masonman Posted April 6, 2013 Posted April 6, 2013 It is not simply that the labor of enslaved people underwrote 19th-century capitalism. Enslaved people were the capital: four million people worth at least $3 billion in 1860, which was more than all the capital invested in railroads and factories in the United States combined. Seen in this light, the conventional distinction between slavery and capitalism fades into meaninglessness. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/king-cottons-long-shadow/ What do you all think about this article?
Magnus Posted April 6, 2013 Posted April 6, 2013 Conclusion: Slaves were valuable in a slave-based economy. I'd call that a tautology. Without slavery, however, the survey maps of the General Land Office would have remained a sort of science-fiction plan for a society that could never happen. That's ridiculous. The West was populated without slavery. any calculation of the nation’s unpaid debt for slavery must include a measure of the wealth it produced Aaaaaand there's the punchline. I owe no debt for slavery. No one alive does. The question of how important slavery was to the US economy is not particularly insightful, either in terms of ethics or economics. The real question is what the US economy could have done if it had been freer. The answer is: even more successful than it actually was.
JamesP Posted April 6, 2013 Posted April 6, 2013 It's a mistake to conclude that because society developed a certain way that this is a prescription for how it should have been. It's not saying something very deep that the way races and classes of people interact today is an effect of injustice in the past... but institutions which initiate violence are a retardant, not a propellant, on social progress.
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