Cultural Exploitation Essay

Throughout history, there are numerous examples of cultural oppression leading to economic exploitation. This means that a group of people who are oppressed in society are also being exploited economically because there is no one to stand up for them. An example of this is the slave labor that existed in the United States. People of color were discriminated against in society and did not have the social power or legal rights to stand up for themselves so they were exploited economically in the form of slave labor. Another example of this is the patriarchy which leads to issues such as the wage gap between genders.

In order to remove this cycle of oppression and exploitation, many feminists argue that capitalism must be removed from society because the problems that society faces “result from a system of domination that confers privilege” (Schwalbe 605). In this case, the system is capitalism. Many feminists believe in Schwalbe’s argument that “to be human is to

Policies meant to make the market more competitive have turned into means for the Global North countries to flood the markets with their own subsidized goods (Roy 463). Through her article, Roy argues that development in the presence of capitalism is simply a means of expanding the exploitation that exists in the already “developed” countries. This idea is further supported by the work of LaDuke, who argues that the nature of capitalism denies the equality of all persons (LaDuke 197) because there is a discord between the way capitalists live and the natural law that exists which prevents capitalists from asking the fundamental questions (LaDuke 195-197). However, as LaDuke argues, without these fundamental questions we fail to see the big picture, and without the big picture, we fail to “deal with questions of race, sexual orientation, class, geography, or privilege” (LaDuke