WAGE LABOR DEFERRED - THE RECREATION OF UNFREE LABOR IN THE US SOUTH

Contrary to the mainstream economic view that unfree labour in the US ended with the Emancipation, this article argues that an unfree labour system continued to dominate southern agriculture in the post Civil W ar period. Part I details how the southern land tenure system, contrac t labour laws, and credit system combined to create a social structure of accumulation [Edwards, Gordon and Reich, 1982] that effectively tr apped a majority of sharecroppers in debt peonage. However unlike Rans om and Sutch [1977] I argue that it was the planter and not the mercha nt, class who were the chief architects and beneficiaries of the unfre e labour system. Part II creates a model showing how this 'unfree' soc ial structure of accumulation led to the limited and skewed patterns o f industrial development, the low level of technological innovation in agriculture, the eventual creation of a large surplus labour pool, an d the depressed wage rates that have characterised the American South up to the 1970s.