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MO N L O R N O F R O LU O N R M I

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is not yet possiblefor THEo returnits former32 pagesize. Therculationand revenue in thetedStates are still consider-lytoo low to be ableto offsetlargedecreasein circulationnd revenue from the foreignaresultof the out-eakof war.Nor did sufficientibutionscome@to be ablehave a 32 page DecemberBy the time the Januaryissueppears we shall know quitefinitelyif THE NEW INTaR-ONALan increaseits sizegain, or whether it will bessaryto stabilizethe maga-neon a 16pagebasis.The November numberused considerable interest4300copieswere published,largerquantitythan for sev-al months; this despite therculation loss from abroad.though some copiesare stilln hand,they will no doubtbeearedfrom the shelvesby re-sfor copiesand bundles.* * *Several tww orders and in-were placed in recenteks. The Harvard Socialistagueplacedan order for 20pies; a group in Memphis,nessee,for five copies; andgroupof comradesat theUni-rsity of Michigan,Ann Ar-r,put in anorderfor 20cop-regularly.Increasesweremadeby Wor-erto ninecopies;New Hav-from 15 to 20; San Diegoom five to eight. Two de-were recorded:Minne-olis f rom 75 to 50 and De-t from 35to 25.The bundle circulation, byd large, appearsto be quitelized,with more persistentplannedeffortsmadeby thehesto circulatethe maga-e. The agents have for ang time been orderingwhatey are ableto disposeof andTHENEW INTER-

circulationis entirelya fide.The main difficultycontinuesthe field of subscriptions,ich for varied reasonshaven harderto obtain.Howeverpastmonthwasa quitegood, all things considered.Butcombinationoffer of a THEINTERNATIONALubscrip-togetherwith a copyof theLiving Thought ofx,with an introductionbyTrotsky, Marxismin Oures,broughtin quiteanum-of subscriptions.!

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T N IAVolumeV De4xxnber939 NumberIZ (WholeNo.99)P ublish ed m on th ly by THE NEW INTERNATIONALublishing Com-pany,116University Place, NewYork, N. Y. Telephone: A@onquin4-8547.Subscriptionrates: $2.00per year; bundles,14cfor 5 copiesand UP. Canada and Foreign: $2.50per year: bundles 16c for 5copies a nd UP.Enteredas second-classmatterDecember9,1937,atthepostotliceat NewYork,N. Y.,undertheact of March3, 1879.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS :1

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IM o n t h l y O r g a n of R e v 01 u t i o n a r y M a r x i s m

5 DECEMBER 1939 No.

RevolutionandtheNegroHE NEGROS revolutionary history is rich, inspir-ing, and unknown. Negroes revolted against the slaveraiders in Africa; they revolted against the slaveaders on the Atlantic passage. They revolted on the plan-

The docileNegro is a myth. Slaves on slave ships jumpederboard, went on vast hunger strikes, attacked the crews.ere are records of slaves overcoming the crew and takinge ship into harbor, a feat of tremendous revolutionaryaring. In British Guiana during the eighteenth centurye Negro slaves revolted, seized the Dutch colony, andeld it for years. They withdrew to the interior, forced thehites to sign a treaty of peace, and have remained freethis day. Every VVest Indian colony, particularly Jamaicand San Domingo and Cuba, the largest islands, had itsttlements of maroons, bold Negroes who had fled into theilds and organized themselves to defend their freedom.n Jamaica the British government, after vainly trying toppress them, accepted their existence by treaties of peace,rupulously observed by both sides over many years, anden broken by British treachery. In America the Negroesade nearly 1S0 distinct revolts against slavery. The onlylace where Negroes did not revolt is in the pages of cap-alist historians. All this revolutionary history can comea surpriseonly to those who, whatever International theyelong to, whether Second, Third, or Fourth, have notet ejected from their systems the pertinacious lies ofglo-Saxon capitalism, It is not strange that the Negroesevolted. It would have been strange if they had not.But the Fourth International, whose business is revolu-on, has not to prove that Negroes were or are as revolu-onary as any group of oppressed people. That has itslace in agitation. VVhat we as Marxists have to see ise tremendous role played by Negroes in the transforma-on of Western civilization from feudalism to capitalism.is only from this vantage-ground that we shall be able topreciate (and prepare for) the still greater role they mustf necessity play in the transition from capitalism to so-What are the decisive dates in the modern history ofreat Britain, France, and America? 1789, the beginningthe French Revolution; 1832, the passing of the Reformill in Britain; and 1865, the crushing of the slave-powerAmerica by the Northern states. Each of these datesarks a definitive stage in the transition from feudal toapitalist society. The exploitation of millions of Negroesd been a basic factor in the economic development of eachf these three nations. It was reasonable, therefore, toxpect the Negro question to play no less an important

role in the resolution of the problems that faced eachciety. No one in the prerevolutionary days, however, evfaintly foresaw the magnitude of the contributionsNegroes were to make. Today Marxists have far lexcuse for falling into the same mistake.

The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, athe basis of bourgeois wealth was the slave trade and tslave plantations in the colonies. Let there be no mistaabout this. Sad irony of human history, says Jaur&, fortunes created at Bordeaux, at Nantes by the slave-tragave to the bourgeoisie that pride which needed liberty acontributed to human emancipation. And Gaston-Martthe historian of the slave trade sums up thus: though tbourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the scess or failure of the traffic everything else dependTherefore when the bourgeoisie proclaimed the RightsMan in general, with necessary reservations, one of thewas that these rights should not extend to the French conies. In 1789 the French colonial trade was eleven mlion pounds, two-thirds of the overseas trade of FranBritish colonial trade at that time was only five millpounds. What price French abolition? There wasabolitionist society to which Brissot, Robespierre, Mibeau, Lafayette, Condorcet, and many such famous mbelonged even before 1789. But liberals are liberal. Fto face with the revolution, they were ready to compmise. They would leave the half million slaves in thslavery, but at least the Mulattoes, men of property (incluing slaves) and education, should be given equal rigwith the white colonials. The white colonial magnatesfused concessions and they were people to be reoned with, aristocrats by birth or marriage, bourgeoistheir trade connections with the maritime bourgeoisie. Thopposed all change in the coloniesthat would diminish thsocial and political domination. The maritime bourgeoisconcerned about their millions of investments, supporthe colonials,and against eleven million pounds of trade pyear the radical politicians were helpless. It was the revotion that kicked them from behind and forced them fward.First of all the revolution in France. The Girondiright wing of the Jacobin club, overthrew the pro-royaFeuillants and came to power in March, 1792.And secondly the revolution in the colonies. The Multoes in San Domingo revolted in 1790, followed a fmonths later by the slave revolt in August 1791. On Ap4, 1792 the Girondins granted political and social rig

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?age 340 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL December 1to the Mulattoes. The big bourgeoisie agreed, for the colon-ial aristocrats, after vainly trying to win Mulatto supportfor independence, decided to hand the colony over to Brit-ain rather than tolerate interference with their system. Allthese slave owners, French nobility and French bourgeoisie,colonial aristocrats and Mulattoes, were argreed that theslave revolt should be suppressed and the slaves remain intheir slavery.The slaves, however, refused to listen to threats, and nopromises were made to them. Led from beginning toend by men who had themselves been slaves and were un-able to read or write, they fought one of the greatest revo-lutionary battles in history. Before the revolution they hadseemed subhuman. Many a slave had to be whipped beforehe could be got to move from where he sat. The revolutiontransformed them into heroes.The island of San Domingo was divided into two col-onies, one French, the other Spanish. The colonial govern-ment of the Spanish Bourbons supported the slaves in theirrevolt against the French republic, and many rebel bandstook service with the Spaniards. The French colonials in-vited Pitt to take over the colony, and when war was de-clared between France and England in 1793, the Englishinvaded the island.The English expedition, welcomed by all the white colo-nials, captured town after town in the south and west ofFrench San Domingo. The Spaniards, operating with thefamous Toussaint Louverture, an ex-slave, at the head offour thousand black troops, invaded the colony from theeast. British and Spaniards were gobbling up as much asthey could before the time for sharing came. In thesematters) wrote the British minister, Dundas, to the gov-ernor of Jamaica, the more we have, the better our preten-sions. On June 4th, Port-au-Prince, the capital of SanDomingo, fell. Meanwhile another British expedition hadcaptured Martinique, Guadaloupe, and the other Frenchislands. Barring a miracle, the colonial trade of France, therichest in the world, was in the hands of her enemies andwould be used against the revolution, But here the Frenchmasses took a hand,August 10, 1792 was the beginning of the revolutiontriumphant in France. The Paris masses and their support-ers all over France, in 1789 indifferent to the colonialquestion, were now striking in revolutionary frenzy at ev-ery abuse of the old regime and none of the former tyrantswere so hated as the aristocrats of the skin, Revolution-ary generosity, resentment at the betrayal of the coloniesto the enemies of the revolution, impotence in the face cfthe British navythese swept the Convention off its feet.On February 4, 1794, without a debate, it decreed the aboli-tion of Negro slavery and at last gave its sanction to theblack revolt.The news trickled through somehow to the French WestIndies. Victor Hugues, a Mulatto, one of the great person-alities produced by the revolution, managed to breakthrough the British blockade and carried the officialnoticeof the manumission to the Mulattoes and blacks of theWest Indian islands. Then occurred the miracle. Theblacks and Mulattoes dressed themselves in the revolution-ary colors and, singing revolutionary songs, they turned onthe British and Spaniards, their allies of yesterday. With

