Slavery, Capitalism, and the Interpretations of the Antebellum United States: The Problem of Definition

Illiberal economic institutions and racial intolerance in the United States

“…Burnard, 2015;Burnard & Riello, 2020;Clegg, 2015;Coclanis, 2018;Engermen, 2017;G. Wright, 2017;Hilt, 2017;Huston, 2019;Logan, 2022;Magness, 2018a;McCloskey & Carden, 2020, pp. 122-7;Murray et al, 2015;Neptune, 2019;Oakes, 2016;Olmstead & Rhode, 2018).…”

A Theory of Capitalist Slavery

“…James), Genovese presented himself as a Marxist, and both he and his principal opponent in the debates of the 1960s and 70s, the neoclassical economic historian Robert Fogel, had been educated in the communist party . But while Genovese’s view of slavery as “pre‐capitalist” is now generally presented as Marxian orthodoxy (Johnson ; Huston ), he himself presented it as a critique of that orthodoxy (Genovese ). In fact, it was Fogel and not Genovese who was defending an orthodox Marxist position in that debate…”

“…For a similar estimate see Balleisen (2001, p. 167). 59 Oakes (2016), McCurry (2017), and Huston (2019). 60 For a critical review of attempts to extend the Williams thesis to the antebellum Northern economy see Wright (Forthcoming).…”

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

“…Uncultivated plantation lands were so vast they enabled some non-slaveowning Southerners to subsist simply from customary rights to hunt and fish them(Blackburn 2011: 87).57 Morris (1999) describes the failed attempts by debt-encumbered slaveowners to have slaves reclassified as real property.58 Clegg (2017: 13). For a similar estimate seeBalleisen (2001: 167).59 Oakes(2016),McCurry (2017), andHuston (2019).60 For a critical review of attempts to extend the Williams thesis to the antebellum Northern economy seeWright (Forthcoming). However, in keeping with Marx's occasional discussion of capitalist slavery as a "grafted" and "anomalous" historical construct (see note 13 above), it may be useful to reverse the relation of dependency posited by the new historians of capitalism, such that rather than emphasizing the ways that Northern industrial wage labor was dependent on slave labor, we might better understand the anomalous form of capitalist slavery in the American South by recognizing that it depended on the existence of wage laborers in Britain and North, as a source of growing direct and indirect demand for slave-produced raw materials.…”