Lincoln’s decision to resist Southern secession and fight a war to maintain the American Union was motivated primarily by his belief that the nation was founded on the idea that this country “proposed to give all a chance” and allow “the weak to grow stronger.” The toxic combination of secession together with an unending commitment to unpaid human bondage by a new and separate Confederate nation, he calculated, would be fatal to the American Dream. It posed a direct threat to a self-sustaining middle-class society and to the promise of America leading the way to spreading the idea of opportunity and upward mobility throughout the world.
“I hold the value of life is to improve one’s condition,” Lincoln declared just three weeks before assuming the presidency, reiterating a lifetime of similarly expressed commitment to what historian Gabor Boritt brilliantly calls the uniquely American “right to rise.” Seven slaveholding Southern states had already declared by their independence the converse: the right to establish a nation of their own based on the denial of opportunity. Lincoln believed that the American nation based on the credo of opportunity for all was worth fighting for. “Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man, so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing, I am for that thing,” he said in 1861. In the face of unimaginable casualties and devastation, he remained for “that thing” for the rest of his life.
The origin, depth, and durability of Lincoln’s commitment cry out for new exploration and interpretation, particularly now, as the ability to rise is being challenged in the United States by economic, social, and political conditions producing ever-increasing inequality.…
… Lincoln was unwavering in his commitment to preserve the American Dream of economic opportunity for future generations, a dream he lived by escaping the poverty of his childhood and one he advocated throughout his political life. It was this commitment that lay behind his determination to ensure that a government dedicated to providing economic opportunity for its citizens “shall not perish from the earth.” Lincoln largely fought the Civil War over this principle, establishing a role for government in securing and guaranteeing economic opportunity for its citizens, a guarantee that has remained at the center of political debate and discord ever since, seldom so acrimoniously as today….
More than is often realized, the Civil War was fought not over the morality of slavery or the abstract sanctity of the American Union, but over what kind of economy the nation should have….
Salon
We have Lincoln wrong: Our greatest Lincoln historian explains his real Civil War motivations
We have Lincoln wrong: Our greatest Lincoln historian explains his real Civil War motivations
Harold Holzer and Norton Garfinkle
Slavery is part of an economy. ... so when they say "not over the morality of slavery .... but over what kind of economy" that's a false distinction
ReplyDeleteSlavery itself, Lincoln believed, was morally repugnant and a stain on the founders’ vision that all men were created equal. But his commitment to economic opportunity was what spurred him on the path toward emancipation. It is crucial to remember that long before he was willing to entertain political or social rights for African Americans, including citizenship, voting rights, or racial equality, Lincoln insisted that African Americans were entitled to the same economic rights as all other Americans.
ReplyDeleteemphasis added
What is that right? The right to enjoy fully the fruits of one's labor.
ReplyDeleteMeh .... Lincoln did not seem concerned about the rights of the Natives that he slaughtered.
ReplyDeleteBut Lincoln does deserve credit for being progressive on economic policy, influenced by economist Henry Carey, who has largely been forgotten today.
Its a political choice. .. we can have whatever economy we want to have (subject to real constraints )
ReplyDeleteIf the civil war was fought to end slavery (a very dubious proposition), why then reintroduce it ("slavery by another name", as it is called) after the civil war?
ReplyDeleteWhat should we make of all Lincoln's pronouncements that he didn't want to end slavery in the south? Was he being truthful or was this a ploy and the machinations of he a master politician?
http://www.amazon.com/Slavery-Another-Name-Re-Enslavement-Americans-ebook/dp/B001NLKT24
http://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/watch/
Its not slavery by another name its opportunity (without guarantees).... still weak and comes up short...
ReplyDeleteMatt:Slavery is part of an economy. ... so when they say "not over the morality of slavery .... but over what kind of economy" that's a false distinction.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. Such false distinctions are everywhere, an intellectual plague.
John: If the civil war was fought to end slavery (a very dubious proposition)
The very dubious proposition is that it wasn't. Everybody knew it was over slavery at the time. That it wasn't over slavery is a myth propagated by the neo-confederacy Blackmon criticizes. (Don't know if he is aware of this.) Lincoln was both truthful & a master politician. He never said he didn't want to end slavery.
