Wolf Larson
17th February 2010, 00:17
Other than white mans burden/racism was it not unenforceable private property that led capitalists to kidnap, import and enslave 6 million chattel slaves? When colonial settlers came from the Western European nations they chose to mostly homestead [on stolen land] once they paid off their ticket for passage. Most white Europeans chose to live free of wage labor, rent, interest and usury which depleted the available labor force for capitalistic land owners. Private property could then not create a large population of wage slaves because there was too much "free" [stolen] land/resources so the capitalistic profit driven land owners , in order to profit idly off of other peoples labor, needed to import chattel slaves as the Caribbean system further south had begun doing.
Primitive accumulation had created the aristocracy or bourgeois class in Europe which was based in the system of property/capitalist expropriation/exclusion. Since this new system of property could not fully be enforced in the "New World" the old property class who were arriving in America did what any self respecting capitalist would do- enslave a large labor force. Chattel slavery had existed for centuries beforehand but I believe this was the justification for it in the so called "New World" where the capitalist was fleeing persecution by the state [taxes]. They sought liberty, liberty for the capitalist. The other moral justification obviously being "white mans burden" but the economic justification, I believe, was private properties inability to create wage slaves in the colonial period.
One question is, why did many people in the north rightly oppose chattel slavery while accepting their own subjugation to wage slavery, rent, interest and usury? What kept the civil war from being a revolutionary war between truly free men and tyrants? Also, since the first colonial settilers were christian socialists running from the new system of property in Europe how were they oppressed in the new world? Specificlly how were the christian socialists marginalized? From what I gether the true American revoloution was based in emacipation from property but the movment was co opted by the bourgeois and their network of fellow Freemasons. After chattel slavery was abolished how did American expropriation manifest. What was the process? Did the government "own" most of the land, recources and wealth or did private business men exclude the masses from accessing the land, resources and wealth? I'm fully aware of the land grabs and theft from native tribes and 'Mexico' I'm more concerned with why the white European colonial Americans accepted the process of expropriation. Was it pure ignorance on the part of the working class? "It's hard to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.
Primitive accumulation had created the aristocracy or bourgeois class in Europe which was based in the system of property/capitalist expropriation/exclusion. Since this new system of property could not fully be enforced in the "New World" the old property class who were arriving in America did what any self respecting capitalist would do- enslave a large labor force. Chattel slavery had existed for centuries beforehand but I believe this was the justification for it in the so called "New World" where the capitalist was fleeing persecution by the state [taxes]. They sought liberty, liberty for the capitalist. The other moral justification obviously being "white mans burden" but the economic justification, I believe, was private properties inability to create wage slaves in the colonial period.
One question is, why did many people in the north rightly oppose chattel slavery while accepting their own subjugation to wage slavery, rent, interest and usury? What kept the civil war from being a revolutionary war between truly free men and tyrants? Also, since the first colonial settilers were christian socialists running from the new system of property in Europe how were they oppressed in the new world? Specificlly how were the christian socialists marginalized? From what I gether the true American revoloution was based in emacipation from property but the movment was co opted by the bourgeois and their network of fellow Freemasons. After chattel slavery was abolished how did American expropriation manifest. What was the process? Did the government "own" most of the land, recources and wealth or did private business men exclude the masses from accessing the land, resources and wealth? I'm fully aware of the land grabs and theft from native tribes and 'Mexico' I'm more concerned with why the white European colonial Americans accepted the process of expropriation. Was it pure ignorance on the part of the working class? "It's hard to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it." - Upton Sinclair.