Slavery as Circumstance

Brandon JonesPhilosophy 4910: Nietzsche, Marx, and FreudThe University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

February 08, 2014

1

The object of this paper from its outset is to answer the

question of whether or not the Marxist perspective, that all

people who do not own the means of production are slaves, is

still accurate of white-collar workers today. The question has

certain assumptions which will need to be addressed. Classic

Marxism views the proletariat as a different class from the

slave, and even the serf. Yet, in these differences we find

similarities in the relations of the proletariat to the slave.

These similarities become clearer when we look into the mindset

behind the denial that the modern proletariat, as a class, has

about their role as a slave. It also must be discussed as to why

the central question of this paper infers that white-collar

workers would be thought of, and indeed think themselves as

being, less slave-like than other workers. The circumstances of

the wealthy and poor members of the proletariat bear a striking

resemblance to the circumstances of the house slave and the

field slave of old. It is ultimately upon these circumstances

that we will be able to determine whether or not the white-

collar workers of today are slaves.

2

From the classic Marxist perspective, as indeed by the

modern capitalist perspective, slaves are technically set apart

from the proletariat and bourgeoisie dichotomy as a class wholly

their own- as the perpetually alienated other which neither side

claims under their mantle. In his, “The Principles of Communism”,

Frederick Engels asserts five ways in which the slave differs

from the proletariat. They are as follows:

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly.

The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existenceis assured only to the class as a whole.

The slave is outside competition; the proletarian is init and experiences all its vagaries.

The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, while the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and, himself, stands on a higher social level than the slave.

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the

3

proletarian can free himself only by abolishing privateproperty in general.1

From this we glean in exactly what way the proletarian differs

from the slave as a class; the slave is an object while the

proletarian, for all her difficulties, remains human- “a member

of society” as it were, just like the bourgeoisie.2 In stark

contrast, for all of the comforts which, depending on the master,

a slave may be granted and which can constitute for it a “better

existence”, a slave is allowed no scrap of humanity, because in

the eyes of their master a slave is not human, it is an object.3

This is supposed to be the motivation for the slave to free

itself from the bondage of its class to join the class of mankind

known as the proletariat, and inherit new bonds of private

property along with it. In either case though, the slave and the

proletarian have a shared condition, which is that neither are

free. We, who live in global capitalism today, have a tendency to

speak of one as either being free or being a slave, but in 1. Friederich Engels, “Section 7.” The Principles of Communism

(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969), 81-97, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

2. Ibid. 3. Ibid.

4

Marxism it is simply understood that there is more than one

situation, or relation, in which one lacks freedom; one can lack

freedom as a member of society or without that membership, as a

proletarian or as a slave. One wonders though, if this way of

looking at slavery as a separate condition isn’t at least

partially derived from an unwillingness to see the proletariat as

being as completely unempowered as the slave is, as both are

treated as objects.

Surely we needn’t view slavery strictly as a class? Perhaps

we can view it as relations, as a circumstance of slavery which

one finds oneself in. To ask if any aspect of Marxism is still

accurate in any capacity toward any subject today is really to

ask if what is Old is still a relevant tool of analysis of what

is New. In this instance Marxism as a method is the Old while the

predicament of slavery in relation to modern white-collar workers

is the New. Instead of asking what Žižek would call “the obvious

question” of whether or not Marxism, and its associated

communism, are still relevant (or ‘accurate’) perspectives for

analysis today, we should ask the opposite question, “How does

5

our predicament today look from the perspective of the Communist

idea?”4 Žižek goes on to defend this assertion,

It is those who propose the constant creation of new terms ... in order to grasp what is going on today who miss the contours of what is actually New. The only wayto grasp the true novelty of the New is to analyze the world through the lenses of what was "eternal" in the Old. If communism really is an “eternal” Idea, then it works as a Hegelian “concrete universality”: it is eternal not in the sense of a series of abstract-universal features that may be applied everywhere, but in the sense that it has to be re-invented in each new historical situation. 5

