Did capitalism helped end or prolong slavery in the US and elsewhere

[noblegas]

The OP is simplistic. Slavery and slave-trading thrived for centuries under capitalistic systems ruled by monarchies, colonial governorships, and independent republics. Quakers often owned slaves until that system became unpopular with the leadership in the late 17th-early-18th C, as did Cherokees. Even when slavery became domestically unpopular in the northern US and the UK, enterprising traders and ship-owners found ways to profit from the trade in human lives by delivering humans to places that condoned slavery, and plowing their profits into buying and transporting raw materials and finished goods to other ports.

History is not simple, nor is it usually pretty and bucolic. Africans did not swim to the Caribbean or to South America looking for a better life. There were huge profits to be made from the slave-trade, and as long as that situation prevailed there were always greedy persons willing to engage in the practice.

Yes you are right. Only the principle of individual rights coupled with economic liberty is what really ushered the movement to end slavery in western european nations and the United states in the 18th and 19th centuries. I mean China is developing a capitalistic economy and it has a sizeable slave population. I still contend that it was the industrial revolution and not the slave trade industry that made the US and the West very prosperous nations and further contend that slavery was mostly profitable for slaveowners and plantation owners because slaves were less productivity then free men. Otherwise , many socialist countries like the Soviet union would have been paragons of economic prosperity.

 

[mheslep]

The cotton gin eliminated the need to separate cotton by hand, which was a very inefficient process for seperating cotton compared to having the cotton gin separate cotton from the cotton seeds. I was mistaken, it seemed that the inventor of the cotton gin hoped that his invention would in slavery. ...

Lets put this one to bed. As Integral suggested, the cotton gin was a major contributor to slavery. After its invention, slavery exploded in the Southern US.

However, like many inventors, Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave.

Because of the cotton gin, slaves now labored on ever-larger plantations where work was more regimented and relentless. As large plantations spread into the Southwest, the price of slaves and land inhibited the growth of cities and industries. In the 1850s seven-eighths of all immigrants settled in the North, where they found 72% of the nation's manufacturing capacity. The growth of the "peculiar institution" was affecting many aspects of Southern life.

http://www.eliwhitney.org/museum/eli-whitney/cotton-gin

The invention that might have decreased slavery if it had been possible was the tractor and the mechanized cotton picker, not the cotton gin.

 

[mheslep]

I'm wondering if this thread is asking the wrong question. Slavery wasn't abolished/isn't illegal because it is a flawed economic theory, it was abolished/made illegal because it is morally wrong. So perhaps the better question is whether the morality inherrent in western democracy helped end slavery.

Some libertarian politician the other day suggested an interesting idea on this topic: the North should have just bought all the slaves and freed them with some kind of stipend. My first knee jerk reaction was no, that entire social order needed to be destroyed, etc, etc. But then not so fast: that was 600,000 people killed that might have been avoided, entire communities North and South wiped out? No federal government attacking the states, no suspension of habeas corpus, etc. What would the same reconstruction time period look like if the South was not so dirt poor? It's not so easy to dismiss.

 

[mheslep]

... There are about 30 million slaves in the world at the moment (and note that this is a low estimate, the number may be - in fact, is likely to be - significantly higher), and the number is rapidly increasing. Slavery and human trafficking is considered to be the fastest growing criminal industry in the world...

...Also slavery is not eliminated in Western Europe or the United States. There are tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves in the U.S. alone. I've seen various estimates between 50,000 and 200,000 (again, these being lower estimates).

That's misleading to post these together in context, implying some kind of collaboration between the crime and country. The slavery of many of those 3rd world millions is condoned, even sponsored, by their host nations. Slavery is illegal in W. Europe and the US. There are also estimates of tens of thousands of assaults, rapes, and assaults, but they're not condoned either.

