In pre-capitalist history, concepts like "revolutionary line" and "united front" are of no relevance to us. Despite contradictions, flowing from their historic situation and embodied in their persons, folks like Touissant, Robespierre and even Cromwell played progressive roles in history. This is all despite the fact that there were forces in their countries and time that they came into conflict with that represented a clearer anticipation of communism (Moise, Jacobins, socialist Christian sects).

The Haitian Revolution is particularly more inspiring (and ignored by official history) than other revolutions of the time due to implications in the fight against racism and colonialism more recently and currently. You should post that Welfare Poets song again.

Your definition of marronage is wrong. You should reconsider using the name Mackandal when you don't understand the significance of marronage within the Haitian Revolution.

Mackandal was a revolutionary vodun priest. Without him, there would have been no Haitian Revolution.

Moreover, maroonage is NOT an opportunist concept. And, Toussaint is NOT the ideological birth father of the marronage - Makandal is.

Marronage is a revolutionary tradition that is Pan-African. It manifests through many different forms such as maritime marronage, petit marronage, grande marronage, intralimital, and extralimital.

The first image that you use in this article perfectly encapsulates marronage - enslaved people meeting in forests and swamps and practicing vodun. Every time they meet, they are plotting on how to liberate themselves. The forest and swamps become their maroon camps and that is where they build elaborate traps so that the master can't find them.

One maroon camp - Palmares - existed for over a hundred years. Revolutionaries like Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey can also be considered as maroons. Would you call them opportunists?

toussaint lost support because he forced the ex-slaves back on to the plantations, and unfortunately, there were abuses.

the people didn't understand, and he never explained. there was a failure to communicate. he took it for granted that the people understood that without production the revolution would fail.

but without Toussaint, or someone like him, there would have been no revolution.

Toussaint, like the principal character in avatar, straddled two worlds. he understood the mind of the people, and the mind of the master. this is what allowed him to lead, and incorporate some of the more progressive understanding from the french revolution.

While it's true that the objective conditions present, these by themselves d not make revolution. people have to captured by an idea. they have to embody it, for revolution to happen. that's what happened with haiti. but not at first. without his leadership the insurrection would have lost momentum, would have lacked direction and purpose. this is important to understand. revolutions cannot happen without a transformation in consciousness. the slave needed to stop seeing himself as a slave. as Toussaint already had.

Jan Makandal, (or others),

Could we please here more about the "revolutionary line" represented by Moise, and also more about Toussaint's "repression" of Moise?

Did Moise (or anyone else's) resistance and/or aliternative to Toussaint's approach point to an alternative way forward? Or were they merely threats to one path that did not offer or suggest a genuine alternative?

Also Jan Makandal: What is your basis for claiming that Toussaint himself "owned slaves"?

And then on the other hand, to Mike E and others: What were the similarities and differences between outright slavery and the "the plantation system" as it was promoted and reproduced under Toussaint?

@ Mrs. Boris

I agree with you Makandal represented a tendency in the revolutionary camp of the slaves. He did practice a type a guerilla warfare quite advanced for his time. He was captured by the enemy due to his own weakness and vice and voodoo did not protect him.

Not all slave combatants were voodoo priests. Some were Muslims. I do believe religions coming from the African slave traditions were important factors in the struggle but neither voodoo nor Islam was fundamental or principal in the slave struggles. Bourgeois ideologues and petit bourgeois ideologues interpreted the Bwa Kay Iman ceremony has a voodoo religious practice but I am more of the opinion that it was a congress held by the revolutionary slave leadership to defeat the slave masters. Of course, cultural traditions were present. Here are some facts upon which these views are founded.
A] Bookman, a slave coming from Jamaica, came to Hispaniola because he felt this land was riper for change, was Muslim.
B] Progressive historians, (I am not, nor do I pretend to be a historian), are saying that Bwa Kay Iman, were many large backyard gathering places for the slaves to meet and plan their struggles and the word Iman mean the leader, the priest again a Muslim word.
C] The Bwa Kayiman congress was held in the North because of its vast and large plantation and voodoo was least practiced there.
Again, I am insisting on the fact that the slave history has been interpreted by bourgeois and petit bourgeois intellectuals and a lot of work needs to be done for a materialistic interpretation to contribute in the consolidation of proletarian theory to defeat capital.

