IN-DEPTH

CAPITALISM AND THE LIMITS OF SLAVERY


A CONTINENT INTERRUPTED


IMPERIALISM AND EXPANSION

1400s EUROPE

It’s easy to be amazed that a country so steeped in individual freedoms and inalienable rights could have the rather “checkered” past that is the United States of America. How did we get here and can we get farther away from that past and towards that lofty ideal that all men are indeed created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights? 1400s Europe gives us a path to follow.

During this period much of Europe was reeling from both the Dark Ages (known as a lack of written records except for the Church) and the after-effects of the Bubonic Plague which could be said to have contributed to the collapse of the monarchies. One could say what is to be expected when the centuries old feudal monarchies left a clear class strata that actually made “national currency” a necessity so as to enable a feeling of empowerment for those with and a feeling of hope for those without while also unbalancing the usefulness of capitalism.

This strata led to indentured servitude of nationals and/or neighbors and the importation of “slave-workers” from places where goods could be readily traded for bodies from all over the “civilized” world. This led to further stratification of the populous and setting the stage for an even more cruel stratification in the New World.

1400s AFRICA

By the 1400s, much upheaval and progress occurred in the various regions of Africa, with many upheavals caused by the ultimate “desertification” of the Saharan region which provided much of the beginnings of agricultural trade and additional goods along the same routes.

Slavery was practiced in Africa but most of what was later called chattel slavery was only realized by Rome before and sometime after its fall. Most African slavery would more so be considered what is defined as indentured servitude and was rarely enacted as an economic incentive but payment of debts, spoils of war.

There were also the “policies” of warlords that would “forcibly conscript” young people into local, regional and sometimes even national armies. Even then it was not designed to limit but to create armies for defense and conquest. By the 1500s the repercussions of Columbus’ excursions to the “new world” and colonization begun in earnest by initially the Portuguese who wanted to temper the Arab aspirations to introduce Islam throughout Africa and also find a route to the Indian Ocean. But as the usefulness of “free” labor enabled a smoother transition to the exploration and conquest of the Americas, the African economies and cultures were nearly shattered irreparably as imperialism took hold, plunged the continent into decades of war to prevent colonization and resource exploitation.


A NEW PARADIGM


THE NEW WORLD

LABOR IS CAPITAL

Though in terms of immune strength Africans were well-suited to abusive conditions, in terms of cultural spirituality it took a heavy toll as attempts to maintain strands of the heritage were replaced by torture and false religious idols. By the 1600s, the slave ships finally reached North America and the die was truly cast for a somewhat contradictory foundation.

Much of what was taught weren’t “true beliefs” as such but the desire to excuse treatment thought necessary to maintain order in a disorderly economic structure. As agriculture became the “bread and butter” of the south, slaves were centered there as a source of labor that cost no more than clothing and substandard conditions.

This also had its toll on small, free farmers who had to compete with much larger operations and were required to pay their citizen employees (this was brought to light in THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION involving prison labor). But that stratification also had roots in a strange type of resentment and on some occasions blacks were able to purchase their freedom and excel as citizens. Slavery did though offer many opportunities for white citizens to become bounty hunters, trackers, even law enforcement.

CLASH OF VALUE

Some were fortunate enough to manage slaves with live-in accommodations on larger plantations and relatively free rein over all slaves of any age. This began a march towards the “southern brood mare” and even her eventually white counterparts, used for sex and/or reproduction with little freedom to explore the arts and sciences. This was yet another economic strain caused by the societal stratification that enabled slavery and the marginalization of women in America. But as the 1600s progressed and more slaves and freed men came to the West Indies, more agricultural resources were developed such as sugar cane which grew to enslave more Africans in the West Indies than in the colonies during the 1700s

At this point wars were fought over the lucrative trade and Britain turned out to be the overall winner and began the overzealous importation of slaves to the colonies. Textiles became the main export of the south along with tobacco and alcohol. But by the 1700s, economic factors were already at work causing white indentured servants to more identify with Africans and even side with them. This action codified the first lave laws enacted in the guise of the Virginia Slave Codes of 1705, the hope being to more adequately stratify the different actual classes and limit even more the ability of slaves to become free. the abolitionist movement was well underway in Britain, some would say because of a moral resurgence though it could also be argued that the amount of economic power being transferred to what could have then been called “Big Ag” slavery began to be a drag on capitalist endeavors.


RUSH TO FILL COFFERS


REVOLUTION OF THE NEW WORLD

AMERICA TAKES CHARGE

By the signing of the Declaration in 1776, nearly all colonies had allowed slavery to some extent, whether chattel, indentured or debt based, it exploded by reproduction more than the actual slave trade as the chattel slavery system meant every child born to a slave became a slave. While many other facets of American progress were occurring at the same time, such as the French and Indian War, and the final formation of the nation under the Constitution, though Britain held on very tightly to control which ironically caused the revolution, with taxation without representation being perhaps the definitive precipitation.

