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good treatment either in terms of physical or moral welfare' ' and an absence (4)
or mildness of "racism " . Prof. D. B. Davis made a similar comment on "paternalism": "The meaning o f paternalism is devastatingly clear when Genovese discusses specific situations of dependency, accommodation and resistence. The concept becomes hazy when extended as a general historical category. Genovese seems to have retreated from the term "seigneurlal" much as he ea rlier retreated from "feudal". Yet he still equates paternalism with a "pre-capitalist" stage and thus with various preceding forms of feudal or semi-feudal society. It is sufficient here to say that he has not moved far in clarifying the relationship between paternalism and c a p ita lis m "^ .
ambiguousness of "paternalism" is compounded by its interchangeable use with "patriarchalism", "mediaevalism", "corporatism", and "seigeuriallsm In contrast, his analysis of "treatment" introduces a much-needed clarity.
1) ibid. p. 98.
2) ibid. pp. 96, 99-100.
3) ibid. pp. 98-99.
4) ibid. p. 111.
5) D. B. Davis, The New York Times Book Review, 29, September 1974, p. 6) Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, op. cit. p. 76.
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Indeed, this essay constitutes a fertile development arising out of the discussions which Tannenbaum et al. initiate«/.* \ve shall now critically analyse it
well as the problem of comparative "race relations".
Genovese demonstrated that "treatment" can be understood in three different senses; tiay to day living conditions, including labour conditions, more general living standards involving the slaves recreation and cultural existence and, finally, opportunities for freedom and citizenship. He correctly perceived that Frcyre, Hlkins,and Tannenbaum used treatment in the first, second and third senses respectively, and that their critics did not isolate the different categories. In Genovese's view, although the slave's treatment in a given slave regime may be 'good' in one sense and 'bad' in another, specific kinds of treatment can be compared and this could provide a basis for judgement as to the relative severity of the slave systems.
Against Genovese,it can lie argued that since the various categories of treatment are not logically related or comparable, any subsequent judgement of the nature of the slave systems must involve an arbitrary favouring of a particular category. For example, if Brazilian slavery was better placed in respect of space for the development of the slave's culture but worse in terms of nourishment and labour conditions, which slavery was m ilder? Genovese's conceptual analysis of treatment could well have displaced the whole problem of the comparative lot of Am erica's slaves. But Genovese concedes too much in retaining the concept of treatment. He does not recognise that he has provided the basis for a change of terrain. Wc observe in the following passage how Genovese is led astray by "race relations". He writes: "A comparative analysis of treatment in any of the meanings must take place on at'least two different levels simultaneously. First, conditions must lx; measured or assessed at a given historical moment. Race relations or
working conditions must be evaluated for Cuba, Brazil, Jamaica, Saint Domigue and Virginia for a certain year or decade, for each slave system reflected the exigencies of the world market at any given moment in time. Second - more difficult but probably more important - conditions must lx* measured
Fugenc Genovese, "The Treatment of Slaves in Different Countries" in l.aura Foner and Eugene Genovese (eds.) op. clt. pp. 202-210. (Our amplia si s, Y. W .)
