---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996 19:37:29 -0800 (PST)
From: pat lauderdale <atpll@leland.Stanford.EDU>
To: listproc@csf.colorado.edu
Subject: On Slavery
The recent exchange has been illuminating, as much for what we don't know
as what we do (at least, under some conditions). The comments on slavery,
in large as an aside, remind me of the fact that nobody predicted the fall
of the U.S.S.R., despite a few feeble claims to the contrary. With
thousands predicting, you'd think probability alone would have led to a
few correct predicitions. Of course, now that it's gone, as is one form
of slavery, there are plenty of after-the-fact explanations. Pretty risky
business, but our usual one.
At the risk of misplaced concreteness (sic), it might be useful to
consider the demise of planatation slavery in the U.S. The idea that
slavery was ethically wrong or not cost effective (even if you include the
scope condition of necessary threshold) was in existence long before the
demise began. On the other hand, the sources of the transformation of the
planatation in the U.S. South seem critical: 1. demand for "Black" labor
in the North; 2. plagues encouraging agricultural diversity; 3. subsidies
for limiting production on commodities such as cotton among others; 4.
technological innovation, e.g., from hand labor to mechanized labor. Of
course, the structural conduciveness via the world system is relevant,
however, despite much friction there has been little light on why slavery
changed in different parts of the globe at different times.
If this had been a multiple guess question, then i would have had to chose
cost effectiveness for the answer for the demise of slavery but that
choice is misleading. The same goes for Civil Rights Revolutions, note
the one in the l870s in the U.S. But, we are not stuck with multiple
guess, so we still are left with the slavery question at the world systems
level. Can the 5k approach provide some new answers?