Abstract
Compared here is what links antebellum pro-slavery discourse to contemporary postmodern theory, and how a shared antagonism to capitalism and support for ‘those below’ constitutes a populist anti-capitalism of the right. Unlike the anti-capitalism of the left, that of the right mobilises on the basis of categories outside the working class. An idealised perception of traditional culture as empowering, plus a mutual dislike of laissez-faire underwrites the emergence and consolidation of the (non-class) identity politics endorsed by pro-slavery discourse and postmodernism, but against which Marxism warned. A consequence of this failure politically to differentiate opposition to capitalism is the current misunderstanding by postmodern theory of the deleterious impact of a globally burgeoning industrial reserve army on working class solidarity/organisation in metropolitan capitalist nations.
‘Every month brings forth its millionaire, and every day its thousands of new paupers.’ – A pro-slavery indictment of 1850s capitalism by George Fitzhugh.
1
Introduction
One of the more paradoxical issues currently facing the social sciences is how to account for the following contradiction. 2 Namely, the seemingly anomalous fact that in metropolitan capitalist nations, large numbers of the working class no longer support the left but instead vote into power not just conservative parties and politicians but also those led by rich men who palpably do not – and cannot – share the same political interests as themselves. The issue this raises is not so much that a conservative politician attempts to persuade workers that he – and only he – can best represent their interests (this he will try to do anyway) as to why this argument is so often successful: that is, believed by ‘those below’. What, in short, must be said by ‘those above’ to persuade ‘those below’ holding not just different but antagonistic class positions/interests that their comfort, welfare and health – indeed, their livelihoods – are of equal concern to a conservative who (unlike them) is wealthy, frequently as a result of their own toil on his behalf.
One answer to this paradox is the capacity to mobilise politically and ideologically on the basis of non-class identities, such as nationalism and ethnicity, thereby shifting the economic struggle away from (for conservatism the potentially dangerous terrain of) class consciousness and struggle. Another, currently of increasing significance, is the fact that in metropolitan capitalist nations the print and/or electronic media are usually owned by the rich and powerful, which enables them to shape and/or control both the political agenda and how this is presented, in the process generating/reproducing what Marxism characterises as false consciousness. 3 Less frequently addressed, however, is yet another reason: the invocation ‘from above’ of ideological opposition to capitalism itself, whereby in specific contexts antagonism is expressed by those with power and wealth towards the impact on ‘those below’ of the accumulation process.
This, it is argued here, is the anti-capitalism of the right, which is different from that of the left, and has to be distinguished from the latter in all respects (ideologically, politically and economically). A failure to do so results in those on the left espousing identity politics, in the mistaken belief that because this, too, is a form of opposition to capitalism, such discourse must consequently be progressive. Where the anti-capitalism of the right is not differentiated from its leftist counterpart, therefore, socialists – and even some Marxists – who omit to make this distinction, mistakenly proceed to regard the anti-capitalism of the right as positive and consequently a view that should be endorsed and supported politically. 4
What the anti-capitalism of the right is, why it should be differentiated from that of the left, and the sharp lessons taught when this is not done, is best illustrated by reference to the way antebellum Southern pro-slavery discourse opposed Northern capitalism in the period leading to the American Civil War. This negative appraisal of capitalism, which not only evinced sympathy for the plight of free labour composing its workforce, but also drew on arguments made by Socialists, has invited comparison with Marxist critiques of the accumulation process. From this apparent overlap stemmed a tendency among some on the left to view aspects of pro-slavery discourse – if not the discourse itself – in a more positive light, with particular reference to the claims made regarding not just the distinctiveness and empowerment conferred by traditional, rural, ethnic and national forms of selfhood, but also their historical longevity.
Much the same kind of epistemological approach currently informs the ‘new’ populist postmodernism, both opposed to development in many so-called Third World countries and supportive of analogous variants of identity politics – agrarianism, nationalism, ethnicity, tradition – deemed to empower an unheard rural ‘from below’ voice. Failure to differentiate the anti-capitalism of the right from its leftist equivalent, therefore, underlines the ease with which, now as in the past, it is possible to slide unknowingly into a conservative politics. It also highlights the crucial role of ideology in framing discourse; that is, a capacity to set – and then privilege – a political agenda, especially one which addresses in a populist fashion an issue linked to the formation, reproduction, or, indeed, dissolution, of ‘from below’ consciousness (and thus struggle) of class. 5
The presentation which follows is divided into two sections, the first of which examines pro-slavery discourse in the antebellum South, with particular reference to its constituent elements (empowering nationalism, ‘otherness,’ tradition and rurality). As an ideology it combined positive views about unfreedom (subsistence guarantee) with negative ones about capitalism (exploitation, labour market competition). The second considers the ideological affinities of pro-slavery discourse: superficially with socialism (and even Marxism), but more accurately with the ‘new’ populist postmodernism. The significance of the latter is linked in turn to current debates in the social sciences about how to interpret what is now a globally expanding industrial reserve army of labour.
