In his Institutes, John Calvin defined natural law as the “apprehension of the conscience which distinguishes sufficiently between just and unjust, and which deprives men of the excuse of ignorance, while it proves them guilty by their own testimony.” He described the purpose of natural law as “to render man inexcusable.”1
Thomas Carlyle lit his prophetic fires in the empyrean of Bacon and Locke, Hume and Bentham, and then Mills. The power of cognition, or superior intellect would drive this Titan through the Victorian Age. Yet, it was in the light of Shakespeare that he would discover his darkest precursor of this power – On Heroes and Hero-Worship (1841):
For, in fact, I say the degree of vision that dwells in a man is a correct measure of the man. If called to define Shakspeare’s faculty, I should say superiority of Intellect, and think I had included all under that. What indeed are faculties? We talk of faculties as if they were distinct, things separable; as if a man had intellect, imagination, fancy, etc., as he has hands, feet, and arms. That is a capital error. Then again, we hear of a man’s “intellectual nature,” and of his “moral nature,” as if these again were divisible, and existed apart. Necessities of language do perhaps prescribe such forms of utterance; we must speak, I am aware, in that way, if we are to speak at all. But words ought not to harden into things for us. It seems to me, our apprehension of this matter is, for the most part, radically falsified thereby. We ought to know withal, and to keep for ever in mind, that these divisions are at bottom but names; that man’s spiritual nature, the vital Force which dwells in him, is essentially one and indivisible…If I say therefore, that Shakspeare is the greatest of Intellects, I have said all concerning him. But there is more in Shakspeare’s intellect than we have yet seen. It is what I call an unconscious intellect; there is more virtue in it than he himself is aware of. Novalis beautifully remarks of him, that those Dramas of his are Products of Nature too, deep as Nature herself. I find a great truth in this saying. Shakspeare’s Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature.
Carlyle steeped as he was in the philosophy and poetry of the English and German Idealism followed the intricate course of vitalism through such romantics as Goethe, Novalis, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He also grappled with Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. He wrote a great history of the French Revolution that is still worth reading not only for its power of rhetoric but for its deep insight into the dark contours of that age. That old liberal gnostic Harold Bloom in his Essayists and Prophets admired Carlyle for his Shakespearean temper: ”
We can learn from Carlyle also that the distinction between religious and secular writing is merely political and not critical. Critically, all writing is religious, or all writing is secular; Carlyle sees that Shakespeare has abolished the distinction, and has become the second Bible of the West.2
Yet, I doubt the English atheist Carlyle would have stated it in such a way. Being of Calvin stock he was never fully washed clean of the stain of Christianity, but in his secular modifications he entered that naturalist mind that was Shakespeare’s without hesitation. But it would be Nietzsche who would nail the head on the wall when he said of Carlyle – Beyond Good and Evil:
Carlyle: a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetor from need, constantly lured by the craving for a strong faith and the feeling of his incapacity for it (in this respect, a typical romantic!). The craving for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith, but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith, then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skepticism; one is sure enough, firm enough, has ties enough for that. Carlyle drugs something in himself with the fortissimo of his veneration of men of strong faith and with his rage against the less simple minded: he requires noise. A constant passionate dishonesty against himself-that is his propriurn; in this respect he is and remains interesting. Of course, in England he is admired precisely for his honesty. Well, that is English; and in view of the fact that the English are the people of consummate cant, it is even as it should be, and not only comprehensible. At bottom, Carlyle is an English atheist who makes it a point of honor not to be one.
That Carlyle became in later life a Reactionary is a part of the dark stain that haunts him still. In the Latter Day Pamphlets he wrote of the sorrows of democracy and the corrosive effects of populist politics and laissez faire capitalism. He attacked democracy as an absurd social ideal, while equally condemning hereditary aristocratic leadership. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in April 1850 would review of two of these essays, No. I: “The Present Times” and No. II: “Model Prison”, saying, agreeing with Carlyle as far as his criticism of the hereditary aristocracy, yet criticizing Carlyle’s plan to use democracy as an experiment in reactionary politics. “Thomas Carlyle belongs the credit of having taken the literary field against the bourgeoisie at a time when its views, tastes and ideas held the whole of official English literature totally in thrall, and in a manner which is at times even revolutionary.”(here) Marx and Engels explain the theoretical basis of the author’s reactionary political views and intellectual degeneration: “Carlyle affirms that England still possesses many such nobles and “kings,” and … he summons them to him.”
Another modern day prophet of the Right, Mencius Moldbug, rides in the wake of this humbug literati of the royalist faction. His take on the reactionary impulse in Carlyle is simple: “A reactionary is not a Republican, a Democrat, or even a libertarian. It is not even a communist, a fascist, or a monarchist. It is something much older, stranger, and more powerful. But if you can describe it as anything, you can describe it as the pure opposite of progressivism.” (here) These reactionaries cannot describe things in positive terms, cannot tell you just what they serve in their political program, but instead offer mythologies of the Sith Lords and non-such interspersed with satirical appreciations of all the proto-fascist ideologies of the Nineteenth and earlier centuries. Mencius even hails Carlyle as the secular Christ: “I am a Carlylean. I’m a Carlylean more or less the way a Marxist is a Marxist. My worship of Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian Jesus, is no adolescent passion – but the conscious choice of a mature adult. I will always be a Carlylean, just the way a Marxist will always be a Marxist. And it is not too late for you to join us yourself! It’s a big tent, this cult of Carlyle.” (here) Such reactionaries follow simple principles and postulates: “I, and others like me, want to live and should be able to live in a liberal regime of spontaneous order, which is not planned from above but emerges through the natural, uncontrolled interaction of free human atoms.” (here)
In one of his late essays Thomas Carlyle would show the darkest aspects of his being in a racist screed “Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question“. But instead of quoting him I’ll let you follow the path in forming an educated understanding of his ideological carpology: first Chartism, then the Latter-Day Pamphlets, then Shooting Niagara, then the Occasional Discourse. Following Hayek , Mencius Moldbug reminds us that Serfdom and slavery can be described as microgovernment and nanogovernment respectively. In government proper, the normal human role of patron is filled by a giant, impersonal, and often accidentally sadistic bureaucracy, which is sovereign and self-securing. In serfdom, this role is filled by a noble house or other large family business, which in turn is a client of the State, and just as fixed to the land as its serfs. In slavery, mastership is exercised by a mobile individual whose slaves go with him. (here) In an aside he continues: “Democracy here appears as simply a mechanism for controlling subjects by deluding them into believing that they control the entire enterprise, a pretense which cannot be maintained in the context of serfdom or slavery. In this role it is certainly unnecessary, as physical enforcement technologies are quite sufficient. The mind-control state is obsolete.” (ibid.) As a reactionary defense Moldbug tells us that Carlyle is in fact ready to be as indignant as anyone over these abuses of slavery as an institution. “He reasons: since slavery is a natural human relationship, this bond will exist regardless of whether you abolish the word. And it does – if only in broken and surreptitious forms. However, if you are a genuine humanitarian and your interest is in abolishing the abuses, the best way to do so is to – abolish the abuses. So, for example, he proposes reforms such as stronger supervision of slave owners, a standard price by which slaves can buy their freedom, etc, etc.”
What’s twisted in Moldbug’s reasoning is that he accepts all this without blinking as if this was all just natural human relations working themselves out, when in fact these are artificial relations constructed through coercive and illogical, even irrational forms of domination and exploitation as old as Plato’s Republic where the wise Philosophers would rule all those unwise citizens (serfs, slaves). Reactionaries can make everything sound so logical and natural that you’d almost be willing to buy into their horseshit, but then you wake up and realize that like Carlyle himself this whole reactionary process is a form of madness out and out… For him we’re already serfs in a machine, cannibals and cannibalized consumerists in a capitalist system that feeds off our productive slavedom. Trapped in our own dark illusions we see no other way out so we blind ourselves to the chains that lock us into a destructive system all for security and a livelihood to maintain our minimal existence.
