>CB: No. I get he idea that slavery was integral to the primitive accumulation of >capitalism from Marx (Steal this idea!). It is not my idea or the CPUSA's right >wing’s. It is Marx's idea. Quote:
>The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signalized the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of the European nations, with the globe for a theater. It begins with the revolt of the Netherlands from Spain, assumes giant dimensions in England's Anti-JacobinWar, and is still going on in the opium wars against China, &c.
The different momenta of primitive accumulation distribute themselves now, more or less in chronological order, particularly over Spain, Portugal, Holland, France, and England. In England at the end of the 17th century, they arrive at a systematical combination, embracing the colonies, the national debt, the modern mode of taxation, and the protectionist system. These methods depend in part on brute force, e.g., the colonial system. But, they all employ the power of the State, the concentrated and organized force of society, to hasten, hothouse fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition. Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with >a new one. It is itself an economic power. et al.
>http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
>CB
>^^^^^^^^^
Reply
Perhaps my distinction between the slave trade on the one hand as a force of primitive accumulation of capital, and the transition to capitalist slavery was not clear enough. Several distinct historical periods are being talked about. My specific point is that on this land mass the capitalist slave Marx speaks of is not a category of primitive accumulation of capital but rather capital conversion and reproduction. “That is the secret.”
After the discovery of the Americas in the 14th century, the Portuguese and Spanish, probing down the coast of Africa, became involved in the already developed slave trade. In history, capitalism roughly experienced 700 years of evolution and development and there have been leaps, transitions in its quantitative and qualitative configuration. The slave trade of the 14th, 15th, 16, 17th and 18th century cannot be confused with the system of slavery peculiar to America in the 19th century, which roughly coincide with the transformation from manufacture to industry.
I humbly decline to “steal the idea” that equates capital conversion and reproduction – creation of surplus value, with the historical process called the primitive accumulation of capital. This is not to say that I do not steal ideas but have grown old enough to steer clear of “fools gold” and wooden nickels. Ours is a historical dispute, which has been running since the 1928 and 1930 documents on the Negro Question created by the Third International. I stole the ideas from the previous generation.
There were no concrete feudal economic relations in America. Trading companies colonized America. I stated that, “The material quoted by Marx makes clear the character of slavery in the South. "That is the secret.” Perhaps I should have simply stated – in retrospect, that slavery in the American South of the 19th century drove the transition from manufacture to industry, and this is a different historical period than the “dawn of the era of capitalist production,” although your quote from Marx is wonderful.
Apparently, I should have outlined the slaughter and murder of the Native Bands of people as the primary form of primitive accumulation on this landmass and its peculiarity as primitive accumulation. That is to say the process of separating the producer from the means of production, of which Marx speaks is called primitive because this process forms the “pre-historic stage of capital and of the mode of production corresponding with it.” Marx states rather clearly, “In the history of primitive accumulation, all revolutions are epoch-making that acts as levers for the capitalist class in the course of formation;”
What is peculiar to our history is that “separating the producer from the means of production, ”meant wholesale murder on the scale of genocide. The voice of the Anglo-American proletariat, who I seek to represent, has been weak on this matter, and this has perhaps kept the Native Bands away from Marxism.
I decline to steal your conception of slavery in the American South of the 19th century as a lever of the primitive accumulation of capital, because the capitalist class was well formed and evolved. “The secret” is that the Negro People evolved and developed as a people prior to the development of the “Black Belt”nation. This formula – which I stole and kept, is the key to grasping the peculiarity of the Negro Question as a national-colonial question. Race theory absolutely prevents one from grasping why there is an actual colony in the heart of the old slave holding South.
What this means is that national formation did not take place in America on the basis of the transition from feudalism to the capitalist mode of production and its consequent amalgamation of people into nations, because trading companies – not feudal economic and social institutions, colonized America. There did not exist feudal economic relations here, only economic formations that were feudal like in their social structure. The historic position of the CPUSA is that slavery was a concrete form of feudal economic relations and hence, an authentic expression of the primitive accumulation of capital.
The logic of history is inescapable for you and I. You have presented and rediscovered – on your very own, the historical dispute. This is no pun because you entered the debate on a level I had to evolve on in the course of more than thirty years. I await and probably have to create my replacement. Such is the life of the communist. My daughter is an excellent candidate. My son pisses me off.
