Tim Sandefur writes:
The pro-slavery argument was very much what we would today call “communitarianism”—the argument was that the society of status was more human and spiritually rewarding than the allegedly cold, commodified, alienating society of industrial capitalism. . . . There’s a reason why the term “dismal science” (describing economics) was coined by Thomas Carlyle in a pamphlet arguing in favor of slavery. Economics was liberal, artificial, atomistic, alienating, individualistic, and therefore dismal, in Carlyle’s eyes—as opposed to the warmth of a static, hierarchical, communitarian society of mutual bonds.
. . . .
[A] slave society will relieve the poor slave of the grueling, alienating feeling of having to work and provide for himself; it will provide him with life, home, and health. After all, the classical liberal just stands for an empty, bourgeois freedom—an unreal freedom, since the poor man won’t have access to the things he needs. A slave society, by contrast, will give him positive rights to life, home, and health—the things he really wants—instead of freedom.
Amazing how these arguments persist to this day. On one hand, those who argue for liberty, with all its joys and hardships—and on the other, those who scoff at such filthy, mean rights as liberty and the opportunity to choose for oneself, and promise instead to give us life, home, and health, if only we will give up such freedom.
The whole post is interesting and worth reading, particularly the recitation of a Confederate poem.
It is worth observing, with some humility, just how closely the political principles that support and condemn slavery run together. The social conservatism of John Calhoun, and to a lesser extent George Fitzhugh, was one of the central defenses of the pro-slavery cause. And the social liberalism of today is often defined not by any special devotion to freedom but rather to a devotion to entitlement, and this at the expense of freedoms deemed less worthy or as acceptable casualties. The political traditions of both the left and the right, then, share uncomfortable proximity to justifications for America’s most immoral institution.
While it may be in poor taste to compare another’s political philosophy with the pro-slavery cause, it is never acceptable to be without a defense of one’s politics that identifies articulable, non-arbitrary limits between legitimate government action and totalitarianism. It will not do to suggest simply that “there is something deep within liberalism [or conservatism, or whatever], from its earliest beginnings, that prevents it from degenerating into fascism.”
[Here’s an example. Teddy Roosevelt remarked that “the spread of the English-speaking peoples over the world’s waste space” was “the most striking feature of the world’s history,” and that only “a warped, perverse, and silly morality” would condemn the American conquest of the West. This muscularity might be serve as ready support of a muscular foreign policy, for example, encouraged by modern conservatives. Before doing so, however, one would have to contend with Roosevelt’s accompanying observation that “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. The most vicious cowboy has more moral principle than the average Indian.”
If one wishes to find support for a muscular foreign policy, it will be necessary to do more than quote Teddy Roosevelt. It is not enough to roam through history looking for friends. One must look also for underlying principles.]
While it may be in poor taste to compare another’s political philosophy with the pro-slavery cause,
it happens all the time, and we shouldn’t expect it to cease.
Mike,
The point I want to make is that while such comparisons for cheap political gain are in poor taste, comparisons in thoughtful, respectful discussions on political philosophy are both necessary and proper.
But yes, we will continue to hear comparisons of the first sort.
Tim, this is going to be an overly-simplistic response to this post, but…
While I agree (obviously) with the general thrust you make, isn’t one of the benefits and main draws in belonging to a political philosophy “team” that you don’t have to be bothered with addressing those pesky questions? If you take away that benefit, I don’t know that your team sticks around.
RTod,
This is where categories become important: I take what you mean by “political philosophy team” is what we commonly refer to as ideology. And by ideology I think we sometimes just take as a menu of policy preferences to which we can add or subtract as political realities dictate. By political philosophy, in contrast, we define our more fundamental positions about government and society. Such as, what do we mean by freedom, power, law, etc.
Right, but I don’t get why that’s so important if what we’re referring to here is a lie. Slave owners might have made some critique of industrial capitalism to justify slavery, but it’s not like we don’t know they were lying, right? I mean, we do know that, eh? The slave owners didn’t really own slaves to protect them from capitalism. So, since we know they were lying, what is the responsibility of people who make those critiques today? Are they supposed to prove that they’re not really stumping for oppression? Or simply ask themselves if their beliefs don’t lead logically to oppression? Since, again, the slave owners didn’t wind up with slaves because they really believed they were helping- they wound up with them because growing commercial crops in the New World using slave labor was a quick and easy way to make a tremendous profit. Period. I mean, we don’t ask Christians to examine the dangerous implications of their beliefs because slave owners once talked about bringing the light of the Gospels to the savages and we think that’s really how they became slave owners.
