NF Slavery's Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development

Non-Fiction

chellers

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Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman (Editors)
University of Pennsylvania Press (August 19, 2016)

During the nineteenth century, the United States entered the ranks of the world's most advanced and dynamic economies. At the same time, the nation sustained an expansive and brutal system of human bondage. This was no mere coincidence. Slavery's Capitalism argues for slavery's centrality to the emergence of American capitalism in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. According to editors Sven Beckert and Seth Rockman, the issue is not whether slavery itself was or was not capitalist but, rather, the impossibility of understanding the nation's spectacular pattern of economic development without situating slavery front and center. American capitalism—renowned for its celebration of market competition, private property, and the self-made man—has its origins in an American slavery predicated on the abhorrent notion that human beings could be legally owned and compelled to work under force of violence.

Drawing on the expertise of sixteen scholars who are at the forefront of rewriting the history of American economic development, Slavery's Capitalism identifies slavery as the primary force driving key innovations in entrepreneurship, finance, accounting, management, and political economy that are too often attributed to the so-called free market. Approaching the study of slavery as the originating catalyst for the Industrial Revolution and modern capitalism casts new light on American credit markets, practices of offshore investment, and understandings of human capital. Rather than seeing slavery as outside the institutional structures of capitalism, the essayists recover slavery's importance to the American economic past and prompt enduring questions about the relationship of market freedom to human freedom.

Contributors: Edward E. Baptist, Sven Beckert, Daina Ramey Berry, Kathryn Boodry, Alfred L. Brophy, Stephen Chambers, Eric Kimball, John Majewski, Bonnie Martin, Seth Rockman, Daniel B. Rood, Caitlin Rosenthal, Joshua D. Rothman, Calvin Schermerhorn, Andrew Shankman, Craig Steven Wilder.

Editors
Sven Beckert is Laird Bell Professor of History at Harvard University. Seth Rockman is Associate Professor of History at Brown University.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0812248414/?tag=civilwartalkc-20

Disclaimer: This post is neither a recommendation nor solicitation by CivilWarTalk or Chellers. It is solely for informational purposes.
 
Thanks for posting. Another addition to my reading list!
Does anyone doubt that southern slave-holders were capitalists? I don't intend that as a criticism of capitalism or free markets, but simply as a statement of fact....
 
Thanks for posting. Another addition to my reading list!
Does anyone doubt that southern slave-holders were capitalists? I don't intend that as a criticism of capitalism or free markets, but simply as a statement of fact....

Actually, many leading slaveholders of the day were highly critical of capitalism, and believed slavery was a superior system, even comparing it to socialism. For example:

"Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism. In fact, the ordinary wages of common labor are insufficient to keep up separate domestic establshments for each of the poor, and association or starvation is in many cases inevitable. In free society, as well in Europe as in America, this is the accepted theory, and various schemes have been resorted to, all without success, to cure the evil. The association of labor properly carried out under a comman head or ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve the laborer of many of the cares of household affairs, and protect and support him in sickness and old age, besides preventing the too great reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and free competition. Slavery attains all these results. What else will?

... The socialists stumbled on the true issue, but do not seem yet fully aware of the nature of their discovery. Liberty was the evil, liberty the disease under which society was suffering. It must be restricted, competition be arrested, the strong be restrained from, instead of encouraged to oppress the weak - in order to restore society to a healthy state. To them we are indebted for our argument against free trade. We have extended it and explained its application. They demonstrated that social free trade was an evil, because it incited the rich and strong to oppress the weak, poor and ignorant."


- George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society

Source: <<http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html
 
Actually, many leading slaveholders of the day were highly critical of capitalism, and believed slavery was a superior system, even comparing it to socialism. For example:

"Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism. In fact, the ordinary wages of common labor are insufficient to keep up separate domestic establshments for each of the poor, and association or starvation is in many cases inevitable. In free society, as well in Europe as in America, this is the accepted theory, and various schemes have been resorted to, all without success, to cure the evil. The association of labor properly carried out under a comman head or ruler, would render labor more efficient, relieve the laborer of many of the cares of household affairs, and protect and support him in sickness and old age, besides preventing the too great reduction of wages by redundancy of labor and free competition. Slavery attains all these results. What else will?

... The socialists stumbled on the true issue, but do not seem yet fully aware of the nature of their discovery. Liberty was the evil, liberty the disease under which society was suffering. It must be restricted, competition be arrested, the strong be restrained from, instead of encouraged to oppress the weak - in order to restore society to a healthy state. To them we are indebted for our argument against free trade. We have extended it and explained its application. They demonstrated that social free trade was an evil, because it incited the rich and strong to oppress the weak, poor and ignorant."


- George Fitzhugh, Sociology for the South, or the Failure of Free Society

Source: <<http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/fitzhughsoc/fitzhugh.html
Thanks for your response.
Sort of an 'enlightened' socialism, where the workers own nothing and are toatally dependent on Big Brother... er, Massah....
 
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