Did America ACTUALLY have 400 years of slavery?

[Lexicus]

I mean, does it? What ultimately replaced slavery was a system of peonage that ensured the basic continuity of pre- and post-bellum Southern planter economy. It's not as if the South stopped producing tobacco, cotton or rice, after all. The ultimately significance of abolition wasn't liberating Southern blacks from the plantation, but providing the legal basis for their grandchildren to do so, and it's possible to imagine that if the United States had achieved a non-military resolution to the "slave question", it could have transitioned directly to peonage.

The expansion of convict labour after the Civil War mostly served to fill those roles previously occupied by slaves that could not easily be filled by agricultural peons, such as public works and industry. There's enough continuity in how slave labour and convict labour were use that Congress' legal identification of convict labour with slavery seems less like a technicality and more like prescience. I don't know how far that continues down to the present, but it's worth consideration.

AFAIK convict labor has never been the main or even one of the main means of surplus-extraction, though. I don't know about the immediate postwar* period but today stuff produced by convict labor represents something like one tenth of a percent of US GDP. By contrast slaves were the single most valuable capital asset in the country before the war*.

*American Civil War

 

[Traitorfish]

AFAIK convict labor has never been the main or even one of the main means of surplus-extraction, though. I don't know about the immediate postwar* period but today stuff produced by convict labor represents something like one tenth of a percent of US GDP. By contrast slaves were the single most valuable capital asset in the country before the war.

That's true, but that doesn't dissolve the continuity between slavery and convict labour. Most of the profits of slavery lay in cash crops, which were produced by debt peons or wage-labourers after the Civil War. Convict labour was used in more marginal areas, but functioned in those areas as a direct replacement for slave labour. Before the war, slaves built roads, felled timber, and mined coal. After the war, convicts built roads, felled timber, and mined coal.

If the more general question is whether the Postbellum South was, like the Antebellum South, a society based on unfree labour, the answer is "yes", with the concession the abolition of slavery required the ruling class to employ different mechanisms for keeping labour unfree. Peonage and convict labour both filled that role.

 

[Lexicus]

That's true, but that doesn't dissolve the continuity between slavery and convict labour.

I'm not claiming there's no continuity. What I'm arguing is that I think the hinge of the argument, which obviously must be "things haven't changed enough since slavery days" if we're being remotely serious, should be peonage and not convict labor.

If the more general question is whether the Postbellum South was, like the Antebellum South, a society based on unfree labour, the answer is "yes", with the concession the abolition of slavery required the ruling class to employ different mechanisms for keeping labour unfree. Peonage and convict labour both filled that role.

Well, I would say that peonage was central to the class structure in the South in a way that convict labor was not despite these both being unfree forms of labor organization. The social ideal was the head-of-household employing peons and wage laborers, not the prison warden employing convicts. But of course "peonage and slavery are both forms of unfree labor" is way less provocative and slogan-worthy than "slavery never ended."

 

[schlaufuchs]

The question isn't about a change in material conditions so much as a question about definitions, at least insofar as my argument extends.

The assertion is "slavery has existed in the United States for 400 years," and that assertion is true. Before 1864, the law was "slavery is legal in those states which declare it to be so," and after 1864 the law was "slavery is illegal everywhere except for prison labor." While the specific modes in which slavery exists and is practiced have changed, it still remains that slavery exists, and that this distinction isn't an arbitrary one, revealed by the fact that the very law which outlaws slavery makes an exception for one specific form of involuntary labor. The very text makes this explicit: all forms of slavery are illegal except for this one very specific kind of slavery which is still legal. By definition, this means that slavery is still legal.

An analogous exemplum:

The form of the British monarchy changed very dramatically following the Glorious Revolution in 1688, such that it is meaningful to draw a distinction between the British monarchy before 1689 and afterwards, yet I don't think there are very many people who would say that the British monarchy ceased to exist altogether in 1689.

 

[caketastydelish]

Didn't the Monarchs continue to have political power after 1689 did? I'm pretty sure King George did in the American Revolution and that was after 1689. After the British Monarchy ceased having political power is where we should start counting.

I mean, we're talking about people who are doing involuntary work... as a punishment for doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, there are people who don't work on the streets who are homeless anyway. How much of a difference does that really make?

