CB , always a lawyer in the tradition of that attorney Lenin: >>Was the end of slavery a social revolution because it was a fundamental change in the property relations?<< CB: Yes, it was. And it was the revolution that resulted from the first phase of the industiral revolution, a development of the forces of production. The social revolution coincident with , and perhaps caused by, the steam engine phase of the industrial revolution, the original industrial revolution of capitalism, was the abolition of the slave property relations within capitalism. MP: In the tradition of Lenin. I see. Your ideology prevents you from posing and formulating question correctly. Read what you wrote. The end of slavery did not change the property relations of the former Slave holding south. The slave property relations of the South was a bourgeois property relations. This issue has confused many Marxist and specifically those whose history is linked with the approach of the Communist Party USA. There was no fundamental change in the property relations or the instruments of production for that matter after the overthrow of slavery. The South remained more than less unchanged for at least another 50 years. Actually until 1939. The property relations of the Slave holding south were not "slave property relations" but bourgeois property relations carried out and cemented using slaves as value producers. I could quote Marx all day on this subject but you have your point of view. Here is what Marx states and it is fairly clear to me. "In the second type of colonies - plantations - where commercial speculation figure from the start and production is intended for the world market, the capitalist mode of production exists, although only in the formal sense, since slavery of Negroes preclude free wage labor, which is the basis of capitalist production. But the business in which slaves are used is conducted by capitalists." Further Marx states: "where the capitalist outlook prevails, as on the American plantations, this entire surplus value is regarded as profit . . ." In Capital Volume 1 Marx describes in unmistakable detail why the slaves were carrying out bourgeois production. He most certainly calls the slave oligarchy bourgeois planters and on a couple of occasions speak of their bourgeois nature in his writings. You speak of "the abolition of the slave property relations within capitalism" and misunderstand the meaning of the value relations. There were no slave property relations as such but bourgeois property relations using slaves. In the same vain several writing speak of the horrors of the Jews in work labor camps under German fascism being reduced to a level below slaves. No Mr. Lawyer in the tradition of Lenin - there were no slave property relations in America. Southern agriculture was a bourgeois property relations that consisted of more than just the slaves. Pardon but there were a lot of white people in the South and only one section of the plantation South's population were slaves. The plantation south was not a society composed of just masters and slaves. The plantation South was composed of bourgeois planters, slaves, independent farmers and rural proletarians, sharecroppers and small business persons and merchants of all kinds. We are of course speaking of America rather than world history and the dissolution of feudalism? See what happens when one lives in the theater of the abstract . . . Mr. Lawyer. Melvin P.
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