What's wrong with the US founding fathers, bill of rights and constitution

[consuming negativity]

there is never one reason for anything. no, the north did not overcome racism, but certainly some of it had. it's not an either/or kind of thing and you guys keep making these black and white assertions that are just ridiculous.

Zim, you're right, but you're not talking about materialism here. I'm so surprised of how people think somehow Marx and engels did not form a totalising and comprehensive understanding of the world around them - like they had their head up their ass. they are simply too underestimated.

poor engels, he can't even get his name capitalized

[Invader Zim]

Actually historical materialism, as far as Marx himself is concerned, posited that the industrial bourgeoisie was opposed to slavery - that the southern slave owning class indeed did not willingly want to abolish slavery, that a revolutionary war had to be waged against them.

This may, or may not, be true of the US industrial bourgeoisie in the mid 19th century. However, as I have already made clear, I am talking about the international campaign to abolish the slave trade, culminating in 1807 not the origins of the American Civil War culminating in 1861 and the emancipation of American slaves. Emancipation =/= abolition. Sorry, but your two posts were a bit of a waste of time because you didn't address or critique the actual point I was making.

Saying that historical materialism regards anything as predetermined or "historically inevitable" is nonsense.

I'm sorry, but what? Let's have a quick look at the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), which is by far the clearest and most succinct piece of writing that Marx ever produced on this topic and for the historian the most methologically significant. The central tenet of HM is that "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production", and this would result in "an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

This absolutely is deterministic and it was also the basis of Marx's thesis that those same processes were occuring in his own period, and by extension ours too, and that we will see this process occuring regarding the capitalist mode of production. That is an historical inevitability.

It had nothing to do with the cost of slaves, but the nature of capitalist production.

Again, if you care to read what I actually wrote, I was talking specifically about the abolition of the slave trade. Not the origins of the US Civil War. The point regarding the value of slaves was in answer to a specific point:

"southern land owners were becoming more aware of the fact that it's more cost effective to rent a man than own him."

Which is not reflected either in the value of slaves or the income value of slave ownership, both of which show that, right up until the outbreak of the Civil War, slavery was highly profitable and that slaves were very much in demand.

If it was primarily intellectual or ethical concerns over slavery - why wasn't this a problem for societies in which slavery persisted for thousands of years?

Different societies have different ethical concerns for a multitude of cultural and social reasons.

The point is that the ideas of the bourgeoisie and it's civic values completely contradicted the existence of slavery.

You treat the bourgeoisie as a homoginous unit. While the likes of John Wesley might have opposed slavery, George Whitfield had no problem with it. The fact is also that abolitionism had detractors and advocates from across the entire range of societies social and economic strata.

The class conflict was between the industrial bourgeoisie and the southern landowning class.

Yet in the late 18th century this conflict was embryonic. And you continue to take a US Centric view of an international instiution in which the US was actually a very minor player.


The actual power that mattered when it comes to the abolition of the slave trade and indeed emancipation was Britain. Unlike the US in this period, which was a small fry former colony, Britain was one of the two most powerful empires on earth and more importantly still had naval dominance. So, when it abolished the slave trade, she was able to use her naval muscle and economic power to bully and bribe other powers into following suit. Also remember that British North America and the US as it would become, imported around 360,000 slaves. Compare that to a few other other British colonies:

Jamaica: 1 million
Barbados: 500,000
British Windward and Trinidad: 360,000
British Leewards: 300,000

In short, the US was the destination of around 4% of the slave trade, the wider British empire was at least 25%. So, you need to stop thinking about slavery and the slave trade through a US prism, whether or not US slavery can be explained in the manner you describe is pretty much irrelevent to the wider question of why Atlantic slavery came to an end. Quite frankly, the US did not matter on the world stage when it came to big international questions after 1783 until around 1898. And in terms of the wider issue of slavery, the US numerically wasn't all that significant either.

Economics as described in this way of course isn't primarily the driving force of history. But materialism concerns more than the idea of "economics". It concerns the real lives of real men and women, their means of life and survival. Materialism is not economic determinism.

Sorry, but this strikes me as a gross misunderstanding of HM, for reasons explained above.

Sorry Zim, but if you're looking for problems or flaws in historical materialism: then slavery is the worst example.

Except, you haven't actually dealt with my point at all, which was about 1807 not 1861, and abolition not emancipation.

[Rafiq]

This may, or may not, be true of the US industrial bourgeoisie in the mid 19th century. However, as I have already made clear, I am talking about the international campaign to abolish the slave trade, culminating in 1807 not the origins of the American Civil War culminating in 1861 and the emancipation of American slaves. Emancipation =/= abolition.

Why do you pick and choose which points you want to refer to? Both the driving force of capitalism and the rising and refined bourgeois ideology completely contradicted the existence of slavery. Essentially for Marx, [I]by the late 18th century slavery as such had become an obstacle to commodity production - even though it may have been more "profitable" (again, this is cheap cynicism, not materialism).

Again, wage labor arises out of the dissolution of slavery and serfdom . . . and, in its adequate, epoch-making form, the form which takes possession of the entire social being of labor, out of the decline and fall of the guild economy, of the system of Estates, of labor and income in kind, of industry carried on as rural subsidiary occupation, of small-scale feudal agriculture etc. In all these real historic transitions, wage labor appears as the dissolution, the annihilation of relations in which labor was fixed on all sides, in its income, its content, its location, its scope etc. Hence as negation of the stability of labor and of its remuneration

I used the example of hte American south because it was a historical anomaly, as Marx recognized. Likewise, you claim that the enlightenment values being somewhat responsible for the dissolution of slavery impossible because of the example of the United States. So I'm simply addressing the inevitable claim that capitalist relations contradicting the existence of slavery, the remnants of pre-capitalist or proto-capitalist commerce, is not true because slavery persisted in the American south. That's the point. Slavery had become a hindrance to the development of capitalist social relations on a global level - just as serfdom was. Do you also want to claim serfdom was somehow abolished because people wanted it to be abolished, without any other explicable factors?

The reason Marx's detailed analysis of slavery (or the transition between slavery into wage labor relations) is not particularly well known is because a great bulk of it resides in Capital volume III. A book I am sure you are absolutely unfamiliar with. And judging by your understanding of materialism, I'm sure you don't know anything about the first volume either.

The process of the abolition of slavery is NOT simple - we know that. We simply recognize that without the initial pre-requisite of slavery becoming an obstacle to capitalist relations, or even the emerging civic values which completely contradicted the existence of slavery (OF COURSE there are exceptions historically, Zim. But these exceptions become just that - exceptions. They no longer have the hegemonic power to be distinctive or definitive factors. They become the bread crumbs of history. They become the dingle berry on the ass of history) is what made possible the abolitionist movement across western Europe. Hence, this is a terrible example you're using. No one claims that this process (Of proletanization) is a natural one, or that it needn't force to exist. Serfdom existed in Russia until the late 19th century - and the Capitalist neo-feudal relations of Russia up until the October revolution certainly prove that mutations and freaks of history are possible. It is possible that slavery could have continued to exist in the colonies without the abolitionist movement, though what was inevitable was the proletanization of these slaves - they would exist as slaves only by merit of bondage, their relationship to production would be proletarian, as in the American south. Materialists know full well that political agency is often necessary for the development of history and the development of the forces of production. The proletariat cannot abolish itself without political agency, for example: And capitalism creates the embryo of Communism, Communism essentially ALREADY exists in the form of the commons, already exists insofar as it is a direct possibility created by capitalist production. It is proletarian political agency alone which can exalt this.

