Modern America and the Slave System

Recently, I've spent some time in my History class learning about the slave system in America, and I actually see a lot of parallels between it and modern-day America. I wasn't aware, for example, that relatively few southern farmers owned slaves. In fact, the majority of southern farmers were little more than subsistence farmers that were looked down upon by the plantation aristocracy. As it turns out, few families owned large numbers of slaves: Only 1,733 families owned 100 or more slaves. It was these families that benefitted most from the slave system.

However, those subsistence farmers - often called White Trash by the plantation aristocracy - were those that most fiercely defended the slave system; many died for it in the Civil War. Why would those poor farmers give their lives to defend a system that kept them poor and only served to further enrichen the wealthy? Perhaps for the same reasons that many poor Americans today support a system that protects the rich at the expense of the poor: Dreams.

Southern subsistence farmers dreamt of one day owning their own slaves, having their own plantation mansion, and of having the wealth that accompanies the former. Those dreams kept subsistence farmers working in the fields picking cotton or tobacco. Those dreams gave subsistence farmers hope of advancing beyond their meager status. And those dreams meant that subsistence farmers would fully support the slave system - the same slave system that helped to keep them poor. I see many parallels with the system today.

For example, I've heard minimum wage earners decry tax increases on the top 1% of salary earners. I've heard those at the poverty level argue passionately against luxury taxes on jewely. And I've listened to those who will inherit nothing more than a stack of bills protest the unfairness of the inheritance tax. Many of these working poor - I call them wage slaves - will never have to suffer a luxury tax on a $10,000 diamond ring. Fewer still will have to deal with estate taxes, and perhaps only 1 in 100,000 will ever be in the top 1% of wage earners.

Today's wage slaves aren't much different from southern subsistence farmers: Both aspired to become wealthy, both support a system that oppresses them, and few of either would ever reap the benefits of the systems they support.

The similarities between the generations don't stop there - let's look at the other end of the spectrum. Yesterday's plantation aristocrats have been replaced by today's corporate elite. Both were supported by what amounts to slave labor; the cost to feed, clothe, and house a slave 24-hours a day isn't that much less than paying minimum wage 8 hours a day.

Even more pertinent is the attitude of the corporate elite today: They're snobs. They look down upon "the great unwashed". Many of them feel that because they have money, they are better than those they employ. Is there any doubt, that Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski felt thought himself better than his employees? The video clip of his wife's multimillion-dollar birthday party showed a man who acted as though he was entitled to the funds he embezzled.

Dennis Kozlowski, to his credit, worked his way to the top. But what of those who were born into wealth? One could look at the video antics (not those antics) of heiress Paris Hilton on The Simple Life. She makes no attempt to hide the fact that she thinks she's superior to the average Americans who appear as props in her show.

The point is that the very wealthy today look down upon the average American in much the same way that plantation aristocrats looked down upon subsistence farmers of the day.

Thomas Hobbes said that, "[M]en have no pleasure (but on the contrary a great deal of grief) in keeping company where there is no power able to overawe them all."

In America, we have no royalty to overawe us. Instead, we look to anecdotes of the lifestyles of the richest people in America to overawe us. And sadly, the average American fights to protect a system that will protect the rich, at the expense of the average citizen. Hobbes might say that's the natural order of things, but I'm an optimist and will argue that if the average American wouldhis or her eyes, he or she would see the inequity in the system and would fight to reform the system to better everyone, and not just the rich.

Then again, the Civil War was started by the South to protect the inequities of their system, not to reform it.