Capitalism & Slavery

i’ve been overwhelmed and dejected with the state of my personal platform.

for numbers i have about 500 people subscribed to this lil list of mine, half of which open the emails that I send. all of which i’m thankful, all of which are subscribed for different reasons. since 2019 some of ya’ll have bought things from me, filled out a form at one of my workshops to be added, visited my website and added yourselves manually. i think the realms of emails are so bleak. the internet itself in general. humans are creatures of habits. there have been many applications that have pooled a majority of internet users. the ones i have been active in: facebook, instagram, twitter, fetlife, tik tok, niteflirt and later rednote, upscroll, and bluesky.

these past few years as an independent contractor for larger businesses and an entrepreneur of my own brand of goods and services have privy’d me to the coercion of capitalism. how individual entrepreneurship is punished, how large conglomerate companies are protected by the state, in their conquest to steal life force from the workers that make CEO’s billionaires, which to me on an energetic level is slavery. If everyone could be a business owner the system would cease to exist. the myth that anyone can do it is just that. a myth. an illusion to keep people distracted/docile to the fact that the nature of this economy is extremely deliberate in who makes money, and how. So let’s do it….let’s talk about Slavery.

Capitalism: is defined as an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit.

Slavery: is a system where individuals are owned, controlled, and forced to work for others without compensation, often under threat of violence.

I would argue the two are so deeply intertwined at their core that to distinguish between them would be like trying to un-blend a smoothie. Slavery as it pertains to modern day Capitalism was so pervasive especially in the US specifically because of capitalistic aspirations. Already wealthy landowning families, ship owning families, ship captains, government officials ie., presidents, wanting to expand their wealth more so than the average whyte Amerikkkan colonizer, further creating a larger class divide amongst the whyts of the Globally dominant elite: Britain, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands and Denmark.

Eric Williams, former Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago wrote is his 1944 thesis titled, Capitalism and Slavery, that

“Capitalism as an economic modality quickly replaced Slavery once European elites accumulated the vast surplus capital from slavery that they needed in order to bankroll their industrial revolution.”

This analysis ties the birth of Capitalism to the “death” of slavery that unfortunately almost everywhere you google “does slavery exist _____?” the answer is a resounding yes which leads to my question, that if slavery was required for the creation of a system, that also needs slavery in order to exist, why do we call it Capitalism?

As a descendant of African victims of chattel slavery and Black Natives in the Mississippi Delta Basin region, I have an aversion to worship at the temple of capitalism and drink of the cup of the “self-made millionaire”, this idea that individuals can rise themselves up from their bootstraps somehow being able to separate themselves from the harm even of being able to be paid in US dollars, the most dominant currency in the world. The fact that all of the presidents featured, except for Abraham, were slaveowners illustrates this core thought to me. That on an energetic level invoking these men every time we pay for our basic resources feels like some kind of twisted colonial ancestral veneration. *insert P. Diddy’s “It’s All About the Benjamins”*

The fact that I have to look at the faces of men who would own me disgusts me, and some self help financial abundance enthusiasts might say this is the core of my financial instability, but I would argue that many descendants of chattel slavery victims have developed a particular cognitive dissonance in relation to these emotions and where they come from. In my opinion for any demographic to be successful within Capitalism you have to continue feeding the cycle of slavery either intentionally or unintentionally through cognitive dissonance.

There is no comprehensive data analyses that connects the richest people in the world to slavery. But as a spiritual scientist I know this to be true. To make a statement like “the majority of the worlds wealthiest people have ties to if not directly then indirectly to pre- and modern day slavery” feels so accurate deep in my spirit, it does not feel like a lie in my body as i write this. At a brief glance, what are the facts?

JPMorgan Chase: Two of it’s predecessor banks, Citizens’ Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana, accepted enslaves people as collateral for loans.
Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citibank: The predecessor institutions of these banks also financed enslavers and benefited from the slave trade economy.
Lloyd's of London, Aetna, and New York Life: These insurance companies built early fortunes by insuring slave ships and the "lives" of the enslaved people as property.

Following independence, Haiti was punishably forced to pay a massive indemnity to the colony of France. When Haiti could not pay, French banks—and later American banks—took over.
From 1915-1934 the US occupied Haiti. In 1914, the National City Bank of New York (now Citibank) coerced the transfer of Haiti’s gold reserves to New York. By 1922, the National City Bank of New York gained total control over the Banque Nationale de la République d'Haïti, managing the country's finances and ensuring debt repayment to US investors.

The estimated total cost of the debt was 560 Million dollars, which is said to have cost the country over 21 billion in economic growth.

A 2023 Reuters investigation found:

“at least 100 members of the 535 117th U.S. Congress were direct descendants of ancestors who enslaved Black people. A subsequent analysis found these descendants had a significantly higher median net worth than those without such ancestral ties, demonstrating the enduring economic legacy of slavery.”

Forced Slave Labor accounted for 60% of the US kkkolony’s wealth in 1860. After the amendment of Slavery, rich plantation owners bounced back by investing in sharecropping and the Prison Industrial Complex which was in support of the clause in the 13th Amendment as it “abolished slavery and involuntary servitude throughout the United States, *except as punishment for a crime”

This gave birth to the rise of “convict leasing” which allowed for prisons to loan out incarcerated people to a plethora of businesses. A practice that is still alive and thriving today with over 4,000 of your favorite fast food restaurants, telephone services, and grocery store chains capitalizing on paying people below $3 an hour or not at all.

One could easily take the time to go down the list of everyone involved who profited/profits on this type of exploitation and see how they solidified their wealth in this system and continue to expand their economic dominance that would support my previous statement that a majority of the wealth amassed in this modern economy leads back to this vile system.

I did not expect to go into this topic after not writing to you for a minute. I think sitting down to write activated this bubbling rage that I have in regards to the levels of atrocities the US has and continues to do towards my people. To realize not only the scope of harm, but the scope of profit that the subjugation of my ancestors had on the entire global market is enough to madden me for an entire lifetime. Prior to 1865 90% of the worlds cotton was exported from the US and accounted for roughly 60% of the total exports.

From sunrise to sunset my ancestors were forced to work. From sunrise to sunset for 246 years. The amount of money that each enslaved person was valued at was about $1,000 so about 4 Billion which inflated is estimated to be 42 Trillion, being the most profitable “commodity” of the US. The total profit calculations during the 246 years of capitalizing off enslavement is nearly impossible. By 1836 nearly half of the kkkountry’s economy was being held together by the cotton industry. Not to mention all of the buildings, roads, the White House that was built by our hands.

I think that’s just it. Knowing all of this and feeling like I can’t do anything about it. That people have just let go their fight, that survival is more necessary than retribution, justice, burning down this kkkolony for continuing to play in our faces. I wish things were different. I wish individual wyt people who profited/continue to profit from slavery were more radical financially. I wish more of my people wanted freedom. I wish there were no such thing as a Black soldier, as a Black prisoner, as a Black cop, in a world with Reparations I truly don’t believe they would exist. In a world of Reparations the US war machine wouldn’t have fuel, in a world of Reparations whyt people move back to their motherlands, in a world of Reparations Black nations thrive and the diaspora is poppin. In a world of Reparations there is no climate crisis. In a world of Reparations the list goes on, but this is the world I live in. One without Reparations, where crusty crackas continue to exist on the roads my ancestors built with the wealth that allow them to pay other bitches, to fund other countries, to financially fuel genocide, to invest in war. I hate it. I want to see it all burn.

- Jordan

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