Happiness in Slavery

Slavery should be reintroduced in America. Perhaps the whole world. Now before you jump to conclusions, please be patient and hear me out. I am certain many will agree with me when I finish. Many already do.

The institution of slavery has been prevalent through most of human history. From that perspective, opposition to slavery is unnatural. Alexis de Tocqueville recognized in Democracy in America, "the most profound and capacious minds of Rome and Greece were never able to reach the idea, at once so general and so simple, of the common likeness of men and of the common birthright of each to freedom; they tried to prove that slavery was in the order of nature and that it would always exist. Nay, more, everything shows that those of the ancients who had been slaves before they became free, many of whom have left us excellent writings, themselves regarded servitude in no other light." So the ancient Greeks and Romans recognized, both freemen and slaves alike, that slavery was natural and should not be questioned. But we have arrogantly questioned it and foolishly disposed of it, despite the wisdom of the ancients. After all, who are we to question the wisdom of the ancient Greeks and Romans, whose ideas have been around much longer than the foolish notion that all men should be free? Do modern ideas hold up to such ancient wisdom? I think not. So let us do away with this silly notion that slavery is unnatural. Our ancient forefathers believed slavery was natural and so should we. The question then arrises as to why we ever got rid of such a wonderful system.

One reason we got rid of slavery is it did not work very well in the past. Ludwig von Mises claimed in Human Action that "Servile labor disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labor; its unprofitability sealed its doom in the market economy." He then says slavery survived in the American South only because of laws restricting free labor. I would disagree. Obviously such a wonderful system is perfectly capable of surviving, regardless of the laws. It seems to me there are other reasons why slavery did not work. For one, slavery was obviously not tried by the right people. If slavery is to work, it must be carried out by the right people. These people clearly were not the American Southerners, who became too lazy. Nor apparently were the ancient Greeks or Romans, as slavery did not survive much past them. If the right people were to try slavery and be the slave masters, then slavery would work spectacularly well despite the objections of people such as Mises.

Then there is the possibility that we were simply not ready for slavery when we tried it. I do not know if we are ready for it even now. One can only dream we will be in the future. The problems we had with slavery were with the philosophical ideology and psychological conditions of both slaves and slavemasters. This was especially prevalent among slaves in the American South, but less of a problem with Greek and Roman slaves. We could look to them for many reasons and examples of how slavery worked for the slaves. But perhaps we do not have to look as far back as ancient Greece and Rome; especially when all we have to do is look back to the mid-1700's for a philosophy perfect for slaves, perfect in making them better slaves; and not only better slaves but even enjoy their slavery.

Immanuel Kant's moral system is perfect for the slave of the future to adopt and for the future slavemaster to reinforce among his slaves. Kant says an action can only be considered moral if one has absolutely no desire to do it, but does it anyway out of a sense of duty. Not only this, but he must derive absolutely no benefit from it whatsoever, either material or spiritual, since the benefit would destroy any moral value of the action. What could be a better moral philosophy for slaves? What action would a slave want to do as a slave? None. Therefore his actions would be moral. And what would be better to ensure the slave does his work than because he has a moral duty to do so? And what benefit does a slave garnish from his actions as a slave? Why none, of course. So a slave’s actions would be the epitome of morality! Once we convince our slaves to believe this, they will be happy and dutiful slaves, since they would believe their slavery to be the height of morality. Not only this, but they would see any desire to be free as at best nonmoral, and so would not desire freedom. Kant's suggestion that the only standard of virtue is duty, and that to receive any reward for doing something would erase the morality of the action would further strengthen the philosophical binds of the slave, since one of the distinctions of slavery is that there are no rewards, only punishment. The suffering of the slave would be seen as the ideal state by the slave when he adopted this morality, creating the ideal philosophical and psychological conditions for slavery. The use of reason is so disparaged by the condition of slavery that any ounce of freedom would be such a heavier burden on the new slave that he would greatly prefer his slavery to any suggestion of freedom. This further strengthens the perception that slavery is moral, which is used to ensure their slavery. Since they disparage reason, this view that morality lies outside reason would again be most beneficial. The less they use reason, the more moral they are. Thus, slaves would see themselves in the most moral position in their slavery. They would love their slavery and would never try to escape it.

