Slave subordination in plantation society rested on productive relations more than race alone.

Evidence

Perhaps the more familiar employment of Gramsci’s notion of hegemony as applied to slavery is that of Eugene Genovese in his Roll, Jordan, Roll, op. cit. Genovese’s treatment of North American plantation slavery as an instance where the master class achieved “command of the culture” (p. 658) has been effectively challenged by Herbert Gutman in The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750–1925 Pantheon, New York, 1976, chap. 2, and Lawrence Levine, Black Culture and Black Consciousness, Oxford University Press, New York, 1977. Alan Dawley has observed: “If the idea of hegemony cannot be reduced to its ideological or cultural elements alone, might there also be something wrong in Genovese’s attempt to appropriate it to explain the rule of slavemasters in terms of ‘command of the culture?’ During the long history of slavery in North America, the rule of the big planters was maintained through property: first in land, with ownership and inheritance confined to freemen, and second, in the bondsmen themselves, who were chattel, freely bought and sold… . Subjugated by race as well as relegated to economic dependency, they could scarcely reach out to ally with poor whites. On top of this they were subject to the lash, the patroller, the brace, the coffle. The masters had gotten along on these terms for 150 years before paternalism flowered on the plantation. Are we to believe that for the generation born after 1830 these severe authoritarian and economic modes of domination disappeared? On the contrary, plantation slavery is the last place to look for a North American example of a hegemonic culture as the basis for class rule.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2082 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Plantation slavery produced juridical racism, not the reverse; Slave plantations operated through ongoing negotiation, not one-way coercion; Ancient slavery did not necessarily deploy racial categories; plantation slavery did. (+5 more)

Related

• North American plantation slavery was maintained by force and property, not cultural hegemony (similarity 0.93)
• Slave plantations operated through ongoing negotiation, not one-way coercion (similarity 0.91)
• Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance (similarity 0.79)
• Plantation slavery produced juridical racism, not the reverse (similarity 0.79)
• Southern slavery was a culture and social order, not only an economic system (similarity 0.79)
• Slavery’s labor demands produced juridical racism rather than racial attitudes producing slavery. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• North American plantation slavery was maintained by force and property, not cultural hegemony #qualifies (0.55) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2082
• Slavery’s meaning was psychological subjugation beyond mere economic exploitation #complicates (0.50)
• Slaves responded to plantation violence through collaboration, endurance, or open terror #complicates (0.45)