Whether plantation slavery was capitalist remains an unresolved scholarly debate

Evidence

The same can be said in more detail of the troublesome case of plantation slavery in the New World. This is, of course, the site of a protracted, and still unresolved, debate. Ulrich B. Phillips—whom, despite his offensive anti-slave viewpoint, Eugene Genovese correctly praises for a seminal analysis of the political economy of slavery—argued, long ago, that plantation slavery was a form of capitalism. That was, indeed, the basis of his objection to it (Genovese 1971). Genovese himself argues that slavery had a distinct set of exploitative relations—a “seigneurial society … [which] created a unique society, neither feudal … nor capitalist.” Barry Hindess and Paul Hirst constitute plantation slavery as its own distinctive “mode,” using primarily formal criteria. Eric Williams, early on, and subsequently Genovese, and Jairus Banaji among others, have concentrated on the relationship between plantation slavery—whatever its characteristic “mode”—and the global capitalist economy. Robert Fogel and Stanley Engerman have recently described slavery as a profitable form of “capitalist agriculture” (Hindess and Hirst 1977; Williams 1944; Genovese 1971; Banaji 1977; Fogel and Engerman 1974). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 607

Categorization

• XREF: This mapping of rival positions (Phillips, Genovese, Hindess/Hirst, Williams/Banaji, Fogel/Engerman) is a useful intellectual-mapping typology for the reader’s economic-thought thread.