On Reparations

There's been some talk about this essay in the Atlantic, which makes an extended case for reparations from the perspective of the harm done to black Americans over several centuries. (A rebuttal from the National Review is here.) We should consider it, because I think the case is even stronger than the author makes it.

The strengthening element comes at the union of two points he does make, which I will quote. The first one is about the way in which black slaves were increasingly subject to an emerging racism:
When enslaved Africans, plundered of their bodies, plundered of their families, and plundered of their labor, were brought to the colony of Virginia in 1619, they did not initially endure the naked racism that would engulf their progeny. Some of them were freed. Some of them intermarried. Still others escaped with the white indentured servants who had suffered as they had. Some even rebelled together, allying under Nathaniel Bacon to torch Jamestown in 1676.

One hundred years later, the idea of slaves and poor whites joining forces would shock the senses, but in the early days of the English colonies, the two groups had much in common. English visitors to Virginia found that its masters “abuse their servantes with intollerable oppression and hard usage.” White servants were flogged, tricked into serving beyond their contracts, and traded in much the same manner as slaves.
Indeed it is no wonder that poor whites and blacks found themselves in a similar case in 1619, because racial theory in general did not exist at that time. The Wikipedia article on the subject alleges some 'classical' theories, but comes up with two very minor examples; and the choice of the word 'race' is the translator's, not the original author's. (The Latin is "gentium.") That different peoples are different is not news, but the idea that there was some sort of quasi-species difference is not an ancient concept.

It is certainly not a Medieval concept. The distinction that interested them most was not biological but religious. Indeed European society during the Middle Ages was much more diverse ethnically than we realize today without careful effort, largely because they themselves didn't make a big deal about it. Likewise in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, the hero's father's first wife is a black African princess. His half brother is half-black (literally, in the novel: half his skin is black and half white, in patches). The marriage isn't considered illegitimate because of the difference in skin color, but because the wife was of a pagan faith and Parzival's father was a Christian. Meanwhile, when he and his half-brother meet, they meet as equals and treat each other with great joy. That is not to say that there were never Medieval remarks about those differently-colored foreigners that were disparaging: the Jewish philosopher Maimonides makes some very vicious ones in his famous work Guide for the Perplexed. But there was no sense of this concept of "race."

The invention of racism in the Enlightenment is "early" during the life of Robert Boyle, who was not born until 1627. The concept was not well accepted even in his day. Three of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment did much to change that: Voltaire, Kant, and Hegel. (Kant, who advocated so strongly for universal rights coming from internal rational nature, is the most surprising name on this list; but nevertheless, as philosopher Charles Mills points out, he made a complete commitment).

So there was a move in philosophy, including natural philosophy -- father of the sciences -- toward racism. The sciences became enthusiastically embraced on this point by culture, politics, government, and art. Why? Because it provided slave owners with white support to help them suppress the danger of rebellion from a black population that greatly outnumbered them (as historian Kenneth S. Greenberg demonstrates), while also providing a justification for the generation of the greatest wealth in human history to that era.
In the seven cotton states, one-third of all white income was derived from slavery. By 1840, cotton produced by slave labor constituted 59 percent of the country’s exports. The web of this slave society extended north to the looms of New England, and across the Atlantic to Great Britain, where it powered a great economic transformation and altered the trajectory of world history. “Whoever says Industrial Revolution,” wrote the historian Eric J. Hobsbawm, “says cotton.”

The wealth accorded America by slavery was not just in what the slaves pulled from the land but in the slaves themselves. “In 1860, slaves as an asset were worth more than all of America’s manufacturing, all of the railroads, all of the productive capacity of the United States put together,” the Yale historian David W. Blight has noted. “Slaves were the single largest, by far, financial asset of property in the entire American economy.” The sale of these slaves—“in whose bodies that money congealed,” writes Walter Johnson, a Harvard historian—generated even more ancillary wealth. Loans were taken out for purchase, to be repaid with interest. Insurance policies were drafted against the untimely death of a slave and the loss of potential profits. Slave sales were taxed and notarized. The vending of the black body and the sundering of the black family became an economy unto themselves, estimated to have brought in tens of millions of dollars to antebellum America. In 1860 there were more millionaires per capita in the Mississippi Valley than anywhere else in the country.
This telling dramatically understates the importance of slavery to the Industrial Revolution. Historian Eric Williams famously declared that the British participation in the trans-Atlantic slave trade underwrote the entire industrial program. American slave shipping followed the same model, developing a variation of the "Triangular Trade" that had funded the development of British industry. Based in the Northeast, it shipped rum to Africa to trade for slaves, slaves to the Carribean to trade for sugar cane, and sugar cane to New England to make into rum.

The American South was not much involved in that trade because it was involved in the British triangle, which took cotton to its mills to make into textiles, traded the textiles for slaves, and the slaves for cotton. It was not until the American Civil War that the South was brought into the North's economic system, as the northern American states had developed cotton mills of their own, and the blockade closed the South to British shipping for years, forcing the British to turn to India for cotton -- a change that was never undone, once it had finally been made. As a consequence, the market for Southern cotton after the war was in the North. The huge "gilded age" boom of industry was funded first by the slave trade, then by slavery, then by the oppressive systems of sharecropping and Jim Crow. Thus was there money to build factories and railroads!

The Atlantic piece makes much, rightly, of the suffering that attended sharecroppers under this new system. What the author misses is that this affliction was not entirely race-based. The intense racism was wielded as a way of keeping Southern poor whites -- who once again had very much in common with poor blacks -- on the side of the system run by the elite in places like Atlanta, capital of the "New South," which made business ties to New York its guiding light. Jim Crow was not just to keep blacks down, but to keep the poor divided and distrustful of each other. Official, government-enforced racism intensified during this era because it was the only thing holding the system together, as grinding poverty worsened every year under the law of monoculture: every year cotton production must go up, which means that -- supply and demand -- the price per bale came down. Until the Boll Wevil destroyed the crops three years running in the late 1920s, nothing got better in the South.

What all that means for reparations I couldn't say. The proposal is to study the issue. It's worth studying. It's worth understanding.

52 comments:

Texan99 said...

