Libertarian Contentions and Ruminations
on Voluntary Slavery

(An Exercise in Recreational Polemics)

In part a re-print of a philosophical debate between Dr. Leonard Carrier (DW In-House Historian and Philosopher)  and Professor Walter Block, American’s “Leading Libertarian Philosopher”, followed by

A Questioning of (almost) All Contentions by Dusty Schoch,

DW Foreign Policy Editor

(Acknowledgment: The Original (2-part) portion of this debate is Available athttp://watchingpolitics.com/?p=3463) – our corresponding blog where Len Carrier is

Contributing Editor, with their kind permission.)

 BLOCK/CARRIER DEBATE ON SLAVERY

By Leonard Carrier – contributing editor

Once again we feature an article by Walter Block, America’s leading Libertarian philosopher.  This time, Professor Block defends the idea that a person should be allowed to sell himself into slavery.   Remember, please, that the fundamental driving idea of Libertarianism is the Axiom of NonAggression, according to which a person may do anything he wants so long as he doesn’t aggress against others.  A corollary is that the government may not compel us to do anything whatsoever if our not doing the things government wants us to do does not harm others.  Self-imposed slavery, not paying our taxes, being prostitutes, using drugs, refusing to serve in the military, owning machine guns and not helping people in serious distress are but a handful of the things Block defends.  Of course he is against medicare and forced social security.

Our own Professor Leonard Carrier offers a rebuttal to Block.  Block’s essay is over 40 pages and we have been obliged to edit it severely.  Dr. Carrier’s essay is short but he has generously agreed to have it edited, too.

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WALTER BLOCK

The following scenario will illustrate a problem. You are a rich man who has long desired to have me as a slave, to order about as you will, even to kill me for disobedience or on the basis of any other whim which may occur to you. My child has now fallen ill with a dread disease. Fortunately, there is a cure. Unfortunately, it will cost one million dollars, and I, a poorman, do not have such funds at my disposal. Fortunately, you are willing to pay me this amount if I sign myself over to you as a slave, which I am very willing to do since my child’s life is vastly more important to me than my own liberty, or even my own life. Unfortunately, this would be illegal, at least if the doctrine of inalienability (non-transferability) is valid. If so, then you, the rich man, will not buy me into slavery, for I can run away at anytime, and the forces of law and order will come to my rescue, not yours, if you try to stop me by force.

At the extreme left are those who oppose sales, markets, and prices for anything. In this viewpoint, held mainly by the dictators of such countries as North Korea and Cuba, and by professors of sociology, literature, and religion at American universities, everything would be inalienable.  Instead of greedy profit-driven enterprise, the economy would be organized around the socialist principles of central planning and “benevolence.”

At the extreme right would be the libertarian philosophy I shall defend which maintains that everything should be legally alienable or commodifiable.

The underlying point of the libertarian critique is that if I own something, I can sell it (and should be allowed by law to do so). If I can’t sell it, then, and to that extent, I really don’t own it. Take my own liberty as perhaps the paradigm case of the debate over inalienability. The claim is that if I really own my liberty, then I should be free to dispose of it as I please, even if, by so doing, I end up no longer owning it…………..My thesis: No law should be enacted prohibiting or even limiting
in any way people’s rights to alienate those things they own. This is “full monte” alienability, or commodification.

Suppose that the master says to his human property, “Now that you are my slave and must obey me, give me back that $1 million I just paid for you.”  At most, this example proves it was foolish to sell yourself into slavery, not that it was wrong, illicit, or contrary to libertarianism. It would be like agreeing to work for $1 per year. Silly, perhaps, but no rights violation.

The voluntary slave agreement is not a “mere” promise. Rather, it is a bona fide contract where consideration crosses hands; when it is abrogated, theft occurs. If you pay $1 million for the right to enslave me, and I spend it, work for a week at your plantation, change my mind, escape, and the forces of law and order refuse to turn me over to you, then I have in this manner stolen that amount of money as surely as if I broke into your vault and absconded with it. [The slave owner is entitled to force the slave to return.]

