Was Thomas Paine a Socialist?!

[WyoLeftist]

I've recently heard of a few books, historians and academics state that American Founding Father Thomas Paine was a socialist, a proto-socialist, or at least held some socialistic leanings. Is there any truth to this, and if so, could someone PLEASE point me to the appropriate reading?!

[syndicat]

no. he was an advocate for private property and the market. he was an advocate for relatively democratic form of government such as the first constitution of PA in 1776 which was hated by the local elite and overthrown in a few years.

[Ocean Seal]

I've recently heard of a few books, historians and academics state that American Founding Father Thomas Paine was a socialist, a proto-socialist, or at least held some socialistic leanings. Is there any truth to this, and if so, could someone PLEASE point me to the appropriate reading?!
Thomas Paine was the most radical voice of the American revolution, but it is difficult to say that he would have socialistic leanings in a time where socialism had such little relevance. Thomas Paine was certainly a leftist at the time though, and a radical anti-monarchist.

[WyoLeftist]

What about his pamphlet "Agrarian Justice?" It's been discribed as such:

"Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor, which could be considered as the precursor of the modern idea of citizens income or basic income. The money would be raised by taxing all direct inheritances at 10%, and "indirect" inheritances - those not going to close relations - at a somewhat higher rate; this would, he estimated, raise around £5,700,000 per year in England"

[The Douche]

More of a proto-social democrat. He believed that private property is what made some rich and some poor, so he recognized that as a problem, but was not in favor of getting rid of it, instead he wanted to tax land-owners in order to provide social programs for the poor, and wanted some land set aside to be held in common by the poor.

[scarletghoul]

More of a proto-social democrat. He believed that private property is what made some rich and some poor, so he recognized that as a problem, but was not in favor of getting rid of it, instead he wanted to tax land-owners in order to provide social programs for the poor, and wanted some land set aside to be held in common by the poor.
yes, but considering the historical context (feudalism was far from overthrown and capitalism was still revolutionary and fresh), that view is about as radical and revolutionary as was possible for someone who didnt have magical powers of prediction. So yes in essence i would say tom paine was a revolutionary socialist/communist. Certainly he fits in more with marx lenin and mao than with the other founding fathers, who were mostly genocidal slave-owners

[The Douche]

yes, but considering the historical context (feudalism was far from overthrown and capitalism was still revolutionary and fresh), that view is about as radical and revolutionary as was possible for someone who didnt have magical powers of prediction. So yes in essence i would say tom paine was a revolutionary socialist/communist. Certainly he fits in more with marx lenin and mao than with the other founding fathers, who were mostly genocidal slave-owners

You can't be a communist if you don't call for the abolition of private property.

I think Paine was a progressive thinker, and I have some of his texts in my bookshelf, I like his writings. But just being forward thinking doesn't make you a communist...

[RemoveYourChains]

So yes in essence i would say tom paine was a revolutionary socialist/communist. Certainly he fits in more with marx lenin and mao than with the other founding fathers, who were mostly genocidal slave-owners

While I think the case can certainly be made that Thomas Paine is the most radical of the American founders, that's not quite the same as saying he was in fact a socialist (let alone a communist.) Those are ideas with specific theoretical under foundations.

[Tim Finnegan]

yes, but considering the historical context (feudalism was far from overthrown and capitalism was still revolutionary and fresh)
In the Anglo-American world, feudalism was dead and buried, even if its last holdouts in the Scottish Highlands having been torn up after the 1745 Jacobite Rising. There remained a variety of aristocratic legal and political institutions that were already proving incompatible with the logic of bourgeois society, but that's not the same thing as a non-capitalist set of social relations.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

I wouldn't say Tom Paine was a socialist or even a proto-socialist. He was rather a radical democrat, which was the ideology then of the British and American working classes.This was one of the mileus from which socialist ideas later emerged but at the time of the US Revolution the conditions were not ready for socialism.

Tom Paine was involved in the French Revolution (though an interpreter, he didn't speak French). He was about to be guillotined for his support of (I believe) the Girondinists. George Washington hated his guts (partly because of Paine's radicalism)and wanted to let him die. Thomas Jefferson had to pull strings to get Paine released.

Overall Paine represented an important strand of Anglo-American radicalism and anti-clericalism. Interestingly the US Republican Party today uses a lot of his slogans and ideas (in an utterly different context) to support their reactionary agenda.

I put Tom Paine as my hero in my high school year book years ago. I wrote, "Tom Paine, Revolutionary". My school was in a religious rural part of the US. When the yearbook was published they wrote "Tom Painerly", who apparently was a minor country singer. My Dad thought this "typo" was on purpose due to the influence of loval church groups. Tom Paine is still widely hated in bible belt areas of the US.

[RadioRaheem84]

Progressive liberal. Soc Dem at his very best.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

It shows how far the current "democratic" society is from the sorts of ideas that emerged with the early bourgeois revolutions that someone like Thomas Paine appears to be something like a "socialist radical."

[Tim Finnegan]

Tom Paine is still widely hated in bible belt areas of the US.
You know you're doing something right when you're still making enemies of reactionaries two hundred years after you die. :D

[RadioRaheem84]

You know you're doing something right when you're still making enemies of reactionaries two hundred years after you die. :D

I believe in Texas, the school board wanted to diminish the role of Paine and Jefferson in the history textbooks.

[syndicat]

Paine was a critic of religion. this in itself would explain the hostility of bible-thumpers.

[chegitz guevara]

In the Anglo-American world, feudalism was dead and buried,

Not so much. It changed, of course, but feudalism was still alive for a long while.

Paine, it should be noted, became more and more radical over time. By the time he was elected to the assembly in France, his politics would be what many people consider social democratic, which, for the late 18th Century, was extremely progressive.

[RED DAVE]

yes, but considering the historical context (feudalism was far from overthrown and capitalism was still revolutionary and fresh), that view is about as radical and revolutionary as was possible for someone who didnt have magical powers of prediction. So yes in essence i would say tom paine was a revolutionary socialist/communist. Certainly he fits in more with marx lenin and mao than with the other founding fathers, who were mostly genocidal slave-ownersNo he wasn't. You have to consider the property forms that he was dealing with. If a person, no matter how radical, does not advocate the abolition of private property, then that person, no matter how radical, is not a socialist.