If the problem came from "keeping people down," which I agree it did, a good question might be: is it best addressed by not keeping them down any more, or by paying them a bunch of money for the identity of their ancestors and without regard to what they're doing in the present? I think we've got pretty good evidence what happens to people who are treated according to the latter prescription. The become the socio-economic equivalent of the VA or the public schools.

E Hines said...

Maybe Iraq and Iran should pay Israel reparations for all that mistreatment some years ago. Maybe Italy should pay the citizens of the northern African nations, Egypt, Greece, Iran and on ad nauseum reparations for their forebears' mistreatment of those unfortunates. Maybe the FRG should pay reparations, Great Britain--and England separately--should pay up, and....

Maybe today's African nations owe a taste of reparations for their forebears' complicity in the slave trade.

Who will dare present Russia with their butcher's bill?

No. Sometimes the Alexandrian solution is the correct one. Have done with the matter. The current run at reparations is just another move to keep some groups separate and to prevent assimilation or even integration.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Who will dare present Russia with their butcher's bill?

God will, if no one else. When that grave day comes, it won't do much good to reply that we didn't choose to pay ours because no one forced them to pay theirs.

Besides, there's a coherence with the discussion we had the other day about the 1907 crisis and the purchase of a significant part of American sovereignty. Where did the wealth come from that enabled those few to purchase something so valuable?

It came from this -- from the greatest theft in human history. That was how it started, and as the Atlantic piece points out, it carried on through the 20th century in various forms of fraud.

If there is an error, it lies here: "...just another move to keep some groups separate and to prevent assimilation or even integration."

It is right to say that the black experience was worst, but it is also right to say that the crime was much bigger than what was done to them. If something could be done -- perhaps nothing can be, but the study strikes me as worthwhile -- then perhaps it should be done.

Grim said...

..., a good question might be: is it best addressed by not keeping them down any more, or by paying them a bunch of money...?

There may be a third option (or indeed many more options). Chesterton used to advocate for a kind of Tory option, which I gather the Church endorsed at one time. Giving the poor land to farm wouldn't address the problems of today, but something analogous might.

There may be other systems that would be agreeable, and more productive than either "not doing anything" or "paying them a big chunk of money." The study is worth doing, I think.

E Hines said...

the 1907 crisis and the purchase of a significant part of American sovereignty.

One thing that was elided in that discussion was that this connection was never established.

Where did the wealth come from that enabled those few to purchase something so valuable?
It came from this -- from the greatest theft in human history.


Yeah. No non-slave-owning business, no industry of non-slave-owning businesses generated any prosperity. On the contrary, slave-owning was a failing business model by the time the colonial and national economy were taking off, perpetuated only by the convenience of slave-owning for the...owners.

In the end, all the victims of that mistreatment are dead, as are the mistreaters. Today's victims of misbehavior have plenty of legal recourse against today's misbehavers.

Who should be paid, then, today? Who should pay, today? What about all the other ills inflicted by man on man--are reparations owed there, too? "The black experience was the worst"--stipulated, arguendo: whose ancestors' past suffering is insufficient to be worthy of payback? When do reparations end? What's the limiting principle?

This sordid business of reparations, regardless of motive, serves only to perpetuate victimhood and separation. It's time to move on.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

One thing that was elided in that discussion was that this connection was never established.

I remember you agreed arguendo, but I regard the matter as settled. You're welcome to build a counterargument if you find the evidence, but I see no reason to believe it was otherwise -- it seems as settled to me as tectonic theory.

No non-slave-owning business, no industry of non-slave-owning businesses generated...

Obviously the claim is not that. But such businesses had existed since the dawn of time, without producing the explosion of wealth necessary to fund the tremendous investments associated with the Industrial Revolution. Those investments eventually did not require slave labor at all, nor the funding of slave trading, nor the little extras that came from insuring slaves or financing slaves on credit.

But that's where the seed money came from, and not a little -- for a long time, the founding of the modern age, that's where most of the money came from. That's not something to sneeze at, as we ponder whether or not we owe something.

The author began with a Biblical quote that I also think is on point. It's not time to 'move on.' It's time to pause and reflect.

E Hines said...

I agreed arguendo because it wasn't central to the discussion we were having. Nothing more than for the sake of the argument actually in progress.

We've been pausing and reflecting for some 150 years. I'm done with perpetuating victimhood.

It's time to move on.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

It is good to pause and reflect. So said the Bible, 74 times: and Socrates, too.

I have a habituated suspicion of the impulse -- very modern! -- to 'move on.' Partially it's because it has been misused since the Clinton impeachment hearings by those who wanted to stop the conversation about a serious problem at hand. Partially it's because it is a suspicious sentiment in any event: it's the conflation of motion with progress, as if the direction of where we've been isn't relevant to where we are going.

E Hines said...

Shall I say, then, it's time to stop agonizing over the past, a behavior in which we've been engaged for some 150 years, and devote our energies instead to helping those less fortunate present today improve their lots, break their dependencies, stop being/avoid becoming victims?

Studying the past for its lessons is one thing. Engaging in shirt rending, breast beating, wailing about how terrible we are and who can we pay today for the sins of our ancestors is quite another.

I'm suspicious of such agonizing because it's been misused by so many to perpetuate...victimhood...for the personal gain of those misusers.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

150 years ago was 1864. At that point we were doing a bit more than agonizing.

I don't think the agonizing could have properly begun until the end of the immediate fallout of that war; I would locate that moment, given the economic consequences that were finally ended by the Boll Wevil, at the Great Depression. But that was a new crisis that demanded immediate attention; the prosperity that might allow reflection was not later than the victory at the end of WWII.

So then we could begin to reflect; and sure enough, it turns out that this is the period at which serious agitation begins in the Civil Rights era. But that was a new crisis, and by the time it was over we're talking about the mid- to late- 1970s.

Now since Reagan, we've had a moment. Things have been pretty good, financially. So I'll give you 30 years.

Still, 30 years ago a lot of this research wasn't done. Charles Mills is writing today -- I met him not long ago (and, by the way, he is one of the most courteous and generous of men I have ever encountered). Kenneth S. Greenberg just retired; I sent him a note to thank him for his work, which I've found invaluable in understanding what has come before us.

So I don't think it's dragged on too long. In some ways, we've only just come to the moment at which we can properly begin.

Ymar Sakar said...

http://ymarsakar.wordpress.com/2014/04/18/the-democrat-institution-of-slavery/

I did write a revised summary here, but I just deleted it.

