Genovese

[JKSCHW at aol.com]

Well, it's not that I have not paid the matter of Ancient versus American 
slavery some attention. The differences between them are significant, and 
many kinds of Ancient slavery (not all) were less onerous than most North 
American slavery. Nonetheless, I think Genovese has established that despite 
these differences a broadly Gramscian analysis applies. I don't know how you 
can say that an institution that lasted 350 years and was only suppressed by 
a civil war wasn't comparatively stable. I agree that the consent of the 
nonslaveholding whites was important, and Genovese doesn't deny this. But I 
don't see how you can deny that the slaves, like other subordinate groups, 
consented to their subordination, which does not mean that they didn't resent 
and hate it. An institution like American slavery, a minority domination over 
a majority population, that was a stable over hundreds of years, could have 
survived on mere brute force. Maybe we just disagree about that fundamental 
point. --jks

In a message dated 10/14/00 7:37:27 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
farmelantj at juno.com writes:

<<  think it may well make sense to apply Gramsci's concept of consent

 to the analysis of ancient slavery but it seems to me that this concept

 is of far less utility in analyzing American slavery where naked coercion

 played a much greater role in.

 
. . . . 

  I am not so sure that American slavery as an institution wasn't

 inherently

 unstable.  I think Yoshie makes an important point that it was the

 consent of non-slaveholding

 whites rather than the consent of the slaves themselves that was the

 crucial

 factor in sustaining slavery as an institution n the antebellum South.

  >>