I have to say, if the editors thought it wouldn’t resonate with their readers, they wouldn’t have published it. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people who read The Economist long for the good old days when they could own slaves. At least they still get to sic their hired thugs on labor activists, though, so they can’t complain too much.
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At first I thought of the anonymous reviewer as basically a paid internet troll: someone who espouses, and possibly even defends, an indefensible position, because some people find it fun to get others riled up, especially with the protective cover of anonymity. Then two things occurred to me:
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This is an edited publication, not a site that allows unfiltered comments. Even though the reviewer is anonymous as far as we’re concerned they still worked with an editor who had read this review and said, “Yeah, this is exactly the sort of statement that best represents us.”
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This is The Economist.
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Yes, thanks, it’s an amazing piece of rhetoric, I love it too.
What I don’t love is listening to people (and they’re always white) try to debunk its authenticity.
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Like climate change? 
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As a seemingly intelligent white Southerner myself I’m appalled by the “most slaves were treated well” argument. When I read about slavery in school, even when I had white teachers, some of whom tried to make it sound like slavery wasn’t so bad, I never lost sight of the fact that even a well-treated slave is still a slave. And most of those who were “treated well” by their “owners” were still treated horribly by those who kidnapped them from their homes and put them up for sale as though they were property.
When I hear someone say “most slaves were treated well” I don’t think they’re blind, but rather uncomfortable with the historical reality.
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Horribly shitty review to publish but I disagree that the use of slavery in early America brands capitalism as immoral. It’s just an economic concept.
Now, the way early America utilized the idea of capitalism to build itself up? 100% immoral. I think any organization that traces its roots back to that era owes a significant amount of money to the descendants of slaves.
Or just shut them down entirely but that’s probably a bit too optimistic.
Yeah, true enough. At least they don’t argue anymore that those who tried to escape were drapetomaniacs.
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Awfully, one article they link to at the bottom of the apology is about the internetz and prostitution, containing this delightful [/s] chart:
Although the chart does not relate to the general labour market, I would suggest The Economist both monitor its internal editorial direction more closely, and tuck wholesomely into the remuneration differentiation across the entire spectrum of the US economy.
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The Economist has long history of printing anonymous ultra-right-wing comment-'taters (comment potatoes?) saying stupid right-wing bullshit under the pen name of long-dead economists. It’s an outlet for the billionaires and celebrity pundits to say what they really think about the little people in a safe space with no consequences.
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But to their credit, their apology wasn’t of the type “We’re sorry if anyone was offended”. They state that they goofed: “We regret having published this and apologise for having done so.”
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The thing that struck me about this, is that he’s not even engaged with the specific argument, the field is debating whether or not the slave system in the American south was the engine of American capitalism or whether it hindered it (which is a legitimate point of debate in this field). I don’t think that the brutality of the slave system should even be a point of debate at this point and somehow the guy focused on that to discredit the books argument. It’s just a bad review all around.
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“Mr Baptist has not written an objective history of slavery; almost all the blacks in his book are victims, almost all the whites villains – this is not history; it is advocacy.”
Jesus Christ, what a supreme asshole. That’s not “fucking dunderheaded” that’s “fucking monstrous.” How fucking warped in the head do you have to be to write something like that? Kidnapping, rape and murder - the argument for? I’d like to see his review of a book about serial killers… “almost all the people who were murdered in his book are victims, almost all the serial killers villains” ?
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FWIW I was traveling and pretty much off-line when Abu Ghraib emerged. I didn’t know about it until I got on the plane to go home and The Economist put Abu Ghraib on their cover. I was pretty surprised at the time though I also recall the saying about broken clocks.
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Capitalism is “immoral” in the sense that it inherently anti-humanitarian. America has progressed from exploiting its own population to exploiting the populations of other nations. Wage slavery may not be as bad as actual slavery, but it’s still pretty awful. I guess we can all look forward to a brighter future, when sentient crab people will work for a pittance in lunar factories, churning out parts for the iPhone Sixty Billion.
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Then this would have been the perfect opportunity for the Economist. . . that staunch defender of capitalism. . . to make this point. To drive a wedge between capitalism as an ideal, and the particular brutal history of its application.
But they didn’t. They defended slavery. Because apparently, The Economists’s first reaction was that an attack on slavery is an attack on capitalism.
They accuse themselves.
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I wonder if we can look forward to a review pointing out that books about World War II are always one-sided advocacy, painting the German concentration camp guards as bad guys and the Jews as innocent?
Yeah, I know, I’m almost Godwinning, but then again today I read an interview with a guard who worked at Auschwitz, and he says that he doesn’t feel like a criminal because he treated the Jews very humanely, gave them leftover bread, and never shot any of them!
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Yeah, that’s the crazy thing about the review… it’s like the guy didn’t even address the actual argument about capitalism and slavery…
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Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yes, if it is even true it reminds me of prisoners who have been in prison for so long they no longer know how to survive in the free world and commit a crime to go back to prison.
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Journalistic populism at a level that appears intellectual to students and middle class voters.
The facts are always true, as someone said above; but what they direct you to and how they present it are vexingly teleological.
it’s a shame - there should be one journal that is objective. The Economist isn’t it.
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Jourdon Anderson was a better man than I.
The only thing I can imagine writing in response to someone who enslaved me for 30+ years is: “Fuck you. Don’t write me again.”
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