Slavery and American Capitalism

(Quote of the Week)

Four hundred years ago, the first black African slaves were brought in chains to Virginia. In a 1953 speech excerpted below, veteran Trotskyist Richard S. Fraser explained the central role played by slavery and its legacy in the development and maintenance of American capitalism. As fighters for black liberation through socialist revolution, we stand on Fraser’s pioneering work on the material roots of black oppression in the U.S.

The racial division of society was born with capitalism and will die only with the death of this last system of exploitation. Before capitalism there was no race concept. There was no skin color exploitation, there was no race prejudice, there was no idea of superiority and inferiority based upon physical characteristics.

It was the advent of Negro chattel slavery in the western hemisphere which first divided society into races. In a measure the whole supremacy of western capitalism is founded upon this modern chattel slavery. The primary accumulation of capital which was the foundation of the industrial revolution was accrued largely from the slave trade.

The products of the slave system in the early colonies formed the backbone of European mercantilism and the raw materials for industrial capitalism. The three-cornered trade by pious New England merchants, consisting of rum, slaves and sugar cane, was the foundation of American commerce. Thus Negro slavery was the pivotal point upon which the foundations of the U.S. national economy were hinged.

—Richard S. Fraser, “The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution” (November 1953), printed in “In Memoriam—Richard S. Fraser,” Prometheus Research Series No. 3 (1990)