I
The defence mounted by pro-slavery discourse in the antebellum South rested centrally on three interrelated arguments. 6 First, a challenge to the very definition of slavery itself, on the basis that unfree workers in the South were better off than free equivalents in the North. Second, the claim that those in the latter category, unlike slaves, were not only subject to labour market competition, diminished wages, and work intensification, but had to fend for themselves when capitalist crises resulted in unemployment. And third, approval for socialist antagonism towards free enterprise coupled with a warning that the latter system would eventually lead to a revolutionary overthrow by socialism of religion, family ties, private property and the law. All these arguments were underwritten by the predominant image reproduced throughout pro-slavery discourse: that of the antebellum South as a benign form of non-capitalism, the ‘other’ of the Northern laissez-faire economy, in which master and slave co-existed harmoniously in what was claimed to be a pastoral variant of the agrarian myth.
For the Mutual Benefit of Both
Objecting to what it categorised as ‘false and malicious representations’ of antebellum society, and rejecting the terms ‘slave’/‘slavery’ used by abolitionists as inapplicable to the South, pro-slavery discourse insisted that the relation was not as onerous as the concept implied. 7 Far from being a chattel or thing (‘to be bought and sold, and treated worse than a brute’), therefore, in the South the relation was no different from that of a servant who, despite being obedient ‘to the will of another’, nevertheless possessed ‘rights, privileges’. Although the word remains the same, its content has changed. Historically, slaves were at the mercy of their masters, since the person of a slave was owned, and as with any property could be used/abused by its proprietor. This, insisted Southern pro-slavery discourse, ‘is not our labor system.’
The reality of Southern unfreedom was different, asserted pro-slavery discourse, arguing that ‘slavery is the duty and obligation of the slave to labor for the mutual benefit of both master and servant’, an arrangement whereby the slave obtained in turn ‘protection and a comfortable subsistence’. Accordingly, the slave is said to benefit from the provision by the master of a form of cradle-to-the-grave welfare, a ‘subsistence guarantee’, which its exponents maintained covered ‘infancy, sickness, and old age’, the whole cost of which was borne by the master. 8 This particular argument underwrote the pro-slavery claim that the ‘subsistence guarantee’ supplied by the master in the antebellum South ensured that unfree labour was better-off economically when compared to what the free worker received from employers and the market in the North. 9 In the words of pro-slavery discourse, the reality of what it regarded as the ‘subsistence guarantee’ consists of the fact that ‘[c]apital exercises a more perfect compulsion over free labourers than human masters over slaves; for free labourers must at all times work or starve, and slaves are supported whether they work or not.’ 10 When economic crisis (‘commercial revulsion and distress’) occurs, and a free worker has to fend for himself, therefore, the subsistence needs of the slave by contrast are guaranteed by the master. 11
In this way slavery is recast as merely a form of equal exchange, one involving nothing more than a reciprocal transaction (subsistence/protection
Pro-Slavery and/as (Conservative) Anti-Capitalism
Just as the antebellum pro-slavery case rested principally on its negative portrayal of Northern capitalism, so the main plank of the latter argument was in turn the deleterious impact on free workers of labour market competition, the economic ‘other’ of the ‘subsistence guarantee’. The case for the defence of slavery depended on a positive/negative combination forming a two-pronged polemical approach: not just on the attempt to demonstrate that it was a benign relational form, therefore, but also and simultaneously on undermining the defence/justification of capitalism and its laissez-faire philosophy. 16 Denouncing political economy as the philosophy of free society that promoted free market capitalism, pro-slavery discourse contended that by privileging ‘social, individual, and national competition,’ political economy ‘naturalized’ the process of competition as an inescapable feature of society, maintaining that ‘all competition is but the effort to enslave others’. 17
Equally clear is both the extent of the employer advantage that such labour market competition conferred, and also the emphasis place on this by pro-slavery discourse. Hence the focus of the latter on the fact that the only beneficiary of laissez-faire was the capitalist, to whom it gave the whip hand over the free worker adrift in a competitive labour market which guaranteed him nothing. 18 This is the crux of the pro-slavery indictment aimed at capitalism (= free society), which compares the relative absence of power to control by the strong in a state of nature (= pre-capitalist society), and how such power/control increases substantially once the strong own the earth (‘They are masters without the obligations of masters, and the poor are slaves without the rights of slaves.’). 19 It is a contrast between the absence of power wielded by the master over the slave in the antebellum South, and the absolute nature of power that the capitalist exercises over the free worker in the North.
