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

[Hawki]

The racial inequality in America today, or the global inequality between majority white countries and everyone else, is a direct result of the history of racism. The explosive growth of the US economy in the early and mid 19th century was fuelled, in large part, by slavery. Shortly before the civil war, cotton exports comprised the majority of the total value of US exports. The domestic textile industry, one of the first drivers of industrialization in the Northern US states, also relied directly on slavery. Slavery brought incredible wealth into the US economy, it laid the foundation for the US to become the wealthiest country on the planet by the end of the century. At the time, that wealth may have disproportionately benefited a small number of industrialists, landowners and investors, but over a very long time (in no small part due to the efforts of unions) that wealth translated into a better standard of living for white Americans, but was specifically kept from black Americans. That economic inequality continues to this day.

The idea that the US's wealth derives from slavery isn't an indefensible one, but I've never seen anyone address the following:

-If we look at the Americas, and we operate under the assumption that slavery = wealth, then by all rights, Brazil should be the wealthiest country in them, as 90% of slaves from the AST went there. I've seen explanations explaining why the South American states failed to grow in the same way as the northern American states, but if anything, these arguments mitigate the claim.

-I actually checked the GDP figures, you're right, the US was the wealthiest country (by GDP) at the dawn of the 20th century. It took the top spot around 1890. But if that's the case, then why the lag? If slavery stops in 1865, why the 'economic lag' of 25 years to translate that wealth? Shouldn't there be a lull in growth, especially since the country has to deal with the aftermath of a war, plus, apparently, the loss of an economic powerhouse?

Rather it has to be the sustained, sincere effort to resolve an ongoing injustice and to build a society that is free from racism, and free from the consequences of racism.

This isn't a point against reparations, but while I believe the latter is possible, do you seriously think the former is possible? Considering that ingroup/outgroup bias develops as early as six months of age?

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

-If we look at the Americas, and we operate under the assumption that slavery = wealth, then by all rights, Brazil should be the wealthiest country in them, as 90% of slaves from the AST went there. I've seen explanations explaining why the South American states failed to grow in the same way as the northern American states, but if anything, these arguments mitigate the claim.

Not nearly as much of Brazil is developed like the US is, and Brazil was a colony for most of its history that meant all of the wealth went back to its colonial masters in Portugal (and after then, being saddled with colonial debt). Unlike the US, which had a more internalised economy, the exploitation actually went back into the investment of the economic base rather than being taken overseas.

Even after then, it lacked the industrial structure that the US later developed due to its geography. Rest assured though, it is still a very wealthy country within South America. The chief differences are also that the US developed larger trading ports that eventually encompassed both oceans, whilst Brazil was restricted in its options to primarily Rio. There's a variety of factors but they don't disprove the significance of slavery.

 

[Hawki]

On another note, since I can't edit my original post, the GSI shows that slavery in the modern day seems to be correlated with poverty. The poorer the country, the greater the number of slaves. Make of that what you will.

Not nearly as much of Brazil is developed like the US is, and Brazil was a colony for most of its history that meant all of the wealth went back to its colonial masters in Portugal (and after then, being saddled with colonial debt). Unlike the US, which had a more internalised economy, the exploitation actually went back into the investment of the economic base rather than being taken overseas.

Even after then, it lacked the industrial structure that the US later developed due to its geography. Rest assured though, it is still a very wealthy country within South America. The chief differences are also that the US developed larger trading ports that eventually encompassed both oceans, whilst Brazil was restricted in its options to primarily Rio. There's a variety of factors but they don't disprove the significance of slavery.

To the first, that's a fair point, but Brazil gained independence in 1825, while the US gained independence in 1783. Meanwhile, the US stops slavery in 1865, while Brazil stops slavery in 1888, and in the modern day, is the 4th wealthiest South American country. Plus, slavery was still going elsewhere, and despite now being finally illegal worldwide, there's now more slaves in the world today than any point in human history (with the upside that as a percentage, it's never been lower). Also, on the subject of Portugal, I'm not arguing that colonialism involved wealth transfer (because the figures demonstrate it, if nothing else), but Portugal in the 21st century? Um, how's it doing, because last I heard, the answer was not too well.

