Mississippi River Blues

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

To the people who think that Northern abolitionists wanted to end slavery out of the goodness of hearts. The abolition of slavery in the Americas was as economically driven as its inception.

(via geoekwe)

This analysis is ahistorical and without nuance. Much of the abolitionist movement was ideologically, morally and religiously opposed to both slavery and the abuses of capital.  I mean the idea of conflating the goals of Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, or even H.D. Thoreau, with the Whigish elements that had coopted the Republican party by the end of the war is kind of laughable. To reduce “Northern abolitionists” into Northern capital is to erase the history of black abolitionists, women abolitionists and the anti-capitalist elements of the movement, and is thus a fundamentally bourgeois understanding of history in that it only recognizes the role of capitalists as historical agents. 

Rodney’s quote is useful in demonstrating why capitalists might have eventually decided to take up the abolitionist cause (1840s at the earliest), but they were definitely not in the movement at “its inception.” The struggle against slavery in (what would become) the United States is in the historical record in the mid-18th century, but is likely as old as the institution of slavery itself. 

-MRB

(via msriverblues)

Thanks for your addition. As someone who has obviously not done as much research as you concerning this topic, I will admit didn’t give the justice to the intricacies of the abolition of slavery. What I’m not trying to say is that abolition was purely economically driven. After all, many people who supported slavery were not economically incentivized but morally incentivized as they thought that Africans were backwards and that slavery was a way of bringing us into the enlightened European ways. By “inception” I mean the beginning of the enslavement process, not the beginning of the abolitionist movement. Many people at the time believed that slavery was ethical and used the Bible to back up their claims. However, slavery was a way of the Western nations getting an economic edge. The abolition of slavery, too, is seen to be largely an ethical endeavor, however, I believe that it was just as economically driven as enslavement of Africans at the start.

(via geoekwe)

(via geoekwe)

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

To the people who think that Northern abolitionists wanted to end slavery out of the goodness of hearts. The abolition of slavery in the Americas was as economically driven as its inception.

(via geoekwe)

This analysis is ahistorical and without nuance. Much of the abolitionist movement was ideologically, morally and religiously opposed to both slavery and the abuses of capital.  I mean the idea of conflating the goals of Fredrick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Brown, or even H.D. Thoreau, with the Whigish elements that had coopted the Republican party by the end of the war is kind of laughable. To reduce “Northern abolitionists” into Northern capital is to erase the history of black abolitionists, women abolitionists and the anti-capitalist elements of the movement, and is thus a fundamentally bourgeois understanding of history in that it only recognizes the role of capitalists as historical agents. 

Rodney’s quote is useful in demonstrating why capitalists might have eventually decided to take up the abolitionist cause (1840s at the earliest), but they were definitely not in the movement at “its inception.” The struggle against slavery in (what would become) the United States is in the historical record in the mid-18th century, but is likely as old as the institution of slavery itself. 

-MRB

(via randomactsofchaos)