1. Lora Koetsier. Natural Law and Calvinist Political Theory (2004 Trafford)
2, Harold Bloom. Essayists And Prophets (Kindle Locations 1164-1166). Kindle Edition.
dmfant said:
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2013/05/peter-hallward-vitalism-or-voluntarism/
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ktismatics said:
“What’s twisted in Moldbug’s reasoning is that he accepts all this without blinking as if this was all just natural human relations working themselves out, when in fact these are artificial relations constructed through coercive and illogical, even irrational forms of domination and exploitation”
That’s where the human biodiversity argument comes in: some people are genetically predisposed to rule, others to serve. And this hierarchical ordering principle isn’t just individual libertarian meritocracy, it divides populations by gender, by ethnicity, by race. From the Moldbug piece you link:
“In all these relationships, the structure of obligation is the same. The subject, serf, or slave is obliged to obey the government, lord, or master, and work for the benefit of same. In return, the government, lord or master must care for and guide the subject, serf, or slave. We see these same relationship parameters emerging whether the relationship of domination originates as a hereditary obligation, or as a voluntary obligation, or in a state outside law such as the state of the newly captured prisoner (the traditional origin of slave status in most eras). This is a pretty good clue that this structure is one to which humans are biologically adapted.
“Not all humans are born the same, of course, and the innate character and intelligence of some is more suited to mastery than slavery. For others, it is more suited to slavery. And others still are badly suited to either. These characteristics can be expected to group differently in human populations of different origins. Thus, Spaniards and Englishmen in the Americas in the 17th and earlier centuries, whose sense of political correctness was negligible, found that Africans tended to make good slaves and Indians did not. This broad pattern of observation is most parsimoniously explained by genetic differences.”
Aristotle offered a similar apologetics for a naturally-ordered hierarchical society: men over women over children, Greeks over barbarians, masters over slaves. The neo-reactionaries are interpreting genetic and cross-cultural research to buttress these views. But the natural hierarchy is already known intuitively and a-priori by those enlightened by something akin to Calvin’s sensus divinitatus. And who is most well endowed with the right intuition? I’m guessing it’s the ones at the top of the pyramid.
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noir-realism said:
I’ve been working through Lora Kostier’s Natural Law and Calvinist Political Theory pas couple days, looking at the history of liberal thought in its infancy and discovering how dogged it informs the reformist spirit as well as the reactionary spirit to our day.
What’s interesting and at the same time almost scary is that people listen to this Moldbug like he’s some latter day prophet of the reaction. I was thinking of Nick Land and his cronies that seem to find in Moldbug some ultimate cornerstone of their new ideological system. Thing is their sense of hierarchy is from the ground, more idealist in the sense of let’s say Schelling. One reason I quoted the passage from Carlyle on Shakespeare is this rootedness in pagan nature that C saw: “Shakspeare’s Art is not Artifice; the noblest worth of it is not there by plan or precontrivance. It grows-up from the deeps of Nature, through this noble sincere soul, who is a voice of Nature.” Moldbug on a variation of this bottom-up approach said the same in the passage I quoted from him: “I, and others like me, want to live and should be able to live in a liberal regime of spontaneous order, which is not planned from above but emerges through the natural, uncontrolled interaction of free human atoms.”
He says ‘liberal regime’ but mean royalist, and against party and an intelligentsia or central committee he offers the organic “not planned from above but emerges through the natural.” The almost in an OOO flat ontological political theory he offers us this “uncontrolled interaction of free human atoms (objects?).”
OOO has always tried to stay supposedly value neutral, keeping away from direct political statements, except for Levi who seems at times to support both the Enlightenment naturalist as well as an ultra leftist stance…. Morton grows out of the Romantic poet era, while for Bogost it is gaming and algorithmic culture. Harman has withdrawn from the arena, yet there is a latent thread within his work that could be used either way with its investment in Malebranch’s causality…. not a criticism, just wonder sometimes.
Either way I’ve been looking at these neoreactionaries surrounding Nick Land more as a trend in the subversive Right… there is a lot of latent hate and violence within such thought and a psychopathology – in the Ballardian sense, that comes across in such thought. That’s my major concern with Srinek and Williams playing with such fire as accelerationism: the latent psychopathology of fascism hidden in its lack of accountability and responsibility, as if we can not only allow capitalism to flourish but even speed it up like some alien spacecraft from the posthuman future. Dark Enlightenment they call it, and even align themselves, supposedly joking and satirically, with the Starwars mythology of the Sith Lords. What does that tell you about such thought?
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nydwracu said:
Accelerationism is nothing new, even within the left: some Italian Marxists in the early 20th century saw their political role as compelling the bourgeoisie to perform the historical function that they had hitherto neglected: the function of bringing capitalism to Italy. (This almost certainly happened elsewhere, but Italy is where my weakness on history reaches its lowest point.)
Liberal royalism is also nothing new. Moldbug picked it up wholesale from Hoppe and Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Hostility to democracy is already present in ‘classical liberalism’ and libertarianism — the majority, allowed to rule, will vote themselves goodies until the economy is sucked dry and suppress any behavior they don’t like. But the proposed solution is usually… well, it’s usually the structure of the American government, at least as it’s taught in schools — and look how well that turned out. So the libertarian is stuck either denouncing FDR and (sometimes) Lincoln as a force of evil, a pack of black swans that emerged from the ether and broke the government in a way that wouldn’t be repeated given a reboot, a return to the structures that preceded them, or disposing of classical liberal means as not conducive to classical liberal ends. From Mises to Carlyle…
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noir-realism said:
Agreed! I don’t even think Land or W & S in their manifesto argue that Accelerationism is new… their just entering into its current manifestation on the treadmill of current topicality and manipulating it toward their own ends.
Same with Moldbug, he’s even stated as much that his ideas came out of exactly the people you mention. Nothing new there… none of them are arguing that these ideas are new, their only taking these ideas up as part of their own ongoing programs and churning them within their own ideological velt. Hell in that sense I’m doing the same, we’re all doing the same. As Harold Bloom once said: “Even the Great Originals weren’t original to begin with…” I doubt that the universe we live in was the original… some of the theories have us bubbling on the back of some superocean with an undetermined amount of other universes. Maybe the abyss is larger that thought to believe…
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Nergal said:
” That’s my major concern with Srinek and Williams playing with such fire as accelerationism: the latent psychopathology of fascism hidden in its lack of accountability and responsibility, as if we can not only allow capitalism to flourish but even speed it up like some alien spacecraft from the posthuman future.”
That’s the good thing about Communism. Even today, Communists are saying “That wholesale extermination that happened in the 20th century? Our bad. Sorry,guys.”
Never mind… that was Germans I was thinking of. Germans.
Communists are always saying “That wasn’t for real Communism!”.
Here’s what I wonder…What if Hitler’s Nazi Party wasn’t “real Nazism”? Are the proletariat Leftist anti-capitalists,who spend millions of dollars a year on trendy Che Guevara t-shirts and stupid-looking foreign berets when not neglecting to bathe,amenable to this argument?
Could Germans just say “No,no,no, that wasn’t REAL Nazism!” undo all their bans on using Nazi slogans and imagery and revive the Nazi Party without leftists squealing like stuck pigs?
When I think about Communists, the first thing that comes to mind is accountability and responsibility. We know how they banned the labor theory of value,use of the word “comrade”, the Soviet flag, and labor unions after those 150 million people died under a hammer and sickle and are still making groveling apologies to the world for things modern Communists didn’t actually do.