I would agree from reading your piece, that my definition of mawonaj appears unilateral for not mentioning the two lines of mawonaj: the revolutionary mawonaj, an autonomous political line of the slaves to combat slavery and the opportunist mawonaj of trying to outsmart the enemy. This type of mawonaj, nowadays, is totally recuperated by the dominant classes and opportunists in the petit bourgeoisie by trying to outsmart the enemy by political maneuvers and deceit. Duvalier, Aristide and Manigat are the latest politicians that have practiced opportunist mawonaj in dealing with imperialism. All have failed for the most part; only Duvalier to some extent was capable to delay his failure due to international conditions at the time.

My usage of Toussaint as the ideological birth father of mawonaj is to demonstrate its recuperation by bourgeois and petit bourgeois intellectuals to serve their own objectives. Toussaint was a master of this political concept of mawonaj. This political concept of mawonaj is to bring our political struggles into the battlefields of the enemy, a battlefield controlled and well guarded by the enemy. We need to force them into our own battlefields. In Haiti, revolutionaries are doing their utmost best to reclaim the combative and revolutionary mawonaj. We need to support them in this orientation by supporting the struggle against imperialism and occupation, but also by organizing an intransigent struggle to defeat feudalism and capitalism.

Now a last point, I tried not to respond to arrogance and accusations. No one will gain anything from that and in the final analysis this would be in favor of “our” class enemy, capitalism and their servants. I choose to engage in theoretical battle, ideological and political battle in my camp from the objective of building unity, guided by a spirit of unity. Unity building in our camp is essential in our struggle under the principle of UNITY STRUGGLE UNITY to defeat the enemy. I will engaged in any debate with an open mind with the objective to convince or to be convinced and if I am convinced I will rectified and adopt the correct position for the advancement of our struggle…

There's much here that I want to come back to but for now just two points. On Louverture as slave owner, Madison Bell's biography states that he owned at least one slave (page 71 and 73), there are other sources as well available by google.
About Haiti as pre-capitalist, how was it pre-capitalist at the time of the revolution? I don't know enough to say for sure either way about Haiti as capitalist or pre-capitalist, but I ask because a lot of marxists have a reflex to define slavery as pre-capitalist without much thought or argument. That's a mistake, there's no a priori incompatibility between slavery and capitalism.

> marxists have a reflex to define slavery as pre-capitalist without much thought or argument. That’s a mistake, there’s no a priori incompatibility between slavery and capitalism.

That may depend on how you define things. But the classical concept of slavery was bound to an economy where land-ownership was fundamental. Keeping labor bound to the land which you own becomes a motive for slavery. Capital need not be bound to a specific tract of land. Factories can be closed down, dismantled, the parts moved, and then reassembled at a different location. Mobile capital has a need for mobile labor, hence "free" labor, hence the abolition of old-style slavery. If you decide to move the factory, then just fire the workers here and hire new ones there. If economic growth in one region means that more jobs are accumulating there, tell workers to move on their own responsibility without you providing the transportation. These are some characteristic differences between capitalism and feudalism. Slavery is more easily associated with the latter.

"a lot of marxists have a reflex to define slavery as pre-capitalist without much thought or argument."

Economies tend to develop in that direction because it's a matter of access to and monopolization of land. In a newly colonized country, where there is a lot of land and few workers, those in power have to enslave workers or otherwise the workers will just leave, find (or take) their own land and live independently.

But when land becomes monopolized, and people with no access to it become more plentiful, and they have no way to survive other than finding work, then it's cheaper to hire them by the hour (and not have to feed and house them).

@radical eyes and Ajagbe

I prefer not to discuss the role of individuals, but rather their contributions in their political line to get rid of slavery and the colonizers. We really do need to use dialectical materialism to give us a scientific analysis of the vibrant historical struggles of the Haitian slaves, developing a theory of our interpretation of what really exists and developing a theory on the development of complex realities and the relations between these complex realities.
Many intellectuals have written on the subject. Some were outright reactionaries; they only related the struggle to religion. I acknowledge the importance of religion, but not its fundamentality or principality. Also according to some historians, the alliance that occurred was an alliance of colors, blacks and mulattoes but was not a class alliance that was based on material conditions and interests. Some progressive intellectuals of the petit bourgeoisie, claimants of Marxism, attempted to give a more progressive and somewhat revolutionary interpretation, valuable but still limited, due to the fact these contributions in analyzing this history did not come from their own insertion in struggles. These contributions were a step, a limited step, since a more profound contribution would have required these intellectuals to engage in the mass struggle and leave the comfort of their living rooms.

