By Musa T. Bey

I. The Ghetto as the Architecture of Capitalism and Empire

The world is a ghetto. And not just the crumbling, abandoned neighborhoods we call ghettos in the heart of cities, but the entire planet. From the inner-city projects of North Philadelphia to the devastated landscapes of the Global South, from the block in Brooklyn to the village in Haiti, the ghetto is not a place—it is a system. It is the very structure of capitalism itself, built to control, to isolate, and to exploit.

I speak as a Black man—born in the belly of the beast, raised in the rubble of empire, and forged in the fire of resistance. I know the ghetto. I have lived in its prisons, its ghettos, its borders. I’ve felt the chokehold of racism, of systemic violence, of being marked as disposable. And yet, the ghetto is where we learn to survive. It is where we learn that resistance is our birthright.

Capitalism was never meant to be inclusive. It was meant to be exclusive—exclusive to the powerful, to the rich, to the colonizers. It divides and stratifies. It makes the poor work, sweat, and bleed so that the rich can profit off their labor. Capitalism created the ghettos of the world—shantytowns in the Global South, over-policed neighborhoods in the U.S., and dispossessed Black and Brown communities across the globe.

But let me be clear: the ghetto is not a mistake; it is the plan.

The ghetto is a product of empire, of colonization. The same empire that brought Black people across the Middle Passage and cast us into forced labor also created the ghettos where Black people, Indigenous people, and Brown people are trapped. The ghetto is not just the inner city. It is the entire global system of racial capitalism. It is the perpetual force that drives wealth extraction from the Global South to the Global North. It is the theft of land, resources, and labor.

II. The Global Ghetto: The Exploitation of Blackness and Brown Bodies

As a Black man, I am constantly reminded that my very existence is marked by capitalism’s need for exploitation. To the capitalist, I am valuable only as long as my labor is cheap and my life is disposable. Whether I am a poor man on the streets of Philly, a migrant worker in the deserts of the Middle East, or a child laborer in Africa working in mines for cobalt, I am valued for my productivity and not my humanity.

The global ghetto isn’t just about poverty—it’s about the racialized division of the world. The Black and Brown bodies across the planet are treated as expendable, as tools for the reproduction of wealth for the elite few. In the U.S., they call it systemic racism. In Palestine, it’s called settler colonialism. In Africa, it’s called neocolonialism. But at its core, this is all the same thing: the ghettoization of Black and Brown bodies in the service of global capital.

These bodies are farmed for cheap labor, trafficked for resources, and discarded once they are no longer useful. The ghetto is the space where the human cost of empire is hidden from view, where the suffering of the many is turned into profit for the few. The police in our streets, the drones in the skies, the military-industrial complex—all serve to protect the ghetto and ensure that capital continues to extract from our communities without resistance.

III. The State as the Enforcer of Ghettoization

The police, the military, the state—they are the agents of control. Their job is simple: to maintain the ghetto. They don’t protect the poor; they patrol the poor. They don’t provide for the marginalized; they punish the marginalized. They enforce the boundaries that capitalism has drawn.

In the U.S., the police have historically been the frontline soldiers of ghettoization. From slave patrols to modern-day police forces, their role has always been to keep Black and Brown bodies in their place—to control, to repress, to eliminate any possibility of rebellion. The prison-industrial complex, built upon this legacy, serves to imprison not just bodies, but hope itself. It is a system designed to contain the revolutionary potential of the oppressed.

But we cannot allow the state to define us. We cannot allow the police and the military to be the architects of our lives. We must disarm the state, not just in terms of their weapons, but in terms of their control over our communities. The police are not protectors; they are occupiers. And in every ghetto across the world, the fight against them is the fight for our freedom.

IV. Psychological Warfare: The Mental Prison of Capitalism

The ghetto is not just a physical space; it is a mental prison. Capitalism does not just confine our bodies—it confines our minds. The lie that we are inferior, the lie that we are criminal, the lie that we are disposable—these are the tools that capitalism uses to keep us in place.

The mind is the ultimate battlefield, and in the ghetto, we are told from birth that our lives don’t matter, that we are not worthy of dignity, respect, or justice. It is a psychological war—a war designed to make us believe that we have no right to resist, no right to dream of something better, no right to demand liberation.

But I tell you this: We are not inferior. We are not disposable. We are not criminals. We are the future.

