The Great Plantation: George Fitzhugh’s Political and Social Thought In The Context Of Universal Basic Income

As the humanists would have said, “Ad fontes.”

I want to dust off George Fitzhugh in light of the ongoing discussion about free-market capitalism, Southern identity and universal basic income:

“The tendency of modern civilization is to beget one public opinion throughout Christendom. …”

Who can argue with this?

“We think we perceive already unmistakeable evidence that a counter current of thought has already originated. Like all such reactions of opinion, it has been occasioned by experimental demonstrations of the fallacy and inadequacy of existing theories, and of practices founded on those theories. The great socialist and communist movement of the day, which is co-extensive with free society, whilst it has not yet invoked the reestablishment of domestic slavery, asserts, in a thousand forms, the utter failure of existing social institutions, which have arisen from the ruins of feudal servitude …”

Fitzhugh nails it.

The communist movement, socialist movement and anarchist movements are all byproducts and a reaction against free-market capitalism and the dominant liberal paradigm. They are a consequence of the disintegration of the social and economic fabric under Free Society.

“We have, then, the almost unanimous testimony of men of all conditions, that free society is a failure, is intolerable, and requires total subversion and reconstruction. This is, of itself, a mighty reactionary movement in favor of slavery …”

I knew there was a reason that Yang struck such a nerve with me.

It is because Andrew Yang is arguing that the working class is being replaced by automation. The creation of machines that are perfect pliable laborers will displace humans from the labor force and will effectively resurrect the dynamics of Slave Society.

“The slavery principle is a necessary and universal principle of government, and is the opposite of the let alone, or laissez-faire doctrine, of the political economists. The only difference that can exist between us and the abolitionists is this: are the negroes, as a class, weak, helpless, improvident or dependent, like women and children, and therefore, as a class, to be subjected to slavery; or are they fitted generally for the offices and functions of masters?”

Obviously, the machines being created by Silicon Valley to perform any number of tasks are meant to be our slaves, and we their masters. As slaves, why can’t we redistribute the fruits of their labor to ourselves? This is no different than plantation slavery.

“We presume that very few will not be willing to admit that the negroes are not fitted for the unrestricted liberties of white men. All men, whose opinions are worth considering, will agree, that more of the slavery principle should be adopted in the government of negroes than of white men. The question, then, as to the status of negroes, is narrowed down to this: is the kind of slavery to which he is subjected the proper and necessary one, looking to his moral and intellectual wants and capacities? He is certainly improving, and his bonds relaxes everywhere as he improves. We believe that nature best adapts and modifies slavery to suit its subjects, but are quite willing to see the subject discussed, how far it would be proper to define by law the obligations of the master and the rights of the slave?”

The chattel slave was a capital investment. He had only very limited rights recognized under law in the Southern states. The machines won’t have rights at all. They have already taken over agriculture but we haven’t redistributed the profits as a social dividend. At least not formally since enormous quantities of food in supermarkets is already being pushed off the shelves by EBT.

Here’s an excerpt from John Majewski’s Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation:

“Secessionists believed that state-supported agricultural research, government investment in railroads, and interventionist trade policies would strengthen slavery in the long run. Virginia political economist George Fitzhugh approvingly noted the propensity for southern-state action during the antebellum period. Southerners may have preached free-trade, laissez-faire, and “Let Alone” policies, he wrote in the Charleston Mercury in 1856, but in actual practice they supported state activism. “We build roads and canals, endow colleges, aid education, encourage commerce and manufactures, prohibit peddling, and, in a thousand ways, endeavor by interfering with, encouraging and controlling private pursuits, by State Legislation, to enhance State wealth, intelligence, and well being.” Southerners decisively rejected “laissez-faire” when it came to controlling their slaves, Fitzhugh argued, so it was hardly surprising that southerners would reject laissez-faire in other elements of their lives. Fitzhugh was hardly representative, but his observations captured an important element of the southern mindset.”

Southerners later continued all of the above with land grant colleges and state supported agricultural research in the early 20th century. The current system is hardly laissez-faire.

“The secessionist focus on homogeneity of interests and the protection of slavery speaks to how Confederates could support a modern economy without supporting what scholars often label as “modernization.” Modernization theory sees economic growth creating distinct periods or phases of development in which “traditional” beliefs are cast aside in favor of modern notions of rationality, scientific thinking, and political liberalism. In contrast to modernization theory, secessionists saw a modern economy in concrete terms – more factories, more cities, more wealth, more political and military power – in a way that allowed them to reject the dichotomy between modernity and “traditional.” Even as they worked toward a more modern economy, secessionists often touted the conservative elements in their society, including slavery, evangelical religion, and (when convenient) various forms of agrarian republicanism.”

Wow … who does this sound like?

It sounds exactly like the People’s Republic of China.

This excerpt comes from George Fitzhugh’s Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters:

“Further study, too, of Western European Society, which has been engaged in continual revolution for twenty years, has satisfied us that Free Society every where begets isms, and that isms soon beget bloody revolutions. Until our trip to the North, we did not justly appreciate the passage which we are about to quote from Mr. Carlyle’s “Latter-Day Pamphlets.” Now it seems to us as if Boston, New Haven, or Western New York, had set for the picture:

“To rectify the relation that exists between two men, is there no method, then, but that of ending it? The old relation has become unsuitable, obsolete, perhaps unjust; and the remedy is, abolish it; let there henceforth be no relation at all. From the ‘sacrament of marriage’ downwards, human beings used to be manifoldly related one to another, and each to all; and there was no relation among human beings, just or unjust, that had not its grievances and its difficulties, its necessities on both sides to bear and forbear. But henceforth, be it known, we have changed all that by favor of Heaven; the ‘voluntary principle’ has come up, which will itself do the business for us; and now let a new sacrament, that of Divorce, which we call emancipation, and spout of on our platforms, be universally the order of the day! Have men considered whither all this is tending, and what it certainly enough betokens? Cut every human relation that has any where grown uneasy sheer asunder; reduce whatsoever was compulsory to voluntary, whatsoever was permanent among us to the condition of the nomadic; in other words, LOOSEN BY ASSIDUOUS WEDGES, in every joint, the whole fabrice of social existence, stone from stone, till at last, all lie now quite loose enough, it can, as we already see in most countries, be overset by sudden outburst of revolutionary rage; and lying as mere mountains of anarchic rubbish, solicit you to sing Fraternity, &c. over it, and rejoice in the now remarkable era of human progress we have arrived at.”

Now we plant ourselves on this passage from Carlyle. We say that, as far as it goes, ’tis a faithful picture of the isms of the North. But the restraints of Law and Public Opinion are less at the North than in Europe. The isms on each side the Atlantic are equally busy with “assiduous wedges,” in “loosening in every joint the whole fabric of social existence;” but whilst they dare invoke Anarchy in Europe, they dare not inaugurate New York Free Love, and Oneida Incest, and Mormon Polygamy. The moral, religious, and social heresies of the North, are more monstrous than those of Europe. The pupil has surpassed the master, unaided by the stimulants of poverty, hunger and nakedness, which urge the master forward.”

By the 1850s, the North was perceived at the South as a land of dangerous “-isms” and permanent social revolution that was eating away at the social fabric. Southerners recommended slavery as the perfect antidote to this sort of social discontent.