The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South

by Eugene D. Genovese

PART The Setting - The Slave An Interpretation. PART Virgin Land and Servile Labor - The Low Productivity of Southern Slave Causes and Effects, The Negro Laborer in Africa and the Slave South, Cotton, Slavery, and Soil Exhaustion, Livestock in the Slave Economy, The Limits of Agricultural Reform. PART The Subservience of Town to Country - The Significance of the Slave Plantation of Southern Economic Development, The Industrialists under the Slave Regime, Slave Labor or Free in the Southern A Political Analysis of and Economic Debate. PART The General Crisis of the Slave South - Origins of Slavery Expansionism. - A Note on the Place of Economics in the Political Economy of Slavery.

Genres: History, American History, Economics, Nonfiction, Race, Civil War, American

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1965

About the author

Eugene Dominic Genovese was an American historian of the American South and American slavery. He has been noted for bringing a Marxist perspective to the study of power, class and relations between planters and slaves in the South. His work Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made won the Bancroft Prize. He later abandoned the Left and Marxism, and embraced traditionalist conservatism.

Reviews

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genovese was a master at fine distinctions and nuance. Here he refutes the two main views (at the time) of the South’s trajectory towards our national crisis--the "irrepressible conflict" view and the view which takes Southerners as anti-intellectual and unsophisticated--and champions his own. His thesis, which he defends with particularity, is that slavery is, for all its other flaws, an inefficient and ultimately unsustainable economic system. And, on top of this, that slavery was so integral to Southern civilization that the planter class--as the dominant class responsible for the direction and shape of the South--could not alter its stand without disastrous consequences. The book takes apart the South's slave-based economy and the "backwardness" of the South, while simultaneously investigating the "why" (refuting the "anti-intellectual/unsophisticated" view of the South) and the limited role that "economics" played to the overall shape of Southern society.

Genovese, by a series of essays/papers, builds his case, which is divided into four large sections. The first section and the epilogue are the broadest, and I found these bookends to be the most accessible and the most impactful.

(1) He starts by establishing slavery's role in the Old South. "The uniqueness of the antebellum South continues to challenge the imagination of Americans, who, despite persistent attempts cannot divert their attention from slavery. Nor should they, for slavery provided the foundation on which the South rose and grew." This uniqueness is something that Genovese takes pains to understand. And though he would later write a massive book on this specific topic, here he intimates his early findings of the ideology of the master class: "The planters commanded Southern politics and set the tone of social life. Theirs was an aristocratic, antibourgeois spirit with values and mores emphasizing family and status, a strong code of honor, and aspirations to luxury, ease, and acomplishment. In the planters' community, paternalism provided the standard of human relationships, and politics and statecraft were the duties and responsibilities of gentlemen. The gentleman lived for politics, not, like the bourgeois politician, off politics. . . The planter typically recoiled at the notions that profit should be the goal of life; that the approach to production and exchange should be internally rational and uncomplicated by social values; that thrift and hard work should be the great virtues; and that the test of the wholesomeness of a community should be the vigor with which its citizens expand the economy. . . At their best, Southern ideals constituted a rejection of the crass, vulgar, inhumane elements of a capitalist society. The slaveholders simply could not accept the idea that the cash nexus offered a permissible basis for human relations."

(2) Part two turns to the economics of slavery and inefficient nature of slave labor, along with the many reasons this was so. This includes the unproductive slave labor, soil exhaustion, abuse of animals and farm equipment, and the absence of agricultural reform. Genovese interacts with the leading scholarship in this area as well as the original sources from which the scholarship is derived.

(3) Next he addresses the plantation system in the South and the hegemony of the planter class, as well as the planters' battles with the shifting international, national, and regional markets--primarily considering the planters' struggle against industrialism both inside and outside of the South. Here again, Genovese shows his commitment to understanding the times and the full picture of the Southern economy, which lends his assertions more weight.

(4) In the fourth section, he focuses on the crisis in the South just prior to the War for Southern Independence (Genovese's chosen term), discussion of expansion and the root causes of the crisis. The fate of this crisis was largely in the hands of the dominant planter class: "The extinction of slavery would have broken the power of the slaveholders in general and the planters in particular. Ideologically, these men had committed themselves to slaveholding and the plantation regime as the proper foundations of civilization. Politically, the preservation of their own power depended on the preservation of its economic base. Economically, the plantation system would have tottered under free labor conditions and would have existed under some intermediary form like sharecropping only at the expense of the old ruling class."

(Epilogue) The epilogue, lastly, discusses the nature of a domestic view of work, labor, and social relations (which the South consciously adopted) versus a commercial view of social relations (which was predominant in the North and is accepted by most modern economies). It also shows the wreckage and poverty that all slave-based economies leave in their wake.

[Robert Owen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a phenomenal book, and my only regret about reading it is that I let it set too long on my “to read” pile before getting to it.

