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.                 

THE READING RHEUM: AMERICA-- IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT HER (2014)

 

I've had only a nodding acquaintance with the life and works of Dinesh D'Souza. I knew that after he wrote a negative book about on Barack Obama, New York prosecutors, possibly doing the will of the Obama administration, charged D'Souza with illegal campaign contributions. The eight months D'Souza spent in a low-security prison may have been good for his career in that both his books and documentary films have become popular with right-leaning audiences. Over the years, I read a few D'Souza essays and liked some ideas but thought he sometimes resorted to sophisms (like the well-worn "the Democrats were the party of slavery," which is broadly true but misleading).

AMERICA-- IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT HER contains a few sophisms, but its theme statement provides a solid philosophical response to the Left's condemnation of the United States as irretrievably evil and imperialist. D'Souza marshals an impressive roster of intellectuals and academics-- including Marx, DeToqueville, James Madison, Adam Smith, and many of the 20th-century radicals, whose justifications of their hatred of America lay bare their dubious motivations, as well as their insidious influence upon Leftist politics. From these diverse voices D'Souza articulates his thesis: that America was unique in championing entrepreneurship as no country had before or has since. 

Further, D'Souza connects good entrepreneurship with the quality Adam Smith, conceiver of the market's "invisible hand," called "empathy:"

...entrepreneurs created demand by introducing a product that no one asked for, but millions of people wanted once it was available. I call this "extreme empathy" because it's a case of entrepreneurs providing for the wants of consumers before consumers even know what they want. -- Chapter 10.

Now neither Smith nor D'Souza denied that the entrepreneur is motivated by what Smith termed "self-interest." But D'Souza asserts that such self-interest manifests in the maintenance of commerce, and because commerce is generally consensual, it stands in marked contrast to the ethic of conquest that dominated all older cultures:

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.

To buttress this argument, D'Souza even quotes the 12th-century Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun (albeit in paraphrase), to the effect in his time violent conquest was deemed more honorable than the tradecraft of merchants, because conquest was more overt in its purpose to exploit others. But D'Souza's thesis persuasively argues that the ethic of conquest has been transcended by the actions of the colonists of early America, made up largely of either merchants or immigrants who aspired to be merchants.

I won't cover in detail the ways in which D'Souza exposes the grievance-based methods by which Leftist radicals have sought to tar the United States with the sins of the past. But he throws considerable doubt upon the motives of politicians like Obama and Hilary Clinton, and even if all of D'Souza's charges don't stick, it's a relief to find some of these sacred cows gored (so to speak).

One last comment: this 2014 book mentioned the fact that Obama was going to pass the Presidential torch to Hilary, which was correct. D'Souza thus makes no mention of the Presidential gamechanger Donald Trump, who announced his candidacy in June 2015. But it's fitting that Trump, whatever his faults, should arise to oppose the shame-dependent Left, not least because Trump is also-- an entrepreneur.