Capitalism & Freedom

[Bill Burgess]

At 12:55 AM 24/11/00 -0500, Yoshie wrote:

>If you want to give a little moral credit to some Europeans, why not 
>praise Canadians, the French Jacobins, & the Latin-American Jacobin 
>insurgents in the wars of independence?

Or _some_ Canadians. William Lyon Mackenzie, leader of the 1837-38 failed 
national-bourgeois-democratic revolution in Upper Canada (Ontario) was a 
leader of the Anti-Slavery Society (don't recall its exact name). On the 
other hand, Canada's first PM, Sir John A. MacDonald, was the legal agent 
of the Southern Slave States. The assasination of Abraham Lincoln was 
planned in Montreal.

Bill Burgess

Capitalism & Freedom (was Re: Yes, the white man's moral burden!)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 3:35 PM -0400 11/23/00, Ricardo Duchesne wrote:
>We all know that Europeans created their own version, but the
>point remains that Europeans enslaved a people who were not yet
>conscious of their freedom.

It is not "Europeans" but _capitalism_ that created the idea of 
bourgeois freedom (= double-edged freedom of wage labor).  And it is 
_capitalism & slavery_ that created the idea of "Europe" & 
"Europeans."  Try to avoid anachronism for once.

>But the Europeans then understood
>it was wrong and, by 1838, had abolished slavery in all British
>colonies.

When production based on chattel slavery & mercantilism ceased to be 
more profitable than production based upon free labor & Laissez Faire 
for British capitalism, as Eric Williams argues:

"The capitalists had first encouraged West Indian slavery and then 
helped to destroy it.  When British capitalism depended on the West 
Indies, they ignored slavery or defended it.  When British capitalism 
found the West Indian monopoly a nuisance, they destroyed West Indian 
slavery as the first step in the destruction of West Indian monopoly" 
(Williams, _Capitalism and Slavery_, Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina 
P, 1994 [originally published in 1944], p. 169).

Capitalism came to outgrow chattel slavery & mercantilism which had 
helped it develop in its infancy.  The development of forces of 
production broke the fetters of now antiquated relations of 
production.

>Already in 1807 England and the US had already
>prohibited the international slave trade.

Which helped them triumph further in economic & imperial competition 
with other Europeans (mainly the Spaniards & the Portuguese):

*   From 1830 to 1850 both Great Britain and the United States, 
by joint convention, kept on the coast of Africa at least eighty guns 
afloat for the suppression of the slave trade.  Most of the vessels 
so employed were small corvettes, brigs, or schooners; steam at that 
time was just being introduced into the navies of the 
worldRepeatedly we had chased suspicious craft only to be 
out-sailed.  At this time the traffic in slaves was very brisk; the 
demand in the Brazils, in Cuba, and in other Spanish West Indies was 
urgent, and the profit of the business so great that two or three 
successful ventures would enrich any one.  The slavers were generally 
small, handy craft; fast, of course; usually schooner-rigged, and 
carrying flying topsails and forecourse.  Many were built in England 
or elsewhere purposely for the business, without, of course, the 
knowledge of the builders, ostensibly as yachts or traders.  The 
Spaniards and Portuguese were the principal offenders, with 
occasionally an English-speaking renegade.  The slave depots, or 
barracoons, were generally located some miles up a river.  Here the 
slaver was secure from capture and could embark his live cargo at his 
leisure.  Keeping a sharp lookout on the coast, the dealers were able 
to follow the movements of the cruisers, and by means of smoke, or in 
other ways, signal when the coast was clear for the coming down the 
river and sailing of the loaded craft.  Before taking in the cargoes 
they were always fortified with all the necessary papers and 
documents to show they were engaged in legitimate commerce, so it was 
only when caught in flagrante delicto that we could hold them.

(For the rest of the story see Wood, J. Taylor. "The Capture of a 
Slaver." Atlantic Monthly 86 (1900): 451-463. Electronic Text Center, 
University of Virginia Library )

   *

If you want to give a little moral credit to some Europeans, why not 
praise Canadians, the French Jacobins, & the Latin-American Jacobin 
insurgents in the wars of independence?

*   As a result of the legal opinion of the colony's (Upper 
Canada) Chief Justice in 1818 no one seen as a slave in another 
jurisdiction could be returned there simply because he/she had sought 
freedom in Upper Canada.  Whatever their status in the U.S. or 
elsewhere, in Upper Canada they were free long before the abolition 
of slavery throughout the British empire in 1833 See also 1791 under 
Upper Canada.  (Posting on [EMAIL PROTECTED] by Dr. Jeffrey L. 
McNairn, Department of History, York University, Toronto, Ontario)

   *

*   The Haitian Revolution
FRANKLIN W. KNIGHT

...The leftward drift of the revolution and the implacable zeal of 
its colonial administrators, especially the Jacobin commissioner 
Léger Félicité Sonthonax, to eradicate all traces of 
counterrevolution and royalism -- which he identified with the whites 
-- in Saint Domingue facilitated the ultimate victory of the blacks 
over the whites.[45]  Sonthonax's role, however, does not detract 
from the brilliant military leadership and political astuteness 
provided by Toussaint Louverture

...[45]  Robert L. Stein, Léger Félicité Sonthonax: The Lost Sentinel 
of the Republic (