little more from revolutionary France than its moralport, they drove the British and Spaniards frgm theirquests and carried the war into enemy territory.British, after five years of trying to reconquer the Frecolonies, were finally driven out in 1798.Few know the magnitude and the importance ofdefeat sustained at the hands of Victor Hugues insmaller islands and of Toussaint Louverture and Rigin San Domingo. Fortescue, the Tory historian of the Bish army, estimates the total loss to Britain at 100,000 mYet in the whole of the Peninsular War Wellingtonfrom all causeskilled in battle, sickness, desertions-on40,000 men. British blood and British treasure were pouout in profusion in the West Indian campaign. Thisthe reason for Britains weakness in Europe duringcritical years 1793-1798. Let Fortescue himself spThe secret of Englands impotence for the first six yof the war may be said to lie in the two fatal wordsDomingo. British historians blame chiefly the fever, aSan Domingo was the only place in the world that Eopean imperialism had met fever.Whatever the neglect or distortions of later historithe French revolutionaries themselves knew what the Nequestion meant to the revolution. The Constituent,Legislature, and the Convention were repeatedly thrinto disorder by the colonial debates. This had grave recussions in the internal struggle as well as in the revolutary defense of the Republic. Says Jaur&, Undoubtbut for the compromises of Barnave and all his partythe colonial question, the general attitude of the Assemafter the flight to Varennes would have been differeExcluding the masses of Paris, no portion of the Freempire played, in proportion to its size, so grandiose ain the French Revolution as the half million blacks andlattoes in the remote West Indian islands.

The black revolution in San Domingo choked asource one of the most powerful economic streams ofeighteenth century. With the defeat of the British, the bproletarians defeated the Mulatto Third Estate in a blocivil war. Immediately after, Bonaparte, representativthe most reactionary elements of the new French bgeoisie, attempted to restore slavery in San Domingo.blacks defeated an expedition of some 50,000 men,with the assistance of the Mulattoes, carried the revoluto its logical conclusion. They changed the name ofDomingo to Haiti and declared the island independent.black revolution had a profound effect on the strugglethe cessation of the slave trade.We can trace this close connection best by followthe development of abolition in the British Empire.first great blow at the Tory domination of Britain (anfeudalism in France for that matter) was struck byDeclaration of Independence in 1776. When Jeffewrote that all men are created equal, he was drawingthe death-warrant of feudal society, wherein men werlaw divided into unequal classes. Crispus Attucks, thegro, was the first man killed by the British in the warfollowed. It was no isolated or chance phenomenon.Negroes thought that in this war for freedom, they c

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Dceember 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Page 3win their own. It has been estimated that of the 30,000men in Washingtons army 4000 were Negroes. The Amer-icanbourgeoisie did not want them. They forced themselvesin. But San Domingo Negroes fought in the war also.The French monarchy came to the assistance of theAmerican Revolution. And Negroes from the French col-onies pushed themselves into the French expeditionaryforce. Of the 1900 French troops who recaptured Savan-nah, 900 were volunteers from the French colony of SanDomingo. Ten years later some of these menRigaud,Andr6, Lambert, Beauvais and others (some say Chris-topheralso)with their political and military experiencewill be foremost among the leaders in the San Domingorevolution. Long before Karl Marx wrote, Workers ofthe world, unite, the revolution was international.The loss of the slave-holding American colonies tookmuch cotton out of the ears of the British bourgeoisie.Adam Smith and Arthur Young, heralds of the industrialrevolution andwage-slavery, were already preaching againstthe waste of chattel-slavery. Deaf up to 1783, the Bri-tish bourgeois now heard, and looked again at the WestIndies. Their own colonieswere bankrupt. They were losingthe slave trade to French and British rivals. And half theFrench slaves that they brought were going to San Do-mingo, the India of the eighteenth century. Why shouldthey continue to do this? In three years, the first abolitionistsociety was formed and Pitt began to clamor for the aboli-tion of slaveryfor the sake of humanity, no doubt,says Gaston-Martin, but also, be it well understood, toruin French commerce. With the war of 1793, Pitt, cher-ishing a prospect of winning San Domingo, piped down onabolition. But the black revolution killed the aspirations ofboth France and Britain,The Treaty of Vienna in 1814 gave to France the rightto recapture San Domingo: the Haitians swore that theywould rather destroy the island, With the abandonmentof the hopes for regaining San Domingo, the British abol-ished the slave trade in 1807. America followed in 1808.If the East Indian interest in Britain was one of thegreat financial arsenals of the new bourgeoisie (whencethe diatribes of Burke, Whig spokesman, against Hastingsand Clive), the West Indian interest, though never so pow-erful as in France, was a cornerstone of the feudal oli-garchy. The loss of America was the beginning of theirdecline. But for the black revolution, San Domingo wouldhave strengthened them enormously. The reformist Britishbourgeoisie belabored them, the weakest link in the oligar-chic chain. A great slave revolt in Jamaica in 1831 helpedto convince those who had doubts. In Britain Better eman-cipation from above than from below anticipated the Tsarby thirty years. One of the first acts of the victorious re-formers was to abolish slavery in the British colonies. Butfor the black revolution in San Domingo, abolition andemancipation might have been postponed another thirtyyears.Abolition did not come to France until the revolution of1848. The production of beet-sugar, introduced into Franceby Bonaparte, grew by leaps and bounds, and placed thecane sugar interests, based on slavery in Martinique andGuadaloupe,increasingly on the defensive. One of the firstacts of the revolutionary government of 1848 was to

abolish slavery. But as in 1794, the decree was merelyregistration of an accomplished fact. SO menacing wasattitude of the slaves that in more than one colony the logovernment, in order to head off the servile revolution, pclaimed abolition without waiting for authorization frFrance.

1848, the year following the economic crisis of 18was the beginning of a new cycle of revolutions all othe Western world. The European revolutions, Chartiin England, were defeated. In America the irrepressiconflict between capitalism in the North and the slsystem in the South was headed off for the last timethe Missouri Compromise of 1850. The political develments following the economic crisis of 1857 made furtcompromise impossible.It was a decade of revolutionary struggle the world oin the colonial and semi-colonial countries. 1857 wasyear of the first war of Indian independence, commomiscalled the Indian Mutiny. In 1858 began the civil win Mexico, which ended with the victory of Juarez thyears later. It was the period of the Taiping revolutionChina, the first great attempt to break the power ofManchu dynasty. North and South in America movedtheir predestined clash unwillingly, but the revolutionaNegroes helped to precipitate the issue, For two decabefore the Civil War began, they were leavingSouth in thousands. The revolutionary organization knowas the Underground Railway, with daring, efficiency adispatch, drained away the slave owners human properFugitive slaves were the issue of the day. The FugitiSlave Law of 1850 was a last desperate attempt byFederal Government to stop this illegal abolition. TNorthern states replied with personal liberty laws whinullified the heavy penalties of the 1850 law. Most famoperhaps of all the whites and Negroes who ran the Uderground Railway is Harriet Tubman, a Negro who hherself escaped from slavery. She made nineteen journeinto the South and helped her brothers and their wives athree hundred other slaves to escape. She made her depdations in enemy territory with a price of $40,000 on hhead. Josiah Henson, the original of Uncle Tom, helpnearly two hundred slaves to escape. Nothing so galledslave owners as this twenty-year drain on their alreabankrupt economic system.It is unnecessary to detail here the causes of this,greatest civil war in history. Every Negro ~choolbknows that the last thing Lincoln had in mind was temancipation of Negroes. What is important is that,reasons both internal and external, Lincoln had to drthem into the revolutionary struggle. He said that withoemancipation the North might not have won, and he win all probability right. Thousands of Negroes were figing on the Southern side, hoping to win their freedom tway. The abolition decree broke down the sociaI cohesof the South. It was not only what the North gained bas Lincoln pointed out, what the South lost. On the Norern side 220,000 Negroes fought with such bravery thawas impossible to do with white troops what could be dowith them. They fought not only with revolutionary br

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Page 342 lEII? NEW INTERNATIONAL. Decemberery but with coolness and exemplary discipline. The bestof them were filled with revolutionary pride. They werefighting for equality. one c~mpany stacked arms beforethe tent of its commanding officer as a protest against dis-criminatioaLincoln was also driven to abolition by the pressure ofthe British working class. Palmerston wanted to interveneon the side of the South but was opposed in the cabinet byGladstone. Led by Marx, the British working class so vig-orously opposed the war, that it was impossible to hold apro-war meeting anywhere in England. The British Toriesderided the claim that the war was for the abolition ofslavery: hadnt Lincoln said so many times? The Britishworkers, however, insisted on seeing the war as a war forabolition, and Lincoln, for whom British non-interventionwas a life and death matter, decreed abolition with a sud-denness which shows his fundamental unwillingness to takesuch a revolutionary step.Abolition was declared in 1863. Two years before, themovement of the Russian peasants, so joyfully hailed byMarx, frightened the Tsar into the semi-emancipation ofthe serfs. The North won its victory in 1865. Two yearslater the British workers won the Second Reform Bill,which gave the franchise to the workers in the towns. Therevolutionary cycle was concluded with the defeat of theParis Commune in 1871. A victory there and the historyof Reconstruction would have been far different.

