Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History

by David McNally

The first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery.
 
Karl Marx’s writings on enslavement and labor have fallen out of favor among historians, but David McNally injects new life into them. Slavery and Capitalism gives the first systematic Marxist account of the capitalist character of Atlantic slavery—using colonial travel literature, planter records and diaries, and slave narratives—to support the provocative claim for enslaved labor in the plantation system as capitalist commodity production.
 
Weaving together history, political economy, and radical abolitionism, McNally demonstrates that plantation slaves formed a modern working class. Unlike those scholars who insist that enslaved people were too sensible to set their sights on liberty, he highlights the self-activity of enslaved people fighting for their freedom and reframes their resistance as labor struggles over production and reproduction, with significant implications for US and Atlantic history and for understanding the roots of racial capitalism.
 

Genres: History, Politics, Nonfiction, Economics, Race, Theory, American History

368 pages, Hardcover

Published September 2, 2025

Reviews

[Fred · Rating 5 out of 5]

An instant classic that effectively challenges both the so-called new historians of capitalism who don't understand Marx and the historians of slavery who don't understand class struggle. Belongs on the shelf alongside Du Bois, Eric Williams, CLR James, and Cedric Robinson.

[Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

McNally seems to have two main objectives with this book. The first is a sweeping argument that slavery was capitalist and that enslaved Africans were a “chattel proletariat,” an argument which is largely convincing here. While this argument may be familiar to readers who have followed these debates, McNally provides a useful synthesis here. He’s read recent historical and sociological literature widely, and also draws on a good amount of primary source material (much of which is from published sources or quoted in other secondary scholarship.)

The second objective, especially in the introduction, is a critique of the New History of Capitalism (and the subset of that field that focuses on slavery, in particular, from a Marxist perspective informed by the black radical tradition. Certainly there is room for such a critique, but I was unconvinced by it here, in no small part because I think McNally misreads Walter Johnson as an empiricist, reading the “bale of hay” moment in River of Dark Dreams as a refutation of Marxist Theory and theory more broadly, and not, as I think Johnson intends it, at least in my reading, as a heuristic for settling, or at the very least exploring theoretical questions through careful mapping of the material logics and processes that underlie them. Indeed, if any of the NHC scholars can be said to have an engagement with Marx that is something other than “desultory”, it is Johnson, which makes McNally’s critique all the more baffling - even moreso that he subsequently cites the same text favorably at multiple moments throughout the book. It reads as sectarian and myopic and it does not serve the argument particularly well.

This is infuriating in part because there is much of value in this account, which deftly synthesizes an enormous secondary literature, and settles the “was slavery capitalist” debate fairly decisively in the affirmative. Some individual components of the argument are perhaps more convincing than others as a case for the proletarianship of the enslaved, but it is on the whole a useful contribution to marxological debates on the political economy of North American slavery.

[Roberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely necessary read for those on the American left. Lacking in perspective on chattel slavery or American political economy? Crack open this book and all questions will be answered in a digestible and very poignant way. McNally honors the ghosts and the tortured souls with this beautiful book.

[Thomas Pope · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’d give this a 4.25/5.

Some interesting new insights (new to me, not necessarily new to the field).

Not sure if I agree with his articulation of enslaved African peoples as proletariat - though the factors he utilized to come to that conclusion are meritorious.

I do agree with his placement, as Williams and Du Bois theorized, of chattel slavery as both the progenitor of the development of the modern capitalist mode of production, as well as being situated in the capitalist mode of production - not a feudal hybrid.

While he cites Hartman, I think his chapter on reproduction as integral to slavery was too short, ditto for his attention to social death - but Patterson did pretty broadly address it in Slavery and Social Death.

Will read again.

[ernst · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ein Meisterwerk und wohl das beste neue Buch, das ich dieses Jahr gelesen habe. Vereint spannende, umfassende Historiographie und raffinierte, anspruchsvolle Theoretisierung.

Das entscheidende, das das Buch leistet, ist die Entfaltung eines überzeugenden Argumentes, warum Sklav:innen in einem kapitalistischen Milieu nicht einfach als konstantes Kapital, als Produktionsmittel begriffen werden können, sondern warum sie als variables Kapital fungiert und sich durch ihren Widerstand auch als solches bewiesen haben. Meines Erachtens kommt hier die theoretische Entfaltung des Widerspruchs zwischen Form und Inhalt zu kurz, aber das nimmt der Überzeugungskraft McNallys Arguments wenig. Das System der Sklaverei, wie es etwa ab der zweiten Hälfte des 18. Jahrhunderts entwickelt wurde, war ein wesentlich kapitalistisches System, in dem es den dort engagierten Kapitalist:innen um die Ausbeutung von Mehrwert ging. Das ist nach diesem Buch nicht mehr überzeugend zu widerlegen. Dafür trägt McNally hier auch einfach zu viel schöagendes historisches Material zusammen. Selbst wenn er kein so starker Theoretiker wäre, wie er tatsächlich ist, sondern, wie Eric Williams in seinem Klassiker, vor allem Empiriker wäre, würde dieses Material eine deutliche Sprach sprechen.

