>It is not "Europeans" but _capitalism_ that created the idea of bourgeois
>freedom (= double-edged freedom of wage labor).
>When production based on chattel slavery & mercantilism ceased to be more
>profitable than production based upon free labor & Laissez Faire for
>British capitalism, as Eric Williams argues:
>
>"The capitalists had first encouraged West Indian slavery and then helped
>to destroy it.
This analysis of the rise and fall of slavery shows the robustness of a historical materialist approach as well as the subtlety of the detail, if the history is well researched.
It also illustrates the paradox that the more advanced sections of capital may at times have objective interests with the democrat needs of the working people. This makes for complex contradictions in which the progressive democratic forces may need to take advantage of contradictions between different capitals without losing all strategic initiative to them.
Chris Burford
London