Cotton was the most important raw material for European textile manufacturing at the end of the eighteenth century.  Cotton was cultivated by African slaves in the Caribbean and Brazil, and it was also produced for export in Mexico.  Cotton production in these regions was ruined during the first half of the nineteenth century with the development of large-scale cotton production on plantations in the southeastern United States, which were developed using African slaves and mechanical means to separate and bale the cotton (Galeano 2004:109, 125-28).

      During the nineteenth century, the expansion of the world economy and of global markets for a variety of raw materials such as cotton, sugar and tobacco propelled the expansion in the United States of the peripheral function beyond the limited confines of Virginia and Charleston. From 1800 to 1860, the entire Southeastern region of the United States was peripheralized and converted into the production of cotton, tobacco and sugar for export to core and semiperipheral regions, utilizing low wage labor, primarily African slave labor.  
 
      Cotton was central to the conversion of the US South into a peripheral region of the world economy.  The invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney in 1793 made possible the mechanized separation of cottonseeds from the fiber, thereby speeding the process of preparing the fiber for export to the cotton mills that manufactured cloth.  By 1800, cotton gins were located throughout the South, and for the subsequent sixty years there occurred “rapid geographical expansion” and an “explosion in production” (Cooper and Terrill 1991:192).  By 1860, cotton was grown throughout South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, as well as in parts of Arkansas,Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Florida (Cooper and Terrill 1991:190-93).  
 
      The technology of cotton cultivation permitted its cultivation on small farms as well as large plantations.  During the eighteenth century, whites who owned small farms in the South had used their land to produce their own food and clothing.  But during the nineteenth century, white farmers turned to cotton cultivation, sometimes utilizing black slaves.  Thus plantations and farms coexisted in the cultivation of cotton, most of which was exported to Great Britain.  Although some white farmers cultivated it, cotton and black slavery became intertwined in the South.  Corresponding with the expansion of cotton production, the number of slaves grew from less than 700,000 in 1790 to more than 2 million by 1830 and to nearly 4 million by 1860.  Slaves constituted one-third of the population of the South (Cooper and Terrill 1991: 198-99, 205, 275; Franklin1974:138-39).

      The peripheralization of the US South during the first half of the nineteenth century promoted the underdevelopment of the South and the development of the North: it left the South with a legacy of limited industrial development, forced labor, and political repression; and it provided raw materials and markets for emerging Northeastern industry as well as markets for Midwestern farmers.  Indeed, slavery in the South, by fulfilling a function in a triangular trade that included the Northeast and the Midwest, was central to the spectacular ascent of the United States during the nineteenth century.  The peripheralization of the South also provoked the Civil War, as northern industrial elites and southern plantations owners had different and opposed interests, and they battled for control of the US government, generating ideologies that would successfully enlist the support of the masses in their respective causes. These ideologies functioned to obscure the economic interests that provided the motive for the political action of both northern and southern elites.  These are themes that we will discuss in future posts.  
 

References

Cooper, William J., Jr., and Thomas E. Terrill.  1991.  The American South.  New  York: McGraw-Hill.

Franklin, John Hope.  1974.  From Slavery to Freedom, Fourth Edition.  New  York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition. Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________. 2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.


Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, cotton, South


 

     Sugar production was integrally tied to African slavery.  “Immense legions of slaves came from Africa in order to provide for King Sugar the numerous and free work force that he demanded: human fuel to burn” (Galeano 2004:83; 1997:59). 

     Slavery and slave labor provided benefits beyond sugar production.  “According to Sergio Bajú, the most formidable engine of European mercantilist capital accumulation was American slavery; at the same time, that capital became ‘the foundation upon which was constructed the giant industrial capital of contemporary times.'  The resurrection of Greco-Roman slavery in the New World had miraculous properties: the slaves that crossed the Atlantic multiplied the ships, the factories, the railroads, and the banks of the countries from which they did not originate and to which, with the exception of the United States, they were not destined.  Between the dawn of the sixteenth century and the agony of the nineteenth century, several millions of Africans, it is not known how many, crossed the ocean….  From the Potomac to Rio de la Plata, the slaves constructed the houses of their masters, cut down the forests, cut and ground the sugar cane, planted cotton, cultivated cocoa, harvested coffee and tobacco, and dredged the river beds in search of gold” (Galeano 2004:107-8).

