I'm reading How Europe Underdeveloped Africa right now, and Rodney offers that the inherent opportunity for sabotage in more advanced machinery means transitioning beyond a certain stage in development requires "free" workers, that slaves require high degrees of surveillance and are limited to using tools that are hard to destroy.

This is a convincing argument to me for why a transition away from slavery has a material requirement for free workers under capitalism when it comes to factories, but there was still (and is still) a ton of labour that is ultimately performed without advanced machinery, principally agriculture.

I suppose my question is, wouldn't a maximally beneficial set-up for the bourgeoisie have been one in which the cities had free worlers, but the countryside still was allowed slaves to pick oranges etc? (I do know that most agricultural labour has been replaced by complex, easily sabotage-able machinery now, but that was not true in the 19th century)

(and if anyone has any recommended reading on the topic that's appreciated too)

  • glimmer_twin [he/him]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Without being anywhere near an expert on the topic, I would hazard a guess that southern slave states took a look at the industrialised northern states and saw that, if slavery was abolished overnight, the much more agrarian south would suddenly find itself at a huge economic disadvantage. Basically they had (literally) bet the farm on slavery and were all in on it continuing.