5 ms·

Capitalism and Slavery

24 points by benbreen 12y ago

nickff 12y ago
There is a great deal of evidence that slavery was related to cotton, sugar, and rice plantations (as well as some other crops to a lesser extent). One could also make a very convincing, if not definitive argument that imperialism enabled slavery (at the intercontinental scale), and that mercantilism supported it. Politics, as played by wealthy landowners and slave-traders also perpetuated slavery, as can most easily be seen from the (abominable) actions of the American House of Burgesses.[1] There is very little evidence for the argument that capitalism or free trade was responsible for slavery. Economics was called "the dismal science" precisely because its critics thought the proponents of free markets were not taking a (racist) vision of 'social justice' seriously.[2] Later on in the American South, the bus and streetcar companies tried to segregate busses on the basis of smoking and non-smoking sections, but politicians and racist groups forced them to segregate based on race. In South Africa during the aparteid, businesses were taken to task for not discriminating strongly enough against the Africans, and many groups such as socialists and unions held racist policies as a tentpole of their platforms. There are innumberable cases of the market acting against slavery, and even Smith described markets as notable for their lack of nationalism or discrimination.[3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations
- bobcostas55 12y ago
  >There is very little evidence for the argument that capitalism or free trade was responsible for slavery. Not only that; they were and are diametrically opposed. The Beckert quote implies a connection between slavery and industrialization when in fact the relationship was an inverse one. A comparison between the confederacy and the north is illuminating. The concentration of wealth in slaves and land prevented industrialization during the 19th century, and the south fell very far behind economically. I think it's worth nothing that the vast majority of white people in the south were worse off because of slavery, because the system prevented capital from being allocated efficiently. And while the two areas have converged, differences still remain today.
  - danbruc 12y ago
    What? Having slaves pick cotton is as capitalist as it can get. You own the land, they do the work, you get the profit. That slaves are not as effective as tractors really doesn't matter for that. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)
    - grinnbearit 12y ago
      I got into a long discussion with eli_gottlieb here but I don't think either of us got the answers we were looking for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125
      - danbruc 12y ago
        I read your discussion there, let me pick one of your early comments. It does this (in general) by giving points to people who satisfy other people's values and proportional to how much they satisfy them. These points can be used to satisfy their own values after and this creates a feedback loop of value satisfaction. IMO a very good thing. If I understand you correctly, you think that what Adam Smith explained with the invisible hand, that all individuals pursuing their best interests will usually result in a beneficial situation for society as a whole, is true. If that is the case I have to disagree, otherwise just ignore the rest of the comment. There is nothing that justifies this assumption, if everyone just tries to maximize its individual gain there is no force that will ensure that gains for society as a whole are simultaneously maximized. Let's just stick with the topic of the article, slavery. If a few people exploit the workforce of a large number of slaves they surly maximize their personal gains but you can hardly argue that it leads to a good overall situation. By the way, I want to avoid the moral discussion and will just take it for granted that we agree that a world in which the slaves are not slaves but receive a fair compensation for their work is a better world.
        grinnbearit 12y ago
        > that all individuals pursuing their best interests will usually result in a beneficial situation for society as a whole, The very next sentence I wrote disagrees. > Of course there are problems, every system has winners and losers and thats why we have taxation and welfare, to smooth out some of the issues. The choice of capitalism depends on moral subjectivity, its a necessary part of the discussion. As I said before, capitalism is a type 2 system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338441 At the end of the discussion I asked a question that eli_gottlieb didn't get around to answering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9345477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9345477 This was specific to economic democracy but you can replace that with any other alternative system, the question would still apply and be interesting.
yummyfajitas 12y ago
I'm confused by the argument made here. An economic system fairly different from the modern world, which was not called capitalism at the time ("capitalism" is mainly an 1880's+ idea), used slaves. Slavery was abolished and later that system evolved into capitalism. I'm not sure what the conclusion is. The author seems to think someone forgot about slavery, though it's unclear who. As a counterpoint to the mood affiliation, I'll just remind everyone here that the term "dismal science" was coined by Thomas Carlyle, who favored slavery rather than "find[ing] the secret of this Universe in 'supply and demand,' and reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > I'm confused by the argument made here. An economic system fairly different from the modern world, which was not called capitalism at the time ("capitalism" is mainly an 1880's+ idea), used slaves. Slavery was abolished and later that system evolved into capitalism. Capitalism was a term coined in the late 19th Century to refer to the post-feudal economic system that developed through several centuries and was in full swing by the mid-19th century, and overlapped considerably with the use of chattel slavery. While its critics hadn't yet called it "capitalism", the system which they did get around to calling "capitalism" did not evolve only after the abolition of slavery as you claim.
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I don't dispute that old-school market economies involved the use of slavery. I just don't know what the point of the article is, beyond perhaps attempting to affiliate "slavery" and "capitalist" moods in our mind.
pnut 12y ago
Thank god for robots and computers, 'cuz capitalism isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.
- danbruc 12y ago
  Well, robots and computers did nothing to prevent capitalism from enslaving its workforce, they might actually have made the situation worse. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)
webXL 12y ago
> Despite all this scholarly work, each generation—from W.E.B. Du Bois to Robin Blackburn, from Eric Williams to Walter Johnson—seems condemned to have to prove the obvious anew: Slavery created the modern world, and the modern world’s divisions (both abstract and concrete) are the product of slavery. Slavery is both the thing that can’t be transcended but also what can never be remembered. That Catch-22—can’t forget, can’t remember—is the motor contradiction of public discourse, from exalted discussions of American Exceptionalism to the everyday idiocy found on cable, in its coverage, for example, of Baltimore and Ferguson. The sins of our fathers... Just because racism and violence still exist today does not mean we're all ignorant of the sins our ancestors committed and should abolish an economic system that tangentially benefitted. And this is not a modern phenomenon, as he seems to imply. This country was one of the first to abolish slavery. What occurred in this country's brief history pales in comparison to the brutality that came before it. Slavery is institutionalized theft, organized crime. It is the opposite of free trade and capitalism. Sure, self-proclaimed "capitalists" owned slaves, but that shouldn't impugn the whole system. Please tell me, what other economic system has lifted billions out of poverty?
- AnimalMuppet 12y ago
  While we're at it, please note that slavery existed for millenia before capitalism (at least before our western form of it).
- danbruc 12y ago
  Capitalism is still a form of slavery were the capitalists benefit from the workforce disproportionally with regard to their investment. And what lifts people out of poverty is work, not an economic system. Capitalism is of course very effective at organizing the environment in a way to enable highly productive work but suggesting that this is a unique feature of capitalism seems hardly justified, we just didn't explore many alternatives. Finally judging capitalism by the number of people it lifted out of poverty seems also misguided to me, there are a lot of people that were negatively affected by capitalism. And a fair comparison should of course not compare the result achieved by capitalism with the situation before capitalism but with the - unfortunately mostly counterfactual - result achieved by an alternative system that started from the same initial conditions. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)