I would argue for the existence of a revolutionary line in the slave struggle. Inside this revolutionary line, there existed many tendencies. One of these tendencies never came down from the mountain and continued its resistance to become later a powerful force in the anti imperialist struggle of 1915 to 1934. For me, it was one of the most advanced revolutionary forces at the times. They articulated a position based on class interests. Bourgeois historians and petit bourgeois historians at the service of the bourgeoisie mention them very little. It was the tendency of Goman and Accau. One of their famous statement is “A rich black man is a white man and a poor white man is a black man” Very perceptual indeed, but enough for them to understand that after 1804, the struggle in the interests of the slaves had just begun.

Moise, Makandal and many others represented not only a political line in the protracted war against the colonizers but represented, as well, a political line in land redistribution, not a politically unified camp, but representative of their class interests. Class struggle was quite intense after the revolution of 1804. Dessalines had to travel many places and directly intervene on the question of land distributions and was assassinated a few years later. The lack of autonomy of the slaves and the lack of political unity among slaves in the struggle against the colonizers and against slavery did not allow them to deal correctly with the oncoming contradictions inside the peoples camp at the time. Contradictions were resolved antagonistically in the interests of the freed slave aristocracy, which later became feudal landlords. We have seen similar experience with the Paris Commune. Many revolutionaries, including Marx, Mao, did not quite understand the fundamental question in practice of class autonomy and independence in the relation of theory and practice. In theory Mao insisted on the autonomy of the proletariat in the anti imperialist united front but he did not put this position into practice.

I am not going to try to delve into Toussaint’s mind, nor that of any combatant or revolutionary. The fundamental question is their political line. For me, Toussaint’s line would not have gotten us to the revolutionary closure of 1804 and the beginning of a new era. Toussaint’s brand of mawonaj was not an attempt at an autonomous struggle but was simply trying to outsmart the enemy. He declared the Haitian social formation part of the French empire, as opposed to the English empire. He constantly picked a lesser evil to ally with.

Soon after Toussaint’s political extradition to France, Dessalines declared an ultimatum for unity in order to unify the different revolutionary fractions. The price for non-unity was repression. This line was politically effective but needed to be discussed as a lesson for correctness in resolving contradictions in the people’s camp. It is only then that the radical transformation from a slave mode of production to a feudal mode of production occurred.

For me, we need to evaluate that brand of a political line called mawonaj and understand the reason that type of mawonaj is totally recuperated by the dominant classes. Giving Toussaint the benefit of the doubt nowadays identifies this political line of alliance with a lesser evil, a reactionary line only and exclusively benefiting the interests of the dominant classes and imperialism. This type of mawonaj is a bourgeois line today. Toussaint saw the need for the colony to function as a autonomous colony of the French empire and He as the governor. This was his vision. He did proclaim it in the 1802 constitution. This was part of the project of the feudal landlord, a class project of the feudal landlord installed from independence to finally legitimize themselves as the class from Boyer’s indemnity.

The structuring of the feudal landlord class , from a class by itself to a class for itself, started before the revolutionary struggle for independence, even before the Bwa Kayiman’s congress. In particular, the feudal structuring took a big extension due to exodus of the colon after the bwa kayiman uprising. .

Toussaint was very smart academically and very privileged. He was a veterinarian, a self-taught slave in many fields. In the slave labor process, he was like a foreman, a supervisor, his role in the slave production was correctly described by Malcom X as a House nigger. Toussaint saw the advancement of the colony base on his class interest. He wanted to remain close to the colonial powers to preserve the commercial interest of the feudal landlord to the colonial powers.

Toussaint consolidated himself as the supreme leader of the new feudal landlord class in the struggle to transform the colonial slavery mode of production to feudalist colonial mode of production and a pre-capitalist mercantilism in a feudal colonial mode of production, in the framework of mercantile colonialism. The indigenous army was the instrument, the political party if you will, of domination of the indigenous feudal landlord to exploit and dominate the newly free slaves. At the economical level, this mode of productions was quite reactionary explaining the degradation of the economy under feudalism to continue with the development of a dominated and atrophic capitalism under imperialist domination.