It must be nice to be able to just wash your hands of past atrocities with a No True Scotsman Fallacy and pretend that certain historical occurrences never happened. For all the Left’s arguments about “privilege”,those of us on the Right sure feel a power differential in that area. They’ve got us apologizing for things we never advocated as if a refusal to pre-emptorily condemn means that we too are guilty of these ideas or actions we never advocated,just as those who came before us are also guilty of ideas and actions they never advocated.
It’s a sort of Hindu cosmology or Russian nesting doll of guilt,where present phony guilt rests upon past phony guilt that rest upon still older phony guilt and so on and so forth.
Meanwhile,150 million people in shallow mass graves remain unaccounted for by “real Marxists”.
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ktismatics said:
I don’t know Schelling from Shinola, but let’s say that the Accelerationists want to cooperate with the protean vital forces pushing up from below. These are presumably people who have the right stuff, imbued congenitally with those same protean forces and thus naturally capable of catalyzing and turbocharging the acceleration. What are those forces? Intelligence, creativity, energy, persistent directional thrust, ability to overcome resistance, and so on. It is argued that, while these are the vital force driving the universe, they aren’t equally distributed. Those with more of the right stuff are collectively the accelerator, and so naturally the power and the money should flow to them. Those with less of the right stuff — the dull, the sluggish, the scatterbrained, the weak — find their natural function on the lower rungs, in the outer circles, either following the lead of the Promethean elite or getting out of the way. Egalitarian anarchically spontaneous order works only among the accelerating elite; the slow masses purportedly function best in structure imposed by the elite. Once this hierarchical order is established — freedom at the top, discipline-and-punish at the bottom — self-perpetuating cultures are set in motion, supplementing natural order with sociohistorical order. That’s my understanding of the neo-reactionary program. Some are more insistent on natural group differences between races and sexes, but even those who don’t make those a-priori distinctions between classes are trying to build them into the future.
I’ll have to have another look at the Srnicek and Williams Manifesto, though on my quick reading it seemed not to push back explicitly against this neo-reactionary social and economic stratification. Invoking Marx and Land as fellow accelerationists gestures toward the dissolution between left and right, but it’s a shallow synthesis. It’s true that Marx saw a future of machines increasingly taking over a lot of the dirty work then consigned to humans. If workers own the means of production, then they are freed by the machines to explore creativity, education, art, leisure. But if the accelerating elite own the means of production, then the owners just get rid of the redundant workers while reducing the wages and increasing the duration and intensity of the workweek for those who hang on precariously to their jobs.
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noir-realism said:
Exactly! Some of the studies on Singapore, Dubhai and other postmodern cities suggest just that, a sort of hyperregulation not of the corporate but of the workers in a temporal and statistical grid of hyperrationalism. The so to speak algorithmic culture gone berserk. As well as these new city-states support regimes of serfdom and deregulated capital that allows corporations free reign with little social justice for anyone but their clientele. The workers live in destitution, and are at time sent home penniless in mass firings. It’s sick the way these transnational multiconglomerates can live outside any law whatsoever. The corporations as entities have become the new robber barons of our neoguilded age.
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ktismatics said:
Agreed. There’s a good article in the 27 May New Yorker about the Silicon Valley techno-accelerationists, who seem to believe that what we need to save the world are more cool apps. One gets the sense reading the article that the corporate Prometheans congregated around Palo Alto are actively setting up a kind of Dubai on US soil, with its own (non)tax base and preferential immigration laws and gated industrial zones immersed in a broader dead zone populated by the castoffs and the used-ups.
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noir-realism said:
Yep, instead of the United States, it’s the DisUnited States of our Incorporated Territories… dark days ahead…
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ktismatics said:
Here’s Pynchon in Gravity’s Rainbow counteracting the acceleration:
****
“Don’t flinch like that, I based that design on the double lightning stroke, Hupla — the SS emblem.”
“But it’s also a double integral sign! Did you know that?”
“Ah. Yes: Summe, Summe, as Leibniz said. Well, isn’t that–”
BLAM
All right. But Etzel Ölsch’s genius was to be fatally receptive to imagery associated with the Rocket. In the static space of the architect, he might’ve used a double integral now and then, early in his career, to find volumes under surfaces whose equations were known — masses, moments, centers of gravity. But it’s been years since he’s had to do with anything that basic. Most of his calculating these days as with marks and pfennigs, not functions of idealistic r and θ, naive x and y…. But in the dynamic space of the living Rocket, the double integral has a different meaning. To integrate here is to operate on a rate of change so that time falls away: change is stifled…. “Meters per second” will integrate into “meters.” The moving vehicle is frozen, in space, to become architecture, and timeless. It was never launched. It will never fall.
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noir-realism said:
Hahah…. yea, read him years ago, have been working on Against the Day for a while, taking my time…
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nickbsteves said:
What’s twisted in Moldbug’s reasoning is that he accepts all this without blinking as if this was all just natural human relations working themselves out, when in fact these are artificial relations constructed through coercive and illogical, even irrational forms of domination and exploitation as old as Plato’s Republic where the wise Philosophers would rule all those unwise citizens (serfs, slaves).
Would you care to define “artificial”? Is servitude more “artificial” than, say, civilization? Is implicit hierarchy, or for that matter patronage, more “artificial” than, say, Shamanism, or for that matter, tribal loyalty?
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noir-realism said:
Moldbug says: ” …since slavery is a natural human relationship” – explain to me what is ‘natural’ about slavery as a ‘human’ qua ‘relationship’? Drescher (2009) argues, “The most crucial and frequently utilized aspect of the condition is a communally recognized right by some individuals to possess, buy, sell, discipline, transport, liberate, or otherwise dispose of the bodies and behavior of other individuals.” Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the Code of Hammurabi (c. 1760 BC), which refers to it as an established institution. Even Wiki gives the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_slavery
It was an ancient ‘institution': An institution is any structure or mechanism of social order and cooperation governing the behaviour of a set of individuals within a given community — may it be human or a specific animal one. Institutions are identified with a social purpose, transcending individuals and intentions by mediating the rules that govern cooperative living behavior.
Nothing natural about slavery ancient or modern. It was a legalese originally for the pursposes of taxation and accounting, but obviously took on a darker aspect down through history.
What I was describing was his slapdash cavalier approach to such touchy topics as if other people had no clue as to the real history behind such things. And, to your point of comparing servitude to civilization as more/less, or equal to aritificial: the two categories do not compute, they are of different kinds. Artificial in my context is ‘unatural': meaning an constructed human institution. Not part of the natural order. Even Nietzsche who more than most philosophers pursued this master/slave dialectic through his genealogy new the difference on that score. Some humans want dominion and power over others, simple and to the point. So they created institutions that made it a social practice.
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nickbsteves said:
Civilization iss (is and only is) institutional (division of labor, covenants, enforcement of codes and obligations, hierarchy, relaxation of out-group mistrust, etc.). By your calculations civilization is therefore unnatural. You seem to be using “unnatural” as a synonym for “evil”. Why not just scrap the misleading substitution and call it “evil”? After all, what can possibly be, even in theory, “unnatural” from a materialistic starting point? (Of course, I might ask what could possibly be “evil” by that view as well.)
Is the family an “institution”, and therefore “unnatural”, in your accounting policies? What about the extended family (including marriages to outsiders)? Is tribe “unnatural”? What of hunting party? Warrior band? City? Nation? Empire? Space colonies?
I don’t think you disagree with Moldbug on principle as much as you dislike his accounting practices (you should see him with discount rates). It seems we should first convert everything one accounting standard first, and then see if substantive disagreement remains.
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noir-realism said:
Haha… he’s more of a satirist than one at first believes… that’s for sure. Obviously he likes to reduce things to figures of speech as in “I’m a Royalist” or “I’m a Carlyleian” etc.