I'll leave this part here.

Sherman allowed the aristocrats and land owners to live, thinking they were all going to work hand in hand to rebuild. In reality, nothing of the sort happened. Republican military governors could have been replaced by General Lee and Forrest, especially if the KKK could get rid of the Republican "carpetbaggers". The Democrat party never intended to allow slavery to die completely by a military defeat.

Sherman made a strategic mistake, even though it was the right decision at the time for normal, sane, enemies.

douglas said...

I thought the debt was paid in blood between 1861 and 1865. It seems the only truly comparable currency, anyway.

Given that, I'm with Eric- it's a done deal. Or shall I start a movement to get reparations to people like my mother's family that had to flee mainland China, first from the Japanese, then the Communists?

E Hines said...

So I don't think it's dragged on too long.

Well, it certainly hasn't occurred in a manner suitable to you. That's no knock on you; there are a lot of agonizers, many with legitimate good will.

The 30 years you're willing to grant are a generation and a half, more or less. Long past the lifetimes of the misbehaviors you're willing to discuss as warranting reparations.

But I've asked a number of questions, none of them answered. They all boil down, though, to one that I've also asked: what's your limiting principle? Some of us already have done the pausing and reflecting, and we've already arrived at our answers.

There's no need to go over it again. As someone once said, it's settled.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I've been reading 1491, at Assistant Village Idiot's suggestion. The author worries a lot about things like whether Europeans bear the guilt for the diseases they transmitted to native Americans. He ends up with the idea that, while guilt can't be inherited, responsibility can. I don't buy it. We have responsibilities to each other, but not because of what dead people did a long time ago, and I'd say the responsibilities include a clear-eyed look at the real effect of the mitzvah we claim we're about to confer.

Grim said...

Douglas:

That's commonly said, and perhaps the sentiment is right. But slavery wasn't the end of the problem; indeed, for those who remained in the South, material conditions worsened (though in the social condition of liberty, which is not negligible). For those who moved North, see his point about housing in Chicago.

I'd say the responsibilities include a clear-eyed look at the real effect of the mitzvah we claim we're about to confer.

A clear-eyed look is all that is being asked, at this stage. I don't have a problem at all with being clear about it, just with refusing to think about the case (which certainly doesn't end with slavery).

A huge payout wouldn't be helpful, I think, for the same reasons you think so more or less -- it would not serve to assist people for long, because it would just cause inflation and lead prices to float up. That would only lead to further embitterment.

An ongoing program wouldn't help, because the worst thing you can do for someone is put them on a pension. That seems proven by experience, regardless of the size of the pension -- even Paris Hilton hasn't benefited from what amounts to a very large pension.

So what is left, then? I don't object to hearing some ideas, and giving it some thought. He isn't asking for more than that, and it seems right to me to agree at least to that much.

E Hines said...

...giving it some thought. He isn't asking for more than that...

We've been giving it some thought for 150 years, or 30. When does the agonizing end? Do we give it some more thought on the next guy's insistence that we do?

Want a reparation idea? I've offered one: move on, and devote the resources to helping today's less fortunate.

Here's another: devote the "reparation" resources, instead, to entering those polities--Africa and much of Islam come to mind, as do polities that engage in child trafficking (Makati comes to mind here...)--that still engage in slavery and put an end to those polities and that slavery.

Eric Hines

raven said...

We can see what giving people something for nothing does. Do we really want to give them more?
There would never be an end to it.

How convenient- my ancestor was harmed by your ancestor so now you must give to me. How far shall we chase this rabbit down the hole? No doubt the money would be funneled through a vast Government bureaucracy.

Grim said...

Mr. Hines:

I've responded in the post above on development issues.

Raven:

I think it's fine to rule out classes of responses (large gov't payouts; enduring gov't dependency programs).

What I think is worth doing is understanding the issue fully, and considering what might be appropriate. As I was just saying to Mr. Hines, it's only now that the resources to fully understand the issue are becoming available. It's really worth reading and thinking about it -- both Greenberg's book, which is enjoyable as well as insightful, and Mills' work are worthy of consideration.

Texan99 said...

I'd say Raven's considered the issue pretty fully, and his ideas are worthy of consideration.

Grim said...

Certainly his ideas are worthy of consideration! That's why I agreed to both of his suggestions about bad paths which ought to be avoided.

Whether the issue has been considered "fully" has something to do with the work being done today. The Atlantic piece explored banking practices in housing loans in a way I hadn't seen before, for example -- you may have already been aware of it, but I wasn't.

And Dr. Greenberg's book really is great and worthy of reading. You'd enjoy it a lot, because of the mockery it makes of several of your favorite targets. Really, the person who ought to object to it is me, because its target is my own native Southern honor culture.

Yet on consideration I found it very helpful. I don't think it undermines the idea of honor (nor, really, do I think any society can survive without it). But it does help identify several pitfalls and abuses which can be avoided if one knows they are there. Otherwise, they are very easy to fall into -- his description of how Old South gentlemen played baseball is one I had to laugh at, because I could recognize their impulses ('I will certainly hit the ball with this stick, but I'll be damned if I'm going to run away from anybody!') from my own youth.

MikeD said...

I reject reparations solely on the basis that it engages in blood debt. A concept that our legal system has firmly rejected. The sins of the father are not burdens on the sons. And what makes reparations worse, is that it seeks to address those sins, not by just burdening the descendants of the sinner, but by burdening all of society. I had no ancestors living in this country before the late 1800's (long after the civil war). On my father's side, they were farmers in New England, on my mother's clergy, laborers, and a printer also in New England. What blood debt do they owe? The fact that they lived in a society that had profited from slavery before they had ever moved there? What about recent immigrants to this country? Do they also owe this blood debt? And who decides who gets paid reparations? Do we base it upon simple skin color? What about children of mixed parentage? Do they both owe and receive reparations? And what about recent immigrants from Africa? Are they entitled to reparations because they happen to have the correct skin color? What if their ancestors had been involved in selling the slaves to Europeans?