To the second point, yes, those were some of the mitigating factors I've come across. But to clarify, I don't have issue with the idea of slavery generating wealth (to some extent), because that's been true for the last 12,000 years. But "slavery = wealth" is too simple an equation, because if that was true, there should be a clear correlation between how many slaves a society has, and how wealthy it is. Clearly, that isn't the case. It isn't even the case with serfdom.

 

[Satinavian]

I don't know, the sum of modern mathematics, physics and modern science owing themselves in large part to Greek inquiry is a pretty big boon you know. Being able to debate and to practice science, art and philosophy is a debt that Europe owes Greece in that sense, given that literally all European democracies are based on Greek principles of politics as are all the former colonies that they lorded over.

I think that's quite significant.

No.

A lot of ancient knowledge comes to us via ancient Greeks but was not actually invented by them. That is especcially true for math where quite a lot has an origin earlier and further east. There are several reasons for that. One is that after Alexander Greek culture was exported widely and most of those other countries don't have sone unbroken non-Greek tradition, The other reason was that the Romans idolized the Greek and always referrenced Greek sources when they could (even when others were available) and distributed those throughout the whole empire.

Another Problem is what even counts as "Greek". If you look up most of the important Greek inventors/philosophers that contributed to science/math, many lived in Sicily, (ptolemeic) Egypt or Anatolia. Sure, they spoke Greek and followed traditions that might be reasonable called Greek, but it is somewhat questionable to attribute their successes to Greece.

The main problem is Aristotle. While he did some work that could be called science, he eventually decided that a proper philospher should not work on such mundane things and care more about ethics, politics and similar topics. Since him actual natural philosophy in the Greek mainland did not produce anything noteworthy at all.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

On another note, since I can't edit my original post, the GSI shows that slavery in the modern day seems to be correlated with poverty. The poorer the country, the greater the number of slaves. Make of that what you will.



To the first, that's a fair point, but Brazil gained independence in 1825, while the US gained independence in 1783. Meanwhile, the US stops slavery in 1865, while Brazil stops slavery in 1888, and in the modern day, is the 4th wealthiest South American country. Plus, slavery was still going elsewhere, and despite now being finally illegal worldwide, there's now more slaves in the world today than any point in human history (with the upside that as a percentage, it's never been lower). Also, on the subject of Portugal, I'm not arguing that colonialism involved wealth transfer (because the figures demonstrate it, if nothing else), but Portugal in the 21st century? Um, how's it doing, because last I heard, the answer was not too well.

To the second point, yes, those were some of the mitigating factors I've come across. But to clarify, I don't have issue with the idea of slavery generating wealth (to some extent), because that's been true for the last 12,000 years. But "slavery = wealth" is too simple an equation, because if that was true, there should be a clear correlation between how many slaves a society has, and how wealthy it is. Clearly, that isn't the case. It isn't even the case with serfdom.

Portugal's doing pretty damn well post-recession. They've effectively rebuilt and are now enjoying quite a few social freedoms (in part financed by former imperialist wealth and the Salazar regime's colonialism, though in fairness it's also because they have a healthier democracy ever since they ousted that nonce). As for slavery in the modern day, the difference is how upfront it is. It has effectively become a part of the black market, and as a result is significantly harder to keep track of. Human trafficking in particular is still very lucrative to what figures are available, but we're still talking about where the wealth circulates. I don't think I need to point out that criminal organisations rarely want to invest in the economy or pay their taxes when most of the time they hoard what they can and live out their pathetic Escobar/Scarface fantasies. Though it is true that it's primarily the hyper wealthy (like the UAE) that get to make use of modern slavery.

Of course slavery is never gonna be the absolute sole factor of wealth, but one has to look in terms of what place slavery has within a given social context and its relative significance statistically (to analogise an ANOVA or a multiple regression approach). There are never absolute correlations but there are significant correlations. The US slave trade was as profitable as it was due to the US' natural resources, its ports which were not as tropical as a Rio for example and due to the way the economy was arranged relative to economic factors. Whilst US textile workers would make good use of cheap local slave cotton, the economic trend at the time was still one of globalisation where the greater profit margin was achieved by extracting resources in one country and developing them in another (in this instance, the UK for example) once transportation and industrialisation had sufficiently developed. Profit generation is very much a generative process that is supported by robust structures relative to the technological capacity and resource realities of the time. The US made use of all of its advantages in this respect, first of all by having lots of resources and suitable land for building industrial centers that could develop materials locally, and in tandem having a lucrative port that gave them access to the wealth of European nations. With the advent of globalised capital, this became even more profitable, to the point where running expensive mills that were not as competitive became less of a priority relative to the cheap costs of transportation and development, a truth that holds today when we look at Bangladesh, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia and China for example.

