Conquest, Colonialism, and Capitalist Reproduction

Abstract

This article discusses three primary ideas that effectively tie the history of conquest, colonialism, and imperialist domination to the global structure of capitalist reproduction. I argue that capitalist reproduction on a global scale requires ongoing original accumulation (conquest, slavery, and war) and a global racialized stratification of labor as the foundation of imperialist transfer that together result in economic crisis. These crises in the global economic structure become apparent in the imperialist world but require forms of domination perfected in the colonial world (fascist repression, intensified racism, super-exploitation etc) to recover and stabilize. The argument rests on the work of anti-Apartheid political theorist and revolutionary, Hosea Jaffe, who has demonstrated how the South African Apartheid economic structure is a microcosm of the global world-system.