The psychological chains that capitalism has placed upon us can only be broken through revolutionary consciousness. We must reject the narrative that we are broken, that we are worthless. Instead, we must see ourselves for who we truly are: a people with a long legacy of resistance, a people who have always fought back against the forces that seek to destroy us.

V. Culture and Resistance: The Ghetto as a Site of Creation

In the ghetto, they try to tell us that we are nothing—that our lives, our culture, our histories, are worth nothing. But the ghetto is also the birthplace of revolutionary culture. It is where we invent new languages, new music, new ways of organizing, new ways of being. It is where we create in the face of destruction.

Hip-hop came from the ghetto. The Black Panther Party came from the ghetto. The Zapatistas came from the ghetto. Revolutionary art, revolutionary politics, revolutionary love—all of these things were born in the ghetto, not as a reaction to oppression, but as a rejection of it. We did not accept our fate. We created a new path, one forged in resistance, solidarity, and the vision of a world that belongs to the people, not the capitalists.

We must reclaim our culture as a tool of resistance. We must use our music, our poetry, our history, and our communities to fight back. The revolution will not be televised—but it will be sung, it will be written, it will be danced, and it will be lived in the streets, in the schools, in the homes, and in the ghettos.

VI. Building a New World: The Path Beyond the Ghetto

The ghetto is not our final destination—it is merely the place from which we rise. The struggle against capitalism, against colonialism, against the forces that created this global ghetto, is the struggle for a new world. A world where we are not seen as disposable, where our labor is not exploited, where our cultures are not destroyed, and where our lives are valued.

But this new world cannot be built with the tools of the oppressor. We cannot dismantle capitalism with more capitalism. We must build dual power—alternative systems of organization that challenge the very foundations of empire. This means:

• Building community-controlled institutions—from schools to food systems to health clinics to police abolition.

• Creating international solidarity—uniting the oppressed across the world to bring down imperialism and its structures of control.

• Revolutionizing the way we live, work, and relate to one another—based on equality, cooperation, and mutual respect, not profit.

This new world won’t come easily. It won’t come without struggle. But we must remember that we are the many, and the many are always stronger than the few.

VII. Conclusion: The Fire That Will Burn Down the Ghetto

The world is a ghetto. But it will not stay that way.

From the Black Panther Party to the Zapatistas, from the Nile to the Rio Grande, from the ghettos of Chicago to the streets of Paris—we are rising. We are fighting back. And we will win.

The forces of empire and capital have tried to bury us, to break our spirit, to turn us into nothing more than commodities to be bought and sold. But the fire of resistance burns in our blood. The ancestors who fought in the cotton fields, on the frontlines of the Civil Rights Movement, and in the jungles of Latin America have passed on their struggle to us. We are the children of revolution, and we are ready to rise again.

But this fight requires more than just words—it requires action. It is time to stand up and organize. It is time to mobilize. It is time to break the chains that bind us and reclaim what was always ours—our dignity, our power, our land, our future.

The call to action is clear:

1. Organize in your community—whether through mutual aid networks, community defense groups, or revolutionary political organizations. Build the structures that can sustain us and defend us, that can protect us from the violence of the state and show us the way to liberation.

2. Abolish the police and the prison system—they were never here to protect us. They were here to control us. We must fight for systems of justice rooted in community accountability, care, and solidarity, not punishment.

3. Fight for economic justice—dismantle the structures of racial capitalism that exploit our labor and strip our communities of resources. Fight for a world of wealth redistribution, land reclamation, and economic systems built on the principle of people over profit.

4. Engage in international solidarity—the struggle for liberation does not stop at national borders. Whether in the ghettos of Detroit or the mines of Congo, from Palestine to South Africa, our struggles are one. We must build bridges across oceans, unite the oppressed of the world, and make our revolution a global one.

5. Educate and raise consciousness—share revolutionary ideas, literature, and history. Empower others to understand the systems of oppression that govern their lives and teach them the tools of resistance. Our liberation will not come from those in power, but from the knowledge and strength we build together.

The revolution will not be televised—but it will be felt. In every protest, in every strike, in every act of defiance, we are laying the foundation for a new world. The system we fight against is dying, but its death will not be peaceful. It will take our collective will, our anger, our hope, and our love to bring it down.

It’s time to get organized. It’s time to take action. The time is now.

The fire of revolution is lit. We will fan the flames until it burns the shackles of capitalism, racism, and colonialism to the ground