Liberals, progressives and conservatives of note sign open letter to end cancel culture. (Noam Chomsky/J.K. Rowling/Gloria Steinem/David Brooks etc.)

[tstorm823]

What you're doing is claiming slavery had nothing to do with US wealth and that it was bad for everyone.

You're still not listening. It's not bad for everyone individually, rather it's bad for society collectively. Slavery was obviously of benefit to the slavers.

Simple thought experiment: imagine one person working, they make one person worth of profit while the rest of the society benefits from one person worth of work. If you have 10 people instead, they each get their one person of profit while society benefits from 10 people worth of work. Now throw in slavery: you have one person who owns and directs the slaves and let's say they have 9 slaves doing all the work. If those slaves each do the same one person worth of work, but the slaver takes the profits, you have 9 people who have been robbed of their 1 person worth of profits, 1 person making 9 people worth of profit, and society only gets the benefit of 9 people working instead of 10. Even if the slaves accomplish half of what they would have as free people, the slaver still gets 4.5x what they would have otherwise while the rest of society gets half of the benefit.

Slavery existed (exists) to benefit specifically the slaveholder. It makes the slaveholder wealthy. But it does so at the full expense of the slaves and the partial expense of the rest of society. For the argument that slavery made the US as a whole wealthier to hold water, you have to believe the slaves accomplished more economically as slaves than they would have as free people, and not just more, but so much more as to overcome the sunk cost of the entire slaving industry. And there's no evidence of that.

 

[Terminal Blue]

The majority of US exports being cotton doesn't mean what you're claiming. It's evidence that the rest of the US economy was still trash at the time that there weren't other exports.

So, there's this thing called capitalism.

Basically, it turns out that if you spend a lot of money building a really big factory, or a really big farm, or a really big mine, or a really big railroad, there are efficiency benefits which can't be replicated with small scale investment

For example, my really big factory can have expensive machinery which wouldn't fit in a smaller factory, but which increases the effective productivity of someone working there so to something far beyond what they could achieve by hand. The problem is that building a really big factory requires a lot of money. So if my country has no money, if everyone in my country is poor, who do you think pays for the really big factories?

Sure, foreigners could come and pay for the factories, but the problem then is that noone in my country ever gets much richer. The returns of that capital investment are mostly going back overseas.

In order for an economy to begin industrialising and, more importantly, benefiting from industrialisation (at least in a capitalist economy) there need to be wealthy people who can make the necessary capital investments. In the case of the post-independence US, there was already a small minority of wealthy landowners who made up the political and economic establishment, and who had the money to invest into developing a capitalist economy. Guess where that money came from!

And even more telling than all of that, despite the death and destruction of the Civil War and without the work of slaves anymore, the South returned to pre-war levels of cotton production before the end of the decade.

How do you imagine that was achieved?

I realise we've become unecessarily fixated on the single issue of slavery, as if slavery was the only bad thing to ever happen to black people in the history of the US, but what do you think it says that a slave economy (in which, in some states, half the population was enslaved) can simply pick itself up, put the same people back in charge and go right back to meeting the same level of production without needing to downsize or curb growth to invest in meeting labour needs. What do you think that actually indicates about the position of the now free workers who are picking that cotton?

I mean, we are literally talking about how the legacy of slavery has outlasted the end of slavery itself..

So even if you want to argue cotton is the historical foundation of US economic success, it's not because the US had slaves to pick it. It's because the US had the natural resources that specifically Britain lacked, and the industry thrived at least as much without slaves involved.

Leaving aside that during the 19th century the British isles had large and unexploited deposits of iron and coal, Britain controlled an impossibly vast colonial empire with many, many natural resources.

Heck, the British could already grow cotton in India, it was just more convenient to import from the US.

 

[tstorm823]

What do you think that actually indicates about the position of the now free workers who are picking that cotton?

That compensating them for their efforts is at least as economically efficient as driving them as slaves.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

You're still not listening. It's not bad for everyone individually, rather it's bad for society collectively. Slavery was obviously of benefit to the slavers.

I wonder where slavers are located if not within society.

Simple thought experiment: imagine one person working, they make one person worth of profit while the rest of the society benefits from one person worth of work. If you have 10 people instead, they each get their one person of profit while society benefits from 10 people worth of work. Now throw in slavery: you have one person who owns and directs the slaves and let's say they have 9 slaves doing all the work. If those slaves each do the same one person worth of work, but the slaver takes the profits, you have 9 people who have been robbed of their 1 person worth of profits, 1 person making 9 people worth of profit, and society only gets the benefit of 9 people working instead of 10. Even if the slaves accomplish half of what they would have as free people, the slaver still gets 4.5x what they would have otherwise while the rest of society gets half of the benefit.

