me_irl

People like the commodity fetish because it removes the act of consuming from the process of sausage-making.

I don't think there's a superabundance of people who explicitly want to own slaves. Even when slavery was legal, you had a large and outspoken contingent of abolitionists who revolted at the intimate presence of slaves and slavery within their neighborhoods. Anti-slavery sentiment was what fueled the Northern effort to win the civil war.

At the same time, if you can disguise the mechanism of slavery and divorce the public by distance from the brutality of the institution, it is very easy to win tacit approval for the fruits of slave labor. This is particularly true when you're selling commodity goods to an impoverished underclass.

Slavery as a function of imperialism wins consent of the governed by guaranteeing them a minimum standard of living that their foreign contemporaries lack. Slavery as an act imposed on the immediate population brings reflexive disgust and active opposition.