Slavery was supremely optimal for a good chunk of the US' history. Let's not forget that segregation was also very profitable in ensuring a stable poor of unskilled labour to work in factories and in menial jobs, which is in many ways a lesser form of superexploitation (your employer wouldn't have rights to murder you for not attending your job for example, though you are under constant threat from the KKK or the police). It meant that capitalists could routinely exploit even free labour under racial structures to achieve a greater profit margin in tandem with the productive and technological structures at the time. At the advent of Fordism, where labour became significantly less skilled for basic manufacturing and was divided even more, having a workforce that is always desperate, in need of a job, and with no labour protections relative to their white counterparts meant that the model was even more profitable.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

No.

A lot of ancient knowledge comes to us via ancient Greeks but was not actually invented by them. That is especcially true for math where quite a lot has an origin earlier and further east. There are several reasons for that. One is that after Alexander Greek culture was exported widely and most of those other countries don't have sone unbroken non-Greek tradition, The other reason was that the Romans idolized the Greek and always referrenced Greek sources when they could (even when others were available) and distributed those throughout the whole empire.

Another Problem is what even counts as "Greek". If you look up most of the important Greek inventors/philosophers that contributed to science/math, many lived in Sicily, (ptolemeic) Egypt or Anatolia. Sure, they spoke Greek and followed traditions that might be reasonable called Greek, but it is somewhat questionable to attribute their successes to Greece.

The main problem is Aristotle. While he did some work that could be called science, he eventually decided that a proper philospher should not work on such mundane things and care more about ethics, politics and similar topics. Since him actual natural philosophy in the Greek mainland did not produce anything noteworthy at all.

I agree, but the point was relative to superexploitation and its benefits. Besides, I was precise in saying 'a large sum'.

Aristotle is one of many (and his contributions to logic are very useful indeed, beyond the proclivities stated) but my point was that the Greeks benefitted from slavery in having a petri dish within which to experiment and to discuss ideas. Of course History is not essentialised to any one forerunner group, and knowledge is a collaborative process without borders through and through -- I agree with that. But it's a matter of fact that the most significant theories and texts from that region and from that relative antiquity were formalised within what we could call the Greek diaspora in how we access and use them in the modern context. Iif it was not for the librarians of Baghdad preserving greek texts and spreading the accumulated ideas of the levant, mesopotamia and the mediterranean contained within them, then it is very likely that our history of science, mathematics, philosophy and art would look very different. The greeks were not divine geniuses, but they were uniquely positioned to formalise and to spread these ideas, and developed them to a significant extent. That we may find something in Hindic or "Eastern" (I despise the term because it too conflates many cultures into one that is a conceptual culture that is even less concrete than the normative 'Greek') philosophy that relates to Epicurus' atomism, or the mathematics of Ptolemy or Pythagoras in Sumeria does not underscore the contribution of formalisation and development that can be traced back to a significant developmental explosion contained within the Greek diaspora of antiquity.

 

[Agema]

-If we look at the Americas, and we operate under the assumption that slavery = wealth, then by all rights, Brazil should be the wealthiest country in them, as 90% of slaves from the AST went there. I've seen explanations explaining why the South American states failed to grow in the same way as the northern American states, but if anything, these arguments mitigate the claim.

Well, slavery is obviously not the be-all and end-all of economic growth. Other factors matter. The simplest answer is that massive economic growth of this period is tied to rapid industrialisation: e.g. USA and continental Europe in the mid-late 19th century, Japan and the USSR in the first half of the 20th C, China post-1990.

