The Economics of slavery: Can Slavery work in a modern society?

The Economics of Slavery article1
Thinking the Unthinkable: Can slavery work in a modern society?
A review of a “A modest proposal for the new millennium”, by Rodney Allen and Ian Hunt

Let me start off by saying that in no way do I agree with the ideas suggested in the article I am reviewing, I am merely writing about this as a though exercise for whoever reads this and to bring to all attention that slavery was a very good for economic growth in the past and there are still people out there who think it would be a economically productive in the future.

“Slavery would work, and so would the slaves”

In the article, “A modest proposal for the new millennium”, the authors begin by describing problems that are often seen within western civilization. These problems are high unemployment, high economic inequality, insecurity and social exclusion. The author says that in Britain 40 percent of the work force works full time, 30 percent work part time, and 30 percent are not working at all. These stats point on 30 percent of the labor force have insecure jobs, and 30 percent have no jobs, which leads to their social exclusion, thus making them feel like outcasts. The author goes onto say that the welfare state of western civilizations is not profound enough to support all of these people adequately and it is not economically efficient to do so, therefore social funding should be cut. But what then will the unemployed impoverished people do?

So this is where Allan and Hunt think they are coming to the rescue. They propose to reinforce SLAVERY! It would be voluntary slavery of course but once people signed away their freedom they would undoubtedly be slaves/property. The authors say this would be a fair option for the impoverished people who can’t find securely paid employment. They would be unpaid labor, but their wealthy owners would supply food, shelter, clothes and medical care for them and this would appeal the slaves because these are things that they were unable to provide for themselves and their families. However, once a slave you are now property and and runaway slaves would be returned by state forces, as if they were runaway prisoners and non-obedient slaves would be disciplines the same.

The authors propose many benefits of this new voluntary slavery. It would solve long term unemployment and the socially excluded underclass would be working and feel worth because they were working and being productive. The author says, “that voluntary slavery would not in many instances be radically dissimilar to the sort of life endured by housewives in the first half of the twentieth century, before the upsurge of feminism”. The slaves would be doing mostly “cleaning, cooking, gardening, serving, fetching, and carrying”, the author says doing this work would bring self fulfillment to the workers who were previously idle.

Furthermore, the authors say that voluntary slavery would help diminish the demands placed on the public welfare system, and would help our economy. In the past the main barrier to full employment was the high prices of wage laborers, but with essentially free labor more people could be employed. This would in fact decrease crime aswell because ‘generally’ it is impoverished people who commit crimes, and if these people are working they are less lkely to do so and will be kept in line by their owners. In many instances these slaves would be exposed to a better lifestyle then they ever dreamed of because of slavery they will eat fancy meals and travel to fancy places, and in some cases perhaps be accepted as part of the family. Slavery will resemble Roman and Greek times much more than the slavery seen in the U.S pre civil war. The authors also say that since the slaves are property the owners can sell their slaves organs and lease them to medical research, in order to increase medical knowledge and find cures for cancers and other illnesses.

These are some very controversial ideas proposed by the authors which can be interpreted many ways. I hope that in reading this, you are urged to read the article by Allen and Hunt and voice your opinion, Can slavery work ina modern society?

http://workers.labor.net.au/26/a_guestreporter_modest.html

How bad was slavery? What were the conditions like? How did this happen in America?

The idea of being enslaved day in and day out seems like it would be torturous enough, but slaveholders made life even worse for their “property.” Slaves in the U.S. were brutally beaten, subject to terrible conditions, and generally not given what are viewed as the basic rights of human life. The preamble of the United States Declaration of Independence states, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness." Here all men are created equal, yet slavery is permissible and terrible treatment of slaves is as well. Of course the fault with this argument is the definition of who qualifies as a man in 1776 America, which is naturally only landed white men. At this point in history to be a woman or to be non-white meant that the Declaration of Independence did not apply, and neither did the inalienable rights of humanity.