The United States was significant with regard to slavery because it retained slavery. This historical anomaly, as i have said - as I paraphrased Marx, was not simply an accident waiting to be eroded but a part of the world capitalist totality. British industrial capitalism directly relied on the cotton imports of slavery in the United States, for example. Yet the british abolitionist movement, while it may have been active in seeking its abolition in the United States, had little to no influence in the destruction of slavery in the United States. Why is that, Zim? Why were abolitionists in Britain unable to stop the import of slave-produced cotton? In short, slave-based relations as they existed in the colonies became a hindrance to capitalist development and growth. This does not mean it was not immensely profitable, it was - it simply was an obstruct to the innovation of capitalist relations. Again, I want to be clear: The efforts of the abolitionist movement in Britain and elsewhere were impact and not to be underplayed. But that doesn't mean they existed inseparable from the conditions of which they were derived from.

This here is from a non-Marxist source with no reason to dogmatically adhere to materialism:

A change in economic interests. After 1776, when America became independent, Britain's sugar colonies, such as Jamaica and Barbados, declined as America could trade directly with the French and Dutch in the West Indies. Furthermore, as the industrial revolution took hold in the 18th century, Britain no longer needed slave-based goods. The country was more able to prosper from new systems which required high efficiency, through free trade and free labour. Cotton, rather than sugar, became the main produce of the British economy and English towns, such as Manchester and Salford, became industrial centres of world importance.

http://abolition.e2bn.org/slavery_111.html

You're confusing the perseverance of a system with profit. Profit does not dictate history as bourgeois ideologues would have us believe. The whole of human history is not driven by the pursuit of getting rich.

The abolition of slavery was immensely complicated and of course, nothing is so simple as British capitalists cynically saying "Heh, this isn't profitable anymore, let's get rid of it!" - the efforts of the abolitionist movemetn were necessary but they did not exist in the vacuum of "free choice" or simply the "changing in attitudes". The poverty of your understanding of history rests upon the fact that "changing attitudes" and "changing ideas" are somehow inexplicable. That they simply exist as a result of processes of pure thought. Even then, Zim - what is absolutely hilarious to me is that if YOU were to adopt this outlook, the only thing left is Hegel's understanding of history, which was just that - the evolution of processes of pure thought. You claim that slavery persisted for thousands of years in antiquity because of "different attitudes" and yet it was only Hegel first who was able to propose an understanding of how exactly 'different attitudes' change in history. So what are you left with?

You could adopt Popper's criticisms, which essentially posit that attempting to find patterns, or more specifically, attempting to adopt a consistent understanding of history ultimately leads to totalitarianism and is the basis of "closed societies". This self-imposed ignorance, however, fails because it is inconsistent. For Popper, we can outline the specific evolution of certain "branches" of human history, i.e. the evolution of different "political systems" (How convenient!) and different "economic systems", but only as far as they are isolated from each other. This is an absurdity! This leads to a dogmatic trend of self-imposed ignorance whereby we are unable to understand the relationship between these things simply by merit of fear: Fear that we are stepping into a "totalitarian" mentality. Utter nonsense!

This absolutely is deterministic and it was also the basis of Marx's thesis that those same processes were occuring in his own period, and by extension ours too, and that we will see this process occuring regarding the capitalist mode of production. That is an historical inevitability.

I am quite tired of this. Even Hegel's understanding of history was not necessarily one of "inevitability" but looking in retrospect at the factors which led or, "determined" history. HISTORY could only be looked at in retrospect. The Hegelian mind sees that only after something has happened does it become inevitable. That doesn't mean alternate possibilities were impossible - but that they simply did not occur. Marx was much more critical to this understanding of history in that for him, history was not some kind of conscious agency, or something separable from the men and woman who characterize it. Your understanding of materialism is simply wrong. That our social being determines our consciousness doesn't translate into our consciousness being dictated by something as trivial as price fluctuations in the market - according to your logic, Marx would have it that what happens on wall street determines consciousness. This is not the case. For Marx, social being meant your very basis of survival, your relationship to the production of the reproduction of life itself. You're not making any points by incontextually bringing us Marx quotes which have the word "determines" in it. Determinism is much more simple than this - determinism posits that everything is determined by a recognizable, single factor. According to Marx, this is not the case - the mechanisms of the "superstructure" or ideology influence the character of the base, and coincide with the changes of the base. While not completely the case, it would be a more adaquet simplistic generalization to say that for Marx: historical epochs make possible the conscious endeavors of men, making the latter exist inseparable from the former. That does not mean it is a direct, single-linked relationship of the "economic" determining the ideological or political.

[...]Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men in their actual lifeprocess. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside down as in a camera obscura,[*] this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical lifeprocess as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

Again, it's you who is misunderstanding what Marx means with regard to historical materialism. You pre-supposes that Marx adheres to the notion of the "1economic, 2political, 3ideological, 4cultural and 5religious" as somehow different yet equal spheres of life - and then claim that Marx takes factor 1, and claims it determines factor's 2, 3, 4 and 5. This is not the case. Marx had a radically different understanding of LIFE itself - these things for Marx were not inseparable. Max doesn't look at prevailing ideas or trends and simply plays this game of giving us an economic explanation of them (as Walter Benjamin would call it the Turk, or whatever - you know, the Chess machine that can never lose) - the point is recognizing prevailing ideas as inristically a part of the development of social relations, not an "effect". Marx' understating of materialism is not a matter of cause and effect on a GRAND level but on a smaller level (I.e. the precise mechanisms of cause and effect, not the historical result of which the cause and effect, occurring at an infinite rate, is part of).

Plenty of Marxists recognize this. As a matter of fact, it is rather COMMON SENSE for Marxists. http://ethicalpolitics.org/marxmyths...an/article.htm https://libcom.org/library/introduct...al-materialism http://www.isreview.org/issues/58/ga...erminism.shtml (I don't adhere to everything that is said in these articles, or necessarily agree with all of there content. I am simply pointing out that this is Marx 101 kind of stuff).

Again, you are trying to fit historical materialism within the paradigm of bourgeois rationalism. What is historical materialism? It is the scientific understanding of changes in history and the relationship between ideas, and the human means of not only survival in a trivla sense: But life, the basis of which life prospers and is reproduced, the basis of living. The brilliance of Marx is that exceptions with regard to human ideas, or humans themselves - are essentially inconsistent and nonsensical. Humans are not except from a cohesive understanding. The bourgeois alters of reason (as bordiga called them) swept away the alters of Christ. It is an inconsistency that the former still adheres to the remnants of the latter: Notions of "free will". You are left with two choices, Hegel or Marx (Since all you are doing is claiming that evolution of processes of pure thought are what abolished slavery). You want to attack historical materialism? Then KNOW what historical materialism is in the first place.