Our task is no longer to suggest what Karl Marx and his classic

method may still mean to us in the midst of our modern plight,

but to do the opposite and see what our modern plight looks like

through his eyes.6 How, then, are white-collar workers slaves in

Marx’s eyes? In “Wage Labour and Capital” Marx discusses how

slavery occurs. He states that a person, “only becomes a slave

in certain relations”.7 These “relations” which make up a slave

4. Slavoj Žižek, First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (London Verso Books, 2009), 6.

5. Ibid.6. Ibid.7. Robert Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972), 207.

6

pertain to capital and its means of accumulation through labor

and production. It lies within these relations to make sense of

how the proletariat is a slave, not by class but by

circumstance. Marx writes, “The labour power of the wage-worker

can only be exchanged for capital by increasing capital, by

strengthening the power whose slave it is. Hence, increase of capital is

increase of the proletariat, that is, of the working class.”8 Ultimately a member

of the proletariat is a slave insofar as their master is

“capital”, or money. That a white-collar worker need not toil in

the hot afternoon sun these days matters not; That she may

invest capital for capital gains instead of actually producing

anything material matters not; That accruing money may give her

some form of power also matters not- when one has lost their

personhood to the alienation of capitalism.

The circumstance of alienation deprives us of our humanity

and makes slaves of us all, even more so than slavery as a class

does, because-while the slave class may be prohibited from being

“a member of society”-the process of alienation forces the

proletarian, her white-collar and all, to become foreign to the

8. Ibid., 210.

7

world itself, until she is reduced to an estranged being in an

estranged world.9 Marx eloquently explains this in his “Economic

and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844”,

[Capitalism]-despite its worldly and wanton appearance-is a true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-denial, the denial of life and of all human needs, is its cardinal doctrine. The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less youthink, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being. Everything which the capitalist takes from you in life and in humanity, he replaces for you in money and in wealth; and all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriateart, learning, the treasures of the past, political power -all this it can appropriate for you-it can buy all this for you: it is the true endowment. Yet being all this, it is inclined to do nothing but create itself, buy itself; for everything else is after all its servant. And when I have the master I have the servant and do not need his servant. All passions and all activity must therefore be submerged in avarice. The worker may only have enough for him to want to live, and may only want to live in order to have enough.10

9. Andy Blunden, "Alienation," Glossary of Terms (2008): Al, http://www.marxists.org /glossary/terms/a/l.htm.

10. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, 95

8

Marx sees capital as the master of all things, and we are

all servants to it just as we are alienated by it. One does

not express their own life with capital, they express their

alienated life in relation to it, and this is the life of

the slave. Capital does what we simple servants are not

allowed to do, for and of ourselves, without it there to

grant us permission. Capital interacts with the world,

capital lives- for us!

Harriet Tubman once remarked that she, “freed thousands of

slaves [and] could have freed thousands more, if only they had

known they were slaves.”11 A more interesting twist on the

question of whether or not white-collar workers are indeed slaves

might be to ask how they can be convinced of their place in

circumstances of slavery. Having failed for my own part, many

times, to convince the proletariat of their slavery I can at

least offer a couple of archetypes for their denial. Today’s

white-collar proletariat, at least where western first-world

countries are concerned, are all governed predominantly by

11. Henry Gates, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003), 299.

9

liberal democracies or, as Marx referred to it, “bourgeois

democracy”, wherein the proletariat are represented by the

bourgeoisie and are ultimately oppressed by them.12 In America it

is common knowledge that most of its denizens toe one of the two

prevailing party lines which constitute its bourgeois democracy,

either the democratic or republican parties, with the former

boasting a more liberal politics and the latter, more

conservative. White-collar workers of considerable wealth can be

found among the ranks of both parties, but it has been my

experience that the proletariat on both sides ultimately dismiss

the proposition of their slavery, even if for different reasons.