But there can be long-term effects from such things, and a lot of it is ingrained culture. In my time, I've noticed that a substantial number people I've met who came from the white working classes said their parents were hostile to them going to university, where in the middle classes going to unversity was pretty much an expectation and could cause family rows if they didn't. Or even that the working classes don't feel they should go to university in other ways. People feel they "have their place" and mostly adopt the expectations of people around them. Educating a populace may often be a slow process of encouraging people to believe in education, instilling a sense that it is the right thing for them to so and supporting them into it. And when I say slow, I mean potentially generations. Ghettoisation or segregation of a country's subcultures may slow this. If there are two groups, one of which believes in education and the other that doesn't, if they don't mix, the latter group loses a lot of impetus (through things like peer example) to see things differently.

In many cases, there's also a skills gap. Slaves overwhelmingly don't do skilled work. So it was in the north USA that jobs dependent on high skills flourished, because the population there was best placed to adapt to a world that required higher skills. It still goes on today: most of the advanced jobs are around areas of the country which already have high concentrations of high skill workers (e.g. the Oxford-Cambridge-London triangle in the UK). Industries need suitable labour. You don't have lots of research scientists living in poor, agricultural areas to prop up your research institute. High skill workers will also generate a lot of the novelty for new, high skill work, keeping it localised. Meanwhile, low-skill areas will correspondingly tend to carry on creating low-skill jobs and industries.

Thus the legacy of slavery was to create areas without the skills and attitudes most conducive to the developing modern industrial world, and here we are over a century later, and those places are still relatively poor, because it's a huge task to change, likely requiring significant investments of time and money to support them, and that hasn't been done. It's been left more to the free market and gradual, incremental change. Silicon Valley is the prime example of how this can be done: the government flooded the area with money for research at the birth of the computer age, and now look at it.

 

[Dreiko]

"Allowed 'us'?" Maybe consider editing the plural pronouns there to third person. Also, how exactly are we measuring the strength of a culture? What are the metrics? And if we extrapolate outward, isn't this basically you saying that the various extinct indigenous tribes who fell victim to genocide weren't strong enough to be worth preserving?

This is a very facile reading of history. The Roman empire primarily allowed freedom of cultural expression among conquered peoples because trying to convert them by force instead of letting syncretization do the work for them yielded way fewer goods and tax revenues. This is part of the reason there were so many mystery cults in the empire. The Mongol Empire did the same thing. Colonial empires on the other hand saw themselves as having a directive from God to bring superior, enlightened Western thinking and the salvation of Christ to the "savages." Bringing up the Byzantines just shows how you have to stretch your argument due to your shallow knowledge of the topic. And once again bringing up the historical slave trade elsewhere on the globe does not absolve the participant states in the Atlantic Slave Trade of their crimes against humanity.

Nah that plural is right cause I'm Greek lol.

The strength of a culture is measured by the fact that even when conquered the conqueror still deemed it worth preserving. Like for example, the Nazis bombed big Ben but not the acropolis and Parthenon even. That sort of deal. It's ultimately a subjective thing and you can always have especially ignorant conquerors who have no eye for value like those Isis people who were destroying 5000 year old statues but that is more like the exception rather than the rule.

Also this situation wasn't as much slave trade as it was enslavement. It wasn't like what the ottomans did with the african slaves they got because otherwise there'd be no more greeks (since they castrated all their african slaves) they were just basically installing a sort of feudalism in the land and taxing people for existing and also having control over their lives. You bring up Christianity but it is actually how they used to differentiate their slaves too. The christians were the greeks and the muhhamedin were the ottomans, that sort of deal, kinda by default. It is a lot closer to the colonial conquest done to africa than the form of slavery done in the US. The reason I mainly bring it up is that it took 400 years, up to 1821, to break free from them, and that time period is usually only thought of as one where europeans were oppressing people of color in popular culture, which is just ignorant to me to the Nth degree.

 

[Agema]

Another Problem is what even counts as "Greek". If you look up most of the important Greek inventors/philosophers that contributed to science/math, many lived in Sicily, (ptolemeic) Egypt or Anatolia. Sure, they spoke Greek and followed traditions that might be reasonable called Greek, but it is somewhat questionable to attribute their successes to Greece.

