Western expansion, slavery and colonialism are inherently tied to white, patriarchal, capitalist economics that are still in play today. On closer inspection, however, it is difficult to disagree with the fact that capitalism is almost undoubtedly the most violent economic system of recent times, responsible for more deaths and more social disruption than any other.Įven if in much of the industrialized and developed capitalist word there is the veneer of a state of peace, capitalism, as a system, is maintained and upheld through violence, both overtly and in more subtle ways.
What this narrative does, though, is whitewash the crimes of capitalism, which is conveniently exonerated of its sins, while an association is made between violence and any alternative system, so as to continue to position capitalism on higher moral and economic ground.
This has become so accepted as the triumphant system over the evils of communism, that the end of the Cold War was famously (and incorrectly) regarded as ‘The End of History’ by US political scientist and economist Francis Fukuyama. In that period, capitalist economics have become the modus operandi for the Western world and have been (violently) pushed onto the rest of the world.