With regard to republicans, I have known many who have been

very quick to dismiss the prospect of being a slave entirely out

of hand commensurate with their support of free-market

capitalism. They tend to see capital not as their master but as

their liberator, and themselves not as capital’s poor servants

but as atomized individuals secure in their traditions and

ideologies.13 When one attempts to point out the many failures 12. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, 50113. Jonathan Haidt, The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives (TED:

Ideas worth Spreading, 2008),

10

and current crises of capitalism one is usually met with an

argument somewhere along the lines of “True capitalism has never

been tried! When capitalism fails now it is because it must carry

the added weight of state regulations. A pure capitalism would

work well for all.” Žižek notes the irony of a defense like this

in the context of history,

Consequently, to put it in old-fashioned Marxist terms,the central task of the ruling ideology in the present crisis is to impose a narrative which will place the blame for [any failure] not on the global capitalist system as such, but on secondary and contingent deviations (overly lax legal regulations, the corruption of big financial institutions, and so on). Likewise, in the era of Really Existing Socialism, pro-socialist ideologists tried to save the idea of socialism by claiming that the “people’s democracies" was the failure of a non-authentic version of socialism, not of the idea as such, so that existing socialist regimes required radical reforms rather than overthrow and abolition. It is not without irony to note how ideologists who once mocked this critical defense of socialism as illusory, and insisted that oneshould lay the blame on the very idea itself, now widely resort to the same line of defense: for it is not capitalism as such which is bankrupt, only its distorted realization.14

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html.14. Žižek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, 19.

11

The famous (if possibly misattributed) John Steinbeck quote comes

to mind here, “Socialism never took root in America because the

poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as

temporarily embarrassed millionaires.”15 And this lies, I

suspect, at the core of the reason that the conservative half of

America fails to realize its own slavery to capital- they simply

cannot see themselves as exploited by it. Their dedication to the

ideals and meritocracy of global capitalism is such that their

various lots in life do not seem to be the least bit incidental

or otherwise guided in large part by bourgeois policies, but are

instead seen as being merited and deserved, as if they have

chosen to be poor.16 When people believe that if they are not

part of the bourgeoisie it is by their own choice, they do not

see themselves as ruled over by them.

In my experience, the democrats are of a more advanced

school in the denial of their slavery. They are not totally blind

15. "John Steinbeck." (Wikiquote, 2014), http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck.

16. Alain de Botton, A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success (TED: Ideasworth Spreading, 2009), http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy _of_success.html.

12

to their slavery so much as they are cynical to the prospect that

they may be free. When one tries to criticize capitalism for its

failures the liberal will generally agree that this economic

paradigm has its problems but one can be assured by the liberal

democrat that these problems can be tempered with certain

socialistic agendas. This perspective is well expressed by French

philosopher Guy Sorman who thinks, “that the liberal society

needs a welfare state, first, with regard to intellectual

legitimacy because people will accept the capitalist adventure if

there is an indispensable minimum of social security.”17 One sees

this is true in the most liberal of democratic nations, like

Switzerland for example, where there is currently a lot of

mainstream support for the state to provide a “basic income” for

its citizens.18 If one continues to press liberals they will

eventually arrive at the root of their cynical thinking wherein

they suggest that capitalism, as a base economy, at the very

least should not ultimately be completely abandoned, for while 17. Žižek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, 26.18. Annie Lowrey, "Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for

Being Alive." (The New York Times, 2013), http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-peoplefor-being-alive.html?_r=0.

13

capitalism is imperfect it is the least imperfect system we have

and any radical change will only leave our economic situation in

a worse state. Sorman encapsulates this sentiment perfectly in

this piece of propaganda,

An essential task of democratic governments and opinionmakers when confronting economic cycles and political pressure is to secure and protect the system that has served humanity so well, and not to change it for the worse on the pretext of its imperfection ... Still, this lesson is doubtless one of the hardest to translate into language that public opinion will accept. The best of all possible economic systems is indeed imperfect. Whatever the truths uncovered by economic science, the free market is finally only the reflection of human nature, itself hardly perfectible.19

In other words, liberals are not cynical because they do not

believe their own propaganda, in all likelihood they do, rather

it’s because their propaganda does not recognize any potential

possibility for advancement beyond capitalism. Nothing can be

better than the “best of all possible economic systems”; we

simply must accept the abuses of capitalism and do what we can to

soften its blows by working within the system. If capital is our

master as Marx suggests, then capitalism must be its plantation.

