CSA, slave-based, feudal or capitalist

[Dimentio]

Do any of you know what the productive base of the Confederated States of America was? Was it an ancient slave production society, a semi-feudal society or an emerging capitalist economy? Or was it some form of bizarre hybrid?

[Philosophical Materialist]

The slavery mode of production was reactionary, inefficient, and morally dubious for even the international bourgeoisie in that capitalist age. But the CSA was a capitalist economy since not all labour was performed by slaves, though it was substantially supported by slave labour. Nazi Germany's economy was substantially supported by slave labour but it was still an inherently capitalist arrangement.

I would say that slavery was an attempt by reactionaries in the South to keep power and wealth out of the hands of the liberal industrialists, and to support the doctrine of white nationalism. In economic terms, slavery proved to be inefficient compared to automation and mass production which the USA and the Western European Empires had in their economies.

[More Fire for the People]

Well first of all let’s look at the human and productive relations of the South (which existed long before the CSA, since the 1600s). You had slave-masters: they owned toilers as property, yet they did not gather tributes from the toilers (like in serfdom). Instead, they earned money from the products of the toiler’s labor—which is akin to the capitalist mode of production. The slaves on the other hand did not receive recompense for their labor and hence were not wage-laborers. And remember, the precondition for capital is wage-labor and vice versa: so we are not dealing with a capitalist system.

We have a system that is the purchasing of slaves → slave-labor → production → selling of product for a profit → purchasing of more slaves. (Ps → Ls → C → Ps’).

What is the origin of Ps, or purchasing of slaves? An accumulation of money but not capital, because capital is M → C → M and slaves are not purchased and resold for money. We see this in that although slave-masters were incredibly wealthy none of them were from industrialist (capitalist) families. Early Virginia (the place of origin for American slavery) was settled by the sons of aristocrats. These aristocratic children were given huge tracts of land. These aristocrats turned the tracts of land into profitable tobacco farms and hired indentured servants as laborers. But during this period of aristocracization of land ownership (primarily 1645 to 1675), Black slave-labor became more profitable than indentured laborers. So the source of money for Ps originates in the hereditary wealth of aristocrats and the (low) profits of agrarian capital.

So the Southern slave society, and its companions throughout North and South America were preconditioned upon both the growth and development of capitalism AND the remnants of the feudal relations between serf and aristocrat. I would thus call it a contemporary slave-labor mode of production (as distinguished from slavery of antiquity, which was not and could not have been predicated on a coexistence with capitalism).

[Invader Zim]

The slavery mode of production was reactionary, inefficient, and morally dubious for even the international bourgeoisie in that capitalist age.

Not according to Bob Fogel.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Well first of all let’s look at the human and productive relations of the South (which existed long before the CSA, since the 1600s). You had slave-masters: they owned toilers as property, yet they did not gather tributes from the toilers (like in serfdom). Instead, they earned money from the products of the toiler’s labor—which is akin to the capitalist mode of production. The slaves on the other hand did not receive recompense for their labor and hence were not wage-laborers. And remember, the precondition for capital is wage-labor and vice versa: so we are not dealing with a capitalist system.

We have a system that is the purchasing of slaves → slave-labor → production → selling of product for a profit → purchasing of more slaves. (Ps → Ls → C → Ps’).

What is the origin of Ps, or purchasing of slaves? An accumulation of money but not capital, because capital is M → C → M and slaves are not purchased and resold for money. We see this in that although slave-masters were incredibly wealthy none of them were from industrialist (capitalist) families. Early Virginia (the place of origin for American slavery) was settled by the sons of aristocrats. These aristocratic children were given huge tracts of land. These aristocrats turned the tracts of land into profitable tobacco farms and hired indentured servants as laborers. But during this period of aristocracization of land ownership (primarily 1645 to 1675), Black slave-labor became more profitable than indentured laborers. So the source of money for Ps originates in the hereditary wealth of aristocrats and the (low) profits of agrarian capital.

So the Southern slave society, and its companions throughout North and South America were preconditioned upon both the growth and development of capitalism AND the remnants of the feudal relations between serf and aristocrat. I would thus call it a contemporary slave-labor mode of production (as distinguished from slavery of antiquity, which was not and could not have been predicated on a coexistence with capitalism).

Would this not qualify as some permutation of the Asiatic mode of production? :confused:

On the other hand, the growth and development of capitalism plus the remnants of feudal relations sounds like czarist Russia (Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia) and especially the early days of mercantilism to me.

