/lit/ - Literature

>>18917392
>The strongest argument would be that slavery provided the initial capital accumulation for industry to be successful later.
Yeah, the slaves were like a giant battery to jumpstart the industrial machine, because what were the white people doing? Unless they were slave owners, they were living like the Amish or something -- a lot of small proprietors, tradesmen who work for themselves, or work for someone else long enough to learn skills and go into business for themselves. And plenty of cheap land to go around for everyone! On large scale, this inhibited the kind of capture of labor-produced value by capitalists that they needed to get the investment cycle going. So, slaves did it.

Then they industrialized and that wiped out a lot of these little guys. Then over several generations, more and more of them sold the family farm and move to the Sacramento suburbs and here we are.