24 points by benbreen 12y ago

There is a great deal of evidence that slavery was related to cotton, sugar, and rice plantations (as well as some other crops to a lesser extent). One could also make a very convincing, if not definitive argument that imperialism enabled slavery (at the intercontinental scale), and that mercantilism supported it. Politics, as played by wealthy landowners and slave-traders also perpetuated slavery, as can most easily be seen from the (abominable) actions of the American House of Burgesses.[1] There is very little evidence for the argument that capitalism or free trade was responsible for slavery. Economics was called "the dismal science" precisely because its critics thought the proponents of free markets were not taking a (racist) vision of 'social justice' seriously.[2] Later on in the American South, the bus and streetcar companies tried to segregate busses on the basis of smoking and non-smoking sections, but politicians and racist groups forced them to segregate based on race. In South Africa during the aparteid, businesses were taken to task for not discriminating strongly enough against the Africans, and many groups such as socialists and unions held racist policies as a tentpole of their platforms. There are innumberable cases of the market acting against slavery, and even Smith described markets as notable for their lack of nationalism or discrimination.[3] [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slave_codes [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations

bobcostas55 12y ago
>There is very little evidence for the argument that capitalism or free trade was responsible for slavery. Not only that; they were and are diametrically opposed. The Beckert quote implies a connection between slavery and industrialization when in fact the relationship was an inverse one. A comparison between the confederacy and the north is illuminating. The concentration of wealth in slaves and land prevented industrialization during the 19th century, and the south fell very far behind economically. I think it's worth nothing that the vast majority of white people in the south were worse off because of slavery, because the system prevented capital from being allocated efficiently. And while the two areas have converged, differences still remain today.
- danbruc 12y ago
  What? Having slaves pick cotton is as capitalist as it can get. You own the land, they do the work, you get the profit. That slaves are not as effective as tractors really doesn't matter for that. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)
  - grinnbearit 12y ago
    I got into a long discussion with eli_gottlieb here but I don't think either of us got the answers we were looking for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9335125
    - danbruc 12y ago
      I read your discussion there, let me pick one of your early comments. It does this (in general) by giving points to people who satisfy other people's values and proportional to how much they satisfy them. These points can be used to satisfy their own values after and this creates a feedback loop of value satisfaction. IMO a very good thing. If I understand you correctly, you think that what Adam Smith explained with the invisible hand, that all individuals pursuing their best interests will usually result in a beneficial situation for society as a whole, is true. If that is the case I have to disagree, otherwise just ignore the rest of the comment. There is nothing that justifies this assumption, if everyone just tries to maximize its individual gain there is no force that will ensure that gains for society as a whole are simultaneously maximized. Let's just stick with the topic of the article, slavery. If a few people exploit the workforce of a large number of slaves they surly maximize their personal gains but you can hardly argue that it leads to a good overall situation. By the way, I want to avoid the moral discussion and will just take it for granted that we agree that a world in which the slaves are not slaves but receive a fair compensation for their work is a better world.
      - grinnbearit 12y ago
        > that all individuals pursuing their best interests will usually result in a beneficial situation for society as a whole, The very next sentence I wrote disagrees. > Of course there are problems, every system has winners and losers and thats why we have taxation and welfare, to smooth out some of the issues. The choice of capitalism depends on moral subjectivity, its a necessary part of the discussion. As I said before, capitalism is a type 2 system. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9338441 At the end of the discussion I asked a question that eli_gottlieb didn't get around to answering. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9345477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9345477 This was specific to economic democracy but you can replace that with any other alternative system, the question would still apply and be interesting.