 

[mheslep]

A discussion of free markets and capital quickly goes off on tangents when its allowed to be redefined to mean any kind oppression, or wealth, or despotic behavior. I think the discussion will be more productive if we go to the source:

All systems either of preference or of restraint, therefore, being thus completely taken away, the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men.

http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN19.html#IV.9.51

Such a system of people acting freely to exchange industry and invest capital amongst themselves takes myriad forms, but we can rule out a few things about it:

-It was not 'set up' by Hamilton or any other single banker or individual in power, it operates specifically, as Smith says, only when individuals act freely amongst themselves. So free markets and capital operated in the colonies well before Hamilton sat in the Treasury.

-If one can not invest capital and be paid interest for the investment, then we don't have Smith's 'capital' part of the definition. If 8th century Islam did not allow usury, then they did not have Smith's Capitalism.

-Certainly no slave, nor anyone acting under coercion can participate in Capitalism.

 

[Integral]

A discussion of free markets and capital quickly goes off on tangents when its allowed to be redefined to mean any kind oppression, or wealth, or despotic behavior. I think the discussion will be more productive if we go to the source:


http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smWN19.html#IV.9.51

Such a system of people acting freely to exchange industry and invest capital amongst themselves takes myriad forms, but we can rule out a few things about it:

-It was not 'set up' by Hamilton or any other single banker or individual in power, it operates specifically, as Smith says, only when individuals act freely amongst themselves. So free markets and capital operated in the colonies well before Hamilton sat in the Treasury.

-If one can not invest capital and be paid interest for the investment, then we don't have Smith's 'capital' part of the definition. If 8th century Islam did not allow usury, then they did not have Smith's Capitalism.

-Certainly no slave, nor anyone acting under coercion can participate in Capitalism.

Not exactly sure what your point is?

The slaves certainly did participate in capitalism, you might say they were committed to it body and soul. They were, after all, capital to the Plantation owners.

Interesting quote by Smith, could you provide a year for that?

Do you mean that if I provide a quote from Marx, I can prove that Communism worked?

Indeed Hamilton is responsible for the financial foundations of the USA . Smith, of course, was his bible for this work.

 

[noblegas]

Not exactly sure what your point is?

The slaves certainly did participate in capitalism, you might say they were committed to it body and soul. They were, after all, capital to the Plantation owners.

Interesting quote by Smith, could you provide a year for that?

Do you mean that if I provide a quote from Marx, I can prove that Communism worked?

Indeed Hamilton is responsible for the financial foundations of the USA . Smith, of course, was his bible for this work.

I would argue that the economic system that the antebellum south practice resembled a feudal system more so than a capitalist economic system and capitalism requires that the government recognized that individuals have the right to pursue and acquire property, i.e. property rights. In a feudal system , people are attached to land (not literarly) and are required/coerced to perform the duties the landowner sets for his serf(slave) to do on his property; In the antebellum south, slaves could not leave the land they worked on temporarily or permanently without permission from the land

 

[alxm]

Do you mean that if I provide a quote from Marx, I can prove that Communism worked?

Communism doesn't work, but that doesn't mean Marx isn't quoteworthy. He had lots of good insights. Just because his giant philosophical system as a whole didn't pan out, doesn't mean his way of looking at things isn't useful. And in this context, Marx had a lot to say about slavery in general, and in the US in particular (he and Engels wrote a whole book on the Civil War), so why not?
(In fact, the whole idea of connecting the dots between economy and society in the way this question implicitly does, is in no small measure due to Marx)

To give a very short oversight of the Marxist way of looking at this: In Marxist history theory, the main traits of any society are determined by its means of production. In that framework, slavery and capitalism aren't traditionally related, because slavery was a result of agricultural society (and of plantation colonialism), whereas capitalism is a result of industrial society.

Marx did make some analogies between slave-owners and capitalists, but he didn't consider them to be the same thing. He did view both capitalism and slavery as exploitation of labor, but capitalism did not normally have or lead to slavery. The US system was somewhat 'anomalous', he explained.

So, in the Marxist view, the end of slavery was a battle on two fronts, first the transition from an agricultural to an industrial society and second, the class struggle for better working conditions.

 

[mheslep]

Not exactly sure what your point is?

The slaves certainly did participate in capitalism, you might say they were committed to it body and soul. They were, after all, capital to the Plantation owners.