As for artificial/unatural distinctions one could take this to absurd lengths, but we were specifically speaking in at least my context of ‘slavery’ so in that sense it is artificial. I’ll not combat you on all the myriad distinctions of artificial/unatural binaries that could be used pro/con of quid pro quo… that would be overkill.
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nickbsteves said:
Well my point is that slavery, i.e., servitude, is as natural as any other hierarchical relationship in a society of unequals (which happens to encompass all civilized societies as well as most non-civilized ones). So I’m not asking you to go to absurd lengths. I’m only asking what principle makes slavery “unnatural” and therefore, presumably, “bad” (or at least “yucky”)? And how does that same principle manage not apply to civilzation at large?
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noir-realism said:
In the terms you’ve stated I assume that ‘natural’ for you means evolutionary bottom up approach, as if we were all animals divided into those who are the supposed masters whose main traits are strength, creativity, independence, assertiveness, etc. Who respect power, courage, boldness, risk-taking, even recklessness. It is natural for them to follow their own path no matter what, to rebel against social pressure and conformity. While I assume you would put the slaves into another camp of traits: conformity, weakness, passivity, dependence, meekness. It is natural for them to stick together for a sense of security, just as herd animals do.
I assume since we are animals that you view all of this like a zoo keeper for whom the mass of human kind is just experimental fodder for the aristocratic gin mill? If your trying to get me to give you some reason why slavery is not natural and not good, let’s start with a couple statements. Can you guess who wrote the two passages below? He was an affirmer of such master/slave hierarchies. He’s also had quite an influence on modern and postmodern thought.
“Every elevation of the type “man,” has hitherto been the work of an
aristocratic society and so it will always be—a society believing in a long scale of gradations of rank and differences of worth among human beings, and requiring slavery in some form or other. Without the pathos of distance, such as grows out of the incarnated difference of classes, out of the constant out-looking and down-looking of the ruling caste on subordinates and instruments, and out of their equally constant practice of obeying and commanding, of keeping down and keeping at a distance—that other more mysterious pathos could never have arisen, the longing for an ever new widening of distance within the soul itself, the formation of ever higher, rarer, further, more extended, more comprehensive states, in short, just the elevation of the type “man,” the continued “self-surmounting of man,” to use a moral formula in a supermoral sense.”
Here’s another one: “Here one must think profoundly to the very basis and resist all sentimental weakness: life itself is essentially appropriation, injury, conquest of the strange and weak, suppression, severity, obtrusion of peculiar forms, incorporation, and at the least, putting it mildest, exploitation;—but why should one for ever use precisely these words on which for ages a disparaging purpose has been stamped?”
Have you guessed already who wrote those words? For him everything reduced to psychology and biology, morality included. For him morality was something to be condemned, something to be overcome rather than to be conformed to. Yet, he also despised politics and the Right Wing of his day. He attacked openly those who were anti-Semitic and defended the Jewish people as harbingers of a new type of Man.
Have you guessed yet who he was?
Another man in the 20th Century said this: “To make death easier for people, the Church holds out to them the bait of a better world. We, for our part, confine ourselves to asking man to fashion his life worthily. For this, it is sufficient for him to conform to the laws of nature. Let’s seek inspiration in these principles, and in the long run we’ll triumph over religion.”
Another quote from the same man speaking of religious ascetics: “[t]he fact of his own existence is already a refutation of his protest. Nothing that is made of flesh and blood can escape the laws which determined its coming into being. As soon as the human mind believes itself to be superior to them, it destroys that real substance which is the bearer of the mind.”
Is there a similarity between the two thinkers I’ve quoted? Do they represent a trend? Both seemed to rely on philosophies of naturalism and scientism: a philosophy of man and nature that borrowed just as much from naturalism as from evolutionary thought.
The first two quotes were from Fredrich Nietzsche, the second set of quotes from Adolph Hitler. So if you really want to follow such naturalist ethics and reductionist scientistic ideas of will and master/slavery distinctions of hierarchy then by means I want stop you, but don’t ask me to follow you down that blind path: it’s already been done and we’ve seen the price (millions dead). Is this what you want?
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nickbsteves said:
It doesn’t matter what “natural for me” is. I’m asking what’s “natural” for you? Then I can do my best to translate. Your house, your rules. Tho’ I am, as you may have guessed, not a biological reductionist, I happen believe that “natural” in biology means about the same thing as “natural” by the will of God for the purposes of the evolution of human relationships and societies.
So to speak of “supposed masters” presupposes a judgement call that I don’t happen to be making, and in fact is completely superfluous, and therefore an unnecessary complication. Master is as master does. Full stop. And servant is as servant does. I am not “supposing” anything. I don’t need an ideology to explain how what came to be came to be. It simply is what it is, whatever it is.
It isn’t as tho’ hierarchy has only two levels: Master and slave (man and wife, officer and enlisted, king and subject). Hierarchy runs from top to bottom. You speak of masters as the ones who create the “illusions” which “justify” their “power”. I’m certain antebellum plantation owners would be quite surprised by this, as their behavior was every bit as constrained by law, custom, and religion as were the wards who worked for them and for whom they were responsible. Everyone serves someone…
I do not believe humans are herd animals, although the Cathedral is trying mightily to so convert them. It makes for cheaper and more effective management. No, humans are primarily K-selected creatures. In this, wards are not of a different type than masters, but differ only in degree. Freedom is a power to act on your own behalf, for better or worse. Those who have proven they can indeed exercise it for their own betterment deserve to be masters. Those who prove they cannot do so deserve to be wards (or dead from their own incompetency… but I’m all for reducing body count). Those with no track record either way, should be treated as wards (e.g., children) and given the means and a reasonable time to develop self-mastery.
You continue to assume FAR too much. I might as well “assume” you view the mass of human kind is experimental fodder for the socialist gin mill. (Although you may not have that view, it comports far closer to reality for the last 100 years than the opposite assumption.) Let us keep assumptions to the barest minimum. I am no zookeeper. And men require no zookeeper.
Humans keep themselves, as they have for as long as they have been humans. And if you merely leave them to their own devices, i.e., without imposing an exogenous ideological system, they will develop hierarchies (master/ward and all the rest). And instead of viewing such perfectly natural developments with an hermeneutic of suspicion, i.e., as if there were some competing ideology at work, and something to be deemed “unnatural” and therefore “evil” (or “yucky”), you should accept that most of the time hierarchy serves the common good… which is not to say everyone equally, but everyone at least a little bit better off. This is the story of civilization. Sure there were some people who benefited from it more than others. But everyone benefits at least a little… except for criminals… and good riddance to them.
Craig, your quotations and commentary are very interesting but it seems a bit premature to be arguing the slippery slope. I happen to be quite allergic to turning a raw is into a raw ought&mdash–which sums up, I think, the errors of both Nietzsche and Hitler rather neatly. Although it isn’t as though every single word written by either of them was absolutely wrong, nor are these words any sort of proof that “naturalism” and “scientism” led to the deaths of 6 million Jews.
As a Catholic, I of course do not believe in “naturalism” and “scientism”. So as much as I dislike turning an is to an ought, I think it wise (and natural) to let an is be an is. And this is the very is that you seem quite artfully to be dodging. I am not arguing any ought here; you are the one arguing: Ought… or “Ought not” (which is still an ought).
Okay so you don’t want naturalism and scientism to be our guide. Great, neither do I. But hierarchy is natural, i.e., it occurs in nature without any exogenous force or ideological imposition. In fact, I happen to think it part of the bedrock of civilization. So I am fine with that (let is be is), in fact, if anything double down on it. Craig Hickman is the one who doesn’t like it, doesn’t feel it is “natural”. So you, Sir, are the one whose got some ‘splainin’ to do.
