Comments on: Compassionate Conservatism

By: Josh

Josh — Thu, 28 Oct 2004 00:31:47 +0000

As far as opposition to slavery before the Enlightenment goes, the record’s mixed, and sometimes unclear. Locke condemned slavery—but also drafted the constitution for a slavery-based society in Carolina. Grotius opposed the slave trade of his own day, I believe (though my memory of the details is hazy), but also argued that slavery was in some cases justified (as a result of conquest, or ‘voluntary’ slavery, i.e. when people freely sell themselves into slavery—this was something that bothered Rousseau greatly). From Grotius’s discussion, it seems as if there was a tradition of condemning slavery in natural law theory, but I don’t really know anything about the authors to whom he refers here(from Chapter 7 of Book III of the Laws of War and Peace): ‘BY the law of nature, in its primaeval state; apart from human institutions and customs, no men can be slaves: and it is in this sense that legal writers maintain the opinion that slavery is repugnant to nature.’

By: Xboy

Xboy — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 20:13:56 +0000

I suspect many people living in the pre-Enlightenment years were opposed to slavery – especially those who were slaves. Yes, everyone agreed that it sucked to be a slave. But condemnation of slavery as an institution was spotty before the Enlightenment. And some kind of slavery, serfdom, or servitude was just the way of the world. The Israelites wept in captivity, but when Cyrus freed them they went home to Zion and got some slaves of their own. In Louisiana in the early 19th century, there were as many “free men of color” slave-owners as white. The dawning of Abolitionism in the 18th century was made possible by the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. Aristotle could only imagine slavery being abolished if all the scut work somehow did itself. To him that was an obvious absurdity, but by 1800 there were people who were inventing the technology to make it possible. Of course there were others who didn’t see how mills and railroads and cotton gins could ever change their traditional plantation ways. That’s why the US had to fight a Civil War before slavery could be abolished.

By: Dubious

Dubious — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:38:06 +0000

Maybe someone who is more of a specialized economic historian can address this better than I can, but I think the consensus now is that slavery was a profitable, economically rational institution (for the plantation owner, obviously… slaves didn’t quite agree, I imagine). The higher productivity and lower ‘wages’ of slave labor more than compensated for the increased spending on overseers. See Robert Fogel’s work, etc. I think it makes more sense to see incredibly callous greed as the prime mover here, with racism mobilized to assuage the conscience, rather than racism being so great that it was stronger than greed. I’m on shakier ground, but I think that strong arguments can be made that cotton-slavery (unlike Williams’ sugar-slavery) was in fact very influential in fueling the industrial revolution in the North. Cotton was an enormous mover in the early industrial revolution.

By: jet

jet — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 16:16:02 +0000

Kind of an unimportant point, but not only was slavery competely irrelavent to economic growth in 19th century in the US, it was probably an impediment to 19th century growth as farms without slavery cost less to operate (do to much cheaper immigrant labor). All the major economic gains were made in the North where slavery was illegal. So now we have slave holders not only being morally repugnant, but stupid. It also doesn’t make much sense to say that slavery was ignored for the 60 years running up to the war. If you observe the politics for those 60 years slavery was always a major theme.

By: Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 09:00:13 +0000

I suppose I’m a liberal. And if I was in charge of afterlife, everybody would go to heaven, even those previously sent to hell. However, the notion of my political adversaries sending souls to eternal torment is not something I want to entertain. I might come to believe in it, and in the end there’d be hell to pay.

By: Dubious

Dubious — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 06:37:32 +0000

On the ‘compassionate conservative’ question, I think that’s a phrase to signal that Bush is jettisoning the small government wing of the party and trying to lock in the ‘Reagan Democrats’. That is, he’s trying to assemble a new coalition around social conservative, economic populism. I think it’s true that conservatism (of many stripes) is more supportive of traditional forms of merit, more comfortable with hierarchy and more willing to band together with the in-group against the out-group. Witness the Republican party’s traditional unity vis a vis the Democratic party. This fraternity can sour into the cardinal sin of conservatives: xenophobia, whether sexual, religious, ethnic, whatever. This is true all over the world, as far as I can see. Left-liberals, on the other hand, seem more likely to concentrate on newer forms of merit that are more obviously political for not having emerged from the general cultural background (e.g. sensitivity, proper recycling, etc). There is tension between anti-hierarchical liberal thought and vanguardism, which exacerbates the lack of unity. The anti-hierarchism shades into the liberal-left’s failings: reflexive guilt and self-hatred (on behalf of the well-to-do vanguardists) and envy (from the base).

By: Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 19:05:58 +0000

However, I’m not aware (correct me, Jonathan) of any wealthy Stoic who refused to own slaves during his lifetime, whatever gestures he may have made on his death. I’m also not aware of any, although, to be fair to the Stoics, there were often severe legal restrictions on manumission either by will or during the master’s lifetime. Another phenomenon that existed during the classical era, however, was widespread protest against cruelty to slaves, and this protest did generate results in the form of greater legal protection. The same thing happened in many of the New World countries, which enacted humane treatment laws before abolishing slavery altogether. I’d argue that widespread commercial slavery tends to generate moral condemnation of both the institution itself and the excesses associated with it, and that the latter bears fruit before the former.