Since the slaves did not qualify as “man” at this point in time they were subject to brutality of different forms. In his narrative, Douglass refers to the rape and beating of his Aunt Hester. The scene Douglass describes includes not only whipping but also reveals the sexual relationship between Hester and her overseer: “Before he commenced whipping Aunt Hester, he took her into the kitchen, and stripped her from neck to waist, leaving her neck, shoulders, and back, entirely naked” (Douglass 52). Hester was punished for having a relationship with another slave instead of being the concubine of only Mr. Plummer. Women slaves were almost always abused sexually by their masters and overseers; this was a fact of life to these women as they had no means of escaping this sexual assault.

In addition to beatings for punishment and rape of women, slaves were forced to live in terrible conditions with barely the necessities to survive. Douglass describes the living conditions of the slaves in detail on pages 54 and 55. The bed they all shared was “the cold, damp floor” sharing few, coarse blankets. Additionally, clothing allowances were two linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, one jacket, one pair of winter trousers, and one pair of shoes. For children the clothing was even less; those unable to work in the fields were given only two shirts per year with nothing else. The food was meager, sleep time was barely enough to get fully rested, and there was definitely no time for leisure activities. Life as a slave was a repetitive and cruel existence. It seems hard to believe today that this sort of treatment was allowed in a country that prides itself on freedom and liberties for all men.

In my previous post I discussed that slavery was acceptable because of the supposed ignorance of the slaves, the curse put upon them by Noah, and the idea that they could not survive without the help of their white owners. The inability to gain knowledge was perpetuated by the lack of free time or resources available to the slaves to better themselves intellectually. True, this was the intention of the slave holders as “learning would spoil the best nigger in the world” (Douglass 78). The slaves were treated unfairly on so many levels it is hard to imagine putting up with that lifestyle and not choosing to take one’s own life instead. Intellectual suppression, rape, physical abuse, hellish living conditions- in some ways it is hard not to admire the slaves for their diligence in putting up with the ridiculous treatment they received. On a final note, the lives of slaves illustrate that life without liberty is no life at all.

How was slavery justified by the slaveholders? Had they no morals?

Why should its existence be prolonged one hour? Is it not evil, only evil, and that continually? What does its presence imply but the absence of all fear of God, all regard for man, on the part of the people of the United States? Heaven speed its eternal overthrow!
(Douglass 39)

Slavery is evil without a doubt, but from the perspective of the white American slaveholders it was justified. It seems hard to believe that enslavement- beatings, manual labor, rape, scant rations, and poor excuses for shelter- could be perceived as just by anyone. It was common for “good” Christians to use biblical quotations to substantiate their claim to morality. One argument used by southerners was that “God cursed Ham, and therefore American slavery is right” (Douglass 50). To understand this quote a little background on Ham may be necessary. Ham was Noah’s son, punished for seeing his father drunk and naked then telling his brothers about it. The punishment was a curse on Ham’s son Canaan and thus all descendants- some of which are “black”. The basic reasoning therefore is that African American slaves are cursed to be in such a miserable condition because they are the descendants of Ham.

In addition to using the Bible to justify their wrongs, slaveholders would proclaim a “natural inferiority” of those they enslaved (Douglass 36). Would it not seem natural for intelligence to be hindered by a lack of opportunity? Despite the fact that the slaves were never given a chance to better themselves intellectually, it was assumed that they were unable to learn. Working long hours in the fields, living on meager food stuffs, having barely any clothing or shelter, and no access to books, yet these people were expected to somehow show signs of intelligence. Without access to books or at least a teacher who possesses the knowledge, how could one possibly learn? Of course, however, the slaveholders overlooked these minor details, preferring to justify their behavior through false information.

