I have seen it said that slavery can not exist for long under capitalism and that the only reason it remained in the south for so long is because they were more of a Feudal society than a Capitalist one.
However, I do not see why this is so. If you do not recognize the humanity of another I see no reason why this would be incompatible with and unable to survive under Capitalism. Slaves would be treated much how we treat animals.
Part of the issue is that mechanical labor is often cheaper than slavery.
Hmm, is the argument premised on a person’s labor as a “free man” being inherently more valuable than that person’s labor as a slave? And capitalism, as it is wont to do, would get at that value by the invisible hand of the market? This would break the analogy to animals, since the value of a wild horse’s labor is worth less than that of a plow horse or a race horse. I haven’t heard the argument, but would be interested to hear it.
Also, what is the definition of feudalism as an economic system?
I don’t think I’ve usually seen it phrased that way. Of course slavery can exist under capitalism.
The usual formulation is that free labor will outcompete slave labor.
But it didn’t usedta be. Slavery lasted until steam power became a cheap and reliable alternative. I’ve long held tha it was steam that killed slavery. Cartoonist Gahan Wilson, askled what the power source of the future would be, cynicaklly replied “Slavery”. If we run out of oil, gas, and coal., I think he may be right.
Slavery is inherently limited (Frederick Douglass, in his autobiography, (pointed out how inefficient slavery was – the slave has no real motivation to perform his task rapidly and well, and requires an overseer to make sure he does it and doesn’t run away. Sometimes more than one), but I can easily see it outperforming Free labor, which is expensive. If it didn’t, then I think the South would’ve replaced Slavery long before Steam Power killed it.
I don’t buy the premise questioned in the OP.
No slavery is not possible under capitalism. In order for the economy, the actors in the economic system, countries, etc. to grow, there must be actors with willing incentive to become productive, i.e. they must be willing to produce. No production = no growth. What incentive is there for slaves to work? A beating? Their lives (literally)? Yes, those are all true, but to a point. Complex, delayed gratification orientated goals are not possible under a slave economy.
By complex, delayed gratification goals I mean – there’s a term for this which I can’t think of, but let me give you an example of my work: I have to analyze and negotiate a contract, could take me months, even then, it might not be signed vs. I pick cotton, look I have cotton, my cotton production can be closely and easily monitored, not so with my contract negotiation.
A short complex answer is to state simply that the capital needed incent the workforce and increase (or grow) productivity is not there. It is replaced by whip and brute force. The utility of being a slave is so negative that it will drive the actor (the slave) to not working, but only when so closely monitored (e.g. not picking cotton fast enough). Actors do the absolute bare minimum to be productive.
And it’s dangerous to let slaves perform complex tasks, how do you know they’re doing their work? To take an industry I’m familiar with, slave software developers or slave quality assurance wouldn’t make much sense. Slave janitors, sure, just look at the floor and if it isn’t clean enough increase the beatings. But how do you motivate slave developers to produce bug-free software?
Yeah, I know that in ancient Rome certain slaves worked as teachers or skilled professionals…but this was with the reality that a skilled slave could buy back his freedom after years of work. Many of those Greek pedagogues sold themselves into slavery voluntarily with the hope that they’d make much more money as slaves in Rome than they would sitting around at home.
Nowadays we have more efficient ways to handle such things that don’t require slavery, like student loans. And those ancient slaves weren’t competing against capitalist free labor, capitalism didn’t exist yet.
Like you say, slavery for producing meanial tasks and non-complex labor will out perform free labor (and by free, I think you mean wage labor), but only in that regard. You couldn’t have slave doctors, lawyers, architects, programmers, IT specialists, teachers, etc.
So let me clarify my previous post by stating post-industrial capitalism couldn’t support slavery (but I don’t make the distinction between different types of capitalism). However, in this case, technology surely did play a significant role.
It seems to me that anyone maintaining that slavery can’t exist under capitalism has to explain why it lasted so long in the South. For that matter, why did it last so long in the Roman Republic and Empire?
Could it also be argued that a slave not being able to purchase things for him/her self would have less value to the economy of a nation than the same person would have if not a slave? There is no ‘flow of money’ through a slave.
The other part of the argument is that capitalists will want to free the slaves to increase the pool of people who might buy their prooducts.
I think that market forces do push pretty hard in the direction of a socially/racially egalitarian society (tho’ not at all in the direction of an economically egalitarian one), but there’s also a lot of social pressure the other way.
