“We have deluded ourselves into believing the myth that Capitalism grew out of the Protestant work ethic of hard work and sacrifice. The fact is Capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves and continues to thrive on exploitation of the poor - both black and white, both here and abroad.”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
This video is long and unfortunately uses AI visuals, but if you think of it as an audio essay, it’s excellent.
It’s relevant to the above quote because it details how and where capitalism started - and just as MLK says - how it’s built on slave labor.
(Link starts video at the relevant section, 7:28)
https://youtu.be/gR4eSEetKP0?t=447
AI-enabled capitalism is technology-enabled slavery
https://www.ft.com/content/c1823595-d0f6-49a4-8a10-3d91c92da8f6
https://archive.is/IRqHL
The wealth created by AI is concentrated in the hands of a few petrostate despots, oil oligarchs, & their quisling collaborators.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/may/19/billionaires-ai-complacency-resistance
They are all funding the end of democracy & climate action.
@aburtch
MLK - the American Buddha, ladies and gentleman.
A man who said you do not have to suffer the world's inequities. And you do not have to threaten brutality and tarnish your soul by becoming like your oppressor. There is a middle path of dignity and appealing to people's better nature and ideals that can bend the arch of history towards progress.
And the Trump bigots? They are rallying because they are afraid and they see the arc of eventual defeat on the horizon.
@aburtch I'm sorry to agree up to a point with MLK. His description was undeniably true, when referred to the US, but in the rest of the world the originating environment may have been different. The exploitation of people in Europe may have been dictated more by social status.
The US-centric view of the world may change in the next few decades, when enough dirty money will move from there. Economy is becoming driven by China, even American global politics is decided elsewhere.
@luc0x61 @aburtch Capitalism grew out of the obscene wealth generated by the enslaved Africans in the Americas which created the need for Europeans and the English to create a new economic system to better manage that flow of capital, which dwarfed everything that had come before due to the breadth of its source, and time that it has lasted.
All modern measures of business productivity are rooted in the quantification of the output of the enslaved.
@aburtch Slavery existed before capitalism. Slavery existed before MONEY.
Slavery came into being as soon as one man was down on his back with a spear to his throat, and said "please don't kill me" and the fellow with the spear said "alright then, you serve me now."
And that's about how most of the slaves became slaves.
Capitalism is powered by lending at interest. Slavery was highly profitable, so usury allowed it to expand all over the world fast. In that sense, capitalism powered slavery.
aburtch
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