What if the slaves had free themselves?

[R_P_A_S]

I was just thinking the other day. It was white people and cival war who ultimately freed the slaves in the U.S. right? I mean they weren't entirely free all over the country. But it open up some doors towards their total freedom from slave owners.

Why do you think the slaves didn't raise up and revolt against their white slave masters? Why do you think that it would of been better? or worst? perhaps blacks in the U.S. would have a different attitude and just different culture, etc. There was never a black slave who stood out as the revolutionary and the one who free them!??

discuss!?

[rouchambeau]

Little bit of history: After the southern blacks were freed from outright slavery they continued to work as share croppers and were, for all intents and purposes, still slaves. The rest moved to the cities where they were wage workers, but treated worse than the whites.

I think it would have been radically different depending on what you mean by "freeing themselves". I bet that if slaves had freed themselves while securing their own property they might be much better off.

If they had freed themselves without taking property I think they would have ended up not much different than now, but with a better sense of solidarity from a struggle.

[Red Heretic]

I actually brought a similar question up once at a meeting with a bunch of other comrades. One comrade cited to me an incident where there was a successful slave revolution in Asia, but I can't remember the name...

Either way, the dictatorship of the slave ultimately led to breaking down inequalities between the slaves... but not modern industrialization... and it also wasn't internationalist like proletarian revolution is, so it was confined to the single country with no chance of spreading outside those boundaries.

Essentially, it led to a sort of agrarian socialism which lasted for a while, but ultimately couldn't defend itself once modern capitalist industrialization, colonialism, and imperialism developed around it.

If a slave revolution had happened in the USA, and the dictatorship of the slave was established, the revolution probably would have ended up being crushed by Great Britain, or some other western power, and it would have become a semi-colinial society, with the need for a New Democratic revolution, followed by socialist revolution.

[afrikaNOW]

Hey, RPAS, i suggest you read more about the many of slave rebellions. I mean just take alook at the Haitian Revolution. That revolt and the the plots of Nat Turner,Denmark Vesey and Gabriel Prosser to name a FEW. This put fear into white's hearts, slaveowner and nonslave owner alike and made them take many precautions to prevent a slave revolt from happening.

You think there wasn't any slave rebellions because they don't teach you about that in history class.

[violencia.Proletariat]

John Brown and other abolishionists wanted to inspire slave rebellions in order to end slavery (Harpers Ferry).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29

He also hacked up slave owners in Kansas.

[Janus]

One comrade cited to me an incident where there was a successful slave revolution in Asia, but I can't remember the name...
The Mamluks?


There were several slave revolts in America but due to poor coordination and little education, they were only successful for a short while at best.


He also hacked up slave owners in Kansas.
He hacked up pro-slavery settlers. Not all of them owned slaves.

[Amusing Scrotum]

I'm pretty sure there was a pretty large slave revolt on one of the Caribbean Islands around about the time of the French Revolution. If I recall correctly, they use to have the head of a white baby on a Pike....sort of like their personal "coat of arms".

Anyway, I think C.L.R. James wrote on this; possibly in the The Black Jacobian. Actually, thinking about it, I may be talking about the Haitian Revolution which has already been mentioned. My memory is getting really bad. :(

[Hampton]

http://www.leftbooks.com/online-store/scstore/graphics/slaverevolts.jpg

American Negro Slave Revolts by Herbert Aptheker

300 some odd pages of American slave revolts.

[godisdead]

there were various slave rebellions in the americas: haiti, quilombo (brazil) led by zumbi, another successful one in suriname and various other locally based rebellions. in the US aside from the aforementioned turner etc, many plantations were taken over for short periods of time.

the fact is slaves were isolated, denied access to education (ability to read and write was a death sentence in many american planations), and kept in constanst fear. on top of that aside from the plantations militias (forces) the states and other plantations lended aid when rebellions occured.

a better question is how did slaves continue to resist thru the centuries despite thier seemingly hopeless conditions?


and as far as whites "liberating" blacks... :rolleyes: .... i guess we want to erase hundreds of years of resistence and struggle and pretend a piece of paper "freed" ne one.

