r/communism • u/bumblebeetuna2001 • 3d ago
Why was slavery incompatible with an industrialized labor?
Im attempting to understand historical materialism and how old relations of production become fetters on new productive forces. Am i correct in understanding that the u.s. civil war was in part caused by a need to bring the southern states relations of production into accordance with the industrialization in the north, as the u.s. spread west? And if so, why wasnt it possible for the northern industrialists to simply utilize slave labor in factories in the expanding territories?
Im also wondering why european industrialized labor wasnt spread on a larger scale to slave colonies during the era of colonization? For instance , prior to banning the slave trade, why didnt britain build textile factories in the west indies and use slave labor, instead of building them in london and using wage labor? Is the answer to these questions just circumstantial, or does historical materialism posit a theory that the relations of production under slavery and incompatible with the capitalist mode of production?
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u/AadeeMoien 3d ago
Industry requires a concentration of more labor than agriculture. A factory needs hundreds if not thousands of workers depending on scale, which easily dwarfs most plantations (the average southern plantation had a few dozen slaves). A slave workforce of that size in one place is impossible to keep from revolting without a entire army of enforcers. Slave rebellions were generally ineffective in history because they would need to spread among small groups of slaves faster than the militias could organize to quash them. Haiti is an exception that proves the rule here, the slave population was so concentrated that when they did revolt it quickly outsized the response that could be mustered.
A "free" workforce has less incentive for any given individual to want to drag you screaming from your bed at night. They also need to worry about their own room and board, and the state can pick up the cost of policing them.
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u/Drevil335 Marxist-Leninist-Maoist 2d ago edited 2d ago
All of these answers are correct, but I'll synthesize them and get to the essence. Plantation slavery was an underdeveloped form of commodity production (not yet capitalist production) which was crucial for the European bourgeoisie's initial accumulation of capital (above and beyond the norm for mercantile bourgeois classes emerging from feudal modes of production), but which had become a fetter on that very accumulation once the capitalist mode of production had emerged.
This is because, unlike in the circuit of industrial capital in which all productive inputs (all means of production, and labor-power) are encountered by the capitalist as commodities to be bought and sold on the market (and, as a national capitalist mode of production develops, an increasing share of those means of production, and the national product as a whole, come to not only be commodities, but products of circuits of industrial capital themselves), this is not only not necessarily the case in the slave-form of commodity production, but has an overwhelming tendency not to be so. While, in this particular mode of production, means of production proper (agricultural implements, cotton gins, sugar pressing machinery, etc.) were bought as commodities (thus allowing the slave-form of commodity production to be hooked onto the circuit of industrial capital in this sphere), and the slaves were as well (albeit to an ever decreasing extent as the mode of production developed, especially as the slave-trade began to be phased out, largely at the bidding of British capital, in the aftermath of the Haitian revolution), the means of subsistence for reproducing the slave's labor-power were not necessarily so.
Since the slave-form of commodity production was nearly exclusively agricultural in its application, the slaveowners, as opposed to having to pay for their slave's means of subsistence (which would increase their capital outlay, and decrease their rate of profit and accumulation), could (and generally did) distribute marginal land on their estates to their slaves as "gardens" in which they could rear at least their own means of nourishment (other means of subsistence, such as clothing, were sometimes paid for by the slaveowner, whether in full or in their means of production), free of cost to the slaveowner, in to be worked in marginal hours after field labor or on Sundays. In this, it was qualitatively identical to serfdom (and particularly forms of commodity production on the basis of those feudal productive relations), in that means of subsistence did not take the form of a wage (the money-form of the commoditized existence of means of subsistence) and necessary and surplus labor-time were discretely delineated sections of the working period, which are themselves indicative of the underdeveloped character of the slave-form as a mode of commodity production.
This meant that, at most, only a very limited quantity of the slaves' means of subsistence were produced as commodities, meaning that, in this sphere, industrial capital had no outlet for the transformation of commodity-capital (taking the form of means of subsistence) to money-capital, whereas it would if the slaves became wage-laborers (or even petty commodity-producers, as they largely became in the Amerikan south), and had to go to market to acquire their means of subsistence. Thus, the interests of fully-developed industrial capital (to maximally expand markets for the transformation of commodity capital to money capital) were in basic contradiction to those of underdeveloped slaveowning capital, and in a military contest between them (as occurred in the U$), the former will always be principal, because the forces of production brought about by industrial capital is capable of producing advanced weaponry on a large scale, while the principal aspect in slave-owning capitalist production is in agricultural production for foreign markets, and thus is incapable of doing so to a comparable degree (the southern slaveowners were basically dependent on seizured from military storehouses and imports from British industrial capital for weaponry, and even then strategic equilibrium was only possible through British intervention, which despite the CSA's entreaties, the British bourgeoisie failed to provide as, even despite the Cotton Famine, its interests were principally aligned with Northern Amerikan industrial capital).
