Most Western European states had no slavery even 1000 years ago. By the year 1500 Western Europe was already the richest region in the world on a per capita basis. This was before colonialism really got off the ground. Antwerp especially was the richest city at that time and it had zero slaves. It was mainly populated by merchants and artisans.
Well, I think this comment rather misses the point. Slavery wasn´t legal in mainland Britain, but it was in British colonies. Now the idea is that the slaveowners make lots of money from paying people nothing, and then invest it in factories, which in turn due to slavery in British colonies have a really cheap source of products.
The idea of reparations from the general population depends on the concept of "trickle-down" - a concept that has, ironically, been discredited by left-leaning economists such as Thomas Picketty. Slavery made a small number of families very rich, not the general population, and many of those families are still identifiable today. For Corbyn it probably seems easier just to grab it from taxpayers, rather than the hard work involved in getting it from those who should pay.
You are spot on. There is always a cost that gets passed onto the taxpayers. That cost was actually paid by the public of GB in money to slave owners to free them. The freedom was literally paid for, then on top of that campaigns of political treaties and trade deals were made with other countries to end slavery world wide. If these conditions were not met Britain would use force. But these facts are not fashionable.
@@danielpye7738 Yes and the transfer of our taxes to those families ended fairly recently. I hear comments claiming that it was "all so long ago", yet those families have, ironically, kept it all very much alive through continuing to claim compensation for loss of their slaves.
If it were really free trade, and not forced free trade, where the weaker side had to accept, even if they felt no benefit. Forced free trade is key in Neocolonialism.
@@thomasbentele2468 Recently saw a documentary about a British land owner in Kenya. His grandfather was just given 10,000 acres and they paid nothing for it. The indigenous Kenyans who were living there were all driven out before it was fenced off and the land is still in the possession of the family. THAT is who Britain tended to trade with. It was never for the benefit of the colonised peoples. Let's not even get into the Opium Wars with China but that is an example of how colonial authorities often conducted "trade"... ie agree to our terms or we start killing people till you do.
You still think your neo liberal system still works as well as yesterday? I am not so sure, look at UK, Germany,France Italy, their economic systems are breaking down.
Man, if you want more spending, then you'll lead the economy to the Venezuela-style ruins. There's no such thing as 'neo-liberalism', this is just a leftist buzzword.
This is a debate that has gone on between economic historians for a while. The slave trade did allow people to generate large surpluses that could be invested in factories in the UK. It also provided lots of very cheap goods that could be transformed into higher value ones at a low price. I would argue that the slave trade didn´t cause industrialisation in the UK, but it did mean there was plenty of capital flowing around, which was useful. As for reparations, I don´t think this is the argument we need to address now. What we do need to address is the fact that our countries still do bad things to third world countries, i.e backing military coups, screwing them over with unfair trade deals and the fact that if we continue to do nothing about climate change many of them will become unliveable. That to me is the big issue, we should stop doing the bad things we currently do.
Partly true. But the wealth accrued by those few thousand families is on a scale logarithmically smaller than the capital revenues accruing 30 years and beyond after slavery ended based on fundamentally different industries to the agrarian commodities of the C18th and based on trade primarily with Europe and the US.
@@jeffocks793 Sorry, I forgot to respond to this as it´s a point worth considering. The slave trade ended in 1807, but the slaves weren´t emancipated. Emancipation came in 1833. The initial capital for a lot of the investments made during the early 19th and 18th centuries certainly came from slavery, that´s beyond a doubt and there´s a good case slavery accelerated industrialisation in the UK and the industries weren´t so different, i.e cotton spinning, tobacco pressing machines, also sugar refining was industrialised. However, I don´t think slavery caused industrialisation, it would have happened anyway, a lot of factors in the UK came together at just the right time, i.e scientifically advanced country, coal supplies, plenty of capital, no serfdom internally (but yes in Indian colonies and slavery in the Carribbean).
