John Taber wrote:
>Charles Brown" <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote
>
>> CB: Yea, I mean the whole Civil War was a "corporate plot" in the
>> sense that it was , in the main >, Northern industrial capitalism
>> overthrowing Southern slavery capitalism. The emancipation of
>> the slaves as a moral mission was not the purpose of the war, rather
>> it was an unavoidable side >effect of the Northern corporations
>> asserting their dominance.
>
>I must be confused on what "capitalism" means. I never thought that
>a slave-based economy should be called capitalism. Similarly, I
>wouldn't think that a feudal system is capitalist.
>
>But on this list "capitalism" seems to be broadly used. Would
>somebody care to educate me?
>
************
CB: Not a dumb question at all.
Although, "true" or optimum capitalism requires "free labor" or wage-laborers (who are also the main consumers of commodities) , actually existing capitalism originated and made its original accumulation of capital based on exploitation of slaves and colonial toilers who were not full wage-slaves. In the U.S. , the slave system was capitalist, in that the Southern slavocracy accumulated capital and were part of capitalist commodity market. They did not function economically as in feudal manors or old Roman and Greek slavery. The U.S. Civil War was the ripening of the contradiction in "slavery capitalism", and the full capitalists of the North forcing the hybrid slaverowner-capitalists of the South to "open up their market" , so that the whole mass of Southern laborers could become consumers. Slaves can't buy anything because they are not paid; and capitalists need workers who wear a second hat as "consumer" and buy the commodities produced.
The contradiction that individual capitalists , not considering the health of the capitalist system as a whole, also have a tendency to drive down workers' wages toward "slave wages" in order to maximize their own profit, operates to this day as a major dynamic in the class struggle. This also motivates imperialists going all over the world looking for cheap wage zones. There is a slang term "wage-slavery" , that expresses this contradiction in capitalism.
CB