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noir-realism said:
You say: “As a Catholic, I of course do not believe in “naturalism” and “scientism”.”
So tell me – Do you believe in Slavery? I assume that you would take up Aristotle’s argument for slavery as natural? I mean for him slavery as as you seem to conceive it is natural, and so enslavement for him was appropriate, as well as being frequently the response to the ‘other’, to other peoples (irrespective of their skin colour) and other creatures. This enslavement was a matter not only of the fact of slavery, but also of the psychological designation of the condition of these peoples as inherently that of slaves. This condition meant that these people were regarded as deserving, and/or being readily conducive to, subordination and being trained for service.
Later on Aristotelian concepts of slavery would be used by jurists and writers, such as Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda, to justify the subjugation of the Native Americans by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century.
Let’s face it you can find this idea of ‘natural’ throughout the history of natural philosophy, but does that make it natural? Obviously, by now, it might be dawning on you that what I mean by natural is not its typical denotative meaning of “the order of nature”, etc. Our visceral concept of what is ‘natural’ depends on what we are used to, and will continue to evolve as society or even philosophy does. But in the meantime, we should not allow it to distract us from the rational consideration of deeper and more important ethical issues, such as slavery.
This conversation started with slavery, not hierarchy. You’ve tried to drift away from the original conversation by questioning natural/artificial, natural/unnatural, hierarchy/non-hierarchical etc. Whether one takes top/down or bottom/up approach to all this is irrelevant: Naturalness, in this context, is the assumption that the parameters in a theory should be about unity, and should not have to be fantastically fine-tuned in order to make the theory work.
In book I of the Politics, Aristotle addresses the questions of whether slavery can be natural or whether all slavery is contrary to nature and whether it is better for some people to be slaves. He concludes that “those who are as different [from other men] as the soul from the body or man from beast—and they are in this state if their work is the use of the body, and if this is the best that can come from them—are slaves by nature. For them it is better to be ruled in accordance with this sort of rule, if such is the case for the other things mentioned.”
It is not advantageous for one to be held in slavery who is not a natural slave, Aristotle contends, claiming that such a condition is sustained solely by force and results in enmity.
Even Plato got in on the bandwagon contending that it was right for the ‘better’ to rule over the ‘inferior’. In the Gorgias he said “…nature herself intimates that it is just for the better to have more than the worse, the more powerful than the weaker; and in many ways she shows, among men as well as among animals, and indeed among whole cities and races, that justice consists in the superior ruling over and having more than the inferior.”
Even your Catholic St. Augustine got in on the act attributing it to sin: “The prime cause, then, of slavery is sin, which brings man under the dominion of his fellow — that which does not happen save by the judgment of God, with whom is no unrighteousness, and who knows how to award fit punishments to every variety of offence.
St Augustine thought that slavery was inevitable. He didn’t think that it was the result of the natural laws of the universe – indeed he thought that in a pure world slavery would be quite unnatural, but in our world it was the consequence of sin and the Fall of Man.
Slavery was unknown, Augustine said, until “righteous” Noah “branded the sin of his son” with that name, and established the principle that the good were entitled to use the sinful.
Even Aquinas pulled out the stops… Aquinas largely agreed with Augustine that slavery was the result of the Fall, but he also thought that the universe did have a natural structure that gave some men authority over others.
He justified this by pointing out the hierarchical nature of heaven, where some angels were superior to others.
Aquinas had a much higher opinion of slaves than Aristotle. He considered that slaves had some restricted rights.
“for men of outstanding intelligence naturally take command, while those who are less intelligent but of more robust physique, seem intended by nature to act as servants…” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles
and.. “A son, as such, belongs to his father, and a slave, as such, belongs to his master; yet each, considered as a man, is something having separate existence and distinct from others. Hence in so far as each of them is a man, there is justice towards them in a way: and for this reason too there are certain laws regulating the relations of father to his son, and of a master to his slave; but in so far as each is something belonging to another, the perfect idea of “right” or “just” is wanting to them.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
or even… “since the child is subject to the power of the parent, and the slave to the power of his master, a parent can lawfully strike his child, and a master his slave that instruction may be enforced by correction…
The command that masters should forbear from threatening their slaves may be understood in two ways. First that they should be slow to threaten, and this pertains to the moderation of correction; secondly, that they should not always carry out their threats, that is that they should sometimes by a merciful forgiveness temper the judgment whereby they threatened punishment.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica
I mean you can find defenses for the naturalness of slavery all down the pipe in religious tracts and secular… it’s all there. But does it make it natural? Is slavery part of the ‘Order of Nature’, some law of superior over inferior, aristocrat/plebian, or even, dare we say, racial… Greek/Barbarian? I still say no, it is not natural, it is an imposition, an exploitation or dominion of certain unnatural organizations of power inserted into social relations that tries by justification to prove this is the law of the land, the natural way of life, etc. But it’s all bullshit… just one more game of the one’s in power to impose their dominion over others through profit, war, etc. Hell, slavery happens still all over the earth… children and women are trafficked even now across the globe in a sex slavery, while men are indentured, or sold into slavery in a multitude of countries…
This idea that Slavery is ‘natural’ is bunk:
This argument says that some people are slaves as part of the natural order of the universe, or as part of God’s plan, and it is wrong to interfere with this by abolishing slavery – nobody nowadays regards slavery as a natural thing.
But if this argument was to be used then there would have to be some certain way of distinguishing natural slaves from those who should not be enslaved – without such a method injustice is sure to occur. No such test is possible, although past cultures thought there could be such tests.
Or that Slaves are inferior beings in some natural hierarchy:
This argument says that even if slavery is cruel and degrading, slaves are not fully human and so their suffering is as ethically important or unimportant as the suffering of domestic animals and they do not have any rights that would justify the abolition of slavery.
Some people take the argument further and say that slaves are beings who are so inferior that they deserve to be enslaved.
This argument has often developed into racism to justify the enslavement of certain population groups – some of the defenders of the Atlantic slave trade argued that slavery was the proper place for people of African descent.
These arguments have been used in very recent times to justify enslaving particular racial groups.
This group of arguments is nowadays regarded as completely misguided.
You can paint it anyway you want, and try to justify it anyway you want, but Slavery is and will always be exploitation by power-over through dominion and the threat of death. Do you really want to justify Slavery?
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nickbsteves said:
Craig:
Since we got onto the subject… somehow… I thought I’d point you to my post on hierarchy in case you hadn’t seen it (or wish you hadn’t ;-)) It’s a more thorough articulation of some of the ideas in the scribble directly above… tho’ I do not claim it to be any sort of proof. (I hate proving the obvious!!)
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Nick B. Steves said:
So then, my adjective “Yucky” really isn’t far from mark, is it?
Yes, the conversation started with slavery, not hierarchy. But slavery is just a special case of hierarchy. In fact, slavery is not itself a singular precise thing, but an entire spectrum of relationships in which a “master” has more or less control over a “ward” and in which the “ward” has lesser or greater power to direct his own actions. If you wish to be rid of slavery, just slavery, and yet hold on to hierarchy, then again I ask, what principle are you using which dispenses with the one but retains the other? Or is the solution really so simple as: One is yucky, and the other not?
So you ask whether I “believe in Slavery”? The capitalization is suspicious. It suggests that you have a singular thing in mind called “Slavery”. Perhaps this thing has discordant music attached to it. Perhaps it is the thing that ignorant people think of when you say “Slavery”–the type of thing dramatically portrayed in a facile, one-sided, ahistoric manner in late-70’s miniseries?
