Ancient Rome, Greece, Babylon, Egypt, India, China, and Africa
too, all had slavery. None of them created the Industrial Revolution. Great
Britain and the United States did create the Industrial Revolution, on a foundation
of economic freedom and respect for individual rights.
The great blemish of slavery played no greater positive role
in the history of the US than it had played previously in the world, which is
to say, virtually none. Ignoring its overwhelming negatives, its utmost positive
contribution here may have been a temporarily larger supply of raw cotton.
But even that is probably not true. Free labor could have
picked cotton. True, it would have had to be paid more than a wage equal to the
price of a slave’s minimum necessities, but it undoubtedly would have been less
expensive per pound of cotton picked.
Free labor would have done away with the cost of a system of
overseers and the cost of acquiring slaves. It could easily have been accompanied
by a system of piecework and thus eager competition among workers in picking
more cotton and thereby earning more money.
Free workers would also have been motivated to find brand new
ways to increase production, because they would have financially greatly benefitted
from doing so. Thus, improvements in raw cotton production might have come
generations sooner.
People who believe that slavery is an efficient system of
production are people who are ready to impose 100% marginal rates of taxation
in the belief that doing so is economically harmless.
The alleged economic benefit of slavery is a core belief of
the Left both in current politics and in the interpretation of economic
history. It sees no connection between freedom and production and no difference
between work for positive gain and work to avoid pain.
Fundamentally, the Left does not recognize the distinction
between human beings and draft animals, in that it believes the value of human
beings derives from their muscles rather than their motivated minds.
So far is slavery from having been a source of gain in the United
States that the actual truth is that had it never existed and had no African
ever been involuntarily brought to the US, the effect would have been enormously
positive economically, socially, and culturally.
Incentives to produce and save would have been greatly
increased. No portion of accumulated savings would have been constituted by the
market value of human beings but only by that of physical assets, implying the
accumulation of more physical assets.
There would have been no need for a Civil War to free the
slaves, a war that killed 600,000 Americans. And today there would be no racial
animosities traceable to slavery.
The US would be more the country that its fundamental principles
have designed it to be. A country in which the material self-interests of men
function harmoniously, to the benefit of all, because they deal with one
another by means of voluntary trade, not physical force.
Slavery is as much an economic benefit as holding up gas
stations. Not only does the gas station owner lose what the robber gains, but both
his motivation to produce and his means of producing are reduced. A world of
robbery, which is what slavery is, is a world of great poverty.
This is why the standard of living of even the kings and
emperors of the pre-industrial world was far below that of the average worker
in any capitalist country today.
To learn more, see my "Capitalism: The Cure for Racism" and then my Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics, both available at https://amzn.to/2NLvVVZ