Some of the participants in the French Revolution, such as Babeuf, can be considered socialists. However, properly speaking, the term is not used until the utopian socialists emerged in the generation after the French Revolution.

RED DAVE

[A Marxist Historian]

What about his pamphlet "Agrarian Justice?" It's been discribed as such:

"Paine proposed a detailed plan to tax property owners to pay for the needs of the poor, which could be considered as the precursor of the modern idea of citizens income or basic income. The money would be raised by taxing all direct inheritances at 10%, and "indirect" inheritances - those not going to close relations - at a somewhat higher rate; this would, he estimated, raise around £5,700,000 per year in England"

Paine was two hundred years ahead of his time. This pamphlet advocates social welfare measures that remind you a little of Roosevelt's New Deal.

But not only was this not socialism, it was an argument against socialism and communism. It was a criticism of the ideas of Babeuf, the world's first real communist, and his "Conspiracy of Equals," the world's first real socialist movement, in France.

The pamphlet is an argument *for* liberal capitalism and *against* socialism.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

Not so much. It changed, of course, but feudalism was still alive for a long while.
Really? How so? I'll admit to being far from an expert on this topic.

[chegitz guevara]

In the U.S. feudal relations of property ownership existed in the Hudson Valley up until the 1840s, according to Zinn's People's History. Furthermore, share cropping can be considered a form of feudal relations, and that existed in the U.S. until the 1960s, at least.

In Britain, feudal relations probably only finally completely gave way in the early part of the 20th Century, when the nobility simply could not afford the upkeep on their property anymore.

Clearly, the bourgeoisie was the ruling class in both countries (ruling alongside the slave owning class in the U.S.), and the landowners a junior partner, but they still existed.

[Tim Finnegan]

In the U.S. feudal relations of property ownership existed in the Hudson Valley up until the 1840s, according to Zinn's People's History. Furthermore, share cropping can be considered a form of feudal relations, and that existed in the U.S. until the 1960s, at least.

In Britain, feudal relations probably only finally completely gave way in the early part of the 20th Century, when the nobility simply could not afford the upkeep on their property anymore.

Clearly, the bourgeoisie was the ruling class in both countries (ruling alongside the slave owning class in the U.S.), and the landowners a junior partner, but they still existed.
Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems to confuse feudal social relations for tenancy agreements in which the land-owner happens to be of gentry stock. Share-cropping, for example, was an arrangement that existed entirely within a system of generalised commodity production, and, while certainly taking the form of debt-peonage, can't really be described in terms of the non-market system of obligations which underlie feudalism. To take a provincial example, Scottish Highland peasants and aristocracy before the collapse of the clan system were both bound up in a system of social obligations and entitlements, based in part on kinship groupings, while afterwards their relationship was an essentially capitalist one, the aristocrats acting as individual rentiers exploiting individual tenants, much like any Glasgow slumlord.

[CornetJoyce]

Historians have long referred to the land regime in upstate NY as feudal. Sharecropping is technically something else, but a Mississippi sharecroper and a Kentish villein meeting at a pub would think their lives were remarkably alike.

Entail and primogeniture, which undergird the English aristocracy from the 13th century till 1926, didn't take hold in New England but did in the South, where they were abolished during the Revolution.

[Ocean Seal]

Paine was two hundred years ahead of his time. This pamphlet advocates social welfare measures that remind you a little of Roosevelt's New Deal.

I wouldn't say New Deal, but certainly progressive social welfare measures.


Perhaps I'm missing something, but this seems to confuse feudal social relations for tenancy agreements in which the land-owner happens to be of gentry stock. Share-cropping, for example, was an arrangement that existed entirely within a system of generalised commodity production, and, while certainly taking the form of debt-peonage, can't really be described in terms of the non-market system of obligations which underlie feudalism. To take a provincial example, Scottish Highland peasants and aristocracy before the collapse of the clan system were both bound up in a system of social obligations and entitlements, based in part on kinship groupings, while afterwards their relationship was an essentially capitalist one, the aristocrats acting as individual rentiers exploiting individual tenants, much like any Glasgow slumlord.

On the subject of feudalism, how exactly do social obligations differ from debt peonage. Is it that debt is acquired because of the market system, but in feudalism why would people have to work the land. In a sense what are these social obligations.

[WyoLeftist]

The reason I even brought this up is because of the the Right's incessant use of the founding fathers of America to justify there bigotry and resistance to any form of change. Glenn Beck has REPEATEDLY used quotes of Thomas Paine to justify his idea of 'christian morality' which I find absolutely hilarious given the content of Paine's book "The Age of Reason."

[Tim Finnegan]

On the subject of feudalism, how exactly do social obligations differ from debt peonage. Is it that debt is acquired because of the market system, but in feudalism why would people have to work the land. In a sense what are these social obligations.
Because the former is a market exchange, the latter is not. Debt peonage is simply a market exchange engineered in an incredibly unfair fashion- the peasant equivalent of wage slavery- but it doesn't actually constitute a form of serfdom. You can argue that there are certain similarities of experience, perhaps, but the fact that a transition is undertaken from relations based on mutual social obligations and entitlements (however uneven) to one of commodity exchange between individuals on the market means that the social remains in question have been fundamentally altered.

(And, of course, there's the simple fact that the dissolution of feudal relations usually comes with a significant degree of social upheaval, such as land enclosures, population clearances, and son. The clansman c.1600 and the crofter c.1800, to return to the Scottish example, both had very clearly different relationships to the land they worked.)

[A Marxist Historian]

In the U.S. feudal relations of property ownership existed in the Hudson Valley up until the 1840s, according to Zinn's People's History. Furthermore, share cropping can be considered a form of feudal relations, and that existed in the U.S. until the 1960s, at least.

In Britain, feudal relations probably only finally completely gave way in the early part of the 20th Century, when the nobility simply could not afford the upkeep on their property anymore.