Okay, but they were Greeks. The Greeks sailed out over the years and built colonies all over the Mediterranean. Syracuse in Sicily, Bari and Tarentum in Italy, were Greek cities. The coasts of Anatolia were heavily populated by Greek cities, and after Alexander, an emigrant Greek population formed the new Egyptian ruling classes. These people viewed themselves as Greek, despite some inevitable interbreeding with the locals would have considered themselves Greeks, and so on. For instance, after the Muslim expansion in the 600s, the Byzantine Empire (which was by then well on its way to being a de facto Romanised Greek state) evacuated and resettled most of the Greek populations of Egypt, Syria, etc. which had retained their identity even after all those years.

 

[Seanchaidh]

but allowing cultural expression? Tell that to Christians within the Empire.

Christianity at that point was more of a group of ideologies than a culture.

 

[Hawki]

The reason I mainly bring it up is that it took 400 years, up to 1821, to break free from them, and that time period is usually only thought of as one where europeans were oppressing people of color in popular culture, which is just ignorant to me to the Nth degree.

I think it can be boiled down to a number of factors:

-The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade was a big deal in terms of size and intensity. The only thing that comes close is the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade (arguing which is 'worse' is a debate I won't get into right now).

-The TAS was racialized, or at least, more racialized than other slave trades (I say "more," because among other things, I've actually read Arabic writings on northern Europeans - the dehumanizing language was astoundingly similar to racist writings on Africans, not to mention the 'barbarian argument' that you find in Greece, Rome, and China), ergo, you're left with a distinct slave class, or post-emancipation, former slave class. In contrast, the slavery going on in the Ottoman Empire was more assimilationist, and there isn't any distinct 'slave group' in the Middle East as, say, the United States. Not nearly to the same extent. Turns out castration does a number on reproduction.

-The US has more cultural impact on Earth than probably any other nation in the present day. You can tell the 'story of slavery' within the US, and that will be culturally exported, so knowledge of North American slavery isn't just well known in the US, but well known globally as well. So even though slavery was abolished in the Middle East much later, in the current day, it has much less of an impact on the cultural zeitgeist, at least in the West. I can actually attest to this personally - studying modern history at school, a significant portion of it was on the US, and by extension, slavery. In contrast, I learnt nothing about slavery in Australia (say what you will about the US, it's at least honest about its history of slavery, though granted, it was on a larger scale), and the only time slavery was ever really touched on was in Latin (briefly forraying into the life of slaves in the Roman Empire).

-There's a variety of other factors, but I think there's the sense that because the TSA is the 'worst' form of slavery, that's had cumulative follow-on effects. It's why various countries who took part will try to minimize their role within it and claim credit for ending it (African nations will downplay their role, the UK will over-emphasize their abolition). Also, I wonder if it might be with education - off the top of my head, I recall the controversy over Blood Heir, where a Twitter post said (paraphrased) "slavery only ever existed in the US, so what the hell is the author doing writing a novel based on Asian/Slavic slavery, which never occurred?" I know there's no shortage of idiots on Twitter, but while it obviously makes sense for the US to focus on its own history of slavery, who the heck goes through school and not learn of slavery's wider impact? Then again, as I stated, I'm arguably not that much better, because again, my own education only really touched on US and Roman slavery. And in the meantime, the rest of the world gets to keep quiet.

So, TL, DR, we probably focus on the TSA the most because it was the 'worst' form of slavery, but on the other hand, I don't think we pay enough attention to slavery in a global context either. And that includes slavery in the Ottoman Empire.

 

[Agema]

In contrast, the slavery going on in the Ottoman Empire was more assimilationist, and there isn't any distinct 'slave group' in the Middle East as, say, the United States. Not nearly to the same extent. Turns out castration does a number on reproduction.

Castration sounds to me more like disposability than assimilation.

 

[Hawki]

Castration sounds to me more like disposability than assimilation.

I didn't mean to suggest that castration was done to assimilate the slaves, only that if you prevent your slaves' ability to reproduce, then the chances of them interbreeding with the 'master group' or forming their own 'group' is reduced.

...if reading that fills you with disgust, yeah, fills me with disgust as well.

 

[tstorm823]

The racial inequality in America today, or the global inequality between majority white countries and everyone else, is a direct result of the history of racism. The explosive growth of the US economy in the early and mid 19th century was fuelled, in large part, by slavery. Shortly before the civil war, cotton exports comprised the majority of the total value of US exports. The domestic textile industry, one of the first drivers of industrialization in the Northern US states, also relied directly on slavery. Slavery brought incredible wealth into the US economy, it laid the foundation for the US to become the wealthiest country on the planet by the end of the century. At the time, that wealth may have disproportionately benefited a small number of industrialists, landowners and investors, but over a very long time (in no small part due to the efforts of unions) that wealth translated into a better standard of living for white Americans, but was specifically kept from black Americans. That economic inequality continues to this day.

