Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms

Evidence

The formal endings of slave systems of production in the nineteenth century marked the beginnings of a profound reorganization of the capitalist world system. In Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas, through the deepening penetrations of monopoly capitalism and the impositions of hegemonic colonialisms, slaves were displaced as a source of cheap labor power by peasants and migrant laborers. In Africa, whereas the slave trade had dislocated the reproductive cycles of certain social formations along the coasts of West and southern Africa, the “new imperialism” of monopoly capitalism demanded a more destructive form of appropriation and exploitation. The colonial state parasitized the peasants of the continent’s agrarian hinterlands, transforming traditional economic sectors from the project of reproduction into the source and support of forcibly recruited labor and the sites of cash-crop monoculture and the extraction of minerals and raw materials. To the extent that wage labor expanded in Africa, its level of support was limited to maintenance and not reproduction of labor. In the New World there were also changes. The systems of reconstitution of Black communities were, as well, assaulted by forms of forced labor: peonage, share-cropping, and less than subsistence farming. Moreover, Black workers were subject to displacement from productive land and to publicly and privately organized campaigns of terror and intimidation. Ineluctably, resistance was propelled toward new forms, new consciousness, and new ideologies. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434
• XREF: connects to: Colonial annexation of Madagascar automatically abolished slavery; British condominium urban labor demand created a feared detribalized slave-descendant class; Post-emancipation labor systems trapped former slaves by law and poverty. (+30 more)

Broader Connections

• Black labor exploitation continued in new forms after slavery’s legal abolition #expands (0.80)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage #corroborates (0.60)
• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition #corroborates (0.60)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism #corroborates (0.55) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584