Clearly, the bourgeoisie was the ruling class in both countries (ruling alongside the slave owning class in the U.S.), and the landowners a junior partner, but they still existed.

In England, feudal social and legal relations were eliminated by the English Revolution, Cromwell cutting off Charles's head and so forth. Lots of good books on this by English Marxists. After that, the nobility in the upper house were capitalist landlords, not feudal lords.

And sharecropping is *not* feudalism. It's a commercial arrangement, abstractly utterly capitalist, whereby the sharecropper leases the land and tools and in return gives the leaseholder a portion of the crop. Ex-slaves not only preferred it to slavery, they also preferred it to the Northern notion of making them "free" agricultural proletarians paid a wage in cotton factories in the fields.

In practice, it subjected them to the merchants or landowners because they were deep in debt, not having any money or property of their own after all. And the great collapse in cotton prices in the late 19th century didn't exactly help.

I'm skeptical about Hudson Valley feudalism. Zinn meant well and was on the side of the angels, but he wasn't a historian or a Marxist, and he tended to uncritically repeat every left wing historical myth ever floated.

A good counterbalance to all the *right wing* historical myths that dominate classrooms, but not to be relied on for serious Marxist-historical insight into America.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

In England, feudal social and legal relations were eliminated by the English Revolution, Cromwell cutting off Charles's head and so forth. Lots of good books on this by English Marxists. After that, the nobility in the upper house were capitalist landlords, not feudal lords.
Actually, I'd avoid putting to much emphasis on the so-called "English Revolution". It was certainly an important episode in the development of British capitalism, but I don't think that it can be said to have represented quite the same epochal break as the French Revolution. It tore up some significant legal and political barriers to the extension of capitalist social relations, but there was no grand feudal social structure that it brought crashing down, and no classically bourgeois government was erected in its place. It was a political revolution, first and foremost, rather than a social one; even the "capitalist landlords" of the post-Cromwellian period were still largely the same individuals, or at least of the same social stratum, as before, merely having (further) revised their relationship with their property.

/pedantry

[chegitz guevara]

You just defined feudalism out of existence.

[Tim Finnegan]

You just defined feudalism out of existence.
How so?

[Kiev Communard]

Paine was two hundred years ahead of his time. This pamphlet advocates social welfare measures that remind you a little of Roosevelt's New Deal.

There is certainly some proto-social-liberal elements in Paine's thought, but overall he seems to lean more to the support/guarantee of property of petty-bourgeois small owners rather than for the state regulation of the capitalist enterprises and state welfare for proletarians, as the so-called "Progressives" later did.

[Kiev Communard]

Actually, I'd avoid putting to much emphasis on the so-called "English Revolution". It was certainly an important episode in the development of British capitalism, but I don't think that it can be said to have represented quite the same epochal break as the French Revolution.

Well, it might just be said that the "revolution" that broke the back of traditional feudalism in England was effected by, firstly, the 1381 Uprising (that brought to the end the attempts of the lords to restore/expand "classical" serfdom and allowed the copyhold relations to replace the villeinage) and, secondly, the Tudorian era land enclosures and mercantilist overseas expansion that created the basis for capitalism. The English Revolution was then just the final nail in feudal monarchy's grave, and the official proclamation of full private property on the land was its most enduring impact.

[eric922]

I asked this question in the history forums awhile back, where is the link if anyone wants to give it a read: http://www.revleft.com/vb/opinions-thomas-painei-t152000/index.html?t=152000

I do want to share something that was posted in the above thread though. It is supposedly a short exchange between Jefferson and Paine.

Jefferson-- wherever man is free, that is my country

Paine - wherever he is in chains, that is mine

Jefferson's is good, but Paine's shows a greater concern and solidarity for the oppressed I think.

[A Marxist Historian]

Actually, I'd avoid putting to much emphasis on the so-called "English Revolution". It was certainly an important episode in the development of British capitalism, but I don't think that it can be said to have represented quite the same epochal break as the French Revolution. It tore up some significant legal and political barriers to the extension of capitalist social relations, but there was no grand feudal social structure that it brought crashing down, and no classically bourgeois government was erected in its place. It was a political revolution, first and foremost, rather than a social one; even the "capitalist landlords" of the post-Cromwellian period were still largely the same individuals, or at least of the same social stratum, as before, merely having (further) revised their relationship with their property.

/pedantry

I'm with Christopher Hill on that one. I've liked what I've read of his stuff, not enough unfortunately.

Yes, there was a grand feudal structure that came crashing down, called "absolute monarchy." Perry Anderson significantly advanced Marxism IMHO with his demonstration of the essentially "feudal" essence of absolute monarchy as a political structure, improving over Marx and Engels's unclarity on this important question.

In seventeenth century England you had an essentially capitalist economy in growing contradiction to an essentially precapitalist and anti-capitalist political structure. This was, as Anderson explained, the usual situation with absolute monarchies. The English Revolution resolved this contradiction.

Indeed you had the same landlords, the "gentry," dominating the House of Commons after the Revolution as before, as they had already become capitalist landlords before the Revolution. The difference was that now they, unlike the monarch, were in charge of England.

If the Cavaliers had won, then England would have gone the way of Spain, where the Spanish absolute monarchy paralyzed capitalist development until Napoleon swept it away. It was indeed as key a moment in English history as the Norman Conquest, if not more so.

You can see this in the American colonies, by the way, with the "Roundhead" Puritan colony in Massachusetts the seedbed of the North, and the "Cavalier" colony of Virginia, a remarkably large percentage of whose original settlers were nobles and their servants, becoming the seedbed of the South, with its slave system.

The American Civil War of the nineteenth century can usefully be seen as the last chapter of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

I asked this question in the history forums awhile back, where is the link if anyone wants to give it a read: http://www.revleft.com/vb/opinions-thomas-painei-t152000/index.html?t=152000

I do want to share something that was posted in the above thread though. It is supposedly a short exchange between Jefferson and Paine.

Jefferson-- wherever man is free, that is my country

Paine - wherever he is in chains, that is mine

Jefferson's is good, but Paine's shows a greater concern and solidarity for the oppressed I think.

