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- Title
Towards a Bourgeois Revolution? Explaining the American Civil War.
- Authors
Ashworth, John
- Abstract
This paper introduces arguments from Slavery, Capitalism, and Politics in the Antebellum Republic¹ to suggest that the Civil War arose ultimately because of class-conflict between on the one hand, Southern slaves and their masters and, on the other, Northern workers and their employers. It does not, however, suggest that either in the North or the South these conflicts were on the point of erupting into revolution. On the contrary, they were relatively easily containable. However, harmony within each section (North and South) could be secured only at the cost of intersectional conflict, conflict which would finally erupt into civil war. The Civil War was a 'bourgeois revolution' not only because it destroyed slavery, an essentially precapitalist system of production, in the United States but also because it resulted in the enthronement of Northern values, with the normalisation of wage-labour at their core.
- Subjects
UNITED States; AMERICAN Civil War, 1861-1865; SOCIAL conflict; SLAVERY in the United States; MODE of production; UNITED States economy -- 19th century; SLAVERY, Capitalism &; Politics in the Antebellum Republic (Book); ECONOMIC development; ANTISLAVERY movements; REVOLUTIONS; ECONOMICS; HISTORY
- Publication
Historical Materialism, 2011, Vol 19, Issue 4, p193
- ISSN
1465-4466
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1163/156920611X592364