Since the end of legal enslavement, whites have consistently found ways to continue controlling our time, bodies, and resources. And there’s one way that they’ve definitely managed to keep slavery culture alive and well: business.
The way businesses devalue their assets, calculate their profit margins, and lobby politicians to make laws in their favor comes directly out of the playbook for increasing profits and productivity off the backs of the enslaved. After all, enslavement was also a lucrative business.
It doesn’t stop there.
White scholars have tried to downplay the connection between capitalism and enslavement by claiming that most businesses operate on “European standards.” That’s a lie.
Even the word “task,” which is how many of us organize our work days, has its origins in enslavement.
From Frederick Douglass to Bernie Sanders, the connection has long been made between chattel slavery and “wage slavery.”
If a worker is forced to work in dehumanizing conditions with no freedom, for barely enough money to survive, how different is that really from enslavement?
Modern business management was inspired by the “success” of enslavement. Then, just as now, our labor makes the world go round.
This is even more of a reason to create our own businesses, our own economies, and our own cultures. When it comes to work, we don’t have to do it like they do it!