The right view of Lincoln is Marx's final well-considered one: The great hero of the time. Sometimes what you get taught as a kid is actually true. In fact it usually is. For the best lies that teachers tell are by the best means of lying (Heinlein): Telling the truth in an unconvincing manner.
Paraphrasing Howard Zinn ...by Lincoln issuing his Emancipation Proclamation when he did, on January 1 1863, he simply beat the South to it. Why? Because he needed all the help he could get to win the war. Lincoln's preliminary EP four months before was a military move. It gave the southern states enough time to get their act together -- that is, to stop rebelling, to rejoin the Union, and by doing these two actions keep their slaves; if not, then emancipation.
ReplyDeleteThe American historian Richard Hofstadter: the EP "had the moral grandeur of a bill of lading."
The London Spectator: "The principle is not that a human being cannot own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
I believe the "myth."
Lincoln: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union..."
ReplyDeleteCome what may, the south had decided to secede. Lincoln may therefore have made slavery a proximate cause of the civil war. The civil war started in 1861, and the emancipation proclamation was issued in 1863, and then only to seek further military advantage. So it seems that for almost two whole years a civil war waged to end slavery did not see fit to proclaim slaves free from bondage. And at the end of it, when the issue of secession was ended for good by force, a good deal of the former slave population went back to being slaves.
Pointing out these things out doesn't make you a supporter of the confederacy! It just may mean that the civil war may have had more than one cause, and that the even the issue of slavery was part of something more fundamental. Blackmon is pointing out something that other historians have touched on: slavery was effectively reintroduced after the civil war.
So the question remains, if the civil war was fought to end slavery, why was it reintroduced, and under the political auspices of the victorious North, not the backward slave-holding South?
I repeat, Lincoln never said he didn't want to end slavery. Yes, John (& lastgreek ?), that quote is what I thought you were referring to. But perhaps the rest of what Lincoln wrote then and said and wrote at other times should be read too? Perhaps Alexander Stephens' Cornerstone Speech is worth reading?
ReplyDeleteCome what may, the south had decided to secede.
But why? As Marx said, it was a "pro-slavery rebellion". Marx's writings on the war & on Lincoln in particular are well worth reading. He might answer some of your questions. He had the same suspicions & prosecutorial attitude, perhaps, at first. As events progressed and he understood things better, his estimation of Lincoln continually rose.
Pointing out these things out doesn't make you a supporter of the confederacy!
But maybe people should notice how the supporters of the confederacy, the Redeemers, the KKK, the faithful of the Lost Cause after the war, the Dunning School in academia, spread this & similar lines of bullshit?: That there was something more fundamental, that the war was about anything but slavery, anything but rights? Emanating from bovine derriere doesn't make something bullshit. But it's a pretty good guess & is entirely accurate here. That writers who should understand the effects of their words better end up giving many people a neo-Confederate interpretation of the Civil War in the guise of "progressive" "leftism" is unfortunate but true.
So the question remains, if the civil war was fought to end slavery, why was it reintroduced, and under the political auspices of the victorious North, not the backward slave-holding South?
Because slavery, pre-Civil War chattel slavery was not reintroduced, and serious historians do not say it was. The premise is false, grossly exaggerated. To say it was is an insult to a great many people. Yes, there was a horrible regression - that Blackmon was hardly the first to point out - but it was very far from complete! Big fights that are worth fighting take a long time - centuries, millennia & usually even the most decisive victories are not absolute, complete and immediate. To expect, rather than to hope, it to be all over at once is too much. Haven't read Blackmon that I recall; I would recommend Eric Foner. (Even though he once put me in a very annoying position :-) )
Talking & arguing & questioning like this is like saying: Murder is bad. Superman caught some mass-murderers & put them in jail & prevented more mass murders. But someone got murdered again. So Superman really didn't win the fight against Murder, so he what he did was nothing.
Everything about such questions is wrong.
There are generally many causal factors involved in wars, and they can be social, political or (inclusive disjunction) economics. Usually all are involved in some proportion.
ReplyDeleteObviously slavery was an issue in the US Civil War and a big one but not the only one.
While many still debate the ultimate causes of the Civil War, Pulitzer Prize-winning author James McPherson writes that, "The Civil War started because of uncompromising differences between the free and slave states over the power of the national government to prohibit slavery in the territories that had not yet become states. When Abraham Lincoln won election in 1860 as the first Republican president on a platform pledging to keep slavery out of the territories, seven slave states in the deep South seceded and formed a new nation, the Confederate States of America. (source )
I think this gets it more or less right. Remember that slave importation was already illegal and slave breeding was a profitable endeavor for that reason.