So does that mean you think that capitalists are parasites siphoning off the surplus wealth of the labourer that impoverishes society as a whole when our productive capacity would be greater if we were freer? Because I'm reaching for my 'secret Stalinist' retort here since that's exactly the sort of reasoning you're hijacking, totally divorced from its context.

Slavery existed (exists) to benefit specifically the slaveholder. It makes the slaveholder wealthy. But it does so at the full expense of the slaves and the partial expense of the rest of society.

Slaveholders comprise a social class, and no economics is done in isolation. The efficiency of an industry determines its rate of investment, and its rate of profit influences national growth. This in turn increases investment opportunities, which increases the rate of development of industries, and in turn means that the government is able to take more income in taxes and tariffs that feeds back into investing in infrastructure and state development. A whole chain of financiers, lawyers, sailors, drivers, and speculators are involved in this process, and their enrichment feeds back into the market through purchases and sales. Other countries in turn find the industry more profitable to invest into since they have a greater rate of return on profit from this industry. Add to that, the ubiquity of slaves as a commodity and the guarantee of unpaid labour ratified by law means that you have a money machine. Over successive generations and centuries this means that the race not being enslaved benefits from more material wealth through the circulation of finance - better funded schools, better government budgets, better productive capacity, which means that it opens up labour opportunities over a long period of time to all those who aren't slaves. As a result, white labourers, even when immiserated still have the ability to purchase land, to eventually climb the social ladder and a greater likelihood of assimilating into the capitalist class itself, of which slaveholders were a crucial part of.

As a result, you have a greater circulation of wealth that comes at the expense of the labourers. The country overall is made significantly richer, but the wealth is spread in such a way that only non-slaves ever get the benefit from it until productive capacities develop in such a way that slave labour is no longer necessary or as profitable as new industries. Notice how we're talking about an era where the industrial revolution came right at the tail end of slavery, and how it led to greater competition between countries. Notice also how the gradual circulation of wealth meant more people had access to education, more people ended up having free time in which to think on issues and evaluating their social circumstances. This development inevitably led to revolutions and social strife and makes certain systems both productively unteneable and politically unteneable. But guess what, that wealth still circulated almost exclusively within the slaveholding class and all those intermediaries who were not slaves. Reparations is nothing more than paying back for that stolen labour through the direct hereditary of its exploitation, embodied in the state, specifically because simply taking from individual people would be an unfeasible smash-and-grab that no one other than fascists suggest.

What Marx Understood About Slavery

Marx, like generations of socialists, saw the particularly capitalist character of the New World’s slavery — and the inextricable link between the emancipation of the enslaved and the liberation of the entire working class.

www.jacobinmag.com

For the argument that slavery made the US as a whole wealthier to hold water, you have to believe the slaves accomplished more economically as slaves than they would have as free people

Not the slaves, the system that enslaved them. That much is fact and not a question of belief.

and not just more, but so much more as to overcome the sunk cost of the entire slaving industry. And there's no evidence of that.

There's no evidence relating to whatever 'sunk cost' you're talking about here. Sunk costs for who? The slaveholders or the slaves? The latter is recompensation through reparations. The former were the ones who profitted and ideally should be recompensated from. The costs they sunk into slavery was an investment, that they made back in dozens, but they're all dead now and their wealth is hedged and distrbuted across many different industries and companies, with the sole authority able to make such an effort being the Federal Government.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

That compensating them for their efforts is at least as economically efficient as driving them as slaves.

Stop conflating efficiency with profitability in a historical context. They're not the same terms, and what is efficient or profitable changes as technology develops.

 

[deleted20220709]

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[tstorm823]

It is not a coincidence that lawful racial segregation persisted for a century after the civil war was over. It is not a coincidence that black people could be lynched by a mob without due process 50 years after the civil war. It is not a coincidence that the KKK were a major political force for half a century after the civil war. Black people might have been free in a juridical sense, but the society around them did its' utmost to ensure that they never rose far above the status of slaves.

I agree, it isn't a coincidence. But the cause is hate, it isn't the drive for economic prosperity. There's not a cabal of people thinking "well, those darker skinned people are created equal and deserve love and respect, but we'd be so much poorer if we showed them that so we better keep up the lynchings." Nor would people be correct to think that in the first place.