“The Political Economy of Slavery” is a classic in Civil War historical analysis and the approach Genovese took to explaining the war’s causes has inspired subsequent generations of American Civil War scholars. Originally published in 1965 amid debate over competing schools of thought about the causes of the Civil War, Genovese offered a unique theory that conformed to neither the “irrepressible conflict” or revisionist “bumbling generation” theories then in currency. The “irrepressible conflict" school held that the war was the product of simmering economic antagonisms between North and South that could not be resolved by any means other than war. The revisionist school held that the war was completely unnecessary and that under wiser and more capable political leadership, it could easily have been avoided through statesmanship and compromise. In that neither approach recognized the centrality of planter status interests Genovese argued that they each failed to grasp how invested wealthy and powerful planters were ideologically invested in slavery and the extent to which, given planter’s political power, a world without slavery was simply inconceivable.

The first thing to grasp in Genovese’s analysis is the total political, economic and social dominance of the slave owning planter class within antebellum southern society. Patricians of the old school, accustomed to command and servility, large slaveholders were, in every sense, the masters of all they surveyed and, through their influence, were likewise masters over most that they didn’t. Slaves were the key to this dominance – not only for the control it afforded them over the lives of their unfortunate chattel, but also, for host of ancillary effects on southern culture that tended to hoard all societal status within a limited group of planter elites. Without slavery, this group was merely a collection of rich men – with slavery, they assumed status akin to that of a feudal lord. It was not, therefore, because of the economics of slavery, but rather, in spite of it that these men fought so resolutely to retain the institution that conferred upon them such prestige, honor, wealth and power.

Separate and apart from its obvious moral deficiencies, slavery and its various ancillary consequences were devastating to the south. Due to the need to manage and control an inherently hostile workforce, the economy that slavery supported was necessarily circumscribed. The gang labor system, for example, which was necessitated by the need to manage the largest number of inmates with the smallest possible contingent of paid overseers was only viable within a plantation context. As a result, southern agricultural production was limited to a small number of staple products; principally cotton, but also tobacco, rice, indigo and sugar. Limiting production to these commodity products for export stifled the development of alternative agriculture and diversifying industrialization that gripped the free labor North during the first half of the 19th century. Credit instruments in the south were geared towards boom cycles of cotton deman and the liquidity it produced was reinvested in more land, more slaves and the next year’s crop. In the North, by contract, consumer demand fueled by free labor necessitated a wide array of complex, diversified financial instruments that financed new and important industrial endeavors which, in turn, financed more enterprises that employed more free laborers, spurred innovation and supercharged growth over a broad range of businesses. Whereas in the North expenditures on internal improvements, education of the workforce, innovative new products and technologies that promoted trade and fostered manufacturing efficiencies were promoted, in the South they were actively discouraged as they were seen as threats to the social status quo. Industrial development and agricultural efficiency was further hampered by the absence of consumers – with the exception of rudimentary tools, clothing, etc. necessary to outfit slaves, the only people buying things in the South were the rich planters who purchased luxury goods from the North and Europe. Moreover, the section’s dedication to slavery produced circumstances that inhibited, if not outright prohibited, revitalization of exhausted soil through effective fertilization and regimens of crop rotation, the maintenance of livestock, the procurement of labor saving tools and farm implements or the ability simply to grow wheat and corn in sufficient quantities to achieve self-sufficiency.

Moreover, while the consequences that plantation agriculture had on land health and productivity were disastrous, the various requirements of slavery made them virtually impossible to address. The various older southern states only managed to finance and facilitate limited land reform by selling surplus slaves further west - a move that, at one stroke, provided the planter with liquidity while reducing the number of slaves requiring supervision. As these Western states in turn confronted the same productivity dilemma, they hungered for new slave territories to take their slave surpluses off their hands. As a result, the only way to maintain slavery and survive was to insist on more slavery. Of course, as slavery was antithetical to free labor, Southern demands for more slave states came into conflict with an emerging Northern industrial capitalism that could not tolerate slavery or its several inherent economy-limiting idiosyncrasies.

Simple economic rationality would predict that in this fact-set would, sooner or later, compel the southern states to abandon slavery in favor of the Northern free-labor industrial capitalistic model. Genovese’s principal point is that instead of bowing to the demands of economic rationality, the powerful and wealthy southern elite, appalled at the notion of abandoning the institution that was ultimately the source of their immense prestige, power and influence, instead chose war.

Genovese’s arguments are compelling. In addition, the lessons they suggest have profound relevance with respect to a consideration of today’s contemporary political economy.

This was a tremendous book, and one that was very much worth my time and that I would highly recommend.

[Shain Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

In 1974, Genovese added to American historiography Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made, a masterpiece crafted from the labours of meticulously conducted research. Unfortunately, an earlier work, The Political Economy of Slavery: Studies in the Economy and Society of the Slave South, Genovese provided his audience falls well short of the mark he was able to establish with Roll, Jordan, Roll.

