Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Mark Lause via Marxism]

  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.
*

Bound labor has always been a feature of capitalism (and wage labor was
always a feature of the Southern system).

Horne grossly overstates the point on the American Revolution, inverting
the position that almost every Marxist writer from Marx on ever took on the
American Revolution.  There was no unified strategy in 1776 beyond
independence.

Nor was the Republican Party a unified force.  Nor was the Lincoln
administration consistent in its positions until near the very end.
Next time you're at the library, please check out my recent book on _Free
Labor: the Civil War and the Making of the American Working Class_
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/83qmn2rk9780252039331.html
It argues that the failure of Reconstruction includes the failure to
reconstruct a workers movement that included the general strike activities
that actually ended slavery.

ML
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Kevin Lindemann and Cathy Campo via Marxism]

  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.
*

You might find this helpful:

Herbert Aptheker gives a talk called "The Civil War - A Marxist 
Interpretation," which is about the origins and nature of the U.S. Civil War. 
1963

MP3 Audio (62.81 MB, 44 min. 42 sec., progressive download) 

http://www.go.carleton.edu/campus/archives/media/?item_id=421307

--Kevin Lindemann
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

I think that is a problematic position. In my perspective, capitalism as a
system is globalization of trade, the creation of trans-Atlantic
multi-national monopoly. And that goes back to one thing, the slave trade.
Before that there were market relations between various ports of call going
back centuries, obviously. But the Triangle Trade was the engine that drove
the creation of a globalized market that went way beyond anything that
existed before that and went into the realm of capital as opposed to cash.
Admittedly my view is Afro-centric as opposed to Euro-centric, mostly
because I believe that the scramble for resources has always been based
around Africa rather than Europe, but I think current events in the news
demonstrate Africa is still the center of world trading efforts, hence the
contention between China and Russia on the one hand and the US on the other.

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 6:21 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> On 5/18/16 6:15 PM, Andrew Stewart wrote:
>
>> I have no clue what you mean by "political Marxism".
>>
>
> This is the term used to describe Robert Brenner's theory about the
> origins of capitalism in the British countryside in the 16th century as a
> contingent event that produced large scale farms through the enclosure
> acts, etc. It attracted a number of acolytes including Charles Post who
> interpreted it to mean that slavery in the USA was precapitalist since
> according to Brenner you can't have capitalism without "free" wage labor.
>



-- 
Best regards,

Andrew Stewart
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

I have no clue what you mean by "political Marxism". The contours of the
historical discourse at this point have been pretty well-defined by Gerald
Horne's work and his excellent COUNTERREVOLUTION OF 1776, which argues that
the American Revolution was a war for the preservation of the American
slavery-based capitalist system. By this point the contention about whether
the American colonial economy was capitalist has become a moot point, it is
now whether the events of 1776 were fought by American capitalists in their
revolutionary role described by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto
or if the British were in reality fulfilling this role.

On Wed, May 18, 2016 at 5:02 PM, Louis Proyect  wrote:

> My stuff on this is fairly narrowly focused on refuting the application of
> Political Marxism to slavery but it does refer to a lot of useful
> background material, including the close ties between the NYC bourgeoisie
> and the slaveocracy. It is all here:
>
> http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins.htm
>
> Under the heading "Capitalism, slavery and the Brenner thesis".
>



-- 
Best regards,

Andrew Stewart
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Louis Proyect via Marxism]

  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.
*

My stuff on this is fairly narrowly focused on refuting the application 
of Political Marxism to slavery but it does refer to a lot of useful 
background material, including the close ties between the NYC 
bourgeoisie and the slaveocracy. It is all here:


http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/origins.htm

Under the heading "Capitalism, slavery and the Brenner thesis".
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

Re: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[Andrew Stewart via Marxism]

  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.
*

I have done extensive work on this topic.

First, in terms of slavery, you need to understand it was NOTHING like
pre-modern slavery in terms of brutality or even length, pre-modern slaves
were really closer to indentured servants, taken as prisoners of war, who
would be freed after a period of time. We had a whole abolition movement
over this difference.

Economically, slavery was not going to die out, it was reinvigorated and
turned into a major economic engine for the agricultural sector of the
entire US by Eli Whitney's cotton gin.

Culturally, the white supremacist power structure was unable to conceive of
anything but slavery as a normalized part of life.

