Capitalism and Slavery

A Theory of Capitalist Slavery

“…Edward Baptist has contested Olmstead and Rhode's interpretation of their evidence, arguing that torture (specifically a competitive and ratcheting system of whipping those who fail to meet productivity targets) was the "ultimate cause" of the productivity growth identified by Olmstead and Rhode. However, he has failed to provide consistent evidence in support of his alternative intepretation (Olmstead and Rhode 2018;Clegg 2015). 54 Most historical instances of slavery consisted of household or communal slavery, where slaves were neither purchased on markets nor produced for markets.…”

“…For criticism of the recent historiography along these lines see Murray et al (), Clegg (), Oakes (), Hudson (), Olmstead and Rhode (), Coclanis (), and Huston ().…”

Capitalism and its new historians: A review essay

“…John Clegg argues that the British cotton industry diversified procurement during the Civil War by latching on to markets in Egypt and India (Clegg, 2015: 296), a point also highlighted by Beckert. Periphery started producing cotton whose competitive effects would have been sharper had the Civil War not taken place.…”

“…For instance, Egypt quintupled its cotton production between 1860 and 1865 from 50.1 million to 250 million pounds; even during the post-Civil War trough of cotton production, Egypt’s output remained two and a half times what it was before the Civil War (Beckert, 2014: 293–94). Earlier when Britain was briefly cut off from American cotton by the war of 1812, the price of cotton rose less than it did in the 1860s, suggesting that earlier there was less dependence on cotton from the American South (Clegg, 2015: 296).…”

Capital as Process and the History of Capitalism

“…As forms of property, land and slaves doubled as capital but also not-capital, which set limits on the emergence of the capital process, blocking the subordination of the production and distribution of wealth towards capital's ends. 78 From this perspective, the so-called "capital goods" of the Industrial Revolution represented a historical departure. It became possible to conceive of productive property as capital itself, or wealth fully subordinated to the pursuit of pecuniary income-in other words what economists like Clark branded physical "capital goods," synonymous with capital itself.…”