Mr. CompletelyDec 27, 2022
Folks who are surprised at the naked hypocrisy of white Christian support for cruelty to immigrants might be interested to read up on the defense of slavery in America, especially in the decades immediately prior to the Civil War. There is no end to the evil that evangelicals can justify to themselves when they believe it will bring them political power.
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisDec 28, 2022

@mrcompletely Hey, so, I am in fact literally reading* up on exactly this topic, so if you or anybody else has particular reading recommendations, I'd be pleased to hear them.

*Or at least accumulating scholarly books on the topic, and hope to make time to read in the not too distant future.

Show threadSumana HarihareswaraDec 29, 2022
@siderea have you already run into "Cannibals All!"? https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674094512 @mrcompletely
Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters — George Fitzhugh, C. Vann Woodward

Fitzhugh (1806-1881) offers a stinging attack on free society, laissez-faire economy, and wage slavery, and their philosophical underpinnings, using socialist doctrine to defend slavery. Drawing on the same evidence Marx used in his indictment of capitalism, he holds that socialism is only 'the new fashionable name for slavery.'

Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisDec 29, 2022
@brainwane @mrcompletely No! Thanks for the pointer, I think. Holy crap.
Show threadSumana HarihareswaraDec 29, 2022

@siderea It was quite an eye-opener when I read an excerpt from it in college.

Also: Robin Einhorn's 2006 book *American Taxation, American Slavery* https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo3750524.html on the effect of slaveowners' tax avoidance on the structure of the US Constitution and government. "Tax Aversion and the Legacy of Slavery" by her: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/194876.html

@mrcompletely

American Taxation, American Slavery

For all the recent attention to the slaveholding of the founding fathers, we still know remarkably little about the influence of slavery on American politics. American Taxation, American Slavery tackles this problem in a new way. Rather than parsing the ideological pronouncements of charismatic slaveholders, it examines the concrete policy decisions that slaveholders and non-slaveholders made in the critical realm of taxation. The result is surprising—that the enduring power of antigovernment rhetoric in the United States stems from the nation’s history of slavery rather than its history of liberty.            We are all familiar with the states’ rights arguments of proslavery politicians who wanted to keep the federal government weak and decentralized. But here Robin Einhorn shows the deep, broad, and continuous influence of slavery on this idea in American politics. From the earliest colonial times right up to the Civil War, slaveholding elites feared strong democratic government as a threat to the institution of slavery. American Taxation, American Slavery shows how their heated battles over taxation, the power to tax, and the distribution of tax burdens were rooted not in debates over personal liberty but rather in the rights of slaveholders to hold human beings as property. Along the way, Einhorn exposes the antidemocratic origins of the popular Jeffersonian rhetoric about weak government by showing that governments were actually more democratic—and stronger—where most people were free.            A strikingly original look at the role of slavery in the making of the United States, American Taxation, American Slavery will prove essential to anyone interested in the history of American government and politics.

University of Chicago Press
Show threadMr. CompletelyDec 29, 2022
@brainwane @siderea amazing. One of the factors I want to learn more about is the evolution of the conception of "capital" and how it relates to slavery. I've seen some references to it, how the framing changed from enslaved people as "property" to being "capital" - an immeasurably upsetting abstraction. But if I understand right this is when capitalism was starting to develop in sophistication and I want to understand how its genesis and slavery are entwined
Show threadSiderea, Sibylla BostoniensisDec 29, 2022
@mrcompletely
You've read the 1619 Project?
@brainwane
Show threadMr. Completely
@siderea @brainwane the original magazine yes, the book no - the Desmond article was my intro to linking them
Dec 29, 2022 at 3:59amWeb