[Peace-discuss] hasta la vista, baby.

Mon Dec 24 00:37:51 UTC 2012

[I posted the following comment on my fb page in November. It got a number of interesting replies. --CGE]

The US Civil War (1861-5) was a murderous and unnecessary conflict in which a Southern ruling class, who lived by extracting surplus labor from direct producers by means of chattel slavery, were attacked and defeated by a Northern ruling class, who lived by extracting surplus labor from direct producers by means of wage slavery.

"All modes of production in class societies prior to capitalism extract surplus labour from the immediate producers by means of extra-economic coercion. Capitalism is the first mode of production in history in which the means whereby the surplus is pumped out of the direct producer is 'purely' economic in form - the wage contract: the equal exchange between free agents which  reproduces, hourly and daily, inequality and oppression" [Perry Anderson].

It was thought that the two systems could not exist in juxtaposition ("half slave and half free"), and the dominant social groups came into conflict after the Mexican War over the vast increase of US territory taken from Mexico. After the a dozen years of contestation, war was precipitated by Lincoln, a minion of the Northern ruling class.

"Both groups wanted to control the western half of the continent, and the Northern agrarians became increasingly anti-slavery as they faced the prospect of competing against a forced-labor system. But favoring free soil did not mean agitating to free the black man. The majority of Western farmers were not abolitionists ... Their objective was to exclude both the white planter and the black [workers] from the trans-Mississippi marketplace. That goal, and the attitude which produced it, gave Abraham Lincoln his victory over the abolitionist element in the newly rising Republican party" [W. A. Williams]. 

Although chattel slavery was abolished, the war did not result in material improvements for the working classes in either the North or the South. (See now Douglas A. Blackmon, "Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II," 2009.) The ruling classes coalesce to some degree in opposition to working class demands (cf. "Compromise [sic] of 1877"). The American 'robber baron' Jay Gould (1836-92) is supposed to have said, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half." 

But t will take another trumped-up war, 50 years after Appomattox, to stymie popular demands. (See Randolph Bourne, "War Is The Health of the State," 1918.)

On Dec 23, 2012, at 9:43 AM, "E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森" <ewj at pigsqq.org> wrote:

> Of course, I respectfully disagree.  Several counties
> in southern Illinois wanted to secede and indeed one did (Williamson).
> 
> There were no slaves at all in Williamson county.
> 
> What they were rejecting was federal government tyranny.
> 
> Indeed it was a power struggle, whether I will decide myself how I should live
> my life, or whether I should let some Yankee a thousand miles away dictate to me
> how I should live my life.
> 
> Bringing race in to the equation is a dirty trick, equivalent to throwing sand 
> in the bull's eyes when caught in a dilemma.
> 
> The matter of state's rights and secession is far from settled.
> 
> The ultimate break-up and dissolution of the Union is a lofty goal
> but it is a very worthwhile one that would solve so many of the world's
> problems. Maybe complete destruction of the federal government is a bit
> radical.  Just cutting off some of its tentacles would be
> sufficient.
> 
> It seems that the purpose of the war was for the Northern elites 
> (what you call the 0.01%) to gain control over everybody else.
> 
> Hardly any dog would consume the poison of authoritarian government if
> it were not mixed with the meat of the promise of "social good".
> 
> Anarchism seems to be the ultimate anti-war position, and although
> secession aint exactly anarchism per se, secession is certainly a
> step in the right direction.
> 
> 
> On 12/23/12 22:25, David Green wrote
>> Whatever the advisability of fighting a war to free the slaves, or whether it was indeed fought for that purpose, the southern elites certainly seceded in order to keep their control over slaves (and poor whites) intact.
>>  
>> DG
>> 
>> From: ""E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"" <ewj at pigsqq.org>
>> To: Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net> 
>> Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012 7:32 AM
>> Subject: [Peace-discuss] hasta la vista, baby.
>> 
>> It seems far from settled.
>> Parting Company
>> Over 150 years ago, the Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South's right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): "An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content." The New York Times (March 21, 1861): "There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go."
>> There's more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.
>> The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, "It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense." Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives "to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth." Mencken says: "It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves."
>> 
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