19. Žižek, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, 27.

14

Rationalizations like these are not unlike asking a slave if they

want to escape only for them to ask in return, “Where will I live

better than on my master’s plantation?”

What lies at the heart of all this denial on the part of

white-collar workers though? One can speculate. Perhaps it is

because the white-collar proletariat live in relative comfort.

But what has comfort ever had to do with whether or not one is a

slave? Can one not be a comfortable slave? Oscar Wilde once

wrote, “The worst slave owners were those who were kind to their

slaves, and so prevented the horror of the system being realised

by those who suffered from it, and understood by those who

contemplated it.”20 There is another interesting assumption that

lies within the central question of this paper, which is that if

it is difficult for white-collar members of the proletariat to

envisage their slavery it is not as difficult for the poorer,

blue-collar members, otherwise we should have been asked to

explain this phenomenon on behalf of all of the proletariat.

20. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (London: Thomas B. Mosher, 1905), 5, http://books.google.com/books?id=8SpBVdwhwIQC&dq.

15

Malcolm X would concur with this underlying assumption and

provides insight into the matter,

Back during slavery … there were two kinds of Negroes. There was that old house Negro and the field Negro.

And the house Negro always looked out for his master. When the field Negroes got too much out of line, he held them back in check. He put 'em [sic] back on the plantation. The house Negro could afford to do that because he lived better than the field Negro. He ate better, he dressed better, and he lived in a better house. He lived right up next to his master - in the attic or the basement. He ate the same food his master ate and wore his same clothes. And he could talk just like his master- good diction. And he loved his master more than his master loved himself. That's why he didn't want his master hurt. If the master got sick, he'd say, "What's the matter, boss, we sick?" When the master's house caught afire [sic], he'd try and put thefire out. He didn't want his master's house burned. He never wanted his master's property threatened. And he was more defensive of it than the master was.

That was the house Negro. But then you had some field Negroes, who lived in huts, and had nothing to lose. They wore the worst kind of clothes. They ate the worstfood. And they caught hell. They felt the sting of the lash. They hated their master. Oh yes, they did. If themaster got sick, they'd pray that the master died. If the master's house caught on fire, they'd pray for a strong wind to come along. This was the difference between the two. And today you still have house Negroesand field Negroes.21

21. Malcolm X, Message To Grassroots (YouTube, 2006), http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ.

16

It is the privilege of all proletariat workers, white-collar or

otherwise, to receive ideal tasks (like the house slave) if they

can persuade the agents of their bourgeois master of their

competency or, at times, a need for the task itself. A slave

these days may serve many masters, it may choose where and

perhaps, for some, when to work, but it does not ultimately

choose if it works. The white-collar worker is a house slave who

gets to sit at the master’s table. That the place settings at the

master’s table have seen their delicacies replaced with memos and

laptops does not matter, the table is still the master’s and they

are there only at his behest. It does not matter if it is for or

against their own will that the slave works, or that a slave may

love its master, they are still a slave in their relations to

capital. Sometimes I run across people, white-collar and blue-

collar workers alike, who tell me that they like the work they

do, and indeed they’d do it whether they were paid to do it or

not. To this I always respond, “And that’s great, but wouldn’t it

be nice if you didn’t have to be paid? If you could enjoy a high

quality of life as a right and not a privilege that is dependent

17

upon whether you wished to continue working or not, or upon

whether or not you fell ill and could not continue working?” That

a person can be an accomplice to their own enslavement does not

make them less of a slave, only less than aware of this fact or

less than able to understand it.22

Perhaps they think it is because they can afford to do

certain things which others cannot that white-collar workers

believe they are not slaves? As if, historically, there have not

been slaves who enjoyed greater privileges than other slaves. But

it is their money which allows them to do anything at all.23 One

can only do what one is allowed to do when one is a slave,

possessing capital does not change this one bit. Wealthy, white-

collar workers may live well, but that they do is only a

privilege granted to them by their funds. The white-collar

proletariat may strive to live their master’s lifestyle, the

bourgeois lifestyle, but to live like the master is not to be the

master. The master owns the means of production, he may be said

to be privileged in his position but his access to the materials

22. Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 5.23. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader, 95

18

he owns is not privileged in a way that even the wealthiest

member of the proletariat must admit to, for in owning the means

of production he cannot be parted from them against his will. In

this way the bourgeoisie is exactly like the master and the white

collar proletariat is exactly like the slave. At the heart of the

white-collar denial of slavery is the denial that the quality of

life they enjoy is a privilege that capital allows them to have.

