This reads not as a respectful remembrance of the history of the brutal practice of slavery, but an attempt to suggest slavery is a consequence of capitalism and is thus also evil. That since they are both fundamentally exploitative, today's capitalism, in many ways, causes just as much human suffering as its child, slavery did. The conclusion, whether its stated or not, is that capitalism needs to go, replaced with socialism.

But what every analysis like this fails to recognize is that capitalism doesn't take away the autonomy of the people who have power, they can choose to wield it responsibly or irresponsibly. Changing the system from capitalism to socialism doesn't change the fact that there will be vast disparities in the power, it just changes the system by which people obtain power.

I'm not sure that living "free" under Stalin is necessarily preferable to living a slave in the antebellum south. Of course, both are full of stories of suffering and human misery, and I'm sure both can cite instances where things weren't as bad as we imagine them. But I'm extremely frustrated with rhetoric which cites the latter as evidence that we should move closer to a society like the former.