Re: The "unification" of States (was American Civil War)
Richard Spear (rspear@primenet.com)
Mon, 1 May 1995 17:19:21 PST
In article <574@landmark.iinet.net.au> gil@landmark.iinet.net.au (Gil Hardwick) writes:
>From: gil@landmark.iinet.net.au (Gil Hardwick)
>Date: Sun, 30 Apr 1995 06:53:57 GMT
>Subject: The "unification" of States (was American Civil War)
>The idea of the American Civil War arising from the refusal of the
>then southern states to give up slavery, vis a vis in all other new
>states no slavery to be permitted at all, is a crock.
>In that particular case the alleged conflict over "slavery" was only
>concerned with the enslavement of black Africans within a plantation
>economy. The allegation fails significantly to address the changes in
>economic thought which heralded the precedent Industrial Revolution,
>which called alternatively for a new class of factory wage slaves to
>take their place as a "more efficient" deployment of human labour.
[rest deleted]
Yes, this is quite true. Marx wrote a series of letters to Abraham Lincoln,
extolling him for waging the war and urging the destruction of slavery in
favor of industrialization. The evolutionarily linear perspective of marxism
required that slavery be superceded by capitalism before a socialist society
would become feasible, and Karl wanted to be sure that Lincoln pursued the war
until the south entered the "new world order" of capitalism.
There is no record of Lincoln responding to any of the missives, by the way.
Regards, Richard
rspear@primenet.com
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