In a message dated 9/4/03 5:26:41 AM Pacific Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
>Post argues . . .plantation slavery was incompatible with agrarian petty capitalism in the two decades before the Civil War, plantation slavery became the major impediment to the further development of capitalism in the rest of the USA. I find the following premises unsubstantiated: the development of agrarian petty production was the key to the further development of capitalism, specifically machino-facture, in the rest of the USA, and this key role of agrarian petty production was quite clear as early as two decades before the Civil War. < Comment "Machino-facture" hits the nail on the head by establishing a specific juncture in the development of the primary means of production. Above all plantation slavery was a distinct form of the laboring process. For the last generation of Marxist the meaning of "form of laboring process" was described on the basis of "free" and "slave-labor." The "form" of slave labor itself was identical to the form of "free labor" in agriculture as it produced commodities. That is to say, the process was manual labor. Manual labor as the laboring process in agriculture - be it slave or un-slave, is not incompatible with the bourgeois property relations as it passed from manufacture to industrial production. Capitalism utilizes "any form of labor it finds in existence" is one of those principles generations of Marxist cling to and this is no crime. A deeper description or another vantage point is needed to disclose the process - qualitatively. It is not "stagism" or dogmatism to refuse to surrender the standpoint of the development of the material power of production as expressed in tools, instruments, machinery and external energy source. Slave labor in agriculture was absolutely compatible with and complemented the development of industry, the growth and spread of bourgeois property relations because the entire laboring process was manual. This was capital accumulation on the basis of a distinct juncture in the development of implements. The technological advance can be traced on the basis of the development of the gasoline powered engine and evolution of the mechanical trashing machine. Plantation slavery was more productive than the yeoman farmer during this period of history because of the massive organization of manual labor into a regulated system of production. The intensity of the laboring process cannot be overstated and Marx describes it in detail as the "working to death" of the slave. The yeoman farmer cannot be worked to death by definition. The old saying "he sold me down the river" had a dreadful meaning to the slave. To be sold down the river - Mississippi, and into the heart of cotton country -"Behind the Cotton Curtain," meant an average life expectancy of seven years of labor! The Civil War did not erupted as a social revolution being driven by changes in the means of production or rather as a result of the on going transition from agriculture to industry as such, but political antagonism within the bourgeois property class of America. Yes, the slave was emancipated as slave but not as a class associated with commodity production from the land. In theory the emergence of yeomen farmers after the Civil War, would have spurred technological innovation on the basis of competing capitals and the need for industrial implements for agriculture. This concept of development is understood as the basis for the 40 arches and a mule movement and in our specific history - the political striving for Jefferson democracy, as it stood in political conflict with the shattered slave oligarchy or rather planter landlord class. Politics is of course a "dirty business" and this does not mean that the industrial capitalist stood on one side of the street and shouted "forty arches and a mule" in harmony with the freedmen and property-less whites and on the other side of the street stood the planter landlord class in unison with finance capital screaming "no, this demand will destroy me as a class and my friends in New York support me now that I promise to be a good ole boy and rule on their behalf." Some time ago - during the last cycle of this same discussion on Marxline, a comrade forwarded an interesting document of the National Association of Manufacturers at the turn of the past century outlining their interest in yeoman farming as opposed to sharecropping or having an available source of labor, not restrained by political tradition and political structures. . I understand the word yeoman farmer to basically means a farmer that cultivates his own land. Because he cultivates his own land means to one degree or another he owns his land as property. What he produces on this land is offered on the market for sale to one degree or another. That is to say he alienates his product on the basis of exchange. It class terms this is called by the previous generation Marxist a petty bourgeois producer. Sharecropping is a business even if it does not sound like one. The difference between the sharecropper and the yeoman farmer is that the former worked someone else's land for a portion of the produce - shares, and as such was is still charged with alienating his product on the same economic basis as the yeoman farmer. In as much as no man or women in their right mind opts to work another mans land when given the option of independence - Jefferson democracy, extreme violence was used to keep the freedman tied to the planter landlord and reduced to the level of the peasant in India. Sharecropping in class terms is a petty bourgeois relationship. The degree to which one is cheated and terrorized is a profound political question. In this sense the concept "free labor market" is avoided in my writing although it's meaning is understood as a political description as oppose to an economic category, which is generally the case with Marxist. The petty bourgeois as a class are not free laborers by definition. The Civil War was not a bourgeois revolution when one defines such as a revolution that creates the political structure for the domination of the bourgeois property relations. The Civil War or rather the Yankees imposed a revolution in social relations in the plantation South. Even this does not qualitatively define itself. The social relations that constituted itself as a class of slaves and a class of slave owners was abolished with a political act and enforced by arms. The class was destroyed and became largely a class of petty bourgeois produces in the shape of sharecroppers and the slave-master class was destroyed and became a landlord planter class. The class relations or internal connecting tissue between the sharecropper and planter landlord would not be abolished until the advent of mechanization of agriculture. American history is its own history and instructive. A class can be politically emancipated but not liberated as a class - abolished, until new means of production appear that the class fundamentally superfluous to the production process. Liberation of the sharecropper meant his abolition as a class. An era of history has opened where it is possible to not only emancipate the working class but also begin its material liberation. None of this is a "Marxist" analysis as such. The "Marxism" is witnessed in the evolution of the commodity form and the material basis for its destruction. Here one enters the realm of the destruction of value. Lenin was not inconsistent but facing a material class, political compromise and this compromise itself is the reality of class and economic factors. In the last instance the petty bourgeois producer can only alienate their products on the basis of exchange. There is no political policy that can change an economic category. Bottom line . . .to one degree or another you have to give the people what they want. Bravo Melvin P.