@@Commonsense-u1h thanks for the reply but I still think this isn't correct. My argument is that Britain was very broke at the end of the Napoleonic wars which just happened to coincide with the end slavery. The huge economic surges of the C19th started 30 years after 1807. The industries changed fundamentally as did trade volumes with the US and Western European powers in ships, iron and steel and most significantly railways. Trade in the colonies was in agrarian commodities and not on the same financial scale. Companies rooted in colonial trade like the East India Co were in serious financial and also political trouble. On the slavery side, yes as we know there were wealthy individuals but these were not the primary investors in the post 1840s industries. Many of these people were still dealing in commodities they thought they knew. Post 1840s we see fundamentally new institutional involvements in investment at scale governments, banks, insurers etc. No doubt some wealth from involvement in slavery found its way into these projects but my research doesn't show significant impact at all. At max in the c18th slavery activities accounted for under 8% of GDP. A lot of this money stayed abroad. Individual revenue from slavery I'd say dried up between between 1807 and 1840 and there wasn't much to put wealth into except land and government debt.
@jeffocks793 well industrialisation began before that and 8 per cent of GDP is high. Also slavery played a huge role in the shopping trade. There's the raw materials aspect too and cheap access to them. Indeed even after the British abolished slavery they bought cotton from the Southern US states
@@Commonsense-u1h yes I'm not arguing with the idea that wealth was created by slavery. What I'm in contention with is the idea that those people who got rich by it ploughed it all into 'factories'. The 8% of gdp I refer to is a lot yes, but it is of gdp *prior to* 1807. If you look at the graph of GB's gdp in the C19th it only starts to take off after 1840 and then it's logarithmic. The private revenues of slavery in the C18th had a larger share of gdp then, but on the scale of C19th they fall to 0,00008% by comparison. I'm not of course trying to justify or excuse our role in the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, I'd prefer it if people now didn't put a price on it. There shouldn't have been 1 slave let alone 3 million. But I have taken the data supplied by those arguing the most inflated values, who have reported ships' logs, land and plantation revenues etc. and even if it were all invested in the industries of the late C19TH it would not give us the figures we have. Don't underestimate the importance of what we now call institutional investors. The government itself didn't introduce income tax until 1799, 6 years before 1807! In 1858 when the govt had to take over the East India Co it's entire value was equal to the cost one ship that Brunel was building that year. But yes I agree there are bad things continuing to happen in the 3rd world as a consequence very often of the things you say. I would add though that there are other bad actors in the world, apart from western countries, bad actors who don't really have the best interests of the global south at heart.
Britains wealth mainly came from the "Jewel in the Crown" India. Vast resources of raw materials came from other parts of the world at extortionate rates and which were transported to be Britain and in effect subbed the Industrial revolution. That is how Britain became a leader in the world.
I don't dispute the value of free trade in theory, but in practice there appears to have been some serious shortcomings with it. British imports have exploded higher in recent decades, but there has been no significant increase in British exports. Instead, the deficit in trade has been plugged by a surplus in capital inflows. I wouldn't mind this if those capital inflows had been used to fund construction in new profitable ventures in Britain, but this has not been the case (for the most part). Instead, a huge proportion of the capital inflows have come in the form of UK bond purchases by foreign importers i.e., UK government borrowing. That borrowing has largely been wasted on funding for foreign wars and regime change policies; it has done nothing to improve the economic well-being of Britain, and it has left us with a debt mountain that can only be inflated away (destroying our pensions and retirement dreams in the process). This is, of course, not entirely the fault of free trade (the government is ultimately to blame for its excessive borrowing/spending, along with a corrupt and incompetent fiat-based fractional reserve banking system), but free-trade has at least been an enabler of government overreach via the increased demand for UK bonds from foreign importers. I'm not sure what my conclusion is here, maybe I'm just venting my frustration...
Nuanced view: wealth was required to fuel Industrialisation, the major early investors had accumulated great wealth EG see their big palace like family homes. Also, a visionary driving pioneer energy was required. The early industrialised led the way for others to follow. The wealth spread all through our economy. Re: distribution of the wealth produced. No doubt, a few families benefitted massively. And the general population also benefitted. There is an argument to give back to Countries that have had the heavy boot of colonisation applied. This could involve a return of lands, metal and mineral rights? Corporations paying their taxes even ?
