Slavery and Capitalism

A New Marxist History
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-0-520-41597-3
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 684 g

The first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery.

Karl Marx’s writings on enslavement and labor have fallen out of favor among historians, but David McNally injects new life into them. Slavery and Capitalism gives the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery—using colonial travel literature, planter records and diaries, and slave narratives—to support the provocative claim for enslaved labor in the plantation system as capitalist commodity production.

Weaving together history, political economy, and radical abolitionism, McNally demonstrates that plantation slaves formed a modern working class. Unlike those scholars who insist that enslaved people were too sensible to set their sights on liberty, he highlights the self-activity of enslaved people fighting for their freedom and reframes their resistance as labor struggles over production and reproduction, with significant implications for US and Atlantic history and for understanding the roots of racial capitalism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

McNally, David

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziale Ungleichheit, Armut, Rassismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Gewerkschaften, Industrielle Beziehungen
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Weltgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

Introduction: Whisperings of Freedom

Part One. The Planter, The President, and the Political Economist: Foundations of Capitalist Slavery
1. Planting and Profit: Richard Ligon and the Birth of Capitalist Slavery
2. George Washington: Land Grabber, Slave Hunter, Bourgeois Planter
3. "Without a Servant to Make His Bed": Labor and Race in Colonial Capitalism

Part Two. The Political Economy of the Plantation System
4. Living Labor and Planter Profits
5. The Wages of Slavery
6. Steal Away: Capital on Legs

Part Three. The Making of a Chattel Proletariat
7. Bonded Proletarians
8. Life-Making and Enslaved Reproduction
9. Cultures of Freedom
10. Empires of Capital, Worlds of Revolt

Concluding Thoughts: Ghostly Hauntings, Dreams of Freedom

Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

David McNally is Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston, where he directs the Project on Race and Capitalism. He is the author of seven previous books and more than sixty scholarly articles.