No, the solutions are too ridiculous, the problems of proving the burden of debt too complex, and ultimately the value of doing so ephemeral. Pay reparations today, and the race-mongers will be right back at it again tomorrow. 'The reparations were insufficient' or 'they weren't given to the right people' or even 'they came too late, so you should pay more'. I can hear the complaints now. Quite literally, throwing money at problems (regardless of how it is couched) will never solve them, and quite frankly, unless you can build a time machine and somehow undo the entire slave trade, the deep seated problems caused by it can never be fixed.

Grim said...

I reject reparations solely on the basis that it engages in blood debt.

So you'd be OK with a system that didn't? That's not a necessary feature (nor, I think, a desirable one).

It's possible to construct a system that isn't framed in terms of blood debt at all. A system analogous to the one Chesterton advocated isn't framed in terms of blood debt or punishment. Rather, it just recognizes that the past has led to a present in which things are not really just; and then asks what would be just, and what we'd need to do to get there.

That's the proper business of politics in any case.

Grim said...

That idea of Chesterton's, by the way, sounds a lot like what Republicans were advocating a few years ago -- "an ownership society." So here's a chance to set one up.

Texan99 said...

Your guilt attaches to you because of the hue of your skin. And where have we heard that before?

Texan99 said...

"it just recognizes that the past has led to a present in which things are not really just; and then asks what would be just, and what we'd need to do to get there"

The problem the big distance between reparations and anything likely to increase whatever you mean by "justice." What have handouts to do with it? When have they ever helped? The only thing I've ever known to defeat racism effectively was to quit practicing racism.

MikeD said...

A system analogous to the one Chesterton advocated isn't framed in terms of blood debt or punishment.

All due deference to Chesterton, but there's a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. Getting from here to there. This "Distributism" holds that private property is a fundamental right. But then it advocates "distributing" means of production "as widely as possible". Ok... how do you accomplish that without seizing and redistributing currently held private property? Do you think that it somehow becomes moral to take a business that a man has built into a success away from him just because "he has enough"? And who determines who gets to control that means of production? Some bureaucrat who had no hand in creating it in the first place?

How can you hold private property as a fundamental right in one hand, and absolutely strip it from the individual (or collective owners in the case of publicly traded businesses)? Those are two opposing values.

And furthermore, I posit that it simply will devolve back into the current system. Sure, you might change who ends up on top, but ultimately some individuals put in charge of (for example) a book store will fail, and others will succeed and grow. That will eventually shake out into a few very large successful businesses owned by the person "assigned" to them, and the people who ran their businesses into the ground with nothing. Are you proposing we then repeat the cycle and steal the hard work of the successful owners and put it back in the hands of the failed owners in order to "level the playing field"?

No. This is as offensive to me as run of the mill Socialism, where success is penalized, and failure is rewarded in an effort to be "fair". And it compounds the evil of the system by being founded on stealing current property under the guise of protecting ownership rights. It is founded in hypocrisy, predicated on a lie, and ultimately doomed to result in the same unfair results. And if you think there's a soul who would say "well, at least this time I got a fair shot" you're fooling yourself. Personal responsibility is a sorely lacking virtue. Someone who is given (not earned, given) a business who then runs it into the ground will be no more (or less) likely to accept that it was their own fault than they would take responsibility for their failures prior to being handed the business. That is to say, if they were likely to own their mistakes before, they are likely to accept they failed as a result of their choices after. If they refused to accept responsibility before, they are likely to blame "unfair" factors for their failure after.

E Hines said...

The problem the big distance between reparations and anything likely to increase whatever you mean by "justice."

On the temporal distance, there's a reason we have a statute of limitations concept in our legal system--and that other one in our moral system.

recognizes that the past has led to a present in which things are not really just; and then asks what would be just, and what we'd need to do to get there.

The past isn't important, except for its lessons, as we've been over elsewhere. The operative matters in the cite are a present in which things are not really just and what we'd need to do to get there.

And we've been over that, too: again, it's our Judeo-Christian duty to help those less fortunate and (also) to take care for the future, for our children.

If we do those things, all the rest takes care of itself. Reparations, aside from being morally wrong in the present case, are wholly irrelevant to that duty.

Eric Hines

douglas said...

"That's commonly said, and perhaps the sentiment is right. But slavery wasn't the end of the problem; indeed, for those who remained in the South, material conditions worsened (though in the social condition of liberty, which is not negligible). For those who moved North, see his point about housing in Chicago."

I thought reparations were about slavery. Those other ills affected others as well- white sharecroppers were almost no better off. Whites on assistance do as poorly as blacks. I don't think they're the same problem- related, yes; one affects the other by precidence and by establishing a difficult situation, yes- but that does not make them the same problem- unless I'm not clear on what the problem is. I thought the problem was that slaves contributed not only to the personal wealth of some, but to the wealth of society- but a look at the North vs. the South, and the infrastructure and development differences were a big part of what won the war for the North. It seems slavery held the system from growing in many important ways- it may not have been as beneficial as many give it credit for. At any rate, once free, the descendants of slaves benefitted from societal improvement (wealth) as much as any other member of society- they can use the roads, benefit from the trade made possible by good transit, use public utilities, etc. What part of our societies wealth is off limits to them now? I say none- the opportunities are there, but one must still take them.

That other systems were established to take advantage of some after slavery was abolished is no surprise to anyone aware of the human condition. How do we fix such a problem as human nature?

Grim said...

Now, see, this is starting to sound like a consideration of the problem. Good!

Douglas:

I thought the problem was that slaves contributed not only to the personal wealth of some, but to the wealth of society- but a look at the North vs. the South, and the infrastructure and development differences were a big part of what won the war for the North.

That's right. The North benefited to a far greater degree from trading slaves than the South did from owning them. They invested their profits in the new industrial technologies, instead of in agricultural production. And of course, having found the new wealth associated with industrial production, they no longer needed the slave trade -- at which point they promptly began to experience a moral enlightenment about the evils of slavery and anyone who would associate with it.

But:

At any rate, once free, the descendants of slaves benefitted from societal improvement (wealth) as much as any other member of society...

That's clearly not true. At any point, their ability to benefit from social improvements is demonstrably less. Partially this is because of the new systems that were set up specifically to treat them unfairly. That seems like a problem.

The problem the big distance between reparations and anything likely to increase whatever you mean by "justice." What have handouts to do with it?

On the Chesterton model (more about that shortly), the idea was to establish individuals with a minimum amount of property to provide for themselves if they did the necessary work. It eliminated handouts (which they were also concerned about), but established people as owners of their own means of production.

