Capitalism, Abolitionism, Class Problems and Reflection

Thomas Bender’s The Antislavery Debate brings to the reader a complex, insightful historical debate by three scholars theorizing about not only the possible connections between abolitionism and capitalism but also the factors that propelled there to be a connection with abolitionism and capitalism. These three scholars, David Brion Davis, Thomas L. Haskell, and John Ashworth each argued there idea of a connection around one theme. In turn this theme ventured off into several layers of thought. For example, Davis saw the connection between capitalism and slavery as a form of class interest. Bender quotes, “[Davis] announced early in his book that the movement reflected the ideological needs of various groups and classes” (4). This segued into ideas such as “opposition to slavery cannot be divorced from the vast economic changes that were intensifying social conflicts and heightening class consciousness; in Britain, it was part of a larger ideology that ensured stability while acclimating society to political and social change” (171). In addition Davies also argued that “abolitionism bred a new sensitivity to social opposition, that it provided a model for the systematic indictment of social crime, and that it ultimately taught many Englishmen to recognize forms of systematic oppression that was closer to home” (172). One of his examples to justify his reasoning stressed reform causes. According to Davies, reform causes often serve opposing or contradictory functions as innovative doctrine is co-opted by different social groups. For example, when Wilberforce and his friends in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet feared that England was on the verge of revolution, another radical alien pointed to the connections between the oppression of West Indian slaves and the oppression of England’s poor. Iain McCalman has recently discovered that Robert Wedderburn, a Jamaican mulatto whose slave mother was born in Africa, edited a London periodical, Axe Laid to the Root, that called for a simultaneous revolution of West Indian chattel salves and English wage slaves. Working with Thomas Spence, Thomas Evans, and other London radicals, Wedderburn popularized a plebian antislavery rhetoric in the taverns and hayloft chapels of London’s underworld”(172).

On the other hand, Thomas Haskell’s central theme was that capitalism and abolitionism were tied more to the market and less to class interest. He justified his reasoning through the idea that for one to be humanitarian to another has to experience the disadvantages of another at some high degree before that same person can act to the benefit of the suffering. In respect to class interest, for Haskell, interest implies intention and unconscious intention at least to Haskell is erroneous. In addition, because Haskell believes that an agent needs a cause in order to act in the need of others, our interests are aligned in a cause and effect relationship that requires a recipe in order to plan out how to alleviate one’s suffering. In other words, part of Haskell’s justification that the market plays a larger role is the ambiguity when it comes to causation as well as the preconditions required to implement a cause into direction. As for the market, Haskell consolidates the legal theories of Atiyah and moral attitudes of Nietzsche to define the history contracts and how they linked to promises. Once this is set, Haskell established that the market gave two lessons to people who acted in that setting. “The first taught people to keep their promises; the second taught them to attend to the remote consequences of their actions. Those who learned these lessons well and who could take for granted the existence of many others imbued with the same lessons were the first to cross the threshold into a new moral universe, one in which the horizons of causal perception were sufficiently wide, and the techniques routinely employed in everyday tasks sufficiently complex and future oriented, that failing to go to the aid of a suffering stranger might become an unconscionable act”(141).

John Ashworth in contrast to both Davies and Haskell saw the connection between capitalism and abolitionism defined by wage labor instead of overwhelming class interest or marketplace values. While his argument was not as class heavy in terms of interests as Davies, he seemed to bring more of a discussion on class in terms of home than Haskell whose discussion of class was almost nonexistent. Within Ashworth’s theme of wage labor Ashworth compares abolitionism to classical republicanism in which wage labor was looked down in favor of labor which was owned by people. In other words classical republicanism favored people who worked to create their own means of production for themselves such as farmers, artisans and maybe merchants. And when wage labor came into being, at least at how Ashworth is framing it, individual morality and social order were redefined in the home, family, and in the individual conscience”(191). In turn, Ashworth further extends this to the idea that if waged labor became to be seen as part of the common good which advocated that self-interest was devastating to society, slavery then became as a prime example of self-interest and profit seeking for self. Ashworth states, “to allow the sale of labor power was to consent to the most dramatic and far-reaching spread of market-relations in society and create a need both for an area from which the market would be barred and for a morality to support the new society”(192). In essence Bender suggests the combining of their strongest points to help resolve the connections that can be made between capitalism and class.

For our own discussion, a careful revisit to Emma Christopher, Morgan, Heyrman, and Bouton could help to bring more insight into class conceptions of antislavery. For example, Christopher discusses agency and situational changes within the lives of the workers on the slave ship. Morgan dissects Virginia and digs at the relation between slavery and republican freedom which Ashworth discusses at great length. And finally, Heyrman brings in issues of religion with class to a lesser extent that could embellish Davies points about religion in relation to abolitionists, their causality and class interest in general. In other words, I am suggesting that we use our previous readings as case studies to bring a deeper analysis on if class in relation to market and interest can intertwine in a revealing way that brings to light new insights on the origins of causation among abolitionists and how much capitalism effects their ideologies.

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