Slaves in many places directed the work. For example, in S. Carolina,
they were the only ones who originally knew how to grow rice.
Also, they grew many of their own vegetables frequently.
On Sat, Jun 16, 2001 at 06:54:57PM -0500, Carrol Cox wrote:
>
>
> Ken Hanly wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > P.S. To Cox re Hardy post. I thought that slaves would often be directed by
> > overseers what to do, not left on their own.
> >
>
> Of course they are directed what to do, but that is irrelevant to Marx's
> argument. Consider a task that most subscribers to this list will have
> taken part in at one time or another: collating, stapling, folding, etc.
> a newsletter. Characteristically, in a slave system, the overseer,
> master, would tell the slaves: collate those newsletters. Period! The
> slaves might or might not analyze the task -- they probably wouldn't
> because there would be no advantage to them in doing so and, in slave
> systems, the master would probably never have performed the task himself
> and hence would have no remote conception that it _could_ be analyzed.
> The slaves would then procede to slog through the task in whatever way
> had become customary. If they were anything like people I have worked
> with in this task, probably they would collect the pages for one
> newsletter, stack them, staple them, fold them, staple them, put on a
> label, and put on a postage stamp (if they weren't being bulk mailed).
> There would be no need for some sort of rack which would allow the
> collating of 20 or so copies of the newsletter at once; there would be
> no considering what the best way was to make one's fingers sticky, there
> would in general be no technical division of labor of the sort that so
> delighted Adam Smith. Plato wants his farmers to farm and have their
> tools made by someone else, etc, but there is no evidence anywhere in
> Plato that I know of, and certainly not in Homer, of an analyxis of and
> reconstruction of the work task. That on the whole simply would not be
> considred except accidentally and marginally until the labor of the free
> worker became simply an aliquot part of the labor of the entire work
> force of an entire society -- until the rise of a capitalist social
> division of labor.
>
> This is incidentally key to what Yoshie and I and others are currently
> battling out with Mark and Lou. Capitalism is _different_; it is very
> near to _unnatural_, a freak, an accident which very well might not ever
> appear were the tape of human history (using Gould's metaphor) to be run
> over again.
>
> Carrol
>
>
> Carrol
>
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929
Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
