Realizing the Aristocrat’s Dream: Universal Slavery

Following up on that last post regarding slavery and the Civil War, it’d be nice to think that now – as we deal with issues of vast inequality and as the 1% circle their wagons and start calling up their lobbyists, their political donors, and their congressmen – the idea of democracy will once again win out over America’s de facto aristocracy.  But perhaps it will go the other way.  After all, America’s aristocracy is doing great right now.  How long before they reinstate a de facto slavery too? 

Maybe not too long at all.  Marie Diamond at ThinkProgress  had a post on Tuesday catching up on what is happening in Alabama now that its “stop and show your papers, schnell!” anti-immigrant law has gone into effect and most of its farm labor has abandoned the state.  Turns out, Alabama’s got a two word solution to that little problem:  prison labor.    

 And as Diamond reports, Alabama isn’t alone:

Replacing skilled workers with virtually free (and sometimes actually free) prison laborers has become a trend in Republican-led states.  Under Gov. Scott Walker’s (R-WI) anti-collective bargaining law, at least one Wisconsin county replaced some union workers with prison labor.  And Georgia is considering replacing firefighters with prisoners to save money. (emphasis added)

So there you have it.  The Party of the 1% is destroying the unions (their political enemies) and replacing skilled workers with free prison labor.  They are driving out the immigrant work force that makes their agricultural industry so profitable and then – rather than allow free market forces to drive up labor costs and cut into that industry’s profits – they’re replacing that work force with free prison labor. 

And the next time you need to be rescued from a burning building, remember that the guy who’s supposed to run in and get you knows that he isn’t getting paid for risking his life; sure, it might impact his motivation a little, but rest assured that the money the state saves will more than make up for your subsequent death and/or severe disfigurement.

Of course, this is an old story in American history.  After slavery was legally abolished, the Confederate states created Black Codes that criminalized “vagrancy,” “loitering,” or simply being on the street without written proof of employment.  Convicted blacks were sentenced to prison, where their labor could be sold off to the same plantation owners for whom they originally had worked as slaves and for whom they now would continue to toil under slave-like conditions.

So I guess my only questions are:  (i) How long before the Republican-led states start handing down 360-day jail terms for jaywalking or for driving without a seatbelt? and (ii) Will 21^st-century America finally realize the 19^th-century South’s dream of the universal enslavement of poor people?

Progress!

Aristocracy and Slavery vs. Democracy and Freedom

In The Atlantic’s special issue commemorating the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, Ta-Nehisi Coates has an article titled “Why Do So Few Blacks Study the Civil War?”  Coates is an amateur Civil War scholar and he devotes the article in large part to refuting the convenient fiction that the Civil War was fought over anything other than the issue of slavery.  It really is very good and I highly recommend clicking over to read it. 

This passage in particular caught my attention:

The Civil War marks the first great defense of democracy and the modern West.  Its legacy lies in everything from women’s suffrage to the revolutions now sweeping the Middle East.  It was during the Civil War that the heady principles of the Enlightenment were first, and most spectacularly, called fully to account.

In our present time, to express the view of the enslaved – to say that the Civil War was a significant battle in the long war against bondage and for government by the people – is to compromise the comfortable narrative.  It is to remind us that some of our own forefathers once explicitly rejected the republic to which they’d pledged themselves, and dreamed up another country, with slavery not merely as a bug, but as its very premise.  (emphasis added)

No doubt that this resonated with me because I am still working my way through Colin Woodard’s American Nations. 

AsI mentioned when I first started reading the book, Woodard argues that from the very start the country was divided by the northern states’ Germanic idea of “Freiheit” and the southern states’ Latin idea of “libertas.”  Essentially, Freiheit (“freedom”) held that all people are born free and equal before the law, that they all possess at least certain minimal rights that have to be mutually respected, and that they are capable of self-governance.  Conversely, libertas (“liberty”) held that most people are born into bondage, that liberties are granted as a privilege, that most people are not capable of self-governance, and that only a very few, governing elite could or should enjoy the full blessings of liberty.

Woodard returns to this theme in his chapter outlining how the states subsequently split over the issue of slavery.  Woodard shows that the secessionist states most wedded to the concept of libertas had embraced it in order to justify their slaveholding, and this embrace inexorably led them to the idea that even more people should be enslaved:

There is no question that the Deep South seceded and fought the Civil War to defend slavery, and its leaders made no secret of this motive.  Slavery, they argued ad nauseum, was the foundation for a virtuous, biblically sanctioned social system superior to that of the free states.

When nineteenth-century Deep Southerners spoke of defending their “traditions,” “heritage,” and “way of life,” they proudly identified the enslavement of others as the centerpiece of all three.  Indeed, many of their leaders even argued that all lower-class people should be enslaved, regardless of race, for their own good.