If you're implying multiple modes of production, then why not go all the way and call my post-revolution "multi-economy" the "multi-economic" mode of production (instead of capitalist, although I do imply the preeminence of state capitalism) and the post-Lenin Soviet economy the "bureaucratic" mode of production (even though that had the capitalist feature of wage labour)? :confused:

[But then, during the early stages of that "bureaucratic" mode of production, slave relations were existent, so does that stage merit its own mode of production? On the other hand, such NKVD-coordinated slave relations existed to supplement the overall, Gosplan-coordinated economy.]

After all, with my posts in the Philosophy forum on corrective labour ("Utilitarianism"), the state would earn shitloads of $$$ from the products of the inmates' INTENSE labour (ousted bourgeoisie, many of those who fought violently AGAINST the revolution, violent non-political criminals, etc.), no recompense for this INTENSE labour would be given, etc.

The "capitalist economies" are then either private-capitalist (parecon) or state-capitalist (Gosplan), and then a "socialist economy" based on labour-time will emerge, too.

[Philosophical Materialist]

Not according to Bob Fogel.

Do you know where I may read his thoughts on the subject? Thanks. :)

[Dros]

It was a slave driven economy akin to the ancient mode but obviously with its own distinct features.

[Severian]

I would thus call it a contemporary slave-labor mode of production (as distinguished from slavery of antiquity, which was not and could not have been predicated on a coexistence with capitalism).

Right. It's a slavery based on production for the world market, and totally tied up with commercial capitalism, including English and Northern capitalism.

Marx makes the point somewhere in Capital that this combines the worst of both systems. Slavery's sheer brutality with capitalism's limitless profit-hunger. He makes a similar point about the "second serfdom" in Eastern Europe.

In both cases, the rising, liberating capitalism in Western Europe is combined with an actual slide backwards to older and worse forms of exploitation on its Eastern European and New World periphery.

Even today, capitalism sometimes combines with and uses all kinds of leftover precapitalist crap.

[Lord Testicles]

Do you know where I may read his thoughts on the subject? Thanks. :)

I think Zim is talking about this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_on_the_Cross:_The_Economics_of_American_Negro _Slavery) but I might be wrong.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Right. It's a slavery based on production for the world market, and totally tied up with commercial capitalism, including English and Northern capitalism.

Marx makes the point somewhere in Capital that this combines the worst of both systems. Slavery's sheer brutality with capitalism's limitless profit-hunger. He makes a similar point about the "second serfdom" in Eastern Europe.

In both cases, the rising, liberating capitalism in Western Europe is combined with an actual slide backwards to older and worse forms of exploitation on its Eastern European and New World periphery.

Even today, capitalism sometimes combines with and uses all kinds of leftover precapitalist crap.

Would consumers being choked in debt count as slavery? You pay the banks $$$ (more value from your labour being extracted), but get no compensation.

[Ol' Dirty]

It was all three. A capitalist economy with essentialy indentured whites and de facto enslaved blacks as a source of labor. The three aren't mutualy exclusive.

[PRC-UTE]

Completely capitalist, nothing else. Slavery is common in many capitalist periods, in fact slavery has been most widely seen during capitalism, more so than even the slave-based economies of Rome, etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ I think slavery is more in line with "primitive accumulation" than with "normal" capitalism, though, no?

[Unicorn]

Marx wrote:



As for slavery, there is no need for me to speak of its bad aspects. The only thing requiring explanation is the good side of slavery. I do not mean indirect slavery, the slavery of proletariat; I mean direct slavery, the slavery of the Blacks in Surinam, in Brazil, in the southern regions of North America.

Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery which has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies which have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry. Consequently, prior to the slave trade, the colonies sent very few products to the Old World, and did not noticeably change the face of the world. Slavery is therefore an economic category of paramount importance. Without slavery, North America, the most progressive nation, would he transformed into a patriarchal country. Only wipe North America off the map and you will get anarchy, the complete decay of trade and modern civilisation. But to do away with slavery would be to wipe America off the map. Being an economic category, slavery has existed in all nations since the beginning of the world. All that modern nations have achieved is to disguise slavery at home and import it openly into the New World.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1846/letters/46_12_28.htm

[humbabba]

Labor's Untold Story by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais has early chapters that deal with this subject. To summarize briefly, if I remember correctly, it talks about the south being dominated by very small planter class that was slave owning and held political power not just in the south but dominated U.S. politics all together. It puts the contradiction between this planter class and the northern bourgeoisie as a central cause in bringing about the civil war. It says that after the political power of the planter class was broken the military occupation of the south was no longer necessary and the republicans left the newly freed but precariously positioned former slaves at the mercy of racist reaction that led to jim crow.

[Unicorn]

Not according to Bob Fogel.
Fogel is a racist capitalist economist who thinks that slaves were better off than poor whites in the antebellum South. Do you believe him?