Customer Reviews

Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of Time on the Cross

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Gutman's analysis of T/C is marked by the same measure of excellence as T/C itself; Gutman's successful venture into cliometrics is obviously indicative of his prowess and flexibility as a historian. Gutman's greatest success in writing his criticism amounts to this: he beat Fogel and Engerman at their own game by demonstrating the lack of uniformity and impotence of the statistics used by the authors, as well as exposing many tenuous claims Fogel and Engerman drew from their data. His criticism, although at times annoyingly tenacious in its attempt to prove the cliometricians wrong, is thorough and a solid piece of scholarship. His persistence, though admirable, is also his biggest folly, for Gutman fails to refute the overarching implications made by T/C, most notably the implication that the antebellum south was capitalist in nature, and was managed by the planter elite, who were, like northern industrialists, driven by economic rationality and the profit motive. This oversight is significant for Genovese, and he quickly addressed the fallicy put forth. He draws directly from Marx (aptly) the distinction between capitalist and pre-capitalist being wholly contingent upon the social (labor) relation between the bourgeois and laboring classes. Because, as Marx deliniates, the social relation in capitalist society is characterized by the presence of wage labor, Genovese rightly rejects the classification of the southern economy as capitalist. Explaining why the Marxist interpretation is more fitting would require a lengthy and tedious review of the first volume of Capital, but if the reader is familiar with Marx, he can appriciate that the advantage the Marxist model offers over the Capitalist (chiefly Ricardian) interpretation (the emphasis here being placed upon the existence of labor markets). Furthermore, Genovese's indictment of T/C places a necessary emphasis on the societal aspect of planter society, pointing out its unique, often contradictory place inbetween capitalist and pre-capitalist societies. He characterizes the south as being merchant capitalist, essentially societies that were heavily influenced by profit motive and raw commodity production, yet still retaining a feudalistic flavor in regards to social, and more importantly, labor relations. Fruits of Merchant Capital by Genovese and his wife offers a much more vivid and deep examination of T/C than the overview I've provided, and a more historically pervasive and satisfactory case for rejecting many of T/C's arguments than Gutman's statistical retaliation. I know, my adoration of Genovese is not well hidden, but the assessment of T/C in Fruits is undoubtedly a stronger and more thorough (while remaining less viturperative) socio-economic indictment than is Gutman's Slavery and the Numbers Game. Read both if you have the time and judge for yourself.