Social struggle forever?

The motto of the French Revolution, based on the ideals of the European Enlightenment, was ‘Liberty, equality, and brotherhood.’ It means that we should all be free and equal, as brothers and sisters. That was a tad ambitious back then, and it still is today, because human nature is not particularly forthcoming. There was also some liberty, equality, and brotherhood elsewhere, but developments in the West came to decide the history of the world. The European Enlightenment turned these values into abstract ideals that we could fight wars over. The French Revolution and the subsequent spread of Enlightenment ideas across Europe by French armies led by Napoleon prompted the German philosopher Hegel to formulate his dialectic of progress.

Hegel laid out the ideological conflict between progressives and conservatives that would dominate Western societies over the next two centuries. Better ideas would replace poorer ones in a competition that includes revolution and warfare, he prophesied. One particular branch of progressivism was Marxism. Marx believed that the organisation of societies stem from unenlightened self-interest, thus our willingness to accept the myths of the elites and our unwillingness to accept the facts. We would be better off if we knew the facts. Intellectuals at the time came to agree that much of the Bible was fiction. Add to that that Jesus hadn’t shown up for 1,800 years.

Religion kept people dumb and obedient. Christ taught that the meek would inherit the Earth. Marx taught that the meek should rise against their oppressors to achieve Paradise themselves. In the Soviet Union, communists started a state-run economy. In the West, socialists pressed for labour reforms and higher wages. Once workers in Western societies had come to live the good life, the Marxists moved on to try to liberate other oppressed groups. Critical Theory, also known as Cultural Marxism, examines and criticises society and culture using the social sciences and the humanities. The question remains: what is oppression and what is not? And if liberating requires repression, would the end still justify the means?

Max Horkheimer described Critical Theory as seeking to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them. You can free yourself from thoughts such as believing your job or role is natural or divinely ordained. And you can free yourself and your group from the oppression of another. Critical Theory examines power structures, societal roles, cultures and their alternatives. You can ask yourself why most members of parliament are men. Is it culture, human nature, or power structures? Critical Theory leads nowhere if it tries to liberate us from human nature. Still, culture can greatly affect our conduct. Critical Theory can lead to a new power structure of opinion-makers who tell you what you should think, as the clergy did in the past.

The critical theorists suspect the existence of conspiracies of those in power to keep the oppression going, such as men in positions of power aiming to keep women out of positions of power. There is something like an old boys’ network. Men being in power has consequences for the rules in society. If men are in control, they make the rules and determine what constitutes acceptable conduct in relationships between men and women. Most complaints about improper behaviour come from women complaining about men. What men might consider harmless, women might see as intimidating. And so, women started the MeToo movement. Humans are genetically nearly identical, so differences in behaviour between groups are mostly cultural. To illustrate the point, the ancestors of civilised Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians are raping and pillaging Vikings.

Conservatives object to Critical Theory, claiming it promotes divisions within society. They might claim the order is natural. Are blacks and whites not very different, and does that not explain their success in life? And, men should treat women right, but aren’t gender roles natural? And if you dress like that, should you complain about men making remarks? Do we need political correctness officers who tell us what we should and shouldn’t say? Why do we need a new language? Does replacing the word slave with enslaved person change anything for the better? What people believe is acceptable and reasonable changes over time, and that change often comes from activism. Women have fought for the right to vote. Now most people accept it. Social justice causes have made societies more agreeable. Still, there is a limit to what we can achieve, and when order falls apart, civilisation will prove to be a thin veneer that will be gone before we know it.

Over 1,000 years to end slavery

One noteworthy example of Hegelian progress is the end of slavery. It was a long struggle as it took more than 1,000 years, at least if you reason from the Western perspective. And it involved political activism and war. Most ancient societies had classes like slaves, serfs, free men, nobility, and priests. We pursue social status, not only for ourselves but also for the groups we belong to. We divide societies into social classes, while conquerors often enslaved the conquered. It helps to explain why ending slavery took so long, or why raising blacks to equality with whites aroused strong negative sentiments among whites. In the past, most people considered slavery normal or natural, but our values and culture have changed. There were also entrenched interests within societies. Slave owners were usually wealthy and powerful. In 1860, they were the elite in the Southern United States.