In support of this aspect of its case, pro-slavery discourse indicated that opposition to emancipation was not confined to the South, but found also in the North, where free workers did not want ‘to have the North filled up with free [blacks]’; that is, rivals in the labour market. 20 Couched in the language of race, the focus of this ‘from below’ objection was economic: competition for jobs, and a fear lest additions to the labour market would lead to a decline in the pay and conditions of those already in it. 21 That capitalism posed a threat to the livelihood of the free worker was further underlined by two additional warnings. The first, drawn from European history, demonstrated that once emancipated, serfs became free workers required to labour more intensively; workloads increased while their remuneration declined. 22 Merely to obtain subsistence, therefore, the outcome was that erstwhile serfs – now free, and vulnerable to employer demands – were faced with a much larger burden of work in exchange for lower returns. And second, as threatening to the employment interests of ‘those below’ were two further sources of labour market competition: externally, from European migrants arriving in America (which ‘overstocks permanently the labour market on the Atlantic board’), and internally, from a burgeoning lumpenproletariat (consisting of the ‘most wretched members of society’, a ‘very large nomadic class’ that is composed of ‘poor thieves, swindlers, and sturdy beggars’) already there. 23
Forging New Chains for Themselves
Pro-slavery discourse in the antebellum South demonstrates both how the anti-capitalism of the right deploys arguments favourable to the working class, and also how it is possible consequently to mistake this kind of critique as progressive, simply because its target is capitalism. Ostensibly as sympathetic to the political interests of workers is the pro-slavery endorsement of a similar critique emanating from socialists, fuelling yet further erroneous perceptions of such anti-capitalism as necessarily progressive, and thus deserving of political support. Among the views expressed by pro-slavery discourse that coincide with those of leftists, therefore, is on the one hand support for the labour theory of value, for the existence both of a class hierarchy and its concomitant form of struggle, and on the other hostility towards the unequal distribution of income, towards increasing wealth consolidation by the rich, towards the oppression of urban workers, and towards the impact on their livelihoods of labour market competition. It was an ideological combination designed to attract popular support in general, and that of labour in particular.
That a similarity existed between the pro-slavery anti-capitalist critique of Fitzhugh, involving both hostility to Northern producers combined with sympathy for the plight of their free workers, and a socialist anti-capitalist critique, has been noticed by his biographer, who maintained consequently that Fitzhugh was influenced by Marx. 24 Another and slightly different interpretation notes that ‘Fitzhugh exploited and quoted extensively from many of the sources that Karl Marx used ten years later in the first volume of Capital to marshal evidence of the inhumanity of British industrial capitalism.’ 25 It is argued here, however, that such an overlap extended well beyond the sources themselves, and included a number of concepts – among them class, class struggle, and a version of the labour theory of value, drawn perhaps not from Marx but from French Socialists – that are fundamental to leftist political theory. 26 If the language and concepts used by pro-slavery discourse appeared closer to those of socialism than is thought by recent opponents of this view, this was because the object of such discourse was not just to defend slavery but also to do so by disparaging capitalism. 27 However, criticism of the latter tout court was problematic, given the presence in the South itself of capitalist enterprises (see below).
