Slavery vs industrialization?

Forced labour systems in communist states would often suffer from sabotage from disgruntled badly treated workers. There's a lot more stuff about to break in a factory than on a plantation.
 
That's essentially how Communist states industrialized as well, forced labor projects on factories, mining, infrastructure etc.

Forced labor isn't the same. A slave is a piece of property, while somebody sentenced to hard labor supposedly did something "illegal" (by that, I mean something the regime didn't like).

And I say that to everybody who tries to make the comparison. Yeah, they're force to work, but they aren't property and are still citizens (which means what in Stalin's USSR?).
 
Forced labor isn't the same. A slave is a piece of property, while somebody sentenced to hard labor supposedly did something "illegal" (by that, I mean something the regime didn't like).

And I say that to everybody who tries to make the comparison. Yeah, they're force to work, but they aren't property and are still citizens (which means what in Stalin's USSR?).

Chattel slavery like in the United states before the Civil War is different than the type of slavery adopted in Brazil and the Romans practiced. I think the comparison works more in the latter, and I had already conceded that it wouldn't have been effective in Antebellum South that much over fears of uprisings.
 
The totalitarianisms of the 20th showed that slavery and industrialization were compatible.

True to a point, but the question is, how long could such a system survive, without the aid of conspiracies or extreme political corruption? It would probably have to deal with a significant amount of sabotage and certainly, there would be many riots of slaves, some of whom wouldn't be afraid of consequences.
 
In general, when the cost of labor is low, the cost of capital is high, and vice versa. This is because as you increase the price of one, people look for ways to reduce their costs. Thus if wages are high, people look for ways to reduce that cost relative to the item being produced - which means they invest more in tools and other things to make that expensive worker more productive to offset the higher cost. The more being spent on such capital tools eventually results in the cost of such declining because

First world industrial development is based on cost of capital being low, with labor cost being high instead. Obviously, if you have low cost labor then there is much less incentive to invest in capital because you can simply throw more labor (which is cheap) rather than spend lots of money on some kind of capital tool. Thus undeveloped nations have extremely cheap labor (lots of poor people), and the cost to acquire any kind of capital tends to be high because there is so little of it and the owners can charge you lots to use it.

Whenever you are dealing with slavery, you are dealing with cheap labor. It is the reason the institution exists. Thus you have an economy that effectively punishes anyone from moving to an advanced industrial paradigm.

Slaves in workshops can only produce so much industrial goods. Eventually you need to make large scale investments in assembly lines, factories, and other large scale capital improvements. Unfortunately, in a slave economy, such investments will be a lot more expensive than in a non-slave economy. Also, as you try to expand industrial production using such tools, you need to invest more in the workforce for training, which is an increase in the labor cost which is defeating the purpose of utilizing a slave force instead of free labor. And of course, as you invest more in a slave and build his skills, if the slave runs away, it hurts you more even while you are giving him the skills that would help him if he does run away.

This isn't saying that a slave economy can't have some industry, but it will be far behind industrial powers with a free economy. The slave economy will always be manufacturing the low end, least valuable products while the free economy eventually moves to the most innovative, most profitable products. Simply speaking, the slave economy will never be able to compete against their international competitors, and they will always be forced to specialize in areas where cheap labor is the more important competitive skill.

Exactly how communist labor fits into this is complicated. It is important to note that such industrialization was always accompanied by mass killings because they needed to appropriate capital (and food to feed the labor force) from others. And they usually needed to import such manufacturing expertise from the outside because they were incapable of doing it themselves. Stalin had to make lots of deals with the people at Ford and other American corporations to get these capital goods and managerial expertise to set up their huge plants. And in all cases, the products they made were more expensive and less desirable on the world market place and were inferior to what the free world could produce.
 
Exactly how communist labor fits into this is complicated. It is important to note that such industrialization was always accompanied by mass killings because they needed to appropriate capital (and food to feed the labor force) from others. And they usually needed to import such manufacturing expertise from the outside because they were incapable of doing it themselves. Stalin had to make lots of deals with the people at Ford and other American corporations to get these capital goods and managerial expertise to set up their huge plants. And in all cases, the products they made were more expensive and less desirable on the world market place and were inferior to what the free world could produce.

More importantly, communist labour markets only arose in places where available capital was not investing enough in production to make the cost of labour sufficiently high, even if the labour was legally free.

Expropriating capital to invest in underpriced labour instead was basically what the revolutions were about. They generally hit a ceiling in competitiveness in most industries because the cost of capital still remained relatively high compared to the competition.
 
It is important to note that such industrialization was always accompanied by mass killings because they needed to appropriate capital (and food to feed the labor force) from others.
India and Ireland, check.
Post 1776 expansion, check.
Algeria, check.

Doesn't hold all that well for continental (German, Belgian) or settler-society industrialisation outside of the United States, but is a reasonable generalisation regarding industrialisation. In fact, in the German and Belgian case, industrialisation came first, and the mass killing came after.