     Slavery promoted the economic development of the Northeastern United States, even though the region did not utilize slave labor as a systemic pattern.  By the eighteenth century, the Caribbean islands had developed extensive sugar plantations utilizing African slave labor to produce sugar for export to Western Europe.  To maximize profit, it was rational to utilize the plantation exclusively for the production of sugar and to purchase food, rather than cultivate it.  Thus the slave production of sugar in the Caribbean generated a market for food products.  North American farmers, given their medium-sized farms and their proximity to the Caribbean, were strategically located to respond to this market demand.  The sale of food and animal products to the Caribbean turned out to be a very lucrative market for the North American farmers.  Through this trade, the North American farmers accumulated capital, which was converted into industrial development during the nineteenth century, taking advantage of new possibilities emerging form the peripheralization of the South from 1800 to 1860. During this period of 1800-1860, the slave production of cotton, tobacco, sugar and rice in the South provided cheap raw materials as well as a market for the new and expanding industries of the Northeast, thereby creating possibilities for the industrial and economic development of the Northeast.  Thus, although the northeastern farmers did not themselves utilize slaves as an integral and significant part of their production, they economically benefited from slavery in the Caribbean and in the US South through core-peripheral commerce with these slave regions (Frank 1979:64-68; Shannon 1996:64; Pérez 1995:70-71; Galeano 2004:87; Genovese 1967; Williams 1996:108-18).  Since northeastern manufacturing was central to the economic development of the nation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we are recognizing here the importance of slavery in the economic development of the United States. 

     The ascent of the United States was spectacular.  Merely a semi-peripheral nation in the late eighteenth century, during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it ascended to become the hegemonic core power of the neocolonial world system.  No other nation could possibly repeat such an ascent, without finding an equally lucrative commercial relation with a system of forced labor, similar to the relations with systems of slave labor in the Caribbean and the US South, exploited by the North American British colonies and the northeastern region of the United States during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  The ascent of the United States is a theme that we will discuss in future posts.

     The slaves did not passively accept their condition.  In addition to the Haitian Revolution, there were constant slave rebellions in the Caribbean islands.  In addition, slaves escaped to form their own communities in the mountains.  And they developed a cultural resistance, affirming their identity through religious ceremonies, dances, and magic (Galeano 2004:112-16).  This spirit of rebellion of African-Americans would emerge as an integral component of the social movements of the twentieth century.


References

Frank, Andre Gunder.  1979.  Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment.  New York:  Monthly Review Press.

Galeano, Eduardo.  1997.  The Open Veins of Latin America: Five centuries of the pillage of a continent, 25th Anniversary Edition.  Translated by Cedric Belfrage.  Forward by Isabel Allende.  New York: Monthly Review Press.

__________.  2004.  Las Venas Abiertas de América Latina, tercera edición, revisada.  México: Siglo XXI Editores.

Genovese, Eugene D.  1967.  The Political Economy of Slavery.  New York:  Random House, Vintage Books.

Pérez, Jr., Louis A.  2006.  Cuba:  Between Reform and Revolution, 3rd edition.  New York:  Oxford University Press. 

Shannon, Thomas Richard.  1996.  An Introduction to the World-System Perspective, 2nd ed.  Boulder:  Westview Press.

Williams, Eric.  1966 (1944).  Capitalism & Slavery.  New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, Capricorn Books. 

