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 (I do know that most agricultural labour has been replaced by complex, easily sabotage-able machinery now, but that was not true in the 19th century)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

    Abolition would immediately make 99% of their investments worthless, even if they could eventually recoup the losses. It is the same short sided thinking that modern capitalists have, they prefer money now to money in the future.

    This is an extremely important point. Compare lack of willingness to abandon slavery to lack of willingness to abolish fossil fuels, no matter the human cost.