site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   29308 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 6, 2023

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

11
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I know that slavery was integral to the economy of the southern states, but when people say "slavery built America", it seems like they're implying that it was integral to the northern states, too. My biases, which I am actively seeking to counteract, tell me that anyone who says slavery built America is ignoring history.. but y'know, I don't actually know that much about history. I just remember learning in high school that the southern economy was agricultural and sustained by unpaid labor, while the north wasn't agricultural and didn't have any financial need for slavery.

How important was slavery to the north, financially speaking? If the textile factories weren't able to get cotton from the south, would they have ceased to be, or would they have just gotten cotton elsewhere? (Like from overseas?)

Not very. The idea that the south wouldn’t have been able to produce cotton without black slavery is risible, and the idea that northern states relied on southern cotton for their GDP advantage at any point during the period of slavery is equally risible.

Free states had land use regulations written to maximize large, owner occupied farms- probably the most productive arrangement possible in the early 19th century. In other words, kulaks. This is notable from puritan New England on and generated a large surplus that could be invested in things like shipyards and later mills(which could have been supplied with cotton raised via sharecropping, and indeed were historically after the end of slavery. The malaria belt in the south mostly grew rice, not cotton, and there are distinct African American populations descended from slaves who lived in those areas.)

The same process was ongoing in Quebec prior to British rule but quashed by living under mercantilism much longer than New England. Kulak settler colonialism is a really good deal and the south choosing not to do this set them back.

Other commenters are missing the point of GDP by labeling slavery as non-investment spending. Money changed hands, so someone saw material benefit from slavery. The question is whom. These foreign trade charts suggest we mostly exported crude materials until the late 1800s, but it wasn’t much of our GDP. On the other hand, this essay notes that US cotton provided something like 75% of British textiles. That’s potentially a lot of money flowing into the US.

But I suspect it’s a moot point. “Built on slavery” has legs because of the ideological gap between American founding principles and the peculiar institution. It’s an attack on Jefferson, Washington, etc. who saw personal benefit. Any overall economic effect is less important given the particular reverence of the American right for these figures.

It’s an attack on Jefferson, Washington, etc. who saw personal benefit.

I would be somewhat more charitable. "Slavery built America" is best understood as a serious-but-not-literal argument - a reaction to a socio-political milieu that tends to downplay the issues and concerns of African Americans and at worst actively rejects their legitimacy as participants in American society. It's not about attacking the Founding Fathers. It's about asserting their place in American history in the face of people who want to forget about it, Because while there are pretty good arguments that the US would have been better off had it abolished slavery earlier and in a more equitable fashion (the sharecropping system that emerged in the aftermath of the Civil War was better than literal slavery, but still quite suboptimal), the fact of the matter is that it didn't.

I really dislike this sort of pseudo-principled argument for directional dishonesty. Under this justification, why ought not the other side retort that slavery was a net deadweight loss, and that ADoS ought be grateful they ended up here at all, because the alternatives are death or Africa?

I really dislike this sort of pseudo-principled argument for directional dishonesty.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. I don't think people saying "Slavery built America" are deliberately being dishonest; like many political arguments it is of dubious factuality but meant to convey a sentiment (hence the serious-not-literal comparison). Specifically, it is a reaction to people who want to downplay or dismiss black history in the United States. Contra @netstack I do not think it is meant as an attack on the founding fathers; I think it is an attack on a vision of America that does not want to acknowledge black people.

Under this justification, why ought not the other side retort that slavery was a net deadweight loss, and that ADoS ought be grateful they ended up here at all, because the alternatives are death or Africa?

We're not talking about reparations (at least, I wasn't), but about recognition of the role of slavery and black people more generally in American history. Moreover, justifying an injury on the grounds that there are potential counterfactuals that are even worse is not generally considered compelling. Nobody thinks that American Jews should be grateful for pogroms because but for they would have been born in Russia.

We're not talking about reparations (at least, I wasn't)

you may not be but the culture group that this meme belongs to is not exactly shy on this position.

a socio-political milieu that tends to downplay the issues and concerns of African Americans and at worst actively rejects their legitimacy

I'm trying to figure out what decade this could last be said about the US, where those issues and concerns have been aggressively "centered" in all media, every educational institution, and all government policies for decades.

Any overall economic effect is less important given the particular reverence of the American right for these figures.

That does makes sense. Washington and Jefferson are figures of the dying American civic religion. They have to go. In essence it's not different to Christians burning pagan temples.

this essay notes that US cotton provided something like 75% of British textiles. That’s potentially a lot of money flowing into the US.

