Slavery and Capitalism
Marxists have debated the connection of slavery to capitalism since Marx. Some see it as a pre-capitalist holdover. Others see slavery as an integral part of capitalism. Marx’s writings could be said to support either view. He did say that the slave owners were capitalists. Most of Capital and other writings, however, says or implies that capitalism is based on free wage labor.
Slavery arose in the North American colonies primarily but not only in the South. It was integrated into the world market which was becoming more capitalist. Merchant capitalism was giving way to productive capitalism. By the time of the Civil War the Southern economy was integrated into the capitalist world market. Slave owners were capitalist investors and were financed by and financed capitalist banks in the North. As Marx said wage labor needed slave labor as a pedestal.” Without slavery, no cotton, without cotton no modern industry” etc.
This leads some Marxists to end the query there. Slavery was capitalist period. The implication is that chattel slavery is just as likely to be part of capitalism as wage labor is. This in turn can deemphasize the centrality of the waged working class in capitalism and in its potential overthrow.
Contradictions of Slavery and Capitalism
“Wage labor is the most adequate relation of production for capitalism”
There are contradictions between chattel slavery and capitalism. In a capitalist economy, accumulation is as Marx said, “the law and the prophets.” Capital accumulation was largely the replacement of human labor by machines. Chattel slavery contradicts this in two ways: profit that could be invested in fixed capital such as machinery must instead be invested in buying the laborer, not just buying labor power. Less is available for actual accumulation. Secondly, since slaves cannot be readily laid off, the incentive to replace labor with machinery is lower than in wage labor capitalism.
Another contradiction is that physical coercion requires extra expenditure of resources. Slave owners must hire more overseers. This cuts into their profit. Free wage labor relies on economic compulsion and therefore does not require this extra expense.
Wage labor is the most adequate relation of production for capitalism. It affords the capitalists the most flexibility. They can hire and fire at will. They can expand or contract production as needed for profit maximization. There is no point in laying off a slave. Of course, slave owners can sell slaves if they don’t need them. However, their ability to sell them depends on the slave market. Very likely, if production is down and they need to sell, other slave owners do as well.
Chattel slavery requires a bigger up front investment for a similar return. Slaves as Marx put it are not part of variable capital. They are instead part of constant capital. Owners have to pay a larger sum of investment to buy the slave for life. Wage labor requires only investment in variable capital for the next week, two weeks etc. of the laborer’s life. The extra cost of buying a slave all at once cuts into profit rates by raising the investment required.
Wage labor lets capitalists off the hook for social reproduction. Under chattel slavery, owners must invest in the upkeep of their property. With wage labor, capitalists do not have to care if their workers live or die. If one dies, the capitalist simply hires a replacement. Wage labor makes planning easier. Instead of the capitalist having to calculate costs of living expenses for their workers, they simply allocate a certain amount of money for wages based on balance of class forces. Capitalists prefer to commodify the wage relation.
Marx defined capitalism as universal commodity production. Making labor power a commodity flows from the drive for profit and accumulation under capitalism.
This is similar to their approach to social welfare in modern capitalism. When capitalists and their state determine that they must give social welfare to prevent riots and potential revolution, they prefer to give money rather than actual concrete services. They give money welfare, food stamps, housing vouchers etc. Again, this makes for easier planning. They can calculate exactly what to grant. They do not have to figure out what it would actually take to provide the human need for housing, food etc. They say “Here is your benefit. You figure out how to make it meet your needs. If it isn’t adequate, that is your problem.” The bias toward commodification is inherent in capitalism, both so as to prioritize capital over human needs and for ease of planning and profit maximization. This is why Universal Basic Income is supported by some capitalists. It is based on continued commodification of services.
All of this means that there is a bias for wage labor within capitalism. Capitalism can operate with chattel slavery but chattel slavery is an outlier.
Despite chattel slavery’s contradictions to capitalism, there are specific conditions in which it will be the preferred method of exploitation. Though capitalists are as Marx said “ the personification of capital”, they first of all seek profit, not an idealized version of what a capitalist should be.
One example of chattel slavery as an outlier in the capitalist system was the slave South in the U.S.
Why Did Chattel Slavery Arise?
“coerced labor is necessary when economic compulsion alone will not force workers to work for employers”
Why did chattel slavery arise in the British colonies as merchant capitalism was giving way to productive capitalism?
Plantation owners needed labor. The use of indentured servants had limitations as did use of Native Labor. Besides these sources of labor, there was no other labor market where plantation owners could hire workers. Labor had to be brought in from the outside. Obtaining labor from Africa required buying slaves. This investment in slaves as constant capital set up the dynamics of chattel slavery noted above. Physically coerced labor was necessary because there was no adequate labor market. Once the dynamic of chattel slavery started, the owners of slaves had a strong incentive to maintain it. To abolish it or restrict its advance would deprive the slave owners of their invested capital in human beings.
