[PEN-L:7516] Re: Re: Re: Liquidated damages for slavery

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This claim is based on a claim of class exploitation. The enslaved African were a unique category of laborer in the colonial/U.S. mode of production. They were slave, not wage, laborers. Labor is the source of all new value. Thus, this claim for reparations  is class or economically based ; it is for unpaid labor.

"Race" was a European category used to define and mark the class or caste of slave laborers, not a category of the enslaveds or their ancestors.

Slavery was integral to the capitalist mode of production in its "primitive accumulation."  See _Capital_ Vol. , where Marx calls slavery and colonialism the "chief momenta" of original capitalism.

This claim for reparations is based on a history of class or economic exploitation of the Africans.

This claim doesn't bar the ancestors of any other exploited classes from making claims.

A claim of monopoly on virtue is not a premise of the reparations argument.


All past modes of production are not based on exploitation. Class exploitative societies arise about 7,000 years ago in Mesopatamia and Egypt. Before that is 200,000 years or more of egalitarian societies without exploiting classes.

Charles Brown




>>> "Rod Hay" <rodhay@xxxxxxxxxxx> 05/28/99 09:28PM >>>
I don't believe in racial guilt. And I don't believe that any social group
has a monopoly on virtue. My ancestors were poor scotish crofters. If they
received any benefit from slavery, it was not apparent in their income. The
point is that all past modes of production were based on exploitation. Are
all descendants of the exploited (the large majority of the population in
most modes of production) to be compensated.
A much more reasonable political goal would be to design programs that
create opportunities for those that don't have them now regardless of their
background. I think the work of William Julius Williams is instructive on
this question.
It is a class issue not a race issue.



----Original Message Follows----
From: "Charles Brown"

The point is the living descendants' lives are impacted by  history. Today's
inequality is caused by the wrongs and inequalities of the past. Each
generation's equality does not arise anew upon each generation. Calling the
idea of such compensation ludicrous is an unsupported conclusory remark.
Whatever the rationale, "equality (material equality)for African Americans
NOW !" is the demand.
Without recognizing that today's inequality is caused by events in the past
, one ends up having to blame the victims or blame that inequality on the
current generation. That is ludicrous. The inequalities in quantity and
quality of life between different races in the U.S. is rooted in the past.
It is not entirely caused by events in the present. The reparations concept
is one way of taking account of this.

In other words, living whites have social and economic advantages based on
the wrongs of the past. For you to decide it is too complicated to bring in
the wrongs of the past in understanding today, is to conveniently leave
whites in their advantageous position.

Another dimension is that many claims to ownership and control in the
present are based on tracing connections to the past. For example, what is
the basis for claiming that the U.S. can keep people from crossing its
national boundaries except claims to ownership of this land traced through
dead generations  ? Most law, tradition and custom are the products of dead
generations. No one proposes inventing these anew with each living
generation. That would be ludicrous. You would respect history when it is to
your advantage and ignore it when it is not.

Charles Brown



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Rod Hay
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The History of Economic Thought Archives
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