...and frequently flowing right back out again, because hilariously the southern planters insisted on importing just about everything else other than their raw goods, and as a result were almost always in stonking amounts of debt

Exactly. It would be one thing if the South had invested in themselves and turned themselves into an economic powerhouse, but they didn't - cotton profits were consumed, not invested.

On the one hand, they kind of did invest in themselves - the planter aristocracy's money paid for a lot of fancy clothes, yes, but it also paid for Monticello's library, and the education of the statesmen who shaped early America's politics, who were disproportionately from the upper South's aristocracy. That class got surpassed in wealth and direct power when the VA/NC/SC tidewater soils collapsed in fertility under repeated tobacco plantings, while cotton (which was the preferred crop of the declasse Deep South "black belt", which until surprisingly late in the 19th century was fairly wild frontier country) became much more profitable due to the power loom and cotton-gin. Even still, the upper-South's "gentlemen cavaliers" still retained inordinate influence even up to the Civil War - Robert E. Lee, of course, being the "beau ideal" of the type.

On the other, once the South was initially settled as a series of small settlements clustered around an individual manor and plantation, industrialization in the northern fashion became much more difficult. With no real major cities, there were no large single markets justifying expansion beyond cottage-industry production, which was more than adequate to keep individual communities supplied. And because the South is "blessed" with a lot of rivers running from the Appalachians to the sea (either the Atlantic or Gulf Coast), there wasn't really any need to build out road networks for movement of goods - raw materials could be loaded on barges at individual plantation wharfs to float down to seaports, then be transferred onto bulk cargo ships for shipment to factories elsewhere.

Economic development is complicated, and rarely turns on single factors.

I'm not sure how the planter aristocrats of the early United States are anything more than a historical curiosity. Sure, they wielded political influence and had some fancy tutors. But did they play a critical role in the emergence of the United States as an industrial behemoth and world superpower? Speaking as someone who knows virtually nothing about the topic, I don't think so. No doubt there were rich slaveholders all over Latin America, to say nothing of the Middle East and Asia, and likely no less well educated according to their own traditions.

And sure, there were no doubt good reasons from the perspective of those aristocrats to spend their blood money on silk gowns and classical architecture rather than infrastructure. But to return to the object-level issue, the argument isn't that 'slavery could have built America if the planter aristocrats didn't all live next to natural waterways on top of absurdly productive agricultural land with no threats and abundant external demand for cotton and abundant supply of finished goods from industrialized UK', it's 'slavery built America'.

I'm not sure how the planter aristocrats of the early United States are anything more than a historical curiosity.

Until about 5 minutes ago they were the undisputed heroes of the Independence era - Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph, John Marshall, Edmund Randolph ... 4 of the first 5 presidents, architect of the Constitution, author of the Declaration of Independence, some of the most prolific speakers, demagogues, and essayists in defense of independence and the notion of a unified "America," First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, first Attorney General, and the first President of the Continental Congress.

And many of the major figures associated with other states were actually Virginians of the upper rank - just transplanted: William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, Stephen Austin, Sam Houston... the list goes on and on.

In many respects, they were the political elite of the first 30 years of U.S. independence; New England was frigid and pietistic, and the Middle States were a wishy-washy after-thought.

But did they play a critical role in the emergence of the United States as an industrial behemoth and world superpower

Well, insofar as they were key to forging political compromises and coalitions which (1) kept the 13 colonies together as a single polity, and prevented splintering and disunion through which European superpowers could have played diplomatic puppet-games as happened in Latin America, and (2) were early adopters and frequent boosters of the idea of westward expansion and continental (sometimes even hemispheric - see the Ostend Manifesto for a late-period example) dominance, which ensured the U.S. its present enviable geographic, resource availability, and strategic position (at the expense of a lot of natives getting displaced or killed), yes - absolutely.

But to return to the object-level issue, the argument isn't that 'slavery could have built America if the planter aristocrats didn't all live next to natural waterways on top of absurdly productive agricultural land with no threats and abundant external demand for cotton and abundant supply of finished goods from industrialized UK', it's 'slavery built America'.

I agree. Slavery in one sense enabled America, because the indispensible figures of the Revolutionary era were only able to be "statesmen" on the backs of the surplus produced by slave-driven latifundia. However, slavery did not drive American industrialization, because the areas where the slaves were had been set up such that industrialization just wasn't in the cards, and the areas which did industrialize had no need of the institution - free workers were actually cheaper, and africans didn't have a mortality advantage over european immigrants in the north anyway.