[Invader Zim]

You know, I would reply to all this - but it is quite clear that you are deeply confused. Hense questions like this:

"Why were abolitionists in Britain unable to stop the import of slave-produced cotton?"

The issue of slave produced cotton was an issue from the 1830s onwards, it had nothing to do with the rise of abolitionism as a major political movement. In 1807, the period I'm talking about southern cotton production was a tiny. Southern cotton didn't take off until well into the 1820s/30s. And this really highlights anachronistic nature of your understanding of all this - you talk about changing modes of production yet are blissfuly unaware of what production was these economies were based on or how they functioned.

Or make comments like this: "(Since all you are doing is claiming that evolution of processes of pure thought are what abolished slavery)." Which is nothing like anything I said. Or contradicting your own position regarding there being no such thing as historical inevitability and then saying: "though what was inevitable was the proletanization of these slaves" Or suggesting that because I suggest that HM is deterministic I therefore am saying: "our consciousness [sic] being [sic] dictated by something as trivial as price fluctuations in the market"

Indeed, when you make comments like: "Determinism is much more simple than this - determinism posits that everything is determined by a recognizable, single factor." I become increasingly convinced that you have no idea what determinism actually means - because the above is simply wrong.

So, really what you've gone and done is write a load of highly confused prose that I simply can't be bothered to parse. And, moreover, you clearly have an at best tenuous grasp of what you are talking about when it comes to abolitionism, late 18th Century and early 19th Century economics (i.e. your talking about British cotton imports in relationship to the anti-slavery movement, which makes sense after the 1830s but not before which you seemingly are and is totally anachronistic), or culture and intellectual climate.

It seems to me that your entire understanding of this issue is built on a reading of Marx's comments about it, with no contextual knowledge drawn from any other source. So, I have a solution to this. Below is a short bibliography for you - and yes I have read them. Enjoy.


***************************

Articles / Chapters

Anstey, R., ‘The Pattern of British Abolitionism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’, Anti-Slavery, Religion, and Reform: Essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, Bolt, C. (ed.), Drescher, S. (ed.), (Folkestone, 1980).

Cox, E. L., ‘The British Caribbean in the Age of Revolution’, Empire and Nation: The American Revolution in the Atlantic World, Eligh H. Gould (ed.), Peter S. Onuf (ed.), (Baltimore, 2005).

Drescher, S., ‘Two Variants of Anti-Slavery: Religious Organization and Social Mobilization in Britain and France, 1780-1870’, Anti-Slavery, Religion and Reform: essays in Memory of Roger Anstey, Bolt, C. (ed.), Drescher, S. (ed.) (Folkestone, 1980),

Geggus, D., ‘British Opinion and the Emergence of Haiti’, Slavery and British Society 1776-1846, Walvin, J. (ed.), (Basingstoke, 1982).

Heywood, L. M., ‘The Anglo-Afro-Brazilian Cultural Connections’, From Slavery to Emancipation in the Atlantic World, Frey, S. R., (ed.), Wood, B., (ed.), (London, 1999)

Lovejoy, P. E., ‘The Volume of the Atlantic Slave Trade: A Synthesis’, The Journal of African History, Vol. 23, No. 4. (1982).

Books

Anstey, R., The Atlantic Slave Trade and British Abolition 1760-1810 (Aldershot, 1992).

Blackburn, R., The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848, (London, 1988).

Bolt, C., The Anti-Slavery Movement and Reconstruction: A Study in Anglo-American Co-Operation 1833-77 (London, 1969).

Brendinger, I. A., To Be Silent… Would Be Criminal, The Antislavery Influence and Writings of Anthony Benezet, (London, 2006).

Coupland, R., The British Anti-Slavery Movement, (London, 1933).

Davis, D. B., Slavery and Human Progress, (Oxford, 1984).

Davis, D. B., The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770-1823, (Ithaca, 1975).

Drescher, S., Capitalism and Anti-Slavery: British Mobilization in Comparative Perspective, (Oxford, 1987).

Drescher, S., Econocide: British Slavery in the Era of Abolition, (Pittsburgh, 1977).

Drescher, S., The Mighty Experiment: Free Labour versus Slavery in British Emancipation, (Oxford, 2002).

Du. Bois, W. E. B., The Suppression of the African Slave Trade to the United States of America 1638-1870, (New York, 1896).

Fladeland, Men and Brothers: Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation, (Urbana, 1972).

Frey, S. R., Water from the Rock: Black Resistance in a Revolutionary Age, (Princeton, 1991).

Hurwitz, E. F., Politics and the Public Conscience: Slave Emancipation and the Abolitionist Movement in Britain, (London, 1971).

Jakobsson, S., Am I Not a Man and a Brother? British Missions and the Abolition of the Slave Trade and Slavery in West Africa and the West Indies 1786-1838, (Uppsala, 1972).

Kidd, T. S., The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (London, 2007).

Mathews, D. G., Slavery and Methodism: A Chapter in American Morality 1780-1845, (Princeton, 1965).

Midgley, C., Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780-1870 (London, 1992).

Mori, J., Britain in the age of the French Revolution, 1785-1820, (Harlow, 2000).

Oldfield, J. R., Popular Politics and British Anti-Slavery: The mobilisation of public opinion against the slave trade, 1787-1807, (Manchester, 1995).

Smith, W. T., John Wesley and Slavery, (Nashville, 1986).

Thornton, J., Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, (Cambridge, 1998).

Tomkins, S., William Wilberforce: A Biography, (Oxford, 2007).

Walvin, J., Slaves and Slavery: The British colonial experience, (Manchester 1992).

Williams, E., Capitalism and Slavery, Brogan, (into.), (London, 1964).

Wolffe, J., The Expansion of Evangelicalism: The Age of Wilberforce, More, Chalmers and Finney, (Nottingham, 2006).

[Rafiq]

Zim, if you don't want to address my post because it is too lengthy, then kindly keep your fucking mouth shut. You don't get to pick and choose that which you want to nip out - you're taking my words out of context. I don't argue with intellectual mystics: Tell us what you mean, give us examples: Or shut up. Don't argue by mystery, don't make it as though there is something crucial which you are withdrawing. I'm calling your bluff, Zim.

You know, I would reply to all this - but it is quite clear that you are deeply confused. Hense questions like this:

"Why were abolitionists in Britain unable to stop the import of slave-produced cotton?"

The issue of slave produced cotton was an issue from the 1830s onwards, it had nothing to do with the rise of abolitionism as a major political movement. In 1807, the period I'm talking about southern cotton production was a tiny. Southern cotton didn't take off until well into the 1820s/30s.

Good job Zim, except you're missing the whole point all together. You claimed that there were no significant "economic" predispositions toward the abolishment of slavery, because "prices went up" and they were in "high demand" (to paraphrase). The conclusion we are left with is that the abolitionist movement, and shifting attitudes toward slavery itself are what primarily caused the abolition of slavery.

My point, on the other hand - was that if shifting attitudes toward slavery were the primary cause, we can assume that "British culture", or "attitudes" in Britain toward slavery did not change after the abolition of slavery, or at least - they did not regress toward pro-slavery sentiment. Do you disagree?