. . . .  James Henry Hammond, former governor of South Carolina, published  a seminal book arguing that enslaved laborers were happier, fitter, and better looked after than their “free” counterparts in Britain and the North, who were ruthlessly exploited by industrial capitalists.  Free societies were therefore unstable, as there was always a danger that the exploited would rise up, creating “a fearful crisis in Republican institutions.”  Slaves, by contrast, were kept in their place by violent means and denied the right to vote, resist, or testify, ensuring the “foundation of every well-designed and durable” republic.  Enslavement of the white working class would be, in his words, “a most glorious act of emancipation.”

[snip]

George Fitzhugh, scion of one of Virginia’s oldest families, became the [Tidewater] region’s proslavery standard-bearer.  In his voluminous writings, Fitzhugh endorsed and expanded upon Hammond’s argument to enslave all poor people.  Aristocrats, he explained, were really “the nation’s magna carta” because they owned so much and had the “affection which all men feel for what belongs to them,” which naturally led them to protect and provide for “wives, children, and slaves.”  Fitzhugh, whose books were enormously popular, declared he was “quite as intent on abolishing Free Society as you [Northerners] are on abolishing slavery.”

Placed within this historical context, Coates’s statement that the Civil War called the very principles of the Enlightenment into account by requiring that violent action be taken against bondage and in favor of self-governance seems all the more exact.  The Civil War was the most violent conflict in the eternal political struggle between – in Jefferson’s words – “aristocrats and democrats,” and in 1865 the idea of democracy won by sheer force of arms.

OWS: Liberty vs. Freedom

Real Life stuff and trying to keep up with what is going on with the Occupy movement has delayed me getting into American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, but I picked it up again yesterday. 

The author, Colin Woodard, begins by describing in chronological order the origin of the oldest of these cultures: El Norte (the northern portion of Spain’s American empire, essentially a 100 mile strip running along the modern U.S./Mexico border and – at the time – up into California), New France (the settlement of eastern Canada and, as an outpost and afterthought, Louisiana), Tidewater (English planters in Maryland, Virginia, southern Delaware, and northern North Carolina), and Yankeedom (the New England states, especially after the Puritans’ Massachusetts Bay Colony established dominion over them following Cromwell’s victory in the English Civil War).

In his description of the Tidewater culture, Woodard begins foreshadowing the United States’ own Civil War by offering a cultural/historical explanation for the starkly different traditions that would develop between the states.  He describes 17^th century Tidewater as essentially nothing more than a place of huge manorial estates without a single actual town to be found there.  He explains that each such estate was in essence a perfect fiefdom, in which the planter whose estate it was had complete and absolutely authority – including that of life and death – over all persons.

He then attempts to explain how a culture of such authoritarianism could produce champions of republicanism like Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison. 

American Aristocracy Update

About six weeks ago I wrote a quick post reflecting on American society's apparent desire to create an aristocracy.  I pointed out that those in power tend to sniff at social climbers who "rise above their station" but, once one has elevated oneself to a position of prestige, power or great wealth, one's children are automatically treated as royalty:

Who can forget David Broder’s famous exclamation over Clinton’s infamous personal failing with Monica Lewinsky:  “He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place.” (emphasis added)  Or DC doyenne Sally Quinn’s eight-year personal feud with the Clintons after First Lady Hillary committed the unpardonable snub of failing to attend one of Quinn’s luncheons when the Clintons first came to town in 1993?  Sure, one can imagine the establishment hacks thinking, they may be the President and First Lady, but let’s remember – they’re from Arkansas, and have no real money.  They’re not really one of us.

Of course, the Clintons have since moved into the rarefied strata of the landed gentry.  They’ve been around long enough – and have gotten rich enough – that were Chelsea or her inevitable brood to decide to get politically involved she (or they) would be welcomed with open arms.  Just as were George W. Bush, Lisa Murkowski, and Luke Russert.  I have a picture in my head of the Villagers gathered around Sally Quinn's table like the cast in Tod Browning’s Freaks, and all of them chanting “One of us.  One of us.  One of us.”

Well, what can I say?  Sometimes I am prescient.  Today we learn that NBC News has hired Chelsea Clinton to be a full-time special correspondent.

Don't get me wrong . . . I have nothing against Chelsea Clinton personally.  From everything I hear, she is an intelligent, poised, charming young woman.  Certainly, her education at Stanford, Oxford, Columbia and New York University indicate that she isn't brain-dead.  But that education has been in history and public policy.  And while it is great that she can bring some actual - albeit theoretical - knowledge to her new position as Special  Correspondent for one of the Big Three Network News Channels, let's not lose sight of the fact that she apparently has no journalistic experience whatsoever.

Now, it may very well be that Clinton ends up doing a bang-up job in this new gig.  But can anyone actually suggest with a straight face that she wouldn't even have been considered for this position if it weren't for her parentage?

What I find so insidious about little anecdotes like this is that so few people report on what is actually happening.  The politically powerful become rich, the people reporting on the politically powerful become rich, and the children of the politically powerful become both rich and the people reporting on the politically powerful.  (See, e.g., not only Chelsea Clinton, but also Jenna Bush, who is a correspondent for NBC's "Today" show, and Meghan McCain, who is a contributor at MSNBC).