Nuanced view: did they not benefit from the industrial revolution like us? medicine, electricity, trains, cars, computers, TVs, furbies, etc? I don't want to give out my money as I wasn't even born back then.
It's also a factor that the majority of colonised regions were wealthier and healthier during and after the Empire than their neighbours who did not benefit from being part of the Empire, and that those countries were the transatlantic slave trade were destinations, have seen the descendants of those slaves to be an order of magnitude more wealthy and healthy than the countries that sold those slaves in Africa. There is a demand for reparations from the UK and US, yet no mass exodus of African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans back to the utopia of Africa,...because they know they are 10 times better off here than they would be in the land of their ancestors. Want to talk about mafia =-like practices? Look no further than the Afro-centrist activists calling for reparations, 'demanding money with menaces'. We should be laughing at them, not debating them or entertaining them.
He´s certainly not a grifter, I see no evidence he ever wanted personal fortune. Perhaps you should actually read about him rationally and think instead of just believing what MSM rags tell you.
But the fact that he continues to be attacked indicate that his ongoing support for the many is still feared by few. For why are ruling class relaxed about that 'nice' Mr Starmer?
@antispindr8613 depends on perception. You perceive "ongoing support" whereas others perceive "ongoing grift." Starmer being another sub optimal human being is something that can simultaneously be acknowledged. I wouldn't pull either of them out of the water myself.
It’s interesting to me how people who peddle the ‘slavery is the root cause of wealth disparity’ would almost certainly, rightly call out, the ahistorical nature of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, a myth that rests on the central truth that the union states were wealthier because they had abolished slavery.
I always thought the Northern States won because they were established earlier and had a more self sufficient economy with a better developed industrial manufacturing sector. The Southern states were more generally an agricultural economy dependent on exports to fund trade. Over time the Northern blockades of Southern ports would probably have eventually starved the South into defeat.
Worth following this chap up. My own research crudely suggests that Britain was broke after the Napoleonic wars, when slavery was ended. The enormous wealth from trade of iron, steel, ship building, railways etc didn't begin until 30 years after slavery had ended. The industrial revolution generated enormous revenue by comparison with the C18th and most of the wealth generating trade came with other European powers and latterly the US. Corbyn doesn't have a leg to stand on surely? The UK has contributed much to infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. But where I am sympathetic is that many prime coastal Caribbean communities are being evicted to make way for real estate investors building hotels, golf courses and exclusive residential villages. This doesn't seem right to me when the locals don't benefit in any way.
Well he doesn't speak for me. I'm not an "adoring fan", I was just aghast when Corbyn materialized with most of my policies . How could I not join Labour then? Nothing to do with colonialism or that stuff, Corbyn is just a sincere and trustworthy guy. Although Corbyn "lost" the 2019 election, it was hardly a normal election as it basically became a 2nd referendum on Brexit, so "Get Brexit Done" won over many Labour voters as the party was virtually 50/50.
Colonial exploitation took capital from places that had it and used it in England. The Colonial power legislated against their colonies developing competitive industries. That's simple fact. Whatever about reparations let's not tell each other that colonization is a benefit to the colonized. The European empires benefited economically from their depradation. Unacknowledging that is kind of silly. Trade is never completely free. Supply chains were imposed. How are they being adjusted?
Literally the opposite is true. Being allowed to exploit slave labour holds an economy back. The economies of Europe flourished once they banned it.
Most Western European states had no slavery even 1000 years ago. By the year 1500 Western Europe was already the richest region in the world on a per capita basis. This was before colonialism really got off the ground. Antwerp especially was the richest city at that time and it had zero slaves. It was mainly populated by merchants and artisans.
Well, I think this comment rather misses the point. Slavery wasn´t legal in mainland Britain, but it was in British colonies. Now the idea is that the slaveowners make lots of money from paying people nothing, and then invest it in factories, which in turn due to slavery in British colonies have a really cheap source of products.