In this way, it's the inverse of the Marxist or Socialist approach. Instead of society owning the means of production and regulating it for the common good (i.e., for the politically connected), the concept was that individuals should be owners of their own means of production and regulate them accordingly.

This was actually done in early Georgia, and elsewhere in America, via the land lottery. The Jeffersonian faction thought that it wanted a society based on small yeoman farmers, who each owned their own means of production. So, the state took its lands and gave them away by lottery. It worked for a while, but the slave economy ended up destroying that system: there was so much more money to be made on a plantation model, leveraging slaves, that land prices rose until the yeomen sold their farms to the plantation owners.

This was not to the overall good of the society, the civilization, the political culture, nor the slaves themselves.

Grim said...

Mike,

You've raised the best and strongest objections in my opinion.

...there's a fundamental flaw in his reasoning. Getting from here to there. This "Distributism" holds that private property is a fundamental right. But then it advocates "distributing" means of production "as widely as possible". Ok... how do you accomplish that without seizing and redistributing currently held private property?

I offered the example of the Georgia land lottery above, and other similar ones from American history. But of course you are right, or almost right, about how it worked. They didn't seize "personal property," but they did seize and redistribute "tribal property" -- the lands especially of the Creek and the Cherokee nations.

Clearly the examples don't show us an easy way forward, then.

And furthermore, I posit that it simply will devolve back into the current system. Sure, you might change who ends up on top, but ultimately some individuals put in charge of (for example) a book store will fail, and others will succeed and grow.

That's also right -- it's what happened to the yeoman system James Jackson labored to set up in Georgia. It was replaced by a much less desirable system, because that system -- though based on brutal human bondage -- was wildly profitable.

Without some sort of continuing or repetitious efforts, any one-time fix is likely to break down over time. I would think it would be necessary to make some sort of basic provision for each new child, at least, even if we agreed to let people fail and suffer the consequences.

These are two reasons I didn't suggest the Chestertonian system outright (plus a third: few now know how to farm). I think you'd have to construct some sort of analog to the system. It would have to be based on capital rather than property, and it would need to be more flexible.

Now capital answers the first problem in a way, because it is not a zero-sum game. It is not necessary to take from X to give to Y (especially if you believe, as none of us do, the arguments of the Obama administrations' favorite economists).

But the second problem is real enough: it's an ongoing concern. You can't do it once -- at least, I've never thought of a way to do it once -- and expect it to last.

E Hines said...

They invested their profits in the new industrial technologies, instead of in agricultural production.

Yeah. And they benefited by not having to grow their own tea; they could just invest in it from China. The Chinese owe reparations.

What we've been pleased to call civilization for the last 8,000 years has always prospered, to some extent, as well as suffered to some extent, from one inequity or another. And for the preceding dozen thousands of years, too. Where do reparations end?

Mike and I both have asked this question, and who should pay, today; and to whom, today; and based on what theory; and limited by what principle.

Still no answers.

A discussion of reparations has no meaning without that framework.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

Mike and I both have asked this question, and who should pay, today; and to whom, today; and based on what theory; and limited by what principle. Still no answers.

That is the sort of question that would be the product of an inquiry, rather than its predecessor. I think we've come to a few limiting principles via discussion: we are all opposed to schemes that are mere handouts, or that entail massive government entitlements or bureaucracies.

I regard the matter in a similar light to our discussion on limiting the franchise a few years ago. In the end, the discussion appeared to prove that the only proper limit was the one we had -- against felons. But having worked it through we could say exactly why.

Perhaps this discussion will work out the same way. It may also not work out the same way. That remains to be seen.

Texan99 said...

Can anyone get in on this? I want reparations, too.

E Hines said...

That is the sort of question that would be the product of an inquiry, rather than its predecessor.

Or, it's an iterative feedback that arrives at limits and then what's permissible within the limits. Open-ended discussions of a matter with no limits guiding them strike me as...inefficient.

However, I have the impression that most of us a) have already considered the matter and are less that interested in pursuing it anew just because a new author wants us to, and b) hold for no reparations. Full stop. Not just no handouts or massive government whatevers. Our problem begins today, with the world as it is today. The lessons learned should help us avoid, e.g., slavery, but I see nothing there that would lead us to a debt to the past.

Eric Hines

Grim said...

I dare say all of you hold against it, some of you strongly. There is no one here who is interested in pursuing the question at length except me.

And when we did the franchise, nobody was actually in favor of limiting it. I got some real hate mail from readers in those days, too, for even considering the question. Several people demanded to be removed from the blogroll, which I of course agreed to do.

Nevertheless, I've gone back to that discussion many times since. It's one of the more helpful ones we've had. Conservatives sometimes suggest that the weight of experience is on their side, so that we know that certain things work (or do not work) as an empirical matter, without having to be able to say just why.

But how nice to be able to say just why. How nice to learn that the franchise is linguistically associated to a word the Normans brought in their conquest, which means 'having the manner of a Frank'; and that the Saxons who held power after the Conquest, because they were too powerful to be suppressed, came to be known as 'franklins,' i.e., 'a little Frank.'

Now we know something we didn't know before, something about just what this thing called the "franchise" is, and just where it came from.

There seems to me to be a strong case for considering some sort of action to repair the society, so that those who were disadvantaged by the long history of slavery are brought onto level ground. I am prepared to hear that it is impossible, or that it is unwise, or that it is impractical. But I want to hear the reasons, and think it over with care.

Texan99 said...

Aren't you confusing consideration with agreement? You've received several counterarguments.

Grim said...

And considered them, and posed new problems and counterarguments.

I don't ask you to agree. I've never asked that of you.

Texan99 said...

I think I missed the counterarguments!

Sometimes when people don't agree, it can seem as though they refused to consider. Here you're raising an issue that several of us have considered carefully over a long period; we simply don't agree with you.

douglas said...

For the record- I'm enjoying the discussion, Grim, even though (or perhaps exactly because) I'm pretty well settled on this issue.

"That's right. The North benefited to a far greater degree from trading slaves than the South did from owning them. They invested their profits in the new industrial technologies, instead of in agricultural production. And of course, having found the new wealth associated with industrial production, they no longer needed the slave trade -- at which point they promptly began to experience a moral enlightenment about the evils of slavery and anyone who would associate with it."

