Sven Beckert

“We associate industrial capitalism with contracts and markets, but early capitalism was based as often as not on violence and bodily coercion. Modern capitalism privileges property rights, but this earlier moment was characterized just as much by massive expropriations as by secure ownership. Latter-day capitalism rests upon the rule of law and powerful institutions backed by the state, but capitalism's early phase, although ultimately requiring state power to create world-spanning empires, was frequently based on the unrestrained actions of private individuals--the domination of masters over slaves and of frontier capitalists over indigenous inhabitants.”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History

“It was on the back of cotton, and thus on the backs of slaves, that the U.S. economy ascended in the world (p.119).”
― Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History