TheAct Prohibiting Importation of Slaves of 1807 (2 Stat. 426, enacted March 2, 1807) is a United States federal law that stated that no new slaves were permitted to be imported into the United States. It took effect in 1808, the earliest date permitted by the United States Constitution.
The big issue during the lead up to civil war was the status of new territories, since the US was still expanding into the frontier.
The article goes on to say:
The incoming Lincoln administration and most of the Northern people refused to recognize the legitimacy of secession. They feared that it would discredit democracy and create a fatal precedent that would eventually fragment the no-longer United States into several small, squabbling countries."
This leaves out some key facts. First. cotton was the premier economic product of day, just as oil is today. Slaves were the capital from which that product was created at a subsistence wage. This was the legal extraction of economic rent par excellence, other than colonial rapine. Although the US missed out on the colonial rapine of the day, it did practice it in another way through the expropriation of Native American land and importation and then domestic breeding of African slaves. (See also Slavery among Native Americans in the United States)
Secondly, England was a key buyer of US cotton. The South was counting on British intervention on it side in the conflict, which would have tipped the scales. See United Kingdom and the American Civil War. That did not happen.
With the discovery of oil in Pennsylvania in 1859, cotton and slavery eventually became non-issues and no one but historians remembers how important they were economically at the time and the role that slavery played in this. However, the US never faced up to the consequences of African slavery or Native American expropriation and, some would say, genocide. Both remain festering wounds.
Calgacus: "But why?"
ReplyDeleteAccording to Blackmon, if I remember correctly, by this time the South did not believe any reassurances by the North about not ending slavery. Lincoln's election was the last straw. So all Lincoln's reassurances about not prohibiting slavery, but not extending it to the new territories, were not believed. This is credible. It makes the lead up to the civil war sound like a history of blunders, confusions and false impressions, but that may well be the case.
Tom's point about the economics is crucial. The North was being industrialised. The South was predominantly rural and would stay that way until the diseconomy of widespread slavery took its time to work. Leaving aside the British-French Empires battles accelerating the end of slavery (Haiti was crucial) and the slave rebellions making slave economies difficult to hold on to, Adam Smith somewhere points out that slavery was starting to disappear because it would be cheaper to rent people rather than own them.
Given the new economics, it is surprising that the North permitted the effective reintroduction of slavey in the South. That it happened is unquestionable. Thousands of people attest to it, and the historical records are clear on this. Perhaps some parts of the economy were still viable under slavery while widespread slavery would be economically disastrous. After all, the US was now competing with the UK and other world powers. The North may also have reluctantly accepted that culturally some amount of slavery was necessary in a region that was deeply racist (membership of the KKK was widespread).
If Lincoln had survived the reintroduction of slavery may not have happened and the South's history would have been taken a different course. Lincoln did a great thing by defeating the South and ending slavery. He may well be the US's greatest ever president (not much competition here), but that should not interfere with a proper accounting of the civil war and what in fact triggered it. The simple Goodies versus Baddies history of the civil war has too many holes in it to make sense.
The problem that we are still facing is the aftermath of slavery and colonization of the Americas.
ReplyDeleteFreeing the slaves was only a the first step. A sine qua non but essentially meaningless without follow through. Lincoln's plan was apparently to ship them back, that is, deport them, to Africa.
Something similar happened to the Native Americans by just dumping them onto reservations.
As a result both those groups are still by and large dysfunctional relative to the larger society.
Tom: "Lincoln's plan was apparently to ship them back, that is, deport them, to Africa."
ReplyDeleteThat's an extraordinarily important point, and we gloss over that at our own peril of continuing to misunderstand history and the political economy of slavery. Now that the slaves had fulfilled their mission in building a prosperous America ready to take its place on the world stage, they could be dumped like human garbage so as not to further offend the delicate eyes of the superior rulers.
For that reason slavery would not have been reintroduced because all the slaves would have been kidnapped, yet again, and shipped to Africa, an alien place to match the alien place that they were initially brought to. That puts Lincoln's alleged sympathy for black people into perspective. How easy that would have been to implement is another matter, although I should imagine that it would not have been so difficult given the circumstances.
