Similarly, today, the U.S. working class cannot win the class struggle with the bourgeoisie and emancipate itself without first substantially abating racism.
Here's a little ditty from Marx on cotton trade and slavery.
From "The British Cotton Trade"
(Vol. 19 Collected Works M&E page17)
....English modern industry, in general, relied upon two pivots equally monstrous. The one was the potato as the only means of feeding Ireland and a great part of the English working class. This pivot was swept away by the potato disease ad subsequent Irish catastrophe. A larger basis for the reproduction and maintenance of the toiling millions had then to be adopted. The second pivot of English industry was the slave-grown cotton of the United States.The present American crisis forces them to enlarge their field of supply and emancipate cotton from slave-breeding and slave-consuming oligarchies. As long as the English cotton manufactures depended on slave-grown cotton, it could be truthfully asserted that they rested on a twofold slavery, the indirect slavery of the white man in England and the direct slavery
of the black men on the other side of the Atlantic. Sept. 21, 1861 written New York Daily Tribune 10/14/1861
Charles Brown
>>> James Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> 04/18/99 06:27AM >>>
On Sun, 18 Apr 1999 09:01:02 +0100 Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes:
>[BTW I forget whether Marx supported the Federal or the Confederal
>side in
>the American Civil War - could someone start a new thread title if
>they
>know the answer?].
>
Chris,
Karl Marx was a stauch supporter of the Union or Federal side in the American Civil War. During that time he wrote numerous newspaper articles in support of the North and he made strenous efforts to rally worker support for the North especially when it appeared that Britain and other European powers were considering intervening on behalf of the Confederates. Marx even corresponded with President Lincoln.
This should BTW call into question Chris' contention that Marxism invariably defends the right to national self-determination. The Confederates invoked consitutional arguments in favor of the right to succession. They maintained that the US Constitution was a pact between sovereign states who were free to secede from the US at anytime. In effect the Southern states maintained that they were sovereign states that could not legitimately be forced to stay within the Union against their will. The Federal side maintained that with the ratification of the US constitution, the states alienated their rights to sovereignty. The South arguably had the stronger constitutional arguments but the Civil War itself might be said to led to a redefinition of the US Constitution through the force of arms.
As I said Marx & Engels were staunch supporters of the North during the US Civil War. They supported the Northern side because they expected that a Northern victory would result in the destruction of slavery in the South. And they saw the destruction of the slave system as a major step forward for the emancipation of labor in general whether slave or 'free.' Interestingly enough the French anarchist, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, supported the Confederate side, precisely because of his support for national and regional rights to self-determination. Chris' position on self-determination seems closer to Proudhon than to Marx, and should logically lead him to similar to political positions.
Jim Farmelant
___________________________________________________________________ You don't need to buy Internet access to use free Internet e-mail. Get completely free e-mail from Juno at http://www.juno.com/getjuno.html or call Juno at (800) 654-JUNO [654-5866]