Between 1871 and 1905 the proletarian revolution wasdormant. In Africa the Negroes fought vainly to maintaintheir independence against the imperialist invasions. Butthe Russian Revolution of 1905 was the forerunner of anew era that began with the October Revolution in 1917.While half a million Negroes fought with the French Revo-lution in 1789, today the socialist revolution in Europe hasas its potential allies over 120 million Negroes in Africa.Where Lincoln had to seek an alliance with an isolatedslave population, today millions of Negroes in Americahave penetrated deep into industry, have fought side byside with white workers on picket lines, have helped tobarricade factories for sit-down strikes, have played theirpart in the struggles and clashes of trade unions and po-litical parties. It is only through the spectacles of historicalperspective that we can fully appreciate the enormous rev-olutionary potentialities of the Negro masses today.Half a million slaves, hearing the words Liberty, Equal-ity, and Fraternity shouted by millions of Frenchmenmany thousands of miles away, awoke from their apathy.They occupied the attention of Britain for six years and,once again to quote Fortescue, practically destroyed theBritish army. What of the Negroes in Africa today?This is a bare outline of the record.F r en ch West A fr i ca : 1926-1929, 10,000 men fled intothe forest swamps to escape French slavery.F ren ch E qu at or i al A fr i ca: 1924, uprising. 1924-1925,uprising, 1000 Negroes killed. 1928, June to November,rising in Upper Sangha and Lai. 1929, a rising lasting four months; the Africans organized an army of 10,000.B fi t ish West A fr i ca: 1929, a revolt of women in Ni-geria, 30,000 in number; 83 killed, 87 wounded. 1937,

general strike of the Gold Coast farmers, joined bydockers and truck drivers.Bel gi an Congo: 1929, revolt in Ruanda Urundi; tsands killed. 1930-1931, revolt of the Bapendi, 800sacred in one place, Kwango.SoZ~thAfr ica: 1929, strikes and riots in Durban;Negro quarter was entirely surrounded by troops andbarded by planes.Since 1935 there have been general strikes, with sing of Negroes, in Rhodesia, in Madagascar, in ZanzIn the West Indies there have been general strikesmass action such as those islands have not seen sincemanicpation from slavery a hundred years ago. Shave been killed and wounded.The above is only a random selection. The Negin Africa are caged and beat against the bars continuIt is the European proletariat that holds the key. Leworkers of Britain, France, and Germany say, Arischildren of starvation as loudly as the French revoluaries said Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity and whaton earth can hold these Negroes back? All who know

thing about Africa know this.Mr. Norman Leys, a government medical officKenya for twenty years, a member of the British LaParty, and about as revolutionary as the late RamsayDonald, wrote a study of Kenya in 1924. Seven yearshe wrote again. This time he entitled his book AChance in Kenya. The alternative, he said, is revolutioIn Caliban in Afr ica, Leonard Barnes, another milkwater socialist, writes as follows: So he [the Southrican white] and the native he holds captive go spindown the stream fatally, madly spinning together alonrapids above the great cataract, both yoked to one omtent hour. That is the revolution, wrapped in silver pThe revolution haunts this conservative Englishmanwrites again of the Bantu, They crouch in their conursing a sullen anger and desperately groping for aThey will not be many years making up their minds. Tand fate, even more prevailing than the portcullis oAfrikaner, are driving them on from the rear. Sometmust give; it will not be fate or time. Some comprehesocial and economic reconstruction must take placehow? By reason or by violence? . . .He poses as alternatives what are in reality one.change will take place,by violence and by reason comb

aLet us return again to the San Domingo revolutionits paltry half a million slaves. Writing in 1789, theyear of the revolution, a colonist said of them thatwere unjust, cruel, barbarous, half-human, treachedeceitful, thieves, drunkards, proud, lazy, unclean, shless, jealous to fury and cowards.Three years later Roume, the French Commissinoted that even though fighting with the royalist Siards, the black revolutionaries, organizing themselvesarmed sections and popular bodies, rigidly observed aforms of republican organization. They adopted sloand rallying cries. They appointed chiefs of sectionsdivisions who, by means of these slogans, could callout and send them back home again from one end o

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Dceember 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Paprovince to the others. They threw up from out of theirdepths a soldier and a statesman of the first rank, ToussaintLouverture, and secondary leaders fully able to hold theirown with the French in war, diplomacy, and administra-tion. In ten years they organized an army that foughtBonapartes army on level terms. But what men theseblacks are ! How they fight and how they die ! wrote aFrench officer looking back at the last campaign after fortyyears. From his dying bed, Leclerc, Bonapartes brother-in-law and commander-in-chief of the French expedition,wrote home, We have . . . a false idea of the Negro. Andagain, We have in Europe a false idea of the country inwhich we fight and the men whom we fight against. . . .We need to know and reflect on these things to-day.Menaced during its whole existence by imperialism, Eur-opean and American, the Haitians have never been able toovercome the bitter heritage of their past. Yet that revolu-tion of a half million not only helped to protect the FrenchRevolution but initiated great revolutions in its own right..When the Latin American revolutionaries saw that half amillion slaves could fight and win, they recognised thereality of their own desire for independence. Bolivar,broken and ill, went to Haiti. The Haitians nursed himback to health, gave him money and arms with which hesailed to the mainland. He was defeated, went back to Hai-ti, was once more welcomed and assisted. And it was fromHaiti that he sailed to start on th final campaign, whichended in the independenceof the five states.Today 150 million Negroes, knit into world economy in-finitely more tightly than their ancestors of a hundred years

ago, will far surpass the work of that San Domingmillion in the work of social transformation. The cous risings in Africa; the refusal of the Ethiopian wto submit to Mussolini; the American Negroes whoteered to fight in Spain in the Abraham Lincoln Bas Rigaud and Beauvais had volunteered to fight inica, tempering their swords against the enemy abrouse against the enemy at home-these lightings anthe thunder. The racial prejudice that now standsway will kmw before the tremendous impact of thetarian revolution.In Flint during the sit-down strike of two yeaseven hundred Southern whites, soaked from infaracial prejudice, found themselves besieged in the GMotors building with one Negro among them. Whtime came for the first meal, the Negro, knowing wwhat his companions were, held himself in the backgImmediately it was proposed that there should be nodiscrimination among the strikers. Seven hundredwent up together. In the face of the class enemy threcognized that race prejudice was a subordinatewhich could not be allowed to disrupt their struggNegro was invited to take his seat first, and after ttory was won, in the triumphant march out of the fhe was given the first place. That is the prognosisfuture. In Africa, in America, in the West Indiesnational and international scale, the millions of Nwill raise their heads, rise up from their knees, ansome of the most massive and brilliant chaptershistory of revolutionary socialism. J. R. JOHN

The ColonialPlantationSystemdIN THE colonial period, before the rise of large-scaleindustry, slavery existed in two different economicforms in the Western world, one representing its past,the other its future. The first was the patriarchal form inwhich it had flourished from time immemorial, The patri-archal plantations were largely self-sustained, retainingmany features of natural economy. Production was dividedinto two parts, one devoted to the cultivation of such cashcrops as tobacco, corn, hemp, etc. ; the other to the needs ofhome consumption.The plantation system developed along these lines in theVirginia and Maryland colonies. The average estate wasrelatively small, employing from five to twenty hands, partof whom were likely to be white redemptioners. Blacks andwhites worked together in the fields without insurmount-able barriers or deep antagonisms between them. Relationsbetween masters and slaves, with notable exceptions, had apaternal character. The slaveowner was not an absenteelandlord who entrusted his estate to the supervision of anoverseer and was interested solely in the maximum amountof profit to be gained from his operations. He lived uponhis plantation the year round and regarded it as his home.Field hands were often indulgently treated. Negro servants,

who replaced white servants in the household as well as inthe field, were frequently on intimate and trusted terms

with the master and his family, remained in the samily generation after generation, and were regarded aordinate members of the household.Such plantations raised their own food, wove thecloth, built their own houses. Agriculture for domeswas sometimes supplemented by domestic manufaGeorge Washingtons estate, for examp[e, contaweaving establishment. Other planters owned spinniweaving factories employing not only slave labor butservants on a wage-labor basis.In South Carolina and Georgia the plantationdeveloped according to a different pattern. Thereslavery lost its patriarchal characteristics and becameformed into a purely commercial system of explobased upon the production of a single money crotypical rice and indigo plantations in the coastal rwere of large size, employing about thirty slaves wunder a white taskmaster. The proprietors were eithsentee owners living in Charleston, Savannah, or Jwho came to inspect the estates several times a yearlived only part of the year upon their plantations owthe prevalence of malaria in the hot months. Southlina and Georgias economy was so utterly dependenslave labor that they became the strongholds of thsystem in the English colonies,on the mainland.