And Jefferson of course was a slaveholder, indeed the best and most capable representative of the "class" of slaveholders during the American Revolution. It was he that forged the "Virginia dynasty" that maintained the control of the Southern slavemasters over the US government that wasn't really broken until the Second American Revolution, the more important one, led by Lincoln.

Jefferson was a student of Gramsci before his time. Rather than crudely demanding outright slaveholder dominion like a Calhoun, he maintained the *hegemony* of the slaveowners over American society through "Jeffersonian democracy," mobilizing the American farmers and artisans vs. the New England based rising capitalist class. And white racism of course, which he was the main and most influential advocate for among Enlightenment intellectuals.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

There is certainly some proto-social-liberal elements in Paine's thought, but overall he seems to lean more to the support/guarantee of property of petty-bourgeois small owners rather than for the state regulation of the capitalist enterprises and state welfare for proletarians, as the so-called "Progressives" later did.

Mmm ... you're right.

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

TMH, you may find it interesting to note the Spartacists sometimes call for the Civil War to be "completed", and if you've ever lived in the Deep South, you can see why, and I rather agree with them.

[A Marxist Historian]

TMH, you may find it interesting to note the Spartacists sometimes call for the Civil War to be "completed", and if you've ever lived in the Deep South, you can see why, and I rather agree with them.

Me three. I grew up in a not-so-deep part of the South, and was glad to escape.

Lincoln definitely *did not* complete the job. His successor Andrew Johnson was very very bad news.

The historical articles by Jacob Zorn that the Spartacists have been publishing lately are IMHO some of the best Marxist historical stuff on the USA I have ever seen.

(And, in case anybody wonders, no I'm not him.)

-M.H.-

[Jose Gracchus]

Do you have a link?

[A Marxist Historian]

Do you have a link?

Whoops! I am a bit dyslexic in my old age. Got the name crisscrossed with somebody else, have corrected my mistake. Not the first time I've done something like that, gotta watch it.

Anyway, these articles by Jacob Zorn are all posted on the ICL website and are searchable.

In fact, here's the search string URL:

http://www.picosearch.com/cgi-bin/ts.pl

I note the search string doesn't include "Zorn" for some reason, may be a quirk of the website. Anyway, if that doesn't get you these articles, just plug "Zorn" into the search box you get.

Should give you links to seven articles (some co-authored) and an index.

-M.H.-

[RED DAVE]

The lowdown on feudal survivals in the Hudson Valley seems to be that certain feudal property forms involving tenantry but not ownership of land survived in that region until about 1845. However, as with other survivals, they served the existing capitalist form of agriculture: production for the market. What was going was something more like sharecropping than feudal villeinage. However, there were certain archaic customs and attitudes that did prevail.

Melville set one of his novels, Pierre, in this region and among this "feudal" class.

http://www.bernehistory.org/area_history/antiRent1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War

RED DAVE

[A Marxist Historian]

The lowdown on feudal survivals in the Hudson Valley seems to be that certain feudal property forms involving tenantry but not ownership of land survived in that region until about 1845. However, as with other survivals, they served the existing capitalist form of agriculture: production for the market. What was going was something more like sharecropping than feudal villeinage. However, there were certain archaic customs and attitudes that did prevail.

Melville set one of his novels, Pierre, in this region and among this "feudal" class.

http://www.bernehistory.org/area_history/antiRent1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War

RED DAVE

That sounds about right. This must have something to do with the fact that New York was originally a Dutch colony, not an English. The Dutch bourgeois revolution was the very first one, and did not rid Holland of all feudal survivals as thoroughly as the English, to say nothing of the French.

Teddy and Frank Delano Roosevelt, by the way, were descendants of exactly those old Hudson Valley landlords with feudal pretensions. One of the reasons that the New England WASP capitalists who dominated and still basically dominate the Republican Party never totally trusted either of them. Looks like the Republicans are about to run a New England Mormon of all things for President, whose father used to make cars, but not very well.

The Bush family, despite their Texan populist pretensions, are basically Connecticut WASP bourgeois.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

I'm with Christopher Hill on that one. I've liked what I've read of his stuff, not enough unfortunately.

Yes, there was a grand feudal structure that came crashing down, called "absolute monarchy." Perry Anderson significantly advanced Marxism IMHO with his demonstration of the essentially "feudal" essence of absolute monarchy as a political structure, improving over Marx and Engels's unclarity on this important question.

In seventeenth century England you had an essentially capitalist economy in growing contradiction to an essentially precapitalist and anti-capitalist political structure. This was, as Anderson explained, the usual situation with absolute monarchies. The English Revolution resolved this contradiction.

Indeed you had the same landlords, the "gentry," dominating the House of Commons after the Revolution as before, as they had already become capitalist landlords before the Revolution. The difference was that now they, unlike the monarch, were in charge of England.

If the Cavaliers had won, then England would have gone the way of Spain, where the Spanish absolute monarchy paralyzed capitalist development until Napoleon swept it away. It was indeed as key a moment in English history as the Norman Conquest, if not more so.
I think that we may be arguing past each other here, a little bit; I'm not arguing that the English Civil Wars did not represent an important event in the development of English capitalism, or that the attempted absolute monarchy of the Stuarts would not have represented a feudal institute, but that the English Civil Wars did not themselves mark a sweeping transition from feudalism to capitalism, as can be argued in other countries. By that point, most of the social obligations, between and across classes, that constituted feudalism had been dissolved outside of the Gaelic fringe (where they required the "revolution from above" of anti-Jacobite repression). In much of England, the Insular model of agricultural rationalisation meant that there weren't even very many peasants left to actually constitute a feudal society, the majority having emerged as either medium-sized farmers, or the landless farm labourers who worked for them.


You can see this in the American colonies, by the way, with the "Roundhead" Puritan colony in Massachusetts the seedbed of the North, and the "Cavalier" colony of Virginia, a remarkably large percentage of whose original settlers were nobles and their servants, becoming the seedbed of the South, with its slave system.

The American Civil War of the nineteenth century can usefully be seen as the last chapter of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century.

