Slavery & 19th Century Morality (split from TIL: Today I Learned)

[Mouthwash]

It turns out that Karl Marx was himself a Nazi. The more you know!

I had to drive without power steering for a few months once and my forearms got buff.

There's an idea...

 

[Arakhor]

Are you seriously trying to derail the thread again, Mouthwash? Being a 19th Century racist does not make one into a Nazi.

 

[Mouthwash]

Are you seriously trying to derail the thread again, Mouthwash? Being a 19th Century racist does not make one into a Nazi.

...no? I thought it was pretty clear I wasn't being literal (rather, poking fun at the people who refer to all contemporary racists as 'Nazis'). As for derailing the thread, that's usually a result of arguments getting out of hand. I'm not sure what sort of defense could be mounted in the face of "the common negro type is only a degeneration of a far higher one".

 

[Takhisis]

If you're poking fun at somebody and you don't specify then it just looks (as it often does) as if you were making fun of everybody in the forum.

 

[Traitorfish]

It turns out that Karl Marx was himself a Nazi. The more you know!

Marx's comments on Lassalle are notorious. This isn't some dark secret that you, the blogger, or the biographer have dredged up.

Mostly, they're just kind of sad; Marx himself was a Jew whose dark complexion earned him the nickname "the Moor", so there's an undertone of self-loathing to the whole sorry tirade.

 

[Mouthwash]

Marx's comments on Lassalle are notorious. This isn't some dark secret that you, the blogger, or the biographer have dredged up.

I didn't claim it was. I was directing my ire at people who think Roger Scruton or Jordan Peterson are beyond the pale, yet continue to hero-worship this person.

 

[Takhisis]

You say ‘it turns out’ which does give credence to the interpretation that you were accusing Karl Marx of being a Nazi, in spite of his being denounced by Nazism.

 

[Traitorfish]

I didn't claim it was. I was directing my ire at people who think Roger Scruton or Jordan Peterson are beyond the pale, yet continue to hero-worship this person.

Karl Marx died in 1883. That he held the lamentably typical prejudices of his era, while certainly worthy of note and repudiation, is not particularly shocking. Scruton and Peterson are fringe weirdos, whose prejudices are not typical of their era, and in a certain sense of any era, so those prejudices do frequently appear, if not shocking, then at least contentious. There's surely an appreciable difference in that.

 

[Lexicus]

Karl Marx died in 1883.

Moreover many of the people who would "cancel" Marx because of those comments are explicitly and virulently anti-Marxist (see Marxism as Eurocentric or an ideology for white males or whatever).

 

[Mouthwash]

Karl Marx died in 1883. That he held the lamentably typical prejudices of his era, while certainly worthy of note and repudiation, is not particularly shocking.

But could this not be said for people like George Washington?

 

[Traitorfish]

But could this not be said for people like George Washington?

Washington owned human beings. Marx made unpleasant remarks in private correspondence. I don't think that's the same.

 

[Mouthwash]

Lamentably typical practice of Washington's era, is it not?

 

[Cutlass]

Lamentably typical practice of Washington's era, is it not?

But, as @Dachs pointed out in a recent discussion of Jefferson, during the period of his life the idea of owning slaves was challenged on moral and ethical grounds. And while Washington was not the scholar Jefferson was, they ran in the same circles, Washington would certainly have been aware of the arguments. Further, Washington was more actively religious than Jefferson was.

So to say that Washington's slave owning was reprehensible within the context of the society that he lived in isn't a stretch. But he did it anyways.

 

[Traitorfish]

Lamentably typical practice of Washington's era, is it not?

You surely appreciate that there is a difference between practice and prejudice? Washington was a slave-holder as a private citizen and pro-slavery as an office-holder; he did concrete harm to hundreds of lives directly, and to tens of millions indirectly. Marx privately held obnoxious opinions about un-assimilated Jews and about Africans, but there is no clear causal chain by which any actual Jewish or black people suffered any substantial harm because of these privately-held prejudices.

 

[rah]

but there is no clear causal chain by which any actual Jewish or black people suffered any substantial harm because of these privately-held prejudices.

But couldn't you really say the same for most modern day people. Many people with privately-held prejudices have never actually harmed or caused such harm. Yet in other threads those types have been damned as evil people.
So does what's in your heart matter if your brain keeps it in check?

 

[Gorbles]

Really don't know how we got from someone attempting to use Marx as a defense of current living ideologues not living in the same times as Marx, to "silent racists are being called evil people".

Anyhow. Today I learned that it could be argued that Neo-Nazi (and therefore, white supremacist) talking points are arguably incitement, and thus not protected by free speech as per the First Amendment (in America).

 

[Takhisis]

Really don't know how we got from someone attempting to use Marx as a defense of current living ideologues not living in the same times as Marx, to "silent racists are being called evil people".

Mouthwash has openly admitted that one of his main purposes on this website is to ‘own the libs’, so I wouldn't waste too much time on his posts.

 

[Zkribbler]

But, as @Dachs pointed out in a recent discussion of Jefferson, during the period of his life the idea of owning slaves was challenged on moral and ethical grounds. And while Washington was not the scholar Jefferson was, they ran in the same circles, Washington would certainly have been aware of the arguments. Further, Washington was more actively religious than Jefferson was.

So to say that Washington's slave owning was reprehensible within the context of the society that he lived in isn't a stretch. But he did it anyways.

Conveniently forgetting that it was illegal under Virginia law to free slaves except in a will, which Washington did, and conveniently forgetting that the last ~1/3 of Jefferson's draft of the Declaration on Independence was a condemnation of slavery. The Second Continental Congress omitted this section to keep North Carolina, South Carolina & Georgia from walking out.

I am sick of the efforts of white supremacists to spread confusion by falsely equating the treason of Lee and the other Confederate generals to the actions of heroes like Washington and Jefferson.

 

[aimeeandbeatles]

Conveniently forgetting that it was illegal under Virginia law to free slaves except in a will, which Washington did,

What even is the purpose of that law? It doesn't make sense.

 

[Takhisis]

It does. It keeps slavery as an institution. Several of the English/British and other colonies in the Americas would have been untenable without imported slave labour. That's why a large part of the present-day Caribbean population is black or mulatto, all across the Antilles, Colombia, even down to Peru, Uruguay and Brazil.