By: Julian Elson

Julian Elson — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 16:48:15 +0000

Jackmomorn, I assume you’re arguing that desert plays a larger role than I claim in “liberal morality” because of the notion among liberals that luck (such as condition upon birth) does not translate into desert, so it is immoral for people to have such good conditions? Well, it’s true that I overstated my case. Most liberals do think about desert, perhaps more than most conservatives, even. And folks like Bruce Ackerman and Ronald Dworkin think about equality and desert per se. I’m not really familiar with that stuff, though. Sorry. I suppose what I was mainly talking about was “liberalism to me.” To me, it means people like Bentham, Mill, Rawls, etc: people who saw nothing wrong with undeserved riches, but saw a great deal wrong with poverty and suffering. To me, someone who says, “let’s put the bad people in prison, not because it’ll have any good effects, but because they will suffer in prison, and, as bad people, that’s their desert,” is not a liberal, nor is someone who says “let’s take away Paris Hilton’s wealth, not to help some other people, but just because she enjoys her wealth, and she has done nothing to deserve it.” A conservative might be comfortable with the first statement, and a radical of some sort with the second. Now, I suppose there ARE liberals who are comfortable with the ethics of desert, unconnected to utility, as I mentioned before (do Ackerman or Dworkin fall into this category?). I’m not really familiar or comfortable with that style of thought, though. If you want to, you can give me a quick course on it, though.

By: DaveC

DaveC — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 14:37:11 +0000

Conquest and Culture Thomas Sowell 1998

By: chris

chris — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 08:55:05 +0000

Jonathan Edelstein’s point is important, and fits nicely with Ayjay’s earlier observation about the nature of slavery at different times. (Ayjay omits to notice slavery in Greece and Rome, which was far more commercial than at any time before the 17th century. Finley argued that a social revolution in those societies was a precondition of its emergence.) In societies where chattel slavery, as opposed to serfdom or forms of temporary bondage, is not the predominant mode of exploitation, where there are only a few slaves around, it’s easier for slave owners to persuade themselves that they are paternalists, looking after the interests of the unfortunate lesser beings (slaves by nature) who depend on them. This sort of self deception becomes harder as the market becomes larger and more obtrusive, leading to questions being asked. However, I’m not aware (correct me, Jonathan) of any wealthy Stoic who refused to own slaves during his lifetime, whatever gestures he may have made on his death.

By: artclone

artclone — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 07:32:37 +0000

I suspect many people living in the pre-Enlightenment years were opposed to slavery – especially those who were slaves.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 04:33:36 +0000

“neither does anyone deserve to be born Paris Hilton” True, but what can we do to help her ?

By: Jackmomorn

Jackmomorn — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 03:42:09 +0000

julian elson, One of the determining characteristics of liberalism, as I see it, is the understanding of randomness. It is not anyone’s fault that so-and-so is born poor in Bangledesh, but neither does anyone deserve to be born Paris Hilton. The ethical system of liberalism comes out of this understanding of radical arbitrariness in our conditions. The sentimental school of late Enlightenment thought came to this realization at its most radical. See for example Hazlitt’s wild essay on the principles of moral action, in which he argued that even self-interested action had no logical primariness, as the sympathy the present self felt for any future self was based in an arbitrary, habitual act of imagination. Sympathy for the self is only as logical as sympathy for any other possible person is. What is interesting—and may be a partial answer to the original question—is that Hazlitt arrived at some of this theory by working through Burke’s writings on the imagination… A well-written book on the question of the British vs. the French Enlightenments is David Simpson’s “Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the Turn Against Theory.”

By: masaccio

masaccio — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 02:40:54 +0000

Rorty thinks that we do not actually think out our moral sentiments in the usual case, instead we muddle through, using whatever mental tools come to hand: ” … the difference between statements about torture and statements about knives and forks is not about different ‘status’ but their diffenent degrees of importance to the ends that we, the people wno debate these statements, wish to achieve. For us, here and now, torture matters very much and table etiquette does not. Now imagine a really nasty culture, one in which the reverse is true. Is there a way to decide between the relative merits of those two cultures? Sure. It is the same messy, nonargumentative, hit-or-miss way in which our culture emreged from earlier cultures.” Debating the State of Philosophy, 66 When people have a relatively large group of actions to examine, then they can try to offer a kind of post hac justification, but it will always seem like something tacked on, not something organic, especially because they are always free to change their minds.

By: Julian Elson

Julian Elson — Mon, 25 Oct 2004 00:39:40 +0000

I’m not sure if I’m on the right track here, but I think that one of the big differences between liberals and conservatives is that liberals believe people should get the best that’s available, and conservatives believe people should get what they deserve. To put it another way: let’s say that you were put in charge of judgement in the gates of the afterlife. You can arbitrarily send people to heaven and hell, and you can clearly distinguish good people from bad people. There is no cost for doing either way, and people will never improve or degrade in their character after death, nor will, for example, sending good people to hell make hell a better place, or sending bad people to heaven make things worse for the good people up there. Put a conservative in that position, and I think the conservative will send the good people to heaven and the bad people to hell. Put a liberal in that position, and I think the liberal will send everyone to heaven. To liberals, institutions like prisons are only good insofar as they provide incentives to change behavior and incapacitate potentially destructive people. To conservatives, they’re good in and of themselves, because (rightly) convicted criminals are getting what they deserve. I think the bigger difference isn’t rationalism vs. sentimentalism, but utility vs. desert, though I admit I’m biased, since I’m a sentimentalist and a liberal.