[RedJacobin]

There's a novel called "Fire on the Mountain" by Terry Bisson. The slaves of the South carry out a successful revolution and establish a republic of their own, which later becomes socialist. They end up fighting against Lincoln, who tries to bring the Black republic back into the union. The revolution has huge reverberations in Europe, leading to the triumph of the Paris Commune and revolutions throughout the continent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_on_the_M...%281988_book%29 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_on_the_Mountain_%281988_book%29)

[Severian]

Excuse me, but plenty of Black people did fight in the Civil War. In a sense, large parts of the Union Army became the largest and most successful slave revolt in human history. Under the leadership of the industrial capitalists - at the time a revolutionary class - and allied with working farmers and workers. Who knew the survival and expansion of slavery were a threat to their own class interests.

Despite a lot of hesitation at the beginning, the Union eventually waged a revolutionary war.

There's no reason to minimize the significance of this, or of the Emancipation Proclamation. There is every reason to emphasize that for a time after the Civil War - the period called Radical Reconstruction - Black people did have full bourgeois-democratic rights, and working people made all kinds of gains. The first public schools in the South were created, and the freed slaves began to demand "40 acres and a mule."

By 1877, this was betrayed by the capitalists, and crushed by segregationist terror - the beginning of the KKK. If you're going to play "what if", that's a good one: what if Radical Reconstruction had continued, and Black and white working people had united to fight for land to the tiller, breaking up the plantations?

****

The awful truth is, there are damn few victorious slave revolts in human history. Maybe only one - Haiti, as others have mentioned. From ancient Rome to the 19th century, Spartacus and Sicily to Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey - most were crushed sooner or later.

[Janus]

Excuse me, but plenty of Black people did fight in the Civil War. In a sense, large parts of the Union Army became the largest and most successful slave revolt in human history
That's a strange way of putting it.

A revolt is technically defined as a battle against authority, since Northern blacks were not subject to slavery anymore, they were not directly resisting authority but rather fighting to help their brethren out.

[Janus]

Oh and not all slave revolts were on land.

There were some immediate ones that occured during the trip over to the Americas.

Amistad revolt (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Amistad)

[Marukusu]

Anyone heard of a certain roman slave named Spartacus?

[Revolucion Compadre]

In Cuba, Carlos Manuel de Cespedes, freed his slaves and they joined him in fight against Spain for independance.

[EwokUtopia]

The Union didnt end slavery because of its caring and humanitarian nature, it ended it because Slavery was anachronistic at this point in history. The South was backwards, and they had backwards semi-feudal proto-capitalism, that had room for slavery in its system. Slavery in the north was no longer desirable because the North was an Industrial Capitalist society, they didnt need slaves because they had the proletariate. Slavery has never coincided with industrial capitalism (save for the extreme example of Nazi Germany, but the Confederacy did not have massive labour and extermination camps for the African slaves, so its different) because Industry makes slavery obsolete from an exploitational point of view. It is cheaper to kick down a couple of easily made dollars to the workers (and tell them that they are free) than it is to keep watch over them constantly, feed them, clothe them, give them room and board, make sure they are reproducing and well fed enough to work, et cetera.

Let nobody say that the Union represented a morally superior faction because they opposed a form of slavery that was largely obsolete. The North, lets not forget that pretty much as soon as the war was over those men in blue came out to the west to conduct a massive genocide of the indigenous inhabitants of what is now America. They made the American West into the Lebensraum for the White Americans, this is easily as bad, if not worse than the crimes of the confederacy.

If the slaves had freed themselves, that would have been great, but the problem is that even if they managed to secure land for themselves, they would still have ended up exploited by the Industrial Giants of America and Europe and would have probably landed themselves in the same situation that Haiti was (and is) subjected to for the last two centuries.