There were no concrete feudal economic relations in the American South and this was “the break through” in the presentation of the Negro National Colonial Question. The Negro people developed as a people prior to the development of the Black Belt nation; while the evolution of the Black Belt nation – and what we call the distinctiveness of the Southern culture historically, emerged on the basis of capitalist production in the form of slavery.
The Negro people are not a race – from the standpoint of Marxism and the national colonial question, but a distinct historical evolved people formed in the crucible of capitalist slavery. Here is an idea worth stealing.
The slaves had been drawn from a variety of people in Africa. This is the era of handicraft (a different historical era than that of 19th century American South). As white indentured servitude is phased out, African slavery becomes the basis for the plantation labor system. The consequent identification of slavery with race – an ideological category created to describe differences, and of race with inferiority set the conditions for the slaves to begin their development as a class first and finally a people. “Steal this idea” articulating the evolution of a people class, which really means a class/people but the ideological rot of race prevents this simple disclosure to our class, because the Marxist have “an authentic concept of race.”
Pardon for a moment of irony: our petite bourgeois radical black intellectuals spend an inordinate amount of time proving that the African American is black first and proletariat– class, second. Hence my use of the word “petty” bourgeoisie because they are more petty than bourgeoisie. Here we are confronted by a rarity in modern history – a class/people, and this unique American phenomenon is reduced to race. To continue:
Injected into and among the African slaves were a number of Native Band peoples – (the era is shifting, the “secret” is in formation, “steal this idea”). The were of course tens of thousands of slaves of partial African and partial Anglo-European descent (the Anglo American people as a people are not yet formed; we have entered manufacture.) Perhaps it would add a more “colorful description” to the story if the wholesale rape of the African female was mentioned. This way I will not be accused of belittling the blood lust of homo-sapien-sapien-male; liquidating the Women Question in history and ignoring the barbarism of the white oppressor, whose lust for profit and privilege based on black skin shaped history. Allow me to add, “You are a very bad man.”
This “colorful description” is actually colorful because a people of varying hue are in chemical formation. Not simply black but becoming colored – pardon “Colored.”
The slaver’s lash soon did away with the distinction between the descendant of the Congo and the light-skinned “illegitimate” son and daughter of the driver man. Based on the specifics conditions of slavery in the American South – not the transition from feudalism to the capitalist mode of production, there arose the Negro People. A historically evolved people, socially and culturally developed from the framework of slavery.
The shift from manufacture to industry is underway. The North actually rebels against the political South - the “slave power, ”based on the shift from manufacture to industry and the gigantic concentration of “money” and capacity. The Civil War is fought and the political South is defeated. Reconstruction begins and the Colored masses surge forward in what appears to be a “racial movement” by theorist of race. The movement of apeople/class or rather class/people – branded in the black, is unique in modern history and the early Marxist scramble to grasp a peculiarity without precedence. Thousands of Anglo-Americans in the Northern states grasp the issue and justice and carpetbags are packed in a rush to defeat the remnants of the slave oligarchy.
By the end of the 19th century Reconstruction has been overthrown and a class/people defeated. The defeat of the class/peoples and their demand for land distribution was articulated in the ideological sphere and made to appear as racial antagonism similar to a South African-like white settler regime dominating a black nation. The isolation of a very large and compact mass of black people – class/people,meant the isolation of an entire area. The complete development of the African American people within this isolation was indispensable to the development of the nation. The blacks were the majority of the people in the historically evolved Black Belt community.
Owing to the specific rise of USNA imperialism – Yankee imperialism, on the basis of the defeat of the slave holding South and the emergence of financial-industrial capital, and the history of development of the class and production relations of the Black Belt, there arose a nation, oppressed by Yankee imperialism. This nation social roots and base was the aforementioned Negro people.
Hence the national colonial question and race has nothing to do with a development that is understood in the ideological sphere as racial theory. Nor can one properly speak of 19th century slavery as a lever of primitive accumulation of capital because the world historical framework is the transition from manufacture to industry.
Comrade Charles, I am extremely gratified that you have unfolded the essence of seventy years of theoretical intensity on the basis of your individual intellectual pursuit. I have wronged you by inferring that your Leninism is not up to par. I would suggest, “You steal some of these ideas.” I stole them and it took me a full twenty years of my 38 years in the revolutionary movement to grasp the question from the Marxist standpoint.