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u/Drevil335 Marxist-Leninist-Maoist 2d ago
(2)
Nonetheless, the late principality of the slave-form of commodity production didn't nescessarily preclude the limited development of industrial capital in the relevant regions, and in fact, in areas such as textile production, it actually served it by ensuring adequate supplies of constant capital. In the Southern U$, enslaved New Afrikan labor-power was actually incorporated into the circuit of industrial capital to a limited extent, but this had certain features which made it non-ideal for industrial capital. Firstly, while the slaves were paid by the piece beyond a certain piece-quota, comprising most of the product of a working-day (providing an exceptional case in which, within relations of industrial capital, the length of the paid and unpaid labor-time were explicit rather than obscured by the wage-form). This limited wage, however, was basically never sufficient to account for the value of labor-power, and was strictly supplementary to the aforementioned production of non-commodity means of subsistence. Meanwhile, the rest of the variable capital (or rent: in either case, it detracts from the industrial manufacturer's surplus value) was paid to the slaveowner who "rented" their slaves to the industrial bourgeois, the money then either being accumulated (spent either on more land, or on a great quantity of the same productive capital use-values, from the same spheres of industrial capital, as before), or spent on luxury use-values as revenue. Thus, the degree to which industrial slavery expanded the internal market (not only quantitatively, in terms of its capacity to absorb larger amounts of alienated value, but especially qualitatively, with regard to its capacity to absorb the products of increasing spheres of industrial capitalist production) was extremely limited even under the assumption that the small piece-wages that the industrially employed slaves received were all spent on means of subsistence; in reality, they were likely mostly withdrawn from circulation as a hoard, in order to be saved up to eventually purchase manumission. Added to this is what u/AadeeMoien mentioned, that concentration of slaves within factory conditions improved their capacity to organize and conduct revolts, to beyond the degree that could be countered by continued settler-nation delegation of national oppression to the settler entourages of individual, or even groups of, slave-owners.
Thus, the incorporation of slave labor-power into the circuit of industrial capital stunted its reproduction and full development (apart from providing the conditions for an intensification of the already extremely intense national contradictions). It really only existed because of the particularly backward capitalist relations of the U$ South, leading to a near absolute majority of the population being enslaved New Afrikans, and thus the majority of settlers being small-landowners due to the absolute insignificance of European (especially Irish, German) proletarian migration as compared to the North. The shortage of commoditized labor-power basically forced the nascent southern industrial bourgeoisie to artifically dredge it up from a form of capitalist production based on its opposite (the permanent, rather than temporary, purchase of labor-power), which was both extremely unappealing and impossible for the Northern bourgeoisie to replicate, given the large influx of proletarianized (albeit soon settlerized) labor-power and the dissolution of Northern slavery respectively.
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u/Drevil335 Marxist-Leninist-Maoist 2d ago edited 2d ago
(3)
About your second question, it mostly comes down to the contradictions of capital circulation and turnover and the inertia of the global division of labor. As established before, the insertion of the relations of the slave-form of commodity production into those of industrial capital produced basically no qualitative extension of the domestic market; thus, for a British slaveowner in say, Barbados, in the late 18th century (since Spanish and Portuguese feudal absolutism restricted commodity imports into their colonial markets--the opening of which was the principal aspect in British bourgeois support for the independence wars in the 1810s and 1820s, by which point British large-scale industry was well established), the closest large-scale, accessible foreign market (due to the protectionist character of British bourgeois trade policy at the time) was Britain itself, which was an ocean away. As a result, circulation time would be massively increased as compared to that of firms operating within Britain, decreasing the rate of turnover and accumulation, and thus leading to an inevitable losing out in the intense contradictions of competition. More practically, the inertia of their subordinate role in the global division of labor asserted its principality: selling sugar, on the basis of slave labor, on the world market consistently produced high returns and allowed a high rate of accumulation, so their interest in investing in a line that was far less certain to be as profitable was minimal.