For, a slave can only do what a slave is allowed to do. To afford

to do something is nothing more than to be allowed to do

something by one’s capital.

Outside of party and economic lines, we have to ask

ourselves, “What does it mean to be a slave?” Both the

bourgeoisie and the proletariat do work, just as both the master

and the slave do work (the master manages the plantation, the

slave labors upon it), the difference lies in the circumstances

under which they do so and decide to do so, and to whose benefit

one works. For one who inhabits the circumstances of the

bourgeoisie, work is what one does because one wishes to do it.

Their work can benefit whosoever they wish it to. Instead of

being alienated by their labor the bourgeoisie finds their lives

19

enriched by it. Should one in this circumstance change their mind

for any reason and cease the task at hand no one can diminish the

material needs of their life as retribution. The same is not so

for the proletariat, nor for the slave. The bourgeoisie can be

shamed into doing something they’d rather not be doing, but their

livelihood is never systematically held as ransom to force them

to. The slave is ultimately a disposable object, valued only for

its utility and alienated by its labor. A slave is harmed when it

does not do work. It need not be whipped to be harmed, these days

it is harmed by a collective indifference to its access to

resources when it has no more utility to the bourgeoisie or their

agents. This is the point of harm in relation to slavery, to

motivate the slave to work, whatever the medium with which the

harm is inflicted. And the slave’s work always ultimately

benefits the master more so than it benefits the slave. Such is

the circumstance of the proletariat.

The proletariat are slaves precisely because they share the

circumstances of slavery. Slavery is best seen as a relation,

between master and slave, not as a class. Their circumstances may

have modernized, their chains may have become metaphysical and

20

appear now as statements of debt, industries may have evolved

away from the plantation and into office parks, slaves may sell

themselves daily and hourly instead of once and for all, but this

only makes for modern slaves, not a free and equal populace. If

viewed this way one may perhaps come to understand why so many

proletarians do not free themselves as a class, because they find

themselves in a circumstance which makes slaves of all who find

themselves in it- the circumstance of Capitalism.

Bibliography

Blunden, Andy. "Alienation." Glossary of Terms. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://www.marxists.org/glossary/terms/a/l.htm.

Engels, Friedrich. "Section 7." In The Principles of Communism, translated by Paul Sweezy. Vol. 1. Selected Works. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1969. 81-97. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm.

Gates, Henry. "Underground railroad." In Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, 299. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003.

A Kinder, Gentler Philosophy of Success. Performed by Alain De Botton. TED:Ideas worth Spreading. July 2009. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://www.ted.com/talks/alain_de_botton_a_kinder_gentler_philosophy_of_success.html.

21

Lowrey, Annie. "Switzerland’s Proposal to Pay People for Being Alive." The New York Times, November 16, 2013. Accessed February01, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/magazine/switzerlands-proposal-to-pay-peoplefor-being-alive.html?_r=0.

Message To Grassroots. Performed by Malcolm X. YouTube. July 2006. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQe9nUKzvQ.

The Moral Roots of Liberals and Conservatives. Performed by Jonathan Haidt. TED: Ideas worth Spreading. September 2008. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html.

Steinbeck, John. "John Steinbeck." Wikiquote. January 16, 2014. Accessed February 01, 2014. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck.

Tucker, Robert C., Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader. 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1972.

Wilde, Oscar. The Soul of Man Under Socialism. London: Thomas B. Mosher, 1905. 1-9. Accessed September 08, 2013. http://books.google.com/books?id=8SpBVdwhwIQC&dq.

Žižek, Slavoj. First as Tragedy, Then as Farce. London: Verso Books, 2009. 6-30.