-M.H.-I'm not sure that this follows follows. The slave-system prospered in the South not because it had some latent feudal character, but because it remained an economic colony of Great Britain, and so lacked the compulsion to modernise its system of production. The master-slave relationships was still essentially capitalistic, just archaic.


The lowdown on feudal survivals in the Hudson Valley seems to be that certain feudal property forms involving tenantry but not ownership of land survived in that region until about 1845. However, as with other survivals, they served the existing capitalist form of agriculture: production for the market. What was going was something more like sharecropping than feudal villeinage. However, there were certain archaic customs and attitudes that did prevail.

Melville set one of his novels, Pierre, in this region and among this "feudal" class.

http://www.bernehistory.org/area_history/antiRent1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Rent_War

RED DAVE
Interesting, but that strikes me as something closer to an un-rationalised set of capitalist social relations combined with some archaic legal institutions, not feudal relations as such. It sounds quite a lot like the situation in the Scottish Highlands and Isles in the late 17th and early 18th century, during which time even those of the Gaelic nobility who were converting their feudal holdings into private property still wielded certain legal authority over the "clan" territory attributed to each chieftain.

[A Marxist Historian]

I think that we may be arguing past each other here, a little bit; I'm not arguing that the English Civil Wars did not represent an important event in the development of English capitalism, or that the attempted absolute monarchy of the Stuarts would not have represented a feudal institute, but that the English Civil Wars did not themselves mark a sweeping transition from feudalism to capitalism, as can be argued in other countries. By that point, most of the social obligations, between and across classes, that constituted feudalism had been dissolved outside of the Gaelic fringe (where they required the "revolution from above" of anti-Jacobite repression). In much of England, the Insular model of agricultural rationalisation meant that there weren't even very many peasants left to actually constitute a feudal society, the majority having emerged as either medium-sized farmers, or the landless farm labourers who worked for them.

I take your point. However, I think it would actually be unusual for a revolution to mark an *economic* transformation between feudalism and capitalism, as revolutions are ultimately political not economic phenomena, as are wars of course ("politics by other means").

A social revolution is a revolution in the political superstructure that either, as with the Russian Revolution, makes *possible* a subsequent transformation of the base or, and this is almost always the case with bourgeois revolutions, brings the political superstructure back in line with the economic base, which previously had been "bursting feudal integuments" as Marx or maybe it was Engels put it somewhere or other.


I'm not sure that this follows follows. The slave-system prospered in the South not because it had some latent feudal character, but because it remained an economic colony of Great Britain, and so lacked the compulsion to modernise its system of production. The master-slave relationships was still essentially capitalistic, just archaic.

Slavery is not feudalism. The master-slave relationship is not feudalism at all, any more than it is capitalism. It is a relationship between producers, nonproducers and the means of production that is quite different from either.

Now, the South did *not* have a slavery mode of production like in ancient Rome or Greece (as Eugene Genovese used to argue before he went over the wall). Rather, the slave plantations were integrated into an overall capitalist economy. But the relations of production and mode of production on the plantation *itself* were noncapitalist and nonfeudal.

And indeed for that very reason the South lacked the compulsion to modernize that the North had. Thus as late as the Civil War the South had few railroads, all of its major cities were in border states (except New Orleans, the seaport for the entire Midwest), hardly any educational system, at least by Northern standards, and didn't even have textile factories to spin the cotton that it grew.

The result being that you had *two* ruling classes in America until the Civil War, not one, defined by two different modes of production, engaged alternatively in cooperation and mutual struggle. With the workers and farmers basically as subordinate pawns, just like the slaves, with little more real independence, until the basic class struggle in American society was finally resolved through civil war.

So how did this relate to English colonialism? In that colonial Virginia, made up not of Puritans seeking to become merchants and farmers, capitalists, but of "cavaliers" from the English nobility seeking to become the nearest possible equivalent of feudal lords, borrowed the idea of slave plantations from the Spanish and Portuguese.

New England and Virginia were both economic colonies of England, just of different types. New England revolted quicker against England, but Virginia and the Carolinas did too, because they wanted to be able to sell their tobacco and rice to the Spanish and French as well as the English.

-M.H.-



Interesting, but that strikes me as something closer to an un-rationalised set of capitalist social relations combined with some archaic legal institutions, not feudal relations as such. It sounds quite a lot like the situation in the Scottish Highlands and Isles in the late 17th and early 18th century, during which time even those of the Gaelic nobility who were converting their feudal holdings into private property still wielded certain legal authority over the "clan" territory attributed to each chieftain.

[Tim Finnegan]

I take your point. However, I think it would actually be unusual for a revolution to mark an *economic* transformation between feudalism and capitalism, as revolutions are ultimately political not economic phenomena, as are wars of course ("politics by other means").

A social revolution is a revolution in the political superstructure that either, as with the Russian Revolution, makes *possible* a subsequent transformation of the base or, and this is almost always the case with bourgeois revolutions, brings the political superstructure back in line with the economic base, which previously had been "bursting feudal integuments" as Marx or maybe it was Engels put it somewhere or other.
I suppose what I'm wondering, then, is to the extent that the superstructure in the British kingdoms was out of line with the base, given that the Stuart monarchy did not represent any political totality but a single institution within a political system which for the most part survived the Civil Wars quite intact. However, I won't push it.


Slavery is not feudalism. The master-slave relationship is not feudalism at all, any more than it is capitalism. It is a relationship between producers, nonproducers and the means of production that is quite different from either.

Now, the South did *not* have a slavery mode of production like in ancient Rome or Greece (as Eugene Genovese used to argue before he went over the wall). Rather, the slave plantations were integrated into an overall capitalist economy. But the relations of production and mode of production on the plantation *itself* were noncapitalist and nonfeudal.

And indeed for that very reason the South lacked the compulsion to modernize that the North had. Thus as late as the Civil War the South had few railroads, all of its major cities were in border states (except New Orleans, the seaport for the entire Midwest), hardly any educational system, at least by Northern standards, and didn't even have textile factories to spin the cotton that it grew.