Rather than being a challenge to the whole capitalist system that required its overthrow, as is the case with Marxism, such pro-slavery discourse had a less radical purpose: to disseminate a positive image of slavery by comparing it with its negative ‘other’ in the North; to persuade non-slaveholders that the antebellum South be permitted to retain its form of unfreedom; and to garner support among non-slaveholders for these objectives. 28 Very clearly, pro-slavery arguments were not designed to promote Marxist or Socialist political economy. As is also argued here, while there was agreement as to the negative aspects (oppression, exploitation) of capitalism, pro-slavery discourse and Socialist theory disagreed profoundly about the political solution to this problem. Misunderstanding or underestimating the latter distinction in terms of fact and cause lies at the root of conflating the anti-capitalism of the right and left, an error that in the case of one eminent Marxist scholar of antebellum historiography led him to find merit in the ideas of Southern conservatism, including exponents of pro-slavery discourse. 29
All Capital Is Created by Labour
Dividing the class hierarchy into four strata, composed of (I) the rich, (II) the professions and skilled workers, (III) ‘poor hardworking people’ and (IV) ‘thieves, swindlers, and beggars’, pro-slavery discourse went on to describe those in categories I and II as ‘masters without the obligations of a master’, while those in III and IV were ‘slaves, without the rights of slaves.’ 30 The way in which the class structure was outlined by pro-slavery discourse, and how its distinct components stood in relation to one another, not only differed little from that of Marxist theory, but would have resonated with ‘those below’ who perceived both the hierarchy and its interrelationships as accurate reflections of the reality with which they were familiar. 31 As familiar to them, and similarly in keeping with Marxist theory, would have been the endorsement by pro-slavery discourse of a view akin to the labour theory of value, a position designed equally to appeal to non-slaveholding wage-earners and poor farmers who sold not the product of labour but labour power itself. 32
Having constructed a model of the class hierarchy and its non-egalitarian attributes which socialists would recognise, pro-slavery discourse indicated the nature of the exchanges predicated on such a structure. The object of accumulation, therefore, was quite simply to benefit from the labour of others, a situation made possible because labour was the source of value (‘for all capital is created by labor, and the smaller the allowance of the free labourer, the greater the gains of his employer’, ‘capital was but the accumulation of their labor, for common labor creates all capital’). 33 In words that could have been written by Marx or Engels, pro-slavery discourse outlined how accumulation merely increases the work done by the poor while simultaneously cutting their wages: thus workers ‘are continually forging new chains for themselves.’ 34 A description, in short, that recognises both that capitalism is based on a process of accumulation, and that the latter operates against the interests of the worker. Extending the analysis yet further in the same direction, pro-slavery discourse invokes the arguments of French socialists in order to categorise the capital/labour relation as one of surplus extraction amounting to exploitation, an ‘abstraction, directly or indirectly, from the working classes of the fruits of their labor’. 35
The sympathetic attitude of pro-slavery discourse towards socialism was not merely limited to its critique of capitalism, but also coupled with a warning about where socialism itself might lead. On the one hand, therefore, approval was expressed because political economy promoting capitalist development had been criticised effectively by ‘the Socialists [who] have left it not a leg to stand on’. 36 However, on the other was a fear that, as economic crises generated by accumulation became more acute, the rejection of capitalism would make way not for a return to the kind of pre-/non-capitalist society advocated by pro-slavery discourse, but rather for revolution and a transition to socialism. 37 The latter possibility was of concern because it threatened what pro-slavery discourse regarded as ‘the most essential institutions’: religion, family ties, private property and the law. 38 Hence the support for the socialist critique was tempered by disapproval of its desire to build socialism on the ruins of capitalism.
In making the argument opposing economic competition engendered by accumulation, pro-slavery discourse appears to agree with Marxist theory. Even the language and concepts deployed by pro-slavery discourse against laissez-faire and labour market competition is in many respects no different from that used by Marxists. 39 Suggestive of this is the view that the object of labour market competition is ‘to prevent that association of labour without which nothing great can be achieved,’ together with an acknowledgement of class struggle (‘[i]t is impossible to place labor and capital in harmonious or friendly relations’). 40 That such views are progressive – let alone Marxist – is deceptive, however, since of particular concern to pro-slavery discourse was that class antagonism generated by capitalism would in turn build support for socialism, and thus lead inevitably to revolution. 41 The issue of ‘from below’ struggle – ‘[l]iberty places those classes [rich and poor] in positions of antagonism and war’ – was invoked not so much as an indictment of capitalism per se, therefore, as an expression of disquiet about the ‘from below’ struggle it might produce, and what it prefigured systemically. 42
To this end, pro-slavery exponents raised the spectre of the 1789, 1830, and 1848 revolutions in France so as to illustrate the warning to all those opposing them about the impact on the poor of a ‘free society’. 43 Described as ‘insurrections of labor against capital,’ these nineteenth century revolutions were attributed to destitution and famine ‘among the labouring classes’: revolution was the outcome of consolidation at the top of capital and at the bottom of labour, in the process having deprived both monarchy and nobility of power. 44 The logic of the pro-slavery position was simple: unlike slave society, where labour is provided with a subsistence guarantee that covers all the needs of its subject and family, free society guarantees its worker nothing. For this reason, free labour has to organise politically to remedy this lack (strikes, trade unions, political parties), and in doing so brings into question the property relation of capitalism. It was, maintained pro-slavery discourse, a case of ‘infection’ that had spread to ‘the lower classes’ throughout Europe, creating revolutionary momentum. Moreover, abolitionism would not be content with emancipation, because slavery was so closely bound up with all the other institutions of society that these, too, would have to change. 45 The threat, cautioned pro-slavery discourse, was not just to Southern institutions and society, but also to private property and capital itself.
