The Intersectionalists of the Right

[JahFocus CS]

Source

Perhaps better than most on the American left today, the old advocates of the antebellum system of slavery understood the ideological connections between abolitionism and socialism. They were what one could call “intersectionalists of the Right,” since they sought to demonstrate how abolitionism, socialism, women’s emancipation, and other progressive struggles were all linked to attacks on the rights of property.

Those who fought for the preservation of slavery knew that their war was not only a domestic struggle, but an international one against the same tendencies manifested in European socialism. Their remarks anticipate by a generation the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, when he describes abolitionism, feminism, and the workers’ movement as part of a single cultural logic of modernity, unleashed by the Jacobin energies of the French Revolution.

Even now, neo-confederate and revisionist historians cast Lincoln as an “American Robespierre,” or even as the “American Lenin.”

Here some of the quotes from Confederate leaders and advocates of slavery on the shared logics of abolition and socialism.

Virginia Senator Robert M.T. Hunter, March 25, 1850:

"Mr. President, if we recognize no law as obligatory, and no government as legitimate, which authorizes involuntary servitude, we shall be forced to consign the world to anarchy; for no government has yet existed, which did not recognize and enforce involuntary servitude for other causes than crime. To destroy that, we must destroy all inequality in property; for as long as these differences exist, there will be an involuntary servitude of man to man.

Your socialist is the true abolitionist, and he only fully understands his mission."

Jefferson Davis, on the eve of the Civil War:

"In fact, the European Socialists, who, in wild radicalism, . . . are the correspondents of the American abolitionists, maintain the same doctrine as to all property, that the abolitionists, do as to slave property. He who has property, they argue, is the robber of him who has not.

“La propriete, c’est le vol,” is the famous theme of the Socialist, Proudhon. And the same precise theories of attack at the North on the slave property of the South would, if carried out to their legitimate and necessary logical consequences, and will, if successful in this, their first state of action, superinduce attacks on all property, North and South."

George Fitzhugh, from his book Cannibals All!:

"We warn the North, that every one of the leading Abolitionists is agitating the negro slavery question merely as a means to attain ulterior ends, and those ends nearer home . . . They know that men once fairly committed to negro slavery agitation — once committed to the sweeping principle, “that man being a moral agent, accountable to God for his actions, should not have those actions controlled and directed by the will of another,” are, in effect, committed to Socialism and Communism, to the most ultra doctrines of Garrison, Goodell, Smith and Andrews — to no private property, no church, no law, no government, — to free love, free lands, free women, and free churches."

George Fitzhugh to William Lloyd Garrison, 1856:

"I shall in effect say, in the course of my argument, that every theoretical Abolitionist at the North is a Socialist or Communist, and proposes or approves of radical changes in the organization of society."

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1884, from the Nachlass:

"Continuation of Christianity by the French Revolution. Rousseau is the seducer: he again removes the chains of woman, who from then on is represented in an ever more interesting way, as suffering. Then the slaves and Mistress Beecher-Stowe. Then the poor and the workers. Then the vicious and the sick — all that is brought to the fore."

And here are a couple by abolitionists who came to champion the cause of workers:

Wendell Phillips after the outbreak of the Paris Commune in 1871:

"There is no hope for France but in the Reds."

Theodore Tilton:

"The same logic and sympathy — the same conviction and ardor — which made us an Abolitionist twenty years ago, make us a Communist now."

Why won't the right own up to its ideological lineage shared with defenders of slavery? And defenders of aristocracy and monarchy as well? Let's discuss

 

[Misanthrope]

Because it loses votes, can't be explained in a soundbite, and won't be brought up by an ignorant and lazy media.

/thread

 

[JahFocus CS]

Because it loses votes, can't be explained in a soundbite, and won't be brought up by an ignorant and lazy media.

/thread

I'm not talking about the politicians, but the proponents of the right, including those on here who try to defend the merits of class society and oppression.

 

[DEAD7]

a classless society, is as silly as the idea of a truly free market.

 

[AJaRuleStan]

The argument used by the proponents of abolitionist seem to be a slippery slope one -- if you remove slavery than that will lead to the removal of any sort of private ownership, which will lead to communism. It's a bullshyt argument. They were probably desperate because they couldn't actually think of a real rebuttal for slavery, so they tried to say abolitionist true intent was really to create a communist society and not of morality.

Anyway, in regard to how this relates to the rights view on how capital is controlled/organized in a "free market", I think there is nothing shared at the core level. Free Market Capitalism principle ideas involve "Voluntary" and "Freedom" and that people actually own their bodies. I can't really see how those concepts and ideas relate back to the idea of a Slave market economy.

btw the left has rekt the most havoc on blacks in the last century, and they pay no cost for it either.

 

[DEAD7]

is the idea being pushed here that bad people thought/supported [a], so people who think/support [a] are bad?
If so, You're better than this.

 

[JahFocus CS]

a classless society, is as silly as the idea of a truly free market.

So your view has been beaten back and now your new shtick is to throw your view under the bus and draw an equivalence in order to spite the opposing view?

 

[DEAD7]

So your view has been beaten back and now your new shtick is to throw your view under the bus and draw an equivalence in order to spite the opposing view?

Not at all, I've never held or seen the free market as infallible, and I recognize that it will never be realized, just as true communism will never be realized.
As i stated in the other thread, we should be discussing where to meet in the middle.

 

[Tate]

The argument used by the proponents of abolitionist seem to be a slippery slope one -- if you remove slavery than that will lead to the removal of any sort of private ownership, which will lead to communism. It's a bullshyt argument. They were probably desperate because they couldn't actually think of a real rebuttal for slavery, so they tried to say abolitionist true intent was really to create a communist society and not of morality.

Anyway, in regard to how this relates to the rights view on how capital is controlled/organized in a "free market", I think there is nothing shared at the core level. Free Market Capitalism principle ideas involve "Voluntary" and "Freedom" and that people actually own their bodies. I can't really see how those concepts and ideas relate back to the idea of a Slave market economy.

btw the left has rekt the most havoc on blacks in the last century, and they pay no cost for it either.

So you are of the opinion that black people are better off when black women can't leave black men for fear of starving?

 

[CHL]

So your view has been beaten back and now your new shtick is to throw your view under the bus and draw an equivalence in order to spite the opposing view?