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The main reasons I see why slavery would lead to instability are:
- need to keep them as slaves, as in most cases slaves would revolt presented with the opportunity. This means that once a state runs into other problems causing lower stability, the fact that a large slave caste exists could and in most cases would only add to that instability probably making it fatal to said state. From the other side, states having much of the population pinned down in slavery are said to develop symptoms of instability less often probably due to fact that keeping of slaves 'content' is much more straightforward process than keeping a free citizen with some rights satisfied enough. Also, some states would lower a disloyal citizens' status to that of a slave, which is additional incentive for free citizen not to cause unrest. In other words, someone having nowhere lower to drop is more likely to cause and upkeep trouble.
- negative effect of slaves to market economy. Slave labour makes those goods which are produced by said labour much cheaper, which means that private production is discouraged, there's less of small-scale commerce and mostly less innovation too. This is also the reason roman peasantry died out - producing became unprofitable for them. This can cause more unemployment between the free people and discontent when some industry becomes dominated by slave labour.
The one thing that is rarely explored about slave labour, because it was usually abolished by the time is widespread use of slave labour in factories of industrial age. I'd expect that would be a positive thing for stability as factory workers were a common source of protesters or so called 'proletariat' during the time socialism was on the rise.
- need to keep them as slaves, as in most cases slaves would revolt presented with the opportunity. This means that once a state runs into other problems causing lower stability, the fact that a large slave caste exists could and in most cases would only add to that instability probably making it fatal to said state. From the other side, states having much of the population pinned down in slavery are said to develop symptoms of instability less often probably due to fact that keeping of slaves 'content' is much more straightforward process than keeping a free citizen with some rights satisfied enough. Also, some states would lower a disloyal citizens' status to that of a slave, which is additional incentive for free citizen not to cause unrest. In other words, someone having nowhere lower to drop is more likely to cause and upkeep trouble.
- negative effect of slaves to market economy. Slave labour makes those goods which are produced by said labour much cheaper, which means that private production is discouraged, there's less of small-scale commerce and mostly less innovation too. This is also the reason roman peasantry died out - producing became unprofitable for them. This can cause more unemployment between the free people and discontent when some industry becomes dominated by slave labour.
The one thing that is rarely explored about slave labour, because it was usually abolished by the time is widespread use of slave labour in factories of industrial age. I'd expect that would be a positive thing for stability as factory workers were a common source of protesters or so called 'proletariat' during the time socialism was on the rise.
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