If we assume this is true, then why was there no real abolitionist movement in Britain which posed a threat to the importation of cotton from the American south for British industry? If slavery was abolished primarily because it was viewed as a great injustice, why did that not bother the mechanisms of British industrial capitalism, "after the 1830's"? This is my point. I don't like having to repeat myself - as a matter of fact, this is an indication that my posts should be LONGER, considering you STILL are misconstruing them as a result of lack of further explanation. Thank you for the insight.

Or make comments like this: "(Since all you are doing is claiming that evolution of processes of pure thought are what abolished slavery)." Which is nothing like anything I said. Or contradicting your own position regarding there being no such thing as historical inevitability and then saying: "though what was inevitable was the proletanization of these slaves" Or suggesting that because I suggest that HM is deterministic I therefore am saying: "our consciousness [sic] being [sic] dictated by something as trivial as price fluctuations in the market"

That isn't what you said Zim, but I asked a simple question: If it was primarily intellectual or ethical concerns over slavery - why wasn't this a problem for societies in which slavery persisted for thousands of years?

You responded by saying: Different societies have different ethical concerns for a multitude of cultural and social reasons.

You have repeatedly claimed that shifting attitudes toward slavery, shifting cultural, ethical, or religious views - whatever you like, are what primarily led to the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century. When I say processes of pure thought - I mean processes independent of social relations to production. You haven't provided us with any meaningful examples of HOW these changes occur at all. You rightfully point out that "different societies have different cultural or ethical concerns", which any child can recognize: But you fail to give us an example of why. How, historically, do these attitudes come about? How do different societies change so rapidly, and what can account for the specific instances and character of these changes? So that's the problem Zim: The only conclusion we are left with, IF we are to reject historical materialism, is that it is processes of pure thought - or in other words, changes in perception, attitudes, views: whatever you want. So no one's claiming you admitted to this: but it's a logical extension of what you are saying.

If there are exceptions with regard to historical materialism, historical materialism is rendered completely invalid. Historical materialism does not work with some historical epochs and not with others. It either understands all of history, or none of history. Likewise, slavery is not a good example either. If this example works: Then there are an infinite amount of historical examples that would render historical materialism invalid, or incapable of articulating. The problem is that you don't know shit about materialism. Example?

You claim that the fact that saying there are things that, under certain circumstances are inevitably prone to be a certain way. If I walk into a hotel room and light a cigarette, the fire alarm will go off. But that doesn't mean this was inevitable two hours earlier, when I was at a bar.

If your understanding of determinism is literally the dichotomy between determinism and free will, that's a rather stupid example. Marxists do not recognize this dichotomy because the notion of free will is something we don't entertain. And under your definition, all decent historians, all legitimate bourgeois intellectuals are determinists.

My point overall was that proletanization WAS inevitable, but the abolition of bondage was not (necessarily). I pointed out how slaves in the south where characterized as being proletarians in a state of bondage. THAT was my point: Proletanization was inevitable not because it was "historically pre-determined" but because it was necessiated by the expansion and growth of capitalist relations: But hte growth of capitalist relations wasn't historically pre-determined! When I was still a learning Marxist, around the time I was engaging in those silly debates with you about the crusades (I recognize now that I was wrong, Zim, if that makes you feel any better) - I used to call this "short-term determinism". But it's stupid anyway: Determinism is simplistic. Anyway, I don't care to repeat myself. I've already explained.

Finally, you claim that I am falsely accusing you of attributing materialism with the idea that "consciousness is determined by price fluctuations on the market'. But let's go back and look at the initial point of the debate. You claim that materialism is deterministic, and provide the example that for Marx, social being determines consciousness. You then say that this is inapplicable to the circumstances surrounding the abolition of slavery in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The evidence you provide is that the price of slaves was gradually rising, and that slaves were in high demand. You then claim that somehow, this is a point of substitution for "social being", i.e. that if materialism were true, then the price of slaves would have lowered and they would not have been a very big demand for them. Hence, I claim that you say things AS TRIVIAL as price fluctuations determine consciousness for historical materialism. This is incredibly tiring, Zim. I begin to wonder whether you're even worth the time.

Indeed, when you make comments like: "Determinism is much more simple than this - determinism posits that everything is determined by a recognizable, single factor." I become increasingly convinced that you have no idea what determinism actually means - because the above is simply wrong.

No Zim, you just don't fucking understand my point. This is why I flame everyone - this is why It's so fucking frustrating. Determinism posits a cause-and effect relationship between two things. Vulgar materialists, or 'economic determinists' posit that all events, or human ideas, are because of "economics". When I say determinism, I use the word contextually. HOW THE FUCK could materialism be determinist without, how could you even make that argument without claiming that all things, according to materialists, are the result of previous events which rendered the effect pre-determined?


Historical materialism recognizes that THIS IS NOT the case: That both ideas and the conditions from which they were derived REACT with each other, and that they COINCIDE with each other, i.e. in the form of a PROCESS. Materialists also recognize that social epochs produce a MAGNITUDE of possibilities: But they are POSSIBILITIES. Just because something becomes possible does not mean it will come to happen - likewise, the abolitionist movement was not historically inevitable. This is why Marx refers to TENDENCIES in history, not pre-determined laws.

I shouldn't have to be lecturing you on this. You've been on this website for quite sometime, you have no excuse for this kind of ignorance.

It seems to me that your entire understanding of this issue is built on a reading of Marx's comments about it, with no contextual knowledge drawn from any other source.

Wrong, but even if that was true, I would be perfectly justified, considering the whole point of this discussion regarded that historical materialism, founded by Marx - was incapable of accounting for the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century. I don't care for your sources, again, I don't argue with mystery, give us examples from these sources. No one's saying that I know more about the facts surrounding the abolitionist movement, whom it was founded by, whom it was consisted of, and all of those TRIVIAL specifialities (TRIVIAL in pertinence to this discussion) - the point is that if there is something about these specific facts which is going to discredit materialism, share them or stop posting.

[Rafiq]

For fuck's sake: Is it so ridiculous? What was missing from the 1830's onwards that did not allow an abolitionist movement to curtail the import of cotton and (therefore) discourage slavery elsewhere in the world, but apparently was present in the abolitionist movement which led to the abolition of slavery in the early 19th century? Can you explain how this is a ridiculous question? You genuinely confuse me. Who claimed that the importation of cotton was so important in the early 19th century, when slavery was abolished in the British empire? I CLEARLY WAS REFERRING TO IMPORTATION FROM THE AMERICAN SOUTH, NOT FROM THE COLONIES.

Unless you're claiming that time suddenly rendered these attitudes non-existent, and that slavery being a great injustice was a temporary cultural attitude - that slavery wasn't viewed negatively after the early 1800's in British society? Why, though? Why Zim? How the FUCK can you even respond to this? Can we even understand this without historical materialism? Oh, British society forgot about slavery, or didn't know it existed while they directly necessitated its existence in the American south? Wrong, slavery in the American south was common sense, everyone knew about it. What was it then?

[Rafiq]

Want to know what would be a better example? The slowly rising popularity of feminism - or controversy surrounding feminism today, in 2014 (we could talk about this in another thread).

[Rafiq]

Zim refers to the abolition of slavery in the british colonies during the early 19th century, and the European abolition movement. Not the circumstances surrounding the US civil war.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

Are you a patriot?