–Cliffy
You do raise an interesting question.
I do realize that this is GQ, and hesitate to offer a mere opinion/guess, but to start out with the fact that a slave was very expensive, around $30,000 to $40,000 in today’s dollars:
…And while the cost of a slave in 1850 is the equivalent of 40,000 U.S. dollars…
Adjusted for inflation over 214 years, Engerman says the cost of a slave in today’s money would be around $30,000.
Then (here is the opinion part) I’d have to say that it was either because there was simply nothing else that could do the job that slaves did (I seriously question the economics of this), or it was a status or feel good thing about showing how you were so obviously “superior” to a “lesser race.”
Again, just my opinion, but I think it was the latter. Even today, I see examples of prejudice not only against blacks, but increasingly against Mexicans/Hispanics just because someone want to feel somehow superior to a fellow man.
There were many social and economic factors going into Southern Slavery. Suffice it to say that slavery was only cost-effective when working new soils, with constant oversight, in the “New South:” Alabama, Mississippi, Lousiana, etc. When historians got to looking at the financial statements of the Virginia plantations, they found that they were not very good investments. In fact, they were pretty awful. A great many of the big families were in debt towards the end of antebellum, and slowly selling off slaves and land.
Slaves were more economical for small landowners, where they were probably treated better (I haven’t seen much scholarship on this, but that’s my feeling). There, the ratio of free to slave was roughly even, they were constantly “overseen” because the other workers were free, and they would not feel quite as exploited (same as above), since they were not asked to do too much work the owners did not generally do themselves. However, by the late antebellum period, such landowners were less common in the East, because good land was more expensive and less available.
Also, note that there was huge demand for high-quality Southern cotton in the antebellum. It was the best in the world, and relatively inexpensive. It fed British and Northern mills, which fed the half the world’s clothing demand. That enhanced the demand for slaves; free workers didn’t want to work in cottong plantations. The mere fact that slaves were used for it tended to make it low-class and undesirable.
Just to satisfy my curiosity what was the US south other than capitalist before the civil war?
It kinda was capitalist, but the plantation system was not run along capitalist lines. It was indeed semi-feudal. For example, capital was sometimes used to invest in new land in the New South, but it wasn’t used to invest in productive enterprise itself. once established, plantation owners seldom worked or invested in any systematic manner, and would have found the idea of changing their hard assets into cash to invest elsewhere strange.
In short, it was capitalistic, but clearly had other elements.
In Capitalism Labor is a commodity bought and sold at the price that the Market will bear.
In Slavery the slave, and not his labor, is the commodity.
Just a way to conceptualize it. I think the truth is that thinking of Slavery, and the Slave trade, as a Commodity driven capitalist exercise makes it very clear that Capitalism does not necessarily preclude slavery.
One way for a Slaveholder to increase his profits was to rent out his slave to others for a fee. Slaves were exchanged for cash, as presents and as dowrys. They could buy themselves and their (fully human) family from their Masters like a horse or bushel of corn, like any other commodity. Slave traders, overseers and runaway catchers all were un-questionably “capitalists” who made their living off of teh Institution of slavery.
Certainly “free labor” suffered from slavery – but it suffered the way Union and Child Labor Law made it suffer in (a positive way) and Capitalism and labor markets adjusted.
Blah-blah That the system lasted 1619-1865 in the South certainly precludes any kind of extinction effect of one upon the other doesn’t it?
And, the slave labor that exists in the SE Asian garmet industry? Today?
Actually you could - under a Roman-type model. That is to say a type of indentured servitude where you performed a set period of service, say 10 or 20 years, in exchange for eventual freedom with improved opportunity.
So a doctor from Russia or engineer from India being allowed to waive all U.S. immigration limits/regulations in return for service, followed by automatic citizenship. Under the right circumstances ( i.e. in the absense of other opportunities ), some folks might actually jump at such a chance, however immoral it might be.
It seems that given the choice between sitting in air conditioned cubicle and say doing roadwork in the hot sun would be motivation aplenty. Writing software is not picking cotton.
Which brings another question, were there jobs in Rome or even the south that could be considered technical or complex?
You know, under Communism, racism and sexism are impossible.
Every political ideology has a boatload of claims to make and making the claim that insert bad thing would be impossible under * my* system is a pretty easy one to make. Especially when you are allowed to disqualify any situations that show otherwise.