SLAVE WAGES PT. 3

 I found myself revisiting this two-part essay, particularly the second part, after reading these two sentences from Dinesh D'Souza's AMERICA-- IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT HER:

The impulse to conquest comes from what Augustine termed the libido dominandi, the lust for power. This powerful passion included not merely the desire for goods but also for slaves and concubines.

The D'Souza book does not explore in depth the nature of any "lust for power," Augustinian or otherwise, but aligns any desires for dominion with what he terms "the ethic of conquest," which depends on the use of non-consensual force. This ethic is contrasted with the ethic D'Souza champions, which might be termed an "ethic of commerce," in that D'Souza argues for commerce as the exercise of consensual interactions between assorted parties. And I may explore this thesis further in another essay, but here I want to contrast this one Augustinian assertion with what I wrote in the 2021 essay.

To sum up, I considered various reasons as to the etiology of slavery in antiquity. Reasons included the "eff you rationale" (where the people you're "effing" are rival tribes, by subjugating captives of those tribes), the potential for ransom, and the motive of economic security.

Now, however, I think I oversimplified. I do believe that most if not all cultures regarded the keeping of slaves as a form of personal wealth. And not all slaves are necessarily of enemy tribes or of different races, given that Leviticus mentions that ancient Jews kept other Jews as slaves. Slavery may have evolved as a retaliatory practice during tribal conflicts, but plainly once the practice got going, tribe-members were as vulnerable as outsiders to becoming enslaved, whether for economic or other reasons.

While my "eff you rationale" was conceived purely in terms of Tribe X wanting to enjoy the upper hand over Tribe Y, the rationale may apply in the more general sense of Human X wanting the upper hand over Human Y, irrespective of tribal allegiances. Though I have not read, nor am likely to read, any Augustine, his idea of the *libido dominandi* might be consonant with what I mean by "upper hand"-- though even that may not speak to the full nature of homo sapiens. From some quickie readings online, I see that Augustine's solution for man's domineering nature is "love of God," and that's not precisely a solution for me. In a future essay I may explore this line of thought in concert with earlier posts on the writings of Fukuyama. But with respect only to the etiology of slavery, it's feasible to see both "an ethic of conquest" and an "ethic of commerce" playing equal roles.