If patriotism means loving your home then yes, absolutely.

[Invader Zim]

Zim, if you don't want to address my post because it is too lengthy, then kindly keep your fucking mouth shut.

I don't want to address your posts because they are impenetrably written, long winded, built on a woolly understanding of HM (which you elevate to a creed rather than what it actually is - a tool) and any disagreement provokes am outburst of apoplectic rage. I can't be bothered with that. But, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this one time.

You don't get to pick and choose that which you want to nip out

How so? I made specific points regarding specific historical phenomenon. That you would rather talk about a different phenomenon half a century later, does not invalidate the specific point I was actually making, and nor is it less pertinent.

- you're taking my words out of context.

No, I'm not. But, ironically, you are doing so of my comments and then using that to straw-man my position.

I don't argue with intellectual mystics: Tell us what you mean, give us examples

I have. Ironically, you have not. Note the difference, I have provided evidence, you have provided hypotheses that beg the question.

Don't argue by mystery

No, you argue by informal fallacy and, dare I say it, from a position of ignorance of the historical facts.

don't make it as though there is something crucial which you are withdrawing.

What, precisely, have I withdrawn? Again, your failure to actually address even the parameters of my argument render such desperate tactics rather unnecessary anyway.

I'm calling your bluff, Zim.

And what bluff would that be? The fact that I am better appraised of the substantial literature regarding slavery than you? I don't want to be conceited, but that's true and not a bluff.

Good job Zim, except you're missing the whole point all together.

Except I haven't. Your argument basically boils down to rejecting the fact that the abolition movement was able to garner sufficient political support to legally abolish the slave trade it follows that it must, therefore, have been necessary to elicit wider attitudinal changes. This is a non-sequitur. It ignores the fact that the abolition movement was a temporal phenomenon. Eg. that because attitudes in the latter part of the long 18th C. would necessarily carry over to mid 19th C.

Moreover, the question has little value because it obfuscates the issue. My point is, and always has been, that the rise of abolitionist sentiment which culminated in the abolition of the slave trade is an historical phenomenon that Marxist historians have had considerable difficulty explaining with HM.

Your point, the fact that the Abolitionists were unable to wean Britain from economic dependence on the produce of slave labour, particularly after 1833 despite outlawing slavery in the Caribbean, is a different issue entirely (and one I'll get to presently). It has nothing to do with the fundermental question which is:

Why did abolitionism develop from being irrelevant in the early years of the 1780s, yet by the end of the decade become among the most significant political issue of the day within half a decade, with massive lobby groups across the Atlantic World, significant legislative support, and ultimately political victory in 1807?

But to get to your actual question: Arguing that "Both the driving force of capitalism and the rising and refined bourgeois ideology completely contradicted the existence of slavery", attitudinal changes presumably instigated by the industrial revolution, does not sufficiently answer the question. This is because in the late 18th century, Britain was not the industrial power it would become in later decades, it was, and remained until the 1830s, a mercantile power. This would not change until the 1830s, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s. And this is reflected by the economic data:



In short, the chronology is wrong by not less that 45 years.

If we assume this is true, then why was there no real abolitionist movement in Britain which posed a threat to the importation of cotton from the American south for British industry? If slavery was abolished primarily because it was viewed as a great injustice, why did that not bother the mechanisms of British industrial capitalism, "after the 1830's"? This is my point. I don't like having to repeat myself - as a matter of fact, this is an indication that my posts should be LONGER, considering you STILL are misconstruing them as a result of lack of further explanation. Thank you for the insight.

I didn't suggest that abolitionism was purely a product of the notion that slavery deemed to be a 'great injustice'. I suggested that there were a variety of factors involved, listed each of them and pointed out the problems with considering them alone as the main causal factor.

The conclusion we are left with is that the abolitionist movement, and shifting attitudes toward slavery itself are what primarily caused the abolition of slavery.

False. As I explicitly stated: "What you have is a multiplicity of factors all of which came into play for various different reasons."

Religion, fear of insurrection, intellectual shifts, individual agency, and yes, even economics, may all have played their part in that.

My point, on the other hand - was that if shifting attitudes toward slavery were the primary cause, we can assume that "British culture", or "attitudes" in Britain toward slavery did not change after the abolition of slavery, or at least - they did not regress toward pro-slavery sentiment. Do you disagree?

Yes, I disagree. Several key factors that led to the massive popularity of abolitionism were tied to specific concerns held within Atlantic World societies in the later decades of the Long 18th Century that were far less pronounced by the early-mid 19th C. Among others these include were the changing intellectual fashions of the Enlightenment and the Second Great Awakening. But there is also the fact that political fashions die when certain objectives are met: the abolition movement succeeded in abolishing the slave trade in 1807, naturally once that objective was met, even if far from in full, activism declined. Even more so, still, after 1833. The idea that enthusiasm for a specific political movement does not wane after nearly half a century, and when several key political goals have already been met is laughably absurd.

That isn't what you said Zim

Well, I'm glad you concede that you were straw-manning my position.

but I asked a simple question: If it was primarily intellectual or ethical concerns over slavery - why wasn't this a problem for societies in which slavery persisted for thousands of years?

1. Your question was built on the false premise that I was restricting my position to just these factors. To quote myself yet again:

"What you have is a multiplicity of factors all of which came into play for various different reasons."

The fact is that we have considerable evidence that links the rise of, say, temporal religious antipathy with slavery to abolitionist activism, yet you present zero evidence for your argument. Nill. Nada. None.

You haven't provided us with any meaningful examples of HOW these changes occur at all.

Now we are, at last, getting somewhere. But this poses two key questions:

1. Do you mean how and why ephemeral attitudinal changes occur?

2. Do you mean, what evidence there is to suppose that ephemeral attitudinal changes influenced political questions such as the question of the validity of the slave trade as an institution?

But you fail to give us an example of why. How, historically, do these attitudes come about? How do different societies change so rapidly, and what can account for the specific instances and character of these changes?

This is dependent on a multitude of factors, including and certainly not least, the material conditions of the culture in question. But really, you are asking the million dollar question. If I had the answer to why, for instance, the Second Great Awakening or the Enlightenment occurred, or worked out the impact of the French Revolution on Haiti, then I would be able to write a books on it that would get me an instant job in any institution of higher education in the world. Sadly, I don't have all the answers. Nobody does.

So that's the problem Zim: The only conclusion we are left with, IF we are to reject historical materialism, is that it is processes of pure thought - or in other words, changes in perception, attitudes, views: whatever you want. So no one's claiming you admitted to this: but it's a logical extension of what you are saying.

No, it isn't. Because that would be to reduce my argument to suggest that I believe that material and external conditions do not influence prevailing intellectual notions. You are presenting a false dilemma.

If there are exceptions with regard to historical materialism, historical materialism is rendered completely invalid. It either understands all of history, or none of history.

