Hi All ---- if we start with Marxist concepts then we have to ask ourselves, is chattel slavery American style CAPITALIST (there seems to be a lot of folks who [implicitly if not explicitly] believe this) -- is it PRE-CAPITALIST [the position of Eugene Genovese -- and others of course} -- or is it some SUI GENERIS Mode of Production?
I think the most crucial point Marx made about the distinction between capitalism and feudalism and what he called an Einfache Warenproduktion -- which I think translates as sole proprietorship, a workers who owns "his" [in those days mostly] means of production --- is that under capitalism the laborer is "free" --- free to work for a capitalist or STARVE. Serfs are not free, slaves are not free --- and in fact, slaves rarely starved (though they had lousy diets. -- it was in the interest of the slave-holders to keep their slaves alives and productive = fed) while serfs starved when everyone else starved, during famines. THerefore, American chattel slavery AIN'T Capitalism -- Those who would argue that American chattel slavery is PRE-Capitalist have to think of it as some form of feudalism with MUTUAL OBLIGATIONS between classes and the "unfreedom" of the lower class (whether in ancient slavery or feudalism). BUT --- here we get into trouble because of the non-dynamic nature of all pre-capitalist societies. It's not a minor point when Marx and Engels talked about capitalism's great achievements and that it was the "historic mission" of the capitalist mode of production to create the material basis for the "abolition of scarcity" in a future communist society. Marx at one point even defined CAPITAL as "self-expanding value" ... Yet American chattel slavery was incredibly dynamic --- it was the richest region of the country by far. Yes, Northern merchants got very rich on the cotton trade but manufacturers --- from New England where they were well established to the growing mid-west where they were at a more rudimentary level --- couldn't hold a candle to the richest of the plantation owners. In fact the economist Gavin Wright (in THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE COTTON SOUTH) argued that the very reasons the Southern Planter Class opted for secession was that they felt confident it would be painless --- that the Northern political leaders would never go to war with this newly independent nation. Once the war began, the Southerners hoped the British would come into the war on their side to open up the cotton trade again ... and there was some internal dispute in Britain about whether to "take sides" --- Marx himself was involved in workers' demonstrations to keep the British ruling class from intervening. By elimination, I'm going to assert (without having the benefit of doing any research -- always a fun thing to do when having such discussions) that American chattel slavery was a NON-capitalist mode of production whose very reason for being was the production of a surplus for markets --- in this case actually for an international (=English) market --- Yes there were textile mills in the Industrial North but without British demand, the extensive expansion of slavery into the states of Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana would not have occurred. Now --- was slavery crucial to the successful development of American capitalism before the 1860s? ---- I think the evidence is clear that it was --- the massive cotton exports also created great wealth in the mercantile classes of the Northeast and as the western farmers began to produce foodstuffs, they also entered the export markets (farmers in Ohio, Indiana and Illinois did not eat all their produce --- nor did they sell only to their fellow citizens in the Northeast --- there were significant wheat exports before the Civil War.) One could probably make the case that American chattel slavery fit into an emerging "world system" (to steal from Immanuel Wallerstein) that was capitallist at the core but had both a staple exporting region based on chattel slavery and a non-capitalist mode of production of family farms and a rising set of industrial suppliers to those farmers -- in effect an Einfache Warenproduktion -- all interacting with each other in a very dynamic way ... What does that have to do with the 1619 project? First it validates their view that slavery was central to American society --- it wasn't certain that it would remain profitable based only on tobacco and rice and (pre-1793 = pre- cotton gin) cotton. The invention of the cotton gin made cotton-centered slavery wildly profitable in the early 1800s -- and prompted the western expansion of slavery ultimately as far as east Texas by 1860 --- The US would not have been anywhere nearly as rich by 1860 had slavery "died out" as George Washington supposedly believed it would. (another "bubbe miser" like the Apple Tree?). Second point however, goes against the 1619 argument --- It is hard to imagine that American colonists contemplating reasons for severing ties with "Mother England" would have believed that those Brits who advocated abolishing slavery would come to dominate the policy of Great Britain. The fact that AS A WAR MEASURE, the Brits promised every slave who ran away from their American masters freedom occurred after