The new year opened with a portentous natural gas war between Russia and Ukraine, with Western Europe playing the role of hostage. Next came the West Virginia mine tragedy. Sidebars to that story noted that the price of coal has doubled in recent years, making it profitable for companies to pursue coal seams that are difficult – and dangerous – to access. The local paper this morning carried an ad from a credit union: “Ask about our Fuel Assistance Loan!” Meanwhile, I found myself in a dank and dirty public restroom, considering the connection between the abolition of slavery and clean indoor toilets.
Western democracies formally abolished slavery in the 19th century. Most did so by consensus, the United States fought a war with itself to get the job done. Other nations – Brazil, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia – were slower to abolish slavery, at least nominal slavery. Peonage, debt bondage and sharecropping (“slavery lite”), along with repressive laws aimed at specific racial or ethnic groups, survive.
High school, even university, history classes teach us slavery’s abolition was an outgrowth of the progress of human civilization. We tell ourselves our moral standards evolved to the point that we had to legally acknowledge the universality of the human condition.
I don’t believe it, not for a minute.
The abolition of slavery was a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. The construction of machines and the unleashed of the power of fossil fuels to operate them did not make slavery immoral, but it did make it less economical. Even the most cruelly bound slave must be fed and when he or she dies, a new slave must be bought. In the early days of coal and oil, machine fuel was far cheaper than human fuel. Machines generated more power for less money. Fossil fuels afforded us the ease to ponder the philosophical effects of slavery and congratulate ourselves for ending it. We stopped using horses and oxen for transportation and farming shortly after the abolition of slavery, but we didn’t try to deceive ourselves into thinking morality had anything to do with it.
What was true for national agriculture was also true for home economics. The same fossil fuel platform made both the field slave and the house slave redundant. It sent English manor houses, with their retinues of underpaid servants, into history. It freed working people everywhere from the struggle to provide basic food and shelter and left us free to obsess over new luxuries – like clean indoor toilets.
Slavery has never gone away. It went into decline, we called it by different names, but slavery has never gone away. Now slavery is making a comeback. Globalization, the myth of “sustainable growth” and the race to the bottom in labor markets are primarily responsible for slavery’s return. We continue to tell ourselves that the arc of civilization trends upward, that our armies spread democracy, but really, we’ve just gotten good at turning our faces away, at hiding our slaves in undeveloped countries with layers of businessmen between them and us and at pointing our cameras in other directions.
This resurgent slavery, like the old slavery, does not provide life’s necessities for anyone (least of all the slaves). The world’s slaves are employed making luxuries for the richest among us – chocolate and sneakers for Americans and Europeans.
Stories about natural gas confrontation in Eastern Europe and the miners’ deaths in West Virginia remind us that we are rapidly depleting fossil fuels. Coal and oil diminish, slavery rebounds. If we’re willing to deny liberty and the pursuit of happiness to thousands for the sake of Nestle bars and Nikes, how much misery will we agree to inflict on others in exchange for enough food to see our families through the winter?
Don’t wait until your house is cold and your children hungry before you begin to consider the ramification of the choices you make – or are about to make. Start thinking now, because fossil fuels are disappearing. Civilization does not have to disappear with them.
Free At Last?
The new year opened with a portentous natural gas war between Russia and Ukraine, with Western Europe playing the role of hostage. Next came the West Virginia mine tragedy. Sidebars to that story noted that the price of coal has doubled in recent years, making it profitable for companies to pursue coal seams that are difficult – and dangerous – to access. The local paper this morning carried an ad from a credit union: “Ask about our Fuel Assistance Loan!” Meanwhile, I found myself in a dank and dirty public restroom, considering the connection between the abolition of slavery and clean indoor toilets.
Western democracies formally abolished slavery in the 19th century. Most did so by consensus, the United States fought a war with itself to get the job done. Other nations – Brazil, parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia – were slower to abolish slavery, at least nominal slavery. Peonage, debt bondage and sharecropping (“slavery lite”), along with repressive laws aimed at specific racial or ethnic groups, survive.
High school, even university, history classes teach us slavery’s abolition was an outgrowth of the progress of human civilization. We tell ourselves our moral standards evolved to the point that we had to legally acknowledge the universality of the human condition.
I don’t believe it, not for a minute.
The abolition of slavery was a consequence of the Industrial Revolution. The construction of machines and the unleashed of the power of fossil fuels to operate them did not make slavery immoral, but it did make it less economical. Even the most cruelly bound slave must be fed and when he or she dies, a new slave must be bought. In the early days of coal and oil, machine fuel was far cheaper than human fuel. Machines generated more power for less money. Fossil fuels afforded us the ease to ponder the philosophical effects of slavery and congratulate ourselves for ending it. We stopped using horses and oxen for transportation and farming shortly after the abolition of slavery, but we didn’t try to deceive ourselves into thinking morality had anything to do with it.
What was true for national agriculture was also true for home economics. The same fossil fuel platform made both the field slave and the house slave redundant. It sent English manor houses, with their retinues of underpaid servants, into history. It freed working people everywhere from the struggle to provide basic food and shelter and left us free to obsess over new luxuries – like clean indoor toilets.
Slavery has never gone away. It went into decline, we called it by different names, but slavery has never gone away. Now slavery is making a comeback. Globalization, the myth of “sustainable growth” and the race to the bottom in labor markets are primarily responsible for slavery’s return. We continue to tell ourselves that the arc of civilization trends upward, that our armies spread democracy, but really, we’ve just gotten good at turning our faces away, at hiding our slaves in undeveloped countries with layers of businessmen between them and us and at pointing our cameras in other directions.
This resurgent slavery, like the old slavery, does not provide life’s necessities for anyone (least of all the slaves). The world’s slaves are employed making luxuries for the richest among us – chocolate and sneakers for Americans and Europeans.
Stories about natural gas confrontation in Eastern Europe and the miners’ deaths in West Virginia remind us that we are rapidly depleting fossil fuels. Coal and oil diminish, slavery rebounds. If we’re willing to deny liberty and the pursuit of happiness to thousands for the sake of Nestle bars and Nikes, how much misery will we agree to inflict on others in exchange for enough food to see our families through the winter?
Don’t wait until your house is cold and your children hungry before you begin to consider the ramification of the choices you make – or are about to make. Start thinking now, because fossil fuels are disappearing. Civilization does not have to disappear with them.
(C) Mark Floegel, 2006