Forwarded from Anthony: US History: The class nature of western expansion

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

United in Western Conquest:

[This post WAS intended to be the 7th in a series about US history. 
However, it has been substantially revised in response to offlist 
correspondence with Mark Lause. consider it the first of a new series of 
notes.]

The idea that the north and south of the United States of America were 
united in western conquest of the lands of North America, the lands of 
the North American indigenous people, probably seems like it doesn’t 
deserve a second thought-

It is so historically obvious that they were.

Every social class of the settler state, with the single important 
exception of the slaves, had something to gain from western expansion.

Farmers - slave owners or ‘free family farmers- big landowners, small 
land owners, tenants, and would be farmers - - had the most obvious 
interest in western expansion.

Land.

They could get a bigger, better farm - if they already had one. They 
could replace exhausted soil with virgin soil. Their first son could 
keep the original farm, while their second, third, and fourth sons could 
start new farms.

They could own land of their own for their first time.

But even if they were tenants, western expansion drove down the annual 
rent they paid - to the point that rentier landlords became unprofitable 
in the older states in the 1840’s.

Western expansion created the fastest growing market for consumer 
durables that had ever existed in the history of the world - 
manufacturers of everything from cloth and buttons to axes, plows and 
guns could not keep up with the demand. New manufacturers continually 
entered the market. Blacksmiths turned into industrialists.

And, if they failed, they could always move on to the next, new town, 
and set up shop and try again.

Workers benefited because demand for labor was high, while supply was 
always very tight - until the Irish Potato famine. Wages were high. 
Moreover employers could not easily abuse workers, because they could 
also move on to the next town - or even set up their own shop in the 
next town, or become a farmer a little farther west.

‘Investors’ of course, had the most to win, through western land 
speculation. They could acquire land for next to nothing, and sell it 
for only a little bit more, and still gain huge windfall profits.

However, the idea of unity in western conquest does deserve a closer 
look, especially since the break down of that unity was the most 
important and profound cause of the Civil War in the United States in 
the 1860’s.

From a more theoretical point of view, a closer look at the unity of 
Northern and Southern states raises some interesting questions about the 
nature of the state in the United States prior to the civil war. Was 
there a single state in the USA? Were there two states? Or were there 
many states united in one? Was there a single ruling class in the USA? 
Was it the southern slave owning class of plantation owners? The 
northern merchant capitalists? The northern small farmers? Or were there 
more than one ruling class in the antebellum USA?

These questions were in fact at the heart of much of the political 
debate that occurred in the USA from the time of the Articles of 
Confederation until these issues were resolved definitively by the US 
civil war.

My own answer to these question is that a single state was formed in the 
United States in the period of time from the Declaration of Independence 
until the Constitution became effective. That state however, included 
two ruling classes - northern protocapitalists, and southern 
slaveowners. At the moment of the formation of the state in the USA, 
those two classes were united in defense of bourgeois property, and in 
struggle against two common enemies: Great Britain, and the indigenous 
peoples of North America.

You could call the state in the antebellum USA a kind of dual power, 
although a very different kind of dual power than those which existed in 
1906 and 1917 in St. Petersburg. (Of course, calling that state a kind 
of dual power, will upset all of the rigid, unthinking traditionalists 
who like to keep their labels pure and simple. Especially simple.)

Once these two common enemies had been defeated - which happened in the 
war of 1812 and the associated wars against the Native Americans, the 
unity of the two ruling classes began to unravel. But it took almost 
forty years to completely unravel.

Next post will be “The nature of the state in the antebellum USA”

All the best, Anthony

--

The Marxism list: www.marxmail.org



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