Re: Capitalism, slavery

[Paul Cockshott <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> Is there any evidence here that sharecropping as a disguised form of
> wage labor fettered the mechanization of cotton harvesting which had
> to wait until its weakening? That seems to me true, and suggests that
> the simple progressivist Marxist view of history as the autonomous
> development of the productive forces choosing and abandoning various
> forms of exploitation is probably wrong. The development of the
> productive forces did not dictate the transition from slavery to
> sharecropping; the resistance of former slaves ensured this.
> Sharecropping does not seem to have promoted the development of the
> productive forces more than slavery would have. The form of
> exploitation--sharecropping--was probably not optimal either in terms
> of capitalist profitability or the development of the productive
> forces. But this--the defeat of large scale capitalist agriculture on
> the basis of slavery for the disguised wage labor system of
> sharecropping--seems to be the price that the Northern bourgeoisie
> had to pay for political defeat of the rival capitalists in the South.

 Share-cropping seems to be the standard post slavery formation,
one sees similar forms developing in Europe in the late Roman
empire. Historians seem divided on whether they promoted
or held back the productive forces.





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