On the Brink of Inanity

by Gene Callahan

I woke up at 3AM, and was unable to get back to sleep. I had eaten too close to bedtime, and my stomach was roiling. Bleary-eyed, I wandered down to my computer, figuring I might as well answer e-mail and read a few articles instead of staring blankly at the ceiling. I realized I hadn't yet read Jeff Tucker's recent article about Conservatism, so I pulled up LewRockwell.com. What was this link to Brink Lindsey? I was getting sleepier, but I decided to click on it.

The words on the screen began to blur as I read through Lindsey's "A Tale of Two Libertarianisms," where he argues about the pie-in-the-sky, utopian nature of "radical" libertarianism. (It's the February 25 entry in his blog.) Increasingly, I grew confused as to where I was. The computer faded into insubstantiality – was it some vision I had been having? What in the world was a "computer," anyway? I shook my head, and my vision of the large room in front of me cleared. I had been on the verge of nodding off during an important speech by my colleague!

What an odd dream that had been, of that strange future world! It was, after all, 1803, not 2003. And I was in the US Congress, listening to the honorable Congressman Lindsey assailing the radicals who would disrupt our happy Union over abstract, utopian nonsense like "freeing the slaves." Let me share with you the gist of his argument:

The radical abolitionist vision starts with an abstract ideal: a polity in which no humans are bought or sold as property. A "true" abolitionist, in this view, is someone who upholds this ideal as the summum bonum. True abolitionists may get their hands dirty in the real world and advocate incremental reforms, and they may even be coy about their long-term hopes, but when pressed they must declare their allegiance to the ideal. Any deviation from the ideal, any support for the rights of slaveholders, is seen as impure and compromised. Such deviations represent "concessions" to slavery; they "open the door" to relentless and limitless expansion of it.

Pragmatic abolitionists, on the other hand, start with the status quo in all its wretched messiness. Reformists share with their radical confreres a moral commitment to the sanctity of individual rights – and a deep appreciation of some of the worse aspects of human slavery. But reformists apply their principles in a very different way: not as blueprints for an ideal society, but as guides to incremental reform. As to the precise outlines of an ideal society they are agnostic or even indifferent. For them the goal is making the lives of real-world slaves better, not spinning utopias.

Pragmatic abolitionists do not worry that their acceptance of buying and selling human beings concedes some vital principle. Radicals charge that anything short of complete ideological consistency creates openings for the slaveholding impulse to take root and then run rampant. It’s a concern that might make some sense if we were currently living in an abolitionist polity and were worrying about setting dangerous precedents. But, hey, here’s a news flash: That abolitionist polity is nowhere in sight! There’s no need to worry in our day and age about giving away the store to the slaveholders; they run the store already, folks, and our job is to convince them to give it back. Appealing to them on the ground of principles that neither they nor the vast majority of the American public share (for example, that Negroes are human beings with the same rights as whites, or a revolting idea like making miscegenation legal) is not, in my view, the most effective strategy.

Reformist abolitionists eschew utopianism, not because they are less intellectually rigorous than their radical cousins, but because they are more intellectually rigorous. A utopia without any slavery, upon careful scrutiny, turns out to be a will-o’-the-wisp. Let’s start with examining one niggling little problem: It turns out that full-fledged abolitionist program is incompatible with our dawning industrial civilization. Without slaves to pick cotton in the South, the vast international textile trade would collapse, and with it our nation's prosperity.

Although bettering the condition of slaves is one of the greatest achievements of civilization, nonetheless it is not a project that can be pursued with unswerving consistency – at least not with results that would be broadly acceptable. More basically, the project of aiding slaves cannot even be launched without a political decision to embrace certain values at the expense of others. Radical abolitionists argue that abolition ultimately can be justified as compelled by reason, and I have a good deal of sympathy with that argument. But such an argument, even if successful, still leaves unanswered a fundamental question: Why be reasonable? Why value a system based on reason over one based on other human values or needs? Clearly there are alternatives: People have been unreasonable throughout most of history. A slaveholder believes unbending adherence to the "peculiar institution" makes for the ideal social order, and reason isn’t going to convince him otherwise. Indeed, he believes that unbridled reason is an evil to be combated. Ultimately, then, the case for abolition is an assertion of values: A society in which fewer humans are bought and sold is a better society than the alternatives.

But if people in society are willing to deploy the coercive powers of government to regulate slavery, it should not be surprising that they want to use it to sustain it as well. In my view, therefore, the only intellectually defensible abolitionist position is that the reduction of slavery should be the primary political value, and that other values also should be taken into account when deciding some particular issue with regards to slavery. A utopian view that human slavery ought never to exist is untenable.

Where to draw the line on which subsidiary values can be recognized, and how, is not a question susceptible to principled resolution. There are no analytically sustainable bright lines. Can slaves be made to work on Sundays? Is it acceptable to sell young children separately from their parents? Such questions are matters of judgment. It is inevitable that people will disagree on these judgment calls. But the general principle of "chipping away" at slavery as the highest political value is something that unites us all and defines us as abolitionists.

Unsurprisingly, given my views, I believe that pragmatic, reformist abolitionism represents the most vital and promising expression of the abolitionist impulse. First, it accords far better than the radical alternative with the great current of our intellectual tradition. Neither Plato, nor Aristotle, nor Locke, nor Hume, nor Jefferson, nor Washington, were radical abolitionists – all saw a role for slavery in human society. Utopianism is not the distillation of the abolitionist tradition; it is a caricature of it.

Furthermore, reformist abolitionism offers the best hope for chipping away at slavery in the future. There is an enormous opportunity for abolitionism that is grounded in the real world. But for the abolitionist alternative to really gain ground, it must fashion a message and a program that begins, not with unworkable ideological contraptions, but with the here and now of political reality. It must lead public opinion in the direction of greater appreciation for the value of alleviating the condition of human slaves – gently, firmly, patiently, and just a few steps ahead of those whose minds it seeks to change. It must recognize that there is only a path of ongoing reform and adjustment, no final destination of perfection, and that we all have much to learn along the way.

Copyright © 2003 Gene Callahan

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