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The West didn't abolish slavery, they just deregulated it

Mr. Bolson, the Muslim convert, says basically the same thing as Fitzhugh

George Fitzhugh Against Liberalism

Cannibals All! continued Fitzhugh's criticisms of the foundational guiding principles of the American Revolution, including criticizing the validity of the notion of the consent of the governed:

"We do not agree with the authors of the Declaration of Independence, that governments 'derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.' The women, the children, the negroes, and but few of the non-property holders were consulted, or consented to the Revolution, or the governments that ensued from its success. As to these, the new governments were self-elected despotisms, and the governing class self-elected despots. Those governments originated in force, and have been continued by force. All governments must originate in force, and be continued by force. The very term, government, implies that it is carried on against the consent of the governed. [...] The ancient republics were governed by a small class of adult male citizens, who assumed and exercised the government, without the consent of the governed. The South is governed just as those ancient republics were. In the county in which we live, there are eighteen thousand souls, and only twelve hundred voters."

Fitzhugh's contempt for wage labor and laissez-faire capitalism are themes which dominated his Failure of Free Society and Cannibals All! In these works, Fitzhugh argued free labor was a crueler system than slavery. The results of free labor alienated the working class and therefore, produced movements for socialism, abolitionism, and feminism. As a solution, Fitzhugh advocated for extending the paternalistic relationship of the plantation system to encompass all lower class Southerners.

Fitzhugh postulated slavery as a humane alternative for both black and white laborers that would rectify the evils in laissez-faire capitalism.

"It is the duty of society to protect the weak;" but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, "It is the duty of society to enslave the weak."

George Fitzhugh (1857), "Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters"

Cannibals All! Or Slaves Without Masters - George Fitzhugh (1857)

Fitzhugh was provocative because of his stinging attack on free society, laissez-faire economy, and wage slavery, along with their philosophical underpinnings. He used socialist doctrine to defend slavery and drew upon the same evidence Marx used in his indictment of capitalism. Socialism, he held, was only “the new fashionable name for slavery,” though slavery was far more humane and responsible, “the best and most common form of socialism.”

His most effective testimony was furnished by the abolitionists themselves. He combed the diatribes of their friends, the reformers, transcendentalists, and utopians, against the social evils of the North. “Why all this,” he asked, “except that free society is a failure?”

The trouble all started, according to Fitzhugh, with John Locke, “a presumptuous charlatan,” and with the heresies of the Enlightenment.

The Socialism of George Fitzhugh
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"Slavery, besides associating men more closely as the socialists propose, also associates labor and capital, and thus renders them more productive. It also agrees with communism in supplying each one according to his wants, and not according to his labor. It is far superior either in this, that the head of the association owning its members is impelled alike by domestic affection and self-​interest to take good and kindly care of them. Man takes the best care of that property which is most valuable. Slaves are not only the most valuable property, but they are weak and dependent human beings, and we can’t help loving what is frail and dependent.
Free laborers are at constant war with their employers. They seek high wages—the employers struggle to depress wages—and also at war with each other, by underbidding to get employment. Hence, the free laborer is treated worse and fares worse than any other animal on an English farm; and hence the slave always fares and is treated far better than mere brute animals."
Fitzhugh declared that only a small minority of people—perhaps 1 out of every 20—will be clever enough to rise to the top in a competitive economy. The majority will be vulnerable to exploitation, so they deserve the protection of others. But this protection requires control, and slavery provides both:

"All socialists, indeed I might say, all men agree that the common laboring class and all the weaker members of society require more of protection than is now afforded them. But, to protect men, we must have the power of controlling them. We must first enslave them before we can protect them."

Fitzhugh’s position was nicely summarized by Joseph Dorfman, in the second volume of The Economic Mind in American Civilization(1946):

"Fitzhugh declared that the conservative principle proclaims the duty of society to protect the weak. Effective protection necessitates control. Therefore society has the duty of enslaving the weak, especially in old countries where property is held by a few. The philanthropic-​minded, justly desiring power to control the conduct of his beneficiaries, should invest in slaves because where his control is greatest, his ability to do real good is most perfect. Thus the ideal communism would be to turn over the pauper whites in the North at present to the possessors of capital. The North must realize that the masses require “more of protection and the philosophers more of control.” The mass cannot be governed by “law and moral suasion, but only by despotic discretion.”

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The Socialism of George Fitzhugh
Part 2 of 3

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(In 1851, Andrews co-​founded, with his mentor Josiah Warren, Modern Times in New York, which used labor notes as the currency of exchange.) The vast majority of utopian social experiments had failed (Modern Times lasted for 12 years), according to Fitzhugh, yet socialists recommended that their economic system (based on the “cost principle”) be applied to all of society. Fitzhugh maintained that this would be disastrous. The conflict between capital and labor was inevitable in any society, so the only permanent solution was to minimize the conflict as much as possible. And slavery, which had existed for thousands of years, was the best remedy yet devised.

Fitzhugh shifted the ground on which defenders of slavery usually argued with abolitionists. He argued that slavery advocates need not adopt a defensive posture and defend slavery on moral grounds, since Northerners were as guilty of exploiting their laborers as were Southerners. The only relevant question was: Which system, slavery or “free” labor, produced a better outcome? As Fitzhugh put it in A Controversy on Slavery(a written debate with abolitionist A. Hogeboom, published in 1857):

*“Read the work of your able philosopher, Stephen Pearl Andrews, on “The Science of Society,” and you will see how slavery does exist in (so-​called) free society.” If wage-​slavery had not yet reached its inevitable consequences in the North, as it had in England and Europe, this was because plenty of land was still available in the West, so dissatisfied laborers had some place to relocate. But as the West became populated, all the evils of a free society would manifest themselves, including infidelity, free love, labor riots, poverty, and so forth. Fitzhugh cast down the utilitarian gauntlet to Hogeboom:
I will agree and consent that slavery is wrong, and should be abolished, if you can prove that the “greater number of featherless bipeds” will be physically better off by its abolition. I think that nine-​tenths of mankind are best off when they are ridden with a tight rein, and plentiful applications of the whip and spur. … Such [people], embracing nine-​tenths, probably nineteen-​twentieths of mankind, require masters as well to protect and to provide for them as to govern them.

Although Fitzhugh shared the racial prejudice against blacks that was typical of his time, his defense of slavery was not based on racism. White laborers would also benefit from working as slaves, he claimed. Laborers in the North were slaves without masters, and this made their living conditions worse than laborers in the South, who were slaves with masters. A slave plantation was a nearly perfect socialist community, since slaves received food, shelter, and medical care from cradle to grave, regardless of their physical condition—advantages that Northern workers did not enjoy. All these advantages were provided by the masters that did not exist in the North. Stories of cruelty by masters against their slaves, which had been widely circulated by abolitionists, were the exception rather than the rule. Most owners regarded slaves as members of their extended family, and treated them humanely.*"

As indicated by the title of Fitzhugh’s most famous book, we are all cannibals insofar as we must live off the labor of others. But slavery reduces the exploitation of laborers to a minimum. If, as was commonly claimed, the products of free labor are less expensive than the products of slave labor, this was because slavery allots to the slave a higher proportion of the products of his own labor than does the wage system. Again, the master assures this, whereas capitalistic employers will pay only the minimum required to hire workers. Those mini-​islands of slavery in the South, therefore, are more just to workers than are factories in the North. Fitzhugh wrote:

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Japan, much like the South, has been told to abandon her culture and her values at the altar of progress by the priests of the Yankee Empire.

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#tradition