Formation of capitalism: Babies ... cut into pieces in front of their parents
The roots of American developmentIn early stories capitalism can distinguish two main periods.
During the first period (it covers the XVII century) capitalism won a decisive victory in the struggle against the feudal system in England, and the main political moment of this struggle was the crombwelling revolution of 1640 of the year.
Then the new ruling class - the bourgeoisie, frightened by the separatist and egalitarian demands of its left wing and the masses who participated in its struggle, reversed the revolution in the restoration of 1660 of the year, concluding a deal with large landowners.
However, the restoration in no way deprived the revolution of its basic character — in other words, its anti-feudal content. When there was a threat that the counter-revolutionary movement might go too far, the bourgeoisie, prompted by demonstrations and local uprisings of the poor, carried out the “Glorious Revolution” of 1689 of the year, which confirmed the supremacy of the parliament while maintaining a land aristocracy.
The second period is characterized by the emergence of the industrial revolution of the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, which accelerated the development of capitalism.
The first stage and the very beginning of the second - this is the length of time during which the drama of the colonial period of the United States has been played out. This implies the closest economic, political, ideological and cultural ties that existed between Europe (primarily England) and the colonies, and the subordination of the colonies to Europe constitutes a decisive feature of the early period of American history.
This does not mean that, as the late Edward P. Cheney wrote more than half a century ago, "the history of America is a branch of the history of Europe." Nor does this mean that colonial development, as Daniel D. Burstin wrote in 1958, was mainly American, if not exclusively, so that:
“The more we begin to comprehend the local origin of their [“ revolutionary fathers ”] ideas, the less we need to seek out their cosmopolitan philosophical ancestry or try to explain them as ideas deprived of local monastery the whole world.
The motives of the revolution will turn into an empty phrase. The philosophers of the European Enlightenment, who were dragged to the court of historians as the imaginary fathers of the revolution, may then seem as distantly related to the case as the culprit-cousin, suddenly appearing in the last scene of the foul mystery »1.
The truth is rather the presence in the American colonial evolution and the history of the interpenetration of the local arena of action and its requirements, on the one hand, and the imperial arena of action and its requirements, on the other.
Peculiar and specifically American appears and functions within the framework of English domination and control; The latter fact has a decisive influence on the nature of colonial development, which at the same time is strongly influenced by the first fact. The appearance of the private does not deny the existence of the universal.
From the European origin of the colonies is often derived another conclusion, which is appropriate to consider here, on the verge of our work. Again, we can refer to the Chini book to illustrate an early and vigorous expression of this generally accepted view:
"Since the formation of the colonies, the only significant population of America were the descendants of the Europeans."
There is nothing so clear and sharp in the recently published work of Burstin, but nevertheless its content fully follows this tradition. In other words, Burstin presents American Indians as an obstacle that should have been eliminated as an object of American history.
He concludes, therefore, that any policy aimed at the humane treatment of Indians (such as that conducted by the Quakers) was ridiculous and expensive; he even portrays one uprising of the Pennsylvania Indians as “a hot bonfire kindled by a half-century of Quaker generosity and nonresistance towards the Indians” (p. 58), as if such uprisings did not flare up in areas not “affected” by an excess of generosity and nonresistance, and as if the resistance of the Indians was not caused by the invasions and atrocities of the whites themselves.
As for that stratum of the colonial population, which originally came not from Europe, but from Africa (and by the time of the revolution reached 20 percent of the total population), Burstin was not ashamed to write a phrase that so daunting it in ignorance and so imbued with chauvinism that, indeed, it would have been better if he spared his readers: “The unhewn black slaves, who had left the African jungle only a generation or two ago, were trained in the role of a peasant” (p. 103).
In fact, from the earliest period, despite the fact that the initial impetus to the colonization of America was given by Europe, the very process of colonization and the content of its history were greatly influenced by the presence and activity of people of African and Indian origin.
This is indeed a unique feature of American development, but although for other purposes Burstin strenuously stubborn and even exaggerated the purely “American” content of the history of the United States, for some reason he passed this prospective opportunity.