And we get a little further - see I totally disagree with this. Historical materialism is the most effective theoretical tool that has, in my professional opinion, been engineered to explain the past. That it does not explain everything, or that other historiographical paradigms better explain specific phenomenon, does not invalidate it as a tool or that a better paradigm exists. This assumption of yours, I presume, rests with the following assertion:

"It is the scientific understanding of changes in history and the relationship between ideas"

This is predicated on the notion that the past can be scientifically explained. As a professional in the discipline, I can only suggest to you that this is misleading. The 'scientific' basis to history is the application of clearly defined method to the collection and analysis of evidence. However, the woefully incomplete nature of the evidence, problems of making the subjective into the objective parsed through a subjective lens, and the impossibility of true falsifiability renders historical research that operates on any serious depth inherently speculative. Therefore, the idea that because historical materialism does not best fit existing evidence to explain a phenomenon does not invalidate the paradigm, it just means that it doesn't explain as much in that given specific context. Nor does it necessarily undermine the application of the paradigm when applied to the understanding of wider social forces. Nor does it follow that if one analysis of the past using HM is found to be less effective than had hoped, mean that, in future, another analysis of the same question employing a different data-set, or different reading of the same data-set, using HM will therefore also be invalid. The other problem of course, is that you seem to be treating HM as a Holy writ rather than what it actually is - a tool.

You claim that the fact that saying there are things that, under certain circumstances are inevitably prone to be a certain way. If I walk into a hotel room and light a cigarette, the fire alarm will go off. But that doesn't mean this was inevitable two hours earlier, when I was at a bar.

Well, certain things are inevitably prone to be a certain way. For example, even thought it was not necessarily realised at the time, from 1941 Germany was inevitably going to lose the Second World War. We know this, and had people at the time been aware of the facts that we have available then so would they. There were a variety of factors that determined this:

1. Relative German natural resource weakness.
2. Significantly greater Allied military potential.
3. Advanced and centralised Allied technocratic cultures and agencies.

My problem is not with deterministic conclusions when the historical evidence warrants them, my problem, and this very much goes for HM contrary to your assertion to the contrary, is that HM is fundamentally predicated on determinism.

(I recognize now that I was wrong, Zim, if that makes you feel any better)

Actually, you were arguing with Comrade Om, not I. I think I made one post in that whole thread.

Finally, you claim that I am falsely accusing you of attributing materialism with the idea that "consciousness is determined by price fluctuations on the market'. But let's go back and look at the initial point of the debate. You claim that materialism is deterministic, and provide the example that for Marx, social being determines consciousness. You then say that this is inapplicable to the circumstances surrounding the abolition of slavery in the late 18th century and early 19th century. The evidence you provide is that the price of slaves was gradually rising, and that slaves were in high demand. You then claim that somehow, this is a point of substitution for "social being", i.e. that if materialism were true, then the price of slaves would have lowered and they would not have been a very big demand for them. Hence, I claim that you say things AS TRIVIAL as price fluctuations determine consciousness for historical materialism. This is incredibly tiring, Zim. I begin to wonder whether you're even worth the time.

This is confused. First, you ignore the second part of Marx's axiomatic statement:

"At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production ... [resulting in] an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

This is a deterministic axiom - that the major engine of societal change operates in this dialectic fashion.

Marxist historians, primarily Eric Williams, have attempted to use this hypothesis to explain the decline of the slave trade. Thus, the argument being:

"At a certain stage of [Mercantile Capitalism's] development, the material productive forces of society [new industrial capitalists] come into conflict with the existing relations of production [the institution of slavery] ... [resulting in] an era of social revolution [abolitionism]. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

The argument is one of declinism, conflict and synthesis. Or, as put more gracefully:

"[Following Eric William's classic Marxist account of the decline of the slave trade] For decades, scholars had accepted and formulated new understanding of the abolitionist movement in Britain based on the theory that free market capitalism trumped mercantilist capitalism, rendering slavery unprofitable.
[...] Williams’s thesis [has been situated] as a challenge to the “self-congratulatory view of British antislavery and British imperialism” that became the foundation of future economic analyses of the slave system (p. xiii). Williams used data from Lowell Joseph Ragatz’s The Fall of the Planter Class in the British Caribbean, 1763-1833 (1928) to prove that the success of abolition stemmed less from pure morality and more from the growing economic lack of viability of slavery in the Atlantic world. Williams privileged “economic forces” in shaping the “political and moral ideas of the age” and concluded by cautioning that “we have to guard not only against these old prejudices but also against the new which are being constantly created. No age is exempt.” While later scholars acknowledged the polemical nature of Williams’s work, few questioned the validity of economic decline as the foundation of antislavery until Drescher’s methodical and dizzying presentation of fresh data to the contrary."

http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=31617

And while you may view issue of profitability as 'trivia', the Marxist interpretation of abolition has been centred on just such questions ever since someone attempted to produce a Marxist analysis of the subject.

You may not like that, you may not agree with that, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the likes of CLR James and Eric Williams were rather better read on Marx than you are, and far better qualified to understanding how slavery operated in the mercantile capitalist economies.

Anyway, I'm off to the pub. I suggest you do the same.

[Rafiq]

But to get to your actual question: Arguing that "Both the driving force of capitalism and the rising and refined bourgeois ideology completely contradicted the existence of slavery", attitudinal changes presumably instigated by the industrial revolution, does not sufficiently answer the question. This is because in the late 18th century, Britain was not the industrial power it would become in later decades, it was, and remained until the 1830s, a mercantile power. This would not change until the 1830s, culminating in the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s. And this is reflected by the economic data

That's the point, Zim! If British industrial production had taken off before the abolition of slavery, this would have completely invalidated my point! Let's make a few things clear: Do you recognize that the 'material' predispositions for British industrialism existed from the mid 18th to early 19th century? Of course they did! If slavery, as I have argued, was a hindrance to the development of British capitalism, then British industrialization could only have developed after (But not necessarily immediately after, as there are more factors at hand) the abolition of slavery. I think it's rather stupid, and reductionist to claim that the whole of the abolitionist movement was some kind of expression of popular fervor which unconsciously wanted to fulfill the development of British capitalism: Of course not! of course it's more complicated than this! My point is that abolitionism would have been impossible without the magnitude of possibility created by the changing forces of British capitalism! That's my point.

Also, if I might make something clear: No one is claiming I know more than you about British slavery - and certainly no one is claiming that the research you do is worthless. I whole-heartedly agree that using "materialism" as a substitution for detailed and comprehensive research is rather vulgar and an expression of great ignorance. I completely agree that materialism is not something we ought to skew, trivialize or reduce history to in our understanding of it. But the very fact that you approach materialism in this way suggests you deeply misunderstand what exactly materialism constitutes as. Materialism is not a mold from which you fit everything into. It is nothing more than a word you use to describe a real method of analysis - by recognizing that slave-relations as they existed in the British colonies hindered the advancement and development of capitalism made the abolition movement possible - nay, made it successful is not necessarily a conclusion you could come to by a bare-bones, "objective historical analysis". Marx recognizes this very well himself: If we were to study nature, for example, we might understand the variations of different specimen, we might understand the history of these specimen, when they died out, the circumstances of their extinction or prevalence and so on - but that doesn't mean we are automatically equipped with an understanding of evolution: Or more precisely, an understanding of how these specimen arrived at where they are now.

As you yourself admit:

This is dependent on a multitude of factors, including and certainly not least, the material conditions of the culture in question. But really, you are asking the million dollar question. If I had the answer to why, for instance, the Second Great Awakening or the Enlightenment occurred, or worked out the impact of the French Revolution on Haiti, then I would be able to write a books on it that would get me an instant job in any institution of higher education in the world. Sadly, I don't have all the answers. Nobody does.

