Who said you two were "arguing?" It's intellectual discourse.

I was just teasing about "bowing out" from such discourse because you playfully provided that disclaimer about possibly not having your info straight.

I have no idea. Sorry.

Right. :)

BTW, I don't know why you can't find the more recent Marxist and neo-Marxist writings. I have quite a few of them and know some of the authors.
Maybe you're looking for a particular thing or searching within a particular discipline (i.e. economics or history---when disciplines dismiss particular works it doesn't mean that other disciplines dismiss them. Plus, it doesn't mean that newer scholars won't bring the works back into relevance in the disciplines that have dismissed them.).

Just wanted to highlight the importance of being cautious when making certain sweeping claims.

Yeah it's why I don't normally get involved in deep intellectual discussions. I know that either I don't know enough, my knowledge is gappy from years between learning about the subject and the discussion, or someone is doing a dissertation and is studying it hardcore so I get to be a little bit right but they get to be a lot right. And because it's the internet and thus serious business, I don't feel the need to go open up my notes and textbooks for spontaneous discussion.
Playing dumb is way easier. But I am happy to find out that there are people here who share my interest in Africa's history and its relevance to its current problems.
But I so wasn't even alive back then so it's totally not my problem that we're flooding their markets with our overstock because the US Government pays farmers subsidies to produce extra crop and then laws require overseas markets to sell the import before they can sell their own produce. Nope, not my problem. I didn't do it.
I don't even drink coffee anymore. Starbucks is supposed to have one pot of Fair Trade Coffee on all day, all stores according to the website. Everytime I go in and ask for it, not only do they not have it, I get very confused looks and replies. I've pretty much quit coffee altogether and just drink water. I pick up Ethos Water when Starbuck inevitably disappoints me.

It totally sucks. England has a coffee chain called Costa Coffee. All fair trade and they don't charge extra for soymilk. The UK's gone all fair trade everywhere, even fruit in the supermarkets. It's amazing.

OMG you're so right. It's nothing to do with developed nations, it's all the poorer country's fault.
The US produces way too much crop and floods the global market. Developing nations cannot hope to compete when they have to sell the import before they can sell their own stock. Just a 1% increase of exports for Africa in the global market would lift 100 million people out of poverty.

EDIT: Okay, this thread has been very civil up till now. I do not want to get drawn into an argument and feel angry because 1. internet arguments are stupid and 2. this is a subject I feel strongly about and the better place to learn about it is the actual website. http://www.maketradefair.com There are a few research papers on there, a few reports with statistics. I'm not just pulling this all out of my ass.
I don't want to feel mad, angry or sarcastic, so unless you can be less volatile, I'm officially bowing out.

That's funny because I was fed the opposite. Could be an age difference thing or a school resource difference thing.

If it had not been for my parents who made us read and watch educational things, I would have had no idea that Europeans didn't save the continent AND the world. :) I would've also thought that the only thing that black Americans contributed to society was being slaves (that's the only time black Americans were discussed until we started watching Eyes on the Prize for Black History MONTH (more like week :rolleyes:) in middle school).

Interesting. Do you find this to be untrue based on FACT or just because it hurts your feelings? :) Will I now read that the Trail of Tears was more of a destination wedding?

It should hurt many black Americans' feelings more than yours because it has continued to impact our family lineages, ability to accumulate generations of wealth, eating patterns, etc. Yet, we're constantly told to get the hell over it. :) So I find it interesting that THAT bothers you.

Well, alriiiiiiighty then.

Take care.

And some confuse their "logic" for something more substantive and confuse it with a true cost-benefit analysis approach. You admit that there was abuse but you want to debate semantics of "a little" versus "a lot." Like such subjectivity makes a difference.

Do you know how many Africans died in route during the TransAtlantic slave trade? Cost-benefit analysis never precludes ill treatment. Then or now:

Sure, logic tells us that more employers would invest in making employees happy and healthy. Happy and healthy employees make for good workers and more profit. Yet...the average American employee feels overworked, underpaid, insecure in their jobs, and broke as hell because they don't have benefits. Logic would also tell many people "hey...get a new job or demand better treatment...these damn companies need YOU more than YOU need them....." However, the reality of the matter is that the average American employee across social classes isn't a hot commodity on the market so it's a co-dependent relationship both psychologically and materially. But they remain cheap and dispensible labor.

Apply that general logic to slavery and you'll understand why the facts are as they are.

/back to dismissing you :p

@ SEC Of course, now elementary school textbooks in Georgia are labeling slavery "low-wage labor." Perhaps that is to your comfort.

I am pleased to hear that you were exposed to a more three-dimensional narrative about slavery. Many of the ideas that you introduce emerged to contradict the accepted narrative about "happy" enslaved people. I am glad to know that some of those ideas are gaining currency outside of the ivory tower.

Plantation owners replaced the enslaved people that they beat to death, worked to death, and starved to death, by breeding the women to produce more chattel. So even if they were not in on the raping themselves, they did breed enslaved women as though they were animals to increase their wealth (to which enslaved peoples contributed).

That's certainly a capitalist approach to slavery. "Low wage labor" is the market terminology but to be realistic they should put "no wage labor for the slaves but the pay went to the slave sellers."

I didn't know textbooks were saying that. Do you know when they started including this?

But it isn't too far off the mark for people who believe that it was about the labor and not about where the people came from (i.e. the belief that Africans were only chosen because they were identifiable as NOT European). I agree with that framework to a great extent but believe that the reinforcing role that prejudice and racism played should not be downplayed or ignored.

Ditto @ the rest of your post, btw.

Yeah I guess--as you probably guessed I'm the overzealous doctoral student. I certainly agree that historians use a lot of Marxist tools of analysis but in terms of accepting the overall structural argument I don't see many people doing that these days. The historical discipline as a whole has shifted to cultural history (using both structuralist & poststructuralist anthropological techniques) as well as the literary turn & the accompanying return of intellectual history. Actually one of the big things now in my field (17th c. France) is the return of diplomatic history but analyzing it based on sexuality, gender, culture, etc.

I am pretty old-school amongst my fellow graduate students in that I'm really interested in economic history, but economic history of the kind that was practiced in the 1980s is dead, dead, dead... deader than dead. Most economic history is focused on microeconomics today. That's the kind of work I do. I think that part of the popularity of microeconomics is historians' general turn away from huge explanatory structures. Just a hunch. But I can honestly say that in my experience Marxism is basically nowhere around me. But who knows, that could just be the discipline of history.

Do you always make claims about the practice of chattel slavery in America based on your gut reaction to your elementary school textbooks and not your own research?

I have many friends that study these issues full-time. That devote their lives to reading sources about slavery. I would say the picture you got in elementary school is pretty accurate. In the last 15 years the ways that slaves were able to successfully resist their masters and oppression have been brought to the foreground. But not that's not to say that they were happy or well-treated. Just that they were very savvy people who sometimes pulled the wool over their masters' eyes.

Well, it certainly isn't every discipline. ;)

ha, yeah.

Woooooooooowwwwwwwww.

Reading this just made me really, really sad.