Black theorist Oliver Cox argued slavery and capitalism were simultaneous, not sequential

Evidence

A hundred years after Marx described primitive accumulation and set it between the stages of feudalism and capitalism, Oliver C. Cox, the Black theorist, tried to correct Marx’s error: “[Marx] begins his analysis of the nature of capitalism almost where he might have ended it; and as is commonly the case in classical economics, he relegates as subsidiary the very things which should have been the center of his study… . His ‘primitive accumulation’ is none other than fundamentally capitalist accumulation; and, to assume that feudal society dissolved before capitalist society began is to over-emphasize the fragility of feudalism and to discount its uses to the development of capitalism.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1730

Categorization

• XREF: Cox’s correction of Marx on primitive accumulation is a cornerstone of the Black radical tradition’s critique; links to Robinson’s main thesis that Black radicalism develops its own critique of capital distinct from orthodoxy.
• SEED: Angle: how a Black Marxist correction of Marx’s periodization still matters for debates over racial capitalism.