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Page 344 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL December 19Until the rise of the Cotton Kingdom, the capitalist plan-tation system in the English colonies was perfected on thtlargest scalein Jamaica. Economically considered,the wholeisland was converted into one vast plantation devoted to thecultivation of sugar cane and the making of sugar whichwas then shipped overseas for sale. The individual planta-tions, carved in large sections out of the fertile soil, werein many casesowned by absentee landlords resident in Eng-land and managed by hired superintendents. They were ex-

tremely productive and worked entirely by slave labor.Theaverageunitof industryin theJamaicansugarfieldscalmeto be a plantationwith a totalof nearlytwo hundredNegroes,ofwhom more than half were workers in the field gangs,writesUlrichB. Phillipsin his introductionto the first volumeof TheDocumentar yH i story of American Indtwtr ia lSociety. The labor-er s w er e st rict ly cla ssified a n d w or ked in sq ua ds u nder clos eand energe t ic superv is ion to nea r the max imum of thei r muscu la ra b il it y . The r ou t in e wa s t hor ough ly s ys t ema t ic, a nd t he s ys t ema s efficien t o n t he w h ole a s cou ld w ell be, w h er e t he dir ect or sw er e s o few a n d t h eNeg roes s o many a n d s o lit t le r emov ed fr omt h e s ta t us of Afr ica n s a va g er y. Th e J a ma ica n unit s w er e on t h eaver age the l a r ges t in a l l the h is tor y of p lan t a t i on indust r y .The concentration of production upon one commercialstaple combined with the exclusive use of slave labor giverise to the social and economic consequences that werelater to prevail in the Cotton Kingdom. The small farmerswho had originally populated the island were pushed outand gradually disappeared. The inhabitants came to be di-vided into two absolutely opposed classes: the planters andtheir agents on top and the Negro slaves cm the bottom. Asprinkling of merchants and mechanics between them ca-tered to the needs of the plantation owners. lhe sugar lordswere absolute rulers of the island, exploiting it for theirexclusive benefit and representing it at Westminster.This type of chattel slavery prefigured the future and

was to predominate within the Southern Cotton Kingdom.Except for the far South, slavery was a decaying insti-tution in the English coastal colonies at the time of theRevolution. The decline in the value of tobacco compelledmany planters to turn to the raising of other crops in whichslave labor could not profitably compete with free labor.Finding their slaves to be an economic liability, some mas-ters entertained ideas of emancipation. The slave system be-gan to disintegrate, giving way here and there to tenant-farming, share-cropping, and even wage-labor.Virginia and Maryland were then among the leading

,centers of abolition sentiment in the colonies. Some of thewealthiest and most influential planters in the Old Domin-ion, such as Washington and Jefferson, advocated theabolition of slavery and the restriction of the slave trade.Henry Laurens of South Carolina, President of the Con-tinental Congress, who owned slaves worth twenty thou-sandpounds, wrote his son in 1776 that he abhorred slaveryand was devising means for manumitting his chattels. Butmost slaveholders, especially those in Georgia and SouthCarolina where rice and hemp could not be grown withoutslaves, flatly opposed any restrictions upon the trade whichwould prevent them from buying the labor they needed.They found support among Northern merchants who bene-fited from the slave traflic.

In the first draft of the Declaration of IndependenJefferson had inserted an indictment of George III for pmoting and protecting the slave trade against coIonialptests. But, he tells us,theclause,reprobatinghe enslavingof the inhabitantsof Afriwas struck out in complaisanceo South Carolinaand Georwho had never attemptedto restrainthe importationof slaandwho,on the contrary,stillwishedto continueit . Our Norer n b ret h ren , a l so, I b el ieve, f el t a l it t le t ender under t hos e cs ur es ; for t h ou gh t h eir people h a d very f ew s laves themselyet they had been pret t y cons ider ab leca r r ier s of them to otheThe Revolutionary War impressed the dangers of slavupon the minds of the colonists. Aroused by proclamatifrom royal governors and military commanders promisithem freedom, thousands of Negroes escaped to the Britcamps and garrisons; while the slaveowners, fearful ofsurrection and the safety of their property and familiwere unableor unwilling to serve in the Continental armNew England, with a population lessnumerous than thatVirginia, Carolina, and Georgia, provided more than twas many troops to the revolutionary forces. The South w

easily conquered by the redcoats who were defeated aexpelled from New England at the beginning of the wA1though the Revolution had been proclaimed and fougin the name of liberty and equality, it brought little immeate alteration in the status of the mass of Negroes wlived in the South. Only the few thousands in the Norbenefited from the liberating legislation of that period. Tstate constitution of Massachusetts led the way by aboliing slavery in 1780; Pennsylvania passed an act of grademancipation the same year; in the succeeding years othNorthern states illegalized slavery within their bordeBut not for a half century after the Declaration of Indpendence, in 1826, was slavery legally abolished in NYork.When the delegates to the Constitutional Convention min secret conclave at Philadelphia to form the Union,question of the abolition of slavery was not even plaupon the agenda. The discussions concerning slaveryvolved around those issues pertaining to the interests ofSouthern planters and Northern capitalists whose repsentatives composed the Convention. The questions in dpute concerned the slave trade, the use of slaves as a bafor taxation and representation, and the protective tarIn return for the protective tariff granted to the capitalithe delegates from South Carolina and Georgia, whoplatform was No Slave Trade-No Union, were grantetwenty-year extension of the slave-trade, a fugitive slalaw, and a provision allowing three-fifths of the slavesbe counted as a basis for taxation and political represention.The slavehcdders proved powerful enough to obtainConstitution that not only protected their peculiar instition but even erected additional legal safeguards aroundGeneral Charles C. Pinckney, delegate to the ConstitutionConvention, reported with satisfaction to the South Calina ratification convention that: By this settlement,have secured an unlimited importation of Negroes ftwenty years. Nor is it declaredwhen that importation sh

be stopped; it may be continued. We have a right to recov

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Dceernber 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Pageour slaves in whatever part of America they may takerefuge. In short, considering all circumstances, we havemade the best terms for the security of this species ofproperty it was in our power to make. We would have madebetter if we could; but, on the whole, I do not think thembad.The Constitution, then, was a slaveholders document;the United States was founded upon slavery. Some of thefounding fathers recognized that slavery was the chiefcrack in the cornerstone of the new Republic, a crack whichin time might widen to a fissure capableof splitting the un-ion apart. Jefferson prophetically warned the slaveholders

that they would one day have to choose between emanction or their own destruction. But before Jeffersonsphecy was fulfilled, chattel slavery was to flourish mluxuriantly than ever in North America and spreadyond the Mississippi to Texas. It was to make Cottonof American economy and the cotton barons autocratthe nation; and it was ultimately to flower in that anacnistic Southern culture which proclaimed slavery to b~erfect mod, eternally ordained and sanctified by~awsof ~od, Justice, H-istory, and Mankind.George E.(To be cont%wd) NOVAC

TheNegroin SouthernAgricultureuNDER MODERN CAPITALIST conditions noless than under chattel slavery the Southern planta-tion economy constitutes the main material basis forthe exploitation and oppression of the Negro masses inNorth America.The bulk of the Negroes in the United States live in theSouth. In 1930, 79910of the 11.9 million Negroes in thecountry dwelt there. The proportion of Negroes in the so-called Black Belt has remained constant since before theCivil War, comprising about 50~0 of the population. In1860 Negroes numbered 2,461,099, or 56.4~0 of the totalpopulation of that area, and in 1930, 4,790,094, or 50.3%of the total population. They have maintained the rate ofgrowth of the general population of the region and in addi-tion, have migrated in thousands to the North.Despite the great northward migration of the SouthernNegro, about three-fourths of the Negro people, rural andurban, still live in areas directly influenced by the planta-tion system; yet, despite the proportions of the urban mi-gration, and the growth of industry in the South, theNegro in America is still predominantly rural. The depres-sion has acted as a serious deterrent on further migrationto the cities during the last ten years. The decrease in thenumber of Negro farm operators, amounting to 8.5~0 be-tween 1920 and 1930 and to 7.5~o between 1930 and 1935,does not negate this fact. More than half the Negroes arestill rural; most of these are farm operators; and almost allof the Negro farm operators (95.3 $ZOare in the South.To grasp the fundamentals of Negro life today we mustexamine the plantation system that shapes and overshadowsit.