Interesting quote by Smith, could you provide a year for that?

Do you mean that if I provide a quote from Marx, I can prove that Communism worked?

I'm trying to communicate a definition, not prove what did or did not work (yet). We can't do the latter well without the former. You might well quote from Marx when trying to establish what Communism is, especially if such a discussion spirals off into Communism kills people or does this or that other 'bad' thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations"

Indeed Hamilton is responsible for the financial foundations of the USA.

Hamilton established how the government would handle banking (much of it reversed later by Andrew Jackson). The US economy, especially in the 18th century, was not synonymous with the government or its bank.

 

[Integral]

I would argue that the economic system that the antebellum south practice resembled a feudal system more so than a capitalist economic system and capitalism requires that the government recognized that individuals have the right to pursue and acquire property, i.e. property rights. In a feudal system , people are attached to land (not literarly) and are required/coerced to perform the duties the landowner sets for his serf(slave) to do on his property; In the antebellum south, slaves could not leave the land they worked on temporarily or permanently without permission from the land

I am sorry, but the south was part of the US it was the same capitalist system as in the north. Humans had all of those rights, slaves however were seen as subhuman so the rights of capitalism did not extend to them. Slaves were bought and sold exactly as cattle are to this very day. The slaves were not attached to the land, they were the property of the plantation owner just like the sheep and horses.

I cannot see why you see slaves as incompatible with capitalism. There have been no arguments put forth that show the two as mutually exclusive. The slaves were capital the slave owners were capitalist. How did Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence reconcile his slaves with his words? Beats me, Evidently he was a master at saying one thing and doing another.

 

[arildno]

" would argue that the economic system that the antebellum south practice resembled a feudal system more so than a capitalist economic system and capitalism requires that the government recognized that individuals have the right to pursue and acquire property, i.e. property rights. In a feudal system , people are attached to land (not literarly) and are required/coerced to perform the duties the landowner sets for his serf(slave) to do on his property;"

VERY misleading!
When it came to peasants/serfs in the feudal economy, there were two pillars common:
1. Land rent.
Essentially, the peasant was required to hand some of his produce over, in order to maintain his right of usage of the soil as he himself saw fit. This was the source of the MAIN part of the lord's income.

2. Tallage/services:
It was common that the demesne lands (i.e, the lords' own directly held property) lay in-between the peasant-fields, and that they were required to till them as well, as part of their obligations (many lords were angry that THEIR fields always looked less well tended than the peasants' own strips of land!)

While the tallage/services system was, indeed, highly inefficient, sabotaged by the peasants through go-slow-actions and similar underclass tricks, the land rent system was efficient since it directly tied the lords' income to the peasants' work for their own survival.

Classically, economists are referring to the land rent system when contrasting the "feudal economy" to the "slave economy" and the "capitalist economy", the tallage system being a "remnant" if you like, of the slave system.

Day labourers, who worked for their meal or a few coppers as wages, represented the budding form of capitalist economy.

 

[mheslep]

I am sorry, but the south was part of the US it was the same capitalist system as in the north. ...

I disagree. You keep focusing apparently on the financial actions actions taken by the federal government; if we accept Smith's definition we have to drop that line. Per Smith, the government's main role is simply to stay out of the way, with no "preference or of restraint". The North actually engaged in the practice of free markets and capital investment at a far greater rate than did the South. Lincoln captured the difference in one his early writings, speaking of the industry of every man in the North, all trying to make his fortune by inventing the next gizmo, while right across the Ohio river the goal of every common man was simply to get his own plantation and slaves (can't find the quote at the moment). I can't show at the moment whether Southern state laws or simply social norms enforced that behaviour in the South, but either way, working one's 1850 subsistence farm in the Alleghenies is very weak participation in capitalism.

 

[mheslep]

" would argue that the economic system that the antebellum south practice resembled a feudal system more so than a capitalist economic system and capitalism requires that the government recognized that individuals have the right to pursue and acquire property, i.e. property rights. In a feudal system , people are attached to land (not literarly) and are required/coerced to perform the duties the landowner sets for his serf(slave) to do on his property;"

VERY misleading!
When it came to peasants/serfs in the feudal economy, there were two pillars common:
1. Land rent.
Essentially, the peasant was required to hand some of his produce over, in order to maintain his right of usage of the soil as he himself saw fit. This was the source of the MAIN part of the lord's income.