yummyfajitas 12y ago

I'm confused by the argument made here. An economic system fairly different from the modern world, which was not called capitalism at the time ("capitalism" is mainly an 1880's+ idea), used slaves. Slavery was abolished and later that system evolved into capitalism. I'm not sure what the conclusion is. The author seems to think someone forgot about slavery, though it's unclear who. As a counterpoint to the mood affiliation, I'll just remind everyone here that the term "dismal science" was coined by Thomas Carlyle, who favored slavery rather than "find[ing] the secret of this Universe in 'supply and demand,' and reducing the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dismal_science

dragonwriter 12y ago
> I'm confused by the argument made here. An economic system fairly different from the modern world, which was not called capitalism at the time ("capitalism" is mainly an 1880's+ idea), used slaves. Slavery was abolished and later that system evolved into capitalism. Capitalism was a term coined in the late 19th Century to refer to the post-feudal economic system that developed through several centuries and was in full swing by the mid-19th century, and overlapped considerably with the use of chattel slavery. While its critics hadn't yet called it "capitalism", the system which they did get around to calling "capitalism" did not evolve only after the abolition of slavery as you claim.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  I don't dispute that old-school market economies involved the use of slavery. I just don't know what the point of the article is, beyond perhaps attempting to affiliate "slavery" and "capitalist" moods in our mind.

pnut 12y ago

Thank god for robots and computers, 'cuz capitalism isn't going anywhere, anytime soon.

danbruc 12y ago
Well, robots and computers did nothing to prevent capitalism from enslaving its workforce, they might actually have made the situation worse. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)

webXL 12y ago

> Despite all this scholarly work, each generation—from W.E.B. Du Bois to Robin Blackburn, from Eric Williams to Walter Johnson—seems condemned to have to prove the obvious anew: Slavery created the modern world, and the modern world’s divisions (both abstract and concrete) are the product of slavery. Slavery is both the thing that can’t be transcended but also what can never be remembered. That Catch-22—can’t forget, can’t remember—is the motor contradiction of public discourse, from exalted discussions of American Exceptionalism to the everyday idiocy found on cable, in its coverage, for example, of Baltimore and Ferguson. The sins of our fathers... Just because racism and violence still exist today does not mean we're all ignorant of the sins our ancestors committed and should abolish an economic system that tangentially benefitted. And this is not a modern phenomenon, as he seems to imply. This country was one of the first to abolish slavery. What occurred in this country's brief history pales in comparison to the brutality that came before it. Slavery is institutionalized theft, organized crime. It is the opposite of free trade and capitalism. Sure, self-proclaimed "capitalists" owned slaves, but that shouldn't impugn the whole system. Please tell me, what other economic system has lifted billions out of poverty?

AnimalMuppet 12y ago
While we're at it, please note that slavery existed for millenia before capitalism (at least before our western form of it).
danbruc 12y ago
Capitalism is still a form of slavery were the capitalists benefit from the workforce disproportionally with regard to their investment. And what lifts people out of poverty is work, not an economic system. Capitalism is of course very effective at organizing the environment in a way to enable highly productive work but suggesting that this is a unique feature of capitalism seems hardly justified, we just didn't explore many alternatives. Finally judging capitalism by the number of people it lifted out of poverty seems also misguided to me, there are a lot of people that were negatively affected by capitalism. And a fair comparison should of course not compare the result achieved by capitalism with the situation before capitalism but with the - unfortunately mostly counterfactual - result achieved by an alternative system that started from the same initial conditions. Fun fact: I always get my share of down votes for being critical of capitalism but no one attacks my position in a response. Do you have no arguments? (provocative face)