From The Quotable Mises — surrounding passage

Human Action , p. 626; p. 630 When treated as a chattel, man renders a smaller yield per unit of cost expended for current sustenance and guarding than domestic animals. Human Action , p. 626; pp. 630–31 Slavery did not prepare the way for division of labor. On the contrary it blocked the way. Indeed modern industrial society, with its highly developed division of labor, could not begin to grow until slavery had been abolished. Socialism , p. 297

“Private ownership in the means of production is the only necessary condition for the extensive development of the division of labor. The enslavement of the worker was not necessary to create it.”

Socialism , p. 297 Everyone who preaches the right of the stronger considers himself as the stronger. He who espouses the institution of slavery never stops to reflect that he himself could be a slave. Liberalism , p.