| > No, they did it because they viewed "others" as less than human, or less deserving of dignity and respect, no different than a beast of burden. Slavery predates capitalism by millennia, so viewing others this way clearly doesn't share a causative relationship with capitalism. To contend that capitalism caused slavery is absurd. It's the only economic system in history that resulted in the enduring abolition of slavery. Modern, alternative economic systems still devolve into utilizing slavery to this very day. Darwinism predates "Darwinism". Yours is not an argument. People traded before states existed. Rational actors didn't appear at the date when the model description of capitalism was defined. People kept slaves because they could (obviously). We can argue that they either did this for profit or for laughs. I know what I'd bet. > You should also read George Fitzhugh, the most prominent representative of anti abolitionist plantation owners. He was a staunch anti-capitalist specifically because the moral framework it is built on humanized black people and this sentiment was a primary driver in the abolitionist movement. Capitalists and abolitionists were extremely closely associated during the abolitionist movement. "We treat the Abolitionists and Socialists as identical, because they are notoriously the same people, employing the same arguments and bent on the same schemes. Abolition is the first step in Socialism: the former proposes to abolish negro slavery, the latter all kinds of slavery - religion, government, marriage, families, property - nay, human nature itself. Yet the former contains the germ of the latter, and very soon ripens into it; Abolition is Socialism in its infancy." - George Fitzhugh > > Maximizing rights and freedoms on the macro scale means limiting some people's edge freedoms on the micro scale. > No it doesn't. It means preventing others from stepping on universal freedoms of others, which is exactly the philosophical foundations of private property. Meaning someone enforces your right to property from someone else having a different idea of freedoms. You're not contradicting me. We can only have rights and freedoms by collectively agreeing where those limits are, and enforcing them as a society. That's what laws and regulations do. |