The result being that you had *two* ruling classes in America until the Civil War, not one, defined by two different modes of production, engaged alternatively in cooperation and mutual struggle. With the workers and farmers basically as subordinate pawns, just like the slaves, with little more real independence, until the basic class struggle in American society was finally resolved through civil war.

So how did this relate to English colonialism? In that colonial Virginia, made up not of Puritans seeking to become merchants and farmers, capitalists, but of "cavaliers" from the English nobility seeking to become the nearest possible equivalent of feudal lords, borrowed the idea of slave plantations from the Spanish and Portuguese.

New England and Virginia were both economic colonies of England, just of different types. New England revolted quicker against England, but Virginia and the Carolinas did too, because they wanted to be able to sell their tobacco and rice to the Spanish and French as well as the English.I'm not sure I buy this part about a "nonfeudal, noncapitalist" mode of production. Firstly, how could such a form out of the internal contradictions of feudalism? Presumably you're not suggesting that it's possible to create new modes of production out of thin air just by rounding up a lot of slaves. Secondly, in what sense did it represent a fundamental departure from capitalism? It was still a method of extracting surplus value from labour, which is by definition something which occurs within a system of generalised commodity production. Rather, it seems to me that the slave system was simply an archaic and inefficient form of capitalist-proletarian relations, with absurd legal restrictions on the freedom of the latter- and let's not pretend that such things are incompatible with capitalism as such, given the various outright legal inequalities between employer and employee that existed in much of the Euro-American world, such as those detailed in the various Master and Servant Acts of Great Britain.

[A Marxist Historian]

I suppose what I'm wondering, then, is to the extent that the superstructure in the British kingdoms was out of line with the base, given that the Stuart monarchy did not represent any political totality but a single institution within a political system which for the most part survived the Civil Wars quite intact. However, I won't push it.

I'm not sure I buy this part about a "nonfeudal, noncapitalist" mode of production. Firstly, how could such a form out of the internal contradictions of feudalism? Presumably you're not suggesting that it's possible to create new modes of production out of thin air just by rounding up a lot of slaves. Secondly, in what sense did it represent a fundamental departure from capitalism? It was still a method of extracting surplus value from labour, which is by definition something which occurs within a system of generalised commodity production. Rather, it seems to me that the slave system was simply an archaic and inefficient form of capitalist-proletarian relations, with absurd legal restrictions on the freedom of the latter- and let's not pretend that such things are incompatible with capitalism as such, given the various outright legal inequalities between employer and employee that existed in much of the Euro-American world, such as those detailed in the various Master and Servant Acts of Great Britain.

It wasn't an entire slavery mode of production generated somehow out of feudalism or capitalism. The slave plantations were certainly integrated economically into a capitalist market system operating *outside* the plantation's boundaries.

But the relations of production between master and slave are simply not capitalist, and neither are they feudal. That is objective fact. Slave are simly not proletarians or serfs, and their slavemasters are capitalists if and only if they have capital holdings outside and other than their plantations, which some did but most did not.

George Washington, in addition to being the largest slaveowner with the biggest plantation, was also the richest man in America, and was genuinely undecided as to whether he preferred to be a slavemaster or a capitalist. In the end he went with the capitalist option, and freed his slaves in his will.

A society dominated by plantation slavery, like the American South, simply operates according to different rules than a capitalist society, which is why the American Civil War was inevitable sooner or later. Two different social systems cannot coexist forever in one state. As Republican leader Seward put it, that America cannot forever be "half slave, half free." As Lincoln put it, "a house divided will not stand."

In *all* class societies, the upper classes extract social surplus from the oppressed classes, whether capitalist or feudalist or slave or whatever. Slavemasters *do not* extract surplus value from the laborer through a market transation, which is the essence of capitalism. Rather they own the labor and own his labor power, it is their property not his. A totally different relation.

-M.H.-

[eric922]

One more thing I'd like to add from my thread on this in the history forums. According to a poster mentioned that Noam Chomsky thinks that Paine and Jefferson would be libertarian socialists if they were alive today.

[A Marxist Historian]

One more thing I'd like to add from my thread on this in the history forums. According to a poster mentioned that Noam Chomsky thinks that Paine and Jefferson would be libertarian socialists if they were alive today.

I am tempted to sneer about Chomsky, but I suspect I've already met my sneer quota for today.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

It wasn't an entire slavery mode of production generated somehow out of feudalism or capitalism. The slave plantations were certainly integrated economically into a capitalist market system operating *outside* the plantation's boundaries.

But the relations of production between master and slave are simply not capitalist, and neither are they feudal. That is objective fact. Slave are simly not proletarians or serfs, and their slavemasters are capitalists if and only if they have capital holdings outside and other than their plantations, which some did but most did not.

George Washington, in addition to being the largest slaveowner with the biggest plantation, was also the richest man in America, and was genuinely undecided as to whether he preferred to be a slavemaster or a capitalist. In the end he went with the capitalist option, and freed his slaves in his will.

A society dominated by plantation slavery, like the American South, simply operates according to different rules than a capitalist society, which is why the American Civil War was inevitable sooner or later. Two different social systems cannot coexist forever in one state. As Republican leader Seward put it, that America cannot forever be "half slave, half free." As Lincoln put it, "a house divided will not stand."
Firstly, you're confusing social relations with the means of exploitation, i.e. the relations of production being mediated through commodities with the institution of wage-labour as the means by which proletarians are exploited. Capitalist social relations are relations in which relsocialations between people take the form of economic relations between commodities, which is entirely present in this case; to assume that the fact that the slave is owned outright, i.e. that he is in himself a commodity, rather than his labour power being purchased bit by bit, makes this relationship fundamentally different is to accept the mystifying effect of capitalist legal institutions.
Secondly, you're assuming that to be a capitalist class is to be an urban industrial class, which is not the case. That the Souther planters constituted a de facto colonial elite in conflict with the Northern industrial bourgeoisie does not suggest that they must have been some novel, second class, any more than it suggests that an English county squire and industrialist constituted economically distinct classes.