Do I believe slavery (uncapitalized) exists? It is undeniable. In fact I would say various forms of slavery cannot but exist in human societies. The power relationship between myself and my employer is profoundly unequal. Sure I can leave whenever I want, but I got serious bills to pay… that ain’t gonna happen unless I can find a more generous “master”. Does that make me Kunta Kinte? At least a little.
Do I believe chattel slavery as practiced in the antebellum South was good for business? No. The Northern form of slavery was much more efficient (much to the chagrin of Northern factory workers). That’s why they won the war over the matter.
Every instance of hierarchy has at least a little (sometimes a lot) of slavery attached to it, for in every instance of hierarchy, you have an hierarch making some decisions and taking some corresponding responsibility for those under his authority.
Just as the opposite of Freedom is Slavery, the opposite of freedom is slavery. Let us deal with the uncapitalized versions first. We may very well agree on the Capitalized ones, but those highly specific cases don’t shed much light on the more general problem: which is no one is purely Free and no one purely a Slave.
On this lowercase version of slavery I cannot find much in the ancients, and certainly not Aquinas, with which to disagree. Yes, slavery is a result of sin in the world. Sin incapacitates people. Incapacitated people need help. Slavery is a form of such help: you work for me, a less incapacitated person, and I will feed, clothe, and house you. It’s better than starving.
All human beings are more or less capable. We are diverse, right? So every person will have more or less power to care for and govern themselves. We don’t let 6 year-old children make very many of their culinary choices. We don’t let 14 year-olds drive cars. And we don’t let 20 year olds drink alcohol. This despite the fact that some 6 year olds may make wise decisions about what to eat and some 40 year olds never will; some 14 year olds are perfectly capable of operating a motor vehicle and some 30 year olds are not; and plenty of 20 year olds can drink responsibly, whereas plenty of 21 year old cannot.
Though such rules are basically rational, maybe such rules are arbitrary or at least overly specific. Whatever the case, they reflect in a tiny and specific way of what is true for all men at all times everywhere: Not everyone can handle freedom responsibly. They may harm others, they may harm themselves. There should be safeguards to protect them and others. Those safeguards, whether by custom or positive law, may seem to be onerous to those affected by them–a type of “slavery” (yucky!). But that doesn’t make the entire raft of such safeguards irrational, much less unnatural, and still less “evil”.
Some 35 year olds cannot care for themselves. It is good for them AND good for society if they can become wards of someone. It is actually quite bad if they cannot. Am I justifying “Slavery”? No. But I may be justifying “slavery”.
And your argument thus far against it, while quite eloquent, seems to amount to little more than pointing and sputtering: I don’t really want to go there do I? Well, where is there anyway? Anyone can point to the worst abuses of any institution and say we ought not tolerate that. (Pol Pot, Leftist, there!) But if the objection cannot be based on some rational principle, then it does not tell us why we should disassemble the entire institution vis-a-vis, say, remedying only the greatest abuses. (Nor a fortiori does it account for unforeseeable consquences of disruptive social changes, I might add.) So what is the principle which says slavery per se is abuse, but hierarchy per se is not?
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noir-realism said:
Demoktesis is a thought-experiment designed to show the incompatibility of democracy with libertarianism in general and the entitlement theory specifically. People desirous of more money might “hit upon the idea of incorporating themselves, raising money by selling shares in themselves.” They would partition such rights as which occupation one would have. Though perhaps no one sells himself into utter slavery, there arises through voluntary exchanges a “very extensive domination” of some person by others. This intolerable situation is avoided by writing new terms of incorporation that for any stock no one already owning more than a certain number of shares may purchase it. As the process goes on, everyone sells off rights in themselves, “keeping one share in each right as their own, so they can attend stockholders’ meetings if they wish.” The inconvenience of attending such meetings leads to a special occupation of stockholders’ representative. There is a great dispersal of shares such that almost everybody is deciding about everybody else. The system is still unwieldy, so a “great consolidational convention” is convened for buying and selling shares, and after a “hectic three days (lo and behold!)” each person owns exactly one share in each right over every other person, including himself. So now there can be just one meeting in which everything is decided for everybody. Attendance is too great and it’s boring, so it is decided that only those entitled to cast at least 100,000 votes may attend the grand stockholders’ meeting. And so on. Their social theorists call the system demoktesis (from Greek δῆμος demos, “people” and κτῆσις ktesis, “ownership”), “ownership of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and declare it the highest form of social life, one that must not be allowed to perish from the earth. With this “eldritch tale” we have in fact arrived at a modern democratic state.
The Abolistionist Stowe offered five basic arguments against slavery:
The first major argument of the abolitionists was that slavery was anti-Christian. Genesis 1:27 stated that man was created in the image of God. Indeed, all of the heroes of Stowe’s tale are portrayed as devout Christians. Thus, Stowe essentially argued that the only way to be a good Christian was to be anti-slavery. Yet she went even further than that. Many abolitionists of her day would not have argued for the racial equality of the African, but Stowe did. In the character of Miss Ophelia, she developed a typical Northern woman of the 1850’s. Miss Ophelia considered herself a Christian, yet admitted she had a prejudice against the slaves and couldn’t bear to have them touch her. The young child Eva had no prejudice at all, however, which forced Miss Ophelia to comment, “She’s no more than Christ-like. I wish I were like her.” Stowe expanded this Biblical argument to contend that it was the Christian’s duty to oppose the Fugitive Slave Act, a law that mandated that Northerners could not help runaway slaves and must aid in their capture. The character of Mrs. Bird quoted Scripture to support her opinion that it was her Christian duty to oppose the Act. Her husband, a senator who voted for the Act, argued with her at first, but later when Eliza and her child (two runaway slaves) beg for their protection, he sided with his wife and broke the law. Thus, Stowe essentially argued that a person was anti-Christian if he acted in any way to uphold the institution of slavery.
Second, abolitionists supported their position by drawing on the ideals upon which the nation had been founded. Slavery (and especially race based slavery) denied that all men were created equal as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Thus, slavery was anti-American. This was a similar argument to the Biblical one, but it also touched on the topic of patriotism. Slavery had transformed America into a nation where men had to flee in order to gain their freedom. Stowe used irony to prove her point. When she illustrated the slave George’s escape to Canada, she noted that if he had been a Hungarian fugitive escaping for his freedom, it would have been seen as heroism, but “when despairing African fugitives do the same thing, —it is—what is it?” Earlier, however, when George noted that he would fight for his liberty, he stated, “You say your fathers [American patriots] did it; if it was right for them, it is right for me!” Thus, Stowe paralleled the plight of runaway Africans with one of the most momentous events in American history: the Revolutionary War. With the denial of the Africans’ liberty, Americans had become what they most hated— a tyranny.
Third, abolitionists attacked the economic benefits of slavery. They reasoned that the slave’s only incentive to work was out of fear for his master. Stowe illustrated this in the plantation of Simon Legree – a plantation ruled solely by fear. Slaves could not skimp on the cotton they placed in their baskets or they would face a fierce flogging. She contrasted this with St. Clare’s household where the slaves were generally left alone. St. Clare admitted that his slaves were like spoiled children, but commented that “whipping and abuse are like laudanum; you have to double the dose as the sensibilities decline” which ultimately led to a dehumanizing of slave and master. Indeed, George was one of the only slaves who did not work out of fear when he labored in a factory. But this was mainly because he was one of the most educated and desired to work to gain his freedom. Thus, Stowe contended that the African will only be the most industrious if he is educated, but such education will ultimately lead to the African seeking his freedom. Consequently, the slaveholder must keep the African debased and in fear in order to continue to enslave him.
