The Liberty To Wage Slavery & Slavery's Free Trade Connection

Spanish-American merchants wanted "more liberty", and they defined liberty as their right to buy and sell humans as they would. In the United States, Kentucky's 1850 "bill of rights" stated that the "right of an owner of a slave to such a slave, and its increase, is the same, and as inviolable as the right of the owner of any property whatever" ~ Greg Grandin (dob 1962) an American historian, and professor of history at New York University.

The roots of "free trade" can be traced back to slavery. One of its first applications being the worldwide slave trade, which kicked off the Atlantic world's capitalist market revolution. Yeah, that's right, folks. One of the main reasons that the slave trade flourished was racist Libertarian schmucks and their desire for a "free trade in Blacks".

Critiques Of Libertarianism/Slavery: Slavery is a free-market, capitalist phenomenon. Slavery has almost always been abolished by acts of government that regulate the market, making it illegal. 19th century slave owners defended their property rights in slaves in "economic freedom"-like terms that are unmistakably libertarian... The only way to eliminate... slavery is for government to regulate against it. (Critiques Of Libertarianism by Mike Huben).

Then, as today, the rich don't get their wealth from hard work - they get it from the exploitation of workers (stealing their labor and property). Heck, if you happen not to believe me, get a load of this little gem from the mother of Libertarianism, Ayn Rand, who said "any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent".

Rand was speaking of the White European's "right" to steal the property of the Native Americans who already resided here. Because they were primitive savages who did not believe in the concept of owning the earth. Nice. Surely it is no leap to go from justifying the theft of Native American land to justifying the theft of the labor of Black Africans. Both groups consisted of "primitives" and both groups had their rights usurped by "civilized" Whites.

Rand exhibited a racist attitude in regards to the Native American way of life. Today Libertarians argue that the labor of African Americans (specifically Black teens) is not worth as much as the labor of Whites. The only way they can compete is to to work for less. If you force employers to pay a "white man's wage", they'll only hire white men (The minimum wage's less-than-racist origins).

Sure, Libertarians will SAY that they oppose slavery, as every individual has the right to his or her own labor, but the fact remains that Libertarianism creates slavery. Although today owning another human is mostly illegal, there is a way around this. And it is actually much cheaper. If your wage slave dies from malnutrition or disease you aren't out what you originally paid for the slave. All you need to do is hire another! They are actually quite cheap.

Neoliberal policies such as free trade result in the offshoring of good paying jobs to third world countries were wage slaves toil for low pay in unsafe conditions. Back here in the US, Libertarians argue against a minimum wage so they might be able to force down wages to the minimum to sustain life.

With only so much wealth to go around and with rich people wanting it all; well, slavery is an absolute necessity. BTW, this kind of ties in neatly with that other big Libertarian idea of the early 20th Century known as Social Darwinism. I mean, think about it. If a poor can't get a job, they cannot eat, and if they cannot eat, they die. This type of coercion is a win for the wealthy Libertarian, in that it will allow them to force down the wages of their workers to as low an amount as possible. And also a win in that it will eliminate the inferior low skilled worker.

Herbert Spencer was a popular author during the nineteenth century who supported strict limits on the government and even opposed many forms of charity towards the poor. ...he also believed that neither government nor private charity should interfere with this process of natural selection. Though Spencer was not a eugenicist — he actually argued that the poor should be treated much more harshly than nineteenth and twentieth century eugenicists did — he was both a social acquaintance of Sir Francis Galton, the father of the eugenics movement, and a significant influence on Galton's thinking. Reading Spencer's many works today is an uncomfortable experience - the man devotes hundreds of pages to establishing a philosophical justification for a kind of neglect that most Americans would now view as a moral atrocity. Yet Spencer is also one of the foundational thinkers in the development of the economically libertarian philosophy that drives politicians such as Senator Randal Paul... (Major Libertarian Thinker On Human "Failures": "It Is Best They Should Die" by Ian Millhiser. Think Progress, 4/15/2015).

Libertarianism is naught but an excuse for the wealthy to enslave the workers of the world to further enrich themselves. The quote from Rand as well as the Social Darwinism of Spencer aught to convince you of that. We must not kid ourselves when it comes to this despicable and morally reprehensible ideology. Libertarians are are only concerned about their OWN liberty. Which would be the liberty to coerce others into neo feudal wage slavery.

SWTD #280