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Few, even among the New England incipient abolitionists didn't "identify" with the Slaves in the south. It was also the era, still, of 'states rights' and loyalty to one's own ex-colony' *respect* for others, to put it bluntly. They were living in the era of Federalism, and nothing, really was going to test that but some tax revolts and the like. There was no social basis for anti-slavery in the north among important sectors of white society, yet, IMO. DW Comment I believe myself to understand your meaning but would not call it “no social basis” because this formulation leans itself many interpretations. Struggle on the part of the masses is not sufficient to achieve the overthrow of a property form. Struggle drives an existing social process through a quantitative boundary. Something else different had to happen in the 1850’s that was very much different from the 1770’s to make the question of slavery in the South a matter of national survival and lead to what was called the bloodiest war in human history. 85 years passed between 1776 and the outbreak of the Civil War. Something else must be injected into or arise in society for a vision to because a history altering material force. Lincoln had to win over the working class of the North to support of the Union cause and vision. A Lincoln could only arise and become effective after the North passed through a certain stage in the evolution of manufacturing and into the industrial revolution proper. Northern capital or a dynamic section of it, had to possess or have within its reach the ability to move from being an appendage to the slave system to its own master. Then this understanding had to be realized by the political representatives of the ruling class. Here is the economic and political impulse driving the irresistible conflict. Within this general impulse the abortionists carried out their agitation. Slave revolts and resistance to slaves was ever present. Bottom line, the slaves could not free themselves. The Northern working class could not overthrow slavery and had no desire. II. The working class of the North never had a particular like or love for the system of slavery, because it was understood that slave labor undercut wage labor. However, this hatred of slavery was expressed as hatred for the slave in the exact same way as today, hatred of the cheap labor of the Mexican immigrant is expressed as hated for the Mexican rather than the system and corporations hiring and deploying this labor. In this sense we are dealing with the exact same dynamic, rather than the “quality” of the intensity of the struggle of the workers. It was only at a certain point in the evolution of the political struggle over the role of government, and whose interest it would serve that slavery as an institution moved from conflict and entered into political antagonism with the North. In my opinion the political South understood its political authority was tenuous after 1840. Our constitutional authority is a representative democracy based on population. Every political leader in the South understood a new nation was being formed in the North with a population boom driven by European immigration. Population growth in the North is also an indicator of growth of productive forces and the intense conflict over settling new territory on the basis of slavery or free labor. Further this long struggle has documents as the shifting of political power from the House of Representatives to the Senate. III. The scope of this conflict of 1861 did not exist in 1776 or 1787. It is in fact the growth and development of the industrial productive forces in the North; the settlement of new territory and conflicting demands on government by North and South that caused breach and antagonism to appear within the ruling class, rather than the ideas that were present during the First American Revolution. The ideas were important as was struggle against slavery, but neither were enough to drive the irresistible conflict. Profound political struggle was underway. For instance the Missouri Compromise of 1820 extended the geographic boundary of slavery in the Territories. The Kansas Nebraska Bill of 1854 wiped out all geographic boundaries to slavery in the new territories and made it a political question of the will of th majority of settlers. Both acts effective nullified The Northwest Ordinance Act. The Supreme Court and Senate was in the pocket of the slave oligarchy. The Supreme Court decision of 1857 made every inch of America, North and South, slave territory that had to yield to slavery and the slave power or what Karl Marx called "areas for the cultivation of slavery." The South had to expand to live as a product of its mode of production, with its endless quest for fresh land and fresh labor. Lets look at what lead to the overthrow of legal segregation because the exact same dynamic is at play. I most certainly do not belittle mass struggle but the wall of segregation was fought for 90 years before it cracked and shattered in the 1960s. Black and white folks did not just start fighting in the 1950’s with a "new quality of struggle." We have fought non-stop since the Emancipation Proclamation. Why was segregation overthrow in the 1960’s rather than in say 1924? “ The quality of the struggle” cannot be an answer, without describing what in the environment has changed to give the struggle its new quality. Why did the Federal government and state side with the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s but turned a blind eye to the bloody red summers of the 1920’s? What changed? In the case of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, a section of the ruling class enters into antagonism with itself and is compelled to call forth the popular masses to defeat its enemy. Something else enters the environment of the struggle as a change agent rather than “the quality of the struggle.” The struggle does not magically change its quality, rather a new quality of something arises or is injected into the existing environment. It is literally the advance of industry that sets the stage for revolution or a qualitative leap in the existing struggle and society are driven to complete the vision of the previous revolution, as it is driven forward by a new mobilizing vision of revolution. That is why slavery could and was overthrown as the result of the Civil War and could not be overthrown country wide in 1776. Whether we like it or not to defeat an economic system or overthrow a form of servitude, changes in the productive forces must take place sufficient to kick the legs from under the existing system. Or you can be conquered by a mode advanced society and be torn from existing social relations. In the case of the Civil Rights Movement it was the tractor, as mechanization of agriculture, which symbolizes the change agent driving society to complete the Second Revolution. Such there were other factors like America’s entry into the war and then the post war boom. There are always other factors but something is more fundamental to a process than "other things." The fight of the blacks, in unison with the striving of sections of all classes, including the ruling class, was critical in overthrowing slavery and Jim Crow. However, the historic fight was never enough to produce a new outcome by itself. In my estimate the swinging of Northern labor to the cause of the Union and its vision is a case study in itself important for today. A week or so ago we talked about the film "Birth of A Nation." Its purpose was to break and defeat the vision of Lincoln amongst the Northern working class. If I had to guess I would say the film that played an important role in correcting the ideology of "Birth of A Nation" was the 1967 "In the Heat of the Night." In our history it was an intersection of class interest, culminating in unity between proletariat and bourgeoisie, that has driven the social movements of the past. Slavery could not be abolished in 1776 because the dominant section of the ruing class opposed its abolition. The slaves forced the issue by rushing Union lines, after the war broke out. First the war had to break out. Today, we are very much on our own, in the main. No section of the ruling class has an interest in the economic stability of any section of the proletariat. In the past a section of the ruling class had a material interest in the overthrow of slavery; industrial unionism as stability between labor and capital, civil rights, women right and gay rights. The sectarian battles within the political class, organized on the North/South axis does provide us openings, but this is not a split. WL. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
