Agreed.
Cory, I agree that the original position of The Economist, as you point out, was abhorrent and wrong.
But The Economist withdrew this review, including a mea culpa, within 24 hours, which you donât mention when posting this article a full day later.
When speaking truth to power, give it credit when due. Else power will resist in unpleasant ways.
1 Like
Editors are human, and often fail to read as carefully as sometimes they should. Reading more than than ascribes to malice what was more likely mere stupidity.
Youâre right, they should be taken to task more strenuously for advancing austerity garbage and printing anonymous blowhards writing under pompous Grand Names of the Dead like âShumpeterâ or âBagehot.â
3 Likes
Having written for the Economist and been through their extremely thorough edit/subedit/factcheck process, this seems vanishingly unlikely to me.
20 Likes
But The Economist withdrew this review, including a mea culpa, within 24
hours, which you donât mention when posting this article a full day
later.
I mention this in my piece.
4 Likes
My turn to fail reading comprehension 101, I skim too soon. Mea culpa. My apologies.
One glimpse into how good or bad slaves had it can be seen in the Library of Congress Slave Narratives Archive.
Basically in the 30s there was a program to interview former slaves and record what they said.
One thing I found interesting, and a âsame as it ever wasâ moment was that several of them commented on how lazy todayâs kids were.
1 Like
And beyond Mea Culpa. Coryâs piece is more than the simple calling onto the carpet, but a valuable pointer to Mackintoshâs critique of The Economistâs intrinsic apologia for the evolution of capitalist society in America.
1 Like
Iâve heard this several times, too. To the point where, i think itâs a theme in some southern school education.
I think itâs hard for people to have pride in where they came from, while still acknowledging the faults of that background. Sometimes the worse the fault, the more fervently it must be it ignored.
Native american genocide, slavery, jim crow laws, various self-initiated wars, endemic poverty and homelessness, the suspension of law and the torture of prisoners, these things donât rest comfortably in the narrative of the manifest destiny of the united states.
5 Likes
Tip oâ the hat to Leah Finnegan for her fine lede in a Gawker article about this dustup: âThe Economist is an intentionally fusty British news-aggregation magazine for people who pretend their Economy Plus airline seat is a wing chair by the roaring fire in a manor house.â
8 Likes
ironically, people in Utopia would have agreed with the Economist:
Slavery is a feature of Utopian life and it is reported that every household has two slaves⌠They are kept at perpetual labor, and are always chained⌠a state of servitude is more for the interest of the commonwealth than killing them; since as their labor is a greater benefit to the public than their death could beâŚ
the only âgoodâ thing about Mooreâs version of slavery, was that it didnât extend to the children of slaves.
2 Likes
Itâs not just the perverse mis-application of empathy, but the simultaneous lack of it for the victims of slavery, part of which is the racist conservative narrative about slavery ânot being that bad,â but also refusing to acknowledge the victims of the system as victims of anything. Presumably a big part of it all has to do with avoiding having empathy in more contemporary contexts - for victims of economic exploitation and racism, for example.
4 Likes
People arenât able to identify all of their idelogical biases. So sure, pure and perfect objectivity isnât possible, but neither is stating all of oneâs assumptions and values at the outset.
Objectivity can be approached, however. Iâd much rather writers try to reach as honest a conclusion as possible, arriving at that conclusion after conducting their research or reasoning from their premises.
If someone hasnât even tried to be objective, I couldnât care less how clearly they identify their ideological commitments. Their work is useless. If theyâve done their best to be objective, chances are good at least some of their work is valuable, whether or not I agree with their general worldview.
The second part of that reads,
âŚâOr terminate my employment!â
2 Likes
If outright ownership of labor is wrong, does paying them twelve cents an hour somehow make it all right? And does it make it OK if theyâve been lawfully convicted of a crime?
I donât like it any more than you do, that this conversation is still necessary. But yeah, it definitely still is.
5 Likes
I donât think itâs historically honest to oppose slavery only for what it did to the slaves. (Though thatâs certainly sufficient to be against it) I think one also has to look at the moral effects on the owners: Itâs just not good for a person to be in that position of ownership of another. It teaches the wrong life lessons. Self respect should be enough for people to eschew chattel slavery.
And if you accept that premise, what do you say to Walmart shoppers who know what enabled those low prices?
4 Likes
A socialist one. Also, the words youâre looking for are âmore moralâ.
4 Likes
Paul Krugmanâs noted that American economists in academia and government have been much more resistant, in the last few years, to anti-democratic austerity than Europe. It hasnât made a difference in Congress, but at least we havenât had Andrew Mellon at the Fed. The Economist resonates in the U.S. with the CNBC crowd and no one else, while in Europe (land of the functional examples of welfare states) there isnât anyone in the media but the CNBC brand of econo-blowhards. The resistance put up by Piketty and others has taken a few years to go from ânonexistentâ to âwe had no idea there were no real economists in Europe, guess weâd better speak upâ.
3 Likes
The Economist would seem to be channeling Henry Laurens (1724â92), who provides us with a veritable smoking-gun text regarding the myth of the benevolent slave owner in a letter to his son, John, on August 14, 1776, at the outbreak of the Revolution:
You know, my dear son, I abhor slavery. I was born in a country in which slavery had been established by British Parliaments and the laws of the country for ages before my existence. I found the Christian religion and slavery growing under the same authority and cultivation. I nevertheless dislike it. In former days there was no combating the prejudices of men, supported by interest. The day I hope is approaching when from principles of gratitude and justice every man will strive to be foremost in complying with the golden rule. 20,000 sterling would my negroes produce if sold at auction tomorrow. I am not the man who enslaved them; they are indebted to Englishmen for that favour. Nevertheless I am devising means for manumitting many of them and for cutting off the entail of slavery. Great powers oppose me : the laws and customs of my country, my own and the avarice of my countrymen. What will my children say if I deprive them of so much estate? These are difficulties, but not insuperable. I hope to receive your advice and assistance in this affair in good time.
Note Laurens jumping with no apparent sense of irony from the Golden Rule to something he values much more highly, the 20,000 pounds sterling. And such charming solicitude for his children and their estate were he to deprive them of so much valuable capital. Theyâll only have inherited this evil, much as he did. . . . But someday!
His ability to wrack his conscience in such a particularly self-regarding poor-me way, while maintaining such cognitive dissonance in the face of the lived reality of what heâs talking about, i.e., SLAVERY DAMMIT, is astounding. A venture capitalist himselfâLaurens was a partner in Austin and Laurens, the largest slave-trading house in America, which sold more than 8,000 Africans in 1750 aloneâhe would be at home among todayâs Masters of the Universe.
8 Likes
