yeah I think the question is whether there was a path to the (more or less inevitable) spread of American capitalism that doesn't include the sharecropping / Jim Crow regime that puts the slave power back in charge of the southern economy and politics and I think land reform had a shot - ThreadSky

michaelcaley.bsky.social • 31 days ago

yeah I think the question is whether there was a path to the (more or less inevitable) spread of American capitalism that doesn't include the sharecropping / Jim Crow regime that puts the slave power back in charge of the southern economy and politics

and I think land reform had a shot

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johnlk.bsky.social•31 days ago

There was never anywhere close to a majority even of northern Republicans for land reform, and if Johnson couldn't manufacture one by being a tremendous asshole for nearly four years, it's hard to see how you can get to one.

michaelcaley.bsky.social•31 days ago

land reform would have just *happened* through the actions of the occupying armies if Johnson hadn't stopped it

johnlk.bsky.social•31 days ago

There might have been some limited land reform in places like the Sea Islands, but most of Congress didn't want it. We can see what happened in Tennessee and Louisiana under Lincoln!

rev-avocado.bsky.social•31 days ago

I think it's entirely possible, the politics of the south will just resemble the politics of the agricultural west to a much greater degree, rather than have their own quasi-feudal stratocratic feel.

ordinalandsman.bsky.social•31 days ago

IMO 'was American capitalist domination of the global economy inevitable' is the big question here. Lots of reasons to believe that it was but also lots of countries that looked to be on the same trajectory as the U.S. (Chile, Argentina, to a lesser extent Mexico and Brazil) that stagnated.

michaelcaley.bsky.social•31 days ago

yeah

I am doubtful that the slave power recapturing the south was a core part of making that happen

the American institutions that cultivated our capitalism were mostly northern

but where the offramps are -- surely they exist? -- is an interesting questions

ordinalandsman.bsky.social•31 days ago

Oh I'm not arguing that Jim Crow was ineveitable, but there's a vulgar leftist belief (that I am extremely sympathetic to) that the failure to kill Jim Crow was a symptom of some broader macro-economic failure to deliver prosperity that I think is unfortunately wrong.

michaelcaley.bsky.social•31 days ago

yeah I mean

michaelcaley.bsky.social•31 days ago

it definitely it possible to deliver "discovery of capitalism" growth and a much greater degree of shared prosperity but more or less no one in the 19th century had any good ideas about this yet

ordinalandsman.bsky.social•31 days ago

Possible absolutely but 'can you deliver massive and extremely disruptive increases to shared prosperity within the context of change averse population that is democratically empowered to set economic policy.' Is very much still an open question.

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