One of the first efforts to end slavery and serfdom in Western Europe began in the 7th century with Queen Balthild, a former slave, who forbade the sale and trade of Christians within Frankish borders. In 1102, the Council of London banned ‘the infamous business, prevalent in England, of selling men like animals.’ Around 1220, the Sachsenspiegel, a German law code, condemned slavery as ‘a violation of man’s likeness to God.’ The argument for abolishing slavery was a Christian view on human dignity. There was also an economic reason. Cities provided economic opportunities, and serfs flocked to them, prompting lords to compete for labour. It made serfdom in Western Europe untenable.

By 1500 AD, slavery and serfdom were rare in Western Europe, but by then, slavery began to take off in the colonies. Christians could still enslave non-Christians. A similar historical process would unfold, officially ending slavery more than three centuries later. Shortly after 1500, Spain banned the slavery of Native Americans but allowed unpaid forced labour or corvée called Encomienda. It made the natives serfs on paper but slaves in practice as the corvée extended. The natives weren’t sturdy enough for hard physical labour and died of diseases brought by the Europeans.

European plantation owners needed a more sturdy workforce. European traders brought them from Africa by boatloads, crammed them into cargo holds, and chained them, leaving little room to move, to maximise profits by efficient use of available space. Slavery was common in Africa. Tribespeople captured and enslaved members of other tribes. The European slave trade dramatically increased demand for slaves and made it a lucrative business, so hunting people for profit became commonplace. Unhygienic conditions, dehydration, dysentery, and scurvy caused one out of six to die during the voyage. Between 1526 and 1860, slave traders put an estimated 12.5 million Africans on ships in Africa, and 10.7 million survived the trip to the Americas.

Slave owners didn’t see slaves as humans, but as animals or cargo. On 1 January 1738, the Dutch slave ship De Leusden sank near the coast of Suriname. Over 600 Africans died because the crew had boarded up the hatches on the orders of the captain, thus not even allowing them to swim for their lives. In his diaries published in The Voyage Of The Beagle, Charles Darwin wrote that slaves would regularly receive beatings and torture for insignificant offences, mistakes or for no reason at all. When Darwin wrote these notes, public opinion in Great Britain was shifting, and Britain was about to abolish slavery in its colonies. There was also an economic reason. The Industrial Revolution had taken off, and the British economy no longer depended as much on slave labour as it had in the past.

History of blacks in the United States

The abolition of slavery became the central issue in the 1860-1865 US Civil War. The Northern states had abolished slavery soon after the American Revolution. Their economies didn’t depend on slave labour. That was different in the South. The invention of the cotton gin had turned into a boon to the cotton industry and greatly increased the demand for slave labour. By 1860, slave plantations in the United States produced two-thirds of the global cotton supply. Remarkable efficiency improvements came from tracking each person’s output and punishing those who failed to meet their production targets. These punishments usually were beatings.

The dispute leading to the Civil War was over whether to allow slavery in the new territories in the West. The controversy came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, who opposed slavery’s expansion, became president, and Southern states seceded. Lincoln, hoping to reunite the country, didn’t plan to abolish slavery in the South at first. That changed when a peace deal remained out of sight, and the North needed soldiers to fight the war. Lincoln then signed the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, which freed the slaves and allowed them to enlist in the army. Many slaves escaped and fled to the North to obtain their freedom and to join the Northern Army.

At the time, Frederick Douglass, an influential black writer, complained about the unequal pay of black soldiers, who earned less than white privates. The North’s weak response to the cruel treatment of black prisoners of war by the South also angered him. He forced his way into President Lincoln’s office, and the two men came to know each other. It was a learning experience for both. Lincoln learned how slavery affected the lives of black people, while Douglass came to understand the political reality. Most whites weren’t ready for black emancipation. Not much later, John Wilkes Booth assassinated Lincoln for promising blacks suffrage. That was a bit too much equality for many whites at the time.