the war had begun and the die had been cast --- even though the Declaration of Independence wasn't signed till more than a year after the battles of Lexington and Concord had touched off the revolution. Could it (concern that the Brits might someday abolish slavery -- and that that "someday" might be immanent) have been in the minds of some southern revolutionaries? Perhaps ---- we need to see the actual documents -- (and the Somerset Ruling in Britain probably had more of an impact there than in the US). But why would it have stimulated the likes of John and Samuel Adams and other New England revolutionaries? Not convinced on this one. (sorry to be so verbose) On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 1:14 AM Mark Lause <[email protected]> wrote: > Yes, insofar as the bourgeois revolutions were about securting the right > of property, they are about slavery . . . > > But what that has to do with specifically with why the American Revolution > took place to avoid the British elimination of slavery remains a tad > smudged. > > > > > > On Thu, May 6, 2021 at 7:26 PM <[email protected]> wrote: > >> [Edited Message Follows] >> Please excuse the rather glaring date mistake--I wrote those lines when >> preparing for a colonoscopy and there was evidently some leakage. >> >> The actual discussion of the 1619 project has AFAIK a fair number of key >> points, some of which turn on points of history whereof I have to remain >> silent. >> >> At the very least it seems to me that we are challenged in going beyond >> narrow Eurocentric traditions, to rethink the value of the >> ideology--chattel property of every Ku Kluxer and cracker-barrel crackpot >> in the USA--of "individual liberty." This operation must necessarily also >> challenge familiar US left-wing perspectives, which usually include a hefty >> dose of raw romantic individualism along with whatever socialist honey they >> may employ to disguise the flavor. >> >> As far as "liberty" is concerned, the term has appeared and been misused >> in the revolutionary context since Roman times (assuming we can still refer >> a historical timeline running through ancient Rome). Spartacus used the >> Latin term as did his diametrical opposite in most respects Sergius >> Catilina, who rebelled against the Roman Republic in Cicero's time as a >> throttle on the liberties of the then-declining patrician class. Surely >> the forebears of "Anglo-Saxon" America can have been no less ambiguous in >> their use of the term. >> >> Samuel Johnson, who--except for his intelligence--was the archetypal >> British Tory, spoke with scorn in his pamphlet "Taxation No Tyranny" (1775) >> of the would-be colonial planter gentry: “We are told, that the >> subjection of Americans may tend to the diminution of our own liberties; an >> event, which none but very perspicacious politicians are able to foresee. >> If slavery be thus fatally contagious, how is it that we hear the loudest >> yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” For all his monolithic >> perversity, Johnson has a point. The "liberties" referred to of course >> included the unquestionable superiority of real Englishmen from England >> over mere colonials. We tend to forget that among the English gentry and >> their apologists until quite recently, rank hypocrisy was no vice but a >> positive and active system of pure morality. This had to rankle. >> >> In this sense at least there can be little doubt that at least for a >> substantial number of those supporting the Floundering Bothers the point of >> revolution was to defend slavery, if in no other way than by throwing off >> what to them had become the foreign yoke of British governance and >> taxation--and the hypocritical tendency of English ruling class to look >> down on the "drivers of negroes" as not only far less wealthy but less >> aristocratic or less worthy of admiration than the great English families >> of the day. >> >> I pass over the anxiety that must have been caused by slave revolts in >> the new world; not only in what would become the US but in Haiti leading up >> to the successful revolution of 1791. There was also Lord Dunsmore's >> proclamation of liberty for slaves in Virginia in exchange for their >> support of the British cause. >> >> It doesn't take a 1619 Project to see the potential effect of these >> well-known factors. As for us, can we adopt a democratic perspective >> without genuflecting at least to Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman as well as >> Madison and Jefferson (and Hamilton, who tolerated slavery even in >> denouncing it--while laying the foundations of modern US capitalism)? >> >> The challenge is perhaps to understand at once the systemic character of >> the American ideology of race, which relies for its power to convince on >> the illusion of naturalness apart from social or economic factors. This >> makes racism an ideal vehicle for the theodicy of capitalism, but not a >> function of it. As Louis Proyect has pointed out, It's entirely possible >> to have racism, sexism, and Eurocentricity under the form of some really >> existing socialism. It's happened before. >> >> > > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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