Isn't that just proof it wasn't the slave trade, per se, that benefitted the North, but it's mercantile and industrialized economy, as opposed to the South's agricultural economy? They could have (and did later) trade anything and make it work. That it was slaves,and only in part, for a while isn't really relevant. I'll even offer some good supporting evidence here- if slave trading was so profitable in terms of building a society, why didn't the Africans who were trading them at step one build great societies off the backs of the slaves they sold? They didn't charge enough? What makes a society productive goes way beyond who provided a chunk of the labor. Ideas matter, philosophies matter, luck matters. Maybe it's providence, but still, that takes it away from being convincing that slavery was the big advantage.


"That's clearly not true. At any point, their ability to benefit from social improvements is demonstrably less. Partially this is because of the new systems that were set up specifically to treat them unfairly. That seems like a problem."

How is their ability to benefit different than from Whites? Sounds dangerously close to racism to me. They had opportunity, and not much less than poor whites. Those then-new systems (Jim Crow) were an obstacle, but we also worked to overcome that- whites and blacks alike. It's also not like the Chinese, Italians, and Irish didn't get similar treatment for quite a while.

There are always 'systems' of injustice, but if we reduce the 'systemization' of our society, and instead let men negotiate their relationships amongst themselves as individuals, barring only outright criminality, then we help prevent the ability of anyone to establish a system of injustice. Seems to me that any ideas of reparations is just another system of injustice, but with different stakeholders and victims. I think this gets to what Mike is saying about just shuffling who's on top.

Do we really think a black man in America today doesn't have the same opportunities I do (a mixed Asian-White), or a White guy does? I don't. In many cases, I think they have advantages already. If they don't use them or the opportunities they do have, what am I to do? I've got my own problems.

MikeD said...

Perhaps I am unclear. I fully understand and accept that the systems put in place during slavery, and after, were blatantly unfair and restrictive to slaves (and former slaves). Absolutely. But as you yourself point out re: "race", white indentured servants also suffered at the hands of those same systems, the difference being their remedies came sooner (because after a few generations and moves, how could you tell someone was the descendant of an indentured servant vs that of a slave?). I understand and agree with that.

What I cannot disagree more with is the concept that anyone living today has any responsibility to redress those wrongs. Moreover, I think the idea that doing so through some Chestertonian system (which I've already pointed out my objections to) is repugnant, and will ultimately place society in the position of requiring a whole new set of reparations to those who had their property stolen in order to create the reparations you are proposing we currently "owe".

Furthermore, those who are currently aggrieved will not consider their owed "debt" repaid if they end up failing after being given that "means of production". They will simply claim that the "system" was against them, or that they weren't given the right business/land/location/customer base/etc, and they will claim that the offer wasn't made in good faith. Oh sure, a handful might accept that they failed on their own, but what harm was done to otherwise innocent property owners to achieve that meager result?

You mentioned a land lottery. Let us assume that the Federal government decides to take this very concept as the means of "reparation". We had previously discussed the vast amounts of lands West of the Rockies held by the Federal government. What if they were to announce that they would give away this land to those adjudged as "legally aggrieved" (leaving aside the question of how the heck you'd actually judge that). So someone gets Federal land in Oregon. Not bad. Perhaps they can arrange a timber deal in the same manner the Federal government has. Perhaps they take up farming. Who knows. But what if instead, they got land in the Nevada desert? Even if you gave them 10 times as much as the person in Oregon (which, how would THAT be fair; he got 10 times as much land... you can see the disputes and how they would arise already), it probably would be worth far less. What does that individual do with the desert land?

And frankly, that's the SIMPLEST part of this whole plan. Giving lands held by the Federal government is probably the least harmful way to handle "reparations" (and again, I reject the very notion of a blood debt owed by the descendants of people to the descendants of other people). Figuring out who is legally aggrieved would be far more complicated.

No... I have given this careful consideration. If anything, hashing this out has made me object to the idea even more strongly.

Grim said...

Tex,

I understand. It seems likely to me that we've considered the problem from different angles and perspectives, though, and I'd like to hear it all laid out (for those who are interested in the effort). For example, I imagine you've got some experience with these issues in the law that I have not; I've studied the history in ways you may have not (e.g., the historians and philosophers cited). I just want to know how it all fits together.

Mike's fighting a good fight, and may end up convincing me. I certainly have no chance of convincing him. But whether he convinces me or not, in the end he understands his thoughts better for having hashed it out, and I'll understand better too.

Douglas:

Isn't that just proof it wasn't the slave trade, per se, that benefitted the North, but it's mercantile and industrialized economy, as opposed to the South's agricultural economy?

The claim is that the slave trade is how the industrialized economy got built in the first place. So yes, you can trade sprockets instead of slaves once you have factories building sprockets; but the way those factories got built, at a time when there were not factories building anything in the North -- not even parts for other factories! Think of how hard it is to build the first ones, when there's nothing but the ancient, hand-built way to make anything -- was via the vast sums of money that came from slaving.

Slaving was so profitable not merely because it was mercantile, but because it appropriated people for less than they were worth. You didn't have to pay a slave what he thought he was worth; you could take him for what his enemies thought he was worth, i.e., they were glad to be rid of him and just loved that you would pay them to take him away. Then you could sell him for ordinary mercantile goods -- sugar cane to turn into rum, rum for more slaves. That part of the process worked like an ordinary market, but the slaving aspect was where the real profit was -- because it was theft!

Grim said...

How is their ability to benefit different than from Whites? Sounds dangerously close to racism to me. They had opportunity, and not much less than poor whites...

I don't intend any sort of racial point. I just mean that the structures -- legal and financial -- were set up in a way to prevent them from benefiting as much.

Consider the Chicago aspects of the article. Poor whites moving to Chicago for work could move into areas where they could get Federal mortgages. Because those parts of town were outside the red zones, housing values tended to rise more, and improvements tended to be located nearby. Thus, capital grows over time for this family.

The poor black family is required to go into the red zones. They can't get a mortgage, so they have to use one of the financing structures the Atlantic article talks about. These are much more expensive ways to finance a house, so their cost per house is higher over time. Likewise, social improvements are further away, meaning that housing values don't rise as quickly.

