On Thu, 12 Nov 1998 09:35:02 -0500 "Charles Brown"
<CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes:
>Actually I was involved in a couple
>of extended discussions on this
>issue on another list a while ago.
>I agree with your suggestion
>that U.S. slavery _was_ capitalism.
>It was sort of a mixed system, such
>that the slave owners were capitalists
>and made profits on the world
>capitalist market, although they didn't
>pay wages. (This superexploitation
>was the basis for the U,S. slavocracy
>becoming the ruling class in the
>U.S. in the period before the
>Civil War; Herbert Aptheker
>has termed the Civil War a
>counterrevolutionary attempted
>coup d'etat by the overthrown
>slaveowning ruling class)
> The capitalist system
>of the time included the U.S.
>slavery. Marx analyzes slavery as
>part of the socalled primitive
>accumulation of capitalism.
>
>The whole world capitalist system
>of the period could not have
>had this structure, for the reason
>in my post you quote - capitalists need
>the spending of the wage workers
>to realize their profits out of the
>surplus value they exploit. So my point
>in the post was that there was a
>fundamental contradiction between
>slave capitalism and free capitalism,
>in that slave capitalism had
>the above contradiction in it.
>
I would argue that there were in fact several contradictions between slave capitalism and free capitalism. The first one is the one that Charles mentions namely that widespread reliance on slave labor would constitute a limitation on capital's ability to realize the surplus value that labor (whether free or slave) creates for capital. Secondly, the very fact that slaves were a superexploited stratum means that there is little incentive for planters or other exploiters of slave labor to substitute machines for people. Under free capitalism labor costs were often a major part of production costs and wages could be forced up either by labor shortages and/or by concerted actions of workers in class struggles, therefore there was a strong incentive for capitalists to reduce their unit labor costs by turning to technology. Slave capitalism provided much weaker incentives to slaveholders for developing the forces of production. Third, slave capitalism could not provide the range of incentives to slave laborers for spurring productivity that free capitalism could offer (or force upon) free laborers. Finally, free capitalism had the advantage that surplus laborers could be easily discharged when their services were no longer needed. The disposal of surplus slave laborers was much more difficult although planters attempted to get around this by contracting out surplus slaves either to fellow planters or in some cases to industrial enterprises. In short while slavery played an essential role during capitalism's period of primitive accumulation it came to constitute a fetter on further development of the forces of production. Therefore, as Charles notes it eventually came into contradiction with the free capitalism that was developing on the basis of industrialization. Hence, the increasingly bitter and ultimately violent conflicts between the planter class and other sections of capital.
Jim Farmelant
>By the way, this is an example
>of dialectics, because first slavery
>as part of the socalled primitive
>accumulation of world capitalism
>was a necessary element of
>capitalism. But then this
>form which was necessary at
>first came into necessary contradicton
>with "pure" capitalism with
>"free" labor. Thus, an internal
>contradiction in capitalism
>caused the historical
>change which was the Civil
>War and other abolitions
>of capitalist slavery.
>See "Hegel on Logical
>and Dialectical Contradictions"
>by James Lawler ( in Dialectical
>Contradictions : Contemporary
>Marxist Discussions:Marxist
>Educational Press 1982) on
>the paradoxical character of
>dialectical contradictions.
>
>By the way, don't you think the
>slave masters may have forced
>some slaves to produce food
>and other subsistence goods not
>only for the slaves,but for the
>master and family ? You know that
>slaves provided much of the
>child and house care subsistence
>work for the master and family.
>
>
>Charles Brown
>
>Detroit
>
>
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