[PEN-L:11455] Re: Blackburn versus Brenner

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Louis Proyect wrote:

> Robin Blackburn, "The Making of New World Slavery":
>
> There are many interesting graphs in Blackburn's chapter, but for brevity's
> sake and in order not to upset Carrol Cox, I will only cite one which deals
> with British important of cotton, essential to the textile industry.
> Without this raw material imported mostly from the colonies and without the
> slaves to pick it, it is virtually excluded that the British Empire could
> have been built.

If we are only in the realm of what Wojtek calls "educated guesses," I'll
certify that this proposition is a very good educated guess -- I think it
is the one I myself would make. But I very much dislike to have my
politics depend on merely an educated guess.

And nothing in this whole cluster of threads so beautifully illustrates the
unwisdom of basing political conclusions on sheer data. What this
information tells us is merely that British capitalism *did* use slave
grown cotton. It tells us nothing whatever about what *would* have
been the case had slave labor not been available. To establish that
proposition you would have to argue that *in principle* it would
have been impossible for british capitalism to develop without the
use of african slavery.

Now what that argument suggests to me is a deeply racist implication
buried in the grade school history texts of my youth. Those texts
explained why black africans rather than native americans were
enslaved. The reason was that Indians were too proud to accept
slavery. How do you know that the British capitalists or the
american planters would have been unable to subdue "free white
labor" to their ends? How, in fact, do you have any idea whatever
of what *might have been* given other conditions? Britons never
will be slaves must be your motto for this argument.

Facts simply do not explain themselves.

Incidentally, the first great Virginia tobacco boom was based
mostly on the labor of  indentured white servants.

Carrol