Social alternatives never come from individuals. Social alternatives are always class based and determined by class struggles and the historical capacity of the class and the unity of classes are also historically determined. Even in cases where political power is administered autocratically, the underpinning element of that power is in classes and in the interests of these classes. The aristocracy of the freed slaves that Toussaint was a part of, was a class in formation in the social formation, which mostly became feudal landlords. A small minority became capitalist merchants and is part of the reactionary anti popular, anti national capitalist class. Toussaint’s conflict with Moise was addressing these realities. Moise was opposed to Toussaint’s line in both fronts. Toussaint, at the level of agrarian reform, supported one element of that reform called Latifundia and Moise supported an agrarian reforms calling for a distribution of land to the slaves. Moise was under Toussaint’s command. Moise was arrested, to be assassinated by his uncle as the result of class struggles amongst the slaves. The assassination of Moise was, for me, a turning point in the slave camp and the beginning of Toussaint’s demise.

Moise revolted in about 1801, during the period of Dessalin’s wedding to Mariklè Erez, a 3 day lavishly celebrated wedding costing approximately 1 million dollars. Most of the General of the slaves army were at Dessalin wedding creating a moment of surprise to the failed rebellion of Moise. Dessalin was also a feudal landlord. His decision to fight the Napoleon’s troupe was determined by a period in the development and consolidation of the feudal landlord. The slave class, although the principal force, was always dominated and exploited. Their interest were always dominated. The rebellious leadership, including Toussaint, didn’t quite clearly ask for an end to slavery. They asked for plantation for the revolted slaves and ask for a 3 day weekly rest for the slaves and to stop corporal punishment. To finally understand the need for power under their there leadership and class interest.

I just want to bring up a social remnant of slavery still practiced in Haiti nowadays called restavèk, or the indentured child labor of young children given up to the care of more well to do families.

I agree on the importance of Toussaint’s leadership as an imminent and important element in the struggle for Haiti’s independence. But we need to decipher the political line, base on his class interest, that he represented and take what was positive and consolidate the positive to consolidate our theory, and struggle with the negative to rectify in order to consolidate our theory again. The two-line struggle; the opportunist line versus the revolutionary line, was the decisive factor in the struggle that led to Haiti’s independence.

The transformation in consciousness is not mechanical nor spontaneous, it is the result of that three headed struggle led by revolutionary slaves: a struggle against the slave-masters, a struggle against opportunism in the slave camps, and the appropriation by the masses of slaves of the ideology empowering them of violent struggle against their class enemies. That was the key to popular liberty and popular freedom. Three attempts were made at the redaction of our act of independence again a result of that class struggle.

The social practice of the slaves are proof a social practice existing before theory, a sort of Marxism before Marx, numbers before Math and our collective historical responsibility to give a revolutionary theory interpreting this objective reality.

hi Patrick,
Respectfully, what you're saying isn't really accurate at least from what I've read about slavery in the US in the 19th century (which is all I really know about slavery). During that period slaves were highly mobile spatially -- moved around frequently by owners -- and in terms of their owners -- resold a lot, driven by a combination of land annexation, rising prices on the global cotton market, growth of credit, and a boom in prices of slaves caused by the closure of the importation of slaves. Slaves were also regularly rented out to work alongside waged laborers. I get most of this from the book Slavery and American Economic Development, by Gavin Wright, and about slaves who were rented into waged work from the book Divided Mastery, the author's name escapes me.
Stephanie, I hear what you're saying about monopolization of land, I'd have to think more about it but I think what you're saying makes sense. If I understand your terms right, there wasn't monopolization of land in the US until after slavery was abolished, though. And, about the need to feed and house slaves - at least in the 19th century the costs of slave reproduction were largely offloaded onto slaves via activities that were framed as a measure of freedom by both owners and slaves -- not unlike the consumer freedoms that waged workers have. Without seeing some numbers on it I'm not sure that slavery was more expensive than waged labor, at the level of social averages (I think determining that would involve some calculations that are beyond me - comparing wages to purchase prices+maintenance costs, factored over duration of employment/ownership and profits). Slavery definitely had higher start up costs than employing waged laborers, but that's different. Slave hiring helped to ease some of the short term difficulties that higher start up costs posed. This was facilitated in part by the growth of slave insurance.
cheers,
Nate

> During that period slaves were highly mobile spatially

Slaves could be traded, but the enterprises which employed slave labor remained bound to their territory. If Wal-Mart chooses to they can close the store here in my area and open up somewhere else. Slave plantations were bound to the land ownership. The business bound to a patch of land also had a need for keeping labor bound to it. Hence the motive for slavery.

