Cannibals All. A society based upon.

I found recently a rather facsinating book by a certain George Fitzhugh who wrote a defence of slavery titled Cannibals all. His defense of slavery was effectively a critique of capitilism which he held was far more oppresive than slavery since a master has a great deal of interest in his slave staying alive and well while an employer can simply hire another worker so has no such interest. He advocated the enslavment of all who did not hold capital (ie the entire lower class) of society and believed that "nineteen out of every twenty individuals have...a natural and inalienable right to be slaves". Incidentily in other respects he was rather progressive supporting the right of (free) women to vote.
My first question is how popular were such views in the South was Goerge a tiny minority or did his views represent the opinions of a cobsiderable class.

My second is how do you think they could be anyway to have a society constructed on such principles in the case of say a victorias Confederacy or very different USA. I realise it is rather ASB but I find the book facsinating and very well thought (in a repulsive sort of way) so would like to ask if it would be possible for any goverment to say attempt to in some way enslave the urban proletariate of society in an attempt to build such a society. How could such views gain more popularity in reaction to Capitilism? Maybe if no well thought out socialist theory appears.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Fitzhugh
 
The lower-class whites are not going to go for this at all--slavery made them automatically superior to blacks no matter how poor and degraded they were and that's on top of the whole not wanting to be a slave thing.

(Some Confederate said something to the effect of "I'd rather die than be an n***** on one of those big plantations.")

And guess who is going to be staffing the Confederate armies? The poor whites. Good luck enforcing this.

Assuming a Confederate victory, he can be trotted out as anti-Confederate propaganda regardless of how well accepted (or not) his views were in the Confederacy.
 
Wow, that is a darkly fascinating idea. Sounds very Draka-esque.
Thats what I thought actually especially the equallity that he believed their should be among the Master class. But in other respects the analogy doesn't hold so true since he was religous and argued for the slavery on the grounds that it was good for the slaves. Although he did also talk about the benefits it would provide to the masters since they would be freed from all degrading tasks.

By the way an accusation he makes several times is that slaves in the south were better off than workers in Britain. Is there any truth to this.
 
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By the way an accusation he makes several times is that slaves in the south were better off than workers in Britain. Is their any truth to this.
With very little research, I'd say it depends on which master and which employer you're talking about. A slave could get someone like Jefferson who built his slaves better cabins than most poor whites had, or he could get someone like Simon Legree. A free employee could get a job in either type of factory - but he could also quit and go to work somewhere else. Comparing averages and variance could tell you something very interesting, but I'm sure the worst free workers were much, much, much better off than the worst slaves.
 
By the way an accusation he makes several times is that slaves in the south were better off than workers in Britain. Is there any truth to this.

In Britain, quitting your job at the mill without permission wasn't punishable by mutilation or execution. You really shouldn't have needed to ask that question.
 
In Britain, quitting your job at the mill without permission wasn't punishable by mutilation or execution. You really shouldn't have needed to ask that question.
I was meaning in a purely material sense. Which would be better fed and work the shortest hours and have the longest life expectancy. Life working in a factory wasn't exactly pretty you know.
 
Fitshugh was a tiny minority. He was deeply embarassing to southerners, while Northern polemicists loved the man.

I'm betting that the proletariat was generally better off, though conditions were pretty bad in the early factories. Getting lashed is, after all, a material disbenefit. So is being forcibly emigrated away from your family.
 
He is only marginally wrong. True, slaves were a commodity, and you don't just destroy or cripple an expensive piece of your inventory for shits and giggles, while early industrial safety usually meant having someone drag the corpses or cripples away. If one looks at general health, safety at work and injury risks, the agricultural slaves were certainly far better off than industrial workers. On lashings, etc., a worker could quit (if he wasn't in debt with the company), but he could expect to be beaten if he spoke up, tried to organize the workers or go on strike, even shot at. Living conditions were usually horrible, but I guess the slaves were marginally better fed (you couldn't just lay them off if they got sick) and at least had plenty of fresh air. But urban workers had at least the minute possibility to slowly better their lot.
 
cannibals

Just before the ACW, in Baltimore rented out slaves were were working along side of free industrial workers. The slaves would pay a portion of their wages to their masters. They would keep the rest, out of which they would pay their room and board.
According to the book I read, the only guarentee that the free workers would be better off than the slaves was the formers' incipient right to organize. This is a right that a lot of politicians would love to take away.
 
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