So does that mean you think that capitalists are parasites siphoning off the surplus wealth of the labourer that impoverishes society as a whole when our productive capacity would be greater if we were freer? Because I'm reaching for my 'secret Stalinist' retort here since that's exactly the sort of reasoning you're hijacking, totally divorced from its context.

No, because if you offer less benefit and try to be a parasite in a capitalist society, you ultimately either fail or inspire laws to prevent your behavior. The people who rise to the top and stay there ultimately do so because they are genuinely giving more benefit out to society than the wealth they've received in return.

There's no evidence relating to whatever 'sunk cost' you're talking about here. Sunk costs for who? The slaveholders or the slaves?

There were slavers buying and selling slaves, ships transporting them around, slave drivers and slave catchers all making their living keeping the slaves in place... there was a whole infrastructure to slavery. You can't imagine those people and resources couldn't have done something more productive?

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

I agree, it isn't a coincidence. But the cause is hate, it isn't the drive for economic prosperity. There's not a cabal of people thinking "well, those darker skinned people are created equal and deserve love and respect, but we'd be so much poorer if we showed them that so we better keep up the lynchings." Nor would people be correct to think that in the first place.

No, because if you offer less benefit and try to be a parasite in a capitalist society, you ultimately either fail or inspire laws to prevent your behavior. The people who rise to the top and stay there ultimately do so because they are genuinely giving more benefit out to society than the wealth they've received in return.

Spoiler

American slavers were the richest class in America

There were slavers buying and selling slaves, ships transporting them around, slave drivers and slave catchers all making their living keeping the slaves in place... there was a whole infrastructure to slavery. You can't imagine those people and resources couldn't have done something more productive?

See above regarding conflating productivity, efficiency and profitability. Facebook is profitable despite the fact a lot of its revenue comes from metadata mining and ads.

 

[Satinavian]

Slavery based economy in North America mainly developed because there was a lack of free workers and enough "free" land. Even poor free newcoomers vastly preferred to try their luck with homesteading than to work on someone elses plantation and grow crops for export. That is where the demand for slaves who can't do that comes in.

That was one of the very few occations where slavery was efficient. Usually it is not. Which is why of all the hundreds of countries and time periods where slavery was legal, only very few had actually a slave based economy.


It is a bit more, if you acount for all kinds of unfree labor, but even then the effects were the same. Serfdom in Europe was going back by itself until the Black death and empty farmland which lead to people being forced to stay and bound to the land in Eastern Europe as a result. Same with the loss of the rights of the coloni in the late Roman empire. It is always empty fields and no workers for hire that leads to forcing people to work it as slaves/serfs/whatever.

And every time land gets scarce and unskilled labour cheap and available, unfree labour gets inefficient. While in the US slavery was still profitable when it ended, in quite a number of nations landowners themself were driving the abolishment of unfree labour to be able to modernize and hire cheap desperate poor farmhands without having any responsibility for them or any costs if they got sick or injured.

 

[Agema]

Slavery based economy in North America mainly developed because there was a lack of free workers and enough "free" land. Even poor free newcoomers vastly preferred to try their luck with homesteading than to work on someone elses plantation and grow crops for export. That is where the demand for slaves who can't do that comes in.

Yes. A huge advantage of slavery is that if you want work done that people don't particularly want to do and have other options to explore, you can make someone do it.

Cotton plantations involved masses of transport of slaves, first from across the Atlantic and later from an internal US trade. Implicitly, the labour did not exist to support its growth and phenomenal profits without that - the cotton trade becoming an enormous earner for the USA. In order to have made it work without slaves, one must assume salaries would have needed to be considerably higher to attract workers.

 

[Seanchaidh]

There were slavers buying and selling slaves, ships transporting them around, slave drivers and slave catchers all making their living keeping the slaves in place... there was a whole infrastructure to slavery. You can't imagine those people and resources couldn't have done something more productive?

The thing about human 'civilization' is that "whole infrastructure" of non-productive people has existed ever since settled agriculture took off, and it grows with the surplus generated by the working classes, whether slave, serf, or employee. That "whole infrastructure" of non-productive people is the ruling class and its enforcers and it still exists today. We have a whole infrastructure of military and police to keep people in line abroad and at home and serve the interests of a ruling capitalist class that needn't work at all because they own the productive assets. The surplus generated by the labor of the working classes makes a whole host of non-productive occupations or lifestyles possible. There is also marketing, for instance.

That "whole infrastructure" as it related to the slavers of the American South was made possible by slavery and many of the descendants of that "whole infrastructure" enjoy the benefits of their wealth gained by it to this day-- laundered through "investment".

