ABSTRACT
Capitalist employers do not purchase their laborers; they hire their workforce for a certain period of time. The serf’s existence is simultaneously a necessary condition and a result of seigneurial property. Slave owners, on the other hand, can only employ the enslaved person by acquiring him, and to do so they must make an investment, expending resources in advance. The planter bought the African enslaved person from the dealer, and the purchase price represented the initial investment to acquire the enslaved person. The enslaved person could be bought as a child to be raised to adulthood by the planter. The enslaved person’s sustenance derives from a part of his own production during a day’s work, i.e., with the work time necessary for the reproduction of his labor power expended in the process of production. The phenomenon was only perceived and such criticism was only possible when the capitalist economy developed in Europe provided a clear contrast with slavery in Brazil.
