>>Was the end of slavery a social revolution because it was a fundamental change in the property relations?<< MP: There was not a fundamental change in property relations as the result of the Civil War and the ending of slavery. The form of this bourgeois property relations changed but I do not consider this a a fundamental change in the property relations of Southern agricultural as the plantation system founded on a historically specific combination of human labor + instruments and tools + energy source. You are correct that we have radically different political approaches or lines of march. This is understandable considering our different histories, experiences and class orientation. However, some aspect of history are questions of study. The Slave Oligarchy was a bourgeois planter class and became a bourgeois landlord planter class with the freeing of the slaves. The slaves were slaves - a form of property owned by masters like a machine, horse or chicken, but more than that proletarians in chains in as much as they created value and in their laboring reproduced the value relations. What this means is described in detail by Marx in his Poverty of Philosophy. The slave class produced exchange values as the primary form of their laboring rather than products for immediate consumption of the master. That is to say, the products of their labor acquired a commodity form and entered the sphere of capital circulation and reproduction. The Slave Oligarchy were capitalist and this historically specific form of class went the way of john Henry. Again I believe you consistently approach matters from the theater of the abstract rather than looking at relations in their concreteness . . . Mr. Lawyer. You posed most of your questions as a petty attorney involved in a juvenile debate rather than in their actuality. CB: >>Was the end of slavery a social revolution because it was a fundamental change in the property relations?<< What you write is actually the following: "the end of slavery . . . was a fundamental change in the property relations . . . Was the end of slavery a social revolution?" Mr. Lawyer . . . sir . . . there was no fundamental change in the property relations. The slave form of class was changed.
Melvin P. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list [email protected] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