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LEONARD CARRIER

No matter how bizarre or counterintuitive, it seems that the ugliest, most unloved opinion, can count on having a defender. A case in point is Walter Block’s defense of one’s right to sell or barter one’s way into slavery. When I first read all 46 pages of Professor Block’s compendious treatise, I could not suppress the thought, “Is he kidding?”  Yet, no, Professor Block is not kidding.   He is [the] keeper of the pure flame of Libertarianism:  that cantankerous minority view that holds that property rights are the be all and end all of morality.

Can’t someone voluntarily give up his freedom in order to pursue what he thinks is a greater good?  The answer to this question, is “no.”  [L]iberty is the sole foundation of a Libertarian creed.  You can’t both extol the virtues of liberty to justify the performance of other acts, and also cede that liberty to another. Mill made this same point, but Block chose not to demur.

The notion of property itself has a logical foundation.  I, myself, have certain properties—of being a certain height, weight, bulk, mental disposition, and capacity to act. Block seems to think that I am myself my own property.  I say this because he says that I can sell myself, like chattel, to the highest bidder, and thereby relinquish my right to remain at liberty.  This is logically absurd.    In order for properties to exist, there has to be a subject to have these properties. When Block says that one can sell or give away one’s properties, this is fair enough.  But one cannot give away or sell the “I” that is the subject of these properties. That “I” is the moral agent that is at liberty to sell or give away whatever it owns.  But one does not own oneself.

Block thinks that one can contract or promise to sell oneself into slavery.  This is a huge mistake.  Contracts and promises are invalid when what is supposedly contracted or promised is immoral.  Of course, one can say, “I promise,” or sign a contract that stipulates such, but that doesn’t make it a promise or a contract.  The reason why promises and contracts can’t bind one to immoral actions is simple.  Both of these agreements create an obligation to do what is promised or contracted.  But if what is so promised or contracted is immoral, then there can be no obligation to do what is immoral.  So even if the person who attempts to contract himself into slavery is sincere, his so-called contract is null and void from the very start.  This is because slavery is an immoral institution, and anything that supports it is also immoral.

Finally, Block should consider what it is to be a moral agent.  Clearly, since he claims to be concerned with rights of a moral agent, he should carefully consider the bearer of these rights. The foundation of morality, as both Block and I would seem to agree, is the liberty of the moral agent.  I find it impossible to believe that one can give up liberty, the foundation of morality, in the name of morality itself.

DUSTY’S  ADDENDUM

Interesting debate!  Spending that amount of time and cerebral energy on such a dusty and buried bone of contention smacks a little of playing fiddle while  Bush-reprised empire burning is at its height;  but having said that, I’m moved to join in with a little yanking at both ends of the bone.

Forget the group and tenets of “Libertarian” and simply approach it with the sound and reasonable acknowledgement that we live in a society with a social contract. By this contract, we’ve given up our rights to impose our own will (and morality) upon the majority in return for living in civil peace, harmony with and under the protective rules and authority of our duly-elected and governing sovereign. We’ve agreed, moral or not, to be law abiding. We’ve further agreed to grant the majority the right to legislate what is morally and criminally right (tolerable and allowed) and wrong (intolerable and proscribed).

As a member of our society we’ve agreed to abide by our democratically-legislated laws or leave (after we perhaps peacefully petition for relief and receive no redress).  Block, notwithstanding, wants his Libertarian notions of freedoms to trump our (and his own I should remind) social contract.  His remedy is of course obvious—move to another country with a more malleable social contract. The war lords in Afghanistan would probably welcome him—under his contracted enslavement–with open arms.

Always gentlemanly Carrier wants to debate Block as philosophers most always do—on the propounder’s own often (as here) absurd grounds. I suggest to both  re-entering the realm of what’s common sense, and in our case real. Under the existing laws promulgated under our centuries-old (time-tested and true, the best there is) social contract, we’ve given up as individuals the right to demand individual exceptions to laws passed by our democratic majority. That moots…solves…ends the question.

