5 - The South in the national economy, 1865–1970

Summary

With countless variations, two great traditions interpret and evaluate historical trends in the relationship between households and markets: the tradition of most economists, descended from Adam Smith, which views the spread of markets and specialized production as a progressive development, an improvement of resource allocation, an encouragement to advancements in knowledge and progress, and an opportunity for higher standards of living on and off the farm; and the tradition of Marxian writers (though in this American application with a strong Jeffersonian flavor as well), which views the market as an invading, intruding force, a maelstrom that lures or sucks households into its orbit, whirling them in historical circles beyond their control, and permitting no escape. Usually these traditions talk past each other, obscuring the extent to which each one contains elements of truth in describing the same historical developments, and failing to ask why it is that some cases fit one version, some the other.

–Gavin Wright, The Political Economy of the Cotton South, 182

The antebellum South was no stranger to the forms of market capitalism; the master/slave relationship existed within a world network of prices and markets. This paradox had formed the essential and peculiar feature of the tropical economies of the New World for two hundred years.