II
(Pro-Slavery) Contradictions, (Postmodern) Similarities
It hardly seems necessary to have to point out that, when pro-slavery discourse moves from attacking capitalism for its treatment of free labour to defending slavery as a benign alternative, it encounters major difficulties. 46 According to pro-slavery discourse, therefore, ‘the person of the slave is not property’ but ‘the right to his labour is property’, and as such can be transferred by its owner to another – sold on, in other words. 47 What is not said, however, is that the owner of the labour power in question is the master, not the slave himself. Furthermore, conceptualising the slave/master relation as an exchange of value for value freely entered into by each party not only mistakenly depicts the transaction as voluntary (= chosen by master and slave alike), but also banishes its elements of exploitation and unfreedom. Contrary to what pro-slavery maintains is the case – that the black ‘slaves of the South are the happiest, and in some sense, the freest people in the world,’ because children, the aged and infirm do no work, females ‘do little hard work’ and are protected by ‘kind’ masters, and slaves generally enjoy lots of leisure time – such claims are demonstrably false. 48 If Northern capitalists did not ‘care’ for the free workers they employed, then neither did planters in the antebellum South, claims by the latter to the contrary notwithstanding. Slaves were not free, nor were they happy and well-cared for when ill or old; women had to work as hard as men in the fields, and were subject to sexual predation by overseers and/or owners. 49
Similarly problematic is the connection between the antebellum slave economy and capitalism. An influential argument deployed by one strand of abolitionism consisted of the retardation thesis: namely that, because the presence of the slave plantation was an obstacle to the development of capitalism in the South, its form of unfree labour should therefore be eradicated. 50 The contention was that economically the South ought to become more like the North, a position which reflected the interests of impoverished farmers and workers who, due to the lack of employment, were the real victims of slavery. 51 Contrary to claims made by pro-slavery discourse, therefore, labour market competition was not confined to the North: it also occurred – and had a similarly negative impact – on landless workers in the antebellum South. 52 Because the legislative process in the antebellum South was controlled by slaveholders, however, the interests of non-slaveholding whites in the economic development of capitalism were ignored. 53
Some pro-slavery discourse perceived capitalism as the enemy, the antithesis of the slave system, while others – such as the contributions to Cotton Is King – saw plantation slavery as an important part of world capitalism, to the extent that it could no longer be eradicated. Not the least ironic aspect of pro-slavery discourse, therefore, was that, notwithstanding its critique of Northern capitalism and its claim that the antebellum South was non-capitalist, a major argument deployed against opponents was that slavery had become too much a part of the global economic system to permit abolition. 54 So integrated into world capitalism, and consequently so important for accumulation, was slavery that, although once upon a time abolition might have been possible, this was no longer the case. Supported by ‘numberless pillars’, slavery was now ‘too powerful to overcome’. 55 Among those who regarded the slave economy of the Southern plantation system in the immediate pre-Civil War era as already capitalist was Marx himself. 56
The apparent overlap between arguments supportive of slavery and socialist theory suggests neither that Marxism is reactionary, nor that it supports antebellum conservatism, but rather that pro-slavery discourse – in true populist fashion – sought to influence and secure backing from non-slaveholding plebeian elements in the South and North alike. Maintaining that the solution to labour market competition was a return to the pre-capitalist paternalism of the antebellum South, pro-slavery discourse was in fact the antithesis of Marxism, which posits a solution in terms of a progressive transcendence of capitalism. Whereas pro-slavery discourse advocates a return to a past that is familiar, Marxism by contrast backs a transition to a future yet to be realised.
Pro-Slavery, Postmodernism and Identity Politics
Ostensibly, there is little to connect 1850s pro-slavery discourse with 1980s postmodernism. 57 The latter rejects not only the Enlightenment project and metanarratives as inappropriate Eurocentric impositions on rural Third World countries, but also and therefore is hostile to concepts such as class formation/consciousness/struggle. Currently, postmodern theory still exercises considerable influence over debate in the social sciences, and especially on analyses of development issues undertaken in academic, journalistic and non-governmental organisation (NGO) circles. This kind of approach extends from systemic categories used (Empire), via the kinds of identities said to be possessed by ‘those below’ (subaltern, multitude), to the very forms taken by mobilisation itself (everyday-forms-of-resistance). 58 Displacing revolutionary action designed to take control of the state, quotidian agency at the rural grassroots represents for postmodernism the unheard voices of plebeian elements in Third World nations.