But slaves cannot exist without slavemasters. For that reason, we would next have to ensure our slavemasters too have the right philosophy and psychological conditions. They must be prepared to be slavemasters, and so should not consider their slaves to be on any equal footing whatsoever. They must not only consider themselves superior, but must be prepared to take care of all their slaves' needs. The slavemasters would be, after all, more able to take care of the slaves than the slaves would be to take care of themselves by the very fact that they are the masters. They would take what the slaves produced and distribute it properly, making sure none of their slaves were without needs. Thus the slavemaster must believe that it is he who is morally superior, while being capable of convincing his slaves that they are.

But how can we determine what a slave needs if we do not first know exactly what a slave is. A slave is someone who does not have a right to exist for his own sake. He exists only for the slavemaster, and his work and life must belong to the master exclusively. He exists only for his master, who may do with him as he wishes. The essential characteristic of slavery is the complete denial of the slave's property rights. All property must belong to the master, from the slave's clothes to the house he lives in. Thus, the right to property (to its use and disposal) is vested in the slavemaster alone. Since all the slave's property belongs to the master, the slave himself belongs to the master, as he properly should. Since nothing the slave produces belongs to him, but to the master, his very life belongs to the master. Since a slave's property rights are denied, the slave is of course turned into property himself.

The problem then arises as to who should be slaves. There are many problems inherent in making any one race a slave race, so we should again look to the Greeks and Romans for the best way to institute slavery. They made it a practice to enslave all races, and so could relate to their slaves better, since technically anybody could be a slave. This would mean we would likely have the same percentage of black, white, and Oriental slavemasters as there would be slaves. But where would we get the slaves? Who would want to become a slave? That is easy enough. There are millions of people worldwide who would consider a state of slavery better than their current conditions, especially those who could have whatever pressing debts they had accumulated eliminated, and so would elect to become slaves. As previously stated, though, once they become slaves, the masters would have to be careful to ensure they were properly indoctrinated with the right philosophy so they would not desire their freedom in the future.

The voluntary choice to enslavement would answer the arguments against slavery because many past slaves were made so by force. I am certainly against that. No, if a person elects to make himself a slave, he certainly has the right to do so. I also believe that once everyone begins to see how much better the slave's life is, more and more people will want to become slaves. We could even have entire slave states, with a single master or a small group of masters working together to reside over their slaves. In these larger groups, the slaves would be even happier than their free counterparts, since they would not only see their slavery as moral, but would be happy in the knowledge that his fellow man's slavery makes them all equals. What could be a fairer social system than to have most of the population as slaves, where they would all be equal in their servitude?

Slavery has even more advantages other than equality among the slaves. Slavery would also greatly order peoples' lives, making it easier for them to be happier. It is after all the unknowns in life that make this world an unhappy place to live in. Under slavery, everyone would know their place, what time to wake, to eat, to sleep, and even when to have sex. Ridiculous emotional relationships would be unnecessary, so much psychological suffering would be alleviated. The masters would decide who breeds with whom, making emotions unnecessary and useless. Everything would be perfectly organized. It would be beautiful.

I hope I have convinced you that slavery is the ideal social system of the future. While slavery has had an unsavory past, that is no reason to do away with it outright. Not when so many good things could come about through it. Once we realize the problems we had were simply because the wrong people had tried it and because we were not ready for slavery, we can move on to reintroducing slavery and making it the ideal system it promises to be. I am certain if my outline were followed, this ideal system could be realized. It's a wonderful system that has gotten a bad name because the wrong people did it in the past. Why don't we give this system another chance? If you do not like it, you may certainly feel free to not participate. But let the rest of us who believe in the beauty of such a system go forward into the bright light slavery's future holds for humanity. Once we have shown how wonderful a system slavery is, I am certain you too will want to join it for the greater good of humanity.