On the other hand, this essay notes that US cotton provided something like 75% of British textiles. That’s potentially a lot of money flowing into the US.

No one denies that slavery brought in money, but the claim is that far more money would have been brought in if there had been a market based labor system. As compared with the alternative, slavery was a net loss.

This really does not address the point, because it is entirely possible for both of these to be true:

  1. As you say, compared with the alternative, slavery was a net loss"; and

  2. Slaves "built America" to some degree (BTW< IMHO, that degree is quite small)

In other words, slavery did exist, it was used for labor instead of market-based labor, and hence slave labor was responsible for X percent of US GDP being what it is today. That is true, even if current US GDP would be even higher, had market-based labor been used in the South (which, BTW, I agree is very likely the case).

Similarly, if I hire Bob to build my house, he built my house, even if Joe would have built a better house cheaper and faster.

But slaves were not responsible for the organizational knowledge, the knowledge of trade, the knowledge of agriculture, the necessary systems of rule of law and justice, or the literacy and exportation and sailing technology, all of which were necessary for southern plantations to be effective. What are you basing % slave labor on and do you have a citation which factors for these things?

If you hire Bob to build a mansion, and Bob hires Fred to carry the beams to and fro, Bob built your house and Fred participated in some minor way to Bob’s ultimate vision and skill.

Well, I did say, "IMHO, that degree is quite small," so I don't understand your point.

It all depends on what the point of saying "America was built on slavery" is. My impression is that the goal of this movement is to establish that the USA's extraordinary economic prowess and status as the premier world power is due to (would not have existed without) its early reliance on slavery, rather than to its unique founding principles or constitution. If this is true, then the case for forfeiting its those founding principles to atone for the evils of slavery through e.g. reparations or affirmative action is strengthened.

the USA's position today could easily be caused by multiple factors acting together, neither one being "more important" than the other in the cause-and-effect sense.

This is simply a moral question of who to praise. Some people say it is the genius of the founding fathers direction, and others say it is the hard work and sweat of slaves.

But the existence of alternatives isn’t really important when assigning blame. If I steal a man’s money, I shouldn’t get to keep it. That’s true whether or not I could have expected more money by working a normal job.

Maybe counterfactuals matter when trying to put an actual number on it. The injury would something like be Potential - Actual GDP. This has its own set of problems.

The question isn't assigning blame, it's actually assigning credit for success. If America's success is primarily due to slavery, then a) maybe the slaves are owed not just for the wrongs due to them but also for the lion's share of America's prosperity and b) the achievements of the founders are proportionally reduced, so fidelity to their principles is less important.

When you're talking about whether slavery built America, it's the same America in both versions of the scenario. In other words, in your analogy you'd be stealing a man's money, but then giving the money to a church that's the same church that the man would have given it to anyway. The man is personally injured, but after you and him are dead the money is in the same place that it would otherwise be, except that you burned some of the money first (i.e. slavery is inefficient) so there's less of it.

In this scenario the church isn't to blame. And it isn't meaningfully profiting off of stolen money.

Does the burning matter in this scenario?

The question is whether the initial theft was unjust enough for a particular remedy. That doesn’t change if you burned the money, or even if you added your own to the donation.

If someone's going to give money to the church, and you stole it to give it to the church, that's not "unjust enough for a particular remedy" if by a remedy you mean the church has to give it back. (Particularly if you're going to make sure the analogy fits, in which case the church has a sort of magnetic pull that ensures that all money will get to it eventually.)

More comments

rather than to its unique founding principles or constitution.

(or it's enviable geographic position, and the misfortune of the prior inhabitants to not have cohabitated with domesticated livestock in cities, leaving them vulnerable to a lot of diseases the Europeans brought with them.)

Geographic positions (and natural resources) have remarkably little link with economic development, which is why e.g. New Zealand is more prosperous than Brazil, or places like Albania and Moldova can be poor while being close to places like Switzerland and Luxembourg.

Au contraire; geography has everything to do with economic development, just not in the most simple, straight-forward ways. Brazil has surprisingly crappy topography for development, with the Amazon jungle being surprisingly infertile, and major mountain ranges limiting the ability to move goods from the interior (such as it is) to the coasts.

The U.S. has the Missouri/Misouri/Tennessee/Ohio River systems draining incredibly productive agricultural land and moving its goods cheaply, several amazing harbors on each coast, examples of just about every single type of topography in the world (and the variety and quantity of natural resources to match), natural moats to the east and west, deserts to the south, and forests and tundra to the north. While it's possible to screw up that position, it's really hard; kind of like how France's agricultural productivity made it by far the population hub of the European continent in the late middle ages, and thus it was a power player in European politics even when its politics were a horrifying mess.

