Starting a new thread on socialism and slavery to end the F-16ing of my other thread.
I'll start off with what shouldn't have to be said, but will be said nonetheless. Socialism and slavery are both evils, and there are spectrums to those evils. In fact, on certain levels of the spectrum, socialism and slavery are indistinguishable. They both deny individuals full agency in their lives and place it in the hands of others "above" them.
As was noted on the other thread:
The vast majority of lynchings (in the horrible Emmitt Till vein, as you describe) occurred after slavery ended, and there is a direct correlation. When slaves were someone's property, there was a white man who was materially injured by the act. Slave owners protected their slaves, or the white community had pause to act because there was someone who might bring them to justice for it. The paternal connection, which was tied to slave owning, was much weaker in the post-slavery relationship of boss/tennant.
Because they are vastly different, and I will stand this ground until I die that nothing in human history compares to the holocaust. Just don't even try.
Slavery was an exploitative system of labor that resulted in maltreatment and oppression of the exploited victims, but was geared towards an economic output that trumped everything, including the maltreatment and oppression. That oppression, to the extent that it promoted the output or the system itself, was maintained. It was rarely pushed in excess of those goals, and was indeed constrained insofar as it began to erode them. Thus there is a check on behavior. A slave owner would in most cases no more kill a slave than you would put a bullet in the engine block of your $20,000 pickup. Corrective violence could be harsh (it usually was stepped up after repeat offenses), but never to the extent that it reduced the person's suitability for work or reduced the value of the slave. Slavery was evil, there is no doubt, but it was a constrained evil.
The holocaust, on the other hand, not only had no such constraints, but had counterpressures that actually worked in direct opposition to the goals of production. The proponents of slave labor production, be they the WVHA, Albert Speer, Organization Todt or whatever, wanted so many widgets (fuselage parts, ammunition, mess kits, etc.) produced under their contracts. The SS, however, was wedded to the idea of "annihilation through work." This is not simply working a slave until you get the last bit out of him (the sort of slavery of the west indies that you refered to), but a deliberate deprivation of food, medical care, and even the assignment of tasks that had no purpose at all but to break the bodies of the slaves.
Nothing like this ever occurred in slavery in the U.S. or even in Roman slavery, and though something like this did happen in Muslim slavery, even that was rare. The U.S. slave system was not built on racism. It was built on production and the racism was contributory. In the Nazi system, the reverse was true. They were going to kill the Jews, Gypsies, Jehova's Witnesses, etc. whether they ever made a dime or not.
Another way of looking at it: If the Southerners could have grown cotton with cheap Irish labor, they would have grown cotton with cheap Irish labor not African-Americans. In fact, their racism would have discouraged bringing over Africans if there was an alternative. But there was not. The single greatest reason African-Americans were enslaved in the New World was their physical characteristics, particularly their near immunity to malaria. There's a lot to be said on another thread sometime about the practical origins of slavery.
The Nazis, on the other hand, had decided to remove the Jews from their society, first by deportation, then by extermination. The slave owners had no such goals, even though they (and many abolitionists) turned to deportation as an option AFTER slavery. But this failing for the same practical grounds, outside of a few cases of outright murder (to which you refer), the vast majorty of slaves were accepted as members of the society (albeit at a very subservient level scarcely above slavery for many). There was no ethnic cleansing or wholesale destruction of African American communities, and really the only example on a large scale that comes close to that was Tulsa, many decades after the war. If there was a Tulsa happening in every state once a year, you could compare slavery and the holocaust. Otherwise it's two vastly different forms of evil.
I'll start off with what shouldn't have to be said, but will be said nonetheless. Socialism and slavery are both evils, and there are spectrums to those evils. In fact, on certain levels of the spectrum, socialism and slavery are indistinguishable. They both deny individuals full agency in their lives and place it in the hands of others "above" them.
As was noted on the other thread:
I would not call this a "level of insanity" for society, given that this is the historic baseline of every society in human history at some point. Whether it's cavemen, Rwanda or the United States in its early days, ALL societies have this as hard-wired in their DNA. It is the alternative, the idea of pluralism, which is a modern innovation.Quote:
I think what you are missing is the level of insanity that society has to get to to think casting one group of humans as lesser than another and should be subjugated to the whims of the "superior" group.
This is historical nonsense. Generally, lynching, as a phenomenon targeting African-Americans specifically, DID NOT HAPPEN during the period of slavery. It began AFTER emancipation. Obviously, there are exceptions, but of the documented lynchings in the United States before 1866, only 6 of 10 were African-Americans, the rest were whites. All were for murder, assault or rape. None was connected to a slavery-related crime. Now, the disparity shows that African-Americans were disproportionately subject to lynchings because no one cared about due process for them, but these were very different than you suggest.Quote:
Or a person trying to escape for their freedom, but was caught and lynched and dismembered just to be a warning for any other enslaved person in the area.
The vast majority of lynchings (in the horrible Emmitt Till vein, as you describe) occurred after slavery ended, and there is a direct correlation. When slaves were someone's property, there was a white man who was materially injured by the act. Slave owners protected their slaves, or the white community had pause to act because there was someone who might bring them to justice for it. The paternal connection, which was tied to slave owning, was much weaker in the post-slavery relationship of boss/tennant.