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. It's evidence the textile industry wasn't so driving a force because they weren't using the raw material in the states. The US wasn't an economic superpower until well after the Civil War, and the lack of industrialization in the South is part of why they lost that war.

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. 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.

So no, slavery didn't bring incredible wealth to the US. You are wrong.

Joining in on grievances by saying your demographic suffered too in what was specifically a racialised system would be like Ronald Reagan sitting down with Nicaraguans back in the day and saying that he suffered too from the drugged-up cocaine death squads that the CIA deployed because it made him feel bad. Or hell, George Bush sitting down with Iraqis who were tortured at Abu Ghraib and saying he too felt pain whilst electric pliers were forced up their urethra for the 3rd time that day.

You do all understand that you're arguing that slavery makes the world better, right?

 

[Satinavian]

Okay, but they were Greeks. The Greeks sailed out over the years and built colonies all over the Mediterranean. Syracuse in Sicily, Bari and Tarentum in Italy, were Greek cities. The coasts of Anatolia were heavily populated by Greek cities, and after Alexander, an emigrant Greek population formed the new Egyptian ruling classes. These people viewed themselves as Greek, despite some inevitable interbreeding with the locals would have considered themselves Greeks, and so on. For instance, after the Muslim expansion in the 600s, the Byzantine Empire (which was by then well on its way to being a de facto Romanised Greek state) evacuated and resettled most of the Greek populations of Egypt, Syria, etc. which had retained their identity even after all those years.

True. But when modern day Greeks tout the great acomplishments of their ancestors and list e.g. the inventions of Archimedes then that is about as accurate as modern Brits talking about Thomas Edison as an example of what the English have given the world.

 

[Hawki]

True. But when modern day Greeks tout the great acomplishments of their ancestors and list e.g. the inventions of Archimedes then that is about as accurate as modern Brits talking about Thomas Edison as an example of what the English have given the world.

Because someone had to post it.

 

[Sneed's SeednFeed]

Nah that plural is right cause I'm Greek lol.

The strength of a culture is measured by the fact that even when conquered the conqueror still deemed it worth preserving. Like for example, the Nazis bombed big Ben but not the acropolis and Parthenon even. That sort of deal. It's ultimately a subjective thing and you can always have especially ignorant conquerors who have no eye for value like those Isis people who were destroying 5000 year old statues but that is more like the exception rather than the rule.

That's not strength, that's what we call 'luck' and also 'racism'. The Nazis burned plenty of books and persecuted impressionist artists because they thought it was a degenerate culture but because under their race science they thought the English more 'aryan' than others and because they fetishised the Greeks (though still viewing them as needing ethnic cleansing from asiatic influence) they pretended they let them off scot free (don't forget the Blitz or the genocides in the Balkans). Yet yiddish and jewish culture survived where it was en masse torched and persecuted. I think that counts as strength more than this wishy-washy 'the Nazis liked us' you're putting here.

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. It's evidence the textile industry wasn't so driving a force because they weren't using the raw material in the states. The US wasn't an economic superpower until well after the Civil War, and the lack of industrialization in the South is part of why they lost that war.

I'll take 'what is global trade for $100' Alex.

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.

Yeah I wonder how they did it. Almost like they still retained a pool of desperate unskilled labour and that you don't undo the effects of slavery in a few years huh.

So even if you want to argue cotton is the historical foundation of US economic success,

Read the posts with me and Hawki. That's an actual conversation. Multiple factors intersect and the exploitation of natural resources is how it works.

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.

And Britain had higher quality and higher capacity textile mills that the US also lacked. See above.

So no, slavery didn't bring incredible wealth to the US. You are wrong.

Yeah I'm sure the earth just magicaly opened itself up and flowed with literal rivers of gold whilst some bad apples decided to buy and sell black people to amuse themselves.

You do all understand that you're arguing that slavery makes the world better, right?