The idea of reparations from the general population depends on the concept of "trickle-down" - a concept that has, ironically, been discredited by left-leaning economists such as Thomas Picketty. Slavery made a small number of families very rich, not the general population, and many of those families are still identifiable today. For Corbyn it probably seems easier just to grab it from taxpayers, rather than the hard work involved in getting it from those who should pay.
Would be antisemitic.
Yes at:bob you have the heart of the matter right there
You are spot on. There is always a cost that gets passed onto the taxpayers.
That cost was actually paid by the public of GB in money to slave owners to free them. The freedom was literally paid for, then on top of that campaigns of political treaties and trade deals were made with other countries to end slavery world wide. If these conditions were not met Britain would use force.
But these facts are not fashionable.
@@danielpye7738 Yes and the transfer of our taxes to those families ended fairly recently. I hear comments claiming that it was "all so long ago", yet those families have, ironically, kept it all very much alive through continuing to claim compensation for loss of their slaves.
Can you supply the information of the last payments that were made? To whom and how much?
He is a totally honest politician, you don't get many of them today
I would say biased
The state of the UK economy tells you all you need to know about how well the political consensus is working
7:26 trade and extraction are not synonymous
Exactly this!
If it were really free trade, and not forced free trade,
where the weaker side had to accept, even if they felt no benefit.
Forced free trade is key in Neocolonialism.
@@thomasbentele2468 Recently saw a documentary about a British land owner in Kenya.
His grandfather was just given 10,000 acres and they paid nothing for it. The indigenous Kenyans who were living there were all driven out before it was fenced off and the land is still in the possession of the family. THAT is who Britain tended to trade with. It was never for the benefit of the colonised peoples.
Let's not even get into the Opium Wars with China but that is an example of how colonial authorities often conducted "trade"... ie agree to our terms or we start killing people till you do.
You still think your neo liberal system still works as well as yesterday? I am not so sure, look at UK, Germany,France Italy, their economic systems are breaking down.
Man, if you want more spending, then you'll lead the economy to the Venezuela-style ruins. There's no such thing as 'neo-liberalism', this is just a leftist buzzword.
@@MetalGearyaTVis that what happened in the Scandinavian countries
This is a debate that has gone on between economic historians for a while. The slave trade did allow people to generate large surpluses that could be invested in factories in the UK. It also provided lots of very cheap goods that could be transformed into higher value ones at a low price.
I would argue that the slave trade didn´t cause industrialisation in the UK, but it did mean there was plenty of capital flowing around, which was useful.
As for reparations, I don´t think this is the argument we need to address now. What we do need to address is the fact that our countries still do bad things to third world countries, i.e backing military coups, screwing them over with unfair trade deals and the fact that if we continue to do nothing about climate change many of them will become unliveable.
That to me is the big issue, we should stop doing the bad things we currently do.
Partly true. But the wealth accrued by those few thousand families is on a scale logarithmically smaller than the capital revenues accruing 30 years and beyond after slavery ended based on fundamentally different industries to the agrarian commodities of the C18th and based on trade primarily with Europe and the US.
@@jeffocks793 Sorry, I forgot to respond to this as it´s a point worth considering.
The slave trade ended in 1807, but the slaves weren´t emancipated. Emancipation came in 1833. The initial capital for a lot of the investments made during the early 19th and 18th centuries certainly came from slavery, that´s beyond a doubt and there´s a good case slavery accelerated industrialisation in the UK and the industries weren´t so different, i.e cotton spinning, tobacco pressing machines, also sugar refining was industrialised.
However, I don´t think slavery caused industrialisation, it would have happened anyway, a lot of factors in the UK came together at just the right time, i.e scientifically advanced country, coal supplies, plenty of capital, no serfdom internally (but yes in Indian colonies and slavery in the Carribbean).
@@Commonsense-u1h thanks for the reply but I still think this isn't correct. My argument is that Britain was very broke at the end of the Napoleonic wars which just happened to coincide with the end slavery. The huge economic surges of the C19th started 30 years after 1807. The industries changed fundamentally as did trade volumes with the US and Western European powers in ships, iron and steel and most significantly railways. Trade in the colonies was in agrarian commodities and not on the same financial scale.
