Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Lipton Matthews
“Few ideas in modern historical writing have generated as much intrigue as the claim that slavery and capitalism shared a common managerial language. The suggestion that slaveholders employed accounting principles comparable to those used by modern firms implies that plantations functioned as early laboratories of capitalist rationality. This interpretation has captured scholarly attention because it seems to reveal a chilling continuity between bondage and modern business practice. Yet the plantation record books themselves tell a more restrained story.” (11/13/25)
https://mises.org/mises-wire/plantation-ledgers-and-illusion-capitalist-rationality