Post-Revolution American South

[Rusty Shackleford]

So, i was in my sociology class and the professor put on a video about the very different foundation and development of Massachusetts and Virgina.

The highly organized and authoritarian governments of the north planned city development and therefore were able to better manage resources which ultimately led to a strong growth of the northern bourgeoisie.

On the other hand, virginia was chaotic, hardly continuous, and predominantly male. The first to go to virginia were wealthy investors and therefore failed because hard work was beneath them. the house of burgesses is one major innovation in virginia, but indenture and slavery were more common in the south, and wealth came from land control. because of this, the majority of the working population was technically tied to the land.

this is where my question comes in.

did the American South maintain a sort of semi-feudalism or pre-capitalist development until after the civil war? Wehn you think of the wealthy in the south, you think of a plantation owning, slave owning, white aristocrat. in the north, you think of a factory owning capitalist or someone like vanderbilt... industrialists. now obviously in the south there were no kinds or dukes, but there was a very strong sense of social hierarchy and sort of bloodline like honor system. whatever i mean by that lol.


In short, was the south semi-feudal or pre-capitalist/post-feudal before the end of the civil war?

[Amphictyonis]

Private property replaced chattel slavery as it created millions of dispossessed people who had no choice but to work for a boss. Chattel slavery in the early US was facilitated because white Europeans could, after they worked off their debt from the trip, go at it alone and live off the land. There was no population to trap in rent, usury and wage slavery. There was no way for the bourgeoisie to make money.

As tie went on the white European population grew as did the accumulation of land and resources in the bourgeoisie's hands. The north began to industrialize when land was less available, when settlers or immigrants began to became susceptible to the effects of private property. The South on the other hand was less populated and white Europeans could still homestead. Why work on some one else's farm when you could be self sufficient? Chattel slavery was still necessary in the south in order for profits to be made in agriculture.

The civil war, from the white mans perspective, wasn't so much about freeing slaves as it was the rapid industrialization of America and the entrapment of the people under the old ways in Europe- rent, property, usury and wage slavery (in order for the bourgeoisie to make huge profits). The civil war was basically a war between people who wanted to be independent and the bourgeoisie. (obviously the people wanting to be independent were just as shifty if not more so than the Northern bourgeoisie).

People had the idea that America would be the land of the free- this meant freedom from rent, usury and wage slavery that was becoming the norm in Europe. They were sold a lie- in reality the bourgeoisie set up their system in the US and called it 'freedom' because from their perspective there would be no king or queen taking the lions share of their wealth.

Chattel slavery in the US, in short, mainly arose out of the inability to create a huge dispossessed population via private property. It wasn't feudal...it was for many, for a short time, truly a land of opportunity/independence (for better or worse). Feudalism arose out of land and resources being taken up by a minority, the early US was a sort of reset or recreation of primitive accumulation but more rapid and seemed to have skipped the feudal stage.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Chattel slavery is basically just indentured servitude, correct?

And just to summarize.

And in the north, "free" laborers became more and more common as land was used up and the population rose.

In the south, land was abundant, therefore practices like yeomanry and homesteading were common.

But, feudalism did not really exist in the Americas to the extent, or even at all, like it did in Europe. Now, could this also be a result of something like the Magna Carta which prevented autocratic rulers like France's Sun King? This, im guessing, had a huge effect on English colonizers.

Now, im going to go a bit farther.

I hardly know anything of French colonization of the Americas, but i now have to ask this. Because of the autocratic french government, were the french colonies similar or dissimilar to the french social structure in the mother land. I can imagine that french feudalism itself was very warped due to the creation of an army of nobles on the kings whim.

Did Louisiana see the same sort of development at Virginia? I do know that compared to the English, there were only a fraction of Frenchmen in the Americas. and because of this, did this effect southern society after the Louisiana Purchase, or were the Frenchmen quickly assimilated?