Doing something you don't want to do as a punishment (especially when all of us are expected to work regardless) isn't really comparable to chattel slavery.

They did something wrong; they committed a crime, that's why they're in jail and paying for it.

As opposed to people who were just born a slave, or kidnapped and brought into slavery. And even then, people in jail are freed when their time is up. There was no such freedom for REAL slaves no matter how good their behavior was.

 

[Bugfatty300]

People who read a little too much postcolonial theory and spend too much time on Facebook. I once encountered a guy who who insisted that the Americas were some kind of giant anarcho-communist paradise with no gender oppression, no imperialism, no slavery, no land ownership etc. until the Europeans showed up.

Arguing with him (or even simply pointing out the facts of the matter) would have gotten me banned from the group for being a pro-genocide racist.

I don't mean to overstate the significance of such scattered, ah, eccentric individuals however.

He should read up on the Flower Wars.

I've seen Emilio Aguinaldo counted as an early communist rebel by some sources.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Didn't the Monarchs continue to have political power after 1689 did? I'm pretty sure King George did in the American Revolution and that was after 1689

Yes. That is literally my point.

 

[caketastydelish]

Then I don't get your point.

 

[schlaufuchs]

Then I don't get your point.

The question is: “has slavery existed for 400 years?”

Not: has slavery always been the same throughout history

Not: do/did the slaves deserve their treatment

But: has America had involuntary servitude for 400 years, and legally, semantically, and practically the answer to that is obviously yes.

In much the same way that in evaluating whether Britain has always been a monarchy, the question isn’t really “well how much administrative power does the king really have,” but instead “is there a king?”

 

[caketastydelish]

I don't think that's what they mean when they say 400 years of slavery though.

edit: Also, they still had a constitutional monarchy after 1689, thus the analogy holds. Hell, they even have a royal family to this very day.

"Has Britain had X amount of years of monarchy/kings/royalty" would still be true long after 1689.

 

[schlaufuchs]

edit: Also, they still had a constitutional monarchy after 1689, thus the analogy holds. Hell, they even have a royal family to this very day.

"Has Britain had X amount of years of monarchy/kings/royalty" would still be true long after 1689.

At some point I have to wonder whether such a blithe and consistent misapprehension of my point isn’t being done willfully.

 

[caketastydelish]

It isn't?

In terms of "practicality," these are still people who live unbelievably good lives as an unearned privilege. To say nothing of the House of Lords.

 

[Traitorfish]

I mean, we're talking about people who are doing involuntary work... as a punishment for doing something wrong.

Meanwhile, there are people who don't work on the streets who are homeless anyway. How much of a difference does that really make?

Doing something you don't want to do as a punishment (especially when all of us are expected to work regardless) isn't really comparable to chattel slavery.

They did something wrong; they committed a crime, that's why they're in jail and paying for it.

As opposed to people who were just born a slave, or kidnapped and brought into slavery. And even then, people in jail are freed when their time is up. There was no such freedom for REAL slaves no matter how good their behavior was.

"It's not really slavery if I, personally, think it's okay."

 

[red_elk]

Involuntary work doesn't necessary mean slavery.
Work is involuntary for most people. They would rather do nothing, but have to work in order to get money.

 

[Lexicus]

They did something wrong; they committed a crime, that's why they're in jail and paying for it.

You have a touching faith in the fundamental fairness of the justice system in those Southern states circa 1925. Ever seen Cool Hand Luke by chance?

 

[Traitorfish]

Involuntary work doesn't necessary mean slavery.
Work is involuntary for most people. They would rather do nothing, but have to work in order to get money.

I mean, they call it "wage-slavery" for a reason.

 

[caketastydelish]

You have a touching faith in the fundamental fairness of the justice system in those Southern states circa 1925. Ever seen Cool Hand Luke by chance?

Nope, never heard of it.

 

[EnglishEdward]

I have seen it.

 

[abradley]

Nope, never heard of it.

Your fighting an impossible battle, slavery has been part of mankind's life style since recorded history.

Our American slavery was horrible but nowhere near as bad as Rome's.

But nobody here is anti Rome.

 

[caketastydelish]

In what way was Roman slavery worse?