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 13 2006, 09:55 PM
The Union didnt end slavery because of its caring and humanitarian nature, it ended it because Slavery was anachronistic at this point in history.
In other words, because the Union was progressive compared to the Confederacy. I'm not sure why you're complaining about the Union not acting out of morality or humanitarianism. What government does?

[la-troy]

The story of slavery is one of revolts. The first slave revolt broke out in the first year of slavery I think.While yes the lack of education among the slaves did impact on the results of revolts but you are underestimating the slaves. Most of the larger slaves revolts had good leaders, often African born slaves,. their were usually two types of revolts those that sprang up due to just frustration or slaves exploiting any weakness among the slave owners and revolts that were planned and organize. The main reasons for the failures of the revolts were
1) betrayal , often by creole slaves, as in the case of Tacky
2) lack of equipment, this put them at a great disadvantage to the slave owners who had guns and canons and trained militias at their disposal.
3) lack of a killer instinct, contrary to popular belief many slaves did not necessarily want to destroy whites. example The Baptist revolt where only one white was killed despite the massiveness of the revolt also Cuffy's rebellion in which he refused to press home his advantage after having the white population surrounded seeking a "peaceful settlement" ( he later committed suicide after his deputies challenged his competency).
In the popular Haitian revolt Tussiant had refused to exterminate the French hoping for peace he only attacked them when he say they would not give freedom. He trust them again and it led to his death (he was also betrayed by his generals)

Even If the slaves had freed them self it would not change much, even if they had taken land and other means of production. The fact that they lacked education impacted yes but is often over credited. They would have freed them selves in a white man's world. lets say we take the Maroons of Jamaica they had fought and gained their freedom and near independence. However they still had to live in a white mans world. They had to play by their rules. A better example is Haiti. Haiti gained independence but what happened? they were completely sabotaged by the white nations. they could not trade what little they had they were charged money by france for their independence, Money they could not possible pay that would heavily impact on their affairs in later years. And then we all know about the imperialism practised by America, Canada and Germany.

So in my views it makes absolutely no difference.

[Floyce White]

Conversely, what if the poor whites had successfully "freed themselves" from debt slavery to merchants, from contract servitude, from wage slavery to workhouses, and so on? Really, the struggles of all workers should be considered in any historical epoch--not just of one particular type of servant.

[capitalistwhore]

I couldn't agree more Floyce.

There was a reference made to the slave transformation into sharecropping (and it being not much better than slavery.) However, in the South, black and whites both participated in sharecropping. There's all sorts of information out there on the plight of sharecropping in the South. In fact, cultural elements such as cuisine and music were shared by the black and white sharecroppers.

Here is an article I found by googling it, but it gives some basic information on the White Mississippi sharecropper and its worth a read: http://mshistory.k12.ms.us/features/feature50/farmers.htm

What is important is that the conditions existed across racial lines and struggle is a universal one.

[bootleg42]

Originally posted by Floyce [email protected] 28, 2007 02:21 am
Conversely, what if the poor whites had successfully "freed themselves" from debt slavery to merchants, from contract servitude, from wage slavery to workhouses, and so on? Really, the struggles of all workers should be considered in any historical epoch--not just of one particular type of servant.
Good point.

I read this novel called Jubilee, by Margaret Walker, and most of the story was derived from what the author's grandmother (a former slave) told her. In the story, the slave watchkeepers (who were white) where described as VERY poor people who may have even had it worse than some slaves in terms that those poorer white people actually ended up having to eat dirt to survive while the slaves got food (of course not for humanitarian reasons). Yet the author makes sure to let us know that those REALLY poor white watchkeepers HATED the blacks and were LOYAL AS HELL to the white land owners.

If poor whites in the U.S. were only able to get this myth about race behind them and if they had only rebelled with the slaves and the few native-americans left, the world it self wouls be a different place.

I guess we can only wonder right?