Hi Patrick, I don't get the connection to whether or not slavery was capitalist. I'm also not sure you're talking about qualities of slave production or about agriculture. Furhtermore, as farvas I know, no capitalist enterprise had Walmart's mobility in the 1790s, so I don't find that illuminating. Sorry so brief, I don't mean to be curt, I'm holding my daughter so its hard to type.

Wal-Mart is certainly a modern example, but I think the decided trend caused by the rise of capitalism was that enterprises ceased to be bound to a fixed land. This caused land-ownership to decline in importance as compared with feudalism, when land-ownership was the most decisive economic foundation. That has been my understanding of the bedrock of feudalism. Not so much Kings & Queens, although they are part of it, but land as the primary asset seems to be what characterizes feudalism. The rise of capitalism seems bound with the growth of an economy in which simply being a big landowner was no longer the central criterion of wealth.

Slavery in that older system was certainly bound up within cotton platations and other forms of enterprise that grew up from an economy where land-ownership was the prime source of wealth.

hi Patrick,
I can type again... Respectfully, I think you're presuming the difference between capitalism and slavery, which is what I was trying to say was questionable. I agree with you about the long term trends with regard to land, but I don't think that really gets at this matter. Agricultural and extractive production tend to be quite place-specific, those are fully capitalist today despite limits on their mobility.

"If economic growth in one region means that more jobs are accumulating there, tell workers to move on their own responsibility without you providing the transportation."

Thus creating an imperative for these workers to do the work of relocation unremunerated.

It seems to me that there are two types of slavery being discussed here, which might, borrowing from the language of pollution analysis, be called point-source slavery and non-point-source slavery.

@ Nate, Stephanie and PsmMcnally

A theoretical precision what really differentiate capitalism to slavery or to any other mode of productions is not primary technical aspect such as mobility of capital or labor but rather:
the social process of exploitation of the labor power. Slavery is the exploitation of slaves as commodity different from the exploitation of the labor power as commodity.
The process of producing surplus value; the fundamental element of capitalist social relations
The movement of capital [money] in the financial market and the movement of goods are characteristic of capitalism. Thus the movement of their competition and concentration with all its contradictions and problems: war, ecology, and depletion of natural resources.

The more capital is producing surplus value the more powerful capital becomes again with all its contradictions and problems. To weaken capital is to address the fundamental aspect of capital: the process of extraction of surplus value.

Jan,

Slaves were not only exploited as human property, they were also exploited as labor power. At least in the 19th century United States. Slavery was doubly profitable - one, as a form of property speculation (slave prices quadrupled between 1808 and 1860 and slave markets were very liquid, aided in large part by credit, making slave property a fantastically profitable investment), and two as a form of labor. Slave generally tended to produce greater wealth over the course of the duration of their ownership than it cost to purchase them. To put it another way...

In v2 of Capital Marx gives a very brief summary of capitalism as centering around the series M-C...P...C'-M'. M is money, C is expenditure for means of production (including raw material) and labor power, ...P... is the production process during which labor power is set to work upon means of production. C' is the resulting commodity, transformed by labor. M' is the money taken in by the sale of C'. The difference between M' and M is surplus value. M must be re-invested to repeat the series and the surplus used to to expand the series.

These same dynamics are present in slave-based production in the 19th century US as in waged-labor based production. There are many, many important differences between these forms, but within this (admittedly very schematic) description, it's not the case that there's capitalism and then there's slavery. Rather, there are two full-blown capitalist systems in the US, one largely centered on waged labor and one largely centered on slave labor and slave property. There were definitely incredibly important differences between these, but the difference was not that one was capitalist and the other non-capitalist.

hi Mike,

Thanks for this. I agree that slavery is crucially different from waged labor. The question here though is if that crucial difference is one of whether or not slavery is noncapitalist.

On the different relations of production, I just don't think that's accurate -- again, for the 19th century US. I'm getting this from Gavin Wright's book that I mentioned, I just don't think the difference you're asserting is actually true for social reality in the slave south in that era. And with regard to the 19th century, that makes your "over the last 10 centuries", Tibetan serfs, etc a bit of a non sequitur.

I'm not saying "slavery is capitalist", it's not, no more than waged labor is. I'm saying that slave society in the US 19th century was a capitalist society.

