business journals to celebrate the relations corporate Australia has established with Indigenous communities.

NAB, Chevron, BHP, Rio Tinto, they’re all into it, sporting headlines like, Making Progress with Indigenous Communities (NAB), Supporting Communities, with a photo of a happy healthy Aboriginal child (Chevron) or Woodside’s claim to creative energy against a background of Central Australian Aboriginal art. BHP brags of the job opportunities it is offering Aboriginal young people.

Rio Tinto, not to be left out, talks of ‘partnerships’ with the Aboriginal communities whose land they are exploiting, and have just completed an ‘historic agreement’ with the people of Gove for 42-year right to mine, for which the Yolngu people will receive seven million dollars over the forty-two year period of the contract for social services (services the Government should be providing anyway). No mention of course, of the forty-year struggle it has taken to get even this pittance of reparation for the extraction of finite resources, and no retrospective payment for the last four decades of mining.

What is happening here with all this talk of partnerships and caring for community? Surely Imperialism has not abandoned racism as a means of whipping the working class. The details of these agreements are interesting and can be found online, but what is more interesting is the theory that lies behind all this ‘partnership’ talk.

The Minister’s talk of racism as part of everyday contact on the streets or in workplaces individualises racism and presents it as a contradiction amongst the people. The reality is more complex.

Racism is not an add-on for capitalism. It is integral to capitalist expansion and accumulation. It is embedded in capitalist institutions, particularly the media and the legal systems; it structures historical recording and remembering, and it has an increasingly important role to play in a world market that, whilst offering ‘free space’ for capital to move to where the highest return on invested capital can be realised, also contains a threat to unfettered capital accumulation by offering ‘free space’ for workers to unite across national boundaries.

Constructing identities

‘Scientific Racism’ or biological determinism with its hierarchy of races constructed the identities of Europeans and adversarial others whose lands were becoming colonised. ‘Scientific Racism’ justified the invasion, occupation and exploitation of non-European countries, and the destruction of cultures that were unfamiliar to Europeans, and incorporated values that could undermine the aims and objectives of the occupying power.

Imperialism utilises biological determinism when needed, but it has its own form of racist ideology. Imperialism calls more on cultural difference to generate fear and hatred of the other. Emphasis on racial purity has been replaced with an emphasis on cultural conformity; adherence to the ‘norm’ with the norm being identified by the dominant power.

But some acceptance of difference is also in the interest of Imperial adventures, thus in Australia we give a nod to multi-culturalism and have Aboriginal dancers performing at special functions and Aboriginal art decorating boardrooms. This structuring of ‘normalcy’ and at the same time making sure cultural difference is up front and noticeable, serves a number of functions for Imperialism.

Imperialism, Racism and War

Violence, or the threat of violence (both domestic and global), is at the heart of Imperialism. War is a constant as we have seen over several centuries and into this one, and racism is integral to war as it was to colonial expansion.

Racism justifies death and destruction, the ravaged terrain of the adversary, the crippling of economies and the death of own citizens, and paves the way for the deeper penetration of the dominant and most aggressive capitals into the defeated or captured economies, and the imposition of parliamentary democracy, the system of governance most favoured by capital.

Racism and Class

Another function that racism performs for imperialism is to call into play cultural differences within the working class that can be utilised to undermine working class unity, especially in times of crisis.

A critical function of imperial racism is to disguise class differences within cultures and the commonality and work structured unity, always a threat to capital that exists between cultures especially within the working class.

These aspects of racism are particularly important to capital in a world market where new technologies enable working classes to communicate and act in their own interests across national boundaries.

Using images to disguise intent


The language and images used by capital are merely a ruse to disguise the exploitation of land and peoples here and around the world. The use of placatory imagery has had to be resorted to because of the militancy of Aboriginal communities and their supporters.

For forty years Rio ripped bauxite out of Gove without any consultation with the Yolngu people or adherence to government guidelines. They did exactly as they liked and would have continued to do so without widespread Aboriginal resistance to the rapacious exploitation of land.

The Yolgnu were central to land rights struggles, beginning with the 1963 Bark Petition to federal parliament. Now, mining companies of the same ilk as Rio Tinto, with their imagery of happy Aboriginal children and Aboriginal art backing their advertisements, claim ownership of the progress Aboriginal people have made against racism, cultural destruction and dispossession of lands.

People standing in front of bulldozers to prevent access to land and police present to protect exploiters’ ‘rights’ is not a good look for multinationals wanting to tighten their control over the Australian and global economy.

As workers’ struggles deepen so does imperial racism

Capitalism and Imperialism to a large extent construct the material conditions with which we all have to contend, but they also have to respond to the material conditions they have created, one of which is a militant working class and politicised Indigenous peoples.

The hole capital has dug for itself only deepens, as events around the world indicate. Placatory imagery is a measure of capital’s weakening state.

That Rio Tinto has had to be dragged to the negotiating table to negotiate directly with Indigenous people, as opposed to their preferred option of negotiating a pliant Government, is indicative of the strength of the people.

The struggle against racism will not be led by mining capital. It will be led by workers, as have all other struggles for justice, and human and workers’ rights. But racism will not be extinguished within capitalism. Capital needs racism. Imperialism, even more.