They did both but they also were a mixed bunch, some operated as a black market continuation of the slave trade while others mostly looted the rich merchant vessels and wealthy intercontinental travellers. Some even envisioned a sorta kinda economic democracy and democratic self rule, but obviously as long as they just stayed pirates none of it was sustainable. Some were adventure seekers, some were wealthy leeches supplementing their legal trading and banking operations with investments in piracy on the side, while a large section were men escaping hopeless poverty and inhumane treatment of the royal navies they were drafted into (often explicitly against their will). So again, while the "society" they were de facto building around, say, Nassau wasn't any kind of template for any actual perspective society the radical democracy practiced on some ships stood in stark contrast with imperial practices of the day and made the failings and injustices of the imperial project stand out ever more clearly. The goods stolen by pirates were themselves more often than not the results of the looting of indigenous communities and profits from capitalist exploitation, so cool and good, even if they didn't return to their original creators.

They were mostly slavers operating after the ban of the transatlantic slave trade.

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