Abolitionism is Christian
QUESTION TWELVE (quoting me) “I would say further that the abolition of slavery diminished — at least for that generation — rather than augmented the ‘success’ of the nations behind the abolition, both in the cost in economic losses and (in America) the cost of a Civil War.”
Oh man! I’ve been planning to use that example in this discussion all day! Yes, exactly. People talked about equality for centuries before economic imperatives finally forced white men to give black men the right to vote. My theory is that improving technology (and hence both any individual’s control over their environment and the increasing amount of cooperation necessary to maintain our technology, not to mention better communication and transportation) forces us to expand Singer’s “circle of personhood.”
Unfortunately for your theory, it does not fit the known facts.
Slave work in mines and plantations work throughout the British Empire was an immensely, immensely lucrative business, and before the Civil War Virginia rather than New York was the cultural center of the United States.
In some ways, the Old South still has not recovered from the blow to its economy dealt by the end of slavery, even if ex-slaves and their descendants did make contributions to the economies of the more industrial parts of the nation which perhaps slaves could not have made.
(Although, many a noneconomist calls factory work ‘wage slavery’, so I do not see why in theory if it is wage slavery, a nation could not keep the institution of slavery, send slaves to do unskilled and semiskilled factory work, and save on the wages.)
What drove slavery out of the British Empire, out of the Anglosphere, and then out of Europe, out of Ottoman Empire, out of the colonies, the world was Christian reformers and British warships, and their motives were non-economic.
The ‘circle of personhood’ which the vile and demonic Singer, who lusts for the death of children and old men, is of course nothing other than the Christian conception of the brotherhood of man, all of us being Sons of Adam. It is not a concept found before the Christian Era or in nonchristian lands, nor an idea practiced by Postchristians, even though they pay lip service to it.
And the industrialization has increased throughout the world since the Second World War, so by your theory, slavery should have continued not to exist.
Instead, Christianity decreased in prestige after the Second World War, particularly in the Second and Third Worlds, which are now no longer parts of world Empires run by Christian nations, and therefore their laws begin to reflect their native pagan and heathen values and ideas rather than to reflect our enlightened ideas.
Slavery is on the increase. In the news the police find examples of it even here in the United States. Within living memory – I am old enough to remember – a time when it did not exist anywhere in the world.
So, in sum, if slavery were abolished by industrialization, we would expect, all other things being equal, at least a rough parallel between abolition and industrialization. We do not. Instead we see a rough parallel between abolition and Christianity, and where the prestige of Christianity diminishes and pulls back, slavery re-emerges.
Now, if your theory is that improved communication allowed the Abolitionists to spread their pamphlets, and missionaries to spread the Gospel, worldwide, and improved technology allow British warships to blockade Turkish ports and compel the Sultan to divest his realm of the institution of slavery, there you have a good argument.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