In terms of epistemology and argument, however, not only are there ideological similarities between antebellum pro-slavery discourse and recent postmodern theory but such parallels are hard to miss. To begin with, these cases are made on behalf of contexts outside metropolitan capitalism, rural locations (the American South in the mid-nineteenth century, so-called Third World nations a century later) that are said to be fundamentally different economically and untainted by accumulation. At each context/conjuncture opposition to capitalism is expressed in the name of an alternative and better society, which together with its specific institutional forms (slave plantation, peasant smallholding, bonded labour), are – its exponents insist – not capitalist structures. Both pro-slavery discourse and postmodernism are antagonistic to modernity and development, and each privileges cultural ‘otherness’ as empowering for ‘those below’; in the antebellum South, that of black slaves, while in rural Third World, that of the indigenous population.
Notwithstanding the different contexts and conjunctures involved, the logic of each case is the same: namely, that traditional and long-standing production relations (slavery, smallholding, debt bondage) are emblematic of a particular identity, cultural, regional or national. 59 Moreover, pro-slavery discourse and postmodernism claim to be progressive simply on the grounds that they are opposed to capitalism, in the course of which each draws attention to the exploitative and oppressive character of the accumulation process that erodes an innate historical identity, and how the subject championed (the slave, the peasant, the bonded labourer) fares better in a traditional socio-economic process outside (and against) the capitalist system. The latter is seen as an external phenomenon: as interpreted by postmodern theory, opposition to capitalism then derives from a hitherto undiscovered, but authentic, grassroots voice, that can be depicted as depoliticised, uninfluenced by Eurocentric metanarratives. What these similarities emphasise, therefore, is that opposition to the market, to laissez-faire policies, or to capitalism generally, is not of itself an indicator of a progressive, let alone leftist, politics.
Just as antebellum pro-slavery discourse indicted the capitalist North as representing an alien systemic form, in the process disregarding the presence in the South of the same accumulation process, so British colonialism is incriminated by postmodernism as the harbinger of capitalist penetration of the Indian countryside. Not only does this similarly overlook the existence there of accumulation, but it also enables postmodernism to argue that it was a foreign colonialism that was responsible for privileging free labour as the ‘other’ of bonded labour and/or slavery. 60 Rejecting a political economy approach founded on whether the rural workforce was free or unfree, postmodern theory emphasises instead the ‘cultural’ formation of labour. 61 Decoupling production relations from their material base in this manner, it becomes possible not merely to deny the efficacy of power-exercised-from-above (= class rule), but actually to invert this. The inference is that – had they wanted – agricultural workers and bonded labourers could have challenged their subordination but chose not to do so, which lends credence to the postmodern claim that debt bondage was a non-coercive relation.
As in pro-slavery discourse, postmodern interpretations of debt bondage in rural India attempt to redefine the relation: such workers indebted to landlords, it is claimed, are not unfree, but merely ‘dependent farm labourers’. 62 Quite how and in what way those in the latter category, who are unable personally to commodify their labour power as long as debts owed to the landlord remain unpaid, differ from unfree workers, is never explained. Equally problematic is the postmodern contention that the debt relationship was non-existent because bonded labourers ‘contested’ their subordination, a view akin to saying that slavery was negated by the mere fact that its subject disliked unfreedom. 63 Again like antebellum pro-slavery discourse, bonded labour in India is depicted by postmodernism as an essentially benign arrangement, a form of landlord patronage that is described as ‘the economy of gentleness’ based on the provision of subsistence guarantee, whereby both the unfree worker and his the family were ‘certainly never in want of food’. 64 A similarly benign interpretation is extended by postmodernism to what is one of the most acute political issues facing the left currently: the effect on working class formation/consciousness/struggle of a globally expanding industrial reserve army of labour.