You don't have to have "all of the answers" in order to understand this, Zim. And this is the point: This is the domain of materialism. My problem with you is not so much that you have it wrong with regard to the facts surrounding slavery or its abolition, but the conclusions you draw from them: In other words, the implications you have. What you say is largely true, they were ALL dependent on a multitude of factors. But this is only a bare-bones analysis which has nothing to do with either confirming or contradicting materialism. If materialism was unable to account for, for example, the impact of religious attitudes: How could Marx and Engels even sleep at night? How could this idea ever function? It would be ridiculous!

I fail to see how social change can occur without taking the guise of, for example, changes in religious beliefs or through religious attitudes. I simply could not. I could not envision a man running around through the streets of London claiming "BRITISH INDUSTRIALISM IS UNABLE TO DEVELOP BECAUSE OF SLAVERY!" - I mean this is the whole point of materialism! No one denies that these factors were PIVOTAL, just that they didn't come from someone's ass. They exist for a reason: Certain impactful attitudes are both popular and impactful for a reason

Not to say that you are at fault with regard to how you approach research. This kind of work is incredibly important - but you simply have it completely wrong with regard to materialism.

You claim that:

You may not like that, you may not agree with that, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and suggest that the likes of CLR James and Eric Williams were rather better read on Marx than you are, and far better qualified to understanding how slavery operated in the mercantile capitalist economies.

Evidently not! Because something is profitable does not mean it is reflective of the success of a mode of production that would come to replace it! It may have been profitable within the coordinates of mercantile capitalism, but certainly not industrial capitalism or the solidification of capitalism as Marx understood this. If what you say is true of these historians, then their understanding of Marx is absolutely skewed. This isn't matter of opinion and i have no reason to bullshit here: It is simply untrue that profitability is an indication of the survivability of a set of social relations, like slavery. If we recognize mercantile capitalism, or the remnants of proto-capitalist development to be different from the industrial capitalism that would replace it, or capitalist relations as we know them, then the profitability of something inherent to mercantile capitalism but contradictory to the industrial capitalism which would replace it is not an indication that there were no 'economic' predispositions to its political abolition. Does this make sense? Capitalism was changing already. I don't know if this is a good example: Bernie Madoff's ponzy schemes were certainly profitable, but that does not mean they reproduced the conditions of capitalism - on the contrary, they threatened the financial safety of it (as an example of something that could occur in a wide-spread fashion). Does this make sense? Hence why the "economic" word is misleading: It's not about making more money, but the survival or destruction of certain relations to production.

Frankly, let's shift the tone of this discussion. Instead of attacking you, I genuinely want to know if you disagree: Do you claim that British industrial capitalism magically appeared out of nowhere in the 1830's? I am quite sure that most historians recognize the predispositions toward the intensified industrialization in the 1830's to have begun in the mid-late 18th century. Is this wrong? I am not asking a rhetorical question, this is my ever-so limited knowledge of the subject. Am I wrong, Zim?

Whether or not slavery was profitable or not - profitability has never been so relevant with regard to social revolution or changes in the mode of production. If it has, then well - my understanding of Marx is completely bunk, and all of the texts I have ever read, everything - probably a mistranslation? I mean, it's pathetic that you would argue by authority. What, do you think I'm talking out of my ass? Why? Why would I do this? Why do I care if I'm wrong? I don't give a shit Zim. You have it completely wrong with regard to materialism and frankly - I don't give a damn about whether you want to infer that "these people know more about Marx than me". Obviously they don't know shit with regard to this. I don't care about arguments by authority. I want examples of how theirs was a "Marxist" understanding. Frankly, you haven't provided any aside form a ridiculous pseudo-Marxist mad-lib.

My problem is not with deterministic conclusions when the historical evidence warrants them, my problem, and this very much goes for HM contrary to your assertion to the contrary, is that HM is fundamentally predicated on determinism.

Can you provide examples of where Marx gave us "deterministic" conclusions when historical evidence did not warrant them? Frankly, you attribute the mistakes of individual Marxists to Marxism as a whole. Historical materailsm is not predicted on determinism. For example, when materialists say that by the mid 18th century (and not the 4th century, or the 15th century) the proletanization of slaves was inevitable this is not deduced simply because it happened. It is deduced because the direction global capitalism was taking necessarily contradicted the proto-captialist mercantile mode of production and the social relations that it was composed of. I fail to see how this is determinist.

"At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production ... [resulting in] an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

This is a deterministic axiom - that the major engine of societal change operates in this dialectic fashion.

If I am ignoring the second part, you are ignoring the rest of Marx all-together. Do you deny that Marx and Engels constantly stressed that the superstructure influences the character of the base, and that these things react with each other? how can a vague phrase - a few words, actually embody historical materialism completely? Surely you recognize that this is ridiculous! Again, what you fail to grasp is that Marx understands this in terms of tendency - sooner or later the transformation of the immense superstructure happens not because of any kind of metaphysical law of history, but because changes in the "economic foundation" (and the word "economic" back then had compeltely different connontations and meaning than it does today, for the record) necessiate a superstructure that does not contradict its existence. But that, for example, which existed in previous social epochs which does not contradict a revolution in the base still persists. The religion of catholicism, despite being institutionally weakened, persisted (albeit maybe in a different form).

To claim this is "determinist" is utterly misleading. Determinsim, as I have said, is simplistic - and dialectics itself is completely contradictory with the logic of determinsim. Determinsim concerns causes and effects - while materialism concerns processes. It is not so much that the bare bones definition of determinism is completely alien to materialism, i.e. "that human agency is determined by external factors" but that contextually they are completely alien to each other. Give me a historically determinist theoretician who did not contradict Marxism in one way or another. Marxism does not concern telling us what determined human agency or activity, but the nature of human agency or activity itself.

Historical materialism is not a magical remedy, it is a word we give a real method of understanding. Frankly, nothing you have said about the slave trade - or more importantly, none of the facts you have given contradict historical materialism. This begs the question of why historical materialism is worth anything at all if we can intricately use it to ass cover any flaws, or more specifically, refine it and change it in accordance with that which might contradict it - as Popper criticized it for. But this completely misunderstands the domain of historical materialism itself. If, for example - British industrial capitalism was capable of flourishing without any fundamentally significant effects on the slave trade, this would contradict materialism, this makes it falsifiable. Materialism is nothing more than giving a name to that which already exists. A paradigm which recognizes real phenomena that no one dared give a name to on account of the "holy" and "sacred" nature of human agency, the human soul - human individuals or whatever you want.

What do I have to say, in all? Keep up the good work, Zim. But actually know what you're attacking before you attack it.

[Rafiq]

Why is this discussion confused? Because certainly, with regard to the immediate facts of British slavery or the abolition of which, this discussion is completely useless! This discussion is about their implications, not any disagreement over the facts themselves. That's all this is. Knowing the facts alone does not warrant an understanding of their implications or what they mean. You yourself claim this is uncharted territory - but it is not. It is the territory of Marxism.