This led into the fourth abolitionist argument. The institution of slavery put unlimited power into the hands of the slave-holder. There were no laws protecting the slave. A master could treat his ‘property’ with as much cruelty or benevolence as he saw fit. As a result, the institution corrupted the white slave-owner’s moral values. Stowe relied heavily on historical exaggeration to prove this point, especially with her description of the plantation of Legree. Legree was the most evil of all the characters in the book. He was stripped of any morals or ability to show kindness and worked his slaves to death in order to gain a profit. Historically, Southerners argued that this would not have been in the slaveholder’s best interest, but Stowe illustrated that there was nothing to stop them from doing it. Even further, Legree attempted to destroy the saintly Uncle Tom’s faith in God. Thus, the slaveholder became the ultimate picture of depravity. St. Clare sneered that slavery ultimately amounted to “Quashy [doing] my will, and not his, all the days of his mortal life, and [having] such chance of getting to heaven, at last, as I find convenient…The thing itself is the essence of all abuse!”
Fifth, and finally, abolitionists declared that slavery transformed the South into a perpetual state of fear and instability. This argument applied first to the Southerners themselves. Stowe included a conversation between St. Clare and his brother in which they talked about slave uprisings. St. Clare believed such an uprising was inevitable. Stowe, however, did not refrain from painting such a rebellion in glowing terms. After all, such an uprising would only be natural in a nation that upheld liberty as one of its highest values, even if it had degenerated to mean liberty only for the white man. Stowe expanded upon this argument, however, to refer also to the tragedy of the enslaved Africans. While the master lived in fear of his slave, the slave lived in fear of his master. Legree’s plantation was governed like a prison camp. Stowe also exaggerated the extent to which slave families were broken up and sold to different plantations, which ultimately led to the slave’s psychological torment and despair.
These five arguments of abolitionists were often viewed as fanatical. Yet, by presenting them through the vehicle of a story that appealed to the emotions and reason of her readers, Stowe was able to change the thinking of many Americans. Her compassionate portrayal of the Africans impelled Americans to look upon them as fellow human beings. Ultimately, her arguments proved that Southern slavery was inherently immoral. Previously, the institution had been regulated and compromised on by politicians like Stowe’s Senator Bird, but the novel brought the issue into American homes and forced them to rethink their Christian duty. Slavery was no longer the realm of politics but a moral issue.
Obviously things have changed since that time, an I being an atheist would have to argued it in more secular terms, yet the point is not to apply biological criteria to this argument as if because there are hierarchies in nature then it must be admitted that slavery as an institution is natural because we are natural beings. We are also moral beings, and unless you can point to morality as being a product of hierarchy too (much like Nietzsche and the Will-to-Power) then this is not about hierarchy at all, but is about ethics and one’s relation to versions of ethics. I just choose a democratic ethos that disallows us to enslave others through coercion, and obviously as a descendent of that spectrum of thought that flowed out of the radical enlightenment revolts as well as Marxist thought I affirm an ethical principle of egalitarianism and equality, as well as social justice for all rather than the few.
On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Although outlawed in most countries, slavery is nonetheless practiced secretly in many parts of the world. Enslavement still takes place in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, as well as parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide. In Mauritania alone, estimates are that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved. Many of them are used as bonded labour.
Modern-day abolitionists have emerged over the last several years, as awareness of slavery around the world has grown, with groups such as Anti-Slavery International, the American Anti-Slavery Group, International Justice Mission, and Free the Slaves working to rid the world of slavery. Zach Hunter,[106] for example, began a movement called Loose Change to Loosen Chains when he was in seventh grade. Also featured on CNN and other national news organizations, Hunter has gone on to help inspire other teens and young adults to take action against injustice with his books, Be the Change and Generation Change.
In the United States, The Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery is a coalition of NGOs, foundations and corporations working to develop a policy agenda for abolishing slavery and human trafficking. Since 1997, the United States Department of Justice has, through work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, prosecuted six individuals in Florida on charges of slavery in the agricultural industry. These prosecutions have led to freedom for over 1000 enslaved workers in the tomato and orange fields of South Florida. This is only one example of the contemporary fight against slavery worldwide. Slavery exists most widely in agricultural labor, apparel and sex industries, and service jobs in some regions.
In 2000, the United States passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) “to combat trafficking in persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and involuntary servitude.”[109] The TVPA also “created new law enforcement tools to strengthen the prosecution and punishment of traffickers, making human trafficking a Federal crime with severe penalties.”
The United States Department of State publishes the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, identifying countries as either Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List or Tier 3, depending upon three factors: “(1) The extent to which the country is a country of origin, transit, or destination for severe forms of trafficking; (2) The extent to which the government of the country does not comply with the TVPA’s minimum standards including, in particular, the extent of the government’s trafficking-related corruption; and (3) The resources and capabilities of the government to address and eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons.”
Obviously none of the above will convince you that my ethical stance can be anymore justified that yours, but I’ll maintain it as a point of solidarity with all those humans – even you, who are even now being coerced into sex, labor, etc. against their will, or even as a voluntary need as part of the need to survive in this world.
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nickbsteves said:
So your “argument” is: read (and believe) the propaganda of the victors. Can we at least consult the propaganda of the losers… if only for a bit of perspective? The losers, lacking “legitimacy”, at least have less a reason to lie, right?
Your argument, I respectfully submit, consists of “Slavery is yucky” in themes and variations.
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James A. Donald said:
Let us suppose you are a Tutsi rancher, back in the days before the colonialists came and imposed an artificial equality between Tutsi and Hutus. You find that a bunch of your Hutus have killed and eaten one of your cows, reverting to their natural instincts of hunting and gathering, which are inappropriate to the world of agriculture and property rights that Tutsis have introduced. You round them up. You could kill them, but hey, they are your Hutus, you don’t really want to kill them. You would rather send them far far away, and make sure they stay far far away. Fortunately a friendly slave trader offers to take them off your hands, and, better still, will not charge you anything for it!
In due course these Hutus somehow wind up in the British West Indies. Some of them can produce economic value when someone stands over them with a whip. Some of them, unfortunately, are negative economic value even as slaves.
Now if this had been detected on the boat, those of negative economic value would have been thrown overboard, but it was not detected until they had been slaving for a while. The Tutu who sold them to the slave trader probably had a fair idea, but he was not going to tell.
The worthless slaves are therefore sent to the workhouse, and their former master charged for their upkeep.
In today’s society, they would be on welfare, and/or live by predating upon their betters, hunting and gathering in the streets of the city, turning the city into their native jungle. Which system is more natural? Which solution is better?
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noir-realism said:
You already presuppose too much: “your Hutus” as if the Tutsi had some kind of property rights of the Hutu… the Hutu are free to do what the hell they like, of course if they kill the Tutsi’s cow he might get pissed and kill them, but he doesn’t own the Hutu and has no right to do with them as he wishes.
And your use of “friendly slaver” and “worthless slaves” already make you culpable. In a world of slaves I’d side with the slaves turning the city into a jungle… at least they’d live according to their own dictates and not some other bastard lording it over them.
There is no reasonable argument for slavery, only arrogant justifications from Aristotle to the present day. Slavery of any type is not justified, natural or otherwise. end of story…
I’m convinced that I will not convince you are the other so what’s the point of this exercise? I could mount a shit load of philosophical bullshit, but it would all come down to you defending crap and me defending the right of any individual against slavery of any type…. so it seems circular and misguided. Any justification that I might offer would be spun around on your part. In my book none of your arguments are proof of naturalness or of slavery being inherent in the order of things. There can be no proof or axiom to justify slavery under any circumstances.
Thomas Paine once remarked: “Rights are inherently in all the inhabitants; but charters, by annulling those rights, in the majority, leave the right, by exclusion, in the hands of a few… They… consequently are instruments of injustice.” This was Thomas Paine’s defense of abolition of such practices as slavery:
http://www.constitution.org/tp/afri.htm
Even Darwin and Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations) were against slavery. Darwin was particularly interested in slavery and made with Wedgewood a famous medal, one of the most impressive symbols of anti-slavery movement.