Companies rooted in colonial trade like the East India Co were in serious financial and also political trouble. On the slavery side, yes as we know there were wealthy individuals but these were not the primary investors in the post 1840s industries. Many of these people were still dealing in commodities they thought they knew. Post 1840s we see fundamentally new institutional involvements in investment at scale governments, banks, insurers etc. No doubt some wealth from involvement in slavery found its way into these projects but my research doesn't show significant impact at all. At max in the c18th slavery activities accounted for under 8% of GDP. A lot of this money stayed abroad. Individual revenue from slavery I'd say dried up between between 1807 and 1840 and there wasn't much to put wealth into except land and government debt.
@jeffocks793 well industrialisation began before that and 8 per cent of GDP is high. Also slavery played a huge role in the shopping trade.
There's the raw materials aspect too and cheap access to them. Indeed even after the British abolished slavery they bought cotton from the Southern US states
@@Commonsense-u1h yes I'm not arguing with the idea that wealth was created by slavery. What I'm in contention with is the idea that those people who got rich by it ploughed it all into 'factories'. The 8% of gdp I refer to is a lot yes, but it is of gdp *prior to* 1807. If you look at the graph of GB's gdp in the C19th it only starts to take off after 1840 and then it's logarithmic. The private revenues of slavery in the C18th had a larger share of gdp then, but on the scale of C19th they fall to 0,00008% by comparison.
I'm not of course trying to justify or excuse our role in the transatlantic slave trade. In fact, I'd prefer it if people now didn't put a price on it. There shouldn't have been 1 slave let alone 3 million. But I have taken the data supplied by those arguing the most inflated values, who have reported ships' logs, land and plantation revenues etc. and even if it were all invested in the industries of the late C19TH it would not give us the figures we have.
Don't underestimate the importance of what we now call institutional investors. The government itself didn't introduce income tax until 1799, 6 years before 1807! In 1858 when the govt had to take over the East India Co it's entire value was equal to the cost one ship that Brunel was building that year.
But yes I agree there are bad things continuing to happen in the 3rd world as a consequence very often of the things you say. I would add though that there are other bad actors in the world, apart from western countries, bad actors who don't really have the best interests of the global south at heart.
Britains wealth mainly came from the "Jewel in the Crown" India. Vast resources of raw materials came from other parts of the world at extortionate rates and which were transported to be Britain and in effect subbed the Industrial revolution. That is how Britain became a leader in the world.
I don't dispute the value of free trade in theory, but in practice there appears to have been some serious shortcomings with it.
British imports have exploded higher in recent decades, but there has been no significant increase in British exports. Instead, the deficit in trade has been plugged by a surplus in capital inflows.
I wouldn't mind this if those capital inflows had been used to fund construction in new profitable ventures in Britain, but this has not been the case (for the most part).
Instead, a huge proportion of the capital inflows have come in the form of UK bond purchases by foreign importers i.e., UK government borrowing. That borrowing has largely been wasted on funding for foreign wars and regime change policies; it has done nothing to improve the economic well-being of Britain, and it has left us with a debt mountain that can only be inflated away (destroying our pensions and retirement dreams in the process).
This is, of course, not entirely the fault of free trade (the government is ultimately to blame for its excessive borrowing/spending, along with a corrupt and incompetent fiat-based fractional reserve banking system), but free-trade has at least been an enabler of government overreach via the increased demand for UK bonds from foreign importers.
I'm not sure what my conclusion is here, maybe I'm just venting my frustration...
Nuanced view: wealth was required to fuel Industrialisation, the major early investors had accumulated great wealth EG see their big palace like family homes.
Also, a visionary driving pioneer energy was required. The early industrialised led the way for others to follow. The wealth spread all through our economy.
Re: distribution of the wealth produced. No doubt, a few families benefitted massively. And the general population also benefitted.
There is an argument to give back to Countries that have had the heavy boot of colonisation applied. This could involve a return of lands, metal and mineral rights? Corporations paying their taxes even ?