In 1965, some nine years prior to the publication of Roll, Jordan, Roll, Genovese penned The Political Economy of Slavery. The bases of Genovese’s thesis in The Political Economy of Slavery is that slavery was unprofitable and could not survive. According to Genovese, the South’s “greatest economic weakness was the low productivity of its labor force.” Whilst Genovese’s point is well thought out, the historian does not mention whether or not free white labourers would have been any more productive. Furthermore, Genovese later contradicts his “the low productivity” by writing that “so demoralized was white labor that planters often preferred to hire slaves because they were better workers” and later still Genovese writes the use of whites did not guarantee a better work force than did the use of Negroes.” If Genovese’s statement pertaining to “the low productivity” were to hold true, the productivity produced by free white labourers would have had to have been significantly poor for the low productivity of Negroes to have been considered preferable.

Contradictions, when it comes to The Political Economy of Slavery, are the least of Genovese’s issues. Genovese references an apparent inability the institution of slavery had when it came to the possibility of reformation. In writing “while slavery existed, the South had to be bound to a plantation system and an economy based on a few crops,” Genovese, when it pertains to the nature of slavery, reveals a lack of understanding. From the way Genovese presents his work, he appears to shift the blame of slavery from the slaveholders to the slaves themselves. Furthermore, Genovese appears to have tangled certain aspects of economic and political developments of the mid-nineteenth century. Is there any tangible evidence supporting Genovese’s argument the secessionists needed, as the historian writes it, “an expansionist solution for their economic and social problems”? When it came to conducting the required research of economic developments of the mid-nineteenth century, Genovese should have considered following Allan Nevins’ example.

The political facts Genovese presents are equally as dubious as his economic facts. There were noteworthy political victories supporting slaveholders in the United States Congress which Genovese appears to have underplayed significantly. Fortunately for American historiography, Genovese’s work vastly improved, subsequently providing readers with Roll, Jordan, Roll, a book of significant substance.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yes, it is a little dated, but Genovese produced a lot of influential work on the slave South, so if you are studying this stuff you really should read him. And I found this to be a really fast, interesting read. It doesn't sound like it will be, but he's got a lot of compelling argument here. Basically, Genovese wants to show that the Southern slaveholding economy didn't work at all. It was hopelessly backwards. Plantations were horribly inefficient, and they couldn't invest in labor-saving efficiency innovations, because anything that saved labor meant that the slaves had less work to do. If the slaves had less work, then they would have to be sold. But if all the plantations became more efficient, then there would be a permanent surplus of slaves, which would mean that slaves would lose value, which would lead eventually to the end of slavery, and the death of the planter class. So the slave holders responded by investing all their money in more slaves and more land, rather than in innovation.
This is a debatable argument, as the supposedly anti-Capitalist inefficient plantations made a TON of money for the plantation owners, but hey, history is all about debate. The book remains important.

[Ram · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think "The Southern Tradition" is better, and therefore a real outlier in Genovese's late-life work, incidentally; but this book started it all for me, as far as my admiration for Genovese and his thought. It is this book that taught me to look deeper for meaning and to stop eating the intellectual paste being passed out by the John Hope Franklins and the Ira Berlins of the world, to say nothing of Herbert Gutman. PlaySkool paste-eaters, all.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Argues that the South was a premodern, precapitalist society. The slave system had become "the basis of the Southern social order," not just one form of labor; it had created a planter aristocracy that had to protect slavery to protect its power. Because the South's economy was inefficient and exploitive, the only way to protect slavery was to expand. So the conflict with the capitalist North became irrepressible.

[Chase R · Rating 5 out of 5]

loved the full chapter on soil erosion

[LaShana Claude]

Capitalism largely directs its profits into an expansion of plant and equipment, not labor; that is, economic progress is qualitative. Slavery, for economic reasons as well as for those of social prestige, directs its reinvestments along the same lines as the original investment- in slaves and land; that is, economic progress is quantitative.


-engaged in a growing conflict with Northern farmers and businessmen over such issues as tarriffs, homesteads, internal improvements, and the decisive question of the balance of political power in the Union.

-Find the lecture if you can!

[Richard Pierce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Genovese is a respected historian regardless of what you may think of his political philosophy. What sets this book apart is that he also understands economics as they relate to history. This book has so much information in it, it is worth reading twice.

[Maddox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for class
I really enjoyed this, Genovese’s Marxist historical methods really come to the forefront here as compared to Roll, Jordan, Roll.

[Emma Vanzant · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insanely relevant time to have been reading a Marxist approach to slavery so this is me logging that

[Holozoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

While definitely not the best book on slavery, this book was quiet revolutionary in its approach. For any historian on civil rights or colonial america, The Political Economy of Slavery and Roll Jordan Roll are must reads.

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing. So thorough & analytical, & just so much information i might reread it. I really enjoyed how Genovese tied the history to economics & brought in a ton of pertinent statistics that never seem to be talked about.

[Anthony]

pretty awesome and in-depth so far.

[Joshua · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dated, and (the also dated) Roll Jordan, Roll is much better.