By our standards, Lincoln is a fanatical racist: black and white should not and cannot live together. By the standards of his day, however, Lincoln may not have been altogether different or considered a depraved individual. Lincoln may not have liked slavery, but his attitudes to black people were indeed abhorrent. I think it can be safely said that it was only by default and the mysterious accidents of history that Lincoln was a great president. History worked in mysterious ways its wonders to perform!
Tom:Obviously slavery was an issue in the US Civil War and a big one but not the only one.
ReplyDeleteIt was THE issue.One can safely say: No slavery, no war. It was behind all the other fake fundamental causes, that the postwar, revisionist pro-South historiography put forward. Historiography that was standard for many decades, and still dupes a great many well-meaning perhaps, but ignorant "progressives".
Tom:A sine qua non but essentially meaningless without follow through.
Yup, not having a master who can torture, murder, rape, starve & sell you, your loved ones & near everyone you know at will is "essentially meaningless". Not living where this is a universal fate, is "essentially meaningless".
Lincoln's plan was apparently to ship them back, that is, deport them, to Africa.
That was an early & common idea, even among many abolitionists. Towards the end, he & others realized this was unjust & impossible. All the neoconfederate-tainted BS founders against the rocks of the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments, against the achievements of blacks & whites during Reconstruction.
Revolutions are always betrayed. If there was something left after the betrayal, they succeeded in truth. There was something of infinite value left after the Civil War & its betrayal. Pre & post civil war were not the same. If you call one period slavery, it is obscene to call the latter one true slavery as a matter of fact, not rhetoric. Serious historians, who feel this betrayal in their bones and have been writing about it for decades do not do so.
As a result both those groups are still by and large dysfunctional relative to the larger society. "Those groups" are "dysfunctional"? Not "the larger society"?
John: By our standards, Lincoln is a fanatical racist.
ReplyDeleteThen "our" standards are not mine, and thankfully are outside the main currents of thought about the period. Such "standards" are infantile, mere posturing, like the idea that there was a true reintroduction of slavery. What happened was horrible; I have no beef with calling it "Slavery by another name" rhetorically. But it was not slavery, not as bad as slavery, not as uniform, not as widespread, not supported by a theory of Herrenvolk democracy. I highly recommend Domenico Losurdo's Liberalism: A Counter-History for a very calm and objective, grown-up contextualization and understanding of US slavery and liberalism amid much else, until WWI. There were practices similar to what Blackmon describes perpetrated against the poor whites in the pre Civil War South. They weren't Slavery either, taking the word to mean what it usually does.
The simple Goodies versus Baddies history of the civil war has too many holes in it to make sense. Of course there are always nuances. But the simplest elementary school Goodies vs Baddies story is a hell of a lot better, has a lot fewer holes than neoconfederate-tainted garbage. Like I said, Neo-confederates have worked wonders: people think they are progressive, lefties and swallow the essence of the neoConfederate story: That the war was not about slavery. This is not beyond, but has not yet reached the Goodies vs Baddies grade-school level of history.
The war was about slavery. Bigger then every other "cause" put together. More fundamental than the pretend-more-fundamental things. Talking about economic causes misses the point that Matt concisely put above - it is a false distinction.
I think it can be safely said that it was only by default and the mysterious accidents of history that Lincoln was a great president.
Yes, us wonderful people nowadays are sooooo much better, sooooo much smarter, soooo much more able & energetic, sooooo much more moral than Lincoln.
In fact, the glow of our self-regard is such a light unto nations that there is never any need to actually lift a finger to do something in the real world - or study it - as our outmoded moral and intellectual inferiors like Lincoln or Marx did. For we know that if we actually do something, we might escape from the wonderful image of our own reflection, and worse, we might do or say something which is not perfect.
Tom: Obviously slavery was an issue in the US Civil War and a big one but not the only one.
ReplyDeleteIt was THE issue…..
I would agree with tha. Most of the other chief issues are entwined with slavery — states' right, the Southern "way of life, etc. BTW, these are still issues of contention today even after slavery and they are reasons for periodic calls for secession down to the present.
Tom:A sine qua non but essentially meaningless without follow through.
Yup, not having a master who can torture, murder, rape, starve & sell you, your loved ones & near everyone you know at will is "essentially meaningless". Not living where this is a universal fate, is "essentially meaningless".