While it's possible to screw up that position

That's my point, and that such a position is not necessary for rapid economic development. And it's not that hard, e.g. Russia has lagged despite the Volga, Don, extremely fertile soil in the south, and massive quantities of oil, natural gas, and other commodities.

There's no reliable link from geography to economic development, especially the sort of development that the US has achieved. Socio-cultural explanations are essential: the only comparable successes in the 19th century had similiar cultures of bourgeois values (where an enterprising commoner could rise to high status) and policies, even when geographically very different from the US e.g. the UK or Germany.

More comments

Yes, I am sure that is the point, and it is an extremely dubious one, but it still seems to me that the relative contribution compared to some hypothetical alternative is not particularly relevant.

Eg: Years ago, I made a bunch of money in the stock market, based on recommendation from a friend. That friend deserves my thanks, and perhaps even recompense (reparations, if you will), even if some other person might have given me even better advice. My friend provided me a service, at my behest, just as slaves did. Was their contribution enough, and their subsequent recompense sufficiently meager, such that reparations are in order? I don't know; I rather doubt it, and IMHO a much better argument for reparations is re post-Civil War treatment of African-Americans, or based on equities unrelated to the extent of slaves' economic contributions. However, it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits, respond, "But, I now realize that my business would have been even more profitable, had I relied on free labor." That does not seem to me to be a very compelling argument.

Years ago, I made a bunch of money in the stock market, based on recommendation from a friend. That friend deserves my thanks, and perhaps even recompense (reparations, if you will), even if some other person might have given me even better advice.

Let's say your friend tells you to buy Apple stock and you make a 3% return. But the market as a whole went up 5% in the same period. If you had just given no thought to the matter and bought a total stock market index fund like VTSAX, you would have performed better. In that case, I don't think it's correct to say your friend deserves any thanks or credit for his recommendation. He didn't really help you in any meaningful way, since your default option was better than his suggestion.

Yes, but who says that using free market labor was the default option? Apparently, it wasn't, at least in the eyes of the landowners at the time. Moreover. they went out and compelled Africans to come to the US to work. As I said, " it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits, respond, "But, I now realize that my business would have been even more profitable, had I relied on free labor." That does not seem to me to be a very compelling argument."

However, it certainly does not make sense to me to enslave someone for 20 years, and then when they ask for a share of my profits

That analogy doesn't fit the question. Blacks benefit from America being prosperous. (Or if they don't, it's because of factors other than slavery.) There's no share of your profits to ask for. There's a share of a pool, but the money would have ended up in the pool whether you enslaved anyone or not.

Slavery didn't build anything except some very nice houses and a lot of graveyards.

…the cohort as a whole were brought over specifically to fulfill the most unskilled labor possible. They definitionally did not build anything.

These are clearly not claims about counterfactuals. They’re arguing slave labor generated only ephemeral benefits and thus can’t be credited with later economic prosperity. I think this is shaky—did all that money really go into plantation houses and more slaves? We were supplying something like 80% of various nations’ textile inputs. They clearly got value out of it. I expect our fledgling industry got some, too.

I’m not sure counterfactuals really come into it, either. If critics are calling the current situation rotten because of its historical origins, what does it matter if the alternative would have been more efficient? America clearly didn’t choose that.

It depends on the context. In economic debates, "slavery built America" might be a claim that the US economic development model only worked due to slavery. For example:

Baptist makes the argument that slavery played an essential role in the development of American capitalism

(emphasis added)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Half_Has_Never_Been_Told:_Slavery_and_the_Making_of_American_Capitalism

I think it's clear that slavery was economically bad for both the northern and southern states. If slavery had never existed, both the north and the south would have been economically better off in the long run (even if we ignore the economic losses caused by the civil war).

An enslaved person has no incentive to invest in the future; their incentive is to have as low a time preference as possible. There is no point accumulating assets or wealth, since you cannot legally own them. There is little point in accumulating skills, education, or other forms of human capital because you do not own your own labor. This is a system that massively disincentivizes investment and long-term growth. The system may have economically benefitted slave owners, but it was a loss for the US economy as a whole.

