Beyond the Plantation Economy: How Alabama Can Benefit from Cooperatives | Nonprofit Quarterly | Civic News. Empowering Nonprofits. Advancing Justice.

"Alabama's Black Belt was once at the heart of the cotton kingdom-an economy built on the forced labor of enslaved people. Plantations extracted enormous amounts of wealth while systematically denying education, capital, and opportunity to Black residents. Families were separated, communities destabilized, and the land itself became a tool for profit rather than sustenance. Wealth flowed out of these counties into the hands of absentee owners and resource-dependent markets, while local development stagnated."

"Sven Beckert argues in his award-winning book, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, that the global rise of industrial capitalism is inseparable from the logic of plantation extraction. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker in The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic similarly show how coerced labor, hierarchical control, and economic exploitation form a throughline from maritime and plantation economies into industrial production."

Alabama's Black Belt once centered a cotton economy built on enslaved labor that extracted vast wealth while denying education, capital, and opportunity to Black residents. Families were separated, communities destabilized, and land served profit rather than sustenance, sending wealth to absentee owners and resource-dependent markets while local development stagnated. The logic of labor discipline, de-skilling, and profit concentration persists in factories and prison workshops and links plantation extraction to global industrial capitalism through coerced labor and hierarchical control. Cooperative businesses owned by workers or consumers present a potential route to more equitable local economic development. The state's manufacturing includes automotive, aerospace, textiles, chemicals, food processing, and institutional goods, with major automotive plants employing roughly 50,000 workers.

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