That was mitigated somewhat but not ended. Almost no white person was charged with crimes against blacks, and the one's that were charged and tried were generally acquitted by "a jury of the their peers." In fact, they could count on it. Just like police today using violence to intimidate minorities and now even the precariat in general.
Tom: Lincoln's plan was apparently to ship them back, that is, deport them, to Africa.
That was an early & common idea, even among many abolitionists. Towards the end, he & others realized this was unjust & impossible. All the neoconfederate-tainted BS founders against the rocks of the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments, against the achievements of blacks & whites during Reconstruction.
Well, what Lincoln would actually have done is speculative. Even if he had wanted to deport the slaves, it was a project that likely could not have succeeded and probably would not have even been tried very seriously. It's on the order to Trump's campaign promise to round up and deport all the illegals in the US now. Sounds good but impractical.
Revolutions are always betrayed. If there was something left after the betrayal, they succeeded in truth. There was something of infinite value left after the Civil War & its betrayal. Pre & post civil war were not the same. If you call one period slavery, it is obscene to call the latter one true slavery as a matter of fact, not rhetoric. Serious historians, who feel this betrayal in their bones and have been writing about it for decades do not do so.
The country did not step up as whole until the Civil Rights era of the Sixties. It was a hard fought battle again, not entirely peaceful either. It also changed the political landscape in a way that is still being felt. And the snakes are coming out of their holes.
What was left after the betrayal was the change in the US Constitution and laws that were finally applied, more or less. Now there is retrenchment on that.
As a result both those groups are still by and large dysfunctional relative to the larger society. "Those groups" are "dysfunctional"? Not "the larger society"?
I agree that the US is a dysfunctional society but there are sectors that are more dysfunctional than others. But minorities in general are faced with an uphill fight against prejudice and entrenched interests.
The history of women is not too different from that of the slaves. In fact, in tribal areas of the world and some enclaves in the West, women are still considered chattel, not to mention that trafficking is a huge industry globally.
Humanity has a way to go to become humane.
They weren't Slavery either, taking the word to mean what it usually does.
ReplyDeleteThere is slavery de jure and also de facto. There is still a lot of slavery today de facto in the sense of force and unpaid or underpaid labor that is imposed institutionally and de jure indirectly since some of these institutional arrangements are based in law.
De facto slavery is endemic to the capitalist model in general since rent is intrinsic to it by separating ownership from work and endowing ownership with asymmetrical power and influence.
This is hardly surprising since the feudalism of the late agricultural age morphed into the budding capitalism of the industrial age, bringing imperialism and colonialism to new levels as they morphed with shifting conditions, too.
That was mitigated somewhat but not ended.
ReplyDeleteGoing from a universal rule to a far too common exception, but still an exception, is not "mitigated somewhat".
Almost no white person was charged with crimes against blacks.
Ignores the point. People understood that these crimes were crimes after the war, not before.
I doubt that Lincoln was into colonization at the end of the war. The fact that it was not possible may have become, would have been obvious to a realist like Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln and slavery is pretty good.
What escapes so many modern critics is that Lincoln & all the other good guys were human beings, were neither omniscient nor omnipotent, as they well knew.
"I think the impression was that Lincoln was a pretty sad man, because he could not do all he wanted to do at one time, and I think you will find examples where Lincoln had to compromise to gain a little something. He had to compromise to make a few gains. Lincoln was one of those unfortunate people called a ‘politician’ but he was a politician who was practical enough to get a great many things for this country. He was a sad man because he couldn’t get it all at once. And nobody can. Maybe you would make a much better President than I have. Maybe you will, some day. If you ever sit here, you will learn that you cannot, just by shouting from the housetops, get what you want all the time."
FDR, Conference with representatives of the American Youth Congress June 1940, pp 57-58
IMHO, those old dead neoconfederate, revisionist historians still outsmart modern "liberals" & "progressives" who don't understand such things.
Going from a universal rule to a far too common exception, but still an exception, is not "mitigated somewhat".
ReplyDeleteIgnores the point. People understood that these crimes were crimes after the war, not before.
My impression based on experience is that many people don't see it this way at all. They believe in a natural order of things and positive law has nothing to do with this, so it can be discounted if not disregarded entirely.
Many American believe that "God's law" supersedes and supplants man's law, and they interpret God's law "idiosyncratically" shall we say.
