Was Atlantic slavery a capitalist system or a pre-capitalist one? In a recent conversation, historian David McNally argues that Atlantic slavery was not outside capitalism at all. It was a distinct capitalist system built on enslaved labor, commodity production, and surplus value.
McNally’s new book, Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History, makes the case that plantation slavery must be understood as part of capitalism’s own development, not as a leftover from an earlier era. That argument reshapes how we think about both capitalism and abolition.
Why McNally Rejects the Pre-Capitalist Reading
McNally argues that the “new history of capitalism” was right to reopen capitalism as a historical question, but too often reduced slavery to finance, credit, and market exchange. In his view, that misses the central issue: enslaved people were producing commodities and surplus value on plantations.
That is why he rejects the idea that Atlantic slavery was just an older, pre-capitalist labor form living alongside capitalism. Instead, he sees it as a modern capitalist regime of domination tied to global markets, industrial production, and profit-making.
What This Says About Capitalism
McNally’s bigger point is that capitalism has never depended only on “free labor.” It has always been able to combine market domination with direct coercion, racial control, and paternalism.
That means capitalism is not the opposite of slavery in a neat historical sequence. It can absorb slavery, forced labor, and racial domination when they serve accumulation.
How Abolition Happened
If slavery was capitalist, abolition was not simply a moral reform from outside the system. It was also a struggle over labor, production, and power inside the capitalist world.
McNally emphasizes enslaved resistance as a form of labor struggle. Enslaved people slowed production, resisted domination, ran away, revolted, and forced the system into crisis. In that sense, abolition was not handed down from above. It was fought from below.
Why the Book Matters
Slavery and Capitalism argues that plantation slavery should be understood as part of the history of capitalism itself, not as a separate prelude to it. That matters because it changes how we explain racial capitalism, labor struggle, and the roots of modern inequality.
It also pushes against older Marxist habits that treated enslaved people as outside the working class. McNally instead describes plantation slavery as a form of capitalist labor domination that enslaved people continually resisted.
5 Key Takeaways
- McNally says Atlantic slavery was capitalist, not pre-capitalist. He sees plantation slavery as commodity production organized for profit.
- Capitalism can include coercion. McNally argues that market domination and personal domination often coexist.
- Enslaved resistance helped drive abolition. He frames revolt and everyday resistance as labor struggle.
- The “new history of capitalism” is incomplete without slavery. McNally says finance-only explanations miss production and surplus value.
- The book reframes racial capitalism. It places slavery at the center of capitalism’s history, not outside it.
Source: Interview with David McNally, “A Marxist History of Slavery and Capitalism,” and Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (University of California Press).