Often I am criticized by white folks. They tend to dismiss me as a racist, because most things in our system, are based on Racial Hierarchy.
Capitalism and the Profit Motive, are deeply rooted in racism. The Corporation as it exists today is built upon that extractive framework.
US Southerners for the most part were against Slavery. Do not misunderstand, they were, for the most part, racist. However, they also understood they could not compete economically with free labor. So most of the capital from this time went DIRECTLY to the Slaveowner class.
Fast Forward through the Civil War. Now, the Slave Owner Class has an economic issue. They have prospered greatly and want to continue to do so. In order for that to happen, they need to ensure an underclass.
So they reject Charles Sumner's version of the 13th Amendment and create an exception for slavery in prison. Thus the Prison Slave Labor complex is born. Under the guise of States Rights we see Black Codes, Jim Crow, Segregation, and white supremacist coups. When the Union pulled out of the South and abandoned Reconstruction…former confederates took up positions of power in local and state governments, created police programs, joined the banks, housing…etc. Utilizing their positions of power in the south they codified harsher laws subjugating Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.
As it was becoming less and less of a winning strategy to be OVERTLY racist, Nixon and Reagan adopted southern strategies attempting to embrace the religious white south. This is where we see the War on Drugs (suppling the aforementioned prison complex), more redlining, and Milton Friedman.
Friedman is crucial to this transition to Shareholder theory. In which a corporation, has a Fiduciary Duty to provide an ever-increasing return to investors. (The slave owner class) In order to do so, they need an underclass to ensure they can cut wages and benefits. Then they can sell lesser products to that underclass…and the cycle continues.
If an organization is looking to ever increase their Profit Margin in order to increase their EPS (most CEOs today are paid a majority in stock, and their performance pay is based on stock price) then that comes out of product quality, labor, the local environment, the community.
So I say again. Profit is a market inefficiency that is stolen value from labor. It is derived from Slaveholder Capitalism and Economics.