Although, of course, slaves under capitalism are not doubly free, are not _free_ labor, Marx, from whom we get the definition of wage-labor as doubly free, considered that the slave economies that were developed under capitalism were the chief momenta of the socalled primitive accumulation and that capitalism as a system was dependent upon the non-wage-labor relations for capitalism continued existence. For Marx, without slavery, no capitalism ,i.e. no wage-labor relations of production. Slave labor relations are not wage-labor relations of production, but in the total system of capitalism , Marx considered that the wage-labor relations were dependent upon the existence of the slave relations of production elsewhere. This is , of course, the original, super-exploitation. Slaves are paid no wages, so they are super-exploited. The slave owning capitalists profited in the world capitalist market from the surpluses extracted from slaves.
CB http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm Slavery is an economic category like any other. Thus it also has its two sides. let us leave alone the bad side and talk about the good side of slavery. Needless to say, we are dealing only with direct slavery, with Negro slavery in Surinam, in Brazil, in the Southern States of North America. Direct slavery is just as much the pivot of bourgeois industry as machinery, credits, etc. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry. It is slavery that gave the colonies their value; it is the colonies that created world trade, and it is world trade that is the precondition of large-scale industry. Thus slavery is an economic category of the greatest importance. Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries, would be transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the map of the world, and you will have anarchy - the complete decay of modern commerce and civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations. [*1] <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/poverty-philosophy/ch02.htm #1> Thus slavery, because it is an economic category, has always existed among the institutions of the peoples. Modern nations have been able only to disguise slavery in their own countries, but they have imposed it without disguise upon the New World.