As Smith defines it, and as Noblegas pointed out, any coerced transaction is not capitalism.

...

...Classically, economists are referring to the land rent system when contrasting the "feudal economy" to the "slave economy" and the "capitalist economy", the tallage system being a "remnant" if you like, of the slave system.

Day labourers, who worked for their meal or a few coppers as wages, represented the budding form of capitalist economy.

I think you'd be hard pressed to name any reputable economist that would label feudal systems in any way capitalist.

 

[arildno]

Furthermore:
When people are poor and starving, they will be driven to extremities, for example sending their 5-year olds down in mine shafts in order to gain a few more pitiful coins to the family economy.

Mines were certainly capitalist ventures in 19th century Britain.

If given the right to alienate their own freedom, desperate individuals wouldn't blink at selling themselves (or their children) into slavery, as long as it gave some prospect of a slightly better future, for themselves or their children.

Suppose you are a carpenter, you have made by, raised 5 kids, and one day the disaster strikes: You fall off the roof and break your legs.

There is no larger family around you to support you, the little money your wife earns by cleaning rags and then selling them on is not at all enough to buy your family's food, and there certainly isn't any welfare system to appeal to. Starvation stares you in your face, and your landlord will come along in two weeks' time to fetch the house rent, or will evict you from his property.

However, a character comes along, a wealthy man obviously, who says he can take your eldest lad in as a slave to work in his house, he's even willing to give you 50 gold pieces upfront if you agree..

There is nothing in capitalism per se that is prohibitive of slavery, not the least because HAVING slaves is bound to inflate your ego, and therefore they will be a prized commodity, whatever their work efficiency might be.

Slaves are an adornment to the master, and hence with a value beyond their productivity, and thus buy-worthy.

 

[mheslep]

...Humans had all of those rights, slaves however were seen as subhuman so the rights of capitalism did not extend to them. Slaves were bought and sold exactly as cattle are to this very day. The slaves were not attached to the land, they were the property of the plantation owner just like the sheep and horses.

I cannot see why you see slaves as incompatible with capitalism. There have been no arguments put forth that show the two as mutually exclusive. The slaves were capital the slave owners were capitalist. ...

I agree mostly with this part. What's missing here is what happened with the rest of the South; the plantation owners were a small percentage of the populace. The point being that in the South, maybe five percent (guessing) were involved in capitalism, the rest were effectively shut out. The South had no Andrew Carnegies. In the North, capitalism was wide spread among the population.

 

[arildno]

As Smith defines it, and as Noblegas pointed out, any coerced transaction is not capitalism.

...

I think you'd be hard pressed to name any reputable economist that would label feudal systems in any way capitalist.

Are you "coerced" by your landlord to pay rent?

Many peasants were not serfs at all.

 

[mheslep]

Are you "coerced" by your landlord to pay rent?...

If I freely entered into a contract with the landlord then no I was not coerced. If for example the landlord and the state got together to prohibit me and mine from moving elsewhere, or disallowing me to own to own property, or to somehow conspire to set all the rents, then yes I was coerced.

 

[arildno]

You really should read medievalists like Marc Bloch and Georges Duby to understand what feudal economy primarily was about, and how it, by the b) land rent system distinguishes itself from a) the slave economy and c) classical wage labour system (i.e, capitalism.

To set up a few salient characteristics:
1. Freedom to end contract on labourer's side:
Not present in a), present in b)+c)
2. Close supervision/direction of work performance
Not present in b), present in a)+c)
3. Labourer's own judgment as to how own produce is to be distributed/dispensed with:
Present in b) (except for the specified part called "land rent"), not present in a)+c)
4. "Employer's" responsibility to feed labourer:
Present in a), not present in b)+c)
5. Freedom to end contract on employer's part:
Certainly present in a)+c), but with much weaker presence in b)
(arbitrary evictions due to failing payment of land rent was not particularly common; shortage of man-power made it more attractive to the land-owner to impose new burdens on the peasant, rather than evicting him outright)
These are typical characteristics of the three distinct systems of produce transferral.



