Crushing the Confederacy was the one time the Untied States was progressive. Of course the libs of the era made sure that slavers got away scot free and that black people were still oppressed afterwards.
It was as Frederick Douglass said in Boston in 1865, that the Civil War was begun "in the interests of slavery on both sides. The South was fighting to take slavery out of the Union, and the North fighting to keep it in the Union; the South fighting to get it beyond the limits of the United States Constitution, and the North fighting for the old guarantees;-both despising the Negro, both insulting the Negro.
Crushing the confederacy wasn’t about freeing enslaved people, it was about ending the slave plantation production model and replacing it with the industrial factory employment mode of production. The northern bourgeois had a more efficient system that pushed a lot of the responsibilities of the slave owner back onto the employee, they did not give a shit about the plight of the slave.
That still makes it more progressive in a strictly materialist sense, since it creates conditions (urbanization, expansion of the proletariat, concentration of production) more conducive to socialist revolution.
The north got fucking terrified because of Haiti and the common sentiment at the time was that black people couldn’t compete with white people in the free market and would thus die out on their own. When that didn’t happen abe lincoln himself was looking into ways to deport them to africa, but his general said black people would procreate faster than they could deport and so they just started burning villages and destroying everything black people built after the civil war instead.
No, the US was also progressive from roughly 1930-1945, and not just because of the New Deal. It was also because of genuinely anti-imperialist foreign policy in Latin America.
It certainly is. Even at its most progressive moments, the US never stopped being a racist colonizer run by capitalists for capitalists for a second. But in certain periods, due to a complex set of conditions (especially involving interstate conflict and powerful mass movements), the US was in aggregate a progressive force for the world. Probably totals up to less than 10% of the country’s existence.
If you wanna read more on the Latin America stuff, check out Greg Grandin’s work, like America, América. Under FDR, the Vice President was going to Bolivian indigenous peasant unions and fighting on their behalf against US corporations, the Secretary of State supported and enforced pan-American labor rights and minimum wage, and the Ambassador to Mexico materially defended Mexican land expropriation of American corporate property. Communists across the continent were vocal supporters of the US and thought it was about to make a lasting turn towards anti-imperialism and worker power. Latin American states run by leftists were seeking closer integration so the US could aid them politically suppressing fascists. It was a brief period, but it was legit. I don’t think the US is capable of repeating that, structurally, without a revolution or at least a working class powerful enough to threaten one.
Yeah, they weren’t doing anything to unseat right wing governments. But they were actively strengthening the left wing ones, and at the end of the period, Guatemala was one of the few countries left under a right wing government. At the end of the period, Latin American social democracy broadly was very strong.
Crushing the Confederacy was the one time the Untied States was progressive. Of course the libs of the era made sure that slavers got away scot free and that black people were still oppressed afterwards.
– Black Reconstruction in America
Crushing the confederacy wasn’t about freeing enslaved people, it was about ending the slave plantation production model and replacing it with the industrial factory employment mode of production. The northern bourgeois had a more efficient system that pushed a lot of the responsibilities of the slave owner back onto the employee, they did not give a shit about the plight of the slave.
That still makes it more progressive in a strictly materialist sense, since it creates conditions (urbanization, expansion of the proletariat, concentration of production) more conducive to socialist revolution.
Yeah, progressive is not a moral analysis but a materialist one
Bleak racism
The north got fucking terrified because of Haiti and the common sentiment at the time was that black people couldn’t compete with white people in the free market and would thus die out on their own. When that didn’t happen abe lincoln himself was looking into ways to deport them to africa, but his general said black people would procreate faster than they could deport and so they just started burning villages and destroying everything black people built after the civil war instead.
No, the US was also progressive from roughly 1930-1945, and not just because of the New Deal. It was also because of genuinely anti-imperialist foreign policy in Latin America.
I can’t claim to know too too much on the subject, but I do know Puerto Rico must be a rather notable exception to this assertion
It certainly is. Even at its most progressive moments, the US never stopped being a racist colonizer run by capitalists for capitalists for a second. But in certain periods, due to a complex set of conditions (especially involving interstate conflict and powerful mass movements), the US was in aggregate a progressive force for the world. Probably totals up to less than 10% of the country’s existence.
If you wanna read more on the Latin America stuff, check out Greg Grandin’s work, like America, América. Under FDR, the Vice President was going to Bolivian indigenous peasant unions and fighting on their behalf against US corporations, the Secretary of State supported and enforced pan-American labor rights and minimum wage, and the Ambassador to Mexico materially defended Mexican land expropriation of American corporate property. Communists across the continent were vocal supporters of the US and thought it was about to make a lasting turn towards anti-imperialism and worker power. Latin American states run by leftists were seeking closer integration so the US could aid them politically suppressing fascists. It was a brief period, but it was legit. I don’t think the US is capable of repeating that, structurally, without a revolution or at least a working class powerful enough to threaten one.
This was unfortunately not the case in Guatemala where they supported anti-communist Jorge Ubico for his support of the United Fruit Company.
Yeah, they weren’t doing anything to unseat right wing governments. But they were actively strengthening the left wing ones, and at the end of the period, Guatemala was one of the few countries left under a right wing government. At the end of the period, Latin American social democracy broadly was very strong.
Added to the ever-expanding reading list. Thank you, comrade!
Great post!