Nuanced view: did they not benefit from the industrial revolution like us? medicine, electricity, trains, cars, computers, TVs, furbies, etc? I don't want to give out my money as I wasn't even born back then.
It's also a factor that the majority of colonised regions were wealthier and healthier during and after the Empire than their neighbours who did not benefit from being part of the Empire, and that those countries were the transatlantic slave trade were destinations, have seen the descendants of those slaves to be an order of magnitude more wealthy and healthy than the countries that sold those slaves in Africa. There is a demand for reparations from the UK and US, yet no mass exodus of African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans back to the utopia of Africa,...because they know they are 10 times better off here than they would be in the land of their ancestors. Want to talk about mafia =-like practices? Look no further than the Afro-centrist activists calling for reparations, 'demanding money with menaces'. We should be laughing at them, not debating them or entertaining them.
Becayse US and UK nicked the money - that's why these countries are undeveloped and only now starting to grow again.
Jeremy Corbyn is a grifter who never left his student niche.
He´s certainly not a grifter, I see no evidence he ever wanted personal fortune. Perhaps you should actually read about him rationally and think instead of just believing what MSM rags tell you.
But the fact that he continues to be attacked indicate that his ongoing support for the many is still feared by few. For why are ruling class relaxed about that 'nice' Mr Starmer?
@antispindr8613 depends on perception. You perceive "ongoing support" whereas others perceive "ongoing grift." Starmer being another sub optimal human being is something that can simultaneously be acknowledged. I wouldn't pull either of them out of the water myself.
I despise the term "Late Stage Capitalism".
Jeremy is right!
It’s interesting to me how people who peddle the ‘slavery is the root cause of wealth disparity’ would almost certainly, rightly call out, the ahistorical nature of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy, a myth that rests on the central truth that the union states were wealthier because they had abolished slavery.
I always thought the Northern States won because they were established earlier and had a more self sufficient economy with a better developed industrial manufacturing sector. The Southern states were more generally an agricultural economy dependent on exports to fund trade. Over time the Northern blockades of Southern ports would probably have eventually starved the South into defeat.
Further more as I understand it, this man does not support the NHS!
Worth following this chap up. My own research crudely suggests that Britain was broke after the Napoleonic wars, when slavery was ended. The enormous wealth from trade of iron, steel, ship building, railways etc didn't begin until 30 years after slavery had ended. The industrial revolution generated enormous revenue by comparison with the C18th and most of the wealth generating trade came with other European powers and latterly the US. Corbyn doesn't have a leg to stand on surely?
The UK has contributed much to infrastructure projects in the Caribbean. But where I am sympathetic is that many prime coastal Caribbean communities are being evicted to make way for real estate investors building hotels, golf courses and exclusive residential villages. This doesn't seem right to me when the locals don't benefit in any way.
Well he doesn't speak for me. I'm not an "adoring fan", I was just aghast when Corbyn materialized with most of my policies . How could I not join Labour then? Nothing to do with colonialism or that stuff, Corbyn is just a sincere and trustworthy guy. Although Corbyn "lost" the 2019 election, it was hardly a normal election as it basically became a 2nd referendum on Brexit, so "Get Brexit Done" won over many Labour voters as the party was virtually 50/50.
Colonial exploitation took capital from places that had it and used it in England. The Colonial power legislated against their colonies developing competitive industries. That's simple fact. Whatever about reparations let's not tell each other that colonization is a benefit to the colonized. The European empires benefited economically from their depradation. Unacknowledging that is kind of silly. Trade is never completely free. Supply chains were imposed. How are they being adjusted?
WEALTH TAX . . . NOW!
Why does he still get airtime. He's a fool
Well, getting the blues to see red - is he not doing something correct?
Gosh folks, biased much? I'm a capitalist, but I can cope with disagreement.
Or we can take s complex nuanced view eh?
What else would the .01 % sycophants say haha i just can,t respect the way you earn your money lads.
Corbyn: what an utter waste of space
He´s probably done a lot more for the world than you have
With Corbyn it's: "Make raspberry jam, not war!" (... and that's about all there is to it).