Das Buch ist zudem gut und, denke ich, in weiten Teilen zugänglich geschrieben (manchmal kippt er doch in ziemlich fürchterliche akademische Schreibe um), in Teilen sogar spannend, wenn er die Widerstandskämpfe der Sklav:innen beschreibt. Was man noch bemängeln könnte, ist, dass der Titel dahingehend irreführend ist, dass das Buch sich tatsächlich nur mit dem bereits historisch gewordenen Verhältnis von Sklaverei und Kapitalismus beschäftigt, also im 19. Jahrhundert seine Betrachtung einstellt, während das wirkliche Verhältnis damit mitnichten endet. Auch in der anderen zeitlichen Richtung wäre die Kontrastierung hilfreich gewesen: wie ist die Sklaverei, wenigstens in groben Zügen, vor dem Kapitalismus zu begreifen? Dazu hier kein Wort, womit auch die Verwandlung, die der Kapitalismus an diesem System vollzieht, nicht vollkommen beleuchtet wird. Zudem beschäftigt er sich im Schlusskapitel mit dem Verhältnis von marxistischer Arbeiter:innenbewegung und der abolitionistischen Bewegung, dann Befreiungsbewegung der Kolonisierten und Rassifizierten und zeigt ermutigende frühe Verschränkungen beider auf, die sich dann wieder lösen. Dabei kommt aber zu kurz, dass die Arbeiterklasse in den USA fundamental rassisch bestimmt ist, und ihr weißer Teil schon damals in großen Teilen reaktionär eingestellt war (zu der Problematik bleibt Sakais Settlers das maßgebende Buch). So erhält man eine zu positive Darstellung und die Trennung der beiden Bewegungen erscheint als abrupt und nicht hinreichend begründet.

[Alexander B · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s rare to see a book with a 4.9 rating and even more rare to see one where the rating is fully justified. The argument is not new but the depth, detail and quality of McNally’s argumentation is phenomenal. Going through Marx’s writings and real history of New World slavery, he proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that American slavery was a capitalist phenomenon through and through and that enslaved people were a quintessential proletariat in Marx’s original sense of the word. This book also happens to be both a stellar introduction into the foundations of Marxist economic analysis and the economic history of slavery, so it is highly accessible to newcomers and has immense pedagogical value. After reading several dozen books on slavery, this one instantly floats to the top 3 I would recommend on the topic. What a monumental achievement, truly.

[Daniel Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was an insightful and powerful book on slavery, capitalism, and Marxism. Despite the tendency of many historians since the end of slavery to downplay just how deeply capitalist the institution of slavery was—and, in many ways, still is—the book makes that connection unmistakably clear. As Ira Steward wrote, “freedom is yet to come” for the workers of the world, who even today continue to experience a kind of “living death” under the forces of capital.

[Chris G · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book does an amazing job of showing how even under the most unfavorable conditions to labor possible that their labor still was their power and they were able to strategically withhold it in order to gain more favorable conditions. It was always silly to leave slavery out of the history of capitalism and the struggle for labor rights so I'm glad to see it be set to right like this.

[tracy-ange · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i had to build a syllabus for any class exploring labor struggles, social movements and the birth of capitalism, this would be essential reading. challenged so many misconceptions and assumptions i had about marx and his (supposed) silence on slavery and just the revolutionary current expressed by many enslaved people.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

More than compelling, McNally is fighting on all fronts in Slavery and Capitalism, correcting the mistakes of Orthodox Marxists and Liberal Historians while reintroducing Political Economy to historiography this is an incredible achievement, surprisingly accessible and radical, this feels like a foundational text for understanding slavery, and capitalism itself and capitalism as a mode of production, plantations were factories in the field involved in commodity production for the global market and used socialized labor as well as “improvements” to the means of production to maximize profits resulting in proletarian resistance from enslaved peoples who engaged in strikes and recognizing that they ought to be entitled to the fruits of their labor, and he places it within the existing Black Radical Tradition, I will be visiting CLR James and others now that I am familiar with them

[gaverne Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting