Who Actually Freed the Slaves? David McNally on Slavery & Capitalism

Описание: We were all taught that Lincoln freed the slaves – but David McNally argues the real story is far more radical, and how enslaved people fought for their own freedom.

In this conversation, David McNally joins Clara Mattei to tell a very different story of slavery, capitalism, and abolition – one centered on enslaved people’s strikes, mass desertions, rebellions, and self-emancipation, not just great men and presidential decrees.

They trace how enslaved people waged a “political economy of life” against a system built on death and profit, using every tool available:

• Absenteeism, slowdowns, and sabotage on the plantations
• Mass escapes and general strikes involving tens of thousands of enslaved people
• Flight to Union lines and self-emancipation, forcing Lincoln’s hand
• How law, police, and convict leasing rebuilt racial capitalism after formal abolition
• What this history reveals about labor, prisons, and real democracy today

This conversation breaks the Lincoln myth, centers enslaved people’s self-emancipation, and where power really lies in a capitalist society.

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#DavidMcNally #Slavery #Abolition #Capitalism #LaborHistory #CivilWar #SelfEmancipation #HistoryFromBelow #FREEForum

📖 Learn more in David McNally’s new book Slavery and Capitalism: A New Marxist History:
https://www.ucpress.edu/books/slavery...

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