Cannibals all! or, Slaves without mastersFitzhugh, George
General
Cannibals all! or, Slaves without masters
Fitzhugh, George
Slave labor; Slavery -- Justification; Slavery -- United States; Working class
III. _It creates trade for trade's sake, and augments the number of
non-producers, whose support is chargeable upon Labor._ As trade under
the operation of this principle, offers the temptation of illicit gains
and rapid wealth at the expense of others, it creates trade where there
is no necessity for trade--not as a beneficent interchange of
commodities between producers and consumers, but as a means of
speculation. Hence thousands are withdrawn from actual production and
thrust unnecessarily into the business of exchanging, mutually devouring
each other by competition, and drawing their subsistence and their
wealth from the producing classes, without rendering any equivalent
service. Hence the interminable range of intermediates between the
producer and consumer, the total defeat of organization and economy in
the distribution of products, and the intolerable burden of the
unproductive classes upon labor, together with a host of the frightful
results of pauperism and crime.
IV. _It degrades the dignity of Labor._ Inasmuch as trade, under the
operation of this principle, is more profitable, or at any rate is
liable to be, promises to be, and in a portion of cases is more
profitable than productive labor, it follows that the road to wealth and
social distinction lies in that direction. Hence "Commerce is King,"
Hence, again, productive labor is depreciated and contemned. It holds
the same relation to commerce in this age--under the reign of
intellectual superioritythat commerce itself held a few generations
since--under the reign of physical force--to military achievement,
personal or hereditary. Thus the degradation of labor, and all the
innumerable evils which follow in its train, in our existing
civilization, find their efficient cause in this same false principle of
exchanging products. The next stage of progress will be the inauguration
of Equity--equality in the results of every species of industry
according to burdens, and the consequent accession of labor to the
highest rank of human estimation. Commerce will then sink to a mere
brokerage, paid, like any other species of labor, according to its
repugnance, as the army is now sinking to a mere police force. It will
be reduced to the simplest and most direct methods of exchange, and made
to be the merest servant of production, which will come, in its turn, to
be regarded as conferring the only true patents of nobility.
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