Europe, Africa and America
The most important features of the development of capitalism in the first and second stages of its history were: the movement for enclosing lands, which, along with other violent means, led to the removal of tens of thousands of peasants from their homes; predatory actions in Africa and the enslavement of a large part of its population; the plundering of America and the enslavement (in some cases, such as, for example, in the territory of present-day Haiti, the almost complete extermination) of its original inhabitants, as well as the colonization of the Western Hemisphere for the purpose of more permanent and systematic exploitation; finally, the conquest of Asia, which was accomplished more or less successfully, but always brought a very significant increase in wealth and power.
All these processes were interrelated with each other; The first three are very close to the initial period of American history. Let us consider briefly some aspects of this relationship.
The capitalist revolution was marked by the rapid accumulation of capital with high turnover.
In raising the rate of profit derived from such accumulation, and expanding markets for products of a growing capitalist economy, overseas enterprises have acquired particular importance.
While in countries where the gap with feudalism was the least complete - as it was in the possessions of Spain and Portugal - similar colonial operations were carried out directly under the auspices and control of the crown, in other areas, such as possessions of England and Holland, the same operations were carried out through mixed forms and under the auspices of various forces.
So, in the possession of England, three types of colonies arose - the royal colonies (Royal colonies), under the direct influence of the crown, the proprietary colonies (Proprietary colonies), where the crown endowed certain individuals with economic and political rights, and finally, the colonies endowed with royal charter ( Chartered colonies), where the same rights were obtained from the crown joint-stock companies. It was in the latter that the tendency towards the greatest separation from monarchical control was revealed.
Joint-stock companies were a collective property of groups of merchants and industrialists who invested various amounts of capital. These companies evolved from the Society of Merchant Adventurers (Society of Merchant Adventurers), which began in the 15th century and which itself reflected the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
True, the operations of this society were more local in nature and it was itself an expression of a lower level of capitalization; but at the same time, it served as a harbinger of companies based on the shareholder principle.
The first such companies were brought about by the objectives of using the trading opportunities of northeastern Europe (such as the Moscow Company), the Middle East (the Levant Company) or Africa (the royal African trading company). And they had only one step left, subject to access to the riches of the New World, to the formation of various joint-stock companies (often consisting of the same persons), whose goal was to penetrate into America and exploit this continent.
And indeed, these companies, like the London company or the Plymouth company (named for their bases in the metropolis), armed with the charters of the king, began to colonize their possessions in order to extract profits from them.
The process by which feudalism was destroyed, resulted in the removal of thousands of serfs and holders from the land. This separation of people from the usual living conditions has given rise to appalling poverty, widespread unemployment and massive vagrancy. And this, in turn, caused serious social tensions and created a great danger for the rich and their state.
However, the development of capitalism not only gave rise to this “redundant” and dangerous population in the metropolis; it also made new worlds accessible across the sea. It was in these new worlds — primarily in America, since it is a question of the 16th century — that Europeans were destined to discover vast natural resources and vast land areas.
But these colossal resources and large tracts of land, especially in the northern part of America, where England was to concentrate its efforts, were combined with a very rare population and, therefore, with insufficient labor supply. And although the natural resources of this northern hemisphere were depicted as grandiose, they would remain potential as long as labor was absent - the creator of all values on earth.
That is why these two satellites of the transition from feudalism to capitalism naturally complemented each other, as contemporaries pointed out. For example, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, stepbrother of Sir Walter Raleigh and a prominent warrior and explorer himself, wrote in 1574:
“We could settle in some of these countries [in the New World] and settle here those distressed citizens of our country who now cause a lot of trouble to the state and because of the need oppressing them in their homeland, are forced to commit vile crimes, which makes them every day gallows. "
In 1611, the Spanish ambassador to England reported to the monarch, who followed the jealous and fearful gaze of the British activity: “The first reason that prompted them to colonize these lands was the desire to give a vent to a lot of unfortunate people left behind and thereby avert the dangers that could be threatened from them ".
But thirteen years later, the London company formulated the goal of its colonial activity: "Eliminating the excess of poor people who make up food or fuel for dangerous insurrections, and thus leaving more prosperity to support those who remain in the country." All of these modern testimonies overlooked a number of other important considerations, but the one to which they pointed out was indeed of paramount importance.