Empowering Populism
Historically, the anti-capitalism of the right can take a number of forms: that of landlord hostility aimed at a developing industry which ‘steals’ its tenants, providing them with alternative and better-paid economic prospects in towns and cities; that of middle class resentment generated by economic crisis that results in the loss of savings; or that of those employed in the bureaucracy when the neoliberal state cuts their number. Perhaps the most effective instance of rightwing anti-capitalism is the ‘from above’ political sympathy expressed for ‘those below’ facing displacement as a result of capitalists employing cheaper workers composed of migrants, in the process undercutting pay and conditions secured by locals over years of organisation and struggle. It is the latter situation in particular which generates multi-class alliances – uniting workers and bourgeois parties/politicians sharing a common ethnic or national identity – that breeds populism. 65
Accordingly, a corollary of not differentiating anti-capitalism is not just advocacy of a return to the past but also the dilution of class struggle. Failure to recognise politically distinct forms of anti-capitalism leads in turn to forming alliances with categories that are antagonistic only to certain kinds of capital, and as such regarded by Marxists as uninterested in or hostile to working class empowerment and socialism. Composed of a broad range of components outside the working class (including undifferentiated peasants, lumpenproletarians, and ‘marginals’), political and ideological unity among these socio-economically heterogeneous elements requires – and indeed rests on – the adoption/promotion of cultural and/or non-class identities. It is precisely this objective that licenses the populism + postmodernism combination. Major intellectuals who formulated, promoted or embraced either populism or postmodernism include Laclau, Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard and Baudrillard: a political characteristic shared by them all was, to a greater or less extent, hostility towards socialism, Marxism, and Marxist theory. 66
Because it privileges cultural identity as empowering, therefore, postmodern theory is complicit with nationalism. In this way, postmodernism moves into an ideological space occupied historically by populism. To the postmodern argument emphasising the cultural identity of the migrant-worker -as-‘other’-nationality, therefore, the far right counterposes an argument similarly emphasising cultural identity, only this time of the non-migrant worker. In the absence of socialist ideas/practice, and as capitalism spreads across the globe, this form of nationalist discourse can be deployed effectively by populists who claim it is the only way to safeguard/retain workers’ jobs and living standards. The political outcome is not difficult to discern: consciousness of class, together with its accompanying forms of struggle, quickly give way to ideology and mobilisation based on national identity.
Any working class unity, solidarity and struggle achieved hitherto rapidly fragments along ethnic/national lines and along with it unravelling political and economic gains made by leftist parties/organisations. Labour market competition involving workers and migrants possessing different ethnic/national identities quickly breeds racism, an ideology that populism foments and reproduces so as to obtain grassroots support, thereby dividing the workforce. 67 Components of the latter are encouraged to see themselves – and organise – as members not of the working class but rather of a particular non-class identity/group. This in turn is legitimised by postmodern theory, which proclaims the not just the irreducibility and innateness of non-class identity, but also its culturally empowering nature. Not only does this kind of shift deflect from divisions of class, therefore, but mobilisation/struggle based on non-class identities – religion, ethnicity, nationalism – generates support for non- or anti-progressive ideologies/movements. 68 The result is a populist defence of non-class forms of ‘otherness’, and of their empowerment, simply because they are ‘other’, regardless of what is advocated ideologically and politically.
The kind of problem this generates is clear. To begin with, it ignores periodic warnings by Marxists – among them Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg and Marx himself – that such an approach is not merely not leftist but risks endorsing political/ideological movements that are backwards-looking, and thus opposed to concepts of progress and democracy, let alone socialism. Hence the current enthusiasm on the part of postmodernists – and some leftists – for more ideological ‘inclusiveness’, with the object of constructing a political alliance consisting of anyone opposed to laissez-faire, an all-encompassing form of anti-capitalism that embraces categories outside (and even opposed to) the working class. Under the conceptual umbrella of terms such as ‘multitude,’ ‘difference, ’and hegemony, therefore, postmodern theory advocates incorporating elements like the lumpenproletariat, undifferentiated peasants, religious movements, and even sections of the bourgeoisie, into a broad alliance against the laissez-faire policies/programmes of the neoliberal state. Such populist movements – constructed around nothing more than a shared dislike of neoliberalism – overlook the fact that, politically and ideologically, these categories are not just uninterested in socialism but actively opposed to it, as evidence by their presence historically in counter-revolutionary and/or reactionary movements. 69
An additional factor contributing to the current impact on working class livelihoods of labour market competition is that it is a problem that becomes more acute as capitalism spreads across the globe. Accumulation thrives on this expanding industrial reserve army, composed of erstwhile peasants who, separated from their means of production, contribute to a globally available workforce that – because of deskilling – can now be employed alongside machinery in the advanced capitalist labour process. Improved communications and infrastructure in effect reduce distance between nations, travel no longer being the obstacle to migration that it once was. In the past, what immigrants to Western Europe brought with them was the identity of class as defined by the receiving nation to which they came. Now, increasingly they bring not only a particular ethnic/national identity, but also that of a nation left behind. The latter, it could be argued, is due in part to three interrelated processes. First, the role of NGOs, which nowadays act as a legal conduit for migrant rights, which although presented mainly in terms of asylum, inadvertently justify thereby the access to the host nation of what Marxism regards as an expanding industrial reserve army. 70 Second, the broad tendency to ignore political economy, especially that taking the form of Marxist analysis, when explaining how and why capitalism is reproduced systemically. And third, the role of academia generally, and in particular the adherents of the ‘new’ populist postmodernism, in legitimising a discourse – currently hegemonic – privileging identity politics.
