My favorite treatment of the slave mode of production (he doesn't use this terminology) is Gavin Wright's THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COTTON SOUTH --- His analysis of the so-called "greater productivity" of the slave plantation a la Fogel and Engerman is that the CROP MIX of corn (and other foodstuffs) vs. cotton permitted the largest cotton plantations to devote a higher percentage of their land to cotton than in the smaller farms because small southern farmers had a different incentive structure --- they practiced "safety first" which meant that HAD to grow enough corn (and other foodstuffs) to eat --- a riskier (profit-maximizing??) approach of planting the entire farm in cotton would have meant that one failure to earn enough monetary income from cotton to buy their food and they lose the farm. In other words, sticking to cotton on the large plantations (which were of course also self-sufficient in food) meant greater per acre and per person profitability --- but NOT because of "capitalist" productivity but because of larger percentage of the land in the cash crop, cotton.
Wright also argues that the lack of industrialization in the South was not because the South was "backward" but because it was much more profitable to invest in slaves and land than in machinery --- The elite of southern plantation owners were much richer than the nascent capitalists in the north and midwest --- and anytime they wanted to grow their business, they just could buy more slaves and improve more land ... Small farmers in the parts of the country that did NOT allow slavery were constrained by the size of the family because there was virtually no market (we're talking pre-Civil War) for farm laborers --- thus, the only way northern and midwestern farmers could increase their incomes was to farm more intensively --- which led to all the efforts to improve farm implements --- Patents in implements related to producing wheat, etc. far outstripped inventive activity in the area of cotton production. (and not because southerners were averse to inventive activity --- there were heavy capital investments in sugar grinding machinery!) THought experiment --- would the world glut of cotton production in the late 19th century and subsequent price declines have changed the profitability of cotton growing if slavery had persisted to the 1880s (say an "independent" confederacy) as in Brazil --- we can't know that --- but right before the Civil War, nothinig was more profitable than large scale cotton farming on plantations. [Final point --- in Fogel's last treatment of slavery WITHOUT CONSENT OR CONTRACT he tries to bridge the gaps between his and Engerman's book and the various critics of it .....I think he comes close to admitting that the relationship between people was "non-capitalist" ... but despite his previous membership in the CP he never accepted "Marxian" economics --- and as I read him, he believed that production for sale not use = capitalism!] (Mike Meeropol) > > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6105): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6105 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80286261/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