It's also pretty clear that people at the top have no respect for law because of the double standard of justice that continues to prevail. Moreover, TPTB are able to shape institutions to their interests, including legal institutions.
I am not arguing that there is not a huge difference between de jure slavery and de facto. But the Emancipation Proclamation did not make slavery go away.
Almost everyone today takes some forms of de facto slavery as matters of course and they don't see them as slavery at all.
This is the genius of capitalism. It uses persuasion and guile to achieve what was formerly achieved by force.
There is even a parallel to abolitionism today in the anti-abortion movement. The later is the moral issue of the day for many Americans as abolition was in the lead up to the Civil War.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, those opposed to abortion today propose to make abortion illegal and many also wish to limit access to birth control if not to ban it.
However, there is little of no concern for the increase in unplanned and unwanted births, or plan to deal with this issue as abortion is made harder to get in many jurisdictions.
It's assumed that the issue is resolved in one fell swoop merely by changing the law.
Calgacus, let me rephrase my argument. It is doubtful that the political and economic establishment in the North woke up one morning and decided the slavery that they had defended for centuries was intolerable and that the country had to be torn apart because of it. That the immorality of slavery had suddenly dawned upon them. That it was a moral issue. The political economy of slavery was irrelevant. The international political and economic scene was irrelevant. The internal North-South power politics was irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteThat is why I say slavery was a proximate cause of the civil war. The abolition of slavery was not a moral question for the North. I'd say it has echoes of the British-French battles that ended slavery. The British would use the morality of slavery to further their own imperial interests, but it was clearly nothing but a useful excuse. It was interwoven with who would become the greatest world power. The British didn't push for the abolition of slavery because of moral considerations. A good deal of the French Empire's power relied on slavery in the Caribbean. So the British advocated the abolition of slavery.
I haven't read Marx on Lincoln, and of course I should (my New Year's resolution). Does Marx not refer directly to the economics, internal power politics and global politics of the civil war? That would be very much out of keeping with the Marx that I've read. Does Marx argue that the civil war was triggered by moral considerations? That doesn't sound very Marxist.
As for your argument that the "slavery by another name" that was introduced after the civil war was not comparable to pre-war slavery. The question is why was a significant slave economy in the South tolerated by the victorious North after the civil war?
Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
ReplyDeleteWritings on the U.S. Civil War 1861
Marx's letters on America
I read this some time ago. Quite fascinating as I remember.
See also
Karl Marx On American Slavery by Ken Lawrence
Throughout Karl Marx's long career as philosopher, his- torian, social critic, and revolutionary, he considered the enslavement of African people in America to be a fundamental aspect of rising capitalism, not only in the New World, but in Europe as well. As early as 1847, Marx made the following forceful observation:
"Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that has given the colonies their value; it is the colonies that have created world trade, and it is world trade that is the pre-condition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance.
"Without slavery North America, the roost progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe out North America from the map of the world, and you will have anarchy — the complete decay of modern commerce and civilisation. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.
"Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.1"
1. Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy: A Reply to M. Proudhon’s Philosophy of Poverty, New York, International Publishers, n.d., pages 94-5.
BTW, cotton is still contentious. Disagreement between the North (developed nations) and the South (emerging nations) has been in evidence in attempts to forge trade agreements.
ReplyDeleteTom, thanks for the link. Many of them don't work.
ReplyDeleteI'll read "An Unfinished Revolution: Karl Marx and Abraham Lincoln". Hopefully that'll answer some of the stuff about Lincoln. And there are some interesting books on the political economy of slavery and the civil war. On the whole, they are essentially in agreement with the arguments I've put forward above.
By the way, it is often said that "cotton was the oil of its day". I've never understood this. No doubt I'm missing something, but there is no comparison: without oil there is no modern economy; without cotton, life carries on and people use some other material or go without. How can cotton possibly be comparable?
Oil is the basis for world trade today. Notice how the oil is still mostly priced in the dollar, and the US has been committed to that policy since Bretton Woods.
ReplyDeleteHard to believe now, but prior to oil, cotton was the product that made the world go around through trade. It was a colonial agricultural product that was shipped to England to be turned into industrial products.
The early industry of the American colonies and then the US was textile mills.
That changed when oil was discovered and harnessed, especially when oil was used to militarily. Then controlling oil became the chief objective rather than cotton.