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or assessed according to corresponding points of historical development. The second half of the seventeenth century in Barbados, for example, must be compared and contrasted with the second half of the eighteenth century in Saint Dotnigue or the middle of the nineteenth century in Cuba. One sugar boom has to be measured in economic and social effects against another. These two sets of investigations . . . should lay bare the details of life in time and place with due attention to the state of the world market and the
technological level of each section of the slave economy"^ \ Surely, if treatment is multi-dimensional and functional to a multiplicity of economic and historical circumstances, then, any conclusive investigation across countries is methodologically impossible. 'Hie real problem is that Genovese, in clinging to comparative race relations, must retain "treatment" and inconsistent ly adhere to the orthodoxy of comparing countries. Moreover, if the world market and technology are to lx? investigated,then the treatment of slaves should be replaced with the "rate of labour exploitalion"for the form er suggests a voluntarism on the part of the slave-owners inimical to the structural investigation of a mode of production. Hie political economic and social practices of the slaveowners were determined by their situation within the conjuncture of global commodity exchange. How they trailed their slaves depended on how they were treated by the world economy. Thus if we are
t
to investigate "the treatment of slaves" we need to develop a concept of economic structure. It was the world market which made the slaveholders
Genovese’ s Marxist historiography is of questionable theoretical viability. Although Marx's writings cannot be said to be a theoretically homogenous system, they are indisputably concerned with the analysis of
social classes in social formations with specific inodes of production. For Marx, classes derive from particular social relations of production and their practices are not a consequence but a determinant of their consciousness. This determination precludes the possibility of consciousness being the object of Marx's analysis. F.ven if ideational factors guide all social practice, theorising cannot hope to recapture the em pi rical processes within this 1
guidance^, The point of departure of Marx's analysis is,tl'< rt fori .the economic structure and his project is not explaining behaviour, but the investigation of the relations between classes in the given mode of production. Their theoretical practice - the expression of various ideas, beliefs or intentions is to be situated in a theoretical scheme rather than described as an external
regulator of their political practices.
Marx's analysis thus differs fundamentally from the subjectivist- idealism of sociology where "men are not considered as the "bearers of objective instances (as they are for Marx), but as the genetic principle of the levels of the social whole. This is a problematic of social actors, of individuals as the origin of social action: sociological research thus leads finally, not to the study of the objective co-ordinates that determine the distribution of agents into social classes and the contradictions between these classes, but to the search for finalist explanations founded on the motivations of conduct of the
, " (2)
individual actors" . Marxian social analysis would therefore generate different "problematics" from History and Sociology. Genovese's writings l>elong to these orthodoxies. They promote a studied concentration on the ideational and motivational patterns underlying social interaction in "slave societies", lie arguesthat the goal of getting within" a society should me an a concern with its spirit in its dominant ideology, system of values and psychological patterns"' Genovese's works, tinted with Marxian terms, but directed at the psychology o f slaveholding "and the slave-holding experience’,' are necessarily rife with theoretical and conceptual ambiguities. For,in his pursuit of the chimera of an historical materialist psychology, Genovese 1 2 3
1) Psychological models, historical-psychological models, and even the
renowned, dialiectically-conceived superstructure are not methodologically qualified to take into account the whole chain of ideas involved in even a single social act. The selecting of ideas from an assumed world view would need to be theoretically justified with reference to another type of model. Hut see Chapter III for a discussion of this methodological problem. 2) Nicos Poulantzas, "The Problem of the Capitalist State", in Robin
Blackburn (e d .) Ideology in Social Science (Fontana/Colllns, London 1972) p. 242.
3) Eqgene Genovese "Materialism and Idealism In the History of Negro Slavery in the Americas" in Laura Foner and Eugene Genovese (e d s .) op. cit. p. 251.
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operates on two levels of reductionism: 'class' becomes 'groups', groups
of slaveholders and 'ideology' is equated with psychological patterns, or society’ s spirit. He thereby becomes the supreme idealist. The question a Marxist analysis would ask of American slavery would be diametrically different from Genovese's. It would be to what extent, if at all, the investigation of slavery in the Americas clarifies the concept of capitalist relations of production, not "history".
A second crucial omission on Genovese's part is his failure to
observe that, at root,the divergencies between the two 'schools' are explicable in terms o f their different conceptions of modes of production. Admittedly, these conceptions are rarely made explicit; but a theoretical analysis of texts is concerned with making manifest even their unstated conceptual relationships. Genovese reads his fellow-historians in pursuit of their psychological m o d e ls ^ . This concern with motivation leads him away from the political implications of historical writing. To illustrate, Tannenbaum explained the "friction s" in contemporary "race relations" in terms of the American Negro's sudden
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introduction to Emancipation . The general implication of this explanation is that the demand by the Civil Rights Movement for "freedom now" is premature and self-defeating. Since the years 1941-1947 saw severe "race
( 3 )
riots" ns well as strident black militancy in American cities, ' we may therefore ju stifia b ly Interpret Tannenbaum's rcniark:"What was chattel yesterday cannot be suddenly legalised into citizenship" as a caution to contemp
orary America. Genovese did not consider this aspect of Tannenbaum's work
to lx? of any significance. What impressed him was Tannenbaum's sensitivity to the cultural and spiritual dimensions of slave society.