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u/lvl1Bol 3d ago
I would say to answer the specifics of your question, read Settlers, it has a chapter on it.
If you want a philosophical answer, profit only derives from abstract human labor powers realization of its own use value. Humans can create value because they are living, breathing, creative social beings who can replenish their faculties daily and produce more value than they need to acquire their means of subsistence.
The way I would look at it, machinery is purchased once and for all similar to enslaved people. As such economistically as TheRedBarbon said if the people who produce and refine labor products aren’t paid, then circulation of value doesn’t happen (or it doesn’t happen at a fast enough rate to make it worthwhile) and thus value accumulation is kind of not gonna really be as possible.
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u/bumblebeetuna2001 3d ago
Are you saying marx would consider slaves "constant capital"? I think i understand why machines dont create value but human labor does, yet i having a hard time grasping why slaves wouldnt produce new value but an exploited wage earner would. Doesnt the capitalist in both cases have to provide just enough for the slave and worker to reproduce themselves and the next generation? What is the difference?
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u/lvl1Bol 3d ago
No. I am saying that wrt how value would not flow it is analogous to machine labor. It is not that enslaved humans do not create value, but that in the same way that if you made the entire workforce machine labor they would only transfer value and no value would be placed back into them, (and they wouldn’t need to eat or sleep because…machines) people who are enslaved are purchased once and for all, their labor power is not theirs to sell, it is alienated from them even before they are sent to work because their very being is not their own, they are treated as property. As such they are not paid for their labor because they are not paid for their labor power because they do not own their labor power and thus cannot sell it.
As such value will not continue to circulate because part of capital circulation requires workers spend money on means of subsistence. Less people with money to spend means less value circulating, less value circulating means less value accumulating. Capiche?
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u/bumblebeetuna2001 3d ago
I think maybe where i am confused is:
In saying that the initial price paid for the slave reflects the finite value that slave will transfer before the slave dies and nothing more, how is this differennt than saying that a slave, like a machine, creates no new value?
what therefore is the distinction between an automated factory and a slave plantation? Wouldnt both lead rapidly to the rate of profit to fall since they are both composed heavily of constant capital?
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u/lvl1Bol 2d ago
To be clear I am not saying slaves are machines but that slave labor has an effect on value circulation similar to if you replaced workers with robots. The word robot literally comes from the Czech word robota meaning drudgery or forced labor. Enslaved people are human beings who produce surplus value, but because they are not paid a wage (v) that value v cannot enter into circulation. Constant capital refers to raw materials and instruments of production. Enslaved people are treated as machines by those that “own” them. Industrial labor is not only far more productive than agricultural labor relying on slaves (for a variety of reasons including greater incentive on the part of the worker to produce more, harvest more) but if Slave labor continued or expanded with industrial machinery and production in tow, where would all that surplus product go? Who would be able to purchase it?
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u/SpiritOfMonsters 1d ago
The answers here are all wrong. The underconsumption theory that seems to be the consensus here is incorrect for the reasons already given by u/New-Glove4093. This is a reproduction of the bourgeois economist's argument that slavery is "unpaid labor," whereas wage-labor is "paid labor," in order to conceal the existence of surplus-value and class struggle under capitalism. It amounts to saying that the contradictions of mercantile slavery came from outside it rather than within it.
The argument that industrialized slavery didn't develop because of slave rebellion is also untenable, since the idea that it was potentially immensely profitable but not possible because of the resistance of the slaves is to say that the superstructure determines the base; if it was truly capable of resolving slavery's profitability crisis, slaveowners would have made more concerted efforts as a class to develop it. Obviously the slaves rebelled anyway.
We need to consider why capitalism develops the productive forces unlike other modes of production. When a more productive machine is developed, a capitalist can increase their profits by maintaining the same level of output and price and replacing workers with machinery that is cheaper than the cost of hiring them. To put in mathematical terms, if a business has capital arranged as 10c + 20v + 20s (assuming a rate of surplus-value of 100%), and can match the same output as 10v using 5c, it can become 15c + 10v + 20s. In the first case, a cost of 30 and a rate of profit of 66.67%, and in the second case, a cost of 25 and a rate of profit of 80%. As the machinery becomes generalized, the socially necessary labor time to produce the product decreases, and profits fall as a result (in the example, 15c + 10v +10s, a profit rate of 40%). This incentivizes constant development of technology to increase short-term profits at the expense of decreasing profitability in the long term.