After the Civil War, whites regained control in the South. Paramilitary groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and the White Man’s League, disrupted political campaigning, ran officeholders out of town, lynched black voters, and committed voter fraud. The federal government didn’t stop it. Voting for blacks became more restrictive with literacy requirements combined with the underfunding or closing of black schools. States and counties introduced laws to enforce racial segregation, the so-called Jim Crow laws. Successful blacks faced violence, destruction of their businesses and killing by violent mobs of whites. The most famous example of that is the Tulsa massacre of 1921.

Racial segregation officially ended in the 1960s after the civil rights movement took on the issue. Television made non-violent resistance under the leadership of Martin Luther King a success. Scenes of police violence highlighted the oppression of blacks, and the world could see it. It damaged the credibility of the United States, which was at the time in a propaganda war with the Soviet Union to win the hearts and minds of formerly colonised peoples. That forced President Kennedy to act. And one century after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Declaration, he signed the Civil Rights Act. Both presidents acted for political reasons rather than moral ones. Since then, everyone in the United States has been equal before the law, even though not always in practice.

Something went wrong somewhere

In December 1992, I went on holiday to Florida. My travel agent had strongly advised me not to enter a particular quarter in Miami where blacks lived. Yet, I accidentally drove into that district and tried to book a hotel room there. The lady behind the counter was kind enough to talk me out of it. She said, ‘Folks like you shouldn’t come here, you know.’ Whites weren’t welcome there. And the area seemed okay, as I had also accidentally driven through a real ghetto, where the blacks living there gazed at me, making me think that they saw me as an alien invading their territory. Few whites dared to go there, so it must have been a spectacle for them. That was very unlike the Netherlands, as I was about to move to a neighbourhood where a considerable number of blacks also lived.

A few months earlier, a jury had acquitted four Los Angeles policemen of the beating of Rodney King, a black taxi driver, despite the evidence being clear. Fury erupted, incited by grievances about racial and economic inequality, and the city burned. Something had gone wrong somewhere. The ‘something’ and the ‘somewhere’ are not as straightforward as in the past. Multicultural societies in Europe face similar issues. The success of immigrants often relates to their ethnic background. Education didn’t matter much to enslaved blacks in the United States, and later on, during the Jim Crow years, their education was wilfully neglected. That likely contributed to a culture where education didn’t matter.

Another factor contributing to the persistence of racial inequality in the United States might have been the disintegration of families from the 1960s onwards, which particularly affected blacks. The disappearance of industrial jobs made the situation worse. In 1965, Senator Daniel Moynihan warned that the rise of out-of-wedlock births among blacks would cause a disaster. He argued that black men couldn’t become good husbands and fathers without jobs, which were the means to support a family. It would cause divorce, child abandonment, out-of-wedlock births, and households headed by women living on welfare. And without a positive role model of a providing father with a job who also looks after his sons, young males are more likely to enter a life of crime.

The report came at a time when the Civil Rights movement was fighting segregation and white racism. Hence, civil rights leaders attacked the report as an example of white patronising, cultural bias, and racism. It was not the right time to discuss the issue, as white racism still hindered the progress of blacks. Blacks weren’t allowed to go to the same schools and universities as whites. The report helped to create the black welfare queen stereotype. The trend is broader, but the disintegration of the family affected blacks more than other groups. Black mothers were more often on welfare, raising kids who were more often committing crimes. Some argue that blacks are no good, but despite these issues, the majority of them do okay. And behavioural issues are mostly cultural. And so, the descendants of raping and pillaging Vikings can be Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians.

There likely is a relationship between the strength of communities and families and success in society. You have an advantage when you grow up in a stable environment with married parents. Married parents can invest more time in raising and providing for their children. It doesn’t explain why Muslims often perform poorly in European societies, as they usually have strong family ties. And so, there is more to the issue. Attitudes towards education and society also matter. Blacks and Muslims may feel resentment and think that society is not for them. Blacks may say it is a white man’s world. And if you believe you aren’t a fully recognised member of society and never will be because you are black or Muslim, you are less likely to participate and contribute positively.

