Slavery as Capitalization

[Scot Griffin]

By the end of slavery in the United States, it seems clear that the price of a slave reflected the discounted present value of the future profits the slave’s labor was expected to generate over his/her remaining life.

My question is whether this was also true in Ancient Greece or Ancient Rome, for example? If not, how were slave prices set, and when/where did the pricing methodology change?

For whatever reason, I was struck today by the idea that chattel slavery may be the most primitive (or the original) form of capitalism.

Topic

[Jonathan Nitzan]

May be of interest:

Rosenthal, Caitlin. 2016. Slavery’s Scientific Management. Masters and Managers. In Slavery’s Capitalism. A New History of American Economic Development, edited by S. Beckert and S. Rockman. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 62-86.

Rosenthal, Caitlin. 2018. Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

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