Final answer:
Capitalism necessitates free labor as it is more efficient and promotes economic independence, social mobility, and potential for personal growth. Enslaved labor, being akin to pre-capitalist systems like feudalism, fails to incentivize productivity or personal advancement, leading to social and economic stagnation. Smith and northern advocates for free labor contrasted with Marx's critique of capitalism's exploitative tendencies.
Step-by-step explanation:
The system of capitalism requires free labor rather than enslaved labor for several interrelated reasons. Adam Smith, a critic of slavery, believed that slavery was inefficient and that a truly free market would render it obsolete. He argued that free labor could produce goods more inexpensively since the employer was not responsible for the costs associated with feeding, clothing, and housing enslaved workers. Moreover, Smith suggested that good treatment of workers was in the master's interest, reflecting a rational choice perspective that nonetheless downplayed the horrors of slavery.
From the Northern Perspective, proponents of free labor pointed to the dignity and social mobility it afforded; they saw slavery as creating mass poverty and denying workers the drive for productivity. Consequently, the economic growth and opportunity for social mobility were hallmarks of free labor societies according to northerners like William Evarts and Thaddeus Stevens. Both economic independence and progress stemmed from a labor system where individuals worked for wages and could potentially rise to the middle class.
However, some economic historians considered antebellum plantation systems that relied on enslaved labor as "pre-capitalist," since enslaved individuals did not earn wages to purchase commodities, a core component of capitalist economic transactions. Nevertheless, Karl Marx, another critic of capitalism, forecasted that the free market's propensity for competition and cost-cutting through mechanization would eventually result in widespread unemployment and impoverishment, fueling the rise of communism.