From Rakesh [ reply to DMS]

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: reply to DMS
Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2003 10:36:02 -0700
From: Rakesh Bhandari <rakeshb@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: lnp3@xxxxxxxxx

dms writes:

>But back to Rakesh and Post.  As I replied to Rakesh, the
>arguments Rakesh claims Post makes he is certainly not making,
>to my reading, in the article in the J of A C.

Please read the last section of the article on slavery and economic
development.

According to Post, slavery throttled the development of the rural
home market for Northern industry while Midwestern family farming did
not. For this reason, slavery fettered industrial development while
the Midwestern peasantry did not.

If this isn't what he is saying in the last section, then what is he saying?

>
>I would say history has confirmed the validity of that
>  particular bit of analysis.  In the end slavery did stand in
>the way.

Post has wrong how the North American plantation owners stood in the
way of the development of machino-facture within the US. That was my
argument. Post argues (again see the last section of the paper) that
slavery, unlike Midwestern family farming,  could not provide the
extra effective demand which Northern industry  required. By the way,
this implies Luxemburg's neo Keyensian theory of accumulation.

>Even the merchants of the North were an obstacle,
>going so far as to support the copperheads and the peace
>Democrats and worse, agitate against the draft. Slavery may
>have been a pivot, but that does not prevent it from becoming
>a fetter.

Right but you want to minimize the role slavery played in the
development of the English industrial revolution (Inikori) and the
American one (see Foner, Ronald Bailey). There were those capitalists
(Brown, Lowell) who profited from the commercial aspects of slavery
(supplying the plantations and engaging directly and indirectly in
the slave trade itself) and went on to finance the US industrial
revolution.

In his theory of American economic development Post considers slavery
narrowly; however,  "New England's maritime trade and shipping laid
the foundation for, raised the infrastructure of, and funded early
American industrial development...Maritime trade and shipping
depended largely on the slave trade and n the slave based Atlantic
economic system of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The early
industries, such as shipbuilding and rum distilling, were directly
tied to the slave trade and maritime activities generall...Cotton
textile production in New England was not directly dependent on
maritime activities as such, although its initial capital was. It was
an important substitution industry and the markets for its products
were internal. However these internal markets were created by the
slave based cotton economy of the southern states and the maritime
activities of New England" (Ronald Bailey who does not then deny the
dynamism of the Western markets)

Note that Post does not even cite such research--for example, Inikori
and Ronald Bailey's contributions to The Atlantic Slave Trade, ed.
Inikori and Stanley Engerman (1992). I have myself not yet read
Bailey's "The Slavery Trade(ry) and the Development of Industrial
Capitalism in New England," in The Meaning of Slavery in the North,
ed. Marty Blatt and David Roediger (New York: Garland Press, 1998),
pp. 3-31. Post does cite the Solow and Engerman volume on Eric
Williams but as far as I can see makes no actual engagement with the
arguments therein. Blackburn is only cited to support the claim that
the plantations were not really capitalist because self sufficient,
though the weight of his full argument goes the other way (Blackburn
shows increasing market involvement of North American plantations and
inabililty to fall back within the shell of natural economy; note
Post also makes no mention of Blackburn's defense of a qualified
Williams thesis).

Ellen Wood  more than intimates in about two pages that England's
agrarian revolution had to have issued in the industrial revolution
so we are not allowed to investigate what we can call the mercantile
origins of the industrial capitalist system, whether English or
American. Marx himself of course presented a very different picture
of the genesis of the industrial capitalist.  Neither Wood nor Post
actually considers a single argument which Robin Blackburn or Joseph
Inikori or Ronald Bailey makes in this regard.  To state the case of
slavery's contribution to American industrialism, Post relies on the
more than forty year old research of the neo classical economist
Douglas North!

Of course Northern industry attempted to circumscribe the political
power of slave owners within the US not however because they, unlike
Midwestern peasants, provided a narrow market for mfgs per se but
because they (unlike Midwestern peasants) had the wealth and power to
oppose tariffs (and liberal immigration policy). For its take off,
Northern industry had to make the South its own dependency, both
economically and politically.  Northern industry would continue to
stand on the pedestal of open slavery outside the borders of the US
and even for all practical purposes within (we'll have to study the
history of mining in the Southwest).


>To paraphrase from the lines of Private Hudson in "Aliens,"
>
>"Maybe I ain't keepin' up on current events, but the South
>got its ass kicked back there."  There was a Civil War, the
>grip of the slaver property on the US was broken, the expansion
>of  free soil, free labor, industrial capitalism both pre-figured
>and followed the conflict.

Yes indeed the political power of the slave owners had to be broken
but not for the reasons that you and Post think.

By the way, I also did present criticism of Post's structural theory
of slavery's disincentives to continuous adoption of labor saving
technique. You did not respond, but I do know how down you are with
James Brown who still doesn't know karate but does known ka-razy.

Rakesh


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