Marx held plantation slavery only formally capitalist because it lacked free wage labor

Evidence

Frank quotes Marx’s observation which describes the plantations as “commercial speculations, centres of production for the world market,” as proof that Marx regarded them, too, as “capitalist.” Laclau reminds us that Marx, pertinently, added, “if only in a formal way.” Actually, Marx seemed to be arguing the opposite to Frank; for he insists the plantation slavery could only be “formally capitalist,” “since slavery among the Negroes excludes free-wage labour, which is the base on which capital production rests. However, those who deal in slave-trading are capitalists.” As Beechey (1978) has recently argued, slavery certainly presupposed private property, a class of owners, and a propertyless class. However, whereas under capitalism the worker owns his own labor-power which he sells as a commodity to the capitalist, slaveholders owned both the labor-power and the slave. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 608

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The formal-vs-real subsumption distinction in Marx’s own words — the slaveholder owning labor-power outright vs. the worker selling it — is dense, paradigm-sharpening material.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s intellectual-life thread: this is economic thought itself debating its own foundational concepts.