While each society normally preferred to
choose its slaves from alien people, it did not limit its
selection exclusively to the members of any one race. Slave
inferiority did not lead necessarily to racial inferiority. In
contrast to this, slavery in America was set apart by three
characteristics: capitalism, individualism, and racism.
Capitalism increased the degree of dehumanization and
depersonalization implicit in the institution of slavery. While
it had been normal in other forms of slavery for the slave to be
legally defined as a thing, a piece of property, in America he
also became a form of capital. Here his life was regimented to
fill the needs of a highly organized productive system
sensitively attuned to the driving forces of competitive free
enterprise. American masters were probably no more cruel and no
more sadistic than others, and, in fact, the spread of
humanitarianism in the modern world may have made the opposite
true. Nevertheless, their capitalistic mentality firmly fixed
their eyes on minimizing expenses and maximizing profits. Besides
being a piece of property, the American slave was transformed
into part of the plantation machine, a part of the ever-growing
investment in the master' mushrooming wealth.
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