1.Slavery was a societal response to a need for labor. And it was rarely a system based on race.
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”
Helen Keller
2.“It is surely true that slavery was less common among primitive man than among the societies that arose after the agricultural revolution….because primitive man was so much poorer.
Slaves are a very large expense for nomadic bands. Guarding an enemy who doesn’t want to be part of the group is costly and dangerous.
Children can be taken in as assets- a common practice n many primitive societies, notably among American Indians- and women can be forced into marriage, very often a kind of slavery. But captured warriors from another tribe are a liability. Better to kill them, often theatrically…..
After the agricultural revolution, roughly 11,000 years ago, slavery emerges almost everywhere. The most ancient texts make reference to it. The Bible takes it as a given in human affairs.
The Code of Hammurabi says that freeing a slave is a crime punishable by death. There are records of slavery in China going back to 1800 B.C.”
Jonah Goldberg, “Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy,” p. 33
3.Thomas Sowell, in “Black Rednecks and White Liberals,”p.113, explains why Americans see the institution as primarily racial, and why our educational system is largely to blame.
Karl Marx used the concept to his advantage: “Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted as early as Cicero in Ancient Rome, such as in De Officiis.[11] With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery…” Wage slavery - Wikipedia
Parenthetically, if government schools did not perpetuate the racial aspects of slavery in America, the Democrat Party would lose a huge voting block.
4.Slavery as a racial institution was a stain on America’s noble history….but the crime has been paid for, in blood:
"At least 620,000 combatants died during the four-year struggle; recent estimates put the total closer to 750,000, or more than 2 percent of the nation’s population at that time. More soldiers died in prison camps alone than America lost during the entire Vietnam War. Perhaps more to the point, some 350,000 Union soldiers died during the conflict, abolitionists in effect if not always in intent. Adjusted for population, that would amount to almost 5 million service deaths today, amounting to a blood sacrifice more than sufficient to redeem whatever moral or intellectual inconsistencies there are to be found in America’s founding documents.
And if that’s not sufficient? Well, then, nothing will be. But for most Americans—and for much of the rest of the world—it is more than enough. "
Blood Redemption
But it was not the Civil War that ended the institution of slavery…it was capitalism.
Next.
“There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.”
Helen Keller
2.“It is surely true that slavery was less common among primitive man than among the societies that arose after the agricultural revolution….because primitive man was so much poorer.
Slaves are a very large expense for nomadic bands. Guarding an enemy who doesn’t want to be part of the group is costly and dangerous.
Children can be taken in as assets- a common practice n many primitive societies, notably among American Indians- and women can be forced into marriage, very often a kind of slavery. But captured warriors from another tribe are a liability. Better to kill them, often theatrically…..
After the agricultural revolution, roughly 11,000 years ago, slavery emerges almost everywhere. The most ancient texts make reference to it. The Bible takes it as a given in human affairs.
The Code of Hammurabi says that freeing a slave is a crime punishable by death. There are records of slavery in China going back to 1800 B.C.”
Jonah Goldberg, “Suicide of the West: How the Rebirth of Tribalism, Populism, Nationalism, and Identity Politics is Destroying American Democracy,” p. 33
3.Thomas Sowell, in “Black Rednecks and White Liberals,”p.113, explains why Americans see the institution as primarily racial, and why our educational system is largely to blame.
Karl Marx used the concept to his advantage: “Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted as early as Cicero in Ancient Rome, such as in De Officiis.[11] With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery…” Wage slavery - Wikipedia
Parenthetically, if government schools did not perpetuate the racial aspects of slavery in America, the Democrat Party would lose a huge voting block.
4.Slavery as a racial institution was a stain on America’s noble history….but the crime has been paid for, in blood:
"At least 620,000 combatants died during the four-year struggle; recent estimates put the total closer to 750,000, or more than 2 percent of the nation’s population at that time. More soldiers died in prison camps alone than America lost during the entire Vietnam War. Perhaps more to the point, some 350,000 Union soldiers died during the conflict, abolitionists in effect if not always in intent. Adjusted for population, that would amount to almost 5 million service deaths today, amounting to a blood sacrifice more than sufficient to redeem whatever moral or intellectual inconsistencies there are to be found in America’s founding documents.
And if that’s not sufficient? Well, then, nothing will be. But for most Americans—and for much of the rest of the world—it is more than enough. "
Blood Redemption
But it was not the Civil War that ended the institution of slavery…it was capitalism.
Next.