On Wright's argument, slavery is a strongly different form of capitalism - politically, institutionally, culturally. He doesn't make the comparison but we might consider social democratic capitalism from free market first world capitalism as one parallel for the distinction. You're presuming that slavery is a different mode of production, when the disagreement is over whether or not that's really the case -- you're presuming that the traits you name are marks of being non-capitalist or otherwise a different mode of production. I agree with you that we're talking about different social systems, the disagreement we're having is over whether or not those different social systems are characterizable as capitalist vs non-capitalist.

On the renting out of slaves - you're a bit wrong about slaves not receiving the wages. There were a variety of arrangements depending on economic and institutional factors at various levels (large scale market factors, more local market factors, character of masters etc) but one standard arrangement (this is all according to the book Divided Mastery) was that the slaves received wages and owed the masters a cut off the top. In the case where slaves didn't get to keep any of the wages, which did happen in many cases, I think about Marx's remarks in v1 of Capital, in either the section on machinery or the working day, or both, where he talks about child labor and women's labor. At that time in England, women and children had no more rights to wages than slaves had in the US (Marx uses slave-owner as a metaphor for working class parents pushing their children into work then taking the money). There are of course incredibly important differences between this arrangement and chattel slavery, but the distinctions are not captured in what you've said here, in the terms of our disagreement on this issue ("was 19th century US slavery capitalist or not?"), the implication would seem to be that those children and women were somehow not working in a capitalist system because they were not free waged laborers. That's a pretty seriously counter-intuitive conclusion and one that I think Marx would have remarked on, had that been his view.

A final thoughts then I really have to go as I'm in a rush.

The heart of the theoretical disagreement here is, I think, about unfree labor and capitalism. In my view, Marx overstates the point and offers no real argument when he defines an essential connection between capitalism and free labor.

It seems to me that in broad strokes his analysis of capitalist societies applies to slave societies after a certain period, which is not to say there aren't important differences - just that the difference is not "one is capitalist and the other is not", we need to distinguish forms of capitalism in order to sort these societies.

About the post-Civil War U.S., as I'd guess you know at least as well as I do there's a repeated tendency toward attempts to render African Americans unfree laborers (I get this from the book Slavery By Another Name and the sections of the book The Lost Promise of Civil Rights on debt peonage).

It seems to me there's a systemic tendency in capitalism toward creating or maintain some populations as laborers but not as free or waged laborers. I'm hesitant to try to draw that claim much past WWI because my knowledge gets sparser from there but I feel very confident to say that there at least was such a trend across the 19th century in the US, and that this was not external capitalism - a matter of holdovers from earlier modes of production etc - this was a tendency of capitalism, internal to the capitalist mode of production. Tied to this, there are tendencies toward conflict between different forms of capitalism particularly when tied to political institutions (like the north and south in the US). It seems to me that we can identify better and worse versions -- we don't have to say "the union army was no better than the confederates" just because we say "the north and south were both capitalists." Even though it's my understanding that emancipation via the union army was largely driven (and for a long time, held back) by military and political concerns, that still makes emancipation an incredibly important historical advance.

Sorry this is disjointed, as I said I'm in a big hurry, thanks for the conversation about this.

take care,
Nate

To Nate

I have argued in many of my postings in Kasama that American capitalism did not go through a feudal stage before entering capitalism. Therefore, I am in agreement with you. Slavery was profitable, in feudalism and capitalism, but in capitalism, in the process of producing surplus value, slave labor was the least profitable. The slave master took care of the slaves: housing, sickness, food and et all as compared to just the labor power, intellectual and physical capacity spent to produce goods, and the worker was free to fend and to be solely responsible of the reproduction of his or her labor power. In fact for me, the civil war of the North and the South was not mainly about the emancipation of slaves, since most of the leadership was very sympathetic to slavery. It was mostly about the process of producing surplus value: the underpinning central element of capitalism.

So, based on your definition of Marx’s statement, if M is re-invested to reproduce the series and the surplus to expand, it makes the profit and the surplus fundamental to capitalism. Our task is to appropriate the different modes of the process of surplus value and define a political line to defeat capital at its fundamental core.

For me, progress, change, and radical transformations are the result of and determined by class struggle and the class struggle of production is determinant. Our responsibility is to develop a theoretical model, by using dialectical and historical materialism, in order to appropriate these changes and to define a political line for the proletariat to achieve its historical goals.

