[lbo-talk] the proclamation

[brad bauerly]

>There was a piece in the London Review of Books last month (March 11)
>about Eugene Genovese (and his wife Elizabeth) and their argument in
>Marxian terms about the South and slavery as anti-capitalist.
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There is actually a contemporary debate about this.  I was just reading
through Charlie Post's 1200 page dissertation on this topic.  He doesn't
argue that the South was anti-capitalist, but a barrier to capitalist
development which he argues was just taking off in the Midwest.  It is
interesting to note the racist motivations of the petty commodity producing
Midwest farmers and how this drove them to support the Republican party and
side with New England Merchants.  The farmers feared both the
further expansion of the plantation slavery system, thereby taking away
the cheap land they depended on, and that freed slaves would move west and
compete with them (rooted in their settler colonial ideology).  Thus, the
requirement that only whites could benefit from the homestead act.

Brad