Edit:

That it does not explain everything, or that other historiographical paradigms better explain specific phenomenon, does not invalidate it as a tool or that a better paradigm exists.

Historical materialism was the first of its kind. While I am unsure about reducing it to a "historiographical paradigm" - it represented the opening of this field to begin with. Before Historical materialism there was no coherent, scientific understanding of history. You claim that the problem exists in reducing the "subjective" into the objective. This is where I catch you by the balls: is this not true for all science? The connotations of materialism as being "ideological" and therefore subjective is the problem. But this assumes that there can be a method of analysis of ANYTHING which is not ideological in nature. I might rage at you, or your ideas - but you have opened Pandora's box now.

One thing you ought to consider: wasn't it Engels who recognized that the reality does not conform to our present standards of reason completely? - this actually was pivotal in his break with the Young Hegelians. In short, I completely agree with you - but at the same time absolutely disagree with you.

The point I'm trying to make is that historical materialism concerns an understanding of the nature of the relationship between ideas and our relations to production. Even if our understanding of HISTORY changes, historical materialism must necessarily UNDERSTAND - not EXPLAIN all of history, history in terms of our limited, present standards of reason. What I mean is that no one claims materialism accounts for everything: but only everything that we know so far. But with our present standards of reason, if something were to arise that would contradict historical materalism, all of historical materialism is invalidated. It either understands history itself, all of it - or none of it.

[Sinred]

This would make more sense to me if there was more consistency among people who grow up in the same social conditions. People consistently grow up in the same conditions and arrive at totally different life outcomes.

There are enormous consistency in social and material settings for how humans develop. There are some genetic predispositions towards some things but the overwhelming factor is the environment we are shaped in. But just because you grow up in the same social conditions as others doesnt mean everyone will turn out identical. Gender, nationality, parenting, culture, education, chain of events etcetc all shape us. But the main factor is the social conditions nonetheless.

Most of Marx's class went on to become bourgeoisie servants. But Marx went on to become an advocate for the proletariat. Why so? What in his environment conditioned him to be a spokesperson for the working class?

A great myriad of reasons. He was obviously pretty intelligent and observant of the working class situation in Europe. Not to mention he was a philosopher and national economist. Plus the proletariat at the time were neither close to educated and in most cases couldnt even read/write. Like any idea, it is dependent on the material conditions when and how it will develop. There is a reason marx ideas came when they did. And if Marx wasnt born at all, someone else would eventually make the same (or similar) conclusions
We are dialectic materialists, not determinists.

[rylasasin]

And it shows with the United States of America as the world's number one superpower with more than its fair share of Nobel prize winners,

The Nobel Prize is a fucking joke, that's why.

[NGNM85]

The first amendment of the US constitution protects your very right to express Marxist/Communist/Anarchist opinion. Without it, you probably would be deemed subversives, seditious and treasonous by the authorities.

It is true that the United States, today, has the broadest parameters for legally protected speech in the world, and that this is based on the first amendment. The thing is that the first amendment was not interpreted, or applied as such until Brandenburg v. Ohio, in 1969. Before that political repression was frequently used, in the United States, particularly against the radical left. See: 'Red Scare', 'Hoover, Edgar J.', etc.

[NGNM85]

I'm sorry, but what? Let's have a quick look at the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), which is by far the clearest and most succinct piece of writing that Marx ever produced on this topic and for the historian the most methologically significant. The central tenet of HM is that "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production", and this would result in "an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure."

This absolutely is deterministic and it was also the basis of Marx's thesis that those same processes were occuring in his own period, and by extension ours too, and that we will see this process occuring regarding the capitalist mode of production. That is an historical inevitability.

Jesus. I don't even know where to start with this. As soon as you began to lavish such praise on the Preface something in my head went; 'Danger, Will Robinson!', just as it should for anyone with at least a basic knowledge of Marx's thought. Fuck. Marx absolutely was not an economic determinist, in fact, Marx, particularly the mature Marx vehemently opposed this. I can quote any number of examples. Like this;

'The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of circumstances and education forgets that circumstances are changed by men and that the educator must himself be educated.'

And this;

"History does nothing; it “does not possess immense riches”, it “does not fight battles”. It is men, real living men, who do all this, who possess things and fight battles. It is not “history” which uses men as a means of achieving –as if it were an individual person-its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends."

And this;

"Men make their own history,but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language."
(My emphasis.)

And, naturally, this;

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it."

I could keep going, but I think that's enough, for now. If one accepts the vulgarized, mechanistic schema you propose, this famous quote, in fact, a great deal of Marx, and Engels writings, not to mention their political activism, makes absolutely no sense. Speaking of dear Freidrich, Engels understood this, even if he had an unfortunate tendency to say goofy shit, periodically. (Most of which, unfortunately, as many of you know, was collected, and turned into a book called Dialectics of Nature.) For example;

"It is not that the economic position is the cause alone and alone active, while everything else only has a passive effect. There is, rather, interaction on the basis of the economic necessity, which ultimately always asserts itself."

And;

"According to the materialist conception of history, the production and reproduction of social life is the ultimately determining element in history. More than that neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, senseless phrase."

If I had more time, and energy, I'd go into greater detail, but I think this is sufficient. Engels once said that if you think that because you haven't got a bourgeoisie, you can skip straight to socialism, you fundamentally misunderstood what we were saying. Well, if you think Marx was an economic determinist, you missed the point. You have, like so many (unfortunately) mistaken a vulgarized caricature of Marx for the genuine article. My advice would be to do us both a favor, and read more Marx. Or, if you want, a really good overview, like Alex Callinicos'; Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, or Terry Eagleton's; Why Marx Was Right.

[Invader Zim]

I said that Marx was historically deterministic, because he was.

Learn to read.

[Comrade #138672]

Hi there,

This is my first post; its a question that's always been on my mind and I wanted to get far-left opinions of the US founding fathers, bill of rights and constitution. I'm from Australia and I think the US founders established a very successful republic, and it shows with the United States of America as the world's number one superpower with more than its fair share of Nobel prize winners, the number one for motion picture production, a successful space program and numerous military achievements.

I think the US bill of rights and constitution were critical to the success of the United States and hopefully it will be followed better into the future. I've noticed that socialist/communist regimes tend to be incompatible with the Bill of Rights and constitution of the United States of America.

Please let me know what you think, is socialism compatible with the US bill of rights and constitution? Why/why not? What do you see as potential issues with the Bill of Rights and Constitution, and do you have anything against the US founding fathers?

They are not compatible, since the Bill of Rights reflects the class interests of the bourgeoisie, which are incompatible with the class interests of the proletariat. Thus, socialism will smash it and replace it with something better, something that reflects the class interests of the proletariat instead.

[Comrade #138672]

If patriotism means loving your home then yes, absolutely.

Which is probably why you are labelled a reactionary.

[TheCultofAbeLincoln]

They are not compatible, since the Bill of Rights reflects the class interests of the bourgeoisie, which are incompatible with the class interests of the proletariat. Thus, socialism will smash it and replace it with something better, something that reflects the class interests of the proletariat instead.

What the fuck is actually meant by this, because you're vagueness is truly frightening.

"We're going to smash your written guarantee of free speech/press/assembly and replace it with something better."