Slave-economy speculation seeded a persistent culture of American capitalism

Evidence

During this period, “Americans built a culture of speculation unique in its abandon,” writes the historian Joshua Rothman in his book Flush Times and Fever Dreams. That culture would drive cotton production up to the Civil War, and it has been a defining characteristic of American capitalism ever since. It is the culture of acquiring wealth without work, growing at all costs, and abusing the powerless. It is the culture that brought us catastrophic downturns, like the Panic of 1837, the stock market crash of 1929, and the recession of 2008. It is the culture that has produced staggering inequality and undignified working conditions. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 559

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the framing argument that slavery is foundational, not peripheral, to American capitalism — directly relevant to the reader’s task of separating reframing thesis from empirical claims. — connects to: Slavery’s management rationalities seeded the data-optimization mindset of modern capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 43; Nineteenth-century slavery still predicts low civic engagement today. — Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone The Collapse and Revival…, 1028; American territorial expansion, slavery, and cotton drove the Industrial Revolution symbiotically — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 199
• SEED: Article angle: tracing the 1837/1929/2008 financial crises as direct descendants of the slave-collateral credit boom.