* From: "s.artesian" Marx is very clear on the difference, the critical, crucial, necessary difference to capitalism, between "free" which means stripped of all uses save its use in exchange, and slave labor.
^^^^^ CB: He's also very explicit that British _capitalism_ was built on the double pivot of slavery in the U.S. South, peasant labor in India, Irish oppressed free labor. Also, he uses the slang "wage-slave" which blurs the distinction in one moment of the dialectic. Direct slavery is as much the pivot of our industry today as machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery no cotton; without cotton, no modern industry. It is slavery which has made the colonies valuable; the colonies have created world trade; world trade is the necessary condition of large-scale machine industry. Thus, before the traffic in Negroes began, the colonies supplied the Old World with only a few productes and made no visible change in the face of the earth. Slavery is therefore an economic category of the highest importance. - Karl Marx to Pavel Yasilyevich Annenkov, December 28, 1846
