Was capitalist slavery a slave society?

[jacobin1949]

I have a few questions about the Historical Materialist analysis of history

1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?

2. Would HistoMats view the fall of Rome and the rise of the Medieval church as progressive? Traditionally the middle ages are seen as the dark ages in which the greatness of the classical world fell to barbaric superstition. Does HistoMat show that this was actually a move forward from slave to classical society?

3. Who was the rival class during the slave society of the Roman Empire that eventually seized power to create feudal society? The Feudal Revolution does not seem as clear cut a class conflict as the bourgeois revolutions. For example its not like the Plebians overthrew the Patricians and then set up a feudal kingdom.

[PRC-UTE]

Originally posted by [email protected] 04, 2007 04:31 pm
I have a few questions about the Historical Materialist analysis of history

1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?
No, slavery is not peculair to one economic stage. Salvery was in it purest form in the American south, but this did not define the time period.


2. Would HistoMats view the fall of Rome and the rise of the Medieval church as progressive? Traditionally the middle ages are seen as the dark ages in which the greatness of the classical world fell to barbaric superstition. Does HistoMat show that this was actually a move forward from slave to classical society?

Yes, because it did open the way for the increase of productive forces, both fuedelism and the church. It seems quite contradictory to say that fuedelism represented a step forward: Rome with its centralised state could create architectural wonders that weren't reproduced until the 20th century. However the disintegration aided the rise of a new society.

It is counter-intuitive, but the fact is that the anarchy did help pave the way for capitalism. Weaker states were easier to transform into capitalism than one centralised powerful empire would've been.


3. Who was the rival class during the slave society of the Roman Empire that eventually seized power to create feudal society? The Feudal Revolution does not seem as clear cut a class conflict as the bourgeois revolutions. For example its not like the Plebians overthrew the Patricians and then set up a feudal kingdom.

Actually fuedelism did organically grow within the Empire before its collapse - by the end there were even knights.

[Ander]

Originally posted by [email protected] 04, 2007 01:31 pm
1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?
Slavery existed far before the advent of capitalism.

[The Gulag]

Considering that the entirety of the Jews were enslaved thousands of years ago before the Egyptians kicked them out, I should say that slavery came before capitalism, which required actual intelligence.

[RevolverNo9]

1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?

Slavery can exist as a phenomenon within an economic mode but - it does not necessarily definte it. While we would not deny that slavery in the American South, for example, had deep and far-reaching consequences for social and economic reality in the region, it would be incorrect to say that the primary 'economic logic' of that society was anything other than capitalistic. A useful model that I once came across was that of a pillar... if you are to remove a pillar in a given economic system, would it collapse? American society didn't collapse - we certainly can imagine a modern American society without slavery. But if hypothetically we were to remove the structure of wage-labour exploitation - of capitalsit surplus-exaction - that same society would be inconceivable. This is not to deny the significant structural differences that societies have underwent as a conseqeunce of the existence or demise of slave-ownership. But it is crucial that we don't confuse 'structural' catagories with 'modal' catagories if we are to move towards successfully understanding any society and its economic logic.


2. Would HistoMats view the fall of Rome and the rise of the Medieval church as progressive? Traditionally the middle ages are seen as the dark ages in which the greatness of the classical world fell to barbaric superstition. Does HistoMat show that this was actually a move forward from slave to classical society?

'The Dark Ages' are not an adequate lable for the middle ages, rooted as they are in the European narrative of Classical civilisation and its 'rebirth' in the Renaissance. Even in the years before 1000, little was as 'dark' as old text books would have you believe. That aside, we cannot deny that the fall of Roman civilisation did bring about, at varying rates and to varying extents across Europe, a real decline in material culture. There is a case, as PRC-UTE suggests, for arguing that, despite this, the fall of Rome destroyed restrictive binds intrinsic to the Roman state that hindered development that would in actual fact take hundreds of years to mature. But in actual fact this is far from clear-cut...

I have not studied the subject deeply enough to come to a conclusive desicion but I am tending towards the arguments outlined by the historian Chris Wickham (whose recent magnum opus, Framing the Early Middle Ages, has claims to be the first synthesis of early medieval Europe since the 1920's.) Work he undertook in the '80s concluded that the fundamental transformation with the collapse of the Roman system was from a taxation-based economy to one based on rents of land. Originally he posited this as a modal transformation, ie. from one mode of production (the elusive 'ancient' mode) to another (the eternally problematic 'feudal'). However, after taking on board the criticisms of various state theorists, Wickham went on to modify this argument. He maintained that there was a crucial transformation from taxation to land-tenure but that this was not a modal but a structural transfromation. The essential character of economic exaction remained constant... a proportion of the product of the labouring class in both cases was expropriated by an external agen, whether state tax-collector or land-owning lord. So while these changes were incredibly significant to European society, they did not constitute a change in mode of production. If this were so, that would leave just a single fundamental modal division within class society - those in which exaction is carried out through expropriation of a producing class, and those which rely on the exploitation of wage-labour. Certainly something to consider...

