I’m talking takes that make them immediately throw out the civility fetish and reach for the most crying wojack buzzwords in their vocabulary

  • save_vs_death [they/them]
    ·
    3 years ago

    the first liberal countries, the UK, US and Netherlands were the first to legalize slavery, whereas the ancienne regime of monarchist europe largely abolished slavery as a consequence of every subject being allowed to be a practicing christian (and therefore being able to attend church, have a family, etc.)

    edit: this is basically the synopsis of Domenico Losurdo's "Liberalism, A Counter-History"

    edit2: the book also goes into detail on colonialism, genocide, slavery and so on, and dunks on all the "greats" of old liberalism such as locke, burke, tocqueville, bentham; it's a very exhaustive display of all of the inherent contradictions of liberalism

    • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
      ·
      3 years ago

      One of the first uses of "science" was race science which the Capitalists used to justify black slavery. Medieval European Christians were appalled by the idea of owning another human being for life (serfdom is a mutual relationship, levels beyond "slavery"), so slave owners had to invent a reason why it was OK (black and brown people aren't human because of skull shapes, it's just the SCIENCE). Why do you think the Enlightenment dorks loved ancient Rome?

      • nightcrawler995 [he/him,any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        huh, and here i thought slavery was a natural extension of serfdom. it has been justified as a mutual relationship (by idiots, to be sure) before, seeing as how chattel slaves got 'free' housing, food, etc. will read up more on the subject, tho.

        • Barabas [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          As much as medieval europe abhored slavery, they sure did participate and profit from it. A lot of the ventures that spurred the age of discovery were fuelled by opening new slave markets in West Africa.

          Scientific racism, the curse of ham, civilizing the slaves so they can accept christ etc. are justifications of something that already existed and not the cause.

          • CrimsonSage [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            This, Catholic Spain is in the running for biggest genocidal slave empire in history.

        • CrimsonSage [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It depends, serfdom varied from not completely terrible to basically slavery by another name depending on the region.

        • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
          ·
          3 years ago

          Serfs were more akin to citizens of a small microstate. The time you worked for the lord wasn't crazy or anything, and theoretically you could buy "freedom", the thing was there was nowhere else to go. Being tied to a Lord was almost certainly better than risking it as a vagabond or trying your luck in a city. They were nowhere near "owned".