Last year Jacobin Magazine published a very good issue commemorating the
abolition of slavery, their Issue 18 (https://www.jacobinmag.com/storeissues)
that was surprisingly good. I have a lot of issues with that publication
for all kinds of reasons but they did a good job here.

Another useful tool is the first episode of Ken Burns's CIVIL WAR
miniseries, though the rest of the series is pretty spotty in terms of his
fetish for Shelby Foote.

Finally, consider for your own uses checking out the journalism by Marx and
Engels that they did on this topic, they wrote a good deal. There was a big
fuss some time ago from Lawrence and Wishart, the CPGB publisher, about the
Marxist internet archive having all the material up but you can get around
this by using the Wayback Machine and going to this link (
https://web.archive.org/web/20130614233905/http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1861/us-civil-war
).

The Foners, Du Bois, and Lerone Bennett Jr have some great material worth
checking out also.


Date: Wed, 18 May 2016 15:37:12 +1200
From: John Edmundson <johnedmunds...@gmail.com>
To: Activists and scholars in Marxist tradition
<marxism@lists.csbs.utah.edu>
Subject: [Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc
Message-ID:
<CAOu2+PLpW0JL+WT223QHoBKcn9D8ANm_XVqTF+j5GN=jd3y...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Hi,
I'm teaching a bunch of 16-18 year old history students and we're looking
at the causes and consequences of the American Civil War.

We have started looking at the nature of the Southern States pre-war and
the nature of US chattel slavery. They need to understand issues like the
idea that if the Union had not pressured the South (over things like
Lincoln's plan to not expand slavery into new states), slavery might have
died out anyway. At this stage I have suggested to them that chattel
slavery was more robust and flexible than pre-modern slavery (eg slave
owners could hire out their slaves to the railway building companies etc)
and that therefor the institution could conceivably have survived a lot
longer. I pointed out to them that slave owners could choose to make more
"conventional" investment choices but chose to reinvest in slaves and
cotton lands as a means of achieving a return - that "unfree" slave labour
is different from "unfree" peasant labour in that it can be sold to another
slaver where a peasant is bound to the land. I've suggested that in many
ways US slavery was a distorted version of capitalism rather than a whole
different pre-modern economic system.

However I feel a bit out of my depth here and have been improvising a bit.
I wonder if anyone could point me to some accessible online resources on
this question (and the Civil War issue itself) that I could use.

Obviously when we come to the consequences, I'll be looking at
reconstruction, the enduring legacy (Jim Crow etc), ongoing loyalty to the
Southern flag with all that that suggests, popular culture (music etc). I
know there are lots of US people on this list and y'all know about this
stuff . . .

Thanks in anticipation,
John

-- 
Best regards,

Andrew Stewart
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com

[Marxism] Request re ACW, ante-bellum South etc

[John Edmundson via Marxism]

  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.
*

Hi,
I'm teaching a bunch of 16-18 year old history students and we're looking
at the causes and consequences of the American Civil War.

We have started looking at the nature of the Southern States pre-war and
the nature of US chattel slavery. They need to understand issues like the
idea that if the Union had not pressured the South (over things like
Lincoln's plan to not expand slavery into new states), slavery might have
died out anyway. At this stage I have suggested to them that chattel
slavery was more robust and flexible than pre-modern slavery (eg slave
owners could hire out their slaves to the railway building companies etc)
and that therefor the institution could conceivably have survived a lot
longer. I pointed out to them that slave owners could choose to make more
"conventional" investment choices but chose to reinvest in slaves and
cotton lands as a means of achieving a return - that "unfree" slave labour
is different from "unfree" peasant labour in that it can be sold to another
slaver where a peasant is bound to the land. I've suggested that in many
ways US slavery was a distorted version of capitalism rather than a whole
different pre-modern economic system.

However I feel a bit out of my depth here and have been improvising a bit.
I wonder if anyone could point me to some accessible online resources on
this question (and the Civil War issue itself) that I could use.

Obviously when we come to the consequences, I'll be looking at
reconstruction, the enduring legacy (Jim Crow etc), ongoing loyalty to the
Southern flag with all that that suggests, popular culture (music etc). I
know there are lots of US people on this list and y'all know about this
stuff . . .

Thanks in anticipation,
John
_
Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm
Set your options at: 
http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com