In Atlanta (and many other cities), there was an additional blow when the interstate was constructed. Its route was carefully selected to cut through (and thereby destroy) black neighborhoods. Not only were their homes worth less, and not only had they been more expensive to buy, they were then taken by the government in return for token payments that the government itself got to set. No one had to pay them what they thought their house was worth; the government got to pay what it decided it was willing to pay. Naturally, that was limited by the government's budget for the exercise, not by the actual market values of the homes it was seizing.

Grim said...

Mike:

I appreciate your counterarguments, and the strength of your conviction. I'm not hoping to convince you that you are wrong, just to explore the case fully.

What I cannot disagree more with is the concept that anyone living today has any responsibility to redress those wrongs.

One of the points the article makes is that the wrongs aren't (or aren't only) ancient history. Talking about housing issues (or the interstates, etc) intends to show that the problem didn't end with slavery. So the author doesn't conceive himself as asking people to pay for their ancestor's sins, but rather asking people today to think about how things have continued to be unfair in every subsequent generation too.

Furthermore, those who are currently aggrieved will not consider their owed "debt" repaid if they end up failing after being given that "means of production".

That's unknown, though I suppose it's likely given human nature. Still, a usual feature of legal settlements is a formal acceptance in return for the settlement payment that the claim is resolved forever. There's never been such a formal resolution to this set of claims, and the harms were real enough (as you agree).

You mentioned a land lottery....

Well, yes, but I mentioned it in part to show that it wasn't a workable solution (and in part to agree with you that a fully Chestertonian system wasn't workable because it would require seizing private property). I wasn't advocating a land lottery as a current solution. I brought it up to show that there was an American precedent for this kind of action -- trying to shape society so that people owned enough of their own means of production that we could have something like Jefferson's yeoman democracy.

But it didn't work, and it required seizure from the Cherokee (and others). I don't think repeating the land lottery would work this time either (although I suppose the Federal lands you mention might at least avoid the one problem).

And frankly, that's the SIMPLEST part of this whole plan. Giving lands held by the Federal government is probably the least harmful way to handle "reparations" (and again, I reject the very notion of a blood debt owed by the descendants of people to the descendants of other people). Figuring out who is legally aggrieved would be far more complicated.

That's probably true. A poverty relief system like Chesterton intended is simpler than a system intended to settle claims, even ones within living memory. It's easier to determine who is poor.

MikeD said...

One of the points the article makes is that the wrongs aren't (or aren't only) ancient history. Talking about housing issues (or the interstates, etc) intends to show that the problem didn't end with slavery. So the author doesn't conceive himself as asking people to pay for their ancestor's sins, but rather asking people today to think about how things have continued to be unfair in every subsequent generation too.

This is commonly referred to as either "white privilege" or "institutional racism". And I can periodically be led to accept that these things are real and currently affecting people. The last time I had someone follow me around a store likely to make sure I didn't shoplift, I was probably 12-14 and thus in the likeliest demographic to do so. I understand this can still happen today to a black man who is my age. I also understand and accept that actions taken back as recently as the 50's (your mention of the interstate being deliberately placed in ATL to destroy minority neighborhoods is a new suggestion to me, but such is my respect for you that I do not hesitate to accept that you are speaking the truth as best you know it) are impacting families today.

What I do not, and cannot accept is that the way to redress those wrongs is to punish (either directly or indirectly) those of us like you or I who had no hand in any of these doings. At worst you can accuse of of passively benefiting from actions we had no hand in. I fail to see why we should be deprived of property for that "crime".

That's unknown, though I suppose it's likely given human nature. Still, a usual feature of legal settlements is a formal acceptance in return for the settlement payment that the claim is resolved forever. There's never been such a formal resolution to this set of claims, and the harms were real enough (as you agree).

And yet, individuals successfully challenge those settlements after the fact, especially when they can make a case that the defendant paying the settlement does not do so in good faith. So now you're looking to clog up the legal system with claims that "I wasn't given a good [piece of land/business/customer base/location/etc], and they screwed me over because the system is rigged." There would absolutely be lawyers willing to argue that case for a piece of any potential settlement. And now we've made the situation worse. The aggrieved party is more aggrieved and can possibly wring further concessions out of the government. The grievance industry in this country is already far larger than I think is healthy for a society. I'd not look to expand it.

Grim said...

...but such is my respect for you that I do not hesitate to accept that you are speaking the truth as best you know it.

Thank you for the very kind words. Let me requite them with a little proof of the unfamiliar claim, in the hope that your faith is justified.

Here's the official history from the Federal Highway Administration. Scroll to "Separate, Not "Equal" Transportation.

I fail to see why we should be deprived of property for that "crime".

I think that's fair. The counterpoint is that -- for example -- the interstate construction technically didn't steal their property, but paid for it via eminent domain. That's an exercise of the government's final ownership of real estate in the United States. All owners own it in fee simple at best.

Now in the past where we have isolated a key American interest, we have been willing to pay people for their property in order to put it to the common use (as in the case of the interstates). So if there were a key interest in addressing these issues, and we thought that some sort of Chestertonian scheme was the way of doing it, one could do it without 'depriving people of property' by the exercise of eminent domain.

Now I've said that I don't think that land is the solution, and other forms of property are less subject to the government's claim to be the final and real owner of it. But it's another facet to consider -- one need not envision this as stealing from one to pay the other, but possibly as a national investment meant to put us on a better footing as a nation.

douglas said...

Grim, that section in the DOT link seems to mainly confirm that 'well intentioned' governments do not good actions make - the original idea was that the core of the cities would be revitalized- which should help the poor living there by bringing jobs, development, increased land values...
The idea that racism drove highway development seems to rest on one academic's report on the issue that seems to have lots of quotes intimating that, but little fact (as least as represented here). I don't know about around you, but the black neighborhoods in L.A. are the same ones they were before the highway programs, at least until the Hispanic influx from the 80's forward started to take some of those areas over. Besides- one could have taken a completely colorblind view of the process and decided that the cost of land was the most important factor in acquiring right-of-ways and it would have disproportionally hit blacks, I'm sure. Would that make it racist? I think there's a fair amount of cause and effect confusion here.

"The claim is that the slave trade is how the industrialized economy got built in the first place"

I know that's the claim, but how did progress happen (industrialized or not) before slaves? If you didn't have slaves, wouldn't that have increased the value of labor saving devices? That would seem to de-incentivize industrialization, meaning that slavery would be counter productive in terms of industrialization, and the difference between North and South serves as a good example.