In *all* class societies, the upper classes extract social surplus from the oppressed classes, whether capitalist or feudalist or slave or whatever. Slavemasters *do not* extract surplus value from the laborer through a market transation, which is the essence of capitalism. Rather they own the labor and own his labor power, it is their property not his. A totally different relation.The point of the realisation of value is the sale of the commodity produced by the worker, not the purchase of the labour power from the worker. As such, the purchase of labour on a market is not what defines the appropriation of surplus value. It just so happens that the cost of reproduction of slaves is very low, and that they have no choice in the matter, neither of which constitutes a disqualification from capitalism in itself, legal property forms not actually constituting relations of production.

[A Marxist Historian]

Firstly, you're confusing social relations with the means of exploitation, i.e. the relations of production being mediated through commodities with the institution of wage-labour as the means by which proletarians are exploited. Capitalist social relations are relations in which relsocialations between people take the form of economic relations between commodities, which is entirely present in this case; to assume that the fact that the slave is owned outright, i.e. that he is in himself a commodity, rather than his labour power being purchased bit by bit, makes this relationship fundamentally different is to accept the mystifying effect of capitalist legal institutions.

It is precisely the *relationships between people,* that which lies underneath the economic relations between commodities, that are fundamentally different on a slave plantation than in a factory or a shop. Chattel slavery is *real,* it is not merely a legal formality. It is *not* a disguised form of wage labor, and a plantation owner is *not* merely a capitalist who happens to own a different sort of private property.

The entire social dynamics of the society are different at every level. A capitalist, if he modernizes the plantation and the society he lives in, makes a higher profit. Modernization of the South, on the other hand, would have undermined slavery, and slavemasters actively opposed this, quite successfully.

Any technological innovations that meant human skill became important would have given the slaves leverage, the last thing that was wanted. Picking cotton on the other hand is dead simple, albeit incredibly tiresome. After the cotton gin made the Southern cotton plantation practical, technological progress came to an immediate screaming halt.

The wageworker has an economic interest in working hard, long and well, to at least potentially get a better paycheck, which he will if the boss is smart. The slave has no such interest, his interest is in sabotaging production as much as possible so as to bring the plantation to collapse. A notorious feature of Southern slave plantations, as that was the only really practical form of resistance to slavery until the Civil War broke out and they could help the North win.

A slave plantation society like the old South was static, expanding only horizontally, with none of the capitalist dynamic for technological change, advancement and growth of the productive forces.

Which is why you had the steadily increasing social divergence between South and North, finally leading to the civil war when the South's longstanding grip over the U.S. government broke down, and you had a president elected on a platform of stopping the geographical spread of slavery.

The Southern economy as a whole was capitalist, it was hardly a rebirth of ancient Rome or Greece, though that of course is just what the ideologues of the South saw it as. But economically, socially, culturally and politically speaking the South was utterly dominated by the slave plantations, whose internal relations were non-capitalist and operated on thoroughly non-capitalist economic foundatins.


Secondly, you're assuming that to be a capitalist class is to be an urban industrial class, which is not the case. That the Souther planters constituted a de facto colonial elite in conflict with the Northern industrial bourgeoisie does not suggest that they must have been some novel, second class, any more than it suggests that an English county squire and industrialist constituted economically distinct classes.

A country squire is a capitalist landlord collecting rent, and his economic interests are different from those of the yeoman farmer making a profit and paying rent to him. But the relations between people here are capitalist, generating wage labor, profit and rent.

A slavemaster is a different kettle of fish altogether. If you just have a few slave plantations as drops in the bucket in an overall capitalist economy that is one thing. But when you have an entire society where some 9-10th of the surplus value produced and land ownership consists of slave plantations, then you have the creation of a social class whose economic and social interests conflict *fundamentally* with those of capitalists, and between whom a struggle is just as inevitable as the struggle between capitalists and workers.

Indeed in America in the first half of the nineteenth century the class struggle between capitalist and worker was *subordinated* to the more fundamental struggle between capitalist and slavemaster. The workers of the North by and large supported the Democratic Party, the slavemasters' party, under the banner of "Jacksonian Democracy" and Andrew Jackson's war with the Bank of the U.S. and the Northern capitalist elite in general. Whereas the slaves of course supported the capitalist party, the Republican party, as soon as they got the chance.

The decisive role here being played by the small farmers of the West, who initially supported the Democrats as the consistent party of white supremacy, most determined on driving out the Indians. As with Jackson's disposession of the Cherokees and the "Trail of Tears." But once the Indians were defeated, and the issue became whether the West would become a land of small scale capitalist farming or large scale slave plantations, they swung the other way, setting off the Civil War and enabling the North to win it.

Be it noted I am oversimplifying here, not dealing with the complexities of the Whigs etc. But I don't want this post to be any longer than it already is. Everything I am leaving out or sliding over is merely details.

-M.H.-


The point of the realisation of value is the sale of the commodity produced by the worker, not the purchase of the labour power from the worker. As such, the purchase of labour on a market is not what defines the appropriation of surplus value. It just so happens that the cost of reproduction of slaves is very low, and that they have no choice in the matter, neither of which constitutes a disqualification from capitalism in itself, legal property forms not actually constituting relations of production.

[Tim Finnegan]

It is precisely the *relationships between people,* that which lies underneath the economic relations between commodities, that are fundamentally different on a slave plantation than in a factory or a shop. Chattel slavery is *real,* it is not merely a legal formality. It is *not* a disguised form of wage labor, and a plantation owner is *not* merely a capitalist who happens to own a different sort of private property.

The entire social dynamics of the society are different at every level. A capitalist, if he modernizes the plantation and the society he lives in, makes a higher profit. Modernization of the South, on the other hand, would have undermined slavery, and slavemasters actively opposed this, quite successfully.

Any technological innovations that meant human skill became important would have given the slaves leverage, the last thing that was wanted. Picking cotton on the other hand is dead simple, albeit incredibly tiresome. After the cotton gin made the Southern cotton plantation practical, technological progress came to an immediate screaming halt.

The wageworker has an economic interest in working hard, long and well, to at least potentially get a better paycheck, which he will if the boss is smart. The slave has no such interest, his interest is in sabotaging production as much as possible so as to bring the plantation to collapse. A notorious feature of Southern slave plantations, as that was the only really practical form of resistance to slavery until the Civil War broke out and they could help the North win.

