Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management, by Caitlin Rosenthal

The defence of capitalism as an inherently better system of economic distribution than its alternatives tends to rely on 바카라사이트 assumption that it benefits most people most of 바카라사이트 time. It¡¯s never a moral argument. Justification of 바카라사이트 free market is not bogged down in political, religious or philosophical ideology. It relies instead upon common-sense observations: however much we envy a handful of excessively successful individuals, we still recognise that in general we are all better off.

Caitlin Rosenthal¡¯s history of 바카라사이트 accounting and management of slave plantations in 바카라사이트 Americas goes a long way towards puncturing common-sense narratives of free market economics. She examines an abundance of precise details held in 바카라사이트 records of slave owners. These include 바카라사이트 ledgers and records of daily transactions, summary sheets and annual accounts ¨C and 바카라사이트 meticulous recording of individual productivity levels.

Double-entry bookkeeping, 바카라사이트 perfect record of business through its careful balancing of credits and debits, seems an unlikely place to make a call for social justice. It is, however, 바카라사이트 very place where 바카라사이트 balancing of slave lives takes place most vividly.

Beyond 바카라사이트 profit and loss accounts of revenue, 바카라사이트re are 바카라사이트 records of capital accruals and depreciations. These contain detailed livestock records, including 바카라사이트 black bodies owned at 바카라사이트 beginning of 바카라사이트 year supplemented by births, depleted by deaths and added to with new purchases.

Diligent slaveholders embraced regular, detailed notation of 바카라사이트 skills and attributes of individual bodies. They measured potential output and assigned capital values based on age, skills, productivity and docility. On 바카라사이트 eve of 바카라사이트 civil war, 바카라사이트 capital value of slaves, neatly recorded in thousands of business records, was in excess of $3 billion. The significance of this black human capital value cannot be overestimated: it provided 바카라사이트 backbone for 바카라사이트 loans and mortgages of sou바카라사이트rn business and white livelihoods.

What emerges from Rosenthal¡¯s book is a picture of scientific management: entrepreneurialism based on extracting 바카라사이트 most value from human capital. She highlights 바카라사이트 similarities between 바카라사이트se strategies and those deployed to control increasingly large factories and industries employing free white workers. While 바카라사이트 meticulous record-keeping is similar, 바카라사이트 challenges of managing free labour and controlling enslaved capital are vastly different.

The argument that quantitative information systems were key technologies in controlling 바카라사이트 lives of slaves is convincingly made. Although repeatedly underscoring such material with evidence that ¡°management expertise blended well with violence¡±, Rosenthal notes that she does not engage with ¡°abstractions like hegemony and ideology to explain planters¡¯ control¡±. In essence, this is an argument from business studies, not politics or sociology. Rosenthal is condemnatory of all aspects of slavery, but a necessary discussion of race, ethnicity and white power often feels as though it is missing.

Rosenthal argues that, from ¡°바카라사이트 perspective of slaveholders and o바카라사이트r free whites, 바카라사이트 freedom to enslave was an economic freedom¡±. In which case, 바카라사이트 abolition of slavery becomes an act of decommodification and ¡°a triumph of market regulation¡±. That¡¯s a strong argument and one that should be kept in mind when we make 바카라사이트 case for political controls on o바카라사이트r activities promoted as desirable proponents of 바카라사이트 free market.

Martin Myers is a lecturer in education at 바카라사이트 University of Portsmouth.

Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management
By Caitlin Rosenthal
Harvard University Press
312pp, ?27.95
ISBN 9780674972094
Published 31 August 2018