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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mudsill_theory?wprov=sfla1
The term was something which the Confederacy used to compare the Southern institution of black slaves provided for by their masters, with the Northern institution of white workers struggling to get by on their own with very little pay.
The idea being that, barring any kind of classlessness ever coming about, society will always have a toiling class with little means which provides the foundation for the rest of it...the mudsill or sill plate of a house.
They also invoked it to argue that Northern "free labor" was hostile to poor whites when compared to Southern slavery, which propped up all non-slaveholding whites via the spending & taxation of cotton export revenues.
As a sidenote, Lincoln argued against the idea of a mudsill by pointing towards the predominance of smallholding farming communities in the Midwest & West...his "Free Soil" ideology.
But we all know how this has turned out a century and a half since; the expansion of financial capital, industrial infrastructure and the national population has turned those then-smallholder societies into what the North had become by the time of the War of Northern Aggression.
Anyways, whereas the American Old South featured slaves privately owned by planter families, ancient Sparta featured slaves collectively owned by the citizenry. The agricultural produce of the helots feed all of Sparta, and the helots were also a source of house slaves for private households & the state.
So we can contrast the Confederate model of privatized slave ownership with the Spartan model of socialized slave ownership.
Wouldn't the exsistence of slavery be detrimental to non slave holding whites as they would have to compete with free labour thus reducing the value of their labour
That's a very fair question, thank you! My answer is that, both in precedent and in theory, it comes down to the economic structure within which said slavery is occurring.
The OTL Old Southern example is that, being agrarian, not industrialized and having a lot of fallow land, the Antebellum South featured more opportunity for a poor white to become a small businessman, small artisan, small farmer (for crops other than for export), etc., as well as owning their own small plot of land residentially, than a poor white in the more industrialized, more financialized, heavier populated North did. Again, Lincoln would have pointed to new states like Missouri as examples of even better places to be a poor white than in the Old South, but that owed much more to how recently acquired, undeveloped and unpopulated they were. Similarly, it did not address why the North proper was comparatively worse for a poor white, and why the "Free Soil" West would not become so in time, other than that eventual time being very far away.
Old Southerners such as George Fitzhugh, John C. Calhoun and James Henry Hammond liked to point out how ridiculous homelessness was in Northern cities when compared to Southern cities. Sure, that can be attributed to higher population and land utilization in those cities and states...but remember also that, in those environments, free wage-earning black labor competed with poor white labor as free consumers. A slave is not just unpaid labor for its owner (or more accurately, an owner-provisioned head of livestock), but also, somebody who is not competing with free wage earners in the retail market for shelter, groceries, etc. A black slave was not only a field hand which could've been a poor white, but also someone not pushing up land, food, etc. prices by virtue of having their own purchasing power. Indeed, a plantation owner providing for his slaves would have purchased food for them in bulk at a lower rate than free consumers doing so individually, would have purchased materials for them to build their own huts on his land rather than them competing for separate plots of land and/or separate finished residences as free consumers, etc.
With socialized slave ownership, like in the case of Sparta, the question of how this benefits free laborers really becomes even more apparent than with the privatized Old South model. Barring any property or class requirements to voting, or weighted estates like in pre-revolutionary France (to be clear, ancient Sparta was not a democracy like ancient Athens, but we're talking slave economics here), and assuming that free labor equals or exceeds employers in headcount, how a socialized slave caste is to be utilized would have to clear the interests of free labor as a voting bloc in a democracy.
There's the example of ancient Sparta, in which the slaves more cost-efficiently provide a basic need for the citizenry as a whole. There's the example of the Old South, in which the slaves more cost-efficiently boost exports, and the proceeds of that are spent domestically. There's the example of the Soviet Union (minus having a wholly managed economy), in which the slaves (gulag prisoners, in this example) conduct work too dangerous, unhealthy or arduous for regular free labor to consider. There's the example of the German Reich, in which the slaves (camp labor, in this example) supplement an economic need which free labor doesn't sufficiently meet temporally. Finally, there's the possibility that the proceeds generated by slaves are distributed partially or wholly in the form of a universal basic income, or increased spending on social services, or domestic infrastructure, or even just to balance a government budget.
I think that the most efficient type of slavery would be where the slaves are kept in a colony where they don't pose a threat to the people enslaving them, which would be run by a corporate dictatorship to extract as much money out of them as possible something like volkish aramco wich would be owned by the government of the main nation.
Orlannn gathers the natives of the nations it conquered in one colony so that the other ones can be more easily controlled.
Your welcome son of sparta your welcome to debate me anytime.