A slave plantation society like the old South was static, expanding only horizontally, with none of the capitalist dynamic for technological change, advancement and growth of the productive forces.

Which is why you had the steadily increasing social divergence between South and North, finally leading to the civil war when the South's longstanding grip over the U.S. government broke down, and you had a president elected on a platform of stopping the geographical spread of slavery.

The Southern economy as a whole was capitalist, it was hardly a rebirth of ancient Rome or Greece, though that of course is just what the ideologues of the South saw it as. But economically, socially, culturally and politically speaking the South was utterly dominated by the slave plantations, whose internal relations were non-capitalist and operated on thoroughly non-capitalist economic foundatins.
You really haven't proven your position here, you've just noted that the particular format of slave-ownership rendered it an historical dead-end. If you're going to argue for slave-ownership as a distinctly non-capitalist exercise, then you're going to have explain two thing: firstly, in what sense the relations found on a plantation were something that existed outside of the terms of a society of generalised commodity production (the old debate about whether or not slaves were proletarians can be set aside for now), and, secondly, how such a formation could emerge out of feudalism- indeed, out of a declining feudalism heavily tinged by the emerging capitalism- according to a Marxist understanding of social revolution as the resolution of the internal contradictions of one social formation giving rise to another.


A country squire is a capitalist landlord collecting rent, and his economic interests are different from those of the yeoman farmer making a profit and paying rent to him. But the relations between people here are capitalist, generating wage labor, profit and rent.

A slavemaster is a different kettle of fish altogether. If you just have a few slave plantations as drops in the bucket in an overall capitalist economy that is one thing. But when you have an entire society where some 9-10th of the surplus value produced and land ownership consists of slave plantations, then you have the creation of a social class whose economic and social interests conflict *fundamentally* with those of capitalists, and between whom a struggle is just as inevitable as the struggle between capitalists and workers.

Indeed in America in the first half of the nineteenth century the class struggle between capitalist and worker was *subordinated* to the more fundamental struggle between capitalist and slavemaster. The workers of the North by and large supported the Democratic Party, the slavemasters' party, under the banner of "Jacksonian Democracy" and Andrew Jackson's war with the Bank of the U.S. and the Northern capitalist elite in general. Whereas the slaves of course supported the capitalist party, the Republican party, as soon as they got the chance.

The decisive role here being played by the small farmers of the West, who initially supported the Democrats as the consistent party of white supremacy, most determined on driving out the Indians. As with Jackson's disposession of the Cherokees and the "Trail of Tears." But once the Indians were defeated, and the issue became whether the West would become a land of small scale capitalist farming or large scale slave plantations, they swung the other way, setting off the Civil War and enabling the North to win it.

Be it noted I am oversimplifying here, not dealing with the complexities of the Whigs etc. But I don't want this post to be any longer than it already is. Everything I am leaving out or sliding over is merely details.I don't disagree with your analysis of the political conflicts in question, but I don't see who this actually constitutes an argument for slaveowners as a non-capitalist class. Everything that you say of them could just as equally be true for a section of capital, just as, per my example, the conflict between agrarian gentry and industrial bourgeoisie in Great Britain and elsewhere represented a conflict within capital.

[reformnow88]

hes the only founding father who's work I would ever read!! I live in the bible belt as well and they really don't like him around here hes barely mentioned.

[A Marxist Historian]

You really haven't proven your position here, you've just noted that the particular format of slave-ownership rendered it an historical dead-end. If you're going to argue for slave-ownership as a distinctly non-capitalist exercise, then you're going to have explain two thing: firstly, in what sense the relations found on a plantation were something that existed outside of the terms of a society of generalised commodity production (the old debate about whether or not slaves were proletarians can be set aside for now), and, secondly, how such a formation could emerge out of feudalism- indeed, out of a declining feudalism heavily tinged by the emerging capitalism- according to a Marxist understanding of social revolution as the resolution of the internal contradictions of one social formation giving rise to another.

Perhaps our disagreement is ultimately terminological. The slave-master relations, production relations, on the slave plantations *did not* exist outside of a society of generalised commodity production. The plantations produced commodities and sold them. However the social relations *within* the plantations themselves were noncapitalist, and generated a noncapitalist ruling class.

As a social formation, the plantation slavemasters did not emerge out of "feudalism," but out of a group of English nobility who made up the great majority of the original Virginia settlers, who desired not to go in for smallscale capitalist farming as in Massachusetts, but, when it turned out there was no gold to be found, opted for tobacco plantations worked by indentured servitude nd then slavery as the nearest *equivalent* they could find by the seventeenth century to being a feudal nobility. In Carolina, the original Carolina settlers even briefly attempted to establish an explicitly feudal order on American soil with all the classic feudal trappings, barons, feudal tenure and the whole nine yards, which was a total failure of course.

Basically, America was seen as the perfect laboratory for social experiments, both by the Massachusetts Puritans and the Virginia Cavaliers.

The result being that the US North generated a society quite similar to that of England after the English Revolution, whereas Virginia and the Carolinas give one a taste of what England might have looked like if the Cavaliers had won.

The victory of the Cavaliers in England would not have introduced slavery, but would likely have consolidated indentured servitude as the main labor system. I haven't studied this, but I've heard it claimed that one of the results of the Puritan victory in England was the withering away of indenture, the London 'prentice bands being a major base of support for the Roundheads. In Virginia at any rate the distinction between indentured servitude and slavery was essentially the time limit and little else.


I don't disagree with your analysis of the political conflicts in question, but I don't see who this actually constitutes an argument for slaveowners as a non-capitalist class. Everything that you say of them could just as equally be true for a section of capital, just as, per my example, the conflict between agrarian gentry and industrial bourgeoisie in Great Britain and elsewhere represented a conflict within capital.

The difference being the agrarian gentry were very much capitalist landlords, indeed Cromwell himself was one of them and they were the layer of the English bourgeoisie that *led* the English Revolution. Not surprising as there was no industrial bourgeoisie, being as the Industrial Revolution hadn't happened yet.

-M.H.-