The abolition of slavery closed one chapter in the devel-opment of the plantation system and opened another. Butthe transition from the slave plantations to the presentpeonage of sharecropping and tenancy was not so great abreak as is commonly supposed. After having been shat-tered by the impact of emancipation, the plantation systemwas reorganized upon a new basis, formally different fromthe old but little better in reality. This was the tenancy andsharecropping system.After emancipation neither the state nor Federal govern-

ments made any real effort to enablethe freedmen to aceconomic security on the land. The stricken bourbons, oing nothing but land, faced the masses of the ex-slavessessing nothing but their labor power. A system was arrat whereby labor was secured without money wagesland without money rent. This system, accepted at fira temporary arrangement, developed into a permanenttem.The slave owners place was taken by the usurer-plawho had a direct interest in maintaining and strengthethe survivals of slavery by means of sharecropping andancy. Henry Grady noted in 1881 thatThereis beyondquestiona surebut gradualrebunchingosmall farms into large estates,and a tendencytowardsthestablishmentof a Iandowningoligarchy.Here andthere thrall the cottonstates,andalmostin every county,are reapp

the planterprincesof the oldtime, still lordsof acresthougof slaves.Today, as before the Civil War, the plantation sydominates the entire economic, social, and political lithe South, above all in the cotton areas. The plantsystem supports a hereditary oligarchy similar in allrespects to the slave-holding seigneurs of the Old S

The cotton plantation area is characterized by apercentage of tenancy, a high degree of concentratiolandownership, a large percentage of Negroes, lowecomes for the tenants than for farmers in other secof the country, a slight proportion of urban and viinhabitants, scarcity of non-agricultural industries,families, poor school facilities, and a highly mobile potion. Whole families are frequently on the move in sof better conditions.These families are the vassals of King Cotton ancotton nobility. Practically no other crop is grown oplantations other than feed for livestock and aamount of produce for home consumption. The Negthe principal victim of the semi-slave economy ofplantations, even though this economy, radiating fromplantations themselves, profoundly influences non-pltion farming and tenancy in the neighborhood, and enasses increasing numbers of white workers.

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Page 346 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL DecemberThus, today, the exploitation of black labor in one formor another is basic to the plantation system. Moreover, theconcentration of plantation economy determines the degreeof concentration of the Negroes. In his study, Land lord

an d T en an t on t he Cot ton Pl an tat ion , T. J. Woo fter, Jr.states that in 1934, 84~0 of the tenant households wereNegro in a sample survey of 646 plantations in six South-ern states. Their general status is the same as in slave daysNowhere are ante-bellum conditions so nearly preservedas in Yazoo delta, says Rupert B. Vance. The deltaplanters compose the Mississippi aristocracy and, con-versely, here the Negro is to be found at his lowest levelsin America.

Today, more than three-quarters of a century after theabolition of chattel slavery, the areaof the old slave planta-tions and the modern peon plantations is much the same.This is the area of the largest concentration of Negroesand the area in which the largest proportions of Negrotenancy and sharecropping prevail. The basis for thestrength of the economic survivals of slavery are the plan-tations where the majority of the tenants and sharecroppersare Negroes.Moreover, the link between tenancy and cotton produc-tion is as close today as ever. In the South as a whole, 79910of the cotton farms were operated by tenants, as comparedto 38$Z0of non-cotton farms. In the cotton belt alone thepercentage of tenancy is still higher. For example, in 1935,68$Z0of all farms in Mississippi, and 65.6~0 of all farmsin Georgia, were operated by tenants. The tenant is pre-dominantly Negro, but he is gradually being displaced bythe whites. Today 77$Z0of Negro Southern farmers aretenants, as compared with substantially the same figure,75%, in 1900. During the same period the proportion oftenants among Southern white farmers jumped from 36~oto 46fZ0. Moreover, although sharecroppers are aboutequally divided between Negroes and whites, a far largerportion of Negroes is to be found in this lowest class oftenants. In 1935, 58.5~0 of the 629,301 colored tenants inthe South were sharecroppers, whereas of the 1,202,174white tenants only 28.9~0 were sharecroppers.In Mississippi in 1935, 71.8% of the 147,693 Negrotenants were sharecroppers, compared to 69,871 whites ofwhom 45.1~0 were sharecroppers. In Arkansas, 68.3~0 ofthe 59,940 Negro tenants were sharecroppers, compared to91,819 white tenants, of whom 26.7~0 were sharecroppers.In these typical plantation states sixty out of every hundredcotton farms are operated by tenants. 445 out of every1,000 Negro farmers in the South are sharecroppers, comp-ared to 170 out of each 1,000 white farmers.There has been a steady decrease in the number ofNegro tenants and a steady increase in the number ofwhite tenants. Today the problems of the agrarian popula-tion in the South, and of cotton tenancy in particular, in-volve white, no less than black workers. Most white ten-ants are located on the non-plantation size farms. Tenancyon these is directly influenced by the semi-slave conditionson the plantations and has numerous features in commonwith them. This constitutes the main difference betweenNegro and white tenancy.

There are three types of tenancy in the Southscropping, share-tenancy, and renting.The sharecropper owns nothing. The land to whiis assigned, implements and working stock he usesameans of productionbelong to his landlord. The chas nothing but the labor of himself and his familyaverage area cultivated by the Negro sharecropper inwas 31.2 acres, compared to 52.8 by whites. But intypical plantation states as Mississippi and Arkansasthe largest number of Negro sharecroppers, the acrefrom 10 to 20 acres.For use of the means of production the croppergive the landlord a portion, usually half, of the crop;the other half the landlord deducts for furnish, ifood, clothes, and other necessities advanced durinseason, and the croppers share of fertilizer. These aplied through the landlords own commissary orrangement with some merchant. The cropper has ntrol over the nature of his crops, the acreage, methocultivation or marketing of his crop, and is at allunder direct supervision by the landlord or his agentsettlement at the time the crop is sold amountsmore than this: After having received barely enougsubsistence from the landlord in the furnishes tohim to continue working, he is occasionally granted acash bonus at Christmas during a good year. But uthe cropper finds himself in debt to the landlord aftcotton is picked and sold and is forced to remain undebt is worked off. This state of affairs is legalimeans of vagrancy statutes and laws penalizing agricworkers for failure to complete cultivation of a crophaving entered into a contract with a landlord. The o

sion and degradation of the masses under this foeconomic bondage is little better than those experunder chattel slavery.The cropper is a worker paid in kind with no claimcrops upon which the landlord has first lien. The legaof some cotton states define a cropper as a wage-working for the share of the crop as wages aGeorgia Supreme Court in 1872 decided that thof the cropper is rather a mode of paying wagestenancy.The slave received a bare subsistence, the entire pof his toil on the land being appropriated by the plaowner. The sharecropper, on the other hand, gives thelord one-half of the crop by virtue of the landlordsoship of the land and implements, thus assuring thelord from the beginning a large portion of the sproduct produced by the tiller of the soil. But the ring half also reaches the coffers of the landlordform of payments on the advances, fertilizer, etc.,the landlord usually fixes to equal the total wagessharecropper.While the sharecropper does not appear as partmeans of production, as did the slave, the method bysurplus labor is extracted by the landlord differs bufrom slavery. The only difference is that occasionally

his labor is not essential on his patch of plantatiocropper is paid partly in cash. But his position as a

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Dceember 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Pagslave is altered neither by this nor by the fact that he hasa degree of freedom that permits him under certain cir-cumstances to change masters. The sharecropper is boundto the soil by coercive measures, by contract enforced bythe state for the period of the growing season, and then bydebt slavery, made all the more coercive by the credit sys-tem of finance-capital.The price the plantation owner paid for a slave was theanticipated and capitalized surplus value or profit to beground out of him. (C@itaZ, vol. III, p. 934). The costof the slave was a deduction from the capital available foractual production, and this capital ceased to exist for theplantation owner until he sold his slave once more. Addi-tional investment of capital in production was necessarybefore the slave-master began to exploit his labor.With the sharecropper, the landlord is saved the initialdeduction from capital in the purchase of the slave; he in-vests only in his advances to the cropper and in the costsof production. Under chattel-slavery the cost to feed andmaintain a slave was about twenty dollars a year. Woo fter,in his study of 646 plantations, found that advances totenants and sharecroppers amounted to an average of$12.80 per family per month for an average of sevenmonths of the year. (L and l or d and T enan t the Cot tonPlaMat ion, p. 59).Considering that the sharecroppers family usually hasat least five and often as many as ten members, the actualcost of furnishing a cropper with the bare necessities of lifeis lower, at times, than the cost of maintaining a slave. Ifone considers the initial deduction in capital for the pur-chase of the slave, the investment is even less. The land-owner is relieved of any necessity to provide for his laborin the months between picking and planting the next crop,or during periods of reduced production. The landlord, hiscontract protected by the state power, may force the crop-pers to remain cm the plantation without at the same timeadvancing food and other necessities. This is the prevailingstate of affairs throughout the cotton area in periods ofcrisis or low prices for cotton.Since the sharecropper owns no means of production,he is less a tenant than a wage-laborer. However, his rela-tions to the landlord and the land keep him in a state ofpeonage worse than slavery.There is no strict line of demarcation setting off tenantsfrom sharecroppers. One often finds on a single plantation,sharecropping, share-tenancy, renting and wage-labor. Onthe 646 plantations in the cotton states he studied, Woofterfound that sharecropping was predominant. Of these plan-tations 71~0were mixed in tenure, with share-cropperspre-dominant, 16~0 operated entirely by croppers, 6~0 by rent-ers, 3~0 by other share-tenants and 4$Z0operated entirelyby wage-labor, Negroes and whites many times were em-ployed on the same plantation. Of the above plantations53$% were operated entirely by Negroes, 42% by bothNegroes and whites and only 5910entirely by whites.SThe share-tenant differs from the sharecropper by thefact that he owns part of the means of production andmakes an investment in the enterprise. The tenant supplieslabor, work stock, feed for the work stock, tools, seed, and