There have been through the checkered course of American history, laws few would dispute were “immoral”, by whatever standards were then faddish. This included the days of slavery in American under the identical social contract now in effect. The majority then deemed and legislatively proclaimed the “abominable institution” “legal”, and ipso facto, it was. If we disagreed with that we had the right not to own slaves ourselves, and the right to  move to another country where the social contracting parties had made it illegal.

In this country, at this time, we’ve agreed that—right or wrong—we won’t do it. We’ve legally proscribed the institution and the behavior.   Len is right when he says the theoretical contract (of voluntary enslavement by the slave) is immoral, but he glossed over the point that, under our social contract (the one Block has implicitly pledged to abide by residing in the country where it without exception prevails) the institution of slavery is prohibited; no exceptions.

Where the contract is illegal, morality is a collateral issue. Americans, under their social contract, have previously agreed not to enter contracts their country has deemed illegal and that is a matter of law…not simply “morality”. If we permit individual members of our socially-contracted community to place their own, infinitely-variable and perennially chameleonic  senses of “morality” above their socially-contracted duty to adhere to what is “legal”, we have launched the true war of Armageddon – the war of all against all.

So the resolution of the present debate is apparently too simple for our two philosophers who’ve skated over the frosty-hard foundations on which we’ve agreed to live. Block appears willing to become civilly disobedient. If he enters a contract to perform that which his countrymen have agreed is “illegal”, then he has breached his contract with his countrymen.  He is—morally and legally–hoisted on his own petard.  He must concede that breaching his own contract with his countrymen (actually the laws of his sovereign federation and its government) is “immoral” because, at the very least, from the ethical standpoint, he is breaking his implicit bond to abide by his sovereign’s laws.

As to the collateral issues of one’s being or not being “property” in this country, as a matter of both common sense and law, this is a dead issue. Under our laws, we are people, and people can’t here be sold as property. We’ve agreed to that when we agree to remain here as citizens.

Having said all that, “slavery” in every real sense is fully legal in our country, depending on how you define it. We can contract with one another to “enslave” ourselves for any number of hours a week, month or year to another, and be accountable in courts of law if we breach our duties of voluntary, capitalistic, de-humanizing “employment”. But at the same time we’ve agreed we have no right to kill one another, and so if the right to judge the quick and the dead is written in the employment (or enslavement) contract, it’s an illegal and unenforceable compact. It’s a no-brainer I’d say.

In closing, I think the dangers of slavery are obvious, as are the dangers of employment (legalized capitalistic slavery). Look at what the scholastic enslavement (as employed professors) of Block and Carrier has accomplished – it has driven both to the point of  such logical distraction that they are each willing to enter a debate so puerile  it publicly confirms their insipient old-age dementias.  Just kidding, of course, as I have gleefully sauntered in their little sophomoric sandbox for a shovel or two myself of forensic frolic.

Bottom lines here are so so simple. Block is right, but only relatively right.  He’s right if he’s standing in Afghanistan.  Len is right, but only relatively right on the grounds he’s asserting when he’s standing in church.  I’m right—without being relative—because I’m right here—standing in America, where it’s clearly illegal to enter a contract which enslaves anyone for any reason, including me and my dying son. I (and Block and Carrier) have agreed it’s illegal because we’ve previously agreed to abide by our social contract with our sovereign. Debate over.

Our laws are not always “right” in the moral sense.  Our laws in the past permitted us to put cocaine in our Coke, and that Coke into our slaves to make them work harder loading cotton onto  Mississippi barges. But it was and remains right—both in the legal and moral senses I submit—that we abide by  our social contract that says essentially this—It’s best—and so we agree—to rely on and adhere to  the majority’s idea of what’s “right” to determine what’s “legal” in this country of democratic majority rule.  A whole lot better than relying on one man’s judgments in that–or any–regard.