There is no good economic argument that slavery was an integral part of the north's development, or the south's in terms of opportunity cost. You can clearly see the impact of slavery as an institution was highly negative just by comparing outcomes across borders of states with and without slavery. Slavery's incentives were totally counterproductive to long term economic growth. It shouldn't take a genius to see why--it's not worth it to build up skilled labor, either slave or non slave, with slavery dominating the labor market. It's not too dissimilar to the resource curse where you're incentivized to dig money out of the ground instead of build up long term economic prospects like education and infrastructure. It might be worse because even on an individual level people have little reason to better themselves whereas resource curses mostly suck up expensive corporate and state level capital.

You can clearly see the impact of slavery as an institution was highly negative just by comparing outcomes across borders of states with and without slavery.

Can we actually do this, though? How extricable is "slavery" from "depends on cash-crop latifundia" in a description of the 19th century American political economy? Every study and monograph I've seen answers this with "not very," though there have been repeated efforts to look at the few examples of "industrial slavery" that existed to try and tease out counterfactuals (e.g. Tredegar works in Richmond, a few mills in places like Atlanta, and a few of the border states like Maryland and Delaware).

Cash-crop latifundia always and everywhere wind up placing ordinary workers in fairly spectacular poverty, regardless of whether they're technically "free" or not. Rubber plantations in the Congo, modern cinnamon harvesting in Madagascar, and the various cash-crop economies of the Atlantic world all display similar labor relations.

Yes. The deep south cash crop states were not the only slave states. You pointed out border states yourself, many of which are quite temperate in climate. There was no reason for them to be so undeveloped compared to new england, and even some of the relatively underpopulated great lakes states. Virginia is actually an ideal place for industrialization--lots of cheap coal, lots of riverways that can transport coal and then power industry in cities, and lots of amazing places for huge ports. Yet, Virginia never really industrialized.

Studies have actually been done, although the veracity will always be fuzzy with 150+ year old data, they never suggest the effects are "not very" large.

A lot of borders are arbitrary, but the outcomes are not. The policy of a state and culture of a region are maybe the most important single factor for economic development. Slave states vs non slave are maybe the best example outside of east and west germany.

Maryland and Delaware are very small. Delaware has always been, more or less, a hinterland of Philly. Maryland, on the other hand wasn't that undeveloped - Baltimore was one of the most important seaports in the U.S., and until the opening of the Erie Canal was the major hub for the Ohio Valley via the National Road. The Erie Canal killed the road traffic, and the City diversified into railroads and cast-iron work. It slowly declined in importance relative to NYC and Philly - but not nearly as much or as fast as New Orleans did - and it remained a major locus of immigration and innovation. None of that had much to do with slavery, iirc.

Cash-crop latifundia always and everywhere wind up placing ordinary workers in fairly spectacular poverty, regardless of whether they're technically "free" or not.

Aren't the Dutch engaged in effectively that with their flower industry ? Are the workers there living in such poverty ?

I confess ignorance about that sector specifically, but my general understanding was that the Dutch agriculture sector generally was the most mechanized and technology-intensive on the planet, and so wasn't really what I was thinking of. My fault - I should have been more specific that I was referring to labor-intensive industries. Even today, those tend towards fairly horrifying conditions (e.g. the Indian/Sri Lankan tea industry, where workers are still getting paid significantly in food rations, medical care, school access, etc.)

The most famous argument that slavery was important to the economy is that made by Edward Baptist. It is well worth your time to look at some of the criticisms thereof by economic historians; the book seems to be laughably bad -- for example, Baptist apparently does not understand how GDP is calculated.

If the question is whether slavery and associated industry was a large portion of the national GDP, it was.

If the question is whether anyone else built anything, yes, they built most things. Slavery didn't build anything except some very nice houses and a lot of graveyards. The whole reason the South gets trounced in the war despite better tactical leadership is that they don't have anything close to the numbers of people, factories and equipment that the North does, and virtually none of that can be attributed to slavery. In fact, it can and has been argued at length that slavery kept the South from industrializing and that this crippled their economy up into the 1980s.

The claim that slavery was in some way underwriting the free states is ahistorical stupidity, and a slanderous historical insult to the people who died to end slavery. There isn't a person alive today who has done as much for black americans as the lowliest, whitest, most racist private in the Union Army.

There isn't a person alive today who has done as much for black americans as the lowliest, whitest, most racist private in the Union Army.

Somewhat related, I thought the vandalism of the Hans Christian Heg statue in Madison captured the spirit of the Black Lives Matter movement better than anything else that happened that summer. Let's understand who Heg was:

Hans Christian Heg (1829-1863) was a Norwegian American abolitionist, journalist, anti-slavery activist, politician and soldier. He was born at Haugestad in the community of Lierbyen in Lier, Buskerud, Norway, where his father ran an inn. His family emigrated to the US in 1840, and settled at Muskego Settlement, Wisconsin. After two years as a Forty-Niner in California following the California Gold Rush, Heg returned to settle in Wisconsin.