By the 1800s the nation was in full swing after the Louisiana Purchase which expanded the US across the entire continent, but around that same time the Congress had banned the slave trade which through the Missouri Compromise did allow for slave states to continue the practice but only in the southern states (below a certain latitude). Britain had also made moves towards ending the transatlantic slave trade and using their superior naval power were able to effectively blockade the transport of slaves from West African slave fortresses. Spain, though, was not looking to give up the trade and found traction with the Southern states, basically sowing the seeds for the Secession and Civil War.

In 1794, the US Congress attempted to regulate slavery and in many ways the practice did go directly against the tenets of the free market. The US and Britain then began to blockade ships coming from Africa to slow down the vicious trade. The states in the North, after the Constitution was ratified, all outlawed slavery.

FULL BLOWN CHATTEL

But chattel slavery, by even the time of the Revolutionary War, was a gold mine of profits with relatively minor overhead. It’s noted that fifty years between the Declaration and subsequent Constitution had a slave owner as president. This even more so codified a racial and class stratification that affected every facet of the US government and industry. The ease with which young men could invest money provided through multiple land grant initiatives enabled profits in line with modern day drug trafficking.

This meant that the South had a much higher “margin” on trade than the North which moved more towards the fruits of capital being somewhat distributed. This was the sticking point that actually exacerbated tensions towards secession: why give up free labor and the profits that come with it? Because if we were to look at the direction of the economy, free labor would cause an “everlasting depression” since buying power would go down as more free labor is used. It would in effect be the welfare society that is bemoaned in the modern US.

All purchases would be sponsored by the “plantation” owner and they would continue the minimalist provisions thereby creating less demand for better clothing, etc. The other issue that helped to maintain the “necessary evil” and the “particular institution.” Both terms were designed to make slavery sound less a vicious trade that took the rights away from millions and caused more consternation among paid laborers. By 1820, though the international trade had been ended, interstate slave trade boomed as chattel slavery enabled the production of more slaves.

This further stratified more parts of the US as slaves were bought in for building (even the White House) and in some cases manufacturing. Economists have studied this dynamic for years in terms of economic output and most come to the conclusion that slavery was no more efficient than paid labor but provided a huge disparity in wealth to plantation owners and textile suppliers.


OR THIRTEEN


THE END OF THE BEGINNING

THE CLASH OF ECONOMIES

By the 1830s, all nation states had outlawed the exportation of slaves from Africa and only South America and the US maintained black slave populations. Abolition actually began in England and spread throughout most of northern Europe with Spain and Portugal still demanding the trade be continued. But this did nothing to dull the interstate sale of slaves as cotton grew to huge proportions of the US economy and more landowners took advantage of a “self-sustaining” product.

This indeed challenged British sovereignty but may have exacerbated the imperialism seen in the 1800s as they sought to gain more economic leverage on the world stage. The vastness of America made it futile though as the nation expanded across the entirety of the land between Mexico and Canada. The Deep South was a fertile slave ground because of the suitability of what would then have been “BigAg” consisting of cotton and tobacco and even the burgeoning growth and use of spirits, most of which were produced by slaves in the Caribbean.

This again increased stratification and thereby resentment of slaves as they “took good jobs” from white Americans and began the system of rich and poor we still suffer under today. But the Amistad case in the 1830s hiked up the tensions towards the eventual secession of the southern states as they too wanted to continue the lucrative trans-Atlantic slave trade, even though by then the proportion of free blacks was only 13% with 87% being slave population and producing 4M bales of cotton along with many other major investments from the wealthy landowners including what is now “Big Tobacco.”

But as usual this produced a mentality in these Deep South states that meant the goal was to figure out how to keep wages low to zero. We can see this in the modern days as these states fight against organized labor and raising the minimum wage and also it’s clear that these are the neediest states in a modern capitalist democratic republic that requires that the 100s of millions of citizens can use some disposable income and also maintain regular spending at local establishments and even participate in interstate commerce.

By 1839 , just before the formal treaty between the US and Britain to use their navies to halt exportation, a small ship called La Amistad captured 54 Africans and attempted to transport them to Cuba. There was a revolt and the Africans demanded to be sailed home. The captain though steered towards the continental US and sued for custody. The Spanish government insisted President Van Buren intervene but it was argued that because the trade was forbidden the Africans had the legal right to revolt. The case made it to the SCOTUS in 1841 and was argued by former president John Quincy Adams.


AMISTAD JUSTICE


THE BEGINNING OF THE END

SOUTH CAROLINA LEADS THE WAY

There were many attempts to sway the case to allow the Spanish and the south to get a favorable result but in the end the court ruled that the Africans were within their rights and had the freedom to be transported back to their homes. This caused a major rift in the Union and the south responded harshly to the decision pushing us closer to the act of secession to maintain a “trade” that hurt middle income whites as much as enslaved and free blacks.

The Missouri Compromise has sealed our fate though by allowing a slave state for each free state and the 3/5 Compromise did little to tilt any economic imbalance between northern and southern corporations where one had to pay a fair wage and the other needed to only provide minimal accommodations, including diet and medical treatment. But as many noted the northern states were actually more populous as the free market meant more white citizens could maintain some level of wages to increase economic activity.

And during this time, harsher penalties were pushed through to at least maintain what was THOUGHT to be a hold on a slave population that was quickly gaining more skills and many had to be able to read in order to do the more complex work of building, etc. Perhaps the true tipping point for abolitionists was the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which required any slaves be returned, but on the other side of the fence, the Compromise of 1850 totally abolished the trade but did not make owning slaves illegal in the Capitol.

The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 pushed the nation closer to conflict as war broke out over the newly enacted free state/slave state law. By 1857 the Dred Scott case has wound its way to the Supreme Court where jurisprudence held that a slave could not sue for rights he did not have. This incensed abolitionists such as Abraham Lincoln and his abolitionist Republican Party. The “Slave Power” as it was called was controlling 2/3 of the federal government at the time and Republicans vowed to slow the advance of slavery further into American socio-economic life.

The 1856 Presidential Election saw Millard Fillmore attempting to assuage the fears of southern legislatures who were threatening to secede. This was of course exacerbated by the new anti-slavery Republican Party which formed at the end of the Whig Party. This party wasn’t pro-abolition as much as anti-expansion. They quickly emerged as the true opposition to the Democrats who believed they would fee all slaves and destroy the economic potential in the trade.

But the fight basically cemented the “stratification of a possible outcomes” in America as blacks were considered under the bottom rung for hundreds of years and the class status of free whites determined their position above them. The labor they produced built the fortunes of the south and they had no intention of giving it up even though it did push down the wages of all since the jobs were mostly overseers and security, with families being the corporations of the time.


INDUSTRY RISES


POST CIVIL WAR

SLAVE POWER

The tensions boiled over by the 1860 election with the electorate split among the four major parties. Lincoln led the Republicans denouncing its expansion, the Southern Democrats fully supported it. Northern Democrats felt it should be left up to individual states and localities and the Constitutional Union Party said there should be compromise to preserve the Union. The hypocritical nature of the complaints of the south were echoed in legal decisions determined by the “Slave Power” and further infuriated anti-abolitionists and even moderates who still believed that blacks should rightly be less than whites.

This was yet another of the holdouts evidenced in the poverty created by redlining, lack of a GI Bill or any help with establishing wealth. The concentration of industrial wealth began to truly overshadow the economic progress of the south as it was concentrated in the hands of few. But the bloody civil war truly shattered the illusion that slavery and freedom could co-exist in a capitalist democracy as moral and economic factors influenced the wealthy in the North to push for a paid workforce – though it may have been slightly less vicious than the best of chattel slavery with subsistence wages causing riots and strikes all over the country.

One of the postulates of the text is that many of the seemingly innocuous laws – especially laissez-faire – were a direct result of the influx of millions of freed slaves who now had to earn wages. This also served to divide us into agriculture and industrial strata that we still see today. A key is to look at the wage issues and economic depression of these former slave states see that if the south had won and been allowed to make the entire country clave-holding (it was not recorded that they planned a division), we would probably not be the country we are today. Would the armed forces have been free or slave? How would paid laborers compete with a growing population of unpaid labor?

WHO PAYS TAXES?

Even farther beyond those points is that the taxes paid to the Treasury would never have been possible since by 1910, there could have been as many as 10M unpaid workers and it would have eventually collapsed the actual government. We can see a glimpse of this with how large our national debt is versus the wealth of the companies we allow to avoid taxes. We could almost say that the die was cast with the hypocrisy of establishing a free nation based on slavery after fighting a war that FORCED the direction of blacks being less than human so the country could excuse themselves for such a violations of the INALIENABLE RIGHTS espoused in the founding documents.

Perhaps we will finally embrace the truth of social AND economic equality before more events like the Great Recession, pushing our debt equal or beyond GDP, the continued stratification and the resentment is causes in every strata. Though we were a great experiment in self-rule many other countries have a better position because they didn’t found their society on the enslavement of others. But the point of slavery was economic with no concern for the effect it would have on later generations as they struggled to maintain both the growth of wages but also the growth of equality for all even the ex-slaves.

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