To respond to your post [17]. Your last paragraph is the reason why I used the concept of social formation when trying to represent the complex reality of a society. In general, in any social formation[society] there exist many modes of production in struggle, in correspondence and historically, one will be dominant and determine the type of development occurring in these social formations based on class struggles, the contradictions characterizing these struggles and the domination of one these modes of production over the others and at the same time the relative autonomy and independence of all these modes of production toward one another defining the way they co-exist and reproduce. So, it really doesn’t mean that the feudal mode of production exists exclusively in a feudal social formation. It means that, dialectically, it is the dominant form in which the society reproduces and that the other modes of production are dominated or are in a struggle for dominance under the dominant feudal mode of production. For example, in a mode of production based on slavery, like we saw in “Haiti”, there existed other modes of production. The feudal mode of production replaced the slavery mode of production with the 1804 revolution, while mercantile capitalism, colonial mercantile capitalism and capitalist production also existed. For example, the chains and chokeholds to constrain the slaves were produced in capitalist relations.

To bring any science used to understand an objective reality to the level of reflex, of instincts, means reducing that science to a “mechanical” science. Unfortunately, dialectical materialism as well as historical materialism are being reduced to that level. We do need to use concepts of dialectical/historical materialism not to duplicate theory but to produce theory to apply it to new concrete realities.

Some elements of a social formation:
To understand the relations of these modes of production, we will need to understand classes, the role of classes, the development of these classes, the process of their historical formation and their transition from a class of itself to a class for itself. It is objectively the whole relations of these classes that constitute class struggle, the historical structure of class struggle an important elements of a social formation. It is in this process that we can comprehend the development of a class and its need for power. For example, as soon the American capitalist class reached a level of maturation, the quest for power became an integral part of its development against colonialism. R Toussaint couldn’t participate in a communist revolution because of his class interest.

These relationships of classes are based on power struggles and the capacity of these classes in their maturation process for the objective of power.
A] A social formation is the non-economic relation of these classes based on the economic relations of production and circulation of goods and services.
B] A social formation is made up all the classes historically constituted. It is the relationship between all the classes historically constituted. These relationships are the structure of class struggles.
C] A social formation is a series of complex realities, of relationships of production, the circulation of goods and a superstructure of judicial, political and ideological relations, relations that are not economic but that affect the economy.
D] The relationship of these classes constantly reproduces a process of reproduction of these social relations, a central element of the relations of production and superstructures within the determinant role of the relations of production.

Furthermore, in materialism, we must distinguish the concept of permanent from the concept of constant. Even if a scientific theory has a permanent value, its content would not therefore be the image of a permanent reality. That there are constant relations expressed by theory does not imply any reality coming from history, but of the explanations on analyzable and definable historical realities as concrete conditions; they are hypothetical constancies and by no means of permanence. Theories tend to explain the mechanisms of reproduction in the economy and at the level of superstructures, even if the articulations between different sectors of the economy and between different sectors of the superstructures are all subjected to the laws of contradiction. The central theme in dialectic and historical materialism is reproduction not permanence. Reproduction is the underpinning element of materialism not permanence We need to show why and how a reality reproduces into another. Even if there is a theory explaining slavery, the reproduction of slavery inside one social formation is not identical, or repetitive, compared to another social formation.

As far as social formations dominated by colonialism or imperialism, we need to comprehend the national aspect of those social formations.

Slavery does exist within capitalism -- there are millions of sex slaves within the capitalist framework today, for example.

Slaves liberating themselves does not necessarily (as it does for proletarians) lead to the upending of the whole system and therefore emancipation for all.

Slaves do have a direct relationship to the core process of capitalism, in that their liberation does cease the extraction of surplus value (from themselves). But their liberation does not necessarily mean the end of capitalism, because capitalism can still function just as well (or even more efficiently) if it can convert the slaves into proletarians.

Jan, I will get back to you as soon as I'm able, thank you for this. I want to think more on what you said.

Stephanie, I'd probably want to quibble on the terms and say that slaves are one variant of proletarians other than waged, but I agree with your basic point. I'm not at all sure of the contemporary political relevance of any of this - I'd like there to be some because these are issues I'm passionate about and I'd like it to be more than a hobby, but it may be just a hobby - but one thing that goes along with what you said is the nature of abolition and emancipation in the US and the abolitionist movement. I have much respect for abolitionists and think that tradition is incredibly important, but I'm not sure how to assess abolitionism politically in relation to capitalism. My impulse is to think of it as somewhat analogous to some types of militant trade unionism - very sincere, motivated by higher values, an important part of improving people's lives, but not revolutionary. Not least because, as you say, capitalism can handle a transition from slave to waged labor, even if the transition was a massive crisis for what was then actually-existing-capitalism.

