Quote:
Originally Posted by Homesteaded
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Can you elaborate on this for me? It's not connecting.
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Basically capitalism liked the planter class
at first. Fresh out of feudalism -- plantations were progressive. They were proving more supply and demand than what existed before.
But over time its like Chinese and Russian orders. The planters stop progressing when the progression no longer benefits them. This is why the south was less technologically advanced and lacked all the structural improvements, education institutions, and industrial capacity. Why the hell would you build a factory in the south when its a giant countryside with no infrastructure to support it? Why pay taxes so the north can develop more when your fine just how you are?
The problem is capitalism wants the north developed...and the south...and the whole world.
Capitalism starts getting annoyed with these planters sitting on their ass opposing canal construction, roads, and rail. We always need farmers -- but we don't need planters. The same way we didn't need aristocrats at the top, we didn't need planters (who were often considered a kind of aristocracy) in the end.
In fact, we need farmers that were more efficient. See, the economics of slavery were such that only big plantations were beating out paid labor -- and that margin kept shrinking. The planters were like feudal lords, they had to make sure their small folk were healthy enough to produce. Capitalism doesn't give a fuck. They just need some guy that will do the job for today at the low wage capitalism gives them for their unskilled labor. If their mom is sick -- that's not your fucking problem. And people are taught not to blame you and that it is your problem and not theirs.
So as frontier starts filling out and there are immigration waves (which capitalism ordered) -- cheap labor is getting easier and easier to find. Technology is also key, because industrial production kills off the old guild craft style system held over from feudalism. This also drives down the price of goods like clothing, food, and tools. It starts to become more practical for low paid workers to take care of their basics for less money than is tied up in upkeeping a whole population of enslaved people.
Meanwhile, there were all kinds of ill effects capitalism doesn't like. Like suppressing markets for back people, preventing them from doing the best they could economically, and also turning high functioning educated white people into parasite gentry instead productive capitalists.
Basically slavery outlived its use to capitalism. Capitalism giveth, and capitalism taketh away.