Abstract
Robin Blackburn discusses the role of slavery and emancipation, race and capitalism in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Western world. He argues that the enslaving and racializing dynamic of capitalism was located in civil society while abolitionism sought to challenge the expansion of the “Slave Power.” However, it was the actuality or threat of revolutionary ruptures at the level of the state, and slave resistance that gave abolition the chance to suppress slavery. But the emancipatory project was fatally weakened by the success of armed white vigilantes in terrorizing blacks and denying them political rights. Authors discussed include David Brion Davis, Thomas Haskell, Eric Williams, W. E. B. Dubois, Nancy Fraser, Michael Dawson and Frank Wilderson.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Allen, R 2014, Global Economic History, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Allen, T 1994, The Invention of the White Race, Verso, London.
Baptist, E 2014, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, Basic Books, New York.
Bender, T (ed.) 1992, The Antislavery Debate: Capitalism and Abolitionism as a Problem in Historical Interpretation, University of California Press, London.
Blackburn, R 1988, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776–1848, Verso, London.
Blackburn, R 2010, Age-Shock: How Finance is Failing Us, Verso, London.
Blackburn, R 2011, The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights, Verso, London.
Brenner, R 1977, “The Origins of Capitalism: A Critique of Neo-Smithian Marxism,” New Left Review, 104, 25–92.
Brenner, R 1993, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders 1550–1653, Verso, London.
Brown, C 2006, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Carico, A 2016, “Freedom as Accumulation,” History of the Present: A Journal of Critical History, 6, 1–31.
Clark, I 2014, Legitimacy and the International Order, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Cox, O 1949, Caste, Class and Race: A Study in Social Dynamics, Monthly Review Press, New York.
Davis, D 1973, The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Revolution: 1770–1823, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Davis, D 1987, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Dawson, MC 2016, “Hidden in Plain Sight: A Note on Legitimation Crises and the Racial Order,” Critical Historical Studies, 3, 143–161.
Einhorn, R 2008, American Slavery, American Taxation, Chicago University Press, London.
Foner, E 1995 (1970), Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War, Oxford University Press, New York.
Fraser, N 2014, Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis, Verso, London.
Fraser, N 2016, “Expropriation and Exploitation in Racialized Capitalism: A Reply to Michael Dawson,” Critical Historical Studies, 3, 163–178.
Fraser, N (forthcoming), “Expropriation as Racialization in Capitalist Society: An Interview with Nancy Fraser by George Yancy,” In 35 Interviews of Philosophers on Race (ed.) George Yancy, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Hartmann, S 1997, Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery and Self-Making in Nineteenth Century America, Oxford University Press, New York.
Huggins, N 1977, Black Odyssey: The Afro-American Ordeal in Slavery, Pantheon Books, New York.
Hunt, L 2007, Inventing Human Rights: A History, W.W. Norton & Company, New York.
Hussey, D 2013, Freedom Burning: Anti-Slavery and Empire in Victorian Britain, Cornell University Press, Ithaca.
Johnson, W 2013, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Kagan, R 2006, Dangerous Nation: America in the World 1500–1900, Random House, New York.
Kidd, C 2006, The Forging of Race: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600–2000, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Kovel, J 1970, White Racism, a Psycho History, Pantheon Books, New York.
Muthu, S 2003, Enlightenment Against Empire, Princeton University Press, Princeton.
Roediger, R 1991, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class, Verso, New York.
Saxton, A 1991, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class, Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America, Verso, London.
Scott, R 2006, Degrees of Freedom, Oxford University Press, New York.
Tomich, D 2004, Through the Prism of Slavery: Labor, Capital, and World Economy, Rowman & Littlefield, Oxford.
Tuck, R 1979, Natural Rights Theories: Their Origin and Development, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Wilderson, F III 2003, “Gramsci’s Black Marx: Whither the Slave in Civil Society?” Social Identities, 9, 225–240.
Williams, E 1944, Capitalism and Slavery, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Wood, E 2002, The Origins of Capitalism: A Longer View, Verso, New York.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Blackburn, R. (2017). Debates on Slavery, Capitalism and Race: Old and New. In: Bargu, B., Bottici, C. (eds) Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52386-6_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52386-6_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52385-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52386-6
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)