That critical impact is the story of black labor.
2. I don't think the analysis disregards the manufacturing process and profits extracted from the development of a European working class. My point was, that that part of capital is, paradoxically, considered in isolation from the history of capital.
3. The death knell of slavery was determined by the fact that ever greater inputs of "capital," in this case land and labor, were required to produce a similar or declining output. In the US, the demand for those inputs competed with "free capital" for those elements that would create a sufficient domestic market to support industrial production, land and labor. The South was terrified by immigration to the Northern cities, which threatened its political control.
4. Each moment in the development of US capital in particular confronts the central issue of slavery, the legacy of slavery, and black labor. The Civil War, Radical Reconstruction and its defeat, The Spanish American War, the imperial domination of the Caribbean, black migration to the northern cities in the first half of the 20th century, the changes in Southern agriculture after WWII, and the sustained assault on the living standards of the working class precipitated by the decline in the overall rate of profit in the early 1970s (OPEC being the weapon of attack, and the method for reapportioning profits.)
5. Regarding mercantilism, let me rephrase my earlier position. British capital's development, which includes the development and the jettisoning of mercantilism, is by definition inseparable from the development of the world market. That mercantilist effort, slavery and the colonies, fed that development.
6. Hope you get the chance to read Williams' books.
7. The Toledo, Flint, Twin Cities, San Francisco actions of the 30s confronted capital and even created organs of autonomous workers rule, particularly in the Twin Cities. Yet the movement never confronted capital as a whole, in its origin and development, essential conditions for its overthrow. The movment did not go beyond positing itself as a labor action. Why? I think the answer is imbedded in black labor. Compare, for example, the work of DRUM and the LRBW in Detroit in the 60s. Certainly it is obvious that there is a different history to the development of the black working class. But if that is the case, that history means different demands have to be raised to overthrow the system of exploitation.
8. I hope it's clear that the creation of a black capitalism or capitalists is not the point of beginning this analysis. Indeed the analysis makes it clear how futile and inconsequential black capitalism is.
From: <billbartlett at dodo.com.au> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Thursday, January 02, 2003 8:53 PM Subject: Re: Criticism, Self-Criticism, and a few other things.
> At 1:10 PM -0500 1/1/03, David Schanoes wrote:
>
> >I think CC is on the right track. The history of capitalism, of the
world
> >market, is the history of the movement and exploitation of black labor.
>
> Obviously that is not the whole truth. Unless you are arguing that only
blacks are exploited and moved about by capitalism. If not, I'm not with
you.
>
> > As
> >an aside, we have Marx, producing Capital, as the fruit of his research
and
> >development of historical materialism, and producing it at the same time
as
> >a work regarding capital as abstracted from its real evolution with the
> >slave trade, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas, producing,
> >paradoxically, Capital almost ahistorically, as a separate analysis of
> >labor process.
>
> European capitalism, in its early formation, was more than the
African/American slave trade. That was evidently one way to get fabulously
rich of course, but there was more to it than that. For one thing, there was
what a capitalist did once he got fabulously rich. Mostly he would sail back
to Europe to invest his new capital in something steady, like manufacturing
and trade. Great wealth was being extracted from the English and Scottish
working classes through manufacturing as well. They too had been driven off
their lands and been herded into crowded cities to work as wage slaves.
>
> Meanwhile of course, European colonies were being established in
lesser-known parts of the globe such as Asia, extracting just as much profit
without bothering with slavery. Eventually, even US capitalists realised
that slavery wasn't a very efficient way to extract profits and abolished
it.
>
> > It's not as if British capital would have ever developed
> >beyond mercantilism without the slave trade.
>
> Your reasoning?
>
> >Dr. Eric F. Williams in two
> >fantastic books, Capitalism and Slavery, and From Columbus to Castro,
> >provides the necessary historical material detail for "fulfilling" the
> >Marxist exposure of capitalism.
>
> Not with you?
>
> >In the US, it is almost, more than almost, that we have, not two
different
> >working classes, but a working class that has two separate historical
> >origins, with black labor representing the underpinning of capital in its
> >role as a pre-industrial proletariat in the plantation economy. The
> >"non-black" portion has a different history, and the inability of
workers
> >movements in the US to even pose the question of power when it was posing
> >the question of power--i.e the great workers struggles in Toledo, Flint,
> >Twin Cities, San Francisco in the 30s was a manifestation of its
inability
> >to strike at the core of US capital, racism.
>
> What does "pose the question of power" mean? I gather you are arguing that
this inability to "pose the question of power" (whatever it means) somehow
demonstrates your argument that black labour has a different history (and
origin) to non-black labour? I'm not sure that it is necessary to prove that
point though, since that is fairly obvious. But I'm not sure what difference
it makes.
>
> The only real significance of this different history is that it means that
blacks are somewhat more likely to be working class than those of European
origin. In other words there are a smaller percentage of blacks who are
capitalists, because of historical circumstances and discrimination.
>
> A historical injustice to be sure, but it would seem perverse to pause and
try to right that wrong by struggling to create more black capitalists. In
the name of creating the conditions for socialism. Sure, it ain't fair, but
capitalism isn't a fair system. That's the whole fucking point! Its a
terrible shame that many potential black (and women, etc) capitalists have
been robbed of their chance to join the ruling class, have been
discriminated against, we can sympathise, but what would it achieve to stop
and try to give them a leg up?
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
>