Key words: Third World, revolution, colonialism, neocolonialism, imperialism, democracy, national liberation, sovereignty, self-determination, independence, socialism, Marxism, Leninism, Cuba, Latin America, world-system, world-economy, development, underdevelopment, capitalism, peripheralization, slavery

      In a commentary to my August 27 post, Dr. Yuri Grigoryan, a professor retired from the Physiology Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, rightly expresses his indignation at a possible US military action against Syria.  He expresses alarm at the unconstrained aspirations of the US military-industrial complex.

      The United States developed its enormous military capacity during the twentieth century, a necessary component of its ascent to economic, financial, military, political and ideological domination of the world-system by the post-World War II era.  Its ascent began during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fueled by lucrative commercial relations with slaveholders in the Caribbean and the US South, facilitating the development of textile manufacturing and other industries in the northeastern section of the country.  During the first half of the twentieth century, the United States turned its growing capital accumulation to investments in the auto and steel industries, the most profitable industries of the era, which further fueled US ascent.  During World War II, it converted its industries into the service of war needs, thus establishing war industries, a war economy, and the military-industrial complex.  
 
     The United States emerged from World War II with unchallenged dominance.  Its territory had not been affected by the war, and thus it did not experience violent destruction of its industrial infrastructure, as occurred with Germany and Japan.  British industry was still relatively intact, but it had been surpassed by the US ascent.  The Soviet Union had successfully converted its industries to a war economy during the war, utilizing highly effective state planning.  But the Soviet Union, in spite of an impressive industrial growth after 1917, was still significantly less advanced than the United States.  The growing strength of the Soviet Union was not really a threat to the United States, because the Soviet Union sought peaceful co-existence with the United States, in which the Soviet area of influence close to its borders in Eastern Europe and Asia would be secure, leaving to the United States vast areas of Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia for neocolonial exploitation. 
 
     The real threat to the United States was from the Third World revolutions, which challenged the basic structures of the neocolonial world-system.  In response to this global challenge from below, the United States maintained and developed its war industries, using Cold War and anti-communist ideology to justify this turn to a permanent war economy, disdaining a post-war reconversion of its industry to peaceful purposes, as had been envisioned by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. With its enormous military capacity, the United States became the global policeman, claiming to act against “communism” and in defense of “democracy,” when in reality it was defending its neocolonial interests.  Thus the military-industrial complex became solidified as an integral and necessary part of the US economy, a fact noted with concern by President and formerly General Dwight Eisenhower by the time of his retirement in 1960.

     The United States began to decline in the 1960s and 1970s, and it no longer is a dominant economic and financial power.  However, it continues to be the dominant military power of the planet.  Its military expenses are approximately equal to those of the rest of the nations of the world combined.  This high level of military expenditures contributes to the further erosion of its productive and financial capacities.  
 
      As a weakened economic and financial power, but a dominant military and ideological power, the United States can be expected to continue to pursue its interests through military means, inventing any pretext as justification.  The unsubstantiated claim that the government of Syria has used chemical weapons against its own people is far from the first such pretext.  The US dependence on military action to attain economic, financial and political objectives places all of humanity at risk.

       The problem can be resolved only by the people of the United States, who must come to consciousness of the fact that US foreign policy is designed to promote the interests of US corporations and finance capital and to maintain the United States as a neocolonial global power, and not to promote democratic values and protect democratic structures.  In protecting the short-term interests of US corporations and banks, US policy undermines the economic, social, and physical security of the popular classes and sectors in the United States.  So the people must develop alternative political structures that can bring into power alternative political leaders who would be committed to protecting the interests and needs of the majority.  This is a difficult task, but not impossible, because many conditions favor such a political transformation.  And however difficult the task may be, it is our duty in the present historic moment.  These are themes that we will be discussing in future posts.

      I write these words on August 28, 2013, the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington, in which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  Dr. King was a powerful, articulate, and eloquent critic of the moral evils of racism, poverty and war, and as such was a prophetic opponent of the military-industrial complex.