I too watched a documentary on the US civil war. I learned it was about power, greed and fear. The southerners had complete control over their slaves and losing them meant becoming completely dependant on northern machinery. They likened this to becoming slaves themselves, which was obviously horrifying considering their own behaviour in this regard. So war was their only option, not only to maintain and then grow their properties, but also to destroy or take over the northern industrial capabilities.
Sounds evil, which it was, but at the same time it was a matter of survival, as proven after the war when many plantations and businesses using the former slaves collapsed.
The war happened because the southerners had nothing to lose and everything to gain from it. Or at least, that’s how the documentary portrayed it.
Sounds evil, which it was, but at the same time it was a matter of survival, as proven after the war when many plantations and businesses using the former slaves collapsed.
Yes, but not because they became enslaved to northern machinery. Because the slaves left, having been treated horribly, and the post-war planter aristocracy was incapable of luring any but the most desperate back since the aristocracy was darkly hilariously (in the sense of “the sheer gall of asking someone to come back and work for peanuts or goodwill after enslaving them”) and gruesomely unwilling to pay their former slaves a fair wage, even as their plantations were overgrown and their properties rotted, unmaintained.
Turns out that when almost half of your labor force up and leaves because you’ve been a piece of shit, and you’re unwilling to stop being a piece of shit even to lure them back, the economy slumps. Who’d’ve thought?
The materialist analysis is really lacking on the Civil War. It really was a war of ideas. People, including demographics on a large-scale, do not always act rationally, but according to the values set by their societies.
I too watched a documentary on the US civil war. I learned it was about power, greed and fear. The southerners had complete control over their slaves and losing them meant becoming completely dependant on northern machinery. They likened this to becoming slaves themselves, which was obviously horrifying considering their own behaviour in this regard. So war was their only option, not only to maintain and then grow their properties, but also to destroy or take over the northern industrial capabilities.
Sounds evil, which it was, but at the same time it was a matter of survival, as proven after the war when many plantations and businesses using the former slaves collapsed.
The war happened because the southerners had nothing to lose and everything to gain from it. Or at least, that’s how the documentary portrayed it.
Yes, but not because they became enslaved to northern machinery. Because the slaves left, having been treated horribly, and the post-war planter aristocracy was incapable of luring any but the most desperate back since the aristocracy was darkly hilariously (in the sense of “the sheer gall of asking someone to come back and work for peanuts or goodwill after enslaving them”) and gruesomely unwilling to pay their former slaves a fair wage, even as their plantations were overgrown and their properties rotted, unmaintained.
Turns out that when almost half of your labor force up and leaves because you’ve been a piece of shit, and you’re unwilling to stop being a piece of shit even to lure them back, the economy slumps. Who’d’ve thought?
The materialist analysis is really lacking on the Civil War. It really was a war of ideas. People, including demographics on a large-scale, do not always act rationally, but according to the values set by their societies.