■yd
1) Both George Fithugh and Ulrich Bonn Philips are called "ra cists". Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, op. cit. p. 236. In Red and Black, op. cit. p. 262. For Genovese, F reyre's works are "an attempt at psychological reconstruction". Eugene Genovese "Materialism and Idealism . . . " in L. Foner and E. Genovese (e d s .) op. cit. p. 251. Elkins' book "illustrates how quickly the discussion must pass into considerations of psychology and anthropology" Eugene Genovese in
Laura Foner and Eugene Genovese (e d s .) op. cit. p. 239.
2) Frank Tannenbaum, Slave and Citizen, op. cit. pp. 112-115.
A sim ilar emphasis on the psychological quality of Elkins "Slavery" testifies to Genovese's abiding interest in motivations, values and
experiences. Elkins' book is said to have demonstrated "the remarkable uses to which psychology can be put in historical inquiry. It has brought to the surface die relationship between the slave past and a wide range of current problems flowing from that p a s t " ^ . We would contend that what is remarkable about Elkins' work is the idealist assumption which orders his concepts. 'Hie result is a fragile theoretical structure sporadically fortified with a fervent anti-materialistic ethic. In Elkins, the relationship between North American slavery and capitalism is as follows: "That very strength and bulwark of American society, capitalism, unimpeded by prior arrangements and institutions, had stamped die status of slave with a clarity which
elsewhere could never have been so profound and had further defined the institution (2)
of slavery with such clarity that die slave was, in fact, degraded" . Despite the powerful moral undertones in Elkins' interpretation, he conceptualises slavery prim arily as a legal status. Ilis conception of capitalism derives from the neo-classical school's emphasis on profit rather than on the relations of production,or commodity exchange. Where Elkins considers slavery as an economic institution,he counterposes a profit-orientated, North American slavery to a pro-bourgeois, pre-industrial, Iberian system. Had he analysed the theories of slavery,or possessed a concept of slave production,he might not have taken Gilbcrto F reyre's description of domestic servitude in the declining North-East Brazil as representative of an Iberian type. But Elkins' whole contrasting of slave systems is suggestive of an unspecified capitalism- slavery distinction. The contrastturns out to be a humanist one, capitalistic slavery dehumanises the slaves, while a pre-bourgeois, pre-industrial slavery protects their personality, 'llius Elkins' moral indictment of American capitalism runs parallel with an idealisation of Latin A merican slavery. We may therefore understand the violence o f Marvin Harris'reaction to Elkins' dissertation. 1 2 3 4
H arris' likening o f die comparing of slave systems to the proverbial
1) Eugene Genovese, In Red and Black, op. clt. p. 96. 2) Stanley Elkins, op. cit. p. 61.
3) Harris hopes that Elkins will never experience being whipped by masters differently disposed toward his "human dignity", op. cit. p. 75.
