RE: Debating slavery: Marx's discussion

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> austina@xxxxxxxx 10/21/00 11:48PM >>>
-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Brown [mailto:CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Friday, October 20, 2000 3:29 PM
To: marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: Debating slavery: Marx's discussion



CB: Aptheker's thesis of the Civil War as revolutionary is based on the idea
that one of the main forms of private property in the U.S. system - private
property in people - was abolished by that war. Marxism focuses on the form
of property as defining a mode of production. There was a fundamental
transformation in the mode of production with the abolition of slavery.

AA: The only problem with this view is that those who were in control before
emancipation were in control afterwards.

(((((((((

CB: The slavocracy was the ruling class of the whole U.S. in the decades before 
the
Civil War. They were not in control after the Civil War.  The legal action
constituting the full end of slavery was not the Emancipation Proclamation , as 
you
focus on, but the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, which was passed after 
the war,
not during. By it, ownership of slaves became illegal for everybody. But the 
ending of
slavery was substantively carried out by the war itself, the legal actions being
crystalization of the effect of the war.

 The ending of slave relations of production was a social revolution.

I  believe Xxxx also says the American Revolution was not a revolution. With Lou
saying the French Revolution was not a revolution, between the two of you, 
there were
no bourgeois revolutions at all in history. The feudalist mode of production 
just sort
of slipped away smoothly without any revolution.