Cockburn on slavery

[Charles Brown]

I think one of the main problems
for slavery in capitalism is that
slaves are not paid, so they don't
have any money to buy the
commodities produced in a
capitalist system. Capitalists need
the mass consuming power of
the working class to realize their
profits, although because of 
exploitation, there is always inadequate
buying power for all of the commodities
in society as a whole. The latter
is a root cause of business cycle
crises in capitalism. This would be
much more aggravated the greater
the proportion of the working population
that was slaves, i.e. unfree, non-wage
laborers.

Charles Brown

Detroit


>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 11/10 4:37 PM >>>

On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 15:34:40 -0500 Tom Lehman <uswa12 at lorainccc.edu>
writes:
>
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>Dear James,
>
>Yeah, wasn't it great!  One change of clothes a year.  A shack to live
>in---the animal barns were better.  Oh yeah!  When your not busy 
>working for
>the "massa" you get to grow your own food.
>
>Speaking of modern day innovations.  Many of the slaves used in the
>ante-bellum iron and steel business were leased to the ironmasters.  
>Sort of
>like using contractors today.  A smart southern ironmaster wouldn't 
>have to
>keep a big labor force on hand.  He could contract for slave labor as
>business conditions warranted.
>
>Sincerely,
>Tom L.
>
>
While the contracting out of slave labor might have provided
a partial way out of that system's inherent inflexibilities I fail
to see how it in the long run could become as efficient as
exploitation based on free labor.  The contracting out of
slave laborers was in the first place primarily a means for
slave owners to make some money off of surplus slaves
who they could not profitably use on their own plantations
and who could not be easily sold off.  The fact still remains
that the exploiters of free labor could more easily discharge
surplus laborers than could the owners of slave laborers and
that was an inherent limitation on the degree to which slave-based
production could be made more efficient.

		Jim Farmelant

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