[jsov]

I disagree completely with my colleagues. The American South was very much a last bastion of feudalism on a continent where bourgeoisie society and industrial capitalism had already proven to be a far superior and more efficient system. Make no mistake, the Southern states seceded to retain a way of life that included slavery. All one has to do is to read the constitutions passed by the states of Mississippi, South Carolina, or read Vice President Alexander Stephens infamous "Cornerstone" speech to understand that slavery - and more than that - the inherent belief in the inferiority of blacks was integral to Southern secession.

Plantation owners were not so different from feudal lords. To claim that the South stood for some sort of bizarre freedom is to believe in the continuation of a falsehood. Like all feudal and semi-feudal regimes, eventually it had to succumb to the power of the bourgeoisie state and the production capabilities of industrial capitalism. The war was inevitable - as was the victor. Unfortunately, the results for blacks, who would not see institutional racism abolished for another century was just as inevitable (and never see economic justice).

[chegitz guevara]

Slavery is slavery, not feudalism. After slavery was abolished in the South, it was replaced with semi-feudal/semi-capitalist relations, debt-peonage and share-cropping, but the farmers were tied by market relations, not custom or law or religion.

[jsov]

Slavery is slavery, not feudalism. After slavery was abolished in the South, it was replaced with semi-feudal/semi-capitalist relations, debt-peonage and share-cropping, but the farmers were tied by market relations, not custom or law or religion.

Slavery is not industrial capitalism. It is an inefficient use of resources, look at the feudal Russians of the same time period. The only reason for the South's agrarian existence was that the industrial capitalists running textile mills in England and the US North required the cotton. Note that the textile manufacturers were far more adaptable than the Southern planters expected.

It is really a matter of semantics what one labels the Confederates, but they were certainly not bourgeoisie industrial capitalists. And yes, religion and tradition had a major influence on the US South both before and after the war (as they do today). This is one reason racism and reactionary politics are still more rampant in the South than in other parts of the US to this day.

[chegitz guevara]

I don't think anyone accused the South of being industrial capitalists. What I wrote was that it was not feudalism. Slavery is the first form of class society which existed. Feudalism came later in human history.

It's not a matter of semantics what one understands the social relations of the South to have been. Words have meanings. How we understand things matters because we relate to them based on our understandings.

Finally, the fact that religion and tradition had, and continue to have, a major influence in the South has JACK SHIT to do with what ties people to the land. Farmers didn't stay tied to the land because their immortal soul was imperiled if they refused to obey their lord. They weren't bound by law to the land. They were tied by debts, by cash money, by the market, by capitalism.

[Tablo]

There was industrial capitalism in large southern cities to a significant extent. I'm from one of them! It is called Birmingham.

Also, chegitz has it right.

[thriller]

My take: The south was semi-feudal/racial-mercantilist. Free labor did not exist. Not everyone in the south worked on a big plantation, in fact many yeoman farmers existed and did not have slaves. How ever they focused their labor around sustainability. There was really no wage-paying jobs in the south except for port cities, and even then, many slaves and indentured servants occupied those positions. Capitalism did not exist in the south until they realized they had to industrialize just before the civil war.

[Rusty Shackleford]

My take: The south was semi-feudal/racial-mercantilist. Free labor did not exist. Not everyone in the south worked on a big plantation, in fact many yeoman farmers existed and did not have slaves. How ever they focused their labor around sustainability. There was really no wage-paying jobs in the south except for port cities, and even then, many slaves and indentured servants occupied those positions. Capitalism did not exist in the south until they realized they had to industrialize just before the civil war.
free laborers did exist but not to the same degree as the north.

there was still industry in major southern cities like Atlanta.

[jsov]

Whilst I cannot compete with phrases like "jack shit", what I can do is provide some history lessons.

1. Atlanta was hardly an industrial city before, or during the Civil War era American South. In 1860 the city of Atlanta, Georgia had fewer than 10,000 people and ranked 99th in the nation in population. The only reason it was important for General Sherman was that it was a vital railyard for the Union Army.

2. Birmingham, Alabama was not even a city until the 1870's. Literally, it was not founded until 1871 and named after the English industrial city in an effort to entice investors in the nearby iron deposits.

