A Review of Chapter 1&2

In chapter 1, it discusses how America dominated the global cotton industry for 200 years. It is pointed out that America has the proper climate to grow cotton, and they can compete with the cotton producers in some poorest and underdeveloped areas in the world. Another comparative advantage is that American cotton farmers benefited a lot from the government subsidies, which made it difficult for cotton producers in underdeveloped countries to compete. WTO also agreed that American cotton subsidies violated global trade principles though most of the subsidies were still there by 2008. But the subsidies were not sufficient to account for the dominance of American cotton since American cotton industry outcompeted its rivals almost over a century ago. American cotton farmers also had the abilities to adapt the production skills, marketing strategies, new technologies and organizations to serve themselves. Besides that, institutions and governance mechanism in America were also in place to provide support for the farmers, which could help them avoid risks in the sales, as well as on the plantation for the cotton. On the contrary, the institutions placed in the underdeveloped countries did not support the farmers. In the end, the author also pointed out that there were stains on American cotton’s story and its success, namely, the slave plantation, which gave birth to American cotton industry and enabled American cotton growers to get the first victory over their competitors in the industry.

In chapter 2, it gives a review of the history of American cotton. The British Industrial Revolution resulted in the massive production of cotton textiles and fostered the consumer class, which in turn led to the soaring demand for raw cotton. But that can’t be an adequate reason for American success. American cotton production was increased sharply in the following ten years, and most of the cotton were exported to England. Behind the remarkable growth of cotton, slavery played a critical role in preventing the risks of labor shortage and in expanding their farms to grow more cotton. Then American cotton encountered a bottleneck in the production during their westward expansion, but Eli Whitney’s cotton gin solved the problem and made the production rise again. Moreover, the consumption of cotton from Britain exceeded the total output of the world excluding America by 1860. However, no competition from other countries, America grew into the world’s largest cotton supplier to meet the exploded demand from Britain. Because the other countries, like China and India, lacked institutions that could provide governance for the factory-model production. After the Civil War, the cotton growers built the company town to solve the labor shortage, which can guarantee large numbers of workers available when needed. That tied the workforce to the land and shunned the competition risks in the labor market and contributed to the successful extensive cotton production in Texas. Then a new future with the large Texas cotton factories appeared.

My understanding of relations between slavery and globalization is similar to the author. Slavery created the foundations for the capitalism. The imbalance of power in politics and economy enabled the rich to exploit the poor and the disadvantaged groups. The African-American slaves created a vast amount of wealth to the American society, but they were paid with little or nothing for their labor. Particularly on the cotton plantations in the southern America before Civil War, they were treated badly, but their owners earned tremendous profits through suppressing and exploiting them. Even after the civil war, the rich and the landowners still could manipulate the policies to control and command the workers to provide cheap labor. The workers were deeply trapped in the cycle of poverty and helplessness that they had to work for the wealthy. The factory production system emerged after the Civil War was only another form of exploitation of the weak and poor groups. To generate more profits, the capitalists shifted their attention to the cheaper labor force in the impoverished and underdeveloped areas. As the game designers, they set rules and asked the underdeveloped countries to follow. Through playing the term “globalization”, they obtained abundant but cheap labor and plenty of natural resources from other countries to make more wealth for them. Although the laborers worked in all kinds of “sweatshops” day and night, year after year, they were still difficult to escape from the poverty. Therefore, it is easy to understand why the gap between the rich and the poor still keeps widening. No matter how to describe the things romantically, it can’t cover the fact that American economic success for cotton was built on countless sweats and blood of the slaves in the plantations. The commercial success of the business giants was as well made on countless sweats and blood of the global laborers.

To conclude, the analysis of American economic success for cotton offers us a new understanding of the nature of the capitalist economy. Meantime, it also tells us the democracy advocated by the capitalists can’t be true since there should always be someone to be exploited and used to supply cheap services to the powerful and wealthy people. There will be no future for the bottom people if they are not awakened for what is happening in the world. Thus, it is highly recommended that they should get enough knowledge through education or other learning resources to equip themselves so that they might have the chance to dominate their own destiny.