Mal writes

"And anyway, I wonder if the difference between slaveholding and
wage-labour IS purely legalistic."

I think you wonder wisely as Karl "wondered" likewise.

I think basically what Karl is saying below is if you sell your
labour power for a lifetime rather than a week and perhaps sell your
childrens labour power for a lifetime into the bargain, peonage, you
have effectively sold yourself and family into slavery proper.

I think in some places in the third world this system still operates.

Secound page chapter VI volume one.

Just back from work and TOTAL RECALL!!!!!!!

"On this assumption, labour-power can appear upon the market as a
commodity, only if, and so far as, its possessor, the individual
whose labour-power it is, offers it for sale, or sells it, as a
commodity. In order that he may be able to do this, he must have it
at his disposal, must be the untrammelled owner of his capacity for
labour, i.e., of his person. [2] He and the owner of money meet in
the market, and deal with each other as on the basis of equal
rights, with this difference alone, that one is buyer, the other
seller; both, therefore, equal in the eyes of the law. The
continuance of this relation demands that the owner of the labour-
power should sell it only for a definite period, for if he were to
sell it rump and stump, once for all, he would be selling himself,
converting himself from a free man into a slave, from an owner of a
commodity into a commodity. He must constantly look upon his labour-
power as his own property, his own commodity, and this he can only
do by placing it at the disposal of the buyer temporarily, for a
definite period of time. By this means alone can he avoid renouncing
his rights of ownership over it. [3]"



Third footnote chapter 6 volume one

"Hence legislation in various countries fixes a maximum for labour-
contracts. Wherever free labour is the rule, the laws regulate the
mode of terminating this contract. In some States, particularly in
Mexico (before the American Civil War, also in the territories taken
from Mexico, and also, as a matter of fact, in the Danubian
provinces till the revolution effected by Kusa), slavery is hidden
under the form of peonage.

By means of advances, repayable in labour, which are handed down
from generation to generation, not only the individual labourer, but
his family, become, de facto, the property of other persons and
their families. Juarez abolished peonage. The so-called Emperor
Maximilian re-established it by a decree, which, in the House of
Representatives at Washington, was aptly denounced as a decree for
the re-introduction of slavery into Mexico."

Karl dicusses the Danubian issue in more detail in section 2chapter X

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch06.htm#3

--- In WSM_Forum@yahoogroups.com, "Utilisateur1"
<malcolm.mansfield@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi Dave,
>
> Your not dealing with my point. The fact that chattel
slavery was highly profitable does not mean that it could have
continued indefinitely. To do so would have required land that the
slaveowners would have had to gain at the expense of the northerners.
>
> And anyway, I wonder if the difference between slaveholding and
wage-labour IS purely legalistic (except in a highly abstract
sense). Perhaps one avenue which was closed to the slaveholders was
intensive agriculture of the kind practiced in England from the turn
of the 18th century.
>
> This implied the intensive use of labour power and the
subsequent creation of a surplus population as production
fluctuated. By contrast, the slaveowner would have had an interest
in employing his slaves all the time, any idle-time being a cost
which he could only avoid by finding land to put the slave to work
on. For this reason he always needed more land, the use of machines
being another point. (I don't know anything about cotton gins: were
they used merely to increase production or to be labour-saving?)
>
> Remembering the capitalist relations in England started in
agriculture is important. The growth of industry in England took
place as the agricultural population declined. But in England the
production of corn rose as the corn-producing population fell: an
unprecedented event in history. But what are we to say of the
industrialization of the deep south in the United States. It has
only just happened. What caused the delay?
>
> Mal
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: David Searles
> To: WSM_Forum@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 1:24 PM
> Subject: [WSM_Forum] Re: Feedback request, and not so dumb
question...
>
>
> Reply to Mal and to Dave Balmer
>
> Mal wrote:
>
> Some historians doubt that chattel slavery could have lasted
much
> longer
> than it did in the South. As you say the system was flourishing
and
> cotton
> became king. Fair enough. But agricultural plantations need ever
> greater access
> to the land if they are to expand. This would have meant a
westward
> push by the
> South but the Northern industrialists also needed the west
mainly as
> a market
> for industrial goods. A southern style aristocracy in the west
with
> chattel
> slavery would not have provided an outlet for industrial goods
and
> the north was
> in no position to compete with the leading industrial power,
Great
> Britain. So a
> clash between the North and South was inevitable and Dixie died
a
> death, good
> riddance.
>

>