George Fitzhugh: Slavery

“[T]he unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. ix

“The weak in mind or body require guidance, support and protection; they must obey and work for those who protect and guide them—they have a natural right to guardians, committees, teachers or masters. Nature has made them slaves, all that law and government can do, is to regulate, modify and mitigate their slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 178

Law , Support , Nature , Teachers

“No association, no efficient combination of labor can be effected till men give up their liberty of action and subject themselves to a common despotic head or ruler. This is slavery, and towards this socialism is moving.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 61

Men

“What a glorious thing to man is slavery, when want, misfortune, old age, debility and sickness overtake him.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 68

Age

“The greatest of all communists, if communist he be, Proudhon, has also seen and exposed this tendency of socialism to slavery. He is a thorough-going enemy of modern free society; call property a thief; and would, he says, establish anarchy in place of government.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 62

“Socialism, with such despotic head, approaches very near to Southern slavery, and gets along very well so long as the depot lives.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 334

“But slavery does, in practice as well as in theory, acknowledge and enforce the right of all to be comfortably supported from the soil. There was, we repeat, no pauperism in Europe till feudal slavery was abolished.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), pp. 307-308

Support

“Free trade or political economy is the science of free society, and socialism is the science of slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 61

Science

“Man is a social and gregarious animal, and all such animals hold property in each other. Nature imposes upon them slavery as a law and necessity of their existence… The husband has a legally recognized property in his wife’s services, and may legally control, in some measure, her personal liberty. She is his property and his slave.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 341

Law , Nature , Animals , Personality

“Slavery is a form of communism… The manner to which the change shall be made from the present form of society to that system of communism which we propose is very simple.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Cannibals All!, or Slaves Without Masters (1857), p. 324

Communication , Change

“The negro is improvident; will not lay up in summer for the wants of winter; will not accumulate in youth for the exigencies of age. He would become an insufferable burden to society. Society has the right to prevent this, and can only do so by subjecting him to domestic slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 83

Youth , Age , Winter , Summer

“With thinking men, the question can never arise, who ought to be free? Because no one ought to be free. All government is slavery.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 170

Men , Question , Thinking

“Slavery relieves our slaves of these cares altogether, and slavery is a form, and the very best form, of socialism.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 27-28

“No one will contend that negroes, for instance, should roam at large in puris naturalibus, with the apes and tigers of Africa, and ‘worry and devour each other.’ Nor are they fitted for an Athenian democracy. What form of government short of domestic slavery will suit their wants and capacities?”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 171

Democracy

“All concur that free society is a failure. We slaveholders say you must recur to domestic slavery, the oldest, the best and most common form of Socialism. The new schools of Socialism promise something better, but admit, to obtain that something, they must first destroy and eradicate man’s human nature.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 72

School , Failure , Nature

“Our only quarrel with Socialism is, that it will not honestly admit that it owes its recent revival to the failure of universal liberty, and is seeking to bring about slavery again in some form.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 70

Failure , Universe

“Socialism proposes to do away with free competition; to afford protection and support at all times to the laboring class; to bring about, at least, a qualified community of property, and to associated labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains.”

George Fitzhugh

Source: Sociology For The South: Or The Failure Of A Free Society (1854), p. 48

Support , Time , Communication