Re: [Marxism] Re: Pearl Harbor, etc., correction

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Brian Shannon wrote:
>
>
> When the U.S. Constitution was written, the North conspired with the
> South to fold in its slave population (not citizens at the time) with
> the overall population by allowing a slave to count as 3/5 of a person.

It is not good for Marxists (especially when talking among themselves)
to distort history for a passing rhetorical effect.  First, "conspiracy"
hardly describes a process that went on in the open and was debated
vigorously, loudly and at length. It's like saying the New York Yankees
are conspiring to win the American Leage championship. Secondly, the
3/5ths clause was a compromise between opposing interests. Here is
Barbara Fields's account:

*****Loose thinking on these matters leads to careless language, which
in turn promotes misinformation. A widely used textbook of American
history, written by very distinguished historians, summarizes the
three-fifths clause of the United States Constitution (article 1,
section 2) thus: 'For both direct taxes and representation, five blacks
were to be counted as equivalent to three whites.'10 The three-fifths
clause does not distinguish between blacks and whites-not even, using
more polite terms, between black and white people. (Indeed, the terms
black and white-or, for that matter, Negro and Caucasian-do not appear
anywhere in the Constitution, as is not surprising in a legal document
in which slang of that kind would be hopelessly imprecise.) The
threefifths clause distinguishes between free Persons-who might be of
European or African descent-and other Persons, a euphemism for slaves.
The issue at stake was whether slaveowning citizens would hold an
advantage over non-slaveowning citizens; more precisely, whether slaves
would be counted in total population for the purpose of apportioning
representation in Congress-an advantage for slaveholders in states with
large numbers of slaves-and of assessing responsibility for direct
taxes-a disadvantage. The Constitution answered by saying yes, but at a
ratio of three-fifths, rather than the five-fifths that slaveholders
would have preferred for representation or the zero-fifths they would
have preferred for taxation. When wellmeaning people affirm, for
rhetorical effect, that the Constitution declared Afro-Americans to be
only three-fifths human, they commit an error for which American
historians themselves must accept the blame.*****(Barbara Jeanne Fields,
"Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America," New Left
Review, May/June 1990, pp. 99-100)

Emphasis: The slaveholders wanted slaves to count as "full persons" for
representation, _zero_ for taxation. The north wanted the opposite.
"Conspiracy" is utterly out of place here. It is difficult to understand
the centrality of racist oppression in u.s. history if one replaces
analysis with careless rhetoric.


> This meant that the South got to use its non-citizen slave population
> for purposes of both Congressional Representation and voting for the
> President.

It also meant that the southern taxes were higher than they would have
been if "non-free persons" had counted as Zero-fifths, and that northern
taxes were higher than they would have been if "non-free persons" had
counted as five-fifths!

>
> This is well-known notorious information, right? But it got worse under
> the fascist system referred to as Jim Crow.

Unfortunately, the actual information is _not_ widely known at all, it
would seem. But the use of "fascist system" here is worse than careless
usage. To apply the term so indiscrimately utterly confuses
understanding of the many various forms of opppression  (past, present,
future) under capitalism. In a series of posts on lbo-talk several years
ago Yoshie demonstrated brilliantly that loose usage of the epithet
"fascist" plays into the hands of the Democratic Party. If the Bush
Administration were a fascist threat the policy of the ABBS would make
perfect sense. But there are many kinds of authoritarian state and
fascism is by no means the most common form. Nor is it the form that
most threatens us now.

Carrol

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