Slavery was systemic to modern capitalism, not an historical aberration.

Evidence

Du Bois was arguing that once slavery was addressed in comprehensive terms, in world-historical terms, its true nature was revealed. Beneath its appearance as a “feudal agrarianism” lay the real relation of slavery to the emergence of modern capitalism. As America was a critical subsector of this developing system, the conflicts between American creed and reality, the contradictions of American society, the distortions of its social structures and political institutions ensued from its dependence on slavery and would resound throughout the system into the twentieth century. Slavery, then, was not a historical aberration, it was not a “mistake” in an otherwise bourgeois democratic age. It was, and its imprints continued to be, systemic. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 937

Du Bois was arguing that once slavery was addressed in comprehensive terms, in world-historical terms, its true nature was revealed. Beneath its appearance as a “feudal agrarianism” lay the real relation of slavery to the emergence of modern capitalism. … Slavery, then, was not a historical aberration, it was not a “mistake” in an otherwise bourgeois democratic age. It was, and its imprints continued to be, systemic. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 937

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction argument about slavery’s centrality to capitalism, and implicitly links forward to Robinson’s whole thesis about racial capitalism. — connects to: European colonization employed slave labor as its foundational institution, not incidentally; British capitalism ended West Indian slavery but thrived on American, Cuban, and Brazilian slavery; Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition (+10 more)
• SHARE: The claim that slavery was no bourgeois-age mistake but the very constitution of modern capitalism is one that unsettles standard US historical narratives.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 937

Broader Connections

• Slavery was central to capitalism, not a mere primitive precondition #corroborates (0.90)
• Slave labor was integral to modern capitalism, not a pre-capitalist stage #corroborates (0.90)
• Slavery was a critical foundation for early capitalism #corroborates (0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 584
• Slaves and agrarian workers, not industrial workers, attacked capitalism #expands (0.50)
• Abolition of slavery coincided with capitalism’s reorganization toward new labor forms #expands (0.50) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1434