Not only is American society flat-out engineering a ruling class (something that should be anathema to the idea of the United States), not only is the creation of this ruling class likely to result in even greater epistemic closure than already exists, but nobody is even remarking on this fact, nobody thinks this is surprising at all, it just seems to be accepted that "this is the way it is" now.

Surely I'm not the only person who finds this troubling?

I Consider this Occupy Wall Street Video a Personal Smear

Maybe America never had a real aristocracy, but it seems many of us badly want to grovel in front of one.

                        --Me

I still think that is fundamentally correct.  I think there is a large percentage of people in any population who are what Professor Bob Altemeyer refers to as “Right-Wing Authoritarians,” which means they demonstrate the following traits:  (i) a high degree of submission to the established authorities in their society; (ii) high levels of aggression in the name of those authorities; and (iii) a high level of conventionalism. 

(Note:  “right-wing” - in this case - merely means supportive of the established authority; a right-wing authoritarian in the old USSR would have been a Communist.  As used by Altemeyer, “right-wing” has nothing to do with the political spectrum, and everything to do with supporting the existing power structure.  Professor Altemeyer’s book The Authoritarians is available to read on-line, and for free, here.  I really cannot recommend it enough.)

Of Clinton and Comic Books

I’ve mentioned before, once or twice, that I am something of a comic book fanboy from way back.  So I was predisposed to click over (when I saw via Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress)  that Julian Sanchez recently put up an extremely interesting post titled CEOs in Comics:  Villains Earn, Heroes Inherit.

Basically, Sanchez points out that in American comic book mythology most of the billionaire/monarch superheroes – e.g., Bruce Wayne (Batman), Oliver Queen (Green Arrow), King T’Challa (Black Panther), Princess Diana (Wonder Woman) – were born to their wealth and position.  This is in stark contrast to the billionaire/monarch villains – Lex Luthor, Wilson Fisk (Kingpin), Norman Osborn (Green Goblin), Victor Von Doom (Doctor Doom) – who had to work and strive to achieve their success.

Sanchez argues this reflects “that the hero must wield enormous power in order to effectively perform the superheroic function, but cannot seem to seek it too eagerly, even for admirable ends.”  This is why other fabulously rich superheroes such as the Fantastic Four’s Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards), Stark Industries’ Iron Man (Tony Stark), and Kord Industries’ Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) -- who actually did achieve riches without necessarily being born to them -- are always shown to have achieved that wealth merely as a byproduct of their sheer inventive genius.  They weren’t looking to get rich, it’s just that they were so gosh-darned smart they couldn’t help doing so.

What interests Sanchez is that this dichotomy in America’s superhero mythos seems to run directly counter to what Americans outwardly tell ourselves we really value:  the self-made man, the striver, the achiever.  Sanchez points out that

[w]hile the pattern in comics inverts the meritocratic ideal that seems to rule in most modern American fiction, it fits quite naturally with a pre-capitalist aristocratic ethos, which persisted at least through the early 20^th century in the form of Old Money’s contempt for the nouveau riche.  Jane Jacobs, in her book Systems of Survival, contrasted this aristocratic view, which she dubs the “Guardian” moral complex, with “bourgeois” or “mercantile” ethics.  In this worldview, while wealth and the leisure time it affords may be necessary conditions of cultivating certain noble qualities . . . the grubby business of acquiring money is inherently corrupting.  The ideal noble needs to have wealth, while being too refined to be much concerned with becoming wealthy.  (emphasis in the original)

I think there is probably something to this insight – with respect to both how it applies to the American comic book mythos and how it reflects upon American society in general. 

Thomas Jefferson vs. Lazarus Long

A great deal has been written both in the blogosphere and in the mainstream press about the GOP’s recent adventures in restricting American citizens from exercising their fundamental right to vote.  Of course, the GOP has for years raised phantom charges of “voter fraud” to justify things like requiring voters to present photo IDs before voting . . . despite the fact no evidence of any significant (or even insignificant) voter fraud has ever been presented.  As Bill Maher once pointed out, “We’re America, we don’t vote.  What’s next, you’re gonna pass a law to prevent people from wrongfully showing up for jury duty?”

 

But with the Republican tsunami of 2010 – especially in state races – and as very nicely summarized in this diary by The Troubadour, they’ve since cranked their efforts to restrict voting rights up to Eleven.  And all of these efforts, of course, work to the Republicans’ electoral advantage because all of these measures tend to have the most restrictive impact on minorities, the poor, and college students – you know, groups most likely to vote for a Democrat.

But I’m fairly convinced that this isn’t the only reason the GOP has embraced these vote restriction measures as fervently as they have.  Oh sure, obtaining an electoral advantage by denying your opponent’s supporters the right to vote is nice, but it’s especially nice for the GOP because the Conservative mindset doesn’t believe in democracy.  Instead, the Conservative mindset holds that only the “right sort of people” should be allowed to vote and – coincidentally enough – if you are someone who doesn’t feel like voting for the Conservatives then you, my friend, are not the “right sort of people.”