Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage

Evidence

From whatever vantage point one chooses, the relationship between slave labor, the slave trade, and the weaving of the early capitalist economies is apparent. Whatever were the alternatives, the point remains: historically, slavery was a critical foundation for capitalism. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The use of slave labor in the New World of the sixteenth century by the Spanish Crown (and soon after the Portuguese) and its merchant concessionaires was consequently a most natural step. Slave labor had been a basis for colonial trade in the Mediterranean, Africa, and the Indies; it was already the foundation of colonization in the Canaries, the Azores, and the Madeiran islands. At first, the relationship between capitalism, colonization, and slave labor had appeared almost coincidental. … As Italian capitalism matured, however, this emphasis on trade was to change for three reasons. Briefly, they were the expansion of the power of the Ottoman Turks in the eastern Mediterranean in the fifteenth century, the extension of sugar-cane cultivation from Asia Minor to Cyprus, Sicily, and the Atlantic islands (Madeira, Cape Verde, and the Azores) at the end of that century, and the collaboration of Genoese capitalists with the ruling classes of Iberia. These events transformed the incidental relationship between capitalism and slave labor into the very foundation of New World enterprise. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Capitalism preserving unfree labor is a deviant historical case; Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance; European colonization employed slave labor as its foundational institution, not incidentally (+15 more)

Related

• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism (similarity 0.93)
• Madeira’s sugar plantations first institutionalized slave labor as capitalist commodity production (similarity 0.92)
• Slave labor sustained the extra-European market that industrial capitalism built on (similarity 0.91)
• European colonization employed slave labor as its foundational institution, not incidentally (similarity 0.90)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism (similarity 0.90)
• Medieval Mediterranean slavery foreshadowed Atlantic colonial slavery (similarity 0.90)
• Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance (similarity 0.89)
• Columbus’s success depended on three centuries of Genoese capitalist infrastructure, not personal qualities (similarity 0.88)
• Sixteenth-century sugar plantations required enormous capital and labor investment. (similarity 0.88)
• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition (similarity 0.86)
• The slave trade advanced European capitalism while underdeveloping Africa’s economies. (similarity 0.86)
• Capitalism preserving unfree labor is a deviant historical case (similarity 0.86)
• Capitalists extracted Black labor while letting African social formations reproduce the supply (similarity 0.86)
• Sugar’s labor demands drove the English to mass importation of African slaves (similarity 0.86)
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor (similarity 0.85)

Broader Connections

• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition #corroborates (0.92)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584
• Ottoman expansion, sugar cultivation, and Genoese-Iberian alliance made slave labor central to capitalism #corroborates (0.70) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 556
• American slavery was a forewarning of how capitalism would exploit global labor #expands (0.60)