I think though, that the biggest issue is that any reparations perpetuate a tribal identity and view of our society, and I'm quite certain that's exactly what makes America different than the rest of the world (and human history) and makes it great.

douglas said...

As for the redlining example, here's the caption for the map:
"A 1939 Home Owners’ Loan Corporation “Residential Security Map” of Chicago shows discrimination against low-income and minority neighborhoods. The residents of the areas marked in red (representing “hazardous” real-estate markets) were denied FHA-backed mortgages. (Map development by Frankie Dintino)"

So the mortgage companies were to offer loans for any purchase anywhere? Obviously they must discriminate (in the true sense of the word) or go out of business- and who would that benefit? Does anyone actually want to argue that those areas weren't more dangerous- for a variety of reasons- to make loans in? Did these companies make ridiculous assumptions or did they respond to real world experience in making these maps? I'm pretty sure they didn't get to be a major lender by guessing at it.

This gets lumped in with the Jim Crow South and sharecropping, and surely there is a relationship, but in terms of some systemic racism 'holding the black man down' I'm not fully buying into it. If they said they wanted to go back and using the research touted in the article (I didn't have time to go to every link and determine it's quality) file claims of fraud or breech of contract or something like that, I'd be all for suspending statute of limitations for those to be able to go forward, but those would be actions of individuals against individuals, not group reparations to another group.

That article is full of stuff like this, written to sound as horrifying as possible:
"There was Howell Collins, whose contract called for him to pay $25,500 for a house that a speculator had bought for $14,500."

Does that not roughly match the difference in selling price and total paid including interest (by percentage) that my parents paid for their house? I got this from SF Gate's Home Guide:
"Variations in the term of maturity of a mortgage influence the long term cost of a mortgage. For example, a 30 year, $200,000 mortgage at 7 percent interest costs $479,018 over the life of the mortgage. If the mortgage were paid off in 20 years instead, the total cost of the mortgage in 20 years would be $372,143."

Hmmm, yes, that's about the same. The only predatory thing in those contract housing sales was that they knew they were selling to people unlikely to keep up payments, and the whole plan is to repossess. Perhaps that's rather unchristian, but is it a hazard not faced by anyone else besides blacks? I don't think so.

So I suppose you could make the argument that they weren't prepared for the free market and not as well acculturated to the kind of fiscal responsibility of modern society, but what kind of argument is that? My dad was the first in his family to go to college. I benefitted from that, so yes, if he hadn't been able to, it would have been a disadvantage to me, but lines of generational prosperity take time to build- same for blacks as whites. Perhaps they had a late start, but the game is open now, and I say that's as equal as you could ever hope for.

I think a good question is that if you can't see the value of living in a society that can go from slavery to essentially color blind society (and that is truly where we are by and large with the next generation) in 150 years, you don't know what you've got. I suppose, that's why some of them think they're due something more- they aren't grateful for the almost impossible opportunities they've been born into.

douglas said...

Oh, and I have to comment on the complaints in that article about not being able to buy in all-white neighborhoods- that was true for my parents in the mid-sixties here in California too, so they looked around and found a decent neighborhood where they could buy as a mixed-race couple, and the hell with the places that didn't want them. I still live in that house. They never talked about it till we were much older, and still, it just wasn't going to get to them- they brushed it off and kept going.

Texan99 said...

Seriously. Couldn't one make just as cogent a case that woman are owed reparations from men, and wouldn't that be awfully silly?

Grim said...

I know that's the claim, but how did progress happen (industrialized or not) before slaves? If you didn't have slaves, wouldn't that have increased the value of labor saving devices? That would seem to de-incentivize industrialization, meaning that slavery would be counter productive in terms of industrialization, and the difference between North and South serves as a good example.

The way that technological progress happened before the slave trade was taxation, followed by charity. A main driver of technology in Medieval Europe was the Church, which was the primary educator and investor in technological improvements. (See, e.g., the improvements to water mills in Medieval Spain.) The Church could level a tithe, and in addition often received donations of land or wealth especially from the dying. This enabled them both to fund education and to invest in improvements.

Now it might be suggested that unfree labor also played a role in this, given that the bottom-most sector of the agricultural economies of the Middle Ages tended to be unfree labor. However, they weren't slaves, and certainly not chattel slaves: though unfree in the sense that they were tied to the land (with certain exceptions, such as moving to towns and proving themselves productive members of the polity for a year and a day), they couldn't be sold and had certain legal rights.

Since the kind of wealth that could be readily taxed was based on the production of these unfree workers, it could be argued that technology developed always on a basis of extraction from unfree labor. But I think there's a distinction worth pursuing between the cases, one of which had certain legal rights and exit strategies, and the other of which was a chattel status (although one could free oneself by purchasing oneself, if you could put aside the wealth to do it somehow).

Grim said...

Seriously. Couldn't one make just as cogent a case that woman are owed reparations from men, and wouldn't that be awfully silly?

I think it's an interesting parallel. You'd have to get over the technology hump, because a lot of the strength of the reparations argument depends on the argument that industrialism was built by wealth extracted from slaves. Feminist scholars have sometimes argued that marriage represents a kind of wealth extraction from women, but clearly societies which have practiced marriage but not race-based chattel slavery have not enjoyed anything like the same investment opportunities. There have been especially unfair marriage practices in, for example, the Islamic world and Africa as well as China; of these, only China has ever enjoyed a technology advantage vis-a-vis its neighbors, and certainly lacked the wealth to industrialize itself without foreign investment.

There are two ways of reading that data, but the one most friendly to your point is that it could be that extracting the wealth of even large numbers of laborers doesn't actually get you that far economically. Then you have to look elsewhere for an explanation of the Industrial Revolution than in the slave trade -- perhaps just in something about the capacity to trade widely, so that you were able to better exploit differentials in values. It's just an accident, then, that the third leg of the triangle was slaves: it could have been anything, so long as there was a differential to exploit.

Grim said...

And if that's the case, then the real driver is not slavery but advances in navigation. That would tend to throw the argument back towards those who suggest that geology is the most important factor: of areas on Earth, Europe was the one that had most need to navigate waterways, seas, or oceans.