Podcast Summary

Podcast: New Books Network
Episode: David McNally, "Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History"
Host: Prashanto Sudhar
Guest: David McNally
Published: September 3, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode features a rich conversation with David McNally, Cullen Distinguished Professor of History and Business at the University of Houston, about his new book, Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History (University of California Press, 2025). The discussion critically explores McNally's systematic Marxist account of Atlantic slavery as a fundamentally capitalist enterprise, foregrounding the collective resistance of enslaved people and the need to theorize the connections between slavery, capitalism, and freedom.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Collective Conceptions of Freedom

• Opening Concept: The episode begins with McNally’s assertion:

  “Whoever writes about slavery writes about freedom.” (05:00, McNally)

• Distinction from Liberal Notions:
  McNally critiques the dominant liberal, individualist notion of freedom, advocating instead for a “social conception of freedom” as a collective and unfinished project:

  “Freedom can only be a social value, a collective and communal one, because it requires the undoing of states of oppression... collective goals, communal social practices and so on.” (07:15, McNally)

• Intellectual Lineage:
  McNally draws on Orlando Patterson’s view that the very concept of freedom originated among enslaved people, claiming historians must center the communal pursuit of freedom to comprehend its historical meaning.

2. The “Forgotten Critical Marxist Tradition”

• Restoring Black Marxist Thinkers:
  The core of McNally’s theoretical approach is a return to neglected Black Marxist frameworks, especially the works of:
  • C.L.R. James: The Black Jacobins – argued that Haitian plantation workers were akin to a "modern proletariat" (11:01).
  • W.E.B. Du Bois: Black Reconstruction in America – described the US Civil War slave exodus as a "general strike" (13:07).
  • Sylvia Wynter: Black Metamorphosis (unpublished manuscript) – conceptualized the “plantation proletariat” as a fundamentally modern social class (14:45).
• McNally’s Contribution:
  McNally updates their insights by drawing on recent research, especially the use of capitalist accounting practices on plantations, missing from James and Du Bois’s time:

  “Plantation owners were among the most developed at using techniques of modern accounting... thoroughly modern capitalist cost accounters.” (15:52, McNally)

3. Terminology—"Bond People," "Bond Men/Women"

• On Language Use:
  McNally explains his choice of “bond people” rather than “bondsmen” to avoid contemporary US associations with bail bonds:

  “In the United States today... [bondsmen] refers to someone who provides a bail bond for an incarcerated person. I didn't want that confusion to creep in.” (17:20, McNally)

4. The Necessity of Theory in Historical Analysis

• Critique of Positivism:
  McNally underscores the indispensability of theory when analyzing social formations like Atlantic slavery, challenging empiricist trends in US historiography:

  “You can't just assume that you can understand capitalism by taking mere brute facts like bales of cotton... You have to analyze those commodities in relationship to the social totality.” (20:50, McNally)

• Connection to E.H. Carr:
  Quoting Carr, the discussion highlights the pitfalls of “relying on facts only,” likening it to laissez-faire dogma (23:16).

  “The idea that you can take individual facts and just throw them into a container and see a picture is the same sort of idea as that society just consists of atomized individuals... You've got to be able to grasp collective social processes.” (24:35, McNally)

5. Central Concept—The “Chattel Proletariat”

• Redefining Proletariat:
  Contradicting the view that capitalism’s proletariat must be legally free, McNally demonstrates how enslaved people’s labor and collective actions, including strikes, constitute them as part of the proletariat:

  “Enslaved workers on Atlantic plantations regularly use the strike weapon... If these people act like a proletariat in collective strike action... maybe it's time we recognize them as part of the proletariat.” (29:30, McNally)

• Historical Episodes of Strike Action:
  He lists major collective actions:
  • The strike under Toussaint Louverture in Saint-Domingue/Haiti (circa 1798)
  • Bussa’s Rebellion in Barbados (1816)
  • The 1831 mass strikes in Jamaica leading to abolition

6. Market Relations, Capitalism, and Slavery

• Market Presence:
  McNally traces market mechanisms throughout the plantation system—even when wage exchanges are absent:

  “There’s a market in bonded labor... commodities... are going to global markets... All that's really missing ... is that regular weekly or monthly exchange of labor power for wages.” (32:10, McNally)

7. Social Reproduction and Life-Making

• Gender & Labor:
  McNally extends E.P. Thompson’s approach by centering female labor, life-making, and family formation—elements absent from earlier Marxist labor histories:

  “They [black women] were also going back to the slave quarters and doing life making, reproducing human existence... The enslaved black woman and the slave family become much more important to my account.” (35:00, McNally)

• Etymology:
  Host Prashanto points out, and McNally agrees, that “proletariat” etymologically refers to “those who bear children”—linking reproduction to labor (36:46–37:00).

8. Intellectual Trajectory & Racial Capitalism

• Synthesizing Economic and Racial Analysis:
  McNally positions this book as his most thorough unification of the analysis of commodified social life with racial capitalism, reflecting both his scholarly work and activist commitments:

  “I feel it's my most sustained analysis of the historical formation of racial capitalism which continues to shape our world today.” (39:25, McNally)

9. Future Research—Anti-Colonial Marxism

• Next Project:
  McNally reveals he is currently at work on a study of Frantz Fanon and Vietnamese Marxist Tran Duc Thao, focusing on new forms of anti-colonial Marxism developed within and against the French left:

  “I'm trying to tell this story of a kind of anti colonial radicalism that I think continues to speak to our day and age...” (41:22, McNally)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Origins of Freedom:

  “Freedom as an ethical value and principle begins with enslaved people... it becomes fairly clear that freedom as a goal must be communal and collective.” (06:45, McNally)

• On American Historical Profession:

  “One of the amazing things about the historical profession in the United States is it's had an allergy to Marxism.” (21:55, McNally)

• On Commodification and Resistance:

  “Their revolts against commodified relations, including being commodified themselves, is a form of modern class struggle.” (37:55, McNally)

• On Synthesizing Political Economy and Anti-Racism:

  “This is the one work in which I've most consistently drawn those two strains together—the analysis of the political economy of commodification and commodified life, with the analysis of racial capitalism.” (39:20, McNally)

Key Timestamps

• 06:56 – Foundations of the collective concept of freedom
• 09:14–15:37 – Engagement with C.L.R. James, Du Bois, and Sylvia Wynter; why McNally “rediscovered” this tradition
• 16:43 – Terminology: "bond people"
• 18:17–25:45 – The necessity of theory in historical writing
• 26:37–31:45 – Chattel proletariat: enslaved people as proletariat, historical strike actions
• 32:04–33:16 – The presence of market mechanisms in Atlantic slavery
• 34:03–36:46 – Gender, reproduction, and the meaning of “proletariat”
• 37:49–39:49 – Intellectual and disciplinary trajectory of McNally’s work
• 40:01–41:45 – Preview of upcoming research on anti-colonial Marxism

Tone & Style

The conversation maintains a deeply scholarly yet passionate tone—rooted in rigorous historical and theoretical analysis, but also foregrounded by McNally’s activist background and a shared sense of urgency to revisit and revise how we understand the history of capitalism, slavery, and freedom.

Final Thoughts

This episode offers an insightful overview of McNally’s argument that Atlantic slavery must be understood not as a pre-capitalist residue but as integral to the capitalist world-system, both in terms of economics and collective resistance. Listeners will come away with a renewed appreciation for the centrality of enslaved people's struggles to the history of labor, freedom, and modernity—as well as a sense of the unfinished work in theorizing and fighting for freedom today.