Forwarded from Anthony (rise of US capitalism--part 6)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is the sixth in a series of posts addressed to the history of the USA,
and in part other parts of the Americas, aimed especially at the issues
leading to, involved in, and resulting from the rise of chattel slavery in
the Americas from the 16th century to after the 1860's.

I had planned to write about "Modes of Production north of Mexico in the
16th and 17th centuries." in this post, but a few offlist posts from Mark
Lause changed my mind.

Lause seems to think the big issue in the earlier discussion is the nature
of the 'Second American Revolution'. This is what some Marxists like to
call the US Civil War. I think the idea that the civil war was a revolution
is part of a bigger methodological problem. The problem goes something like
this. Every capitalist country must have had a bourgeois revolution of its
very own, so we have to look hard at history to find one, when it doesn't
appear at first sight. This is basically trying to fit square pegs into
round holes. A better way to understand the development of capitalist
society, is to try to analyze the process on a global - not country by
country - basis.  Limits to understanding history

In my view the most difficult limit on Marxist historians in the past was
the view that revolutions - and social, economic and political development
in general - occur in walled off 'national' histories. To a certain extent
Marx and Engels, and all 19th century European writers that I know of, were
unable to overcome this limit - after all they lived in Europe in an epoch
of nationalism and national revolutions - and in an age of real ignorance.

But the wonderful chapter of Das Kapital on the primitive accumulation of
capital definitely goes beyond that limit.

Lenin, Trotsky, Bukharin, Luxembourg, Proebezhensky, Kautsky - and the
entire generation of Marxist theorists writing around the time of the
Russian revolution - often failed to overcome this limit.. Stalin made a
fetish of this limit.

The Marxist historians of the 30's through the 50's - despite often very
high quality investigation and analysis - rarely got out of this trap. Here
I refer specifically to the British and French Marxist Historians - Hill,
Tawney, Lefevre, et. al. , and also lesser figures like the Foners and
George Novak in the USA. World systems types - whatever their other
weaknesses - usually try not to fall into this trap. (Although some of them
try to fall into this trap and be world systems types simultaneously.)

When you get to the issue of the United States of America - one of the most
important issues for 21st century Marxists to understand - the question of
a 'national' vs. a 'world' approach becomes even more critical than when
dealing with European history.

(I remember once listening to a lecture by a guy named, Tim Wohlforth - a
man who reflected the views of Hill et. al, but through t he distorting
lens of Gerry Healy. Wohlforth insisted that there was no 'American
exceptionalism - meaning that the history of the USA was following the same
pattern of classical capitalist development established in mother England.
What claptrap.)

A good example of how you easy it is to go wrong when you try to view the
world through the lens of 'nations' - and especially when you try to impose
some pattern of development observed in one 'nation' on others - is the
idea of the 'Second American Revolution'. This is what some Marxists like
to call the US Civil War.

If by a revolution you mean a social revolution in which the oppressed
classes of a nation overthrow the state and destroy the social system of
the oppressing classes (what I would call a social revolution.)....

Or if you mean that some opposition force in a country deposes the
government by force and imposes a new form of government or simply puts
some new faces in the offices of the old apparatus (what I would call a
political revolution.) ...

Than the US Civil War was not a revolution.

If you look at US history as a 'national' process of development, you come
up with an even worse problem ..............

There never was a 'bourgeois revolution' in the United States!

Not in the sense of a great social revolution in which the oppressed
classes of a society overthrow their oppressors and the state apparatus of
their oppressors. Not in the sense of the Dutch, English, French, Russian,
Mexican Revolutions and Chinese revolutions.

The 'American'* revolution occurred across the Atlantic in England, and it
was led by Oliver Cromwell.

The 'American Revolution'* - I'm talking about the War of Independence here
- was a political - not social - revolution. It was a continuation of the
British social revolution.

The US Civil War was another continuation of the British Revolution - but
this time it was a revolutionary war of conquest, much like the Napoleanic
wars of conquest in Europe.

Revolutionary wars of conquest are different than social revolutions. In a
social revolution, the oppressed class or classes of society overthrow the
rule of oppressor classes, and the state apparatus of the oppressor
classes, and establish new social relations of production, and a new state
apparatus.

In my view modern history has given us three major examples of this sort of
revolutionary war: the Napoleanic wars, the US Civil War, and the Soviet
offensive phase of the Second World War. In the first example the French
army overthrew the decaying feudal social relations and state apparatus in
parts of Europe (especially the Rhineland and Northern Italy). In the
second example the Army of the Republic (USA) destroyed the
slaveowner/slave social relations and the state apparatus of the
Confederate States of America. In the third example the Red Army destroyed
capitalist social relations, and the capitalist state apparatus, in Eastern
Europe.

In each of these cases the oppressed classes of the newly liberated regions
to one extent or another aided in their own liberation, but never played
more than a secondary role in the revolutionary changes which occurred.

This fact - this key difference between a social revolution and a
revolutionary war - accounts for a lot of the political history after each
of these revolutionary wars. For one thing, reactionary political forces
were able to take on the mantle of 'nationalism' in many countries invaded
by Napoleon. The same occurred in Eastern Europe in countries occupied by
the Red Army. A similar process happened in the US South with southern
regionalism, states rights, etc.

This also accounts - in part - for the relative passivity of the
beneficiaries of the new social relations in the face of counterrevolution
and reaction.

So how is this related to colonial modes of production north of Mexico in
the 16th and 17th centuries? By the fact that the colonies in question were
extensions of England and France in the period of bourgeois revolutions, so
the modes of production in those colonies were essentially imported and
adopted to new conditions.

I hope to write about that in my next post.

All the best, Anthony



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


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