Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I’m just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.
As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something (yes, even if it’s done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner’s freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it’s only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?
Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?
No. Protecting human rights is not authoritarian.
I agree, but technically it was both protecting human rights and taking away other human rights (to own slaves). Do you see what I mean?
Owning others is NOT a human right. It is a violation thereof.
At the time it was a legal right that some humans had, even though it came at the expense of others’ moral right (that most people now believe they had, including myself) to be free. Please tell me you understand this. I don’t think owning others is a human right in a moral sense, even if it was a legal right for some back then. There is a difference between legal rights and moral rights, because legality is not the same as morality. Sorry if that sounds obvious but I think it’s necessary to clarify in order to approach this question with understanding.
Yes, when we talk about human rights we mean as distinct from legal rights. No law can grant or take away a human right, it is inherent to the human condition.
You’ve shown that you understand the distinction but I’ll point out as well that moral right is a third, distinct thing.
Human rights describes the individuals that the rights pertain to, no? So those human rights could either be based in legality or in morality, which wouldn’t always align. People may also have different beliefs about which human rights are morally justified and which ones aren’t. If there’s a third kind of human right that isn’t based on what’s legal or what’s believed to be (or, fundamentally is) moral, then what’s it based in?
Inherent to the human condition is interesting, but isn’t that still a moral stance/belief? Even if you argue that it’s objectively moral (and if you don’t believe in moral subjectivism/moral relativism) or objectively the right thing for humans to have rights based on the kind of beings that they are, how is that separate from morality? As far as I know when someone says “this is a human right” they’re usually asserting that they believe it’s morally correct for humans to have a certain right, and that it would be wrong to violate that right. Occasionally someone says “this is a legally protected human right” to emphasise that it’s a legal right enforced by law. I’m not sure by what metric rights could be ascribed or theorised conceptually to apply to certain individuals, if not law or ethics.
For example, you could say that the law did violate the enslaved’s moral human rights, by assigning other humans a legal right to own them, which many at the time would have also believed was their moral right, even if we don’t agree with that today or assert as being objectively immoral. If their human right to not be enslaved wasn’t legal or moral, I don’t see what the third option could be.
I would also add that it seems that rights are a human concept/social construct, even just in the sense that we’re interpreting what we believe to be ethical/right/moral, even if it’s objectively correct; or we’re enforcing laws based on what people believe is correct, or in some cases what serves certain people personally at the expense of what most people believe is right if the laws are corrupt/undemocratic.
So I think if we’re going to claim that a certain right “just is”, since we’re the ones creating these concepts even if it’s based on our observation of the world and an interpretation that was theoretically objectively correct if not a belief, it falls on us to rationalise and describe how we’re coming to these conclusions and what we’re basing this assertion of a certain right on. Otherwise, “it’s a human right because it’s a human right” is just circular reasoning and has no explanation. How are we formulating our basis for what is a human right? Is it legality? Is it moral beliefs or what we reason (or even logically prove somehow) is objectively morally right? Or … what?
For example, in the case of animal rights theory, many people believe that there are moral rights that animals hold as moral patients, i.e. “negative rights” (= freedom from something being done to an individual) not to be exploited and killed by humans (moral agents), which extend logically from the belief (or fact) of human rights also being morally correct. And in this view, humans by way of our laws, do hold legally the “positive rights” (= freedom of an individual to do something) to exploit and kill animals, but these legal rights are simultaneously violating the moral rights of the animals to not have these things done to them by humans/moral agents.
In this case too, similar to what you said about the human condition, we could argue that something about the condition of animals (which could for example be sentience/consciousness, which they share with humans who are also animals), is the basis for them having these rights, but even then we’re still speculating based on what we believe is either subjectively or objectively moral (since in that case obviously what’s legal is in contradiction with what’s deemed to be moral), and I’m not sure what third definition of rights could be being applied there whether it be in the context of human rights or animal rights.
Legal rights are not human rights. I suggest you go look up the definition of human rights, they’re a separate concept.
A country or state passing a law that makes it legal to punch clowns in the face on Tuesday doesn’t make that action a human right, it just means that country passes fucked up laws.
I’m fairly sure human rights can be used to describe either moral rights or legal rights. In most contexts people are using human rights in a moral sense, but it can be used in a legal sense too. If you’re arguing for a third definition of human rights which isn’t based in morality (what’s good) or legality (what’s been passed as law), then what is it based in?