During lectures, students often like to ask professors and teachers questions that in reality just reveal their theoretical assumptions. In these instances, it shows which framework they're working with, and given the relative power of transformational grammars as tools for discourse analysis, we can, within a reasonable degree of understanding of pragmatics, infer that many questions with a periphrastic 'do' are minimally distinct from interrogatives and declaratives. In that sense, it's quite often the case that the question is simply a proposition that the student may ask that instead reveals presumptions about the student from the scientific facts on hand.

Yes, slavery provided material benefits to certain parts of society that ended up feeding back into itself through investment. The same way that the Soviet Union and the US looting Germany provided them with wealth after World War II. The same way literally any material exploitation through conflict works. The question is at what cost and if it is within our material means to alleviate those effects if they continue to persist into the current day.

What you're doing is claiming slavery had nothing to do with US wealth and that it was bad for everyone (makes you think why it even existed in the first place, the Nazis had an excuse that it was their objective from day one to exterminate the jewish population), and the only logical alternative is that one should be grateful to slavery. The logical conclusion is that you benefit from US slavery and that something should be done about the way in which people benefitted from it at the expense of others through the government. Spin it however you want but if your government spends obscene amounts of money on its military and if it was ready for 40 Acres And A Mule up until all the steam from that proposal was knocked through the gunpowder clap of a pistol's barrel, then evidently such a reality is possible and has been made a case for for a very long time.

 

[Terminal Blue]

If we look at the Americas, and we operate under the assumption that slavery = wealth, then by all rights, Brazil should be the wealthiest country in them, as 90% of slaves from the AST went there.

It's not slavery, it's cotton. Cotton was the most important commodity of the 19th century. Cotton weaving was the most important industry in the British industrial revolution. Demand for cotton was basically limitless, but it was also labour intensive to farm and had fairly small profit margins for a given quantity, so most free farmers couldn't afford to grow cotton. Plantation owners, however, could grow cotton, because they could produce it in industrial quantities just having more slaves and more land. Again, it became by far the most important commodity in the US.

Brazil in the 19th century had a huge problem. Traditionally, Brazilian plantations mostly grew sugar, because the climate of Brazil was well suited to it. However, in the 18th century the price of sugar fell due to overproduction, and that meant that Brazilian sugar ceased to be profitable. The economy collapsed, and Brazil never really recovered. Additionally, while slavery in the American south was essentially a kind of capitalist institution organised specifically around the needs of industrial agriculture, slavery in Brazil was more like a caste system, with slaves basically performing all the low paid or hard work in society, which wasn't as absurdly profitable and actually caused a lot of long term economic problems.

If slavery stops in 1865, why the 'economic lag' of 25 years to translate that wealth? Shouldn't there be a lull in growth, especially since the country has to deal with the aftermath of a war, plus, apparently, the loss of an economic powerhouse?

Basically, after the war the Northern government tried to get cotton exports running again as quickly as possible. Since many former slaves were poor and desperate for work, many just carried on working on the same plantations for very low wages. There were also experiments with practices like sharecropping.

That said, the war effectively ended the American near-monopoly on cotton production, and as such cotton became less important to the US economy. Slavery created an enormous amount of wealth, but as cotton became less important that wealth didn't just stay locked up in plantations, it got invested back into the US economy.

Going from a poor agricultural economy to a rich industrial economy requires getting over an initial hurdle of capital investment. In the US, that capital investment came at least partly from slavery.

This isn't a point against reparations, but while I believe the latter is possible, do you seriously think the former is possible?

Eventually, yes.

 

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[Agema]

The strength of a culture is measured by the fact that even when conquered the conqueror still deemed it worth preserving. Like for example, the Nazis bombed big Ben but not the acropolis and Parthenon even.

I think the main difference there is that Germany was still at war with Britain when it was fighting (by air) over London, whereas Greece had surrendered well before the Nazis reached Athens. (I don't mean that as any disrespect to the Greeks - they gave Italy a beating and put up a brave resistance against Germany before it came hopeless with most of their army cut off in Epirus.)

That's the same sort of reason Warsaw had to be rebuilt after the war and Krakow didn't. Warsaw was fought over, whereas Krakow was strategically abandoned without a fight by both the Poles in 1939 and the Germans in 1945.