Heg is best known as the colonel who commanded the 15th Wisconsin Volunteer Regiment on the Union side in the American Civil War. He died of the wounds he received at the Battle of Chickamauga. A 10 ft (3.0 m) high pyramid of 8 in (20 cm) shells at Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park marks the site on the battlefield where Heg was mortally wounded.

Let's understand that Wisconsin was not a slave state, never had slaves, and frankly had no material stake in the fate of black Americans. Heg fought and died to stop what he regarded as a moral atrocity. He is memorialized at one of the corners of the Wisconsin State Capitol because these are exactly the traits that any decent person would admire. When the Summer of Floyd commenced, the statue was treated thusly by rioters:

On Tuesday, June 23, 2020, the statue was vandalized by protesters, incensed by the arrest of a member of Black Lives Matter, as demonstrations in Madison turned violent.[16][17] Vandals used a towing vehicle to pull the statue down. It was then vandalized, decapitated, and thrown into Lake Monona. The words "black is beautiful" were spray-painted on the plinth, just above Heg's name.[18][19][20]

...

Unlike Confederate statues removed during the George Floyd protests, this statue was of a Union soldier and abolitionist,[23][24] The Associated Press reported that "it seems likely that few Wisconsinites know Heg's biography".[23][24] Protester Micah Le said the two statues paint a picture of Wisconsin as a racially progressive state "even though slavery has continued in the form of a corrections system built around incarcerating Blacks."[21] Two protesters interviewed by the Wisconsin State Journal said that toppling the statues was to draw attention to their view of Wisconsin as being racially unjust.[25] Black student activists had called for the removal of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at University of Wisconsin–Madison in early June 2020, and repeated those calls after Heg's statue was toppled.[26][27]

I can think of no better representation of this movement - ignorant, entitled, ungrateful, destructive, and aggrieved. I cannot capture the prevailing mood of the movement better than they did themselves in destroying and discarding a statue and replacing it with "black is beautiful" - they made the world uglier in a small way and told us that it was beautiful.

I cannot capture the prevailing mood of the movement better than they did themselves in destroying and discarding a statue and replacing it with "black is beautiful" - they made the world uglier in a small way and told us that it was beautiful.

I think it is more like "this statue says that equality and justice is important to you, but we judge that to be a lie, and we will prevent you from having nice things that imply that equality and justice are important to you for as long as we do not think that the world is just".

Still a destructive mindset but I don't think anyone was trying to say that the spray-painted plinth was more beautiful than the statue, just that nobody can have nice things until all of the perceived injustices of the world have been corrected.

That is truly disheartening. And also about sums up why I never liked Madison. Did they ever restore the statue?

Yeah, that's the one bit of happy news - both that statue and the vandalized Forward statue on the opposite side of the capitol have been returned to their places.

It is not even correct to say it about the South, regardless of the North. Slaves were mostly (but not entirely) disposable labor who were brought over because they were inexpensive to purchase and had a +10 racial stat for heat resistance useful for the hot Southern summers. While it is true that intelligent slaves were often tasked with sophisticated skilled labor, and sometimes rose to great heights and were superior to white competitors, the cohort as a whole were brought over specifically to fulfill the most unskilled labor possible. They definitionally did not build anything, and in the absence of slavery they would have been replaced (and were indeed replaced) with poor European immigrants and Chinese workers.

(Today, globalism has replaced the exploitation of American slaves — by this I mean that we can outsource our exploitation to the poor African cobalt and lithium miners whose quality of life is worse than a mid-19th century slave in America. And we outsource our clothing to factories of questionable living standards and who even knows where China gets some of its materials. We pat ourselves on the back for our moral triumph, while we praise Apple execs for building the iPhone, before tweeting to the ancestors of the downtrodden white middle class that they built nothing and belong nowhere.)

heat resistance useful for the hot Southern summers.

And don't forget about the malaria. They were also better at not dying from malaria (and other tropical diseases).

The argument is obviously not that they literally built things, but rather that their labor enabled the growth of GDP, the accumulation of capital, etc. Obviously, there was some truth to that, since slaves made up a substantial portion of the labor force. But only some truth.

