The Civil War in the United States which is a collection of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels about the Civil War.
It's a really good read, though a huge amount of it is focused on the Trent affair and the different positions and reasons for those positions of the British Press on slavery and the South.
Marx does a good job of breaking down the lie that the war of secession was "defensive" or about anything other than slavery. He shows that the economic output of the slave states was falling not because of tarrifs, but because a slavery based mode of production required constant expansion and breeding of new slaves. Especially when accelerated by the insatiable British textile industry.
This expansionist tendency meant that no matter what the Confederates said, their war was a war of expansion and conquest. One that even if they somehow won was doomed to failure because the British textile industry was on the verge of a crisis of overproduction anyways. All the global markets at the time were saturated with textile products and the British mismanagement of India meant they had no import market to absorb the surplus and no organized labor to replace Southern cotton.
Overall a good read for a material and systemic analysis of the Civil War and the influence of the bourgeoning global market on it. Also the formation of the organized and militant American proletariat (which came from Appalachia and the North).
The Civil War in the United States which is a collection of articles and letters written by Marx and Engels about the Civil War.
It's a really good read, though a huge amount of it is focused on the Trent affair and the different positions and reasons for those positions of the British Press on slavery and the South.
Marx does a good job of breaking down the lie that the war of secession was "defensive" or about anything other than slavery. He shows that the economic output of the slave states was falling not because of tarrifs, but because a slavery based mode of production required constant expansion and breeding of new slaves. Especially when accelerated by the insatiable British textile industry.
This expansionist tendency meant that no matter what the Confederates said, their war was a war of expansion and conquest. One that even if they somehow won was doomed to failure because the British textile industry was on the verge of a crisis of overproduction anyways. All the global markets at the time were saturated with textile products and the British mismanagement of India meant they had no import market to absorb the surplus and no organized labor to replace Southern cotton.
Overall a good read for a material and systemic analysis of the Civil War and the influence of the bourgeoning global market on it. Also the formation of the organized and militant American proletariat (which came from Appalachia and the North).