-clip- The causal relations are what they are. No doubt capitalism swept up human beings in its early drive to commodify everying, although slavery is a much older institution than capitalism. No doubt the early capitalist societies were colonialist and imperialist. No dount, European societies profited from slavery and from coloniala nd imperialist theft and rapine. That does not mean that early capitalsim or present capitalism depends on slavery, imperialism, and colonialism in that they would collapse or be unable to reproduce the system without it.
Jks
^^^^^^ CB: But it seems to me a lot simpler explanation for the existence of slavery, imperialism and colonialism to say it is caused by early and present capitalism's dependence on them. Why on earth ,other wise, would so much energy, resources, blood, sweat and tears be expended to establish and maintain S, I and C if not for profit and superprofit ? You either have to say they have no cause, which is odd ,or that there is some other complicated , mysterious cause, like, oddly, that Europeans and Americans are evil souls or something. Applying Occam's Razor makes us choose that capitalism operates under the same motive for slavery, imperialism and colonialism as it does for wage slavery at "home". It's the simpler explanation.
Marx is very explicit in taking the opposite position from Brenner on this issue. It's pretty dishonest for Brenner to claim he is arguing as a Marxist ( except in the sense that Marx was not one).
One really has to wonder what the motive is of those who argue against the very satisfactory and simple explanation for capitalist slavery, imperialism and colonialism. We agree that everything else the capitalists do is in pursuit of unlimited profit. For some mysterious reason, that is not why they establish and maintain S, I and C.