three-fourths or two-thirds of the fertilizer. The lanreceives one-fourth or one-third of the crops. He musadvances from the landlord or the supply merchantcaught in the credit net, is consequently subject to asiderable degree of supervision, including the sale ocrops.The share-tenant is often but slightly distinguishedthe sharecropper.As Robert P. Brooks states, The stenant is in reality a day laborer. Instead of receweekly or monthly wages he is paid a share of theraised on the tract of land for which he is respons(The Agr a r i an Revol u t i on i n Geor gi a , 1865 -1912 , pp66).The renter most closely approaches the typical tenamore developed capitalist areas. The landlord supplierenter with house, land and fuel for which he is paid arental in either cash or its equal in crops. The renternishes all the means of production. When the rentersmall farmer, his work is often supervised by the lanwho is interested in the crop for the rent and in manyfor advances of food and other necessities.

In the North, the rapid increase in tenancy sinceis an index of impoverishment, brought on by foreclowhich deprives the farmer of his land, buildings andcapital. It is only as a much poorer capitalist that thepossessed tenant can rent land, if at all, and continue fing. The complete expropriation of land, buildings,stock, machinery and other capital since 1929, is refin the growth of an army of farm laborers rather ththe growth of tenancy itself. These laborers cannotbecome small tenant farmers.In the South the general basis of tenancy was theplantations that continued to exist after the abolitiochattel slavery, while in the North tenancy was ratheresult of the expropriation of landowning farmers broabout by finance-capital on the basis of capitalist relaof production. The same type of expropriation takesin the South as in the North, but it does not constitutmain basis for the perpetuation of tenancy.There is another important difference between theof tenancy in the North and in the South. In thevolume of Capi ta l , Marx points out that the progrecharacteristics of the capitalist mode of production inculture are, on the one hand, the rationalization of agture which makes it capable of operation on a socialand, on the other hand, in the development of capitenants. While capitalist tenancy has an adverse effectthe advance of agriculture insofar as the tenants onland hesitate to invest in improvements and manypermit the land to deteriorate, the development of captenancy does have progressive features. In contrast tocapitalist forms of agriculture it separates landownefrom the relationship of master and slave, for the lander or his agent is not, as under feudalism or slaverydirect overlord of the tillers of the soil.Capitalist tenancy separates land as an instrumenproduction from property in land and landowners,whom it represents merely a certain tribute in money, whe collects by force of his monopoly from the indu

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Page 348 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL December 19capitalist, the capitalist farmer. Land thus assumes thecharacter of an instrument of production and is separatedfrom private monopoly over a parcel of land, which en-ables its owner to appropriate a part of the surplus valuein the form of rent. Marx points out that capitalist produc-tion brought this about by first completely pauperizingthe direct producers (Capital, vol. III, pp. 723-724). Cap-italist tenancy, by making the landlord merely a rent CO1.lector, an expropriator of surplus value, and by deprivingthe actual farmer of landownership, prepares the road forthe socialist revolution, which will abolish private propertyin land and make possible planned operation of agriculture.Tenancy in the South does not exhibit any of the pro-gressive characteristicsof capitalist tenancy. Instead of sep-arating on a broad scale landownership from the relation-ships of master and slave, it prolonged and strengthenedsuch relationships, thus maintaining important survivalsof chattel slavery in a highly developed capitalist country.Neither was there a separation of land as an instrumentof production from private property in land, despite theintervention of rent in kind, which does not draw any sharpline of distinction between the relations of production andlandownership. The landlord in the South maintains adirect supervision over production.The tenant system in the South, while possessing noneof the progressive features of capitalist tenancy, partakesof its worst evils. Tenancy hinders the rational developmentof agriculture by deterring the tenant from investing inimprovements on the land, since they would only add tothe capital of the landowner.The failure to make improvements and the concentrationof production upon a single crop, which does not permitthe tenant to rest his land and rotate his crops, results inthe deterioration of the land. The Soil Erosion Survey ofseven Southeastern states found 10,900,000 acres prac-tically destroyed for further cultivation and 11,000,000more acres rapidly approaching the same condition. Thereare about half-a-million families living on such land.The dominance of semi-feudal types of labor relation-ships in the South has not excluded the penetration of cap-italist relations of production. Wage-labor and machineryare the best indices of capitalist relationships in Southernagriculture.

Along with an increasing penetration of capitalism intothe agrarian economy of the Black Belt, there has been anincreasing number of Negro farm wage-workers. Manyplantations and some large tenant farms employ wage-laborexclusively and an even larger number employ wage-laboroccasionally.A part of the plantation is set aside by the operator forcultivation by wage-labor. The Iabor for working the 1and-lord farm is supplied in part by wage-labor and in part bythe tenants under forced labor conditions. The large plan-tation owners employ the greatest number of wage-labor-ers; the plantations having fifty or more tenants retainedan average of 1,375 acres to be cultivated in this manner.The typical plantation in 1934, according to Woofter,had three wage-laborer families who cultivated 45 cropacres each, eight cropper families cultivating 20 acres each,

two share-tenant families cultivating 26 acres each aone renter family cultivating 24 acres. This reflectsclose relationships existing on the plantations between citalist and semi-feudal relations of production.Census data on the use of wage-labor are not complbut these data give us some indication of the low stagecapitalist development in Southern agriculture. In Misssippi, a typical plantation state, half the population are Ngroes. In 1929, 64.5jZ0of the managers of plantations afarms, 27.5~1 of the owners and 10.4~0 of the tenanemployed wage-laborers. In North Dakota, a state whighly developed capitalist methods of operation in agricture, in 1929, 77.9~0 of the managers, 75.8~o of the owers, and 71.1 ~0 of the tenants hired wage-workers.Sharecropping and share-tenancy are being replacedan even more vicious system of labor exploitation. Tsharecropper of yesterday is the wage-worker of todthe man who peddles his brawn and muscle for twenty-fand thirty cents a day, lucky to get one days work a wduring the winter months, and still luckier if he can colhis wage in cash rather than in corn meal or old clothAccording to the 1930 census, there were 523,000 Negagricultural laborers in the South. Counting the unpfamily workers they totaled over a million.The shift from farming with sharecroppers to farmwith wage-hands by many landlords, is taking place olarge scale in the Western cotton areas, in the MississiDelta, and in other areas.The semi-feudal conditions in the plantation area weheavily upon the Negro farm workers. They get the lowwages in the country, an average of $180 a year per famof wage-laborers, or $62 per capita, 17 cents a day onplantations studied by Woofter. They labor the longhours and are subject to strict supervision by plantatforemen. This army of Negro agricultural workers winevitably play a leading role in the development of a rolutionary agrarian labor movement in the South.

The technical backwardness of agriculture in the Sois a result of the plantation economy and its credit systThe average value of machinery and implements per Negowned farm in the South in 1930 was $108. For farmserated by Negro tenants it was $57.In his study of Macon County, Georgia, a typical cotplantation county, Charles S. Johnson found that out612 Negro farm families there were 289 who owneda single farming implement and were using the same meods of cultivation as under slavery (Shadow of the Plant ion, p. 119).Only 23% of the owners and managers and 6.8~0 oftenants in Mississippi reported expenditures for imments and machinery in 1929. In North Dakota, a typNorthern agricultural state, 54.8jZ0 of the owners49.5~0 of the tenants reported expenditures for farm mchinery the same year.In the Eastern section of the cotton belt 80j% offarmers still used half-row cultivators in 1936. Fewer t10~0 of the farmers in this area switched to the use of orow or larger cultivators in the period from 1909-19In the Mississippi Delta, an area where nearly all lan

