Slaves and Proletarians: The Debate Continues

Abstract

IN HIS REVIEW OF Eric Foner's Reconstruction: America *s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-18771 Noel Ignatiev continues the debate/discussion on whether slaves in the United States were proletarians. Unlike an earlier discussion by David Roediger, who tried to use Karl Marx as a counter-weight to Eugene Genovese, Ignatiev depends on W.E.B. Du Bois to refute Foner. On this question, unfortunately, I am afraid that Du Bois' shoulders cannot carry the load. At issue is the use of the term General Strike to describe the transfer of the labour of some 500,000 slaves from the plantation masters to the Northern invaders in the Civil War. addition, Ignatiev notes, In a revealing footnote to chapter ten he commented, 'I first called this chapter 'The Dictatorship of the Black Proletariat in South Carolina, but it has since been brought to my attention that this would not be correct...' He finally settled for a more restrained title, but continued to insist that South Carolina 'showed tendencies toward a dictatorship of the proletariat'.3 It should be noted that over the years the criticism of Du Bois' use of what can be called neo-Marxist terminology has been quite restrained. I think there are two reasons for this. First, Du Bois' Black Reconstruction was a classic so far in advance