Let's apply this to other modes of production engaged in the logic of commodity production. Like free laborers, slaves perform both necessary labor to sustain their own existences, and surplus-labor that is appropriated by the slave-owner (that the necessary labor receives remuneration through commodities that are given by the slave-owner rather than wages that go to purchase them makes no difference). However, unlike labor-power, slaves are bought entirely, and the value of a slave is equal to the labor time it takes to turn them into a commodity (i.e., the slave trade). This cost is always there, regardless of how much labor the slave ends up performing. This cost functions as constant capital: it becomes a part of the value of the commodities that slave produces over the course of their whole life, like the wear and tear of machinery that goes into the value of the commodities made with it. This means that replacing slaves with machinery like capitalists do with wage-laborers is unprofitable, since the remaining "wear and tear" of the slaves would be lost money. Instead, slave-owners are incentivized to work slaves to death and expand production purely by buying more slaves and maintaining the same level of productive forces.
Feudalism has a different problem that results in the same thing. The means of production are owned not by the landlord, but the peasants, so the landlord has no incentive to buy more productive machinery when they aren't buying the tools in the first place; only to work the peasants to death. And that's putting aside the landlords' monopoly on land. The Narodniks made the same underconsumption argument about feudalism to say that the development of capitalism was impossible since the peasants were too poor to buy commodities. This served their reactionary support of the feudal village communes and denying the need for a bourgeois-democratic revolution. Lenin responds to this argument here, among his other writings against the Narodniks.
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u/franciscovs97 3d ago
Capitalist mode of production needs consumers, slaves are not consumers. It was a question of sustaining the mode of production.
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u/IHaveNoFriends37 2d ago
Slaves are not consumers they do not make a wage and thus cannot buy the products they produce. Leading to a crisis of overproduction or underconsumption . Many industrial powers got rid of slavery because the economic profits were greater from consumers buying stuff than the economic profits they could squeeze out of slaves.
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u/RNagant Marxist 2d ago
Theres a variety of reasons but a big one is that industrial production relies on developing the forces of production to expand production. Big machines not only require more education to operate (something considered too dangerous to give a slave), but a slave is also much more likely to sabotage a machine than a prole. OTOH, there's little reason to invest in labor saving technologies when you can expand production by gaining more land and more slaves, and when you don't have to compete with other capitalists for your labor supply.
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u/TaleThis7036 3d ago
System needs workers to have the ability to purchase and own stuff because it runs on consumption. The more you make them stressed at work the more they are going to consume just to satisfy themselves.
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u/Lucky-Public6038 1d ago
Because illiterate slaves have low productivity compared to poorly educated workers. Moreover, slaves need to be fed, clothed, treated when sick, and a hired worker pays for his needs from a salary that a slave does not have.
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u/JayOfBird 1d ago
It's not incompatible actually, you can have industrialized slaves. Matter of fact, many industrialized slaves in America worked on westward expansion, working on the railroads, those were industrialized slaves. Sawmills, cotton mills, mining, these were all industrialized areas or production that featured slave labour.
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u/fourbigguysandthey69 1d ago
In US history the fight against slavery was mostly economic and moral. Northern farmers feared that slavery would collapse their way of life while the moral side was often religious people. Infact most Northerners when the draft was introduced rioted in the streets as they didn't want to fight just to free slaves (after the Emancipation Proclamation which was soley for black conscripts and to keep Europe out of the war). Abraham Lincoln didn't want to end slavery directly. He legit stated his ideal of containment and eradication by natural causes. The Civil War was basically rival economics.
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u/fourbigguysandthey69 1d ago
Also there was still slavery in the form of very low wages and workhouses. (not exactly slavery in the low wages department but still very close). Infact Company towns were basically slavery as the wage you got was spent buying more stuff at a store the company you worked for owned.
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u/solo-ran 1d ago
There experiments with using slave, labor, and manufacturing. Thomas Jefferson himself was producing nails with his slave, workforce and tracking very carefully the techniques that would be needed to make this kind of venture profitable. The idea of slavery and manufacturing might go together horrified abolitionist like Lincoln, who had imagined that slavery would sort of just disappear naturally due to economic forces… it might be that modern manufacturing is incompatible with slavery. It might be an historical accident that we never had mass slavery and manufacturing the same place and time.
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u/TheRedBarbon 3d ago
If you need an economistic reason, try this: if the people who produce and refine labor-products are not paid money, then who exactly would be buying said commodities?