His assertions are made from humanitarian perspectives, calling for the immediate abolishment of slavery unlike Priestley. Darwin criticizes that slavery and the slave trade could be identified as an unnatural system. Using rhetoric, he states that the self-purification of the Earth can neither abolish slavery nor help slaves. Adam Smith remarked: “The pride of man makes him love to domineer, and nothing mortifies him so much as to be obliged to condescend to persuade his inferiors. Wherever the law allows it, and the nature of the work can afford it, therefore, he will generally prefer the service of slaves to that of freeman.” (Smith 1776, 388-389) Smith, however, believes the work done by freeman is cheaper than the work done slaves. Smith criticizes slavery with main emphasis on this point. It is evident that the state of slavery must be very unhappy to the slave himself. This I need hardly prove…it will not be difficult to shew that it is so to the masters. That is, that the cultivation of land by slaves is not so disadvantageous as by free tenents; that the advantage gained by the labours [slaves] of the slaves, if we deduce their originall cost and expence of their maintenance, will not be as great as that which is gained from free tenents.” (Smith 1978a, 185)
More detailed argument is given in Lectures on Jurisprudence (B). Smith explains slave’s work costs more than that of freeman whether in manufacture or agriculture. “When land is divided in great portions among the powerfull, it is cultivated by slaves, which is a very unprofitable method of cultivation.” Smith goes on to argue that slave’s work is disadvantageous for slaves as well as employees because his motivation for labour is “the dread of punishment,” which deprives slaves of their wills to work and prevents them from improving on their own.
“The labour of a slave proceeds from no other motive but the dread of punishment, and if he could escape this he would work none at all. Should he exert himself in the most extraordinary manner, he cannot have the least expectations of any reward, and as all the produce of his labour goes to his master, he has no encouragement to industry. A young slave may perhaps exert himself a little first, in order to attain his masters favour, but he soon finds that it is all in vain, and that, be his behavior what it will, he will always meet with the same severe treatment. When lands, therefore, are cultivated by slaves, they cannot be greatly improven, as they have no motive to industry.” (523)
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James A. Donald said:
Equality between Hutus and Tutsis has been tried and found wanting. Either the Tutsis rule the Hutu, or the Hutu eat the Tutsis. Which is why I used the example of a Tutsi selling Hutus to the West Indies.
You concede that the not-entirely-hypothetical Tutsi rancher is entitled to kill problem hunter-gatherer Hutus. If entitled to kill them, why not entitled to sell them into slavery?
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noir-realism said:
I didn’t concede to anything of the sort. I said he might get pissed and kill them… that’s no justification! And, since I do not affirm even the sense of natural right to slavery why would I concede that? You guys are the ones defending slavery, not me… for me slavery was from the get go an erroneous and artificial construct, even if it was some primitive tribesman who first conceived it. It has always been what it is: exploitation, pure and simple.
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James A. Donald said:
Killing problem people, and entire problem groups, is justified. Is not enslaving them a more humane solution?
The progressive fantasy is that there were a bunch of hard working farmers who were nice people just minding their own business, and a bunch of slavers descended upon them to steal their labor. Sometimes that was what happened, but a far more common scenario was that a bunch of people are causing problems, and someone decides to get rid of them, or someone is too feckless to support himself, and sells himself into slavery by borrowing money against his freedom.
Some people are not capable of freedom, and, by and large, these were the people that tended to wind up as slaves. Not always, but that was the way to bet. The alternative to slavery and serfdom is, in practice, welfare and crime.
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nickbsteves said:
[Slavery] has always been what it is: exploitation, pure and simple.
That is simply not true. Even if it were true on average, it is certainly not true in every pure and simple case. Even if every instantiation of slavery was precisely as your Stowe propaganda piece portrayed it, it would still not be true. No slave ever, in the history of the world, benefitted from the care of his master? Ever?? Really??? Mind if I go dig one up? No. This does not comport with reality… it doesn’t even comport with cartoons. Feel free to make religious claims, but don’t make ones that are obviously false, for it tends to cast doubt upon the religion.
For the record, I am not actually defending slavery. Jim is, and I see his point. I am merely looking for the most humane ways to treat people of substandard self-mastery… and slavery is certainly not off the table for that. It is far preferable to letting people become criminals and/or die from their own incompetence.
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James A. Donald said:
This indignation seems strikingly selective. What was the Chinese economic system before 1980 but slavery for almost the entire population, yet never did I hear a single peep out of any of the organs of the Cathedral.
Further, whoseover says that slavery can never be justified, will also say that the Marine invasion of Tripoli to rescue white Christian Americans enslaved by brown Muslims, was not justified.
Clearly, slavery is just fine when communists enslave their fellow citizens, or when Muslims enslave white Christians.
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noir-realism said:
For what it’s worth it was Maoism, a government still run by an elite of intellectuals and a dictator, not a Marxist communistic society. Maoism was a dictatorship of a new aristocracy over the peasants not a communism at all, no matter what title they gave it. Same for Stalinist Russian and its aftermath. Marx would have done away with the State… period. Whatever the revisionists have perpetrated on your studies of communism its wrong: go back to the sources of Marx/Engles and then speak of communism… they were seeking a loose knit Association of individuals. The only difference between Marx and Bakunin was over just that: the State. Marx wanted it abolished, Bakunin not. Funny how people get it wrong about Marx.
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James A. Donald said:
Something no one on the left felt like mentioning before 1980
Similarly, no academic who wants to keep tenure is inclined to mention the reason that Marines visited the shores of Tripoli
Leftists love slavery. They only object when whites are enslaving blacks.
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noir-realism said:
And what, prey tell, do Rightists love? As an ultra-leftist I abhor slavery, so obviously you fall below the fence on that one. And, as stated above, this has nothing to do with race but with the institution of dominion that such as you would probably use to justify almost anything.
I can see by that last remark that we have really nothing to say to each other from this point forward, obviously your hate is shining through now of Leftists. Even you rationalist overlay is gone.
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James A. Donald said:
Leftists don’t abhor slavery. No enemies to the left, therefore the greatest slavers of the twentieth century were not enemies. Further, if you really abhored slavery, your gut reaction to the “the shores of Tripoli” would be different from what it is.
Leftists only abhor members of superior races enslaving members of inferior races.
Observe their gut reaction to what is happening in the Congo right now. They theoretically oppose Tutsi women being sexually mutilated with very large objects, in a hypothetical sort of way, oppose in an abstract sense, but don’t oppose it so much that they stop funding and arming FARDC, the guys that are doing it. If Tutsi men were doing the rape and sexual mutilation, the Cathedral would explode with outrage and would probably intervene militarily to stop it.
Observe your gut reaction to what is happening in the Congo right now. Just as you feel a hundred rationalizations coming to mind that what was happening in Tripoli was not slavery, and if it was slavery it was completely different to slavery by evil southern white males, you similarly feel a hundred rationalizations coming to mind that the Tutsis have it coming to them, and while what is happening in the Congo is terribly unfortunate, it is not really the Cathedral’s fault, and paying attention to what is happening in the Congo would only encourage racism tribalism, sexism and social injustice, just as it would be horribly racist inflammatory and unhelpful to refer to those burning cars in Sweden by some term that more clearly identified them. You have a one hundred and one explanations at the ready. You totally don’t support the rape and mutilation, just as you totally don’t support the car burning in Oslo, but ….
Notice the extreme reluctance to say which ethnicity is doing the rape and sexual mutilation, and which ethnicity is on the receiving end, much as it is “youths” burning cars in Sweden. If it was Tutsis doing it, the Cathedral would explode with outrage, with hatred hotter than ten thousand suns.
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