RE: Forwarded from Anthony (slavery)

["Austin, Andrew" <austina@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim,

You write, "As I recall, Andy Austin on this list a long time ago argued
that social formations are constited by a hierarchy of modes of production
with one of them as the dominant one."

I modified my thinking on this some time ago. I argued then that a hierarchy
of modes of production could comprise a social formation. This was
conceptualized within a synchronic model of social formation. After that, I
began to distinguish between mode of production, on the one hand, and the
technical mode of production, or mode of exploitation, on the other. This
was an attempt to clarify the differences between peasant-labor,
slave-labor, and wage-labor in the context of the capitalist mode of
production. I don't know how much that clarifies things. I think
diachronically multiple modes of production makes more sense, for example
the capitalist mode of production emerging from feudal society. Capitalism
did not come out of nowhere; it emerged and undermined the feudal order,
while at the same time the crumbling feudal order permitted the rise of
capitalism. However, with respect to racial slavery this is not the case,
since capitalism did not emerge from the southern plantation, rather the
southern plantation was a creation of capitalism. Had world capitalism
emerged from a pre-capitalist slave system in the US South and then
overthrew the southern aristocracy to establish capitalism, then we might be
able to talk about a social revolution. This is clearly not what happened.

Andrew Austin
Green Bay, WI