Where we come from: where are we really going?

[LWolf]

The deregulation of the slave trade led to this mass entry into this dirty business of "separate" and "private" traders, which coincided with free trade in Africans and capital flight of this same valuable commodity: all of these italicized terms are part of today's jargon and should remind us of their less-than-glorious antecedents and their role as recurring building blocks of today's capitalist society. More than this, those who reside in a nation constructed by slavery need to think longer and harder about contemporary manifestations of this peculiar institution, not least in terms of the kind of capitalism and republicanism that now obtains in North America but, as well, the degradation of labor in this nation and how the racist stigmatizing of a formidable segment of the working class can reinforce a reactionary conservatism that bedevils the nation.

From The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origin of the United States of America by Gerald Horne, 2014

Some lines from my morning's reading that jumped out, offered for your consumption without comment.

[longship]

1. Happy to R&K. Without comment.

[LWolf]

2. Thank you. nt