> Date sent: Fri, 19 Sep 1997 22:52:12 -0700 (PDT) > Send reply to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > To: Multiple recipients of list <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [PEN-L:12483] Re: cultural relativism In a message dated 97-09-19 01:20:51 EDT, Ricardo writes: > > Slavery was abolished in the U.S precisely because > >it did not conform to the constitutional principles of the North; if > >the U.S was to be true to its own principles, slavery had to be > >abolished, which does not explain the time and the manner in which it > >was abolished...The same is true of lynching, as the civil rights > >movement demonstrates. > >ricardo > Maggie responds: While I applaud the sentiments of this piece, I really think > slavery in the USA was abolished for much more pragmatic reasons. If one > reads the political economists writing in the USA at the time (NOT the > European economists writing about the USA), then the reasons for abolishing > slavery have alot more to do with the war between two different economies. > Prior to 1800, and the mushrooming of manufacturing in the northeast > beginning with the War of 1812, there was almost no free labor -- white or > black or other. The myth is that all white men were free in the USA, > especially following the American Revolution. Actually, there had been a > chronic labor shortage in the new world from the first settlements, and the > methods of slavery and indenturing were developed to capture a labor force in > a world where there was little else to offer in terms of acceptable > amenities. > Roughly 60 to 80% (depending on the historians you read) of ALL > Caucasian non-property owners in the north (men and women) were in long term, > binding, indenture contracts for the bulk of their adult lives. Not only did > between 50% and 80% of all Caucasians arrive as bound labor, prior to 1800 > there were almost no jails, prisons, or almshouses, Every county in the > northeast used regular public indenture auctions as the cure all for: > poverty, rape, murder, theft, drunkenness and all crime. Louis Katz in "In > the Shadow of the Poorhouse" notes that public auctions of Caucasians did not > take place down south primarily because of the need to maintain myths of > white supremacy. However, in the north, they were the primary method of > supplying additional labor to extended rural households. > Indenturing began to wane after the revolution, but did not come > out of all the law books until after the Civil War (the last city to remove > indenturing laws was Philadelphia). The extremely fast growth of > manufacturing in New England suddenly required a 'free' labor force. (in > 1807, the number of cotton mills in Massachusetts almost quadrupled) The > economists talking about a 'free' labor force were not talking about the > political freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. They were talking about > freeing business owners from the need to sustain and reproduce labor > throughout a lifetime. Under the systems of slavery and indenturing, the > owner could not fire or dismiss a disabled or ill slave of servant--they were > required by law to sustain the laborer with food, clothes, and housing--no > matter how poor those items might be. There was extensive debate (Norman > Ware, Henry Carey, ...I can provide a list of authors to anyone who is > interested) as to the relative expense of slaves in the south and 'free' > labor in the north. The general conclusion was that the 'free' labor was > cheaper because of the change of social contract. Business owners were not > obligated to 'free' labor beyond a day's pay, and the worker organizations > which would push the remuneration of that labor, and decrease the work day > and bring workplace improvements, would not get going until well into the > 1860s/70s. > While couched in democratic terms, the need for the industrial > north to gain dominance to protect their economic interests, and increase > their pool of poor wage labor was probably (IMHO) far more important to > sustaining the Civil War than any altruistic reasons. > maggie coleman [EMAIL PROTECTED] > 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: - Slavery was abolished primarily for pragmatic reasons rather than constitutional-liberal principles. It was mainly a conflict between two different economic systems, based on different forms of labor control. - Prior to 1800, free labor among whites in the North was not as common as it has been customarily assumed. Free labor grew later as it became cheaper; its eventual use, therefore, had to do with the economic interests of industrialists, not any sort of democratic principles. - The civil war was about the extension of free labor to the South, so that the abolition of slave labor had little to do with democratic principles and much more with the economic interests of northern industrialists. 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. 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. 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? ricardo