Human rights are those that apply to all humans. So the right to own slaves can’t be a human right as it doesn’t apply to the owned people. The law created two categories of people, so the rights conferred by that law were not human rights.
all I hear is you think humans have a right to own slaves
That’s a weird assumption when I said it was good that it was abolished. Humans shouldn’t have the right to own slaves is my belief. (But they did have that right at the time legally speaking). Or another way to put it, is that I don’t think humans have the moral right to own slaves, even if they did have the legal right. This was a response to someone else telling me that banning slavery was an authoritarian decision. I just wanted to get clarification and try to understand it better.
when you say banning slavery took away people’s rights, that means you Believe owning humans is a right.
Legal rights vs moral rights, that’s the confusion.
They legally had that right at the time. I don’t think they should have had that right, or that they morally have that right. I think we’re talking about 2 different meanings of the term “right”. In one sense (legally), they had the right, as in it was codified into law. That’s not a belief as much as a fact. The part which concerns my belief is whether I think they should have had the right or if they have the moral right, which I don’t. I hope that makes sense.
if you don’t believe they had the right to own slaves, then they had no rights taken away, if your saying they did have rights taken away then you are saying they had a right to own slaves.
Do you agree that someone can theoretically have a legal right to do something bad (as in, be legally allowed to do it) without that being a good or moral right for them to have?
I think you’re only believing “right” to mean one thing and one thing only, when I’m using it in a sense where legality and morality don’t necessarily coincide (even if they do in other contexts, conditionally).
So when I say they had the legal right to own slaves, and that right was taken away from them, that isn’t a matter of opinion/belief because that’s factually what happened, but that doesn’t mean that I think they had the right morally speaking, which is a different concept.
I hope this makes sense.
So you heard someone use a white supremacist talking point, and now you’re ignorantly repeating it under the banner of asking if it has merit?
It does not. Repeating this line as you’ve done here is what the white supremacist who fed it to you wants you to do, as it appears to give legitimacy white supremacy. It does not. It is a false claim.
They weren’t a white supremacist and they were in favor of banning slavery while simultaneously believing it to be an authoritarian decision. They were using this to argue that authoritarianism can be justified sometimes. Your comment assumes that saying something is authoritarian means that you’re against it.
Look buddy, I’m from the south and this is a talking point for Confederate sympathizers. This train of thought has no substance to it. The civil war didn’t just happen to people, slavery did. People did what they had to do to get out and there’s nothing authoritarian about that. You’re not being more intelligent than everyone else and you’re not the smartest person in the room like this gentleman would like you to believe, you’re being gullible.
Same shit, different spread. So they’re twisting the facts to support a different kind of authoritarianism, instead of white supremacy. That’s not much better.
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When we talk about human rights we usually talk about the “what”, and talking about just the “what” leads to misconceptions like that. So the question is why we have human rights. And the formulation human right treaties take is some form of “Human dignity is inviolable”, which means that all human lives are worth the same, and that value can’t be diminished in any way. Human rights are then listed in order to protect that ideal.
When you consider this, it becomes obvious that owning humans can’t be a form of the right to private property because it relies on some humans being above others.
That’s also the reason why free speech doesn’t include things like slander or ordering someone killed.
I think I see what’s happening here. The missing piece of the puzzle is that there are 2 kinds of rights.
“Negative rights” = the right to not have certain things happen to you, aka freedoms. Eg freedom from being assaulted.
“Positive rights” = the right to do/have stuff.
In the case of enslavement, the negative right - to be free from being forced to work, owned, etc is a much more important right than the positive right to own property.
So you are trying to argue that slavery is a RIGHT? This looks like and argument of guilt by association. Authoritarian is seen as bad, by giving the abolishment of slavery the label of “authoritarian” gives of the idea that you want to associate it with being bad.
If having a law that restricts one’s ability to do something is “authoritarian” then any law is authoritarian, because laws, by definition, determine what behaviour is and isn’t allowed within a society. On that note, morality determines legality, not the other way around.
Slavery means that, if you’re rich enough, you should be allowed to revoke the rights of others. This is refutable at so many levels. If someone were to “willingly” agree to give up their rights, then just you’re just taking advantage of someone who was born in an unfavourable position and have no other choice other than to accept (and maybe not starve) or starve.
At what point was owning slaves a human right? It could be a legal right, yes. But I am eager to see which fucked up, inbred, mouth breathing country thought making owning a slave a human right would be a good idea.
I think you are lost in the language. There are no absolute rights, in any legal systems. So any “law” necessarily restricts someone’s “rights”.
Therefore, you need to think about what “authoritarian decision” means, because if all law restricts someone’s rights, all laws are authoritarian by your definition.
Also: terrible example to begin with.
I was about the comment a similar thing.