I just noticed a mistake in what I said above. I said that in the sequence M-C...P...C'-M' "M is money, C is expenditure for means of production" that's wrong. M is the expenditure used to purchase C, the money advanced to begin the sequence. C is the set of commodities purchased (raw material, means of production, labor power).

Hello again comrades, sorry for the multiple posts, I'm balancing this with childcare my time and my mind are both divided right now. Two other thoughts that I had, the last I'll post until others have responded, I promise.

One, some of the discussion on slavery reminded me of this quote from Raymond Williams -

“one thing that is evident in some of the best Marxist cultural analysis is that it is very much more at home in what one might call epochal questions than in what one has to call historical questions. That is to say, it is usually very much better at distinguishing the large features of different epochs of society, as between feudal and bourgeois, or what might be, than at distinguishing between different phases of bourgeois society, and different moments within the phases: that true historical process which demands a much greater precision and delicacy of analysis than the always striking epochal analysis which is concerned with main lineaments and features.” (“Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”, page 8.)

Second thought, I realize the thrust of the post here is about Louverture and I'm pushing discussion off at a tangent. If you'd like me to lay off this or to move it to another thread I won't be offended, I think the historical/analytical issues I'm raising are related but still distant from the political questions at stake in the debate between Mike Ely and Jan Makkandal.

Nate,
] I don’t mind of the progression of the debate as long as the debate is served as a tool, whether in our unity or disagreements, to further the development of theoretical unity to guide our practice in the dialectical unity of theory and practice determines by practice to defeat capital. Otherwise, this discussion will be limited to theory for theory, an intellectualist non-productive approach.

Classes, in any social formation, are not homogeneous. Classes are sometimes divided into fractions a very complex reality especially at the political and ideological level considering independence, fusion, inter relations. For example, in the bourgeoisie we will encounter different fractions of the bourgeoisie in constant struggle for hegemony and for political power. These struggles are define and determine by the nature of bourgeois democratic structures existing in specific social formation. Nowadays, in US imperialism the finance capital’s fractions does have hegemony, of course, with constant struggles that are constantly reproducing their hegemony, meaning its interest in the capitalist camp’s are primarily address at same time addressing the interest of the rest of the other fraction of the bourgeoisie. Of course, the stability of bourgeois democratic structure will determine the problematic of reproduction of these relatively stables democratic structure. So far, this struggles in the capitalist’s camps are secondary struggle base on secondary contradictions in the reactionary’s camp, and the low level of popular struggle, populism and different brand of opportunism are facilitating the capitalist camp’s in inter resolving their problems without strong resistance from the popular camp at this time.

This is the conjuncture we are in now. Historically and eventually, like the civil wars, capitalism will be force to resolve their internal problems antagonistically when the core of capitalist reproductions is in questions: the process of producing and reproductions surplus value. Depending on the status of the subjective factors; the masses are/or are not simple participants, the proletariat is/or isn’t capable to offer autonomous and independents alternatives and the defeat of opportunism and populism in the popular camps are address and confronted by debunking the illusion peddle by opportunism, bourgeois dictatorship will be put in question, even if they still remain in control [hopefully not]

In the working class, we also have fractions. Marxist and Anarchist did identify the industrial fractions as the fractions to lead the working class and the popular masses to defeat capital. At this early stage of capitalism, the process of producing and reproducing surplus value were achieved fundamentally in the unit of productions: the Factories. With the development of capitalism, especially to the imperialist stage it is our task, the new genuine revolutionary left, to differentiate the fake process of producing and reproducing surplus value to the real objective process of production and reproduction of surplus value and defines if the theory defended by Marxist and Anarchist still hold, is still valid and define the political line not only to address the fake process to the real process but as well to define a political line to unify all that could be unify, under the interest of the working class to defeat capital.

To Stephanie
One element that defines and determines classes is class struggle. In the US, due to the objective reality facing us now of low level of class struggle, I would argue that it is a bit premature to consider sex slaves as a fraction of the working class or pertaining to the working class. I think such an approach is expeditious and for lack of data a bit empirical. I am not expressing a disagreement but insisting on the need thru social practice to investigate more…