The importance of enslaved people in the fight against slavery was a major component of the anti-slavery fight. If you think about the most important struggles during this period, it was precisely enslaved workers who led it: take the fight against French colonialism in Haiti.

In the U.S. there were the struggles led by Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman. The labor movements in the 19th century recognized this. For example Marx and Engels spoke of it in the Manifesto and many free workers spoke of their conditions as wage slavery.

Marx himself never spoke of slavery as an analogy. Marx said, “Direct slavery is just as much a pivot of bourgois industry as machinery.”

Labels: Communist Party USA, Parties, USA