 In recent months, several national media outlets and public figures have begun pushing the idea that modern capitalism is built on the foundation of slavery. Last month, while linking to a New York Times article on the topic, Bernie Sanders claimed quote, America's rise relied on treating black people as a literal property, unquote. Meanwhile, a recent Vox headline proclaims how slavery became the building block of the American economy. Hello, this is Ryan McMakin and you're listening to Radio Rockbar. Conveniently, this narrative is perfect for doing two things at once. It sets up capitalism as the moral heir to slavery. And at the same time, it pushes the idea that those who lead a relatively comfortable life now under the capitalist system are benefiting from the toil of slaves from long ago. By this thinking, if every modern day business owner, entrepreneur and middle class property owner has benefited from capitalism, then that person, whether or not his ancestors were in any way connected to the slave economy, has also benefited from slavery. If the strategy succeeds, then modern day capitalists can be shown to be in a sense on the same moral plane as the slave masters of old. And of course, capitalism is also shown to be morally repugnant. Fortunately, the evidence doesn't support the theory. The slave economy was never the engine of American economic growth. And capitalist systems never needed slavery to succeed. Modern day anti-capitalists aren't the first to use this tactic. This version of history claiming everyone gets rich off slavery has a lot in common with the propaganda spun by slave owners in the antebellum south. The goal was to attack the idea that non slave holding northerners were morally superior to slave owning Southerners. The message was we are all equally responsible for slavery. One part of the strategy consisted of claiming that some northern abolitionists were hypocrites for participating in the slave trade as owners of shipping firms that served the slave economy. As recounted by Matthew Karp in This Vast Southern Empire, pro-slavery politician and US diplomat in Brazil, Henry A. Wise, chronicled the hypocrisy of northern merchants who claimed to oppose slavery while making money off the slave trade in Brazil. And that's just one example. But while this sort of thing no doubt made some northern merchants look bad, these claims nonetheless failed to make the case that northern farmers, mine owners, and other capitalists in general, were getting rich from slavery. Far more useful in spreading the blame about slavery was the King Cotton argument, which pushed the notion that most of the industrialized world depended on the cotton economy. Karp continues, quote, slaveholders in the 1850s seldom passed up an opportunity to sketch the inexorable syllogism of King Cotton. The American South produced nearly all the world's usable raw cotton. This cotton fueled the industrial development of the North Atlantic. Therefore, the advanced economies of France, the Northern United States, and Great Britain were ruled in effect by southern planters. The conclusion or southern drew from this King Cotton model were no less grandiose than their premises. DeBowes and Cyclopedia declared that cotton was, quote, the most beneficent product that commerce has ever transported for the comfort of the human family, unquote. Without Southern Cotton, it was claimed Northern industry, assumed to be dependent on cotton for textiles, would suffer a crippling blow. Thus, the Northern and European capitalists were thought to be at the mercy of the cotton producers and to owe their success to the slave economy. So widespread was this belief that Southern political theorists believe the South ought to forget about diversifying its economy. George Fitzhugh, for example, insisted the South should focus on putting all its eggs in the cotton basket. Says Fitzhugh, it matters little who makes our shoes. Indeed, the South will command a fatal blunder if in its haste to become nominally independent, it loses its present engines of power and thereby ceases to be really independent. Cotton is king, and rice, sugar, Indian corn, wheat, and tobacco are his chief ministers. We should not jeopardy this great lever of power in the haste to become like Englishmen, shopkeepers, cobblers, and common carriers for the universe. Now, the fact that Fitzhugh thought it was a terrible idea to become shopkeepers reflects Fitzhugh's reflex of anti capitalism. But the general idea here being that basically just growing cotton makes you the most powerful place in the world. Ultimately, so confident were many Southerners that they could use the cotton economy to control the world. Senator James Hammond of South Carolina concluded, quote, you dare not make war on cotton, no power on earth dares to make war upon it, unquote. Needless to say, Hammond and the purveyors of the King Cotton theory were wrong about the extent of global political power generated by cotton. It turned out that the world could survive without Southern cotton. And more importantly, the world did not need cotton produced specifically by slaves. Nor was it true that the world needed the cheap labor of slavery to produce goods and services economically. Northern immigrants disprove this even before the war. The pretensions about the necessity of slave cotton became more abundantly clear after the war. Even in the wake of the Union army's scorched earth campaign against the South, cotton production began to recover within only a few years of the war's end. Cotton production now using non slave labor had returned to peak levels by the 1870s. By the end of the 19th century, cotton production was more than double what it had been during the antebellum years. Moreover, even during the slave labor era, the Northern economy was hardly doomed to failure without Southern cotton. Textiles are not the only thing people needed to meet their basic needs. And slaves are not the only thing merchants could make money shipping. Northern states produced immense amounts of foodstuffs. Northern merchants shipped growing amounts of crops, building materials and other resources unconnected to the cotton economy. Rather than be an engine of the world's economy, it is more likely the slave economy held the Southern economy back. According to Carl Smith at Bloomberg last month, quote, just before independence, the per capita gross domestic product of the South adjusted for inflation was $3,100 per year, compared with just 1832 in New England. Over the next 60 years, Southern per capita GDP actually declined to 2521. British demand for cotton helped it to recover to 4,000 per person in 1860. But by then the comparable figure for New England was 5,337 in terms of per capita GDP. Slave labor was no match for canals, railroads, steel mills and shipyards. Slavery and the parochial rent seeking culture it promoted inhibited the growth of capitalism in the South unquote. The fact that many industries in the US North and in Western Europe benefited from slave producing Southern cotton does not prove that these economies needed slave cotton to thrive or survive. The world's industrial economies have gotten along just fine without it. Nonetheless, certain leftists are now trying to revive the old antebellum theory that the capitalist economy is built on the backs of slaves. The slave drivers of old would no doubt agree. But the theory is just as wrong now as it was then. Thank you for listening to Radio Rothbard. Have a wonderful day. For more content like this visit Mises.org.