Wed 25 Feb, 2009
The Standard-Times of New Bedford has graciously printed a letter to the editor, “Liberals harm individualism,” in response to their article covering my lectures in New Bedford and Fall River two weeks ago.
This letter, by Stephen Grossman of Fairhaven, Mass., was obviously written by someone who had not attended any of my talks. While I sympathize with his concerns, he exhibits a number of mistaken assumptions about my attitudes and beliefs, as well as my goals in presenting information about the legacy of slavery and racial discrimination to the general public.
I’m en route to a conference in New Mexico right now, but my quick response to the letter is below:
I wish that I could say I’m surprised by Mr. Grossman’s response to the lectures I gave two weeks ago.
However, I’ve come to expect reactions like this when I speak about slavery and discrimination. We as a people have allowed ourselves to forget certain basic truths about our nation’s history and the foundations of our economy and society today. Many people naturally find it uncomfortable to confront unfamiliar facts which can unsettle our understanding of our shared history and the sources of the privileges of contemporary American life.
This may explain why people are so quick to jump to the worst conclusions.
Perhaps Mr. Grossman could reflect on the fact that, contrary to his assumption, I don’t feel any guilt about this subject. Or that I haven’t any form of redistribution to address this, or any other, injustice. He simply assumed these and other things about me.
Individualism, merit, and hard work have been, and must continue to be, at the core of our success as a nation. History, however, teaches us that darker aspects of our history were also essential to our present success. I simply believe that we owe it to ourselves to acknowledge and understand how our history, good and bad, has shaped our present circumstances.
Stephen Grossman says:
I just saw this and dont recall your lectures or my letter. Inferring from your comments here:
Slavery, an enforced denial of mans independent,focused mind is an extremely low production economy. Prior to the capitalist protection of individual rights, the 300K yrs of mans history was virtually universal, grinding poverty, w/low 20s mortality, daily near-starvation, and slavery. Prosperity was merely a religious fantasy for virtually all, despite near-universal. The enforced denial of mans independent,focused mind existed w/American slavery. Bankruptcy was common among those slaveholders. Modern US prosperity is the product of late 19th century industrialism and a few years of the most capitalist economy in history-before Marx- and Christianity-guided Progressives ended it w/Antitrust,etc. The long-term increasing prosperity since then resulted from the ability of business to work around the increasing socialist and fascist economic interventions. The Leftist claim of long-range white US economic superiority is a hysterical Leftist rationalization of the evasion of increasing capitalist prosperity, global and American; and the blood-drenched, poverty-creating and -sustaining economic absurdity of communism. Leftism is a nihillist hatred of mans mind and a rage against the recognition of the necessary failure of communism. Leftists dont want to help the poor. They want to destroy the middle class and wealthy. They now reject social ideals for a universal hatred of all values, of values in principle. Thus "reparatiuons." How about reparations to business for all the Leftist regs and taxes.
James DeWolf Perry says:
Stephen, I appreciate your reply, all these years later. While most of human history has, indeed, been one of grinding poverty for most individuals, the enslavement of others has often resulted in dramatic inequality, with much higher levels of wealth for those who enslave others. And this was never more apparent than in the case of U.S. slavery, which vastly enriched the slave-owning and slave-trading classes, as well as bringing greater prosperity to the majority of citizens, who benefited directly or indirectly from the slave economy. As an example, consider the early industrialization of the U.S., which occurred in New England through the development of textile mills. This industry, in places like Lawrence and Lowell, brought tremendous wealth to owners and investors, and generated greater prosperity for many others in the North. And it depended critically on a vast supply of cotton as a raw input, produced primarily by enslaved laborers in the South. This is why the phrase "Lords of the Loom and Lords of the Lash" gained such currency: because, in the antebellum U.S., everyone knew well how dependent the industrial North was on southern slavery.
It is simply an error to attribute the strength of the U.S. economy, and its rise to become the largest economy in the world, to the Gilded Age. By that time, the U.S. had already managed to industrialize, thanks in large part to our dominance of the global cotton market at a time when cotton was the primary raw input for industrialization and few regions outside of Europe were able to industrialize. And the U.S. economy only overtook that of Great Britain, launching a century of dominance as the world's largest economy, after the Gilded Age and well into the Progressive Era, at a time when most regions of the world outside Europe had not even industrialized and would be unable to do so for generations.
I will happily stay out of your feud with "blood-drenched" and "nihilist" communists and leftists.