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Dceember 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL Pagein cotton plantations, only 9~0 of the farmers used half-row equipment. In the cotton area west of the MississippiRiver most of the implements are two-row or larger. Thereis a definite tendency toward the use of tractors on theMississippi Delta and Texas cotton plantations. The num-ber of farmers using tractors increased from 572 in 1919to 457%in 1936 in two Mississippi Delta counties, and froml~o to 41~0 for the same period in two Texas counties. Thiscompares to an increase from 1~0 to 3~0 in seven selectedcounties in the Eastern areas.There is impending a violent revolution in cotton pro-duction as a result of the development of the mechanicalcotton picker (Johnson, Embree, Alexander, The Col lapseof Cot t on Tenancy, p. 44). This is an event that has beenawaited in the Cotton Kingdom with much more eager-ness than the development of the cotton gin in the lastcentury. When it is perfected, hundreds of thousands ofsharecroppers, tenants and wage-laborers in the cottonbelt will be automatically eliminated from production. Al-ready a large number of sharecroppers and tenants havebeen displaced,especiallyin the Mississippi Delta and West-ern cotton areas, by the increased use of machinery in thepre-picking operations in the cultivation of cotton. This ten-dency is spreading eastward in spite of a persistence of theold methods in the old cotton areas.The survivals of slavery have impeded the introductionof machinery. With the cheapest labor supply in the coun-try on hand, the landlord is not likely to make investmentsin machinery, especially when his profits have been cut bya contracting market. Only the large plantation owners areable to purchase new machinery. By so doing, they accen-tuate the crisis in cotton production by piling up surplusesand thus hasten the expropriation of the small producersand displacement of the tenants and sharecroppers.New machinery under present conditions will not abolishthe semi-feudal plantation system. The increased use oimachinery, especially on the Western plains, can result onlyin a greater exploitation of the tenants, sharecroppers andwage-laborers in the older plantation areas of the East. Theincreasein the use of machinery will promote the maturingof the conditions and forces that will eventually abolishten acres, a nigger and a mule. Machine production canonly accentuate this process, not substitute for it,

The extent of landownership among Negro farmers is ameasure of the extent that freedom has been obtained fromplantation bondage. According to Booker T. Washingtonand other bourgeois leaders, salvation for the ex-slaveswould come under the capitalist system by the growth of alarge Negro landowning class, which could serve as thebasis for the growth of a Negro bourgeoisie. But capitalismhas proved to be just as brutal in retarding the developmentof the Negro landowner and in expropriating him as it hasbeen in the caseof the small Negro businessman.Such land as the Negro had been able to get has been tosome extent expropriated in recent years. Landownershipby Negroes reached its peak in 1910,when there were 218,-972 Negro owners and part-owners with a total acreage of12,847,348. But by 1930 the number of owners had fallenby 16.5% and the acreage by 14.570. Most of this 10SSook

place in the second decade; between 1920 and 1930 Soern Negroes lost 19.770 of their total acreage. Althothere was an increase of about 2Y0 in the number of Nlandowners from 1930 to 1935, during the same periototal acreage declined by about 57o. More and moretendency is to displace the Negro landowner.And while the total acreage held by Negro farmersgroup has been steadily decreasing, the acreage held byone Negro farmer, never large, has also decreased. Inthe colored farm owner in the South owned an averag56.6 acres, compared to 63.1 acres in 1930. The aveacreageper white Southern owner was 144.8 in 1935,stantially the same as in 1930. Many Negroes have faeven smaller than the average; 557o have farms ofthan 50 acres, and 22$Z0of less than 20 acres. Onlyowned between 175 and 499 acres and only 9.7~0 500or more; that is to say, only 14.770 can be said to holda small plantation. Hardly a larger percentage have misize holdings. Most Negroes have small farms, and mhave only minute farmlets.The average value of Negro-owned farms decreasedfaster than the acreage. In 1920 it was $2,459; by 19fell by 17.5% and by 1935 by an additional 25Y$1,133. In 1930 the average value of implements andchinery per Negro-owned farm in the South was$106. The acreage per farm of the average Negro owas less than half, his value of land and building aone-fourth, and his value of implements about one-of that of the average white landowner in the South.Generally the size of a farm is not decisive in detering the economic status of a farmer. A truck farmer ois able to conduct a reasonably profitable enterprisesmall holding. But the fact that Southern farmers geally have a less diversified crop than the ordinary tfarm tends to make a small farm more of a disadvanMoreover, to be profitable a small farm has to be isively cultivated, and this takes machinery and fertilneither of which the Negro farmer can afford. In addthe land held by Negroes is in general the marginalJust as in cities there are neighborhoods from whichgroes are excluded, so there are rural areas wherepractically impossible for a Negro to purchase land.Negro farmer, in general, is to be found in outlyingtions, on back roads, and on the poorest land.

The theory held by certain bourgeois economistssharecropping and tenancy are progressivesteps by wthe farmer rises to ownership rather than a statuswhich they fall, has been proven false by the increastenancy in every sphere. Although the number of yofarmers has decreased, the proportion of those whotenants has increased steadily. There has been a geincrease in the number of tenants over fifty-five yearage. Many of these people, writes Secretary Walhave struggled for years, and yet in their old ageno home and no more security than when they starHarold Ho ffsommer in his study The AAA and the Cper (Social Forces, May 1935) states, In Alabama .those who started farming as sharecroppers, nearlyfourth still remain such. Less than one-tenth have be

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350 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL December 19s . The agr icu ltu r a l l adder f or thousand sha s becomet readmil l.Th e m a jor it y of Negr o t en a nt s a n d la n dow n er s ca n be

a ssed a s in t he low er st ra t um of t he rura l pet ty-bour -ois ie. Th e cr opper s a n d mos t of t h e s ha r e-t en a nt s, a r eet t y-bou rg eois on ly by a s pir a t ion . Th ey h ope t o obt a in, a h ope t h a t h a s sma ll ch a nce of bein g r ea liz ed und err es en t condit ion s. Th is hope, however , is nonet h eles s aow er ful lever for pr opellin g t he rura l m asses on t o t hea t h of r ev olu t ion a r y a ct ion .

Th e pr e-C iv il Wa r pla n t a t ion s h a ve per sis ted a s a u nita la rge extent . Some a crea ges ha ve, it is t rue, beenr oken u p in to sm a ller pla n ta t ion s a n d in to sm a ll fa rm s.la r ge-s ca le oper a t ion s a r e t h e g en er a l r ule in t h e a r eaw a s ch a r a ct er iz ed b y pla n t a t ion s i n 1860.The 1910 plan t a t ion cen su s, t h e on ly one t o sur vey pla n -on s, cov er ed 325 count ies in el ev en cot t on b elt s t a t es .m ost of t he coun ties, Negr oes con st it ut ed a t lea st h a lf

f t h e t ot a l popu la t ion . On t h e 39,073 pla n t a t ion s of fiver m or e t en a nt fa rm s, t her e w a s a t ot a l of 398,905 t en a nt sa n a ver a ge of 10 t en a nt s for ea ch pla n ta t ion .Th e la r ge in cr ea se i n t he n umber of fa rms in t he S out h

t h e d ecr ea s e in t h e s iz e o f a v er a ge h old in gs , d o n ot r e-ect a br ea kin g up of t h e p la n t a t ion , bu t t h e d ivision of t h ean t a t i on t r a ct s into tenan t holdings.I n t h e 325 count ies , 37.1$%of t h e t ot a l number of fa rmsr e in pla n ta t ion s, 31.5 ~ 0 of t he t ot a l fa rm a cr ea ge w a spla nt a tions, a nd 32.8~ 0 of t he t ot a l va lue of la nd a ndild in gs w a s on t he pla n t a t ion s.P la nt a tions con st it ut e only 3.3$Z0of a ll fa rms in t hean t a t i on a rea but ac coun t f or approx ima te ly one-th ird of

t a l fa rm a cr ea g e a n d va lu e of la n d a n d bu ild in gs.Toda y, in t he Ya zoo D elt a , t he m ost fer tile a rea of t hew er M iss is sippi Va lley , 70~ 0 of a ll impr oved la n d is inot ton, 85~ 0 of t he fa rm la nd is in pla nt a tions a nd 86Y0f t he fa rms a r e oper a ted by Negr oes.I n 1910, 8.6~ 0 of t he t ot a l n umber of pla n ta t ion s con -

