>At 11:56 AM 10/14/00 -0400, JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>>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
>
>oh well ferchrisakes. this argument is just bizarre. gramscian
>consent to your own subordination INCLUDES all sorts of resistance.
>of course they hated and resisted it. the point is that
>manifestations of that hate and resistance reinscribes their own
>subjugation.
_No one_ in this thread -- _including Genovese_ -- denies that all sorts of resistance, etc. occurred (though there may be disagreements over the scope & character of resistances). The problem is that Genovese can't pass off his theory of _paternalism_ -- which effectively does away with the difference between chattel slavery in the American South and feudalism, ancient slave societies, & other pre-capitalist formations -- as a variant of Gramsci's theory of hegemony. In Gramsci's theory of hegemony, the ruling class (e.g., slave owners & capitalists, in the South and the North) morally, intellectually, & politically lead the "allied and kindred" classes and groups (e.g., non-slave-owning white small-holders in the South, Northern whites of all classes, lawyers, judges, writers, etc.), who "spontaneously" _consent_ to their rule, and form the hegemonic bloc; and the hegemonic bloc subjugates and sometimes if necessary liquidates the classes and groups outside the hegemonic bloc (e.g., enslaved Africans, Native Americans, etc.) _without their consent_. In contrast, Genovese's theory of paternalism assumes slaves' & Native Americans' own consent to their subjugation, which means that Genovese's idea of consent differs radically from Gramsci's.
I think that Genovese, even when he was a Marxist, never fully understood the nature of slave owners' hegemony over non-slave-owning whites -- nor did he understand what had made chattel slavery in the American South different from pre-capitalist slave societies and feudalism; and I argue that his inability to understand these two points in part explains Genovese's post-Marxist embrace of Neo-Confederacy.
Yoshie