Incorporate in north carolina
The strategy of capital accumulation that transformed North Carolina into the center of United States textile production in the 1920s and 1930s did not take place without criticism. In addition to the periodic rebellions by textile workers against the stretch out and wage cuts, the process of capitalist development also generated criticism from other sources.
In particular, during the 1930s sociologists and economists associated with the University of North Carolina began to question a strategy of capital accumulation that led to a high degree of dependence on a few low wage industries, which produced for the most part cheap finished or semi finished goods for national markets.According to these scholars, dependence on agricultural production was the major cause of unequal exchange between North Carolina and other regions, the drainage of capital to the more productive regions of the United States, and the colonial status like North Carolina, however, capital accumulation was reinforcing, rather than changing, this status.The chamber of commerce style of development and competitive regionalism were attracting primarily low wage, labor intensive industries and were impeding the Souths ability to move from absentee exploitation toward a more self contained development, balanced growth, and improved living standards. If the region was to achieve these goals, a more rational, planned approach to capital accumulation was required. If necessary, this approach should incorporate a willingness to turn away capital in these low wage sectors that were already over represented in the region. At the very least an attempt should be made to move away from dependence on the production of raw materials and semi processed goods by attracting capital in the finishing and distribution of textiles, the processing of food, and the manufacture of components for other, non southern industries. Generally, the southern states should attempt to develop newer industries with high levels of productivity, profits and wages.
Some of the failings of this type of regional analysis and strategy have already been discussed, in particular, its view that industries that are more modern, more capital intensive, and more profitable will necessarily create higher wages and improve living standards and reduce regional economic inequalities. What needs to be emphasized here, however, is the inadequacy of this approach as a political strategy. It relies implicitly on the State as the only logical planning agency, yet, as we have seen, during the 1920s and 1930s, the State had played a major role in the chamber of commerce strategy of capital accumulation. State policy was committed to the preservation of precisely those social conditions that allowed the extraction of the largest possible amount of surplus value, guaranteed the continued competitiveness of the states existing economic base, and attracted those types of manufacturing which are hard pressed in their present locations.
Because of this limitation, the academic critics of capital accumulation in North Carolina were unable to do much to change the process. Between 1935 and 1947 a number of such critics, including Howard Odum, Rupert Vance, and Harriet Herring, was appointed to the North Carolina State Planning Board, a body formed in 1935 using funds from the federal governments Public Works Administration and the National Planning Board. The boards planning program, which was the only condition of eligibility for these funds, included a number of specific components, such as land use studies, a ten year public works program, and the integration of transportation networks. The board was given little political power, however, and was kept entirely separate from the State Department of Conservation and Development, which continued its normal industry hunting functions. Beyond serving as a forum for discussion, data gathering, and as a precondition for federal patronage, the boards concrete achievements were few. As war time demand created economic expansion, the board came increasingly under attack, was reorganized in 1943 and was abolished in 1947 on the grounds that it simply duplicated work that was already being done more effectively by agencies of the State.
By this time, the whole notion of planning had undergone such a transformation that it was barely recognizable. The concept of liberal planning, for instance, consisted of nothing more than the complete removal of all barriers to the free mobility of capital minimum wage laws, collective bargaining, excessive social security and unemployment insurance payments, and the provision of necessary information on tax levels, land use, labor law, labor markets, and natural resources. In other words, planning, signified nothing more than a more systematic effort by State and private agencies to achieve exactly what they had in the past, the continued and expanded reproduction of productive relations that allowed the production of an above average rate of exploitation in order to attract hard pressed capital from other regions.
It should be clear that the strategy of capital accumulation implemented in North Carolina is not a solution to the social problems afflicting North Carolinians. These social problems under employment and over work, poverty, ill health, racism, and a relatively restricted social wage are not caused by exogenous factors as suggested by competitive market theory. Nor are they the result of cultural lag or past mistakes by irresponsible southern businessmen. Rather, they are both components and consequences of a strategy of capital accumulation that depends upon the production of an above-average rate of surplus value. Consequently, to base efforts to deal with these problems on the continued success of this strategy in attracting capital is contradictory, implying that problems can be overcome by the process that creates and relies on them.
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