Genovese

Charles Brown CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Fri Oct 13 10:59:48 PDT 2000



>>> LeoCasey at aol.com 10/13/00 01:44PM >>>
<< American slavery was capitalism. The slaveowners sold to the capitalist market. >>

Come on now, if selling to a market makes a system of production capitalist, capitalism has existed since the end of hunting and gathering societies. Markets existed a myriad of ancient slave societies and feudal societies. There is a substantial historical literature on the nature of modern slavery in the "new world," and it just might be a good idea to read some of it before offering these kinds of theses for public consumption.

(((((((((((

CB: Yea, we had about 20, 000 posts on this issue on Thaxis.

The mark of capitalism is when the market is the predominant economic form. The market was the predominant form in the era of U.S. slavery.

Markets existed on the periphery, around the edges of precapitalist societies. See, for example, _Capital_ by Karl Marx. Or lectures by Herbert Aptheker on the slavocracy as the ruling class of U.S. capitalism in the decades before the Civil War.

Also, slavery along with colonialism were the chief momenta of the primitive accumulation of capitalism. Modern slavery was a without which not for capitalism.

Think a little more before you blurt out silly stuff like above.



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