I hate to disagree with Ludwig, so respectfully -
Slavery was replaced by wage labor just as feudalism was replaced by free markets and the grant of property rights to the common man.
Any man, as a slave, is not as productive as he is as a wage laborer. THAT is why slavery was capable of being abolished. The good outbid the bad. Efficiency trumped waste. Capitalism ENABLED abolition.
It is no coincidence that the nations of the Scotch free market Enlightenment - the great traders of the 18th & 19th centuries, the British and the Dutch - were the vangard of abolition. They could afford it. They reaped the efficiency of wages and property rights.
It is also no coincidence that the nations that spurned free markets and universal property rights were, and remain, the laggards of manumission. Where ever property rights are tenuous, slavery is still tolerated.
The essential fact of freedom is property. I own myself.
That means that I am free. The two cannot be disassociated. I own myself, AND anything that I create, AND I own the right to trade whatever I create on such terms as I accept.
The Abolishionists take credit for a good that something else enabled. Yes, they were a precipitating factor but they were never a sufficient cause. Yes, they deserve credit for pushing, for making it happen sooner but that misses the point - the rise of free markets and universal property rights is what enabled the abolition of slavery. It was evolutionary, the evolution of trade, revealing the efficiency of freedom and property rights, as opposed to slavery.
When Kings and potentates own everything - THAT is slavery, not capitalism.
Slavery is not capitalism. Far from it, it is statism.