Slaves were mostly (but not entirely) disposable labor

Perhaps in the Caribbean, but not in the US, as is evidenced by the fact that the slave population continued to grow after the importation of slaves was banned in 1808. There were 1.2 million slaves in the US in 1810 and 4 million in 1860; note also that the data in that link shows that the growth rate did not slow after importation was banned. Which makes sense, since only about 400,000 slaves were imported from Africa to North America; the vast majority went to the Caribbean and Brazil. Moreover, slaves were not cheap; prices apparently typically ranged from about $400 to $800, a pretty penny in those days.

in the absence of slavery they would have been replaced (and were indeed replaced) with poor European immigrants and Chinese workers.

Very few of those immigrants settled in the South. See here.

If the argument is that they labored, then don’t make a video shouting fervently that they built America. They built America like Slavic people built the Ottoman Empire, the Canaanites built the Temple Mount, and Irish people built modern day Tunisia.

That the slave population grew from a high birth rate does not indicate in any fashion that their labor wasn’t disposable, only that reproduction is cheaper than sailing to Africa. This is not surprising.

The expenses of a slave are not in their upfront cost but in their cost to employ, which was significantly less expensive than those who could compete in the marketplace and demand higher wages. Some were seen as an investment as their children would be slaves as well.

Few of those immigrants migrated to the South because a very interesting thing occurred post-Civil War called industrialization, which changed the American economy considerably. Additionally, the end of slavery did not entail the end of black people laboring in fields for little pay.

only that reproduction is cheaper than sailing to Africa. This is not surprising.

It's historically surprising. Typically slaves weren't treated well enough to reproduce - it was cheaper to import new ones.

Slave US states were anomalous in this because the British wanted it so.

They had Royal Navy interfere in the slave trade and blockade the slave coasts.

Typically slaves weren't treated well enough to reproduce

Where? It was very much true in North America, and there is plenty of data (re height, life expectancy) that the health of slaves in the US South was pretty close to that of free whites. And I would be surprised if slaves were treated poorly enough to reduced reproduction in Old World slave systems, given that they were often not used for physical labor. But, it is possible; I don't know the actual data on that.

I am pretty sure that it was the Caribbean, and maybe also Brazil, which were the anomalies in that respect.

Where

Ancient Rome, for example. I'm also reasonably sure pretty most slave-owning societies treated them that way.

That the slave population grew from a high birth rate does not indicate in any fashion that their labor wasn’t disposable,

Perhaps, but the fact that is was not disposed of does imply that it was not so disposable after all, does it not. It doesn't prove it, obviously, but it is certainly evidence in that direction. Note also that slave labor was disposed of more often in the Caribbean, though there were lots of differences between the Caribbean and the South, not least of which was the fact that most owners in the Caribbean were absentees, and the plantations there were managed by hired overseers whose performance was often measured by the current year's output, creating a clear principal-agent problem. There are many documents in which slave owners complain about overseers mistreating slaves.

The expenses of a slave are not in their upfront cost but in their cost to employ, which was significantly less inexpensive than those who could compete in the marketplace and demand higher wages.

  1. Even if true -- how do you know that it was significantly less expensive, given that slave owners were responsible for providing room, board, health care, and de facto retirement benefits for slaves -- this undermines your claim that slaves could have been easily replaced by white immigrants.

Few of those immigrants migrated to the South because a very interesting thing occurred post-Civil War called industrialization, which changed the American economy considerably. Additionally, the end of slavery did not entail the end of black people laboring in fields for little pay.

? But, you literally said that slaves "and were indeed replaced" by immigrants. Now you are saying that they weren't, which is correct, as shown by the data in the link I provided, and by the fact that, yes, slavery did not entail the end of black people laboring in the fields for little pay. Remember, the question is about the role of slaves in the economy, not the role of black people.

Caribbean islands also had a much higher mortality rate due to disease, no? https://www.virgin-islands-history.org/en/history/slavery/illness-and-death-among-the-enslaved/

Even in the Caribbean, the idea that it would be more cost efficient to work a slave to death and replace him with a new one is probably erroneous, because there are training costs associated with the work, and a young slave who is trained to perform a particular task will have increased productivity in his 20s when kept alive.

Plantation owners would also be responsible for providing room/board/food in the form of pay. The crucial difference between a slave and a citizen is that a citizen has bargaining power, and a slave does not. A plantation owner can provide the bare minimum. Unless you believe that the conditions of a slave were greater than the conditions that a citizen would expect as adequate compensation for his labor.

Slaves were indeed replaced by immigrants in the economy in the North.