The illustration of the interpenetration of these processes can be continued further. Thus, the actual conquest of a large part of the New World by the Spaniards and the Portuguese led to the fact that gold and silver poured into Europe in a wide stream, and the merchants began to receive incredible profits, due to which they formed a fund of capital that greatly facilitated their additional investments in overseas and colonial enterprises. .
In addition, multiplying the colossal profits of merchant families pushed many of them on the path of investing their free capital in the textile, leather, wool and metalworking industries; and this in turn strengthened the process of ousting the feudal capitalist economy and the overseas demand of overseas markets, which were designed to absorb industrial products, which grew on this basis.
The steep rise in prices that accompanied this process contributed to the rapid growth of profits, but at the same time it aggravated the already impoverished situation of the masses, since the real earnings of the poor steadily declined. The following data can be seen on what happened: in England, prices from 1501 to 1650 increased by about 250 per year, while wage growth was so far behind that real earnings in 1700 were no more than 50 per cent compared to 1500 of the year .
Not surprisingly, John Winthrop, the first governor of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, explaining immigration from England, said: "For England, its inhabitants are becoming increasingly burdensome"; and Queen Elizabeth, having made a trip to her possessions, exclaimed: “Poor people everywhere!”
Thus, from the very beginning, the English colonies served as safety valves to reduce the high social pressure created by exploitation and oppression in European states, and this situation persisted even at the beginning of the 20th century.
England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Poland, Russia and other countries were the reservoirs from which millions of workers moved to the West for centuries, bringing with them their skills, their strength and their aspirations.
Slavery and capitalism
The first region outside Europe that caused the righteous voices of pious missionaries, attracted the benevolent gazes of greedy merchants and consecrated swords of the gracious sovereigns, was the land area that was located closest and which needed to be circled to achieve the fabulous riches of Asia - different in words, Africa.
The beginning of the military conquest of Africa and the enslavement of part of its population in modern times was laid by Portugal in the middle of the XV century; In subsequent years, Spain, England, France and Holland joined this profitable enterprise.
The beginning of the modern African slave trade for half a century was preceded by the journey of Columbus to the Western world. The first step was the raids by Europeans on the West African coast and the seizure by them, through rather rough and arbitrary actions, of local people to sell them on European markets, mainly (since this is the first years of the slave trade) in Portugal and Spain.
The earliest surviving documentary evidence of an expedition to capture slaves is the diary of Azurara, who led one of the raids of Portuguese slave traders, undertaken in the 1446 year. It is typical of the hundreds of documentary evidence that was to come to light in the future, and we have the right to elaborate on this event in more detail and to get acquainted with it according to the description made by its leading participant.
Azurara's ship landed in the central region of the west coast of Equatorial Africa. The soldiers rushed to the shore in a heap, captured several curious people and immediately rushed into the inner regions in search of new victims. Here they discovered a settlement; as for the rest, we refer directly to the document:
“They turned their eyes towards the village and saw that the negroes, along with the women and children, were in a hurry leaving their huts, noticing the approaching enemy. However, they [the Portuguese] named St. Jacob, sv. George, as well as his native country of Portugal, immediately attacked them on their lips, killing and capturing all those who came to hand. It was then that you could see a lot of how mothers threw their children, and husbands - wives, in order to avoid danger as soon as possible.
Some were hiding in the water; others hoped to be saved by hiding under their huts; still others hid their children in seaweed lying on the shore (where our people later found them), hoping that there they would go unnoticed.
Finally, our Lord God, rewarding for every good deed, wished that for the hard work that they took upon serving him, they would win that day over their enemies, and also be rewarded for all their efforts and spending, for they captured these blacks — men, women, and children — in the number of 165 people, and that's not counting those who died and were killed. ”
As the cited testimony suggests, the religious bigot could argue with the atrocities found in this case. Thus, among the ships used in the slave trade by the favorite sea hero of the “good queen Bess” [2] - Sir John Hawkins, the two ships were called “John the Baptist” and “Jesus”.
This process of plunder and slaughter — the most profitable, with the exception of war, of all the business enterprises that marked the era of capitalism — lasted over four centuries; in cruelty he has no equal in all the terrifying annals of human oppression. And as a central feature of the process of primitive accumulation of capital, it is the main component of the history of capitalism — American capitalism in particular.
For the first fifty years, the slave trade operations served as a means of providing labor for the plantations of southern Portugal and the mines of Spain, as well as providing these countries, France and England with household servants. Then, with the discovery of both American continents, which needed above all a hardy workforce familiar with mining and agriculture, a special function of Africa was established as a large reservoir of a significant part of this workforce.
This, obviously, should have been, from the point of view of a capitalist economy and ethics, the role of Africa - a role that was of particular importance for North America, primarily for those areas that were to become the United States. It was of particular importance for North America because at the time Europeans appeared there, the entire territory that now bears the name of Canada and the United States had no more than a million inhabitants (“Indians,” as the Europeans dubbed them), of which to Florida and from the ocean to the Appalachian Mountains there were probably only about 200 of thousands of men, women and children.
Due to the shortage of the indigenous population, whose labor could be exploited, there was a need for a massive import of labor; first of all, it was needed, and in significant quantities, to the plantation economy that was to be created in favorable climatic and soil conditions found by Europeans in the zone from present-day Florida to Maryland.
And the plantation economy, in contrast to the farming system with the help of numerous free-holders, was of particular interest to the rulers of England, since it gave them the best means to hold under their power the enormous working army necessary for the production of raw materials absent in the metropolis itself.
For such an economy, numerous, deprived of property and relatively unfree workers were required. A significant part of the population of this category, mainly in the form of enslaving servants (which will be discussed in more detail later [3]), was to be delivered to metropolitan countries and other regions of Europe.
And yet, most of the European population was needed in Europe itself; to bare one’s own continent would be inconceivable to kill a chicken in order to profit by its golden eggs. In addition, over the course of time, hundreds of thousands of workers were needed in the colossal area north of Maryland, where agricultural crops (cultures and forms of economic management became completely different.
The path to the importation of slaves to work in English America from the densely populated areas of Central and South America was closed, since these territories had already fallen under the domination of Spain and Portugal and were exploited by them. It was not possible to bring slaves from Asia, because, firstly, the conquest of Asia was destined to happen only many generations after the journey of Columbus, and secondly, even regardless of this, the power and equipment of European states was not enough at that time developed to cope with the problem of transporting slaves by sea from Asia to America.
In the conditions that existed in the XVI and XVII centuries, perhaps the only solution was - and it was chosen: the conquest and enslavement of Africa. Here was a continent with an area of almost 30 million square kilometers, located close enough to both Europe and America, so that it could be mastered by means of available equipment.
In addition, it was inhabited by millions of people who were at the agricultural stage of civilization; here for centuries they bred tamed cattle, smelted iron (they learned this in Africa, probably earlier than in the rest of the world), wove cotton fabrics, made soap, glass, pottery, blankets.
It should also be noted that, unlike the Indians, the Africans, enslaved and brought to America, were in a strange land and, escaping or resisting, could not count on the help of their people and their social organization. On the contrary, enslaved in Africa and brought to the New World, they were literally in chains, in a strange land, thousands of miles from their homeland and entirely dominated by ruthlessly armed to the teeth, supported by all the forces of the state punitive apparatus.
Slave trade operations brought the rich of the whole of Europe, and later the merchants of the New World, first of all, New England, fabulous profits, which allowed doubling and even quadrupling the initial investment in one or two voyages. It was on the basis of the slave trade that ports such as Bristol and Liverpool, Perth Amboy and Newport flourished.
In this sense, the enslavement of the African continent was of paramount importance for the development of world capitalism, just as the intensive exploitation of Africa, which began at the end of the 19th century, became the primary factor in the power of world imperialism. The magnitude of these operations in monetary terms gives an idea of the fact that the cost of more than 300 thousands of slaves transported to 878 Liverpool courts for ten years - from 1783 to 1793 a year, exceeded 15 million pounds; and this data is only for one port in one decade.
It is much more difficult to determine the scope of these operations in human terms. Over the 400 years of African slave trade, about 15 of millions of Africans were brought alive in the Western Hemisphere.
However, for every negro who reached these shores alive, there were five or six dead — killed in wars in Africa, during the movement of slave caravans to the coast, in pens, where they had to wait for the arrival of slave merchant ships, and in frequent uprisings aboard ships themselves and finally for a terrible six?, eight? or a ten-week “average transition” [4]. And what was the loss during the “middle transition” can be judged by the one example pointed out by Dr. Dubois in his classic study “Eliminating the trade of African slaves”: the royal African company plunged from 1680 to 1688 a year around 60 thousands of slaves, of which over 14 thousand died at sea.
This means that in the course of four centuries, from the 15th to the 19th centuries, Africa lost its enslaved 65 — 75 millions of its sons and daughters, who were also a selective part of the population, since no one usually turns slaves into old people, cripples and the sick. One cannot but recognize as one of the wonders of history that the peoples of Africa have endured this unparalleled test and that now they are more numerous and more highly organized than ever before, and moreover are on the verge of complete national liberation.
And yet, indisputably, the main contribution of Africa to the development of European capitalism and the American colonies - and, consequently, of American capitalism - was non-slave trade, however profitable it may be. The main contribution of Africa was rather in slavery itself, in the free and forced labor of millions of blacks over the course of more than two centuries.
Explaining the reasons for the rapid and mighty growth of American capitalism, historians pointed out - and pointed out quite correctly - a number of factors: the colossal size and fabulous wealth of the United States, the non-participation of the United States in Europe’s endless and devastating wars that weakened their competitors, and the American bourgeoisie allowed them to receive enormous arrived; immigration over many generations of millions of Europeans, Asians and Latin Americans with their skill, strength (and discord, which facilitated their submission and exploitation); finally, the long existence of a bourgeois-democratic republic — the ideal state form in the period of early development and maturation of capitalism.
All these factors are really very important, and below we will have more than once a reason to refer to them.
And yet no less important than any of the above, was the fact that within the boundaries of developing American capitalism for almost three hundred years lived a significant stratum of the population (from 10 to 20 percent of its total number), which was literally enslaved.
Operation in these conditions reached the most intense form, and the profits from cotton, sugar, rice, tobacco, hemp, gold, coal, and wood — the fruits of the labor of these millions of workers — were calculated by many billions. And all this is not counting the value that Negro slavery represented to the rulers of the country in terms of weakening the labor movement and supporting the reaction in general.
However, the question of the value of Negro slavery is rather complicated, because if, from the point of view of the most complete development of capitalism, slavery became the main obstacle, from the point of view of the economic conquest of the American continent and the early accumulation of capital, the enslavement of the Negro people was an integral element of the emergence and growth of American capitalism.
Colonization and Indians
England's policy towards the original population of the colonized areas was, as a rule, a policy of genocide. The territory on which thirteen colonies were later formed was inhabited by two large groups of tribes; these were the Iroquois and Algonquin, whose total number reached about 200 thousand people.
According to their culture, they were on the Paleolithic stage, and the only domesticated animal they had was a dog. They lived by hunting, fishing, and farming in its very primitive form; Much of the work, as well as some management functions, was the responsibility of women.
The land was in common ownership, and only hunting rights to certain sites could be transferred to certain groups of the population (as well as alienated) under the contract. The leaders in their position could not be compared with the European monarchs; it was rather the elders who owed their influence to the abilities and character traits they showed; their decisions were never the result of their will alone and were not binding on others until they received collective approval.
(White invaders were unable to understand these social institutions and preferred to view Indian society from the point of view of European laws and morals — a perversion that often lay at the heart of the rant about new "evidence" of Indian "perfidy.")
The British rulers were spawned by a society where the life of their own subjects (especially when it came to the poor) was valued very cheaply; so, theft of loaf of bread was a crime punishable by death. This inhumanity — a reflection of the communion society — manifested itself in the worst possible way when the Indians came into contact with it. After all, it was the people who owned the wealth and lands that were the subject of the greedy desires of the invading Europeans; besides, professing a pagan religion, he found a fanatical disregard for the “undoubtedly higher” rights of devout white Christians.
What followed, Mark Twain expressed in one phrase: the pious invaders, he wrote, "first rushed to their knees, and then to the natives." There was no such method that would be too brutal to implement the government's policy of conquering and exterminating the Indians. These methods varied from awarding so many pounds for each Indian scalp — a man, a woman, or a child — to bacteriological warfare in the form of spreading blankets infected with smallpox microbes.
Of the countless examples of early capitalist methods of conquest, it suffices to cite two.
The first comes from the governor of the Plymouth colony Bradford. Here is what he writes about the attack on the Pequot on the shores of the Mystic River in 1637, which was marked by the burning of Indian dwellings:
“It was terrible to look at this sight, to see them roasting in the fire, and the blood flows to extinguish the flame; the stench and stench rose indescribable. But victory seemed the sweet fruit of these sacrifices, and our people gave thanks to her for God. ”
Another example — and no less typical — is borrowed from the history of the Dutch governor of New Amsterdam (as New York was then called) Kift, who in 1643 had plotted an operation to root out the Indians in the vicinity of Manhattan. One night, he sent a soldier to launch a surprise attack on a raritan [5] village. Along with the governor that night was David de Vries, one of the leaders of the Dutch colonists. The following description belongs to him:
“I heard heart-rending screams. I run up to the shaft of the fort ... Nothing is visible, only the flames are blazing and the cries of the Indians being killed in a dream are heard ... When the day came, the soldiers returned to the fort. They cut eighty Indians and were convinced that they had committed an act worthy of Roman prowess ... The babies were torn off from the mother's breast, cut into pieces in front of their parents and threw the chopped bodies into fire and water.
Other suckers were tied to planks, and then they were shredded, cut, pierced, and cut into pieces with such frenzy that even a heart of stone would be touched by this spectacle. Some were thrown into the water, and when fathers and mothers tried to save them, the soldiers would not let them get ashore, so both parents and children drowned. ”
But there was not and there is nothing that could not be justified; contemporaries also found very convincing explanations for these atrocities. So, Robert Gray, the author of one of the earliest examples of “warring” literature - “Good luck in Virginia!” (1609 year), said:
“Earth ... is an estate granted by God to man. But most of it is inhabited and lawlessly usurped by wild animals and unreasonable creatures, or rude savages, who, because of their godless ignorance and blasphemous idolatry, are worse than the wildest and most ferocious animals. ”
More deadly, however, than even the bullets and fire of Europeans, were for the Indians of the disease, which brought the aliens and against which the Indians did not develop any immunity. For example, two years before the pilgrims arrived in Plymouth, the vast majority of Indians who inhabited present-day New England became extinct from the plague, which they apparently infected from fishermen who hunted off the coast of Maine. Maize fields of an almost completely destroyed tribe - such were the lands that the "pilgrims" appropriated upon their arrival.
Thus, the white colonialists brought death and destruction to the Indians, and from their side they met with persistent and heroic resistance, which constitutes one of the great sagas of human history. This, however, is a tragic saga, since the Indians, who were at enmity with each other, were inferior, as a rule, in numbers to the enemy, on whose side there was also tremendous superiority in armaments, and finally, unusually exposed to new diseases brought on by invaders from Europe, in the final account defeated. It is not superfluous to note that where renowned decency and honesty prevailed — as was the case with William Penn and Roger Williams — the Indians maintained fraternal relations with the whites.
From the Indians, however, the colonizing powers received not only their lands and wealth, but also their craftsmanship and equipment, without which the entire colonization enterprise would have ended in failure. To a certain extent, these acquisitions were the result of the conflict itself - and first of all it should be noted a new way of waging war, which in the days of the American Revolution was destined to play a decisive role in the conquest of independence. However, for the most part the contribution of the Indians was made in the order of voluntary acts of assistance.
So, it was the Indians who taught the newcomers how to clear the primeval forests and make the land suitable for processing. They taught whites how to sow maize and tobacco, peas and beans, pumpkin and zucchini, melon and cucumbers; how to cook maple sugar; how to use fish heads as fertilizer; how to hunt wild animals, put traps on them and make their skins; how to make canoes from birch bark (without which colonists would never have been able to penetrate into wild thickets); how to bake edible clams on the seashore.
The paths of the Indians were to become the paths of the colonists (just as many of these paths were to become the roads of the automobile era). In a word, the Indians taught the Europeans how to live in the New World, and they repaid them by taking away this Light from them.
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