Mat wrote: >There are lots of debates about whether the Enslavement of African peoples in >the U.S. south, for example, was capitalist or not. Two points: > >1) Enslaved Africans were producing *commodities.* > >2) This production was responsible for capital accumulation > >This is strong evidence supporting the position that this was capitalist >slavery. > >Very important differences between things called the same name, "slavery." >Slavery in Greek Antiquity was not the same, for example, as Enslavement of >Africans on plantations in the Caribbean and the U.S. South. Other important >differences, too. This is why some use the term Enslavement with a capital E >to indicate this experience. To add to the above points, capitalist techniques of organization of production (be it on fields, in mines, or at sugar-refining factories) can be said to have been elaborated under conditions of modern slavery and other forms of forced labor, even before the labor of white artisans became subsumed and transformed under capitalism. Yoshie