In 2013, the acquittal of a neighbourhood watch in the fatal shooting of the 17-year-old Trayvon Martin gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. Martin had no convictions. The police had once found jewellery in his possession, but couldn’t prove he had stolen it. The death of George Floyd in 2020 is another noteworthy case. A police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for over nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face-down in the street, contributing to his death. Floyd allegedly had used a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. He had served eight jail terms for petty crimes. The problem with Black Lives Matter is that their case has little merit. Blacks are three times as likely to be killed by the police as whites, but six times as likely to be convicted of a crime. Relative to the number of violent crime suspects per race, the police killed fewer blacks than whites.

There is, however, a problem, but it is police brutality. Compared to civilised police forces, American police are savages. In the United States, police fatalities are 33 per 10 million inhabitants per year, in league with countries like Angola, Colombia, Mali and Sudan, which is 30 times as much as countries like Germany, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. It comes with the level of lethal violence Americans accept. In the United States, you can get away with shooting a cleaning lady trying to open the wrong door. In Europe, that would be murder. And in the United States, everyone can carry a gun, so the police are more on edge, making them more inclined to shoot first and ask questions later. And so, making a race issue out of it, as BLM did, and ignoring the elevated crime levels among blacks in the United States, can make people angry, as does making heroes out of criminals. Floyd wasn’t killed while saving the rainforest or helping poor people.

Historical perspective

We view things from today’s perspective and assess the past through today’s values. It doesn’t help to understand history or social changes. Slavery has long been normal in many parts of the world. The Bible does not speak out against it. That Christians gradually came to reject it is a remarkable historical development. Slave owners thus didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. They could be kind people, and still treat their slaves cruelly. Darwin wrote, ‘I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating forever the men, women, and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together.’ He could only do that if he didn’t view slaves as people. Among the Nazis exterminating Jews in the concentration camps were family men who cared for their wives and children. Most of us are capable of allowing or contributing to atrocities.

Those of us who eat meat contribute to the animal suffering in the meat industry, which is as horrific as the Holocaust, even though it concerns animals rather than humans. Animals don’t differ as much from us as many of us like to imagine. We buy clothes made by children in Bangladesh who work twelve hours six days a week in filthy factories. Many people in Europe and the United States condone the cruel treatment of immigrants because they think there are too many, and giving them humane treatment would invite more to come over. And it is correct. The ICE brutality led many illegal immigrants to flee the United States. Future generations may view our conduct as appalling as we view slavery today, but only if we have a better world in the future.

Seeing the abolition of slavery as a historical process and acknowledging the limits of our compassion helps us understand why it took so long and that slavery can return or has never fully ended. There were moral and economic issues involved. Slavery was common in most traditional societies, but had ended in Western Europe by 1,500 AD. Europeans then turned the slavery of blacks into a commercial enterprise of unprecedented scale and brutality, making it a pillar of the European capitalist economy. European Christians engaged in the slave trade, but Christianity also contributed to the end of slavery.

That is because Christianity proclaimed a fundamental equality of human souls. Christian churches approved of slavery and benefited from it, but they aimed to convert indigenous peoples. These conversions themselves were often brutal, but by doing so, European Christians admitted that indigenous peoples were humans worthy of conversion. And if they were Christians, enslaving them conflicted with the Christian principles Europeans imagined, because they were not in the Bible. The Western ideal of equality has its roots in Christendom. Europeans gradually began to apply the principle of equality to people of other races, which then helped to end slavery.

Slavery ended more easily where the economics were more favourable. The Industrial Revolution became the new engine of economic growth, so the slave trade and slavery contributed less to the economy. Factory workers were cheap and often lived on the brink of starvation, so the capitalists’ bottom line didn’t suffer from abolishing slavery, except in the South of the United States, which went to war for slavery, thus proving Marx’s point that economics has a considerable, if not decisive, effect on the class structure in societies. Yet, ending slavery didn’t magically create a better world, nor did the end of segregation solve inequality, so there still remain serious issues.

Latest update: 24 April 2024

Featured image: Storming of the Bastille and arrest of Governor M. de Launay on 14 July 1789. Public domain.