- Project Runeberg -  An American Dilemma : the Negro Problem and Modern Democracy /
222

(1944) [MARC] Author: Gunnar Myrdal
Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
  Project Runeberg | Catalog | Recent Changes | Donate | Comments? |   
Note: Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago. Therefore, this work is protected by copyright, restricting your legal rights to reproduce it. However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now. Read more about copyright.

Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - IV. Economics - 10. The Tradition of Slavery - 2. Slavery and Caste

scanned image

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Below is the raw OCR text from the above scanned image. Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan. Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!

This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.

222 An American Dilemma
ments to progress and economic adjustment than slavery itself could ever
have been. It is often argued—and in the main rightly—^that the static,
noncompetitive slavery institution and the quasi-feudal plantation system
did not fit into modern American capitalism. The economic interpretation
of the Civil War makes much of this thought. To quote a typical remark:
^^Slavery stands against our technical trends which demand a mobile,
replaceable labor supply and which generate useful energy in individuals by
offering them hope of advancement.”^
But in certain respects the surviving caste system shows even more
resistance to change than did slavery. The main economic significance of
slavery was that the employer really owned his labor. Because of that he also
had a vested interest in its most profitable utilization. This fundamental
unity of interest between capital and labor—as labor was capital—constituted
a main point in the pro-slavery theory.*
It is true that the slaves were robbed of their freedom to move on their
own initiative. But as factors of production, they were moved by the
economic interest of their owners to their ^^most advantageous uses.” Before
Emancipation the Negroes took part in the westward movement of produc-
tion and people. From this point of view the fight of the South to widen
the realm of slavery in the United States prior to the Civil War was also
a fight to bring Negro labor to those places where it could be put to most
advantageous use. After Emancipation the frcedmen could move individu-
ally in the regions where they were already settled. But they were, as a
group, practically blocked from entering new rural territory in the South-
west. Only the cities in the South and the North left them an outlet for
migration.*^
Before Emancipation it was in the interest of the slave owners to use
Negro slaves wherever it was profitable in handicraft and manufacture.*^
After Emancipation no such proprietary interest protected Negro laborers
from the desire of white workers to squeeze them out of skilled employ-
ment. They were gradually driven out and pushed down into the ^^Negro
jobs,” a category which has been more and more narrowly defined.
There is no doubt that, compared with the contemporary caste system,
slavery showed a superior capacity to effectuate economic adjustment, even
if the slave owners and not the slaves reaped the profits. Even to many
Negroes themselves slavery, again in certain limited respects, was a more
advantageous economic arrangement than the. precarious caste status into
which they were thrown by Emancipation. To the owners, slaves represented
valuable property. The prices of slaves tended to rise until the Civil War.®
The slave owner had the same rational economic interest in caring for the
* See Chapter 20, Section 4.
**
See Chapter 8.
* See Chapter 1 3.

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Project Runeberg, Sat Dec 9 01:31:31 2023 (aronsson) (download) << Previous Next >>
https://runeberg.org/adilemma/0284.html

Valid HTML 4.0! All our files are DRM-free