And in all cases, the products they made were more expensive and less desirable on the world market place and were inferior to what the free world could produce.

The Soviet Union spent a great deal of its economic energy in internal colonisation, it had a captive market in the non RSFSR states. Particularly in the 1920s through 1970s the necessity of competing with other imperialist capitalist powers in anything other than a political-military domain is simply not there.

* * *

I really, really, really heartily recommend people read some actual workplace and economic history of the Soviet Union before continuing to blather in this thread. "A Worker in a Workers' State" should be widely available and deals with post-56 workplace resistance to quality and quantity drives. Andrle's "Workers in Stalin's Russia" does a good job on breaking with a number of the fallacies regarding labour versus capital in the 1930s expansion period. About the only heartening thing about this discussion's overall relationship with the scholarship is that nobody is treating the Soviet Union as a "post-capitalist" society in terms of capital investment or wage labour.

yours,
Sam R.
 
Overall, slave labour is more mobile than free labour, not less. Slave owners can reallocate (sell or rent) slaves to wherever gives them the best rate of return, either between industries or between regions. Free labour is less inclined to move, since free workers often have noneconomic reasons to stay where they are (friends, family, lifestyle, etc). Slaves aren't given that choice.

As I said earlier, slave labour moved between cotton and urban areas. Or, equally, between different geographic regions. This mobility was also why investment in fixed capital was less; the slaveowners might pick up and move at any time. (Even when they didn't move, the possibility that they might move meant that they were less inclined to invest in fixed capital.)

The situation in the first half of the nineteenth century was that, for the main slaveholding areas (Brazil, Cuba, antebellum South), the agricultural market gave the slaveholders better returns than returns from manufacturing.

Of course, agricultural prices were in long-term real decline throughout the nineteenth century (especially cotton and sugar). With obvious consequences if slavery had continued for longer.
They really can't sell their slaves in the antebellum South. They need x number of slaves to run their plantations so they can pay back their creditors and do all the things a Southern aristocrat is expected. Their slaves are collateral on their mortgages, so they can't afford to liquidate them.

Because of these factors, slaves are very much tied to the land, and it hinders maximizing returns. Trying to get out of plantation production was both socially and economically difficult.

Historically, there weren't great movements of slaves from plantations to cities. There were, however, massive movements of free labor to cities and industrial production, with the added benefit that free laborer could at least be working towards his own benefit, however meager that turned out to be.
 
They really can't sell their slaves in the antebellum South. They need x number of slaves to run their plantations so they can pay back their creditors and do all the things a Southern aristocrat is expected. Their slaves are collateral on their mortgages, so they can't afford to liquidate them.

Nonsense. Slaves could be, and were, sold in large numbers. Yes, in some cases, some slaveowners resisted selling their slaves... right up until the point said slaveowners went broke and all of their slaves were sold off to the highest bidder. The effect was the same in terms of mobility of slave labour.

Slaves were also rented out for industrial or other purposes, in some cases, even where not sold outright.

Because of these factors, slaves are very much tied to the land, and it hinders maximizing returns. Trying to get out of plantation production was both socially and economically difficult.

Slaves were not tied to particular crops, to particular land, or even land in general. The economic history of the South makes that perfectly clear. When agricultural prices dropped - which they did most notably in the 1830s/early 1840s - slave labour moved out of agricultural plantations and into either urban centres, or sometimes into rural/small town industries (most notably textiles).

For details of movement of slaves in and out of cities in response to agricultural prices, see Claudia Goldin (1976) "Urban Slavery in the American South, 1820-1860".

For more general treatment of slave labour, its mobility between crops, or between geographical locations (i.e. not fixed to a given piece of land) see Gavin Wright, "Old South, New South" and "Slavery and American Economic Development" and Robert Fogel "Without Consent or Contract".

Historically, there weren't great movements of slaves from plantations to cities.

Not in times when agricultural prices are high, but that's because there was a limited supply of slaves, and the cotton planters could bid more for them.

When agricultural prices dropped, then slaves did move into the cities. Although many moved out again after cotton prices rose.

There were, however, massive movements of free labor to cities and industrial production, with the added benefit that free laborer could at least be working towards his own benefit, however meager that turned out to be.

In North American terms, that was true, but due almost entirely to immigration. During the early stages of North American industrialisation, the labour force consisted largely of immigrants, and in some cases native-born females (mostly the unmarried ones), since female labour was largely under-utilised, for obvious reasons.

Native-born American whites, especially American white males, were very resistant to working in early factories and the like. They were more inclined to work for themselves or try to strike out west in search of land and an independent lifestyle. Working for someone else was loathed, whether as a factory worker or as a hired hand on someone else's farm.

As I mentioned upthread, the presence of slavery (and, to a lesser degree the hostile disease environment) meant that immigrants mostly avoided the South. So whatever early industry developed there had to come from native labour, free or slave. Mostly slave.
 
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