Jim Devine: If you studied with Johnny Murra, you should know a lot more about Latin America than you give evidence of knowing, but thats beside the point which is: Although I agree withg Sid Mintz on the capitalist nature of the sugar plantation system, one does not need to define slaves as proletarians (per Mintz, CLR James, et al.) to make thbe argument in line with classical Marxism. The sugar plantation system and the sugar colonies employed thousands upon thousands of free workers, some on the plantations, many more in the militasry and police forces kept in the colonies to put down slave revolts, the thousands who worked on ships plying the triangular trade, the thousands working in ports in England and France on loading and unloading these ships and in sugar refineries (the sugar was not refined on the plantation). But more crucially, the capitalists who owned the plantations lived in London (etc.); the owners of the plantations were mostly -- particularly after the mid-18th century -- corporations, often selling stock on the Lomndon exchange. And the bottom line: all of this was P*R*O*D*U*C*T*I*O*N. In the typical cases after the mid-18th century (or thereabouts) the owners of the plantations were the sugar factors and refiners in England, sometimes also owning the ships and delving in the slave trade. THIS WAS NOT "COMMERCE." IT WAS NOT "MERCHANT CAPITAL." It was capitalist enterprise of the sort that you find before the industrtial revolution. Repeating for emphasis: often the slaves, free workers on the plantations , free workers in England, and (more or less) free workers on the ships WORKED FOR THE SAME CAPITALIST, and all of it was production, not commerce. The system in the antebellum South was somewhat different: banks were a big factor. But the era of the slave plantation was mainly played out in the Caribbean and Brazil; the cotton South was not important until the 19th century. Even Genovese knows that, and he don't know much. jim b