Essentially, the feudal land rent system is more of a taxation system than a system of employment, with the theoretical land-owner has the right to tax, but not dispossess, the peasant.

 

[mheslep]

(i.e, capitalism)

As far as I can tell attaching capitalism to medieval history is arbitrary; and the post uninterested in any useful definition of capital used in free markets. We're talking past each other, so I'll move on.

 

[noblegas]

I am sorry, but the south was part of the US it was the same capitalist system as in the north. Humans had all of those rights, slaves however were seen as subhuman so the rights of capitalism did not extend to them. Slaves were bought and sold exactly as cattle are to this very day. The slaves were not attached to the land, they were the property of the plantation owner just like the sheep and horses.

I cannot see why you see slaves as incompatible with capitalism. There have been no arguments put forth that show the two as mutually exclusive. The slaves were capital the slave owners were capitalist. How did Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence reconcile his slaves with his words? Beats me, Evidently he was a master at saying one thing and doing another.

Yes , but if there were not LAWS that allowed people to own a particular group of people , then people would not have bought and sold human beings. What do you mean they were not attached to the land? If landowners made provisions for the slaves not to be allowed to leave the plantation, then the slaves would be attached to the land they worked on. Of course, everyone has free will and is free to come and go as they please. Thats not the point. Legally however, slaves were not free to come and go as they please, because the US government at the time, did not recognized blacks as human beings.

If government provisions were not put in place where it allowed human beings to own a particular group of human beings like whites were allowed to own blacks in the United states , then slaves would not have spawned from the free market.

 

[Integral]

The slaves were not attached to the land because if their owner decided to move or to sell them the slaves went where their owners sent them. Serfs were not the property of the land owner they were part and parcel with the land.

Many wealthy northerners held slaves as household servants, just what did these people have to do with land?

mheslep,
Indeed Hamilton set up the first national bank, but he did MUCH more then that. As the first Secretary of the Treasury he set up the entire financial basis of the US. The system he set up was practical and theoretically sound, it is still in use. Smith was a primary reference for everything he did. Indeed government hands off was a big piece of it. These policies had to be established by someone sometime, it was Hamilton in the 1790's.

Not clear to me how it can be denied that capitalism was the economic system of the south, wasn't it part of the US? Just because the southerns did not begin creating factories does not mean that they couldn't, just that they didn't, there is a difference. Sure most of the south was agrarian, but even the small land owners held slaves, it was a prestige thing. IF you could afford a slave you got one or two.

What ended slavery? I think Russ said it. Many northerners were offended by it. There were enough wealthy abolitionists that they were able to get some papers printing essays against it. The papers of the day were shooting for emotional responses, they finally were able to stir up enough feelings to drum up support for a war to end it. The northern capitalist did not have to be an abolitionist to support the war. What good capitalist does not love a war?

 

[BigFairy]

Heh, just a quote i remembered today:

What? The land of the free?
Whoever told you that is your enemy
...

Zack De La Rocha, Rage Against the Machine,"Know Your Enemy" 1992

 

[noblegas]

Heh, just a quote i remembered today:

Your using Zack De La Rocha for a quote to promote your point? I am a fan of RATM, but I cannot take their anti-capitalist diatribe seriously seeing that they have been a huge benefeciary of capitalism. and what do you mean we are not the land of the free? Sure are freedoms have been sliced upon over the years and at one point in this nation history, blacks were not free, but historically the United States has be the freeist nation in history.

 

[BigFairy]

Hi, i only posted that quote as i remembered it (been a while since i listened to the actual track itself) and at the time it seemed like a good idea. Well i 'had' to post it somewhere lol...

 

[arildno]

As far as I can tell attaching capitalism to medieval history is arbitrary; and the post uninterested in any useful definition of capital used in free markets. We're talking past each other, so I'll move on.

