If today we react to such acts with disgust, why did our ancestors commit them back then?
This article will look specifically at slavery, but the conclusions can probably be applied across many forms of oppression.
Throughout history, slaves have provided free labor and a life of leisure for those who could afford them. The temptation of low-cost gains was simply too great for most civilizations throughout history to avoid.
Slavery meant different things to different societies – there were varying degrees of freedom and enforcement. Many societies viewed slaves as a means to perform work and valued them for their productivity. Other societies simply viewed slavery as a means to slowly exterminate a population while making use of their labor. Nazi Germany had a master plan to enslave the Bolshevik population of the Soviet Union, not because they valued their work but because they wanted to squeeze every last drop of productive strength from the population before murdering them.
At one extreme, enslavement was a reasonably amicable ‘contract’ between master and slave, while at the other extreme enslavement was a form of punishment on a segment of the population. For the purposes of this article, I will focus on the capitalist’s view of slavery.
The main thing slavery meant to capitalist slave-owners was profit. Often, throughout history a great battle would end by selling captured soldiers and civilians into slavery. Many warlords throughout time financed their campaigns by selling the spoils of victory, which were often people. Some battles were fought simply for the profit generated through the slave trade. I use the term ‘battle’ loosely, as many slaves were simply plucked from their villages to be exported, while others were simply deceived into slavery.
When bought, slaves provided a large return on invested capital. Interestingly, in some ways, slavery was one of the early reasons that human life was perceived to have value. The perceived value of the slave saved the lives of many conquered peoples, although it delivered them to a life of servitude.
Before industrial mechanization, slaves and the labor-class (peasants) were the industrial machine. As crude as it sounds, capitalists simply viewed slaves as machines (that happened to feel and think). Remember, this was a time before mass mechanization. Hard human labor was common and necessary, and, in many cases, there were no easier alternatives.
Many, many people were needed to feed and clothe a society – an expensive endeavor. Evidence suggests that the price of labor helped determine whether a society used slaves instead of the labor-class. The more inexpensive the labor, (usually because it was plentiful) the less likely capitalists were to purchase slaves. In societies with a small or expensive labor-class, it paid to capture and import slaves.
So why did capitalists and governments eventually decide to stop using slaves? (They are still used in some parts of the world.) Did they suddenly gain a sense of empathy? Did they suddenly become moralistic?
While some people probably always recognized the inhumanity of slavery, especially the kind found in the American South, society had always found ways to suppress any moral concern. I would instead redirect attention away from morality and back towards capitalism.
Slavery ended because the capitalist elite viewed slaves as capital investments and simply found better uses for their capital.
How? New, more efficient ‘slaves’ were introduced: The steam engine, the internal combustion engine, process automation, better infrastructure, the computer and many other inventions. These inventions, which dramatically improved economies of scale, were the ‘new and improved’ slaves. To illustrate this newly-discovered efficiency, 1 barrel of oil, which today costs about $73, provides the equivalent of up to 25,000 man-hours of work. The returns on capital between man and machine are oceans apart.
Human labor simply cannot compete with machines that extract massive amounts of stored energy found in wood, coal and petroleum. On a cost-per-unit basis, even dirt-cheap labor is hardly competitive. Machines don’t eat or sleep. Machines are faster and stronger. Machines can compound power; for instance, a car may generate the equivalent power of 150 horses, but 150 horses cannot be combined to replicate the output (speed, distance) of a car.
So did machines, specifically the Industrial Revolution, end slavery? Many believe this to be true. If the incentive to use slaves no longer exists because of diminishing returns on capital, it becomes a lot easier to abolish the slave trade. Like it or not, economics and wealth are strong motivating factors behind many decisions, whether they be good, bad or ugly.
