Multidimensional Class Struggles and the US Civil War
A Brief Analysis by Li'l Joe from Compton
January 12, 2020

The United States is an association of socio-economic classes and class dominated States. There are several conflicting classes of capitalists based on what's produced or extracted by exploited producing and extraction classes. Different methods of production or extraction are based on what's produced or extracted and what means of production or extraction used determine the kind of labour that is used in relation to the destination of what's produced.

Different classes and property formations are distinguished by conflicting methods of production and forms of appropriation of labour and mode of exploitation of producing classes. The United States is a Federal Republic of States united under one bureaucratic-military central government. The American Civil War was a War between States that resulted from the conflict of Northern industrial capitalist commodity production by wage labour, represented politically by the newly formed Republican Party, against capitalist commodity production by chattel labour in the southern states. It was a war between America's ruling classes with workers and yeomen farmers killing each other.

"Politics is warfare without bloodshed and warfare is politics with bloodshed" (Mao) _ "War is politics by other (i.e. violent) means (Carl von Clausewitz) . The united front of agricultural capitalists, the economy and foreign trade of which was based on chattel labour, were compelled to leave the Union of States and form a new government: the Confederate States of America.

The political structure of the union of North America was a united front of agricultural capitalists based upon chattel slavery and foreign trade together with northern industrial capitalists and merchant capitalists. But by the mid-19th century, the class of southern planters were compelled to leave the Union of States and form a new government: the Confederate States of America.

The bulk of Southern Democrats resigned from the Senate and House of Representatives to form the Confederate State government. The Confederacy had its own army, staffed by officers leaving the United States army. The Republicans, representing Northern industrial states, became the sole power in Congress and the Presidential Administration and had it's own army: the Union Army.

The American Civil War was a War between the States. It was a war between two opposing modes of capitalist commodity production and appropriation of labour: "a house divided cannot stand" said the President of the Union, Abraham Lincoln. The Confederate States of America was invaded and destroyed in conquests by the Union Army.

Political interests represent class interests manifest in ideological combat of class against class - fought out in press and media as well as in Congress. Insomuch as capitalist commodity production by chattel labour had been enshrined in the US Constitution, the Constitution itself was under attack by political and ideological representatives of Northern industrial capital based upon wage labour.

Karl Marx, the utmost theoretician of the International Workingmen's Association, argued for a united front of wage slaves with chattel slaves to fight for the abolition of wages labour along with that of chattel labour. He argued, in Capital Volume One, to white wage workers that: "labour in white-skin cannot be free where in the black it is branded". America's Section of the International Working-Men's Association volunteered to join the Union Army and participated in the American war between the States.

The video "Freedom or Death: the 1811 Slave Revolt" presents slavery as the class issue that it was although it appears to Americans to have been a racial conflict. Capitalist exploitative relations of production in the agricultural South took the form of racial relations based on the form of appropriation and exploitation of slaves. The revolt of the slaves was a class struggle to abolish capitalist commodity production by chattel slave labour. The Emancipation Proclamation was made legal by appropriate Amendments to the federal Constitution. The immediate result was the destruction of capitalist commodity production by chattel slavery and consequently former chattel labourers became share croppers under different relations of production and form of exploitation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zUPNtP3Yn0

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