VERNON :
he article I chose to review is by Al Fuller, “Slavery and American Cap
VERNON :
he article I chose to review is by Al Fuller, “Slavery and American Capitalism.” The author analyses the official perception of slavery. He argues that the presentation of slavery as one of the pillars of American economic growth is overestimated. He believes, prosperity was built by free labor and technological progress and slavery was an obstacle. The author operates with substantial arguments, which make this position very strong. I believe slavery was a shameful page of the past, although regarding economic growth it was rather an obstacle, but not the reasons for the prosperity.
Fuller starts by presenting the official position on slavery. According to the scholars, Dr. James Horton, Prof, Howard Zinn, and Prof. Eric Foner, slavery is presented as a foundation for American economic growth. Due to free labor, the American planters increased the profit margin from agricultural activity. They also argue that this business model was the main obstacle to banning slavery. The author points out that this official position is the most widely spread and is taught at school as the unquestionable truth,
The author provides strong counterarguments. He theorizes that the foundation of economic growth is free labor, creativity in problem-solving, and technological progress. As the arguments, he points out that Brazil imported five times more slaves than America, and yet the economic development of both countries cannot be compared. Similarly, slaves were imported to the Middle East and Arabic countries with similar results. The author emphasizes, that the states with faster economic growth were the states, that banned slavery sooner. Additionally, the cultural standard of respect for hard work and self-reliance, typical for the North, added to the growing prosperity.
I agree with the author’s arguments. Indeed, the reason for the American growing economy contains levels and multiple variables. The strength of the economy depends on the efficiency of the laborer. Consequentially, a free man would work with higher efficiency. If the man’s labor is not enough, one would apply a creative approach and build technologies to solve the problem. Thus, free labor stimulates technological progress and economic growth.
Reference
Fuller, A. (2009, December 6). Slavery and American capitalism. Race & Politics. https://historyhalf.com/slavery-and-american-capitalism/#top.
Wendell:
For many years, academics and liberals have expressed themselves about the achievement of America’s economic and technological progress. Which they claimed was due to their participation in the slave trade of the many black people that were brought to this country. This image has been constantly portrayed to us throughout our history in our education system. But is this entirely true?
There are many different textbooks from various professors, including Howard Professor Zinn and Eric Foner. Despite acknowledging the existence of slavery in other parts of the world, however, they claimed that the treatment of enslaved Africans in the United States of America was the worst one could possibly think of. And the motivation for this was blamed on the greed for wealth by the Americans because of the industrial revolution.
However, many more countries were supplied with tremendous amounts of black slaves; some claim up to five or six times more than the United States. An example of these would be Brazil and other countries that are part of the Islamic states in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet none of them had achieved any similar economic or technological growth. And even after the United States of America completely got rid of slavery, it still continued to thrive even more in these areas. Therefore, we can say that slavery did not contribute much to the success of our nation but rather stood in the way. And that it was mostly the free individuals that worked to steer the country towards economic and technological growth.
Hence, we could say that even though the United States had participated in the acts of slavery of black people as many other countries did, the success of the nation mainly relied on the free individuals that worked to make a living for themselves and others.
Although I can understand the writer’s perspective in this article, I can’t agree with it since it’s almost as if he wants to deny the fact entirely that the enslaved people greatly contributed to anything at all. In addition to providing a weak counterargument since it mentions other countries being provided with even more slaves, it does not address how they were treated. But mainly, the differences in their wealth.
References
Fuller, A. (2020a, August 11). Slavery and American capitalism: The other half of history. The Other Half of History | American History They Don’t Teach in College. https://historyhalf.com/slavery-and-american-capitalism/
