In a message dated 97-09-23 15:37:54 EDT, Ricardo writes: >Maggie, I am not sure my very general comment deserved such a careful, >reasoned response, but now that the ball has started to roll, let me >keep an eye over it. I take the structure of your argument to be as >follows: I didn't mean to overwhelm, it is just an area about which I have strong opinions. >My response is: The constitution of the United States formed >after the war of independence was of major historical >significance. Although it was not fully democratic, it promulgated >the principle of popular sovereignty, that is, that governments >derive their authority from the consent of free men. The so-called >founding fathers gave little thought to slavery, excepting the issue >of how much should a slave vote count in deciding how many >representative each state should have in the >Congress. The founding FATHERS also did not give any thoughts to allowing the founding MOTHERS an equal say in politics, i.e. women were not allowed to vote, nor could married women own property or receive their own wages until well after 1850. Married women's wages were routinely paid to their husbands (and yes, many, many married women worked for wages, I have a publication on that if you want a reference). Herbert Gutman in "Who Built America" characterizes the alliance that won the American REvolution as an uneasy one which fell apart as soon as the Brits left. In actuality, there was almost as much fighting between the working class and the elite leaders of the Revolution after the rev as before. Many, many states passed MORE RESTRICTIVE property holding rules on the right to vote after the revolution than had existed prior to the revolution. Restrictions on voting rights such as literacy did not disappear from all state books until the civil rights movement gained strength in the 1960s. If you read the early 1800s records of Boston City Council, or accounts of life in New York, there were constant riots throughout the first half of the nineteenth century over food shortages, wages, race issues and politics. In the first half of the nineteenth century there were armed rebellions by locals against the legislatures of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont. Generally these were over the impossiblity of repaying debts or paying taxes at a time when there was a chronic specie shortage which lasted until 1850 (the gold rush--when the Brits left, they took the money with them and there was no uniform currency in the US until after the civil war). >This issue was to take momentous significance with the >opening of the West: was slavery to be permitted in the new >territories? Already there was a very strong anti-slavery movement in >the North, and this issue brought this movement to the forefront of >American politics. Anti-slavery politicians put forward the >crucial point that if sovereignty really resided in the people, then >their will should be expressed in Congress through their >representatives; to allow slavery to continue to exist and >expand westwards was against this very principle, in that the southern >representative in Congress were not really >expressing the will of the people. > I don't disagree with any of this, but I think it is really a rosy view of life as it stood in the USA at that time. While there were large segments of the population opposed to slavery, there were large segments who didn't give a damn. Draft riots in New York took the form of beating and killing freed black men, and raping black women. Wealthy men bought their way out of military service, made millions from the Civil War, and financed the war at the same time. Industrialists don't finance wars out of altruistic motives. >The abolition of slavery, then, was not an "altruistic" decision, in >the sense that private individuals felt that slavery was >reprehensible. Many in the North did, many did not. It was the >political institutions in the U.S which ran agaisnt the >practice of slavery; and the abolitionists were simply being true to >the liberal-democratic principles embodied within those institutions. >What is Marxism if not the extension of those principles to the >workplace? You lost me on the last sentence. maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
