Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
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.
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.
Price: $32.95
Pages: 368
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
02 September 2025
Trim Size: 9.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520415973
Format: Hardcover
BISACs:
“Historical works like McNally’s have never been more necessary.”
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.
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
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