“Right, but I don’t get why that’s so important if what we’re referring to here is a lie.”
Rufus, I would argue that this is part of what political philosophies and ideologies do. They allow us to craft our own framework over the ‘small-t’ truth in favor of the ‘large-T’ Truth.
I don’t think those that said those things thought they were a lie anymore than those today that think everything bad is the fault of the opposing ideology and not their own know that such a belief is a lie.
“I mean, we don’t ask Christians to examine the dangerous implications of their beliefs because slave owners once talked about bringing the light of the Gospels to the savages and we think that’s really how they became slave owners.”
Two responses to this:
1. I think that’s learning the lesson from the wrong end of the equation. I think the lesson to be learned from this has little to do with slavery. I think the lesson is this: When Christians point to the de facto moral authority of their faith as a reason for their superior ability to craft public policy, you should really, really remember that this isn’t always the case.
2. If they start pushing potentially dangerous public policy (the desire for some fundamentalists to hasten the return of Christ by shaking things up in the Middle East, for example) we probably *should* ask them to examine their beliefs and remind them how wrong they’ve been in the past.
I think that’s learning the lesson from the wrong end of the equation.
Hey, RTod, you completely changed my reading of the post! Thanks! That’s what I like about this site.
That some men are “natural slaves” goes back to Aristotle.
Whether Calhoun was hateful and exploitative or genuinely paternalistic, I dunno. Haven’t read enough of him. But even those who saw slavery as morally unacceptable [Lincoln, Jefferson] doubted the equality of the black man, questioned whether the races could live side-by-side, and/or thought that slavery was still better than life as an African in Africa.
And this is from some of the good guys. I’m willing to believe that every justification of slavery by slave owners was mere rationalization, but even some of the good guys fell far short of our 21st century egalitarianism.
This is simply to say that doing history properly is understanding these people as they understood themselves, not judging them from our 21st century armchairs.
because slave owners once talked about bringing the light of the Gospels to the savages
Check out Bartolomé de las Casas if you’re in the mood. He’s one of the good guys. But not all good, by any 21st century standard. History’s funny that way. But if Christianity is to be put in the docket, then there are exhibits for the defense.
Rufus: “Hey, RTod, you completely changed my reading of the post! ”
I wouldn’t discount the possibility that I am simply very dyslexic.
And this is from some of the good guys. I’m willing to believe that every justification of slavery by slave owners was mere rationalization, but even some of the good guys fell far short of our 21st century egalitarianism.
I suspect that if you whispered into the ear of even the best of them “End slavery, and your great-great-granddaughters will marry black men”, they’d have serious second thoughts.
That was actually germane to my point, Mr. Schilling. Well done.
Very interesting observation, Jaybird– that is, regarding the blindspot Liberatrians have with children.
From my own point of view, I’d say most of the Libertarians I’ve met are atheists, materialists, homosexuals, well-educated, excessively needy, narcissistic, tempermentally incapable of seeing beneath the surface of just about anything or everything. Bon vivants they are not. Joie de Vivre would not exactly characterize the personalities of Libertarians. They are the ultimate denizens of terra firma, hominids to the core.
Two Eskimos in a kayak were chilly, so they started a fire, which sank
the craft, proving the old adage you can’t have your kayak and heat it
too.
You’re very welcome, Mr. van Dyke. Being condescended to by someone of your ilk makes my day.
“From my own point of view, I’d say most of the Libertarians I’ve met are atheists, materialists, homosexuals, well-educated, excessively needy, narcissistic, tempermentally incapable of seeing beneath the surface of just about anything or everything. ”
Dude, you totally left out the part about feasting on the flesh of babies.
Rufus,
My understanding is that at least some historians accept that some pro-slavery advocates in the antebellum south made their arguments in good faith, and Robert Lee and John Calhoun are examples. And one can even make the pro-slavery argument using the same sort of abstraction of liberty in use today: Liberty is meaningless unless certain preconditions are met, and thus law and society must be fashioned in such a way as to fulfill those preconditions. That is the basic form of the argument that makes the individual mandate, for example, a tool of a certain kind of liberty even while it deprives another, more direct kind of liberty. [I am not concluding, of course, that this means support for the individual mandate is support for slavery.]