If having a law that restricts one’s ability to do something is “authoritarian” then any law is authoritarian, because laws, by definition, determine what behaviour is and isn’t allowed within a society.
questions like this nicely demonstrate how worthless a concept “authoritarianism” really is
Not really. It is the tolerance paradox.
Banning slavery might be authoritarian but it is less authoritarian than allowing it. So on the political scale, banning slavery is anti-authoritarian and allowing it is authoritarian.
Authoritarianism is when the government does stuff
Authoritarianism is all about concentrating power around fewer people. That what authoritarianism IS. Giving more power to the least powerful people is always anti-authoritarian. Yes, there are always trade-offs, no they’re not always as obvious as this one, but more power to more people is never authoritarian.
No, it was anti-authoritarian, as it removed the authority slave holders had over their slaves.
Just as it imposed authority over them to take away their authority, right?
Net authority decreased(by removing the authority imposed on slaves by the slavers), so it’s anti-authoritarian, right?
Sure, if you look at it from a utilitarian perspective I suppose.
Authoritarian doesn’t mean exercising authority. Banning slavery did exercise authority, of the law, over slave owners, but it was anti-authoritarian. It took power, and authority, condensed wrongly in the hands of a few and, in theory, distributed it to the many, however effective it actually was.
As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something
The problem of this approach is that in that case you refuse any law. Even anarchist would agree that a stateless society need people to agree on common rules.
Speed limit ? restrict your freedom to do something, private property ? Restrict your freedom to go where you want, does restricting your freedom to commit murder feels authoritarian ?
Now what’s more authoritarian ? having the state protecing your right to have slave ? Or having the state protecting people freedom by not letting someone enslave them.
Letting slavers exercise absolute authority over slaves is authoritarian and letting that system remain is authoritarian.
It is literally removing authority.
Removing a kind of authority of the people over other people, but wouldn’t it be imposing an authority from the government upon the remaining slave owners?
No.
If it was legal for certain people to slap certain other people, then the people doing the slapping would have the authority over the people being slapped to slap them. But then if the law was changed and took away their authority to slap them, that would be using authority over those slappers to stop them. Does this make sense? Both can be true at the same time
You’ve now described a second scenario in which authority is being removed and not added.
But authority can be used/imposed to take away some else’s authority, can’t it? Or can authority only be used to do something to someone, not to prevent someone from doing something?
What these questions are missing is that the government didn’t start from a place of neutrality, they started by enforcing the institution of slavery. They didn’t go from having no authority over slavery to having all of it, rather the authority they had remained static. The only variable for the amount of authority then is that the classes of “slave” and “slave owner” stopped being a thing, so there were no longer slave owners that had absolute authority over slaves.
Insofar as authoritarian is a useful metric (not very), Yes and it was good
Yes. There’s nothing more authoritarian than a revolution. Slavers, colonizers, capitalists, landlords, and other such parasites can only be dealt with effectively using extreme violence and state oppression.
Yes it’s autharitarian to ban slavery. Kind like a revolution is autharitarian. Don’t really get the people who don’t want to impose , what ya gonna do? Ask nicely?
Natural language is inherently imprecise. You’re going to have to add a contextual definition if you want this to have a single answer.
If making someone do something is always authoritarian, abolition is authoritarian to slavers and anti-authoritarian to slaves. If implementing a law with no checks and balances is authoritarian, it was authoritarian when Louis XIV did it, but maybe not in other cases. If a policy that upholds any kind of hierarchy is authoritarian, it’s always anti-authoritarian.
I would go further to say that if “making someone do something” is the definition, literally any action taken by any government is authoritarian. If a government did not make people do things, it would functionally cease to be.
Yep. That’s the definition Marxists have gravitated to historically, and by that definition everyone is authoritarian and we should stop worrying about it. There’s quotes I’m sure someone here would be happy to supply.
Yes, and it was good authority to exercise.
This sounds like another version of the “definition of freedom”.
Is freedom being unrestricted from doing whatever you want? Or is it protection from people doing whatever they want that would otherwise injure you?
I guess I’d argue that banning slavery in the middle of a culture that embraces it is, in fact, authoritarian. Similarly, enabling slavery in the middle of a culture that rejects it is also authoritarian.
It gets more interesting when the population is split on what they want policy to be. I think Prohibition is a better comparison since it’s less emotionally charged.
Was enacting Prohibition authoritarian? Sure seems that way, even though it had a lot of support. Was rolling it back also authoritarian? The people who originally supported it and now see it taken away probably feel it’s authoritarian.
IMO as long as people are happy to argue with each other about basic definition of words, the answer to the original question is “it doesn’t matter”.
