Freedom and slavery the birth of capital

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument¶

The central thesis is that capitalist "freedom" is a deeply contradictory and historically manufactured concept, born not from the liberation of individuals but from the systematic expropriation, enslavement, and violent dispossession of the majority. The article argues that the real foundation of capitalism was not free enterprise or individual initiative, but the creation of a mass of propertyless workers — "free" only in the double sense of being liberated from feudal bonds and, more decisively, from any means of subsistence of their own. This freedom was achieved through centuries of state-backed violence: the enclosure of common lands, colonial genocide, the transatlantic slave trade, and the brutal suppression of the newly created proletariat. The claim is that capitalist freedom has always been the freedom of the few to exploit the many, and that this contradiction was present from the very birth of the system.

Theoretical Grounding¶

The analysis draws directly on Marx's account of "primitive accumulation" in Capital, Volume 1 — the historical process by which the capitalist mode of production was preceded by the forcible separation of the direct producers from their means of production. The article deploys Marx's observation that this history is "written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire" as its organising motif. It also draws on Engels's historical writings, particularly The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie, to trace the transition from feudalism to capitalism through class struggle — the serfs' flight to towns, the Peasants' Revolt, and the gradual replacement of labour services by money rents.

The theoretical tradition here is classical historical materialism, with an emphasis on the role of force as an "economic power" in Marx's sense. The article rejects any Whig interpretation of capitalist development as a story of gradual enlightenment or commercial progress. Instead, it insists that capitalism's birth was a catastrophe for the majority, and that the state — far from being a neutral arbiter or an obstacle to free markets — was the indispensable midwife of the new order. The analysis also engages with the concept of the world market as a system of robbery, following Marx's remarks on merchant capital in Capital, Volume 3.

Conjunctural Relevance¶

The article was published in October 2019, a moment when the ideological defence of capitalism as the system of freedom was being aggressively renewed by figures associated with the global right — the article explicitly names Turning Point UK, the British offshoot of the American conservative activist network. This was also the period of the revived "culture war" around free speech and individual liberty, with capitalist apologists presenting any challenge to market relations as an attack on freedom itself.

Economically, the conjuncture was one of deepening stagnation and inequality in the advanced capitalist economies, a decade after the 2008 crash. The article's emphasis on the historical creation of a mass consumer market — and the compulsion to consume as well as to work — speaks directly to the reality of debt-fuelled consumerism and the precariousness of working-class life under conditions of stagnant real wages and rising household debt. The reference to Thatcher's Poll Tax and its 14th-century predecessor is a pointed reminder that the class struggle over taxation and the expropriation of the poor is not a historical curiosity but a recurring feature of capitalist development.

Geopolitically, the article's treatment of colonialism — particularly the destruction of Indian home industry by British tariffs and the transformation of India from a source of loot into a captive market — connects to ongoing debates about imperialism, uneven development, and the persistence of colonial patterns in global supply chains. The mention of the spinning wheel on the Indian flag is a concrete historical detail that grounds the argument in a specific anti-colonial struggle.

Where the Argument Continues¶

The article is a broad historical survey, and several of its themes are developed in greater depth elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. The question of the state's role in capitalist development is taken up in more theoretical detail in articles on the bourgeois state and the transition to socialism. The analysis of primitive accumulation as an ongoing process — not merely a historical precondition — is explored in pieces on contemporary land grabs, the privatisation of public services, and the creation of new pools of precarious labour in the Global South.

The relationship between slavery and capitalism, touched on here in the discussion of the £20m compensation paid to slave-owning families, is the subject of a substantial body of Marxist literature that the IDOM tradition engages with, including debates about the "New History of Capitalism" and the extent to which racialised chattel slavery was integral to the development of industrial capitalism. The article's treatment of the guilds and their suppression points toward a broader analysis of the transition from manufacture to machinofacture, which is developed in IDOM articles on the industrial revolution and the labour process under capitalism.

Connections¶

The article sits within a tradition of Marxist historical writing that includes:

Marx, Capital, Volume 1, Part VIII: "The So-Called Primitive Accumulation" — the direct theoretical source for the argument.
Engels, The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie — the key text on the transition from feudalism to capitalism.
E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class — for the detailed social history of the expropriation of the English peasantry and the formation of the proletariat.
Eduardo Galeano, Open Veins of Latin America — cited in the article for its account of colonial pillage.
A.L. Morton, A People's History of England — cited for the Thomas More quotation on enclosures.
Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism — a more recent Marxist contribution to the debate on the transition, though not cited in the article.

The article also implicitly engages with contemporary liberal and conservative defences of capitalism as freedom, and could usefully be read alongside IDOM pieces on the concept of freedom under socialism and the critique of "free market" ideology.

Key Quotes¶

"What the birth of capital required was that the owners of money, land and industry should be confronted by a mass of 'free' workers, liberated from any property of their own and completely reliant on the market. This is the real foundation of the capitalist system, and its history is 'written in the annals of mankind in letters of blood and fire', in the words of Karl Marx."
"Merchant's capital, when it holds a position of dominance, stands everywhere for a system of robbery, so that its development among the trading nations of old and modern times is always directly connected with plundering, piracy, kidnapping slaves, and colonial conquest."
"The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the indigenous population of that continent, the beginnings of the conquest and plunder of India, and the conversion of Africa into a preserve for the commercial hunting of blackskins, are all things which characterise the dawn of the era of capitalist production."
"The concentrated power of the state was used 'to hasten, hot-house fashion, the process of transformation of the feudal mode of production into the capitalist mode, and to shorten the transition,' Marx writes in Capital (vol. 1), adding, 'Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.'"
"Slavery was not abolished because it was immoral; it was abolished because it was unprofitable. It would be foolish to persist in such an expensive and unproductive enterprise when a shrewd investor could squeeze a never-before-seen profit from the blood of the 'free-born slaves' of Britain and its colonies."
"Here lies the secret of capital: Not private enterprise but the sweated labour of others; not property rights but the absence of property for the many."