pynchon-l-digest V2 #2833

[Three Times One Minus One]

I was referring to sharecropping, the most prevalent form of labor after the 
civil war. This was where labor was exchanged for land (on a temporary basis 
usually) and foodstuff rather than simple wages. Debt was used as means of 
coercing labor. Obviously, the southern labor system (for whites in 
particular) wasn't the same as the labor systems found in Prussia or Russia 
before the mid-19th century, but there are many similarities. The wage-based 
labor of the industrial north wouldn't challenge the hegemony of 
sharecropping until the New Deal and World War Two when the Agricultural 
Adjustment Act, the mimimum wage law, and the arrival of defense related 
industries in the south transformed the southern labor system.


From: Terrance <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
To: Three Times One Minus One <pantychrist at hotmail.com>
CC: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: pynchon-l-digest V2 #2833
Date: Wed, 23 Oct 2002 14:05:15 -0400



Three Times One Minus One wrote:

 > However, whether the south was capitalist or not is an entirely different 
question. >It depends on whether your criteria for a capitalist economy 
includes only the type of
 > labor being used--in which case the south isn't capitalist--before or 
after
 > the civil war, due to the prevalence of sharecropping, a feudal system of
 > labor--or whether you point to the rather obvious fact that the southern
 > elite were using other people's labor to accumulate capital--in which 
case
 > the south most certainly is capitalist.

What feudal system of labor? Can you tell me what you mean by a feudal
system of labor in the USA south.


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