georgephillip
Diamond Member
How did Karl Marx view the exchange value of human slavery?
Karl Marx Fought for Freedom
"Marx did not view the large-scale enslavement of Africans by Europeans, which began in the early sixteenth century in the Caribbean, as a repeat of Roman or Arab slavery, but as something new.
"It combined ancient forms of brutality with the quintessentially modern social form of value production.
"Slavery, he wrote in a draft for Capital, reaches 'its most hateful form … in a situation of capitalist production,' where 'exchange value becomes the determining element of production.'
"This leads to the extension of the workday beyond all limit, literally working enslaved people to death..."
"'Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns, as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery that has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies that have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry.'"
Karl Marx Fought for Freedom
"Marx did not view the large-scale enslavement of Africans by Europeans, which began in the early sixteenth century in the Caribbean, as a repeat of Roman or Arab slavery, but as something new.
"It combined ancient forms of brutality with the quintessentially modern social form of value production.
"Slavery, he wrote in a draft for Capital, reaches 'its most hateful form … in a situation of capitalist production,' where 'exchange value becomes the determining element of production.'
"This leads to the extension of the workday beyond all limit, literally working enslaved people to death..."
"'Direct slavery is as much the pivot upon which our present-day industrialism turns, as are machinery, credit, etc. Without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry. It is slavery that has given value to the colonies, it is the colonies that have created world trade, and world trade is the necessary condition for large-scale machine industry.'"