what's the point here? it can't be that Brenner somehow agrees with Locke, since that's not true.
As for Locke, he was an addle-headed apologist: on the one hand, he asserted that if you mix your labor with something and create a product, it's your property. But then it turns out that if your servants work for you, the product is still your property. It's no surprise that he supported slavery in some contexts.
I am preparing a lengthy reply to Charles Post, which involves a review of a lot of material I've never looked at before--starting with Phil Foner's fascinating account of ties between NYC merchants and the Southern plantations. I was prompted to write about Locke after discovering in James Oakes "Slavery and Freedom" that his ideas about political economy in general and slavery in particular were embraced by the slavocracy. Meanwhile Ellen Meiksins Wood views him as a kind of patron saint of the agrarian bourgeoisie in Great Britain, which was the vanguard of capitalist transformation. Meanwhile, Post views slavery and capitalism as antithetical. I do not and will explain why when I have gathered together and digested all the relevant material.
Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org