 

[tstorm823]

The thing about human 'civilization' is that "whole infrastructure" of non-productive people has existed ever since settled agriculture took off, and it grows with the surplus generated by the working classes, whether slave, serf, or employee. That "whole infrastructure" of non-productive people is the ruling class and its enforcers and it still exists today. We have a whole infrastructure of military and police to keep people in line abroad and at home and serve the interests of a ruling capitalist class that needn't work at all because they own the productive assets. The surplus generated by the labor of the working classes makes a whole host of non-productive occupations or lifestyles possible. There is also marketing, for instance.

That "whole infrastructure" as it related to the slavers of the American South was made possible by slavery and many of the descendants of that "whole infrastructure" enjoy the benefits of their wealth gained by it to this day-- laundered through "investment".

And I disagree with all of this, but you are factually a communist, so it is what it is.

 

[Seanchaidh]

And I disagree with all of this, but you are factually a communist, so it is what it is.

You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

 

[Agema]

And I disagree with all of this, but you are factually a communist, so it is what it is.

Okay, let's take a basic assumption that it cost as much to keep a slave as it did to employ a free worker.

A free worker is paid let's say $2/day, and that's his or her money do as he pleases. A slave costs $2, but the slave only gets a fraction of that ("free" food, accommodation, etc.) The rest is going to slave guards, slave traders, slave transport, and so on. In other words, although the cost to the slave-owner is no different, the societal distribution of money very much is, and lots of money going to everyone involved in the infrastructure of slavery rather than the worker, unlike it would with free workers. In other words, the benefits of slavery are actually much more widely distributed throughout and advantageous to the non-slave population than just slave owner profits.

There is a second issue, which is that money is not static, but a gigantic merry-go-round constantly passing between people and organisations. Money in circulation can end up in the pockets of anyone through their work, ingenuity, etc... except slaves. So all the opportunities for profit and advancement from hard work, ingenuity and investment therefore also flow to non-slaves. Thus the non-slave population again benefits more than they would under a situation where slavery did not exist.

To a large extent, non-slave wealth was built on slavery that would not have been built without it. Much of that really will be present today, represented in things like land ownership, investments, social status and education, etc. as generations inherited the advantages left by their forebears.

 

[tstorm823]

A free worker is paid let's say $2/day, and that's his or her money do as he pleases. A slave costs $2, but the slave only gets a fraction of that ("free" food, accommodation, etc.) The rest is going to slave guards, slave traders, slave transport, and so on. In other words, although the cost to the slave-owner is no different, the societal distribution of money very much is, and lots of money going to everyone involved in the infrastructure of slavery rather than the worker, unlike it would with free workers. In other words, the benefits of slavery are actually much more widely distributed throughout and advantageous to the non-slave population than just slave owner profits.

Wat? Your logic here assumes poor workers hoard their income, but it would be spent and distributed anyway. And it isn't well distributed with slavery, slave owners were infamous money hoarders.

 

[Agema]

Wat? Your logic here assumes poor workers hoard their income, but it would be spent and distributed anyway. And it isn't well distributed with slavery, slave owners were infamous money hoarders.

It doesn't matter what they do with it so much that they get it, and can also access the general circulation of money, where slaves don't.

Let's imagine a theoretical model 50:50 free:slave population where slaves are as productive as free. Slaves cost the same as it takes to employ a free man, but half of that cost is employing some of the free to control the slaves. This means that 75% of the economic activity goes to the free (50% of their own and half that again taken from the slaves), and that money circulates around only the free: it ends up benefitting many more free people than just the slave owner. Even if we take the idea that overall slavery impairs the overall economic health of a nation the free population may still better off in absolute terms with slavery than they are without. Imagine in the above model if it depresses the economy 10%. That means the free men are getting 50% more from taking the half the value slaves create but only 10% less from inefficiency. The point being that it's not necessarily true to say free people lose from the lost productivity due to slavery being overall inefficient. They might or might not. It all depends on how the numbers pan out.

Money hoarding isn't really done these days because of persistent low inflation causing depreciation, but it was a lot more viable in the 19th century where long-term the value of money remained constant (albeit with lots of short-term volatility). Even then, saving is only ever a fraction of someone's income.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

So, about that cancel culture:

 

[Specter Von Baren]

So, about that cancel culture:
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I'm confused as to what you're saying.

 

[Gordon_4]

Well this thread turned predictably to shit.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I'm confused as to what you're saying.

A supporter of the big "Cancel Culture is sI lending debate" letter used a spurious defamation suit to silence criticism.

Because that's how Cancel Culture actually works.