The contradictions between capitalism and chattel slavery are part of the explanation for the prevalence of wage labor under capitalism. Some Marxists explain this prevalence based only on class struggle. They believe the capitalists would like to enslave us as chattel slaves but are prevented by workers fighting back. That analysis is wrong about chattel slavery but is truer about coerced wage labor (see below)
In general, coerced labor is necessary when economic compulsion alone will not force workers to work for employers. In the British North American colonies, land was available at the expense of Natives. People could go off and become farmers on their own account. Creating a labor force required physical coercion. This is part of the basis of slavery even in ancient times. When civilizations were forming, much of humanity existed in pre-state societies. It was easier to live in areas outside of state control. To keep workers working for others, often physical coercion was necessary. Warfare was a major way of obtaining slaves.
Coerced Wage Labor
“Capitalists often tried to maintain legal controls over labor”
Chattel slavery is one form of physically coerced labor. Marx defined free wage labor as workers being free from owning the means of production and also free from being owned. However, free from being owned is not the same as being free to leave a job. Through the history of capitalism, there have been various forms of legal coercion of labor backed up by the power of the state: Indentured servitude; impressment of sailors; Stalinist and Apartheid labor books; military draft etc. The distinction between chattel slavery and coerced wage labor is important. The greatest flexibility for the capitalist is the ability to lay a worker off at will while still being able to compel them to work when needed. However, this physical compulsion as noted above requires extra expense. When economic compulsion works well enough, the expense of physical coercion is avoided.
Capitalists often tried to maintain legal controls over labor. What undermined these legal controls was not just class struggle by workers but the expense of these controls as well. Those Marxists who stress class struggle as the reason that capitalism is not dominated by physically coerced labor are partially correct. However, they are wrong to attribute the decline of chattel slavery to resistance by slaves alone. In the particular case of the U.S. South, resistance by slaves was vital. The South lost the Civil War as DuBois argued due to the general strike of slaves. However, this general strike was in the context of wage labor capitalists in the North waging war because they had conflicting economic interests with the slave owning capitalists of the South. Slave revolts from the 1600s through the 1850’s were important in undermining slavery but had not been enough to end it until the interests of Northern capitalists kicked in.
Although Southern slavery was capitalist, the conflict between South and North was based on the conflict between two different labor regimes. The structure of the different labor regimes created different economic interests in each ruling class. The contradictions between capitalism and chattel slavery are vital to understanding this conflict.
The bias of capitalism toward wage labor is shown by the rise of capitalism in Britain. The rising capitalist class created a wage market by depriving the potential working class of the means of subsistence. Peasants were driven off the land. When they became vagabonds, thieves and beggars, the state stepped in with coercive measures to turn them into a proletariat. The state created workhouses, branding of vagrants, the death penalty etc. This process forced people to work for others to survive. It often required extreme brutality. English labor law was called “Master and Servant”.
The use of force to create the capitalist wage labor relation is often ignored, especially by libertarians and other capitalist ideologists. However, the use of force was not aimed at the creation of chattel slavery! It was aimed at creating a “free” wage labor force. Once the coercion had reinforced economic conditions, less coercion was necessary. Workers were convinced that they could only survive by selling their labor power. Coercion was still necessary as a backup, but economic compulsion was the main engine of the continuation of wage labor.
This process was similarly carried out in other developing capitalist economies. Physical coercion was common especially at the beginning. This legal and physical coercion was overcome to the extent that it was by class struggle and by the entrenchment of economic compulsion.
Conclusion
“Workers should be optimistic that we can overcome physically coerced labor and ultimately capitalism altogether”
Understanding the relationship of capitalism to slavery and other forms of physically coerced labor is important in the struggle against capitalism. Rebellion by remaining chattel slaves can be an important part of the fight against capitalism. However, the major agent for transformation will be the waged working class both free and physically coerced. Class struggle has allowed workers to largely free themselves from physical coercion that capitalism liked to employ. Class struggle and working-class organization can go further and abolish exploitation altogether.
Marxists who deny that coerced labor including chattel slavery can be part of capitalism discredit Marxist analysis. It is clear that capitalism has often used coercive labor relations and in many cases today still does. Marxists must be able to account for that.
To define capitalism as exclusively based on “ free” wage labor excludes much of the history of capitalism and even much of the current world economy. Apologists for Stalinism have used the lack of a private capitalist labor market as a reason that Stalinism was not capitalist. They have used this as a justification of Stalinism as an advance over private capitalism, rather than the State Capitalism that it was.
On the other hand, analysts who deny capitalism’s preference for wage labor sometimes ignore the most strategically important part of the world working class. Instead they focus on other sources of capitalist wealth and more marginal populations as central to anti-capitalism.
Marxists need to integrate the fight against exploitation of wage workers with the struggle against the special oppression of those in and out of the waged working class. A working class dominated by racism, sexism etc. will never overthrow capitalism.
Capitalism might end up destroying the ecological basis of human civilization, but it is unlikely to create widespread chattel slavery. The contradictions between capitalism and chattel slavery ensure that. Revolutionaries need to organize to overcome chattel slavery, physically coerced wage labor and ecomically compelled wage labor as well.
The primary source of capitalist wealth is exploitation of wage labor. This should be the primary focus of organizing against capitalism.
