David Shemano wrote: >> I am trying to understand the importance of this debate.<<
I’m not sure that there really was a debate going on, but its importance is part of the Marxian and socialist intellectual traditions: we understand the present partly by examining the past. In addition, starting with Marx, people want to make a moral point against capitalism by pointing to its ideologists’ pretensions about the system being based on “freedom” go against the reality of unfree labor being crucial to capitalism’s rise (along with the basic unfreedom of nominally free labor). (There's a conflict between capitalist theory and practice.) >>If the point is that a capitalist economy can coexist with and thrive in a relationship with a slave economy, that does not seem like a very important point. Seems obvious.<< It may be obvious, but hiding behind that is what is meant by “capitalism.” To many, including money libertarians, modern liberals, and many leftists, capitalism refers to a system of production of goods and services for the market (what Marx called “commodity production”). For others, capitalism is more than just market-oriented production: I think it was that old bald Russian with the Van Dyke beard who defined capitalism as “generalized commodity production” in which not only products of labor but also labor-power are treated as commodities to be bought and sold. (Labor-power refers to one’s ability to work during a specific time period rather than to actual labor done or a human being.) The role of slavery under the first definition of capitalism can easily differ from its role under the second definition. I follow the second one. In general, I follow Marx’s terminology. >> If, however, the point is that the rapid economic takeoff of capitalist economies in the 19th century was "dependent" on its prior profitable relationship with a slave economy, I just don't see it. We can only speculate about counter-factuals, but the notion that a "necessary" condition to the growth in the North in the last quarter of the 19th Century was slavery in the South for the prior 200 years does not ring true to me. I don't dispute that the wealth created in the South was a contribution to the growth in the North, but it seems to me that wealth (profitable cotton, tobacco, etc.) would have been created if the South had a wage-based similar to the North. And I further believe that if the South simply never existed, the North would still have grown steadily and then taken off in the late 19th Century as industrialization took off.<< I’ll ignore the counterfactual about the South never existing (however pleasant that would be), because capitalism is a world system. If the area below the Mason-Dixon line didn’t exist, slave colonies in the Caribbean and elsewhere could have played a similar role. We can't treat either the US or its North as an island. To understand whether or not the existence of slavery was necessary to the rise of world capitalism, we have to think about what the “creation of capitalism” (or the so-called “Primitive Accumulation”) means. It involves the creation of two classes. One (the small minority, the capitalists) owns and controls the means of production (capital goods) allowing them to produce, own, and sell the means of subsistence (consumption goods). The other (the vast majority, the proletariat) lacks direct access to the means of production or subsistence and thus must work for the capitalists in order to survive. That is, they must sell their labor-power to the capitalists, submitting to the latter’s authority for a period of time, in exchange for wages or salaries. Note that despite the proletarians’ social dependence on the capitalists, they are not slaves or serfs. The owners normally do not apply direct coercion to get workers to work. (There are exceptions, of course, as with the forcible breaking of labor unions, etc.) Instead, the reserve army of unemployed labor, the need to pay bills and support the family, etc., push workers to sell their labor-power and then work on the job under the boss’s thumb. As Marx described the process, the creation of this system involved (1) the concentration of ownership of the means of production in relatively few hands; and (2) the exclusion of producers from direct access to them. Starting in a very agrarian society, that involved wholesale conversion of “feudal” property rights in land into “modern” capitalist ones. This process involved phenomena as diverse as the English king’s stealing of Church lands and the voluntary conversion of some “feudal” landlords into capitalists. Most importantly, old feudal traditions which gave the direct producers access to their own land (so, in theory, they could survive on their own) were abolished, so that only the new owner had access or the ability to allow others access. The land instead belonged to some capitalist, who “enclosed” the land with fences, kicking workers off the land and making them dependent on the new landlord for their subsistence. In addition, in the urban sector, guilds were broken (or avoided in some way), ending producers’ control over production. This forcible process involved the concentration and centralization of economic power in a relatively small number of hands. This concentration and centralization in a small number of hands was aided by the accumulation of wealth in the slave colonies. Wealth from abroad also helped fuel England’s capitalist engine, providing profits which promoted accumulation and the spread of the wage-labor system. Cheap cotton (produced by slave labor), for example, helped the English cotton textile industry, which was at the center of the Industrial Revolution. A case may be made that in its early stages, England’s capitalism could have been bottled up and squelched. After all, earlier Italian and Dutch efforts in this direction stalled. But England’s major role in the capitalist world system meant that its capitalists could benefit mightily from the loot accumulated from the colonies. This may have saved their bacon. After a while, however, capitalism becomes less dependent on this kind of international exploitation. Capitalists gain control over production and can introduce machinery and the like to raise workers’ productivity. This provides a surplus which can be accumulated, promoting the growth of the system. By the way, the ability to forcibly squeeze slaves for labor (and the unreliability of slave labor using machines) actively discourages this kind of technological change. In general, it limits the role of free wage labor because the products of slave labor are cheaper (all else constant). Thus, the existence of slavery (or other forced-labor forms of production) can actually block the existence and spread of wage labor. However, slave labor isn't very useful in many spheres of the economy (think about slaves acting as stock brokers, for example) wo that this blockage is not universal. Capitalism’s growth still benefits a lot from super-exploitation (sweatshops and the like). Increasingly, its benefiting from the “exploitation” of nature, i.e., getting benefits now which are going to impose costs on us later (as with global warming) or imposes costs on those not creating the pollution. Was slavery's existence necessary to the existence of capitalism and its rapid growth over the centuries? In theory, no. Marx's theory of capitalist growth in his CAPITAL describes a relatively idealized version of the system which lacks slavery as a major element except to "get the ball rolling." (As mentioned, Marx's description involves no direct coercion of workers.) This theory involves exploitation, class conflict, and economic crises, but the system doesn't automatically fall apart, absent a organized and class-conscious working class movement. However, the coercive power of the capitalist state is crucial, protecting capitalist property and power while helping to avoid the rise of an organized and class-conscious working class movement. In the end, though capitalism may not require slavery, it does require coercion. In practice, however, capitalism and forced labor have been intimately connected since the beginning. Unless there's a social movement opposing it, stockholders and managers really don't care if some of their profits come from slave labor and they will seek out those profits if they can. Capitalists don't care about the health of humanity; instead all they care about is their profits. If slavery promotes profits, individual capitalists will try to gain from it. More long-sighted capitalists have typically opposed slavery, however, perhaps because it can undermine the legitimacy of the system. I'm sorry this is so long-winded. I'll stop there. -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante.
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