Re: Query on slavery

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I am glad you are pursuing this , Lou. Let me say my main concern is that the 
review
of Mark M. Smith's book that you posted said that Smith delcares that Genovese 
and
Fogel, et al. are the main competing schools of thought in the area. And both 
Genovese
and Fogel, et al. , have been criticized by Aptheker on the issue of slave 
resistence,
the issue that Aptheker "originated" in the historical discipline. I have not 
thought
through how this directly impacts the "Was slavery capitalism or not ? " debate.
However, it seems bad that people on the wrong side of the slave resistence 
issue
should be portrayed as the leading scholars on the South and slavery in 
general. It's
very important that you have brought in James and Williams. Notice the 
mainstream
scholars have drifted away from African American/Carribbean scholars as 
important in
the field. Same old story.

As always, Lou, thanks for your activist scholarship

Charles

>>> lnp3@xxxxxxxxx 10/19/00 05:49PM >>>
I've been exchanging email with Mark M. Smith, the author of "Debating
Slavery". According to Smith, the debate is mainly between "Marxists" like
Eugene Genovese on one side and non-Marxists like Fogel, Engerman, and
Oakes on the other. The former tend to put forward the notion that the
Slavocracy was precapitalist and "paternalistic". The other camp, drawing
from econometrics, tries to show that the plantation system was both
profitable and efficient on capitalist terms. However, they are not
Marxists. Charles Brown states that this is a false debate, since it
excludes Aptheker and DuBois. While not gainsaying the enormous
contribution of these two, my question is whether anybody knows of a
Marxist study of slavery that is in line with Eric Williams and the Monthly
Review school? My interest in these questions is tied to research I did
last year on the Brenner thesis and is particularly focused on the question
whether free labor is a precondition for capitalism. Williams, who was
strongly influenced by CLR James, argues that it was not and that
capitalism and slavery were inter-related. However, most of Williams work
is focused on the Caribbeans. I am looking for that kind of research but
focused on the American South.

Louis Proyect
Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org/