This is absolutely true, but we only have post-slavery narratives, not during slavery narratives. Meaning, they didn't really know or understand freedom until they got it.Quote:
But, i also heard them say that they would take freedom over any of the things they had when they were enslaved.
The irony of asking this question in the context of socialism is rich. Obviously, no one would "be okay" with being an exploited field hand, but if you were a house slave or slave carpenter, slave mason, etc. (of which there were quite a few), and you had a relatively (compared to those around you) simple life applying your trade, with someone paying for your food, housing you, etc. then we've seen that people are very content to having someone else constrain their lives. I'm with you that I'd never want that, but when the oppression is much less overt and more subtle, people seem to be fine with it.Quote:
This is also one of those things that should be obvious, but just in case there are any apologist out there, what would it take for you to be okay with being a slave to another?
Actually, you've got a lot of historical falsehoods in here. Slave owners indeed had lots of incentives. First of all, you seem to fall into the trap of thinking like so many do, that all slaves are farm hands. This is not true. They had incentives, to be sure. They could get liberty, they could get priviledges. Andrew Jackson even let some of his slaves take firearms and go hunt squirrels. But when you come to the more specialized slaves, the carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. they could even sell their wares. It is not true that the slave owners owned every ounce of their labor. That could happen, but frequently, they were given the option of hiring themselves out when they were not otherwise engaged, and some of them made good money. Indeed, some made enough to buy their freedom. This was of course, the exception, but the inefficiency of unfree labor was noted very early on and commented on, and the more liberal of slave owners sought ways to overcome it.Quote:
How does a slaveowner encourage his enslaved people to produce more? What is the incentive? Wages were minimal to none. the ultimate incentive was emancipation, but overall was very rare.
Not necessarily, as the above example shows. When you give a slave 5 acres to grow his own crops, that doesn't "cut into profits" unless those crops are harvested simultaneously to yours. There is a reason that African Americans didn't starve after slavery. Even though their farms were generally devoted to non-food crops like cotton or tobacco, they had plenty of experience with food crops like corn, beans, potatoes, etc. Most of this came from their own plots they had gardened with the consent of their owners.Quote:
Those who did not, found their rights extremely limited. Slave owners could promise more rations or slightly better living conditions, but anything more starts to heavily cut into profits.
(For context, since I've pulled this from another thread, this is referring to concentration camps vs. slavery).Quote:
. I just do not understand why you would not say that both examples of slave labor are horrible versions of society without trying to pit one against the other.
Because they are vastly different, and I will stand this ground until I die that nothing in human history compares to the holocaust. Just don't even try.
Slavery was an exploitative system of labor that resulted in maltreatment and oppression of the exploited victims, but was geared towards an economic output that trumped everything, including the maltreatment and oppression. That oppression, to the extent that it promoted the output or the system itself, was maintained. It was rarely pushed in excess of those goals, and was indeed constrained insofar as it began to erode them. Thus there is a check on behavior. A slave owner would in most cases no more kill a slave than you would put a bullet in the engine block of your $20,000 pickup. Corrective violence could be harsh (it usually was stepped up after repeat offenses), but never to the extent that it reduced the person's suitability for work or reduced the value of the slave. Slavery was evil, there is no doubt, but it was a constrained evil.
The holocaust, on the other hand, not only had no such constraints, but had counterpressures that actually worked in direct opposition to the goals of production. The proponents of slave labor production, be they the WVHA, Albert Speer, Organization Todt or whatever, wanted so many widgets (fuselage parts, ammunition, mess kits, etc.) produced under their contracts. The SS, however, was wedded to the idea of "annihilation through work." This is not simply working a slave until you get the last bit out of him (the sort of slavery of the west indies that you refered to), but a deliberate deprivation of food, medical care, and even the assignment of tasks that had no purpose at all but to break the bodies of the slaves.
Nothing like this ever occurred in slavery in the U.S. or even in Roman slavery, and though something like this did happen in Muslim slavery, even that was rare. The U.S. slave system was not built on racism. It was built on production and the racism was contributory. In the Nazi system, the reverse was true. They were going to kill the Jews, Gypsies, Jehova's Witnesses, etc. whether they ever made a dime or not.
Another way of looking at it: If the Southerners could have grown cotton with cheap Irish labor, they would have grown cotton with cheap Irish labor not African-Americans. In fact, their racism would have discouraged bringing over Africans if there was an alternative. But there was not. The single greatest reason African-Americans were enslaved in the New World was their physical characteristics, particularly their near immunity to malaria. There's a lot to be said on another thread sometime about the practical origins of slavery.
The Nazis, on the other hand, had decided to remove the Jews from their society, first by deportation, then by extermination. The slave owners had no such goals, even though they (and many abolitionists) turned to deportation as an option AFTER slavery. But this failing for the same practical grounds, outside of a few cases of outright murder (to which you refer), the vast majorty of slaves were accepted as members of the society (albeit at a very subservient level scarcely above slavery for many). There was no ethnic cleansing or wholesale destruction of African American communities, and really the only example on a large scale that comes close to that was Tulsa, many decades after the war. If there was a Tulsa happening in every state once a year, you could compare slavery and the holocaust. Otherwise it's two vastly different forms of evil.