In passing, I’ll supply Block the question he perhaps should have asked and answered, at least for rhetorical effect:  It’s legal (at least not illegal) in most states to commit suicide.  So, if it’s legal for me to kill myself, isn’t it silly to submit it’s rational to forbid me to sell myself?  Sounds logical until you consider the equally obvious-  It takes only one to kill himself. It takes two to enslave. It’s never been illegal to be a slave– only to be an enslaver. We’ve chosen not to outlaw suicide but to proscribe a third party’s unlawfully assisting it.  Block has no right to tell his fellow countrymen that they must permit one of their peers to enslave Block. Forget morality, and forget Block’s presumed plenary rights over the use and abuse of his own flesh.  The law says his would-be owner can not  become his owner, and that, quite frankly is none of Block’s business, at least so long as he’s living in the good ol’ for-the-time-being Free U.S.A.  Now, again, at the risk of repetition, there’s still Afghanistan, Mr. Block…s’il vous plait.

J Dusty

3 30 07

Apology Needed for Slavery

By: Dr. Leonard Carrier, DW In-House Historian and Philosopher  (with an “Amen-dum” by DW Foreign-policy Editor, Dusty Schoch)

Recently, the State of Virginia issued a formal apology for slavery, and other states, such as Georgia, Maryland, and Missouri, are on the verge of doing so this year. It is fitting because 2007 marks the anniversary of two salient dates in history. The first is 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in Great Britain, and the second is the 150th anniversary of the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a runaway slave to a non-slave state was still a slave and must be returned to his owner. This gap of 50 years shows how far behind the ethical curve America was in redressing the injustice of slavery. Our federal government is still behind the curve in not considering an apology on behalf of the nation.

Although Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, it freed only those slaves in the Confederacy, and not in the North or in Border States such as Kentucky. The 13th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1865, but the failure of Reconstruction led to the evils of segregation, and it was only with the passage of civil rights legislation in the 1950s that black citizens got legal protection from racial discrimination, and even that did not stop the racial violence that occurred during the next decade. Even as racial violence has abated, Hurricane Katrina showed that legal protection was not enough to overcome the federal apathy and incompetence that resulted in the deaths or impoverishment of black citizens in New Orleans.

So we see that slavery has cast a long shadow in the United States. There is really no way to make proper amends for the harm it has caused, but a first step is to recognize it as the evil it was and to apologize for it. The great ethical principles all demand it. The Golden Rule states: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Emanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative proclaims: ”Never treat others merely as means but also as ends in themselves.” So if you were a victim of slavery because your ancestors were treated as mere means to an economic end, wouldn’t you want an apology? Simply asking the question provides its own answer.

DUSTY’S AMEN-DUM

Len has just graced us with his reaction, in both the ethical and historic contexts, to those States in the process of issuing official apologies to African-Americans for the enslavement of their ancestors. I have to admit it swayed me away from my luke-warm attitude towards innocent people apologizing to other innocents. It was my mother’s family—way back—and way down in Alabama that owned slaves.  Why should I be held responsible for that?  Moreover, how can I alter the fact I was named after Tuscaloosa Alabama’s most illustrious Confederate General, Major General, Robert E. Rodes?  I certainly cannot.  So why should any of us white folk apologize for something that happened a century and a half ago that no living person had anything to do with?

But then I read and considered Len’s words and his considered proposal.  Len argues persuasively that Katrina may be reasonably viewed as sequela to our former cultural disease – the “abominable institution” as  liberal elitists referred to it in its day.

When you take into consideration the “good” that might come to our African-American subculture by way of improvement in their individual and collective “self esteem” and sense of continued and unrequited injustice, it makes sense. If a white majority of our still white-dominated nation apologize to a minority of the same people for wrongs suffered by the minority’s ancestors, and make that apology on behalf of the country as a whole that “allowed” it, nothing is lost and the act has minimal “cost” in terms of either material expense or personal sacrifice. It is a gesture of good faith, good will and compassion.

I don’t think it’s something we (the innocent) NEED–by way of moral obligation or mandate–to do for our minority brethren. And that’s the point. That’s exactly why we SHOULD do it.  Black people vote now and exercise civil rights commensurate with white Americans because of the mandates of statutory and Constitutional laws. It’s compulsory. How much greater the gesture will be perceived when it is totally un-required….voluntary and thus patently flowing from the hearts and souls of compassionate fellow citizens.

Thanks, Len, for helping me restructure and evolve my thinking and ethical inertia from “Why should we… To why on earth should we not!”

Dusty

War is Still  our Only Enemy