Slaveholders not only believed that the people they enslaved were unintelligent, they also believed that they could not learn from their mistakes unless physical violence was involved. Unless there was blood dripping from and clotting on slave’s back after an infraction, most of the overseers would not be satisfied that their authority was safe. One maxim adopted by slaveholders was, “It is better that a dozen slaves suffer under the lash, than that the overseer should be convicted, in the presence of slaves, of having been at fault” (Douglass 65). Such drastic views on the brutality the slaves experienced was another fault of the slaveholders. Did these men really believe that even an unintelligent human could not be punished by some less violent means? This is a way that the slaves were compared to animals- animals must be broken by the use of whips. From the slaveholder’s perspective the slaves they owned had not the intelligence or sense enough to look out for their own well-being. They went so far as to say that slavery was beneficial to the African American men and women because they “could not survive without the help of the slave-owner” (Douglass 116). The slaveholders actually believed that without their “generosity” the slaves would bring about their own ruin through their lack of intelligence and common sense. They could even justify this in their minds by deceiving the slaves into this type of behavior at holidays by granting them free time then betting on a slave’s ability to drink more than another slave. The end result would be slaves that were so sick from drunkenness that they would believe “slavery to man better than to rum” (Douglass 115-116).

NOTE: Text Quoted from : Douglass, Frederick. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave. Ed. Houston A. Baker Jr. New York, New York: Penguin Classics, 1986.

How were slaves dehumanized and how could one regain their humanity?

How were slaves dehumanized and how could one regain their humanity?


“You have seen how a man was made a slave, you shall see how a slave was made a man” (Douglass, p. 107)

From the time a slave was born which was often the practice after 1808 when the slave trade ceased, the act of dehumanizing them began. As soon as out of the womb newly born slave babies were seperated from their mothers, the purpose of this as Frederick Douglass believed in his narrative was to, "hinder the development of the child's affection towards its mother, and to blunt and destroy the natural affection of the mother for the child. This is the inevitable result" (Douglass, p. 48). Another tactic was to not let slaves know their birthday or age, Douglass says, he cannot, "remember to have ever met a slave who could tell of his birthday" (Douglass, p.47). This was another way to maintain in slaves minds that they are less then human, and to the white man just economic capital and labor. Rape was another tactic used by slave owners to dehumanize their slaves, by breeding witht he women this brought down the esteem of bothe hte men women and confused children.

Possibly the greatest aspect of dehumanization in slavery however was not giving slaves the resources to develop literacy or intelligence. As Frederick Douglass told us in the narrative the slave holders knew exactly what they were doing by withholding education from the slaves, as Mr. Auld put it, “Learning would spoil the best nigger in the world. Now… if you teach that nigger…how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave” (pg. 78). It was here that Douglass realized how he was being suppressed and now had a visible goal to achieve that could help end his tenure as a slave and humanize him in the eyes of white culture.

Neither achieving education or becoming human in the eyes of whites came easy for Douglass, but the latter one he couldn’t control. He would give lectures and people wouldn’t believe his stories because he was too well spoken, such as in the narrative, “Many persons in the audience seemed unable to credit the statement which he gave of himself, and could not believe that he was actually a slave. How a man, only six years out of bondage, and who had never gone to school a day in his life, could speak with such eloquence-with such precision of language and power of thought- they were utterly at a loss to devise.” (pg. 19) It was these instances that reflect how little the public thought of slaves, for Douglass had become to similar to a white man, to ever be considered the same as a slave who was thought to be 3/5’s of man. To prove he was once a slave and had made the transition Douglass was lucky enough to just let his critics talk, “I indulge no animosity against the fabricators of the Narrative, neither do I know them, but I positively declare the whole to be a budget of falsehood, from beginning to end.” Thompson proclaimed himself a former inhabitant of the Eastern Shore and claimed an early acquaintance with the “recreant slave by the name of Frederick Bailey,” who, according to the author, was too uneducated to have produced a book like the Narrative. He further stated that persons represented in Douglass’s work as unimaginably malign were, to a man, generous, Christian, and humane individuals” (p. 21). These statements proved Douglass’s transition from slave to man to Thompson’s dismay, and confirmed Douglass’s story.

Through Douglass’s story it is clear to see how one could be broken down into nothing, and rise up like the phoenix to live a powerfully inspirational life.