Most of the times as political actors, we just want stuff because we want it. But as participants in an enlightened, liberal society, we must give an account that the things we want comport with that enlightened, liberal tradition — unless we are prepared to jettison that tradition, that is. Did slave holders want to maintain slavery primarily because it was economically and politically profitable, or because it comported with conservative and moral principles? Of course, it was the former. But that is the case with any political question: principle does not galvanize mass political movements, our passions do. Whether principle supports our passions is nonetheless a necessary analysis.
Okay, first off, I do hear what you’re saying here and also agree with the general thrust of it.
And I’m sure there’s a very good case to be made that plenty of slave owners really did believe they were doing the slaves a favor by protecting them from industrial capitalism or bringing them to the Gospels. All I’m saying is that I doubt that those ideals were what initially brought them to owning slaves. I really don’t think a desire to spread the Christian Gospels or thinking factories are soulless could lead someone to own slaves, although certainly they might become later justifications for doing so. Therefore, I don’t think we need Christians or critics of capitalism to prove that their ideals aren’t really an attack on human freedom. He seems to make “industrial capitalism” a synonym for “individual liberty” and defends the former while claiming this amounts to a defense of the latter. It would be too cynical to say that’s pretty much the libertarian project in a nutshell. But it seems to me that we can take just about anything we want (here he’s also arguing agaisnt welfare) and say it’s really that we want to increase human freedom and those who disagree with us really want to increase oppression. That doesn’t make it so. Besides, I see nothing wrong with defending capitalism or attacking welfare on their own merits in the first place.
Rufus,
On the chicken-and-egg question, I agree that, in reality, actions precede principles. But when we do engage in the analysis—even though post hoc—of whether and to what extent our actions comport with right principles of human behavior, we must be consistent. While we can acknowledge that pundits will cynically use such analyses for political gain, those analyses are nonetheless important to give legitimacy to political action.
“those analyses are nonetheless important to give legitimacy to political action.”
Why does political action need legitimacy from a pundit? A pundit does not seek the best course of action, a pundit seeks the words that will convince people to choose their side even if it is not the best course of action.
RTod,
I don’t mean the analyses of pundits necessarily, or even primarily. I only mean the analyses are important, even if they seem trivialized by being placed in the service of pundits.
Rufus, you always continue to amaze me! I’m very, very interested in your book on “Romanticism”. Any chance of buying a chapter? I’m very serious. Do you get into the Sorrows of young Werther? Music? Nature? Animals? Architecture? Poetry?
I’m extremely interested in what subjects and people you focus on–please let me know.
Thanks very much.
If I get it published, I’ll get you a copy. It’s mostly about French literature, travel, and politics, so Staël, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, Nerval, etc. But I will also deal with Byron, Novalis, and yes Goethe. I don’t know if Young Werther will be dealt with, but it is a personal favorite and I’m considering assigning it to my students in the fall.
I’m not so sure that I agree; I think it may actually be the opposite. I think political philosophies force us to choose things we would otherwise conclude were bad or immoral because inflexible frameworks sometimes have that effect*. I would argue that both the arguments “Slavery is good because…” and “Only the other side is responsible for slavery because…” are actually examples of this.
*Or perhaps more accurately, they trigger that pernicious part of our hardwiring that wants to see everything as Us vs. Them.
With Sandefur, he makes this long critique of the “Romanticist attack on liberalism”, but, as someone who’s spent the last three years writing a book on Romanticism, I can say that much of what he’s saying is just wrong. Aside from the fact that most of the Romantics were, you know, political liberals and thus not the ones making “attacks on liberalism”, they also weren’t attacking “individual liberty”- in fact, at its core, Romanticism is a pretty radical defense of individual liberty. Where would all those brooding “geniuses” that the Romantics obsessed over be if there wasn’t freedom for the individual? I think what he’s talking about must be the reactionary attack on liberalism, which shared with Romanticism discomfort with secularism and that’s about it. But tying this all to a defense of slavery is just bizarre. Maybe he’s just read some really bad books about “Romanticism and fascism” or whatever.
Thanks so much for the reply, Rufus. I’m very, very interested in the subject and from your description it sounds like a terrifically interesting book. Good luck!
Great idea about “Werther”. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? (See Blaise if so. Or not so. He’s certainly a generous chap in any case.)
Auf Wiedersehen!
p.s. Anything on Artaud? Madness unbound. Still love the guy.