28$Z0 of a ll t en a nt fa rms in pla n t a t ion s, 23$Z0of a llin pla n ta t ion s, a n d a ccou nt ed for 25$Z0of t he t ot a la lu e of a ll la n ds a n d buildin gs on pla n ta t ion s. Th us w ee t h a t a ppr oxima t ely one-fou rt h of t h e pla n t a t i on econ -my is concent ra ted in t he ha nds of one-t welft h of t hewn er s of pla n t a t ion s.I n -1934, 55.7$Z0of a ll la n d in 20 G eor gia pla n t a t ionoun ties w a s in t ra ct s of 260 a cr es or more. S uch t ra ct sr e 16~ 0 of t he t ot a l n umber of fa rms. There w a s a n in-rea se in p lan t a t i onsin the At l an t ic Coas t r eg ion and a lmos tr educt ion in t h enumber of la r g ep la n t a t ion s in t h eB l a cklt . There w as a ra pid increa se in t he number of sma lloldin gs, indica t in g t ha t a n um ber of sma ll fa rms w erea r ved fr om la r g e t r a ct s w i t hou t r educin g t h e pa r en t t r a ct slow planta t ion s ize.Many la nd lor ds hold non -con t iguou s t r a ct s of la nd , a n -t h er indica t i on of concen t r a t ion of owner sh ip. Wooft eround th a t on t h ep la n t a t ion she sur vey ed , 39~0 of t h e la nd -or ds ow ned a n a ver age of 2.9 a ddit ion al fa rm s, ow ner-h ip of m or e t ha n on e n on -con tig uous t ra ct bein g a com -n pr a ct ice amon g la r ge oper a tor s. Wit h t his gr ou p of

large tenan t-operated plantation farming par takof t h e ch a ra ct er of big bu sin ess .Ab sen t ee owner sh ip is ex ten siv e in many s ect ion s of tS ou th . Wid ow s , h eir s, ba n ker s, la w y er s, mer ch a nt s acorpora t ions become owners of p lan ta t ions , through inhet ance, f oreclosu re and specu la t i vepurchase. Oversee rs ah i red to supervise theseplan ta t ions .Many land lords devoon ly a pa r t of t h eir t ime t o t h eir pla n t a tion s.A la n downhav ing another occupa t i on , i s mos t of t en a merchan t . Mal andlord s fur ther concen t r a t ed thei r oper a t i ons by ren t iadd i t iona l l and . On the plan ta t ions invest iga tedby Woof tt h e a cr ea ge wa s d is t rib ut ed a s f oll ow s : owned , 86~0 ; a dt ional rented , 14$Z0.S in ce 1929, la r ge ba nks, mor t ga g e a n d in su ra n ce copa n ies h a ve t a ken over la r ge a cr ea g es t h rou gh t h e pla nt ion a r ea . I t is es tim a t ed t h a t a r ea s amount in g t o 30~ 0t he cot t on la n ds of va r iou s st a t es a r e ow n ed by in su racompanies and banks. (J ohnson , Embree and AlexandThe Collapse of Cot ton Tenancy , p. 33. )I t is a ppa rent t ha t since a bout 1880 t here ha s beenpr og res sive con cen t ra t ion of t h e bet t er la n d of t h e S ouin to la r ge pla n ta t ion s un der cen tr a l con tr ol. Ow ner spla n t a t ion s of t h e s iz e sur vey ed do not con st it u t e a ma joit y of la n dow ner s in t he S out h; bu t t hr ou gh t heir con tover la r ge a cr ea ges of t he best la n d a n d of la r ge n umbof t ena nt a nd la borer fa milies, t hey st ill domina te teconomic, pol it i ca l and cu ltu r a l l if e. Land lord -tenan t ret ion sh ips on t h e sma ller u nit s in t h es e a r ea s w er e molda ft er t h os e on t h e la r ge h oldin gs .

Louis XIV of Fra nce observed w it h a grim irony tcredit suppor t s a gricult ure, a s t he cord suppor t s thanged. C ot ton cult ure ha s been st ra ngling for yeu nd er a pr eca r iou s cr ed it s ys tem . A fa v or a ble w or ld mket a n d t he socia l a n d econ om ic r ela t ion s boun d u p wit s pr oduct ion h av e perm it t ed cot t on economy t o sur viBu t w i th t h e in cr ea s in g compet it ion of ot h er g row i ng a rin t he w orld, a nd t he r esult ing cont ra ct ion of t he woma rket , t h e cot t on econ omy fa ces t h e fa t a l con seq uenof t h e cr ed it s ys t em . Even under ch a t t el s la v er y, t h e cotecon omy of t h e S ou t h w a s d epen den t o n t h e fin a nce cat a list of t he Nor th for credit , a situa tion tha t kepten t ir e a r ea sub ser vien t t o Nor t hern cap it a l .Th e sea son a l ch a ra ct er of a gr icu lt ur a l loa n s a n d badepos it s , and the specula t ivecharac tero f cot ton loans resin u nbea r a ble cr edit cost s for t he sm a ll fa rmer s, t en aand sha r ecr opper s. The cr ed it mer ch an t is a n un avoid apa rt of such a syst em under a on e-crop econom y. C recos ts a r e es tim a t ed t o dr a in off 25 t o 50~ 0 of t h e oper a tcap it a l o f t h e sma l l fa rmer s.U n der t his cr edit sy st em t her e is n o h ope for t he smfa rmer s a n d t en a nt s. Th e la n dlor d a n d cr ed it mer ch ains t eado f p romot ing advancemen t in ag r icu ltu rea nd socdevelopment , have been f inanc ing economic s tagna t ion aba ckw a r dn es s. (J oh ns on , Embr ee a n d Alexa n der , TCol lapseof Cot ton Tenancy, p. 27.)The cr edit mer ch a nt , ver y oft en a la n dlor d, con t rolscr ed it fa cilit ies, n ot on ly for h is own t en a nt s, b ut of otr en t er s a nd sma l l owner s. The cr ed it mer ch an t s s ecuis t h e en t ir e cr op, wh ich when ha r ves t ed and g inned , m

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mber 1939 THE NEW INTERNATIONAL P a g e 351edover t o h im in pa ymen t of t h ed eb t. The mer ch an t bot h Negr o a nd w hit e, a r e t h e low est of a n y sect ion of t heps the books and sets the in terest ra tes .The tenant rare ly popul a t ion in the coun t ry .

t s a st a t emen t o f h is a ccount a n d u su a lly fin ds h im self S uch is t he present econ omic sit ua t ion of t he Negrodebt , or iust br ea kin g even a ft er t he cr op is sold. Th e worker on the la nd in the South. ~ ~ . .dit sy st em for bids q uest ion in g of a ccoun ts by eit herg ro or wh it e t en an ts .Th e per a n num in ter est r a t es in t hr ee select ed cot t oilu nt ies in Mis sis sippi a n d Texa s in 1934, va r ied fr om.19ZZo 23.3$% In add it i on to th is , cred it p ri ces wh ichre in excess of in t erest ra tes, ma de t he t ot al cost t onan t s f or thei r suppl ie smore than 50~0 per annum. Thist ypica l of t h e whole cot t on a r ea . Under t h is s ys tem , t en -and sha r ecr opper s r a rely g et ou t of d eb t a nd t h e sma l ler is in con st a nt da n ger of losin g h is fa rm . Th e en or -us increa se in tenancy and sha recropping shows how ex-ive ly th i s i s happening .

1. Negroes a re ba sic t o t he pla nt at ion syst em, evenugh la r g e number s of wh it es a r e now equa lly exploit edit s s em i-f euda l method s of la b or .2. Th e pla n t a tion sy st em , n ow fu sed w it h mod er n ca pi-is t method s, d om in a t es t h e en t ir e a g ra r ia n economy ofe South. This economy is the ma in ba sis for the ex-oit a t ion and oppr es si on of t h e Neg roes in Amer ica .3. S h a r ecr opping and sha r e-t en an cy , t h e ma in ch a r a c-r ist ics of t he pla n t a tion sy st em , a r e dir ect s ur viva ls of4. There is a la rge a nd increa sing concent ra tion ofin t h e h a nd s of pla n t a tion own er s, ba n ks, in su ra n cempaniesa nd credit corporat ions .5. S in ce 1910, t en an cy h a s r apid ly in cr ea s ed ,w i t h a d e-a se amon g Negr oes in t he la st fift een y ea r s a n d a pr o-r t iona l increaseof whi te tenants , indica t ing tha t Negroesbeing d ispl a cedby wh it e s and the Negroes being d ri vent h e r anks of w age la b or er s or unemploymen t .S in ce 1930, t h is h a s been t he s it u a t ion w it h wh it e s ha r e-pper s, a s well a s t h e Neg roes .6. Mech a niz a tion of t h e oper a t ion s connect ed w it h t h edu ct ion of cot t on is on t he in cr ea se. Alon g w it h t hiser e i s a n in cr ea se in t he use of wage la b or .7. The income a nd living st a nda rds of t he ma sses ofn a nt s, s ha r ecr opper s, a n d w a g e-la bor er s in t h e S ou th ,

Rober t L . B I RCHMAN

L a t S W WOnce a ga in t he holoca ust ha s broken loose.Why did it st a r t ? Who or wha t st a r t ed it>I s America going in? H ow ca n it be st opped?Ther e is on ly one an swer t o a l l t h es e ques t ion s,a nd in t hir t y-t wo closely w rit ten pa ges J . R.J ohn son g iv es it . No one can m is s it .

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1 o 32T h e An sw er I sFor the second success ive t ime THENEWINTER- THE

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NEW INTERNATIONAL, I t s content s ha veNATIONAL is publis hed a t on ly h a lf it s norma l s iz e. spoken for i t sel f.U nt il n ow , t he r espon se by our r ea der s t o our a p- By t h e t ime the J anua r y , 1940 is sueof THENEWpea l for fu nd s t o ma in ta inour regular 32-page maga-z ine has not been suff icien t .Th e loss of cir cu la t ion

a n d r even ue fr om a br oa da l l t oo qu ick ly had i t sd r a s -t i c e ff ect on THENEWIN-TERNATION.4L,ut it is ourbelief a nd hope t ha t t hemany fr ien ds a n d r ea d er sof TH E NEW INT~ i