Paul Craig Roberts responds:

Paul Craig Roberts understandably takes exception to my criticism of his work. He writes:

I believe your comments on my article criticizing the Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom index misrepresents my message.

Historically, self-ownership is defined as ownership of the products of one’s labor. “Free labor” is labor that owns itself. This is the only comparison I made between a US taxpayer, a medieval serf and a 19th century slave. My statement that a slave could purchase his freedom is accurate, as is my statement that an American cannot purchase his freedom from the IRS. Unlike a 19th century slave, an American taxpayer has no chance whatsoever of owning the products of his own labor. This point is independent of the percentage of slaves who managed to purchase their freedom.

In my column, I was criticizing an “economic freedom index” that completely ignored this important similarity of the lack of self-ownership. I made no statement about the slave’s emotional state, nor that of the US taxpayer.

The IRS treats people very badly also, imprisoning them for “cheating” that is, for trying to keep a little more of the products of their labor.

Economically, mistreatment of slaves makes no sense. Capitalists normally do not destroy their own investments or poison their workforce against them. It would require an empirical study to determine whether more people have suffered at the hands of the IRS or at the hands of 19th century slave owners.

My critique of the freedom index did not attempt any such comparison. I merely noted that in terms of self-ownership, equality before the law, and the Blackstonian legal principles that protect the innocent, a true freedom index would give the US a very low score.

I stand by this point.

Southerners did not enslave blacks. The institution pre-existed and came from Africa itself. Slaves were brought to the US South because there was fertile land and no labor force. Southerners were born into the institution just as were slaves. Slavery was an economic institution independent of racism. Its days were numbered, because it is not as efficient as free contracted labor and population growth was creating a labor market. I make no apology for slavery, not even for the kind the US has today.

A few thoughts:

1. “Free labor” might be defined as labor that owns itself, in the sense of being able to keep the fruits of the labor. But freedom is generally defined to mean a lot more than that. When Dr. Roberts wrote that, among other things, certain slaves who were “leased to businesses or released to labor markets, where they worked for money wages” (part of which was given to the slaveowner) “were as free as today’s American taxpayer to choose their housing from the available stock, purchase their food and clothing, and entertain themselves,” and “In fact, . . . were freer than today’s American taxpayer,” because “they could save enough to purchase their freedom.” I thought it most odd that this comparison about who is “freer” omitted some pretty important aspects of freedom:
   

   Conspicuously omitted from the comparison: Pre-Civil-War slaves could be sold by their masters. The masters could sell one’s spouse, or one’s children, and you might never see them again. The masters could sell one’s daughters into prostitution. In some states, it was illegal for slaves to be educated. Slaves naturally didn’t have constitutional rights, such as freedom of speech. Masters could, to the best of my knowledge, engage in a broad range of corporal punishment (all of course without any requirement of due process). The masters surely could try to stop slaves from running away, and to my knowledge many slaves were murdered while trying away. Need I go on?

   Perhaps most slaveowners didn’t abuse their slaves. But freedom that depends entirely on the grace of one person isn’t usually thought of as freedom. And of course restrictions on education, free speech, the right to move to other places, and so on were often imposed by state law. I continue to think that a comparison of “freedom” as narrow as Dr. Roberts’ is a remarkably blindered comparison. (I also of course stand by the many other criticisms of Dr. Roberts’ work that I made in my original post.)

2. I would say the same about Dr. Roberts’ suggestion that “It would require an empirical study to determine whether more people have suffered at the hands of the IRS or at the hands of 19th century slave owners.” I’m glad to endorse lots of criticisms of the IRS. But I’m pretty certain that we need no empirical study to conclude that chattel slavery — people owning other people, people having pretty broad powers to beat and rape other people, people being killed for trying to flee, people being denied the right to be educated, or to speak out, and much more — is much worse than even the Internal Revenue Service.
3. Also, while I’m pleased that Dr. Roberts “make[s] no apology for slavery,” I don’t quite understand his point that “Slavery was an economic institution independent of racism.” Blacks, not whites, were enslaved. The law had long recognized the fundamental dignity and basic human rights of white citizens — that’s what the federal and state Bills of Rights were all about (as to rights against government), and what the common law and state statutes secured (as to rights against others). It had no respect for the fundamental dignity and basic human rights of black slaves. Of course slavery was an economic institution. But it was an economic institution that was heavily dependent on racism, since it existed only to the extent that people were willing to deny to blacks the same rights to which whites were indubitably entitled. What name is there for that but racism?

        (UPDATE: A reader suggests that Dr. Roberts’ point was that slavery throughout the world was independent of racism. Actually, as best I can tell most slavery, in the post-classical period, did depend at least on some degree of racial or ethnic prejudice, since generally — though by no means always — the people enslaved were members of other ethnic groups than the enslavers. But in any event, slavery in America was intimately tied with racism. That slavery wasn’t related to anti-black racism in other places, or might not even have been related to racism at all in a few places, strikes me as beside the point. Genocide isn’t inherently anti-Semitic, but the Holocaust was anti-Semitic; slavery isn’t inherently racist against blacks, but American slavery was racist against blacks.)