It is also worth remembering that historical materialism is often in danger, if conceived schematically, of being teleological. Are we presenting the Fall of Rome as progressive merely 'because it happened' and we know that our history is a history of progress? In actual fact, as Marx and any Marxist historian worth his salt would be speedy to point out, this is not the case. A materialist understanding of history must recognise both that modal transformations and progressive phenomena are by no means assured and that decline and regression are very real possibilities, as evidenced throughout history. After all, the centralised empires of Asia did not 'fall' with such 'destined timliness'. Traditionally this has been explained in Europe as a consequence of the peculiar nature of Oriental society. But this has never been done so convincingly. Europeans - Marx included - are chronic sufferers of Eurocentricism. I don't think it has been convincingly demonstrated that capitalism could not have arisen in China or India.

[Dros]

1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?

No. I think slavery in the Americas constituted a mode of production seperate from the capitalist sections. In terms of how labor was exploited, slavery as a system is very much distinct from capitalism.


2. Would HistoMats view the fall of Rome and the rise of the Medieval church as progressive? Traditionally the middle ages are seen as the dark ages in which the greatness of the classical world fell to barbaric superstition. Does HistoMat show that this was actually a move forward from slave to classical society?

I wouldn't call it progressive. It was the mode of production that happened to emerge out of that system. It was just as (if not more) repressive. However I would object to your discription of the period. This is the product of Renaissance era ideology that never really had any bearing on reality. For instance, art, literature, architecture, and other elements of culture flourished throughout the middle ages so charecterizing them as "dark" is meaningless.


3. Who was the rival class during the slave society of the Roman Empire that eventually seized power to create feudal society? The Feudal Revolution does not seem as clear cut a class conflict as the bourgeois revolutions. For example its not like the Plebians overthrew the Patricians and then set up a feudal kingdom.

It wasn't so much a class but an imigration. Mass migrations of Germanic and Uralic people into Eastern and Western Europe along with disease and the inefficiency of the slave society corroded Roman society and allowed for the establishment of numerous "barbarian" kingdoms. These "barbarian tribes" should not be thought of as a class because they did not share a relationship to the means of production. For instance, many were exploited as labor but others collected taxes and ruled large portions of land even under the Roman emporers.

[Invader Zim]

Salvery was in it purest form in the American south, but this did not define the time period.

This is untrue. Slavery was far more ubiquitous in Latin America and the island colonies, where (in some places) perhaps 90% of the islands population were slaves. Certainly in these communities slavery did define the period, and I think slavery does define the entire Early Modern period across the Atlantic World.

To expand this idea of defining the period, again I would disagree with you in a wider context. 1492 marks the point the American continents became widely known to Europeans. It was after this point that the Europeans became aware that the fruits of the Americas could be exploited. As such people emigrated from the old world to the new world in their hundreds of thousands. The migrants soon found that they needed additional labour to effectively exploit these new colonies and turned towards the native population for a source of cheep labour. This was obvious even as early as Columbus who refused to baptise the natives he encountered, on the basis that once baptised the Catholic Church decreed they could not be slaves. However, following the mass pandemics which crippled the native populations of the Americas, it was soon clear that an alternative source of labour was required. It was at this point that Europeans turned towards Africa and its inhabitants. Over the next few centuries at least ten million slaves were transported across the Atlantic and a further ten million died prior to reaching the ships. The use of slave labour provided the means to make the New World a profitable place, it led to further emigration of Europeans to the New World, it built the empires that thrived once the New World was discovered. I would say it does define the early modern period.

[Holden Caulfield]

the very word Slavery comes from 'slav' so i dont think we should overlook the 'child tribute' and 'slave catching' of the Ottoman Empire and it Tartar allies,

Slavery is I think partly built into precapitalist-profiteering/imperialism (although not part of its principals), as the divisions of race, colour, religion, were carried on into capitalism to dehumanise people and drive wedges between working classes in order to gain most profit.

think the uzbek children forced to pick cotton on the news, people are sympathetic, yet they don't change their consumerism habits, if they were an English speaking community doing the same the shop selling the product would be forced to change,

[blabla]

I have a few questions about the Historical Materialist analysis of history

1. Was African slavery that existed in the Americas 1492-1885 a return to slave society or was it simply a subbranch of capitalist society?

2. Would HistoMats view the fall of Rome and the rise of the Medieval church as progressive? Traditionally the middle ages are seen as the dark ages in which the greatness of the classical world fell to barbaric superstition. Does HistoMat show that this was actually a move forward from slave to classical society?

3. Who was the rival class during the slave society of the Roman Empire that eventually seized power to create feudal society? The Feudal Revolution does not seem as clear cut a class conflict as the bourgeois revolutions. For example its not like the Plebians overthrew the Patricians and then set up a feudal kingdom.


Check out the book The State: Its Origin And Functions which treats in detail your second and third questions. As for your first question Southern Plantation slavery was really out and out slavery, reminiscent of ancient Rome. Later during Reconstruction it resembled feudalism.