[cwyers]

In that Carlyle essay, he says these, among other things:

"Once we get this far, we are almost all the way to Carlyle on slavery. We have not agreed that a man can be born a slave, but we agree that he can sell himself into slavery. That is: he can sign a contract with a master in which the slave agrees unconditionally to obey and work for the master, and the master agrees unconditionally to protect and support the slave.

Moreover, this contract need not be a mere expression of sentiment. It can and should be enforced by the State, just as a loan is. If the slave changes his mind and runs away, the State will capture and return him, billing the master for the expense. Or at least, these are reasonable terms under which two parties might agree on the permanent relationship of master and slave."

"A person makes a good slave if he is loyal, patient, and not exceptionally bright or stubborn. But even great intelligence is not necessarily a bar to a good experience in slavery, as the experience of many Greek slave philosophers, such as Epictetus, shows. A slave must carry the unique burden of personal dependency and obedience, which we are all used to expressing only toward impersonal government agencies."

"Of course, like gay marriage (or ordinary marriage), slavery is not without its abuses. When we think of the word 'slavery,' we think of these abuses. Thus, by defining the word as intrinsically abusive, like marriages in which one party beats the other, we can conveniently define away all the instances of slavery (or, for that matter, marriage) in which the relationship is functional."

I mean, if those are not actually supporting slavery, it seems to be only because he takes care to voice a lot of pro-slavery rhetoric without actually crossing that line.

[devalier]

Moldbug did in other places explicitly denounce hereditary, chattel slavery and called it evil.

His actual view seems to be that it should be legal for a person to sign a permanent, life-long employment contract, mediated and regulated for abuse by the state, where the person gets a guaranteed wage in return for having to provide labor. The idea is that for the lower end of the bell curve, this is a lot more humane than subjecting someone to the capriciousness of the capitalist system, where a person can be fired at will. Note that some on the left have made the same argument. There was a leftist critique of the end of serfdom in Eastern Europe, by which they accused the end of serfdom of being a greedy power-play by the feudal lords, who wished to renege on their obligations to provide for the serfs. Does this view make Moldbug evil?

[tptacek]

Yarvin makes repeated references to Carlyle in multiple pieces, not just the one that's being circulated. Carlyle's position on slavery is not compatible with your summary.

Carlyle's take† is distilled utilitarianism. The blacks in the West Indies are lazy and stupid. The English are not. The climate in the West Indies is such that a black person living there need not work at all; they can simply pluck their food off the vines. The English are starving. Left to their own devices, the black people will revert to a state of nature, killing each other in an atavistic reversion to a primal jungle. At least under slavery, they can be watched over by benevolent masters. The sugar trade will thrive. The English will prosper. Slavery is pareto efficient.

It's really not hard to find attachment points to Carlyle's "Discourse" in multiple places through Yarvin's writing --- the references to Carlyle, the nitpicking over 1850s politics extrapolated to condemnations of the abolition movement, the genetic predisposition stuff.

A reasonable person could reach the conclusion that the parent commenter did.

It is not, however, fair to say that Yarvin wrote overt defenses of slavery. His defenses of slavery --- presuming that's what they are --- are cryptic.

† and, I'll trepidatiously infer, Yarvin's (after correcting for modernity)

[devalier]

Carlyle's position on slavery is not compatible with your summary.

Agreed.

and, I'll trepidatiously infer, Yarvin's (after correcting for modernity)

Since Yarvin is on this thread, he can clarify his actual views if he so wishes.

I think it is possible to cite Carlyle, and to point out that Carlyle made better predictions than the abolitionists, without believing that all black people should be re-enslaved, without believing that chattel slavery is the optimal solution for people with an IQ under 85. I think one can draw from Carlyle while still being a good person.

I think his positive views are generally cryptic because his goal is not to produce some plan of action, his goal was to provoke and to get us to think critically about whether we are actually as moral and righteous as we think we are. We like to think of ourselves as being morally superior to Carlyle. But the counter argument is that when we try to abolish slavery in a righteousness holy war, we often end up in a worse state of general vagrancy and violence or even a worse state of exploitation (eg, share cropping) or a socialized form of slavery (eg, workfare). So rather than being holy and righteous, we should think about what kind of long-term paternalistic structures would actually work best for all involved. I don't that making this argument makes someone a bad person, or worthy of being purged.

[tptacek]

Whatever else I think about the idea that Carlyle "made better predictions than the abolitionists", I think I can object that the problem doesn't stop at the approving references to Carlyle. For instance, Yarvin's "favorite primary source on slavery" is Nehemiah Adams, which he quotes in the most cryptic way possible, leaving out the fact that the book --- particularly in the context he cites it in --- is essentially an attempt to paint slavery as a benevolent condition. Look at their clothes! Look at their happy faces! They don't seem downtrodden at all!

Maybe "approver of slavery" is a less apt description than "whatever slavery's equivalent of a holocaust denier is".

Your response to this could be informed by the knowledge that the Adams reference is one of many others I could have chosen to highlight.

Again, I could just be misreading all of this. Yarvin surely made that easy to do.

Ultimately, my argument throughout much of this thread is straightforward, so I'd like to restate it as we delve further into the weeds: Yarvin's writing isn't a case where people have worked hard to mine unsavory associations from ambiguously worded old blog posts. Yarvin is best known for his writing, and much of that writing appears frankly and straightforwardly odious.

[devalier]

I am familiar with the Nehemiah Adams reference.

Keep in mind that Moldbug's blog is trying to provide a corrective to our default view, and so Adam's account is his favorite, shock therapy, corrective book in a world where we are already marinated in the view that southern slavery was an unmitigated horror. In world where slave-holder ideology ran supreme, perhaps his favorite book might be something else.

The key question is: do we have a more accurate view of slavery if we include Nehemiah Adams and Genovese and the Roving Editor in addition to the standard progressive accounts? Or do we have a more accurate view if we only read the standard progressive accounts? Is Nehemiah so credulous, so inaccurate, that we get negative information value from reading him? Do we trust his account at all? Or was he duped like Beatrice Webb visiting the Soviet Union?

My own sense is that reading Adams in addition to progressive sources gives us a more accurate view of slavery in its totality. I don't get the sense that he his Beatrice Webb, he wasn't being given a tour by official handlers. But I'm willing to be convinced otherwise. I honestly do want to have an accurate picture of history, whatever that may be.

[tptacek]

I recoil from the idea that the view of southern slavery as unmitigated horror needs correction. Meanwhile, I don't have to defend every sentence in Nehemiah Adams, because the context in which Yarvin chose to cite him (approvingly, as one of his favorites) is as a rebuttal to the idea that slavery was harmful to blacks. If someone's being unfair to Adams in this situation, it's Yarvin.

[hga]

Which puts us firmly in the (disputed) land of Cardinal Richelieu:

Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.

If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.

[tptacek]

Could you be a little more explicit about what you're trying to say? Because I'm prepared to get into more detail here, if you're contesting my interpretation.