Slavery’s management rationalities seeded the data-optimization mindset of modern capitalism

Evidence

The very concept of raw material has deep colonial roots. Raw, in this context, means available for exploitation without resistance rather than a substance that needs no processing. The natural environment itself first had to be reconstructed so that it became available for value extraction. Then, through the practice of slavery (which preceded colonialism but which reached a massive scale under colonialism), human bodies were transformed into a raw material for capitalism in the form of slaves. Historians have warned us against treating slavery—usually imagined as a premodern practice—in isolation from the development of industrial capitalism. The plantation and the factory coexisted for a long time. The treatment of human beings as mere property stimulated the rationalities of profit maximization, accounting precision, and data optimization that we now tend to associate with modern rationality. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Provides the crucial definition that ‘raw’ in colonial/data-colonial terms means exploitable without resistance, not merely unprocessed — the semantic core of data colonialism’s claim.
• XREF: Links to Black Marxism’s claim that plantation slavery generated profit-maximization rationalities, and to the reader’s existing attention/surveillance frameworks around data extraction. — connects to: Slave-economy speculation seeded a persistent culture of American capitalism — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 559; Scientific management of cotton slavery predated and out-stripped industrial factories — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 576; Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance (+2 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 43

Broader Connections

• Scientific management of cotton slavery predated and out-stripped industrial factories #corroborates (0.85) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 576
• Slave-economy speculation seeded a persistent culture of American capitalism #expands (0.78) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 559
• Plantation slavery combined capitalist and non-capitalist modes in dominance #qualifies (0.72)