I disagree that it really makes a difference how the Confederates were classified. Words have meanings? That alone is debatable, but to argue that we relate to the Old South based on these words? Really?

No matter how one classifies the Old South it is surely an anathema to any true leftist. It was a society that reveled in conservative tradition, religion, and the reactionary forces of racialism.

[thriller]

I do realize free labor and some industry existed in the Old South, however it was extremely dwarfed in comparison to the use of slave-labor and agrarian business that dominated the south. The Household economy was much more noticeable in the Old South than it was in the North before the Civil War as well.
Again, just my take, because as jsov said, it's sort of an anomaly to many historians, both left and right ones.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

I hardly know anything of French colonization of the Americas, but i now have to ask this. Because of the autocratic french government, were the french colonies similar or dissimilar to the french social structure in the mother land. I can imagine that french feudalism itself was very warped due to the creation of an army of nobles on the kings whim.

Did Louisiana see the same sort of development at Virginia? I do know that compared to the English, there were only a fraction of Frenchmen in the Americas. and because of this, did this effect southern society after the Louisiana Purchase, or were the Frenchmen quickly assimilated?

I am not sure about Louisiana, but the most profitable French colony was Saint Domingue (Haiti). It was run by the elite whites (les grands blancs). There were 30,000 whites and 450,000 black slaves, so it was only a matter of time before rebellion took hold. When the French Revolution abolished the monarchy and declared the equality of all men, the situation of mulattos became more and more contested, because they were free men of color but were still denied the rights of citizens given to the white colonists.

Aimé Césaire compared the slave plantation to an agricultural factory-- which is what made the slave consciousness revolutionary; unlike the stereotypical image of the conservative peasant who works his own land, the slave was part of a plantation industry: an industrial worker (ouvrier de le Terre)

The US South, I think, operated on this same plantation factory system. It was industrial capitalism, just with a unpaid, enslaved work force. After the Civil War, most blacks continued working in the fields for shit wages. That is why wage slavery is really not any different from slavery, the boss just gives you enough to get by. I mean, slaveholders at least had to feed and house their slaves, so it's not like they weren't giving them anything.

Another example: Nazi Germany used slave labor in their factories to build rockets. Obviously slavery and industrial capitalism are very compatible things.

People just would like to think that things some how qualitatively changed with the abolition of slavery, but like the New Deal or any other reform, it was just an adjustment to the status quo and they would not hesitate to bring back slavery if they can get away with it because it was very profitable for the ruling class. Painting the image of big changes fits the US ruling class narrative because they want to disassociate themselves with the horrors of the past, even though they are still building off that same past.

[Le Corsaire Rouge]

Fly Pan Dulce, I think that the comparison to Nazi Germany isn't one that helps your argument. Nazi Germany was a fascist state, not a bourgeois one, and its intellectual underpinning was corporatism, not capitalism. I also think that saying that "wage slavery is really not any different from [real] slavery" is quite naive, and shows a lack of understanding of what real slavery is like, and the fundamentally different economic systems that underlie them.

Chegitz Guevara, I think you're underestimating the power of superstructural ideologies to influence people beyond strict economic determinism.

[gorillafuck]

Fly Pan Dulce, I think that the comparison to Nazi Germany isn't one that helps your argument. Nazi Germany was a fascist state, not a bourgeois one, and its intellectual underpinning was corporatism, not capitalism. I also think that saying that "wage slavery is really not any different from [real] slavery" is quite naive, and shows a lack of understanding of what real slavery is like, and the fundamentally different economic systems that underlie them.
Corporatism is a form of capitalism and fascist states have been capitalist.

[chegitz guevara]

I disagree that it really makes a difference how the Confederates were classified. Words have meanings? That alone is debatable, but to argue that we relate to the Old South based on these words? Really?

No matter how one classifies the Old South it is surely an anathema to any true leftist. It was a society that reveled in conservative tradition, religion, and the reactionary forces of racialism.

And no such similar societies exist today? Semi-feudal relations still exist throughout much of the world. Slavery still exists. How one builds a revolution depends entirely on the classes that exist in a given society.