What gave rise to capitalism is a crime, and this has also been its constant: conquest, colonization, subjugation, dispossession, extermination and ecocide. The annihilation and enslavement of the populations of America and Africa to facilitate the process of capital accumulation are proof of this. It is a system that is born dripping blood, the classics told us, and perfects its methods, the Zapatistas warn us.
Capitalism has crime as its origin and constant, but there are periods in history in which it manifests itself with its clearest face, without make-up: barbarism. The reason for this is still under debate, there are those who argue that it is because the system is in crisis and resorts to violence to regain its “stability,” also those who point out that the material conditions for the reproduction of the system are in their limit phase and that the ruling classes make war to conquer what is left. Another reading is that we are facing an inter-imperialist dispute for hegemony and leadership of the system. Whether due to the crisis of the system, to the exhaustion of the material conditions or to inter-imperialist disputes, what is certain is that today the system shows itself to us in all its barbarism.
The ruling classes that benefit from the capitalist system, with their legal and criminal corporations, States and other instruments of intervention at their service, have sought to impose themselves by presenting themselves in different masks according to ideological and media trends. Sometimes they use the most urgent problems facing society in order to design their masks or they appropriate ideas that have emerged as criticisms and empty them of all their emancipatory content. Civilization, progress, and development are some of them, but we also identify human rights, democracy or sustainability. But these masks cannot forever hide what really sustains the system: exploitation and domination, colonization and conquest, murder and subjugation of peoples and other civilizations, disappearance of people, extinction of species and destruction of ecosystems. In some cases they even justify the destruction of peoples, territories and ecosystems for the benefit of other social sectors: “we need this megaproject to guarantee pensions”, they say; “mining helps us to obtain scholarships,” they insist. In this way, they seek to justify that certain territories and their populations can be sacrificed for the benefit of other populations. It is almost always the native peoples who must be sacrificed to sustain national welfare. Internal colonies, they used to be called; sacrifice zones, they call them today. These discourses, moreover, seek to confront sectors of the working people: “how they oppose development,” “you do not want Mexico to progress,” they discredit those who criticize. Deep down, we all know that the real beneficiaries are the ruling classes.
The process of global colonization of capital, of the shaping of a world-economy, has also implied the construction or the attempt to erect a world-ecology. One connected to guarantee the free transit of goods and ruling classes, but where more and more borders are erected for impoverished people. A world with more and more ports, airports, highways, trains, gas pipelines, aqueducts, wind farms and other infrastructure and communication projects that help to facilitate the dispossession, the extraction of raw materials, minerals, agribusiness. A world connected so that the ruling classes -and also from time to time the middle classes- can go to large resorts with their pyramids, full of hotels, bars, nightclubs and everything necessary for the amusement and relaxation of “the bosses” and those who aspire to be like them –resort capitalism, they call it–.
Capitalism as a system of accumulation of power and wealth, of domination and exploitation, is built in and on nature. It shapes perspectives, ways of thinking, common senses, emotions and desires. It imposes as maxims to follow ideas of development, growth, success, competition and efficiency. As a system, it reinforces the idea that society and nature are separate, that nature is part of the world of the “wild”, that they are resources, a “thing” that can be controlled and managed to achieve certain ends. As a system, capitalism must continually expand to guarantee “economic growth”: to break down borders, to colonize territories that were previously considered unproductive, to colonize bodies, subjectivities, other planets and even the future. Under these premises, in capitalism nature was seen as infinite and inexhaustible in the spirit of maximizing profit.
Ecocide and extermination are the crimes of capitalism that call us to act today. Stopping the genocide against the Palestinian people and supporting those defending the territories around the world can be a good start.
Excerpt from the presentation by Raúl Romero at the first session of the International Encounters of Resistances and Rebellions on December 28th, 2024.
Published in La Jornada on December 30th, 2024.
Translation by Schools for Chiapas.