"Karl Marx and the American Civil War" Topic

"THE CIVIL War is the defining event in the history of the United States, yet also the most misunderstood. More books are written on this war than on any period of US history, yet for all the words poured across the pages, the real cause of the war—slavery—is usually missed or obscured. Rather, there are tales of chivalrous Confederate generals heroically leading charges, drunken Union generals butchering their men in horrible frontal assaults, brothers fighting brothers in a pointless war that ravaged the land and wounded a people. Was the Civil War just a tragic mistake? A war like any other imperialist war the United States ruling class has its soldiers fighting in today? While some answer these questions with a yes, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels would have been taken aback. They would have resoundingly answered "no." The Civil War, they believed, was not just another horrible atrocity, but rather a revolution that ended slavery and destroyed the slave-owners' power as a class.

Marx and Engels saw the events leading to the Civil War as momentous. In a January 1861 letter to Engels, written after the election of Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln, but before his inauguration, Marx wrote, "In my opinion, the biggest things that are happening in the world today are on the one hand the movement of the slaves in America started by the death of John Brown, and on the other the movement of the serfs in Russia."…"

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Armand

Slavery is usually missed or obscured as a cause of the American Civil War? What planet did this author grow up on?

Funny coming from Marx, the father of modern slavery. The state owned the means of production does not just refer to the equipment. The citizens are also part of the means of production.

No, the means of production are objects that are used for the purposes of production. A worker under capitalism is a seller who sells his labor force and/or competence. A hired factory manager is, in fact, also a hired worker.
In socialist production, it is impossible to have private ownership of the means of production, but it is possible to have collective ownership – that is, to work on a cooperative basis, where the worker receives part of the enterprise's profit and is, in fact, its co-owner. A shareholder. And this form, according to Marx, is the most preferable. The Soviet model, which was essentially state capitalism (where the entire state was, in fact, a single multi-industry corporation) was a distortion of Marx's ideas. Socialism DOES NOT REJECT the idea of ​​a free market… It only excludes the sale of labor to someone and makes any worker a shareholder of the enterprise where he works. The enterprise prospers – the worker prospers. The enterprise suffers losses – these losses are shared by the worker. All other socialist features (free medicine, education, etc.) are just state priorities for distributing collected taxes.

This article is from the International Socialist Review, so go figure.

Not a neutral publication.

Thanks Cuprim2, now I know I'm right about the communist slave state.

Col Durnford, i was glad to enlighten you))) And how much can you buy a socialist slave for? A Chinese or a Vietnamese…

I must, yet again, take issue with the notion that the ACW was about slavery. It was about the preservation of the wealth and power of the southern elites.

Of course, the source of that wealth, and hence the concomitant power, was slavery. If Eli Whitney had invented the steam tractor before that damn'ned cotton gin we might well have been spared all this.

Maybe, HMS, but tractors don't do housework, serve julips on the veranda, etc. A way of life for those elites, part of the culture as symbols of wealth. The North would have had the tractors, and the infrastructure to build and distribute them.
Any tractors in the South would have been driven by who? A good question though and something to think about.

Cuprum2, I have no idea what the sale price of a communist slave would be. How much do Russia pay for their nork slave soldiers?

Actually, the Norks are like Hessian "mercenaries" in the AWI. Britain rented actual Hessian, Brunswick etc army units from their Dukes and so on. So, the Russians will return them when they're through with them.

Ahhh it seems slavery is not dead, at least in Africa.

Subject: UN judge convicted of slavery offences at Oxford Crown Court


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John…

"George III" was a German. Where else to rent some well disciplined soldaten? And get a little money back home to the family. The Norks are not close relatives of Putin.

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Armand

Col Durnford, the fact that you bought all your allies has long been clear))) What else could you offer them?
By the way, why don't you buy some Koreans for Ukraine? Their male population just fled…

"Ahhh it seems slavery is not dead, at least in Africa."

She was in the UK.

Dn Jackson

I know, but the one practicing slavery is Ugandan, hence African. 🙂

"The 49-year-old, who is also a High Court judge in Uganda, was found guilty of conspiring to facilitate the commission of a breach of UK immigration law, facilitating travel with a view to exploitation, forcing someone to work, and conspiracy to intimidate a witness."