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In a message dated 1/18/2010 4:29:13 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: ====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ====================================================================== In a message dated 1/18/2010 1:56:27 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) writes: >> What about Haiti? Nat Turner? No, the reason abolition occurred when it did was because people had struggled and sacrificed for decades for its destruction, not because they ran around like Josephus at Jerusalem in 70 AD shouting "its not possible!" "not now!" "give it up!". I know you're not saying that, but there's this caricature of marxists as eggheaded wannabe practitioners of some grandiose realpolitik with questionable affinities. The view of John Brown and the like was somewhat different.<< Reply Fair enough. People struggle and the struggle of the abolitionists - on the left and right, was very important to ending slavery. Why was slavery not abolished in the South, as the result of 1776 and 1787, is in my estimate not attributable to a lack of struggle, but the character of the political forces shaping the First American Revolution. The political South - upper and later lower, carried the day for decades to come. Unlike Haiti, the slave class in America was not sufficient, within itself to overthrow the political state in America between 1776 and 1861. The paragraph in question condensed to much history without clarification. ML correct some of this mentioning Northern states where slavery was abolished. My point was the events leading up to the Civil War, the destruction of the slave oligarchy and abolition of chattel slavery. The connection between George Washington as paramount leader and Jefferson Davison as slaveholder and President of the CSA, is how and why the Civil War or Second American Revolution, was driven to complete the vision of the First American Revolution. And why Jefferson was cast as utterly reactionary, while Washington was not, although both were amongst the richest slave holder in America. Concretely, colonial American was well a colony and Washington emerges as a revolutionary against and in the context of the War of National Liberation or independence. Jefferson Davis was a counterrevolutionary and reactionary, although he personified Washington at another step on the chains of events and development of America a a material power. Jefferson Davis, or rather the South’s fight was cloaked in all kind of declarations of political democracy and that special Southern blend of individual liberty and state rights. Here cause and vision establishes an interactive chain of events. Successive revolution achieve their cause but the conditions are never quite rip at the time to actually achieve the revolutionary vision - the mobilizing, subjective flesh and blood side of the historical process. The cause of the Revolutionary War was independence. The vision was stated in the Declaration of Independence. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Yet, slavery existed at the moment these words were written. Slavery could not be universally abolished because it would have meant the immediate lose of political and economic power of a class. Since, the vision was not fulfilled, another revolution was inevitable to complete the vision. The cause of the Civil War - for North and South, was preservation of the Union under the political domination of one versus the other. The South formed itself into a political state to subdue the North under its political jurisdiction. The South articulated its vision: The vision of the North, stated by Lincoln was a nation (not a union) conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. The cause of the Second Revolution - preservation of the union, was achieved. The vision was not. The revolution had to be fought out again. The Second edition of the Second Revolution - revolution 2.5, was carried out in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s. Today we face the Third Edition of the American Revolution: Proletarian Revolution. The cause of the Third Edition of the American revolution is the revolution in the productive forces, that has disrupted and polarized all societies organized on the basis of the industrial reproduction of the productive forces. The vision is post Sovietism. The leap to a new mode of production and the destruction of the old classes tied to and expressing the bourgeois production of commodity will take place with the iron logic of a law of nature. How the vision is realized is the stuff of human conflict, struggle, sacrifice and suffering. On another note this is how I approach Soviet history. Cause and vision. The cause of the Soviet Revolution was achieved. The vision was not. The revolution had to be fought out again and again. WL. (http://www.papercut.biz/emailStripper.htm) ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/waistline2%40aol.com ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