183
mediaeval squabble may be an example of unscholarly polemicising. But what he is ridiculing Is the scholasticism of the debate over slavery in the absence of any clarification o f what is a slave system. He effectively exposes the inadequacies of the idealist school, without, however, displacing their questions. To illustrate, Tannenbaum's thesis rests on legal and normative criteria - laws, religion and tradition. His book could well be sub-titled "the religico-juridical ethic and the spirit of slavery". This is a proposition different from the assertion o f different systems of production in the Americas,which Elkins incorrectly attributes to him. It is not that Harris misread Tannenbaum, as Genovese has argued. Rather,Tannenbaum misled his colleagues by confusing slavery as a moral and legal status with slavery as a system of production. Tannenbaum simply has no concept of slavery. , A spectrum of severity does not constitute a structural delineation o f an economic institution. Descriptions of brutality do not inform us as to the standard of living or the degree of labour exploitation. Brutality, like leniency, can l>e a form of social control. It has no logical relationship to the standard of living. Harsh forms of punishment can be meted out to well-kept, but recalcitrant slaves by a master incensed at their "ingratitude". Similarly, a high standard of living, as Genovese observes, is not incompatible with a high rate of exploitation ^. Finally, the Iberian "ameliorations" to which Tannenbaum drew attention may be explained with reference to the lack of c..r ilai resources which caused the given slaveholders to rent out their slaves
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to those better endowed with capital' , as well as the leve l of capital intensity on the given plantation^. Here Marvin Harris'underdeveloped focus on capital was given some sophistication by Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hu .-a. j c
They delineated three phases in the development of the use o f slave labour in the Americas. In the first phase, when production is at subsistence level slave labour is employed In a supplementary capacity to the settler- 1 2 3
1) Eugene Genovese, The World the Slaveholders Made, op. cit. p. 181. 2) Cf. A. J. R. Russell-Wood, "Colonial Brazil" in David W. Cohen and
Jack P. Greene (eds. ) Neither Slave nor Free (The John Hopkins University Press, I>ondon)p. 87.
farmers. The second phase sees the dominance of merchant’ s capital and concomitant processes of agricultural production for export as well as slave trading. Phase three involves a shift from the production of sugar and tobacco to cotton as an industrial raw material for metropolitan markets. It is in the last two phases that slave labour becomes the dominant mode of labour exploitation. The purchase of slaves is an investment in the means of production. Slaves,then,are part of capital equipment and the intensity of their exploitation is determined by the exigencies of the credit system for the purchase of slaves and the market situation of their prod u ce^ .
Ilindess' and Hirst's analysis of slavery in the Am ericas is marred, however, by their not distinguishing between "exhaustion" and'bxploltation". Their'lntensity o f exploitation" refers to the mode of utilisation of the slaves’ labour and this cannot be designated "exploitation" without causing a confusion with Marx's conception of exploitation. In contrast to the tangenital analysis of Ilindess and Hirst, Fogel's and Gngerman's investigation into "the
capitalist character of slavery" and "the anatomy of exploitation" is of supreme relevance to the question of the degree of exploitation o f African labour in the
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history of North American slavery . Their conclusions on the comparative welfare of African slaves and the white proletariat call into question the tendency to see slavery in an opprobrious light with the implication that capitalist wage-slavery is superior. Fogel and Fngerman refute this
implication by comparing, not contrasting, the two modes of labour exploitation. If their comparison is overdrawn it is because of their refusal to distinguish be tween exploitation per sc and capitalist exploitation. The "capitalist character of slavery" is a misnomer, a badly formulated description of "the exploitative processes of slave labour". Slave labour and wage labour are both relationships of non-equivalence. But there are crucial differences between them which, however, do not relate to the attitudes and experiences of agents but the conditions of their reproduction. Wage labour presupposes the 1
1) Barry Hindess and Paul Q. Hirst, op. cit. p. 136.
2) Robert W. Fogel and Stanley Engerman, Tim e on the Cross: 'lhe
Economics of American Negro Slavery, (Little Brown and Company (In c.) London 1974). Chs. Three and Four.
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development of merchant's capital into an independent entity and its penetration into the sphere of production. In the processes of capitalist commodity production, the surplus labour extracted from the producers thereby takes a value form. With slave labour, the processes of the extraction and realisation of surplus labour are not mediated by a money wage and so there is no accumulation of capital, but primitive capital accum ulation.^ In both cases, the measurement of the degree of exploitation presents serious
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computational problems, which partly explains the generally moralistic treatment of the concept of labour exploitation, the moral comparisons of slavery in the Americas as well as the theoretical inadequacies of "Tim e on
(3) the C ross"' ' .
1) Slave labour produces either capital or revenue; wage labour, capital. Thus when slaveowners merely amass wealth, they are not
capitalists. Marx makes the distinction between money and capital and between slave labour and wage labour precisely in order to clarify the difference lx^tween prim itive accumulation and capitalist