Conclusion
Traced here are the epistemological and political links between pro-slavery discourse in the antebellum South and theory espoused currently by the ‘new’ populist postmodernism. Since each is critical of accumulation and supportive of ‘those below’, both correspond to the anticapitalism of the right. Like pro-slavery discourse, postmodernism expresses hostility towards capitalism, and attempts to redefine unfreedom merely as a contextually-specific variant of traditional culture, one that empowers its subject. Consequently, postmodernism shares with proslavery discourse an idealised perception of pre-/non-capitalist systemic forms: the plantation in the case of the antebellum South, petty commodity production in the case of the Third World village. This expression of concern for ‘those below’, together with hostility towards their capitalist oppressors, is – it is argued here – a populist combination. The latter in turn is at the root of the ideological power exercised by the anti-capitalism of the right over some on the left.
Denying that capitalism (= free society) was – or could ever be – based on a social contract between producers and workers, pro-slavery discourse attacked labour market competition as benefitting only the employer. Seemingly no different from leftist critiques of accumulation, this discourse expressed sympathy for free workers, supporting the labour theory of value while opposing the attempts by Northern capitalists to undercut wages/conditions. Without the subsistence guarantee that the discourse claimed was available to slaves in the antebellum South, free workers in the North – so the argument went – would organise to overthrow the accumulation process and usher in socialism. Coupled with this warning about the perils inherent in laissez-faire, the pro-slavery indictment of capitalism was designed to appeal to non-slaveholders (poor farmers, tenants, landless workers). Accordingly, the focus of this anti-capitalist variant was on how market competition favoured by Northern producers disadvantaged the free labourer who had to work harder for less pay, the avoidance of which was designed to generate ‘from below’ support for slavery, which, by keeping black labour tied to the plantation, ensured they remained outside the labour market.
In certain respects, therefore, the critique by pro-slavery discourse of laissez-faire economics was as sharp as anything written by Marxism. Unlike the latter, however, the solution proposed was a return to what was presented as a benevolent pre-capitalist system, of which slavery in the antebellum South was the relational norm. Equally problematic were claims that accumulation and labour market competition were confined to the Northern economy. Much the same kind of logic – a return to a benign system claimed to be pre- or non-capitalist – informs the ‘new’ populist postmodernism. Such claims were and are obviously problematic, not least the attempt by pro-slavery discourse to deny that slavery constituted a form of property, or the insistence by the ‘new’ populist postmodernism that debt bondage did not correspond to unfreedom. In each instance, therefore, what was overlooked was that such labour power was bought/sold/controlled not by its subject (the slave, the bonded labourer) but rather by the master or the landowner.
Recognition of these differences between pro-slavery discourse and postmodernism on the one hand, and Marxism on the other, has been rendered difficult by misunderstanding as to what the latter stands for politically. Over the past decades, and coinciding with the intellectual rise of postmodernism and neoliberalism, there has been a declining interest in Marxist theory. An inevitable consequence of this intellectual/academic unfashionability has been a corresponding inability to differentiate Marxist political economy, concepts and theory, from non- or anti-Marxist equivalents. As predictable in terms of outcome has been what followed the epistemological lacuna that opened up during this period. Because they endorsed what is the anti-capitalism of the political right, with its privileging of non-class identities (nationality, ethnicity, religion), many who saw themselves as being on the left politically ended up not just supporting the reactionary theory/politics of the right, but also opposing leftist arguments challenging such positions. Not the least important of the many issues affected by this problem has been a failure to understand – let alone address – the significance of a globally burgeoning industrial reserve army and its deleterious impact on the working class in metropolitan capitalist nations.
In contrast to the anti-capitalism of the left, that of the right mobilises on the basis of categories outside (and sometimes against) the working class. A shared dislike of neoliberalism underwrites the emergence and consolidation of the sort of identity politics endorsed by pro-slavery discourse and postmodernism: namely, nationalism, ethnicity, religion, and agrarianism. It was against these kinds of non-class ideologies that Marxism warned, indicating that they served to undermine the class interest of workers, and with it any prospects for a socialist transition. Under the banner of populism, the right has now moved to occupy the political space that is vacant, a colonisation unwittingly abetted by those leftists (or ‘leftists’) who mistakenly saw this anti-capitalism – simply because it is opposed to capitalism – as a progressive development. The current significance of this shift is not difficult to discern. In an epoch marked by a global expansion of the industrial reserve army, and the populist reaction this has generated, involving as it does struggles not about class but about national, ethnic and religious identity, this Marxist warning cannot be ignored.
