A Tribute To Communism

[DanielX]

The south, pre-1960 or so, was not a truly capitalist society, but a feudalist one. They were extremely stubborn at giving up the feudalist aspects of society in favor of capitalistic ones; that is why the south's economy was (and in some places still is) screwed up. Had the South adopted a truly capitalistic economy and industrialized post-1870, today it would be comparable to the Midwest or Mid-Atlantic states.

Slavery was economically inefficient. A purely capitalist economy cannot be founded on it; however, a slave-based industrialization is possible (the Soviet Union came fairly close - I consider communism-as-practiced and feudalism-as-practiced to be frighteningly similar in some respects), but it would not have happened with the South unless it had seceeded and cut off industrial ties with the North (as the free industry in the North was far more efficient).

Also. textiles were not the only industrializing agent. The world would still have industrialized, if perhaps a bit more slowly, on the backs of steel, petroleum, agricultural processing (centralized when railroads and canals increased distance of travel for produce), and various goods from iron stoves to steel plows.