Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center
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whose timber was used by shipyard workers rapidly turning<br />
out slave ships; the clerk in the New York City export<br />
house checking bales of tobacco awaiting shipment to London;<br />
the master cooper in the Boston rum distillery; the<br />
young Virginia overseer building up his "stake" to try and<br />
start his own plantation; the immigrant German farmer<br />
renting a team of five slaves to get his farm started; and on<br />
and on. While the cream of the profits went to the planter<br />
and merchant capitalists, the entire settler economy was<br />
raised up on a foundation of slave labor, slave products,<br />
and the slave trade.<br />
Nor was it just slavery within the thirteen Colonies<br />
alone that was essential. The commerce and industry of<br />
these Euro-Amerikan settlers was interdependent with<br />
their fellow slave-owning capitalists of the West Indies,<br />
Central and Southern America. Massachusetts alone, in<br />
1774, distilled 2.7 million gallons of rum-distilled from<br />
the molasses of the West Indies slave plantations.(22) Two<br />
of the largest industries in Amerika were shipbuilding and<br />
shipping, both creatures of the slave trade. Commerce with<br />
the slave colonies of not only England, but also Holland,<br />
Spain and France, was vital to the young Amerikan<br />
economy. Eric Williams, Walter Rodney and others have<br />
shown how European capitalism as a whole literally<br />
capitalized itself for industrialization and world empire out<br />
of Afrikan slaverv. It is important to see that all classes of<br />
Euro-Amerikan settlers were equally involved in building a<br />
new bourgeois nation on the back of the Afrikan colonial<br />
proletariat.<br />
By the time of the settler War of Independence,<br />
the Afrikan nation made up over 20% of the non-Indian<br />
population - one Afrikan colonial subject for every four<br />
settlers. Afrikan slaves, although heavily concentrated in<br />
the plantation Colonies, were still represented throughout<br />
the settler territories. Their proportion in the non-Indian<br />
population ranged from 2-3% i? upper New England to<br />
8% in Rhode Island, to 14% in New York, and to 41% and<br />
60% respectively in Virginia and South Carolina. (23)<br />
While they mainly labored as the agricultural proletariat,<br />
Afrikan labor played a crucial role in all the major trades<br />
and industries of the times. The colonized Afrikan nation,<br />
much more than the new Euro-Amerikan settler nation,<br />
was a complete nation - that is, possessing among its people<br />
a complete range of applied sciences, practical crafts<br />
and productive labor. Both that colonized nation and the<br />
Indian nations were self-sufficient and economically<br />
whole, while the Euro-Amerikan invasion society was<br />
parasitic. While the class structure of the new Afrikan nation<br />
was still in a formative stage, distinct classes were visible<br />
within it well before the U.S. War of Independence.<br />
In Virginia, it appears that an overwhelming majority<br />
of the skilled workers-carpenters, ship pilots,<br />
coopers, blacksmiths, etc.-were Afrikans. Nor was it just<br />
nonmarket production for direct use on the plantation;<br />
Afrikan artisans produced for the commercial market, and<br />
were often hired out by their masters. For example, we<br />
know that George Washington was not only a planter but<br />
also what would today be called a contractor-building<br />
structures for other planters with his gang of Afrikan slave<br />
carpenters (the profits were split between "The Father of<br />
Our Country" and his slave overseer).(24) The Afrikan<br />
presence in commerce and industry was widespread and<br />
all-pervasive, as one labor historian has summarized:<br />
"Some of the Africans who were brought to<br />
America in chains were skilled in woodcarving, weaving,<br />
construction, and other crafts. In the South, Black slaves<br />
were not only field hands; many developed a variety of<br />
skills that were needed on a nearly self-sufficient plantation.<br />
Because skilled labor of whatever color was in great<br />
demand, slaves were often hired out to masters who owned<br />
shops by the day, month, or year for a stipulated amount.<br />
Some were hired out to shipmasters, serving as pilots and<br />
managers of ferries. Others were used in the maritime<br />
trades as shipcaulkers, longshoremen, and sailmakers. A<br />
large number of slaves were employed in Northern cities as<br />
house servants, sailors, sailmakers, and carpenters. New<br />
York had a higher proportion of skilled slaves than any<br />
other Colony-coopers, tailors, bakers, tanners,<br />
goldsmiths, cabinetmakers, shoemakers, and glaziers.<br />
Both in Charleston and in the Northern cities, many artisans<br />
utilized slave labor extensively."(25)<br />
Afrikans were the landless, propertyless, permanent<br />
workers of the U.S. Empire. They were not just slaves<br />
- the Afrikan nation as a whole served as a proletariat for<br />
the Euro-Amerikan oppressor nation. This Afrikan colony<br />
supported on its shoulders the building of a Euro-<br />
Amerikan society more "prosperous," more<br />
"egalitarian," and yes, more "democratic" than any in<br />
semi-feudal Old Europe. The Jeffersonian vision of<br />
Amerika as a pastoral European democracy was rooted in<br />
the national life of small, independent white landowners.<br />
Such a society had no place of a proletariat within its ranks<br />
- yet, in the age of capitalism, could not do without the<br />
labor of such a class. Amerika imported a proletariat from<br />
Afrika, a proletariat permanently chained in an internal<br />
colony, laboring for the benefit of all settlers. Afrikan<br />
workers might be individually owned, like tools and draft<br />
animals, by some settlers and not others, but in their colonial<br />
subjugation they were as a whole owned by the entire<br />
Euro-Amerikan nation.<br />
3. Euro-Amerikan Social Structure<br />
When we point out that Amerika was the most<br />
completely bourgeois nation in world history, we mean a<br />
four-fold reality: 1. Amerika had no feudal or communal<br />
past, but was constructed from the ground up according to<br />
the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie. 2. Amerika began<br />
its national life as an oppressor nation, as a colonizer of<br />
oppressed peoples. 3. Amerika not only has a capitalist ruling<br />
class, but all classes and strata of Euro-Arnerikans are<br />
bourgeoisified, with a preoccupation for petty privileges<br />
and property ownership the normal guiding star of the<br />
white masses. 4. Amerika is so decadent that it has no proletariat<br />
of its own, but must exist parasitically on the colonial<br />
proletariat of oppressed. nations and nationalminorities.<br />
Truly, a Babylon "whose life was death".<br />
The settler masses of Colonial Amerika had a<br />
situation totally unlike their cousins back in Old Europe.<br />
9 For the privileges of conquest produced a nonproletarian