Forwarded from Anthony (reply to Mark L.)

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Reply to Mark Lause on Disputes Numbers 1 and 2

I want to thank Mark Lause for his effort to present his own views on US 
history, and to present something substantial in his attempt to rebut my 
views. I plan to touch on the issues he raises in his two posts at greater 
length in my own series on US history. For now, a few points in response to 
Mark's posts.

In his post

"Dispute #1: the Antebellum American ruling class From: "Mark Lause" 
<MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2003 01:43:40 -0400

Mark Lause tries to argue against my position that there were two ruling 
classes in antebellum US society. He argues that there was one ruling 
class, and the dominant faction of it was the Southern slavocracy. He writes,

"Anthony's argued that pre-Civil War America was a singularly united entity 
around western conquest but that it also had two ruling classes in what he 
calls "dual power." I've argued that the civilization was much more 
complex, that the Southern slaveocracy was the dominant faction of the 
class that ruled here, and that this was particularly evident through its 
control of the nationally dominant political party after the 1820s. "

A) The idea that the southern slavocracy and the northern rulnig class were 
just one social class, with two factions is definitely worthy of 
discussion. I hope Mark will try to substantiate his position in future 
posts. I think this position will, however, fall apart as soon as Mark - or 
anyone else - begins to examine the social relations of the northern and 
southern rulers. They were two distinct social classes. However, I am eager 
to read what Mark has to say to prove otherwise.

B) In all of my posts on this subject, I have been careful to point out 
that the unity of all social classes in US society - except for the slaves 
- around the issue of western expansion, BEGAN TO UNRAVEL AFTER ITS SUCCESS 
IN THE WAR OF 1812 AND THE ASSOCIATED WARS AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES.

Mark's arguments about the dominance of the Democratic party could simply 
be dismissed out of hand as irrelevant to my point - since he is talking 
about the US AFTER the WAR of 1812.

C) However, I will not simply dismiss the point, because the real history 
is more complicated.

The dominance of the Democratic party after the War of 1812 only proves one 
point - that Western conquest was so popular in both the North and the 
South, that sectional interestes were put aside to promote western 
expansion. The dominance of the Democrats does not in any way prove either 
of Mark's points. It in no way contradicts the thesis of two different 
ruling classes, which is based on social and economic foundations - not 
political ones; nor does it contradict the idea of unity around Western 
expansion - since for an important part of the period we are talking about 
the whole country was united around the political party that promoted 
western expansion most consistently - the Democrat- Repbublicans.

Between the dissolution of the Federalists and the formation of the Whigs 
there was only one national party in the USA, the Democratic-Republicans. 
How Northern/southern unity fell apart is the largely the story of how the 
Democrats fell apart. I will touch on the facets of that key issue in later 
posts.

D) The same can basic point can be made about for Mark's list of precivil 
war presidents. The fact is the North supported southern presidents until 
after the war of 1812 because there were no irreconcilaable conflicts 
between the northern ruling class, and the southern ruling class. Rather 
than proving his own point, Mark is unwittingly showing how united the USA 
was prior to the civil war.

Whether the south or the north was dominant before the Civil War is 
irrelevant to both of the points Mark is arguing. The issue does not affect 
whether or not North and South were united in western expansion. The issue 
does not affect whether or not there wre two ruling classes in precivil war US.

However, it is very easy to show that the North weilded great power in the 
antebellum state. The North controlled the Senate and the House of 
Representatives for almost all of the period in question. The North 
controlled the Navy for the entire period. The army was small and 
relatively unimportant. State militias were the real armed power on the 
ground, and the North's militias - as the Civil War would prove - dominated 
in numbers, and dominated in arms. The North was more populous, richer, had 
greater military power, and controlled the key institutions of the state - 
even as it supported southerners as President.

Even Mark's arguments based on the party machinery of the dominant 
Democratic Party (his strongest, though not well developed, argument) will 
fall apart on close examination. The pre-Civil War Democratic party was not 
a 'democratic centralist' party like the SWP. It didn't even have the party 
discipline of Mayor Daley's machine. It was rife with factions, and 
factional disputes. Northern and Southern Democrats were about as loyal to 
one another as black widow spiders (just like today).

E. I really liked Mark's article about the "maroons" ("Borderland Visions" 
in a recent number of MONTHLY REVIEW). However, as interesting as the 
article is, Mark has not yet shown the relevance of the maroons to the 
issues at hand. In his second post,

" Subject: Dispute #2: the Monolithic (less slaves) Unity of Antebellum 
America around Conquest From: "Mark Lause" <MLause@xxxxxxxxxxxx> Date: Sat, 
25 Oct 2003 10:57:06 -0400"

Mark wrote,

"Multi-racial "maroons"--communities of refugees opting to live outside of 
European society in the New World--were endemic to European settlement 
here. My "Borderland Visions" in a recent number of MONTHLY REVIEW covered 
enough of the U.S. experience with "maroons" to demonstrate just how common 
these things were.

Mark says that marroon communities were "endemic", but he does not give any 
real idea of how many people lived in these communities, or how many such 
communities existed at any point in the period of history we are talking 
about.

The numbers are key. In 1790, the first US census estimated the population 
of the United States as being slightly less than 4,000,000 people.

A million marroons would have been a significant number. Even one hundred 
thousand would have been enough to play an important part in opposing 
western expansion.

But a few thousand would not.

I hope Mark, who is the one person on this list who has done the research 
on this aspect of US history, can show us in future posts just how 
significant a force the marroons were.

F) The second part of " Subject: Dispute #2: the Monolithic (less slaves) 
Unity of Antebellum America around Conquest From" addresses "the policy of 
Indian Removal." About which Mark says,

"?there were obvious precedents of all sorts, but its institutionalization 
as the default U.S. policy was established by Jackson and the Democrats, 
and the initial removals were on the largest and most dramatic scale when 
they were moving the "civilized nations" from the South...making their 
world safe for, among other things, plantations and slavery."

The key issue here is the "obvious precedents." Mark's entire argument 
ignores the fact that all of the North was taken from the Indians: from 
Massachussets to Michigan to Iowa and on to Oregon.

Most of the rest of the Mark's post deals with the period from the 
Mexican-American War to the Civil War, the final period of the breakdown of 
unity between North and South. All he establishes in those paragraphs is 
that unity was breaking down, and that the south was in favor of removing 
Indians. Neither of which are relevant to refuting the idea that there had 
been unity in western expansion until the victories of the War of 1812 and 
the wars against the Indians associated with the War of 1812.

As far as I can tell, Mark has a misconception about my basic position. I 
do not think, and have never written, that the North and south were ALWAYS 
united over western expansion. I wrote A) That they were united over this 
issue until the end of the War of 1812 . B) That unity continued for a 
period after the War of 1812, but was beginning to break down. C) Important 
moments in the breakdown were the Missouri compromise, the emergence of the 
Whig Party, the Mexican American War, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and finally 
the emergence of the Republican party. The final end of unity came with the 
election of Lincoln, and the Civil War.

However, Mark and I do clearly have substantial differences, which are 
worth discussing. As far as I can tell they are

A) Whether or not the southern slavocracy was part of the same class as the 
Northern bourgeoisie - as Mark asserts.

B) Whether or not the slavocracy was the ruling faction of a class or class 
in the antebellum US.

C) Whether or not the North was in favor of Western expansion. Mark implies 
that it was not.

The last point is the most important, because - if Mark agrees that the 
North was expansionist, most of the rest of his arguments turn out to be 
besides the point.

All the best, Anthony



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


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