Live on in your fantasy that free marhets and capital accumulation were non-existent phenomena in the medieval and ancient worlds.

 

[mheslep]

Live on in your fantasy that free marhets and capital accumulation were non-existent phenomena in the medieval and ancient worlds.

Thanks, I so enjoy my fantasies, even though I never expressed this one.

 

[Preno]

That's misleading to post these together in context, implying some kind of collaboration between the crime and country. The slavery of many of those 3rd world millions is condoned, even sponsored, by their host nations.

I didn't mean to imply any such thing, and looking at the quotes, I don't really see what makes you think I did. I simply meant to correct the mistaken impression that there is no slavery in the U.S.

Slavery is illegal in W. Europe and the US.

It is illegal in virtually every country now (although in a handful of places it was only abolished this decade).

There are also estimates of tens of thousands of assaults, rapes, and assaults, but they're not condoned either.

Yes, but everyone knows this. Not everyone knows that there are tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves in the U.S.

 

[mheslep]

... but it is an incontrovertible fact that hundreds of thousands of people, including children, had to work hard more for 12-16 hours a day just to be able to earn a subsistence wage.

Alright, but what do you imagine they did on subsistence farms prior to the industrial revolution?

 

[WhoWee]

Yes, but everyone knows this. Not everyone knows that there are tens to hundreds of thousands of slaves in the U.S.

Where are they?

 

[Preno]

Alright, but what do you imagine they did on subsistence farms prior to the industrial revolution?

Well, they certainly worked fewer hours and probably less hard.

Edit: Not that I particularly wish to defend feudalism against 19th century capitalism, my point was to compare the unrestricted capitalism of the 19th century to the somewhat restricted (at least in the West) capitalism of the 21 century.

Where are they?

Out of public sight, obviously.

 

[mheslep]

I didn't mean to imply any such thing, and looking at the quotes, I don't really see what makes you think I did. I simply meant to correct the mistaken impression that there is no slavery in the U.S.

Fair enough, I misunderstood then.

It is illegal in virtually every country now (although in a handful of places it was only abolished this decade).

Yes, but most of the numbers still stem, from what I quickly read, from those places where slavery is still legal or openly tolerated despite laws, namely the Sudan, Dominican Republic, Thailand.

 

[turbo]

Where are they?

According the then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, some 50,000 women and children are transported to the US yearly and forced to work in the sex industry. This number does not count the undocumented aliens smuggled into work as domestic help and in sweat shops.

Bush signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act into law in October 2000, so it's not like this situation is a real secret.

http://usgovinfo.about.com/library/weekly/aa061202a.htm

 

[Preno]

Yes, but most of the numbers still stem, from what I quickly read, from those places where slavery is still legal or openly tolerated despite laws, namely the Sudan, Dominican Republic, Thailand.

Some of them do, but certainly the range of countries of origin is much more diverse than that (other major slave centers include India, Pakistan, large portions of Subsaharan Africa, Nigeria in particular, Indonesia, and a disproportionate number of slaves in the U.S. is of course likely to come from Mexico).

It's not necessarily tolerated as such, but the local law enforcement often simply doesn't have the resources to compete with international organized crime networks.

 

[mheslep]

Well, they certainly worked fewer hours and probably less hard.

From my travels in the world and actually working on a farm as a boy, I doubt it. Many imagine a bucolic Little House on the Prairie when farm life was brutal, back breaking work from before dawn to dust. If I recall, neither population or infant mortality improved much at all through feudalism, going backwards at times, until the industrial revolution.

 

[Preno]

From my travels in the world and actually working on a farm as a boy, I doubt it. Many imagine a bucolic Little House on the Prairie when farm life was brutal, back breaking work from before dawn to dust.

I'm not romanticizing medieval farm life, or at least I don't think I am, but afaik this is a widely acknowledged fact. See here, for example.

There are some provisos mentioned in the text, but working hours were still significantly shorter than during the Industrial Revolution.

If I recall, neither population or infant mortality improved much at all, going backwards at times, until the industrial revolution.

Right.