That's a fine strategy! Clear out the other colonies for colonist settlements & enterprises. Jumble up all the natives into a diverse, uncooperative mass over in the final colony, with the only thing keeping them in line being their custody under the slaver corporation.
As you wrote, if it all goes up in flames eventually, the rebellious slave colony could be bombarded with WMD's until they submit again to the state-owned company's authority.
With regard to such a worse case scenario, I do think the colonizer homeland would need to avert becoming dependent on its one slave colony. There would need to be at least some state economic management to keep the market from centering itself too much around the output of such chattel.
We do give chattel opium to get them reliant on us and passive.
But I have veered off topic
Does thermopylae have colonial holdings like orlannnien viceroyalties.
Naw (though the event ended). Like the Zombie thing, it's an annual Nationstates event that they kindly allowed people who don't enter into it to not participate.
Unlike the Zombie thing where you will see your nation get overrun by Zombies if you're inactive, though it all resets when event ends
Cannot say it does. So far I haven't really been interested in any fantastical roleplaying or lore building...and OTL Sparta, at its height, pretty much just had a sphere of influence over ancient Greece.
Just serving as a reminder to contemporary culture of what ancient Sparta was about, including the bits which mainstream folks would rather forget.
Should Singapore be part of Greater China, it is at least 75.90 % ethnic Chinese, according to Wikipedia, of course under a capitalist $ economic system and western style multi political party system with all its faults and merits?
As all of you know, I have all the nations of NS China, communists, NS Taiwan China, NS Greater Taiwan China, NS Hong Kong 1, NS Macau and NS Singapore.
That would be one fine breeding ground for leftists. A fertile soil for spawning communists. Imagine the inclusivity and diversity among their ranks!
Singapore is 24th province of China, they just dont know it yet.
But China under ChiCom one-party state, not western multicultiparty system. Such system creates division, discord, factionalism. Merging all into one powerful state makes a strong united nation. Opposition is illogical.
+15 social credits for me
Orlannn and Thermopylae
Indeed. As I've come to learn by experience, that may actually be all that "communists" these days care about. The class abolition part? All a facade by now. I even try to avoid dignifying anti-racists/anti-fascists these days with terms like "Marxist", "commie", "far-left"...because they just aren't.
I've pissed off a good number of "communists" in the past few years with Engels' ending quote to The Magyar Struggle:
The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.
For context, he wrote that with regard to Slavic independence movements against Hungary. Combine that with Marx's praise for the British colonization of India in The British Rule in India, for having smashed "Oriental despotism" (his words), and yea.
Oh, and the fact that the First Internationale was started by two French journalists trying to counter Polish immigration being used to break up French miner strikes and...well...I've punched a good number of "leftists" with left hooks. Purely rhetorically ;)
In Character: Your nation's failure to annex your local version of Singapore is quite disappointing. If Kong Qingdong's light were guiding your forces as well, China would have already settled its control of Jupiter, considering your current level of technology (granted, interplanetary colonies and settlements would have low, if any permanent, population, but other human powers would have been subdued or unable to deny that Chang'e is undeniable proof that China has owned the moon since ancient times and it follows that everything in space belongs to China since she had to enter it to reach the moon.)
Our Great Omnibenevolent God Emperor Kong Qingdong recommends a merger of NS Greater Taiwan China and NS Singapore, if only behind the scenes. A Democratic system or not really depends on how your Chosen people prefer to manage their affairs. It would be... Unfortunate... If you have no Great Leader but that is your business.
If your people begin to prefer Japanese over Chinese, *then* we may be forced to intervene!
Internet Communists can't even agree whether the deaths of Left Wing Anarchists is a good or bad thing. They fight each other more often than right-wingers do. Unlike the undeniably sound and sane policies of Kong Qingdong, one cannot expect online leftists to actually manage an irl nation.
Orlannn and Thermopylae
Good afternoon
Just looking around my friend, what’s there too do in this region?
I reckon you could -attempt- to do some diplomacy with other regions, maybe try some W.A. delegacy? I dunno tbh...
Does anyone know how to get the fervent followers achievement . I'm both religious and patriotic what more do i need.
Greetings Nationalists, I am the NSM-appointed envoy to your fine region. I will announce relevant government items to you.
Everyone, BOPDR's next debate will be on immigration. It will be at 9:00 AM AEST Sunday, or 6:00 PM EST (I think. That could be CST) Saturday. The specific topic should be 'In what cases is increased immigration a good thing?'. If you would like to sign up to participate in the debate, telegram me about it, and I will add your name to the list.
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