You just seem to be throwing out half-sensed ideas hoping one would stick… but surely you know such things as “slaves did not have bargaining power” and “the West Indies had unique disease”. Remember that the argument is “were slaves some crucial ingredient without which America would not be built”, or a topic similar to this — whether we should say slaves built America, when we clearly do not say the same about Irish slaves in Tunisia or Russian slaves in the Ottoman Empire. I’m arguing that they were used because of their cheapness, because any reasonable employer would choose the cheapest option. What is your argument exactly against this?

Caribbean islands also had a much higher mortality rate due to disease, no?

Yes, they did. They were worse in many respects.

Even in the Caribbean, the idea that it would be more cost efficient to work a slave to death and replace him with a new one is probably erroneous

For owners, perhaps not. For overseers, perhaps so. See my reference to the principal-agent problem. There is a decent amount of literature on this precise topic, IIRC.

I’m arguing that they were used because of their cheapness, because any reasonable employer would choose the cheapest option. What is your argument exactly against this?

I am not arguing against that. I am arguing against your original, and more extreme claim, that "It is not even correct to say it about the South, regardless of the North. Slaves were mostly (but not entirely) disposable labor."

To go back to the very first point of discussion, why do you believe it is correct to say that “slaves built the South”, versus “Slavs built the Ottoman Empire”?

I don't. See my first response to you, as well as my post ridiculing the work of Edward Baptist.

The crucial difference between a slave and a citizen is that a citizen has bargaining power, and a slave does not.

Materially, the position of American slaves was far, far superior than that of notionally free Chinese. What use is bargaining power if people are literally starving to death within a month if fired ? That was how things were in 19th century China.

The crucial difference between a slave and a citizen is that a citizen has bargaining power, and a slave does not.

That's not actually true. Slaves could - and did! - slack on the job, assist in minor sabotage efforts, and rebel/escape. Overseers, particularly on large estates, understood that they were a tiny minority of the labor-force, could not be everywhere or keep up omni-directional surveillance, and could be overwhelmed. They also understood that they were responsible for the levels of output the plantation produced. Far easier to set up a complicated system of carrots and sticks to try to incentivize collaboration and productivity than to just try to literally whip everything into good morale.

Very few of those immigrants settled in the South. See here.

Well, yes - this doesn't demonstrate what the situation would have been in the absence of slavery, since it shows the situation resulting from our history, ie. where there was slavery (and, in 1900, there was still an abundance of cheap black labor in the South, even despite the abolition of slavery.)

? How does it indicate that there would have been labor available in the South, absent slavery?

I was under the impression that the primary competitive advantage of african slaves were disease resistance to (primarily African) tropical diseases that the very small amount of initial African slaves (or sailors?) brought over.

Before those tropical diseases were widespread white (and indigenous) workers did just fine in the tropical areas of the americas and were willing to go over and work for competitive rates. After the spread of the diseases people were much less willing to go unless paid well (and if they did many died), which obviously doesn't work very well for low skill labour.

It wasn't until the development of things like Quinine that things started to really change.

Specifically, malaria. The lines demarcating "slave" and "free" areas in the Americas even correspond almost precisely to the latitudes where the mosquitos that carry it can survive.

Indigenous "workers" (typically enslaved) were vulnerable to all manner of Old World diseases, like smallpox, and had a tendency to flee back into the wilderness they were more familiar with (sometimes even being joined by fleeing African slaves). They were used, especially in South America, but probably would not have been sufficient in number to support a mass labor force in North America. White workers did try to go over, but even by the time of the first attempt at the Jamestown colony in the very beginning over the 1600s, malaria was present and devastating.

Areas where malaria was a major limiting factor on a workforce presence mostly did not grow cotton, they grew rice. And African Americans descended from the populations that were enslaved there are ethnically distinct today.

It’s not difficult to imagine an alternative history where the cotton belt poor are mostly mestizos of Irish and Native American descent.

In my understanding "areas where malaria was a limiting factor" includes most of the American (non-Appalachian) South, Caribbean, and northern Latin America, and of course such an area included a very wide range of crops that were being grown (especially over hundreds of years--early settlers had to grow food and also often grew tobacco, for instance, while the large cotton plantations came later, after slavery was established). Whites found it difficult to grow anything, because they couldn't work.

It’s not difficult to imagine an alternative history where the cotton belt poor are mostly mestizos of Irish and Native American descent.

I think it is pretty difficult. Native populations were always smaller north of the Rio Grande and were devastated by Old World diseases. And I find it unlikely that it would have made economic sense to bring lots of Irish to Virginia and South Carolina. Its population in 1600 appears to have been about 1-1.4M, so the 400,000 number for African slaves brought to NA that Gdanning mentions elsewhere in this thread would have been a huge portion of their population.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats