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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Interesting argument, but something is missing, 2004-07-22
John Ashworth views the Civil War as a ?bourgeois revolution? that occurred because it was impossible for southern slavery to coexist with the emerging industrial capitalism of the North. Ashworth, however, does not provide full evidence of this in this first volume.
He does convincingly show that the industrial revolution caused a dramatic shift in values, which he summarizes by stating that, ?Contrary to the traditionally accepted view, freedom did not require ownership of property, or of means of production. Instead, it required self-ownership, which implied the right to sell one?s labor power for wages? (p. 167). Ashworth also persuasively shows that slavery and modern capitalism could not co-exist in the South. But what he does not do is to demonstrate that these differing economic systems could not exist as northern and southern neighbors. In other words, Ashworth does not make it clear how southern slavery would impede northern capitalism.
When the data do not fall neatly in line with his thesis, Ashworth resorts to vagueness. He claims that the capitalist elites of the North could not accept slavery as economically viable, but then mentions ?the unholy alliance between the ?Lords of the Loom? and the ?Lords of the Lash,?? (p. 160) without explaining this alliance or trying to argue that this apparent contradiction of his thesis is not actually the discrepancy it seems.
Part of Ashworth?s theory of incompatibility rests on his claim that radical abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison were motivated primarily by economic self-interest. But here Ashworth seems too boxed in by his Marxist ideology. Garrison could very well have been motivated by moral self-interest ? trying to assuage a bothered conscience. But despite admitting that abolitionists were a minority in the North, Ashworth does not explain why the economic perspective that was supposedly primary for abolitionists was lost on most northern capitalists.
Nonetheless, Ashworth does bring up the valid point that slavery has existed since the dawn of recorded history, and yet it was only in the nineteenth century that slavery was abolished relatively quickly in much of the world. Other factors unique to the modern world must have played a role ? moral scruples alone are insufficient. Correlating abolition with the rise of industrial capitalism is a logical place to look. The formidable task Ashworth has undertaken is to show a causal relationship between these coinciding events.
Still, insofar as the new value system created by modern capitalism gave abolitionists new tools with which to fight slavery, and with westward expansion bringing the political ramifications of slavery?s expansion home to the Congress, Ashworth?s thesis that the Civil War was a bourgeois revolution has some merit even if volume one does not successfully nail down the argument. We?ll have to wait for volume two to discover exactly how strong Ashworth?s thesis really is.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
balanced study of the conflicts within the slave South, 2000-01-08
The emphasis here is upon the "class" tensions within the slave South and between the North with its "wage labor" and the South with its slave labor. Far too many historians in recent years have been afraid to use the concepts of "class" and "capitalism" for fear of being tainted with the brush of Marxism. But these are clearly terms and concepts the abolitionists and the pro-slavery thinkers themselves used in their attempts to make sense of their world. Ashworth does an admirable job of employing these concepts while avoiding the pitfalls of dogmatism and economic reductionism. He draws inspiration from Antonio Gramsci's concept of "hegemony" to provide his class and material analysis with a balance that emphasizes the complexities of human motivation. The author clearly reveals the points at which the slave system was in inner conflict and shows how the southern attempts to provide an intellectual defense of slavery were doomed to fail because of the conflicts and tensions within the southern class system. He goes on to detail the ideology and the foundations of the Jacksonian Democrats, the Whig Party, and the Republican Party and in the process gives the reader a balanced perspective on the forces that led to the Civil War. This is a book that should be read by anyone interested in why the two sections of the country were so different and came to think of themselves as different peoples.