A superb discussion — as usual, although to say that devalues it: each one really is a treat. One highlight here was the description of the story of Susana from the apocryphal Daniel as a detective story, but there were a great many.
To address one question that was raised at one point: I will say that the politics of this story are hard to read as conservative, for me anyway. At least, they're hard to read as late-60s/early 70s conservative. I'm thinking of your comment that the critique here is almost socialist, and someone — Glenn, I think? I didn't write it down — mentioned a conservative view that people oughtn't to have to work, ought to be freed from that. I will say that's not in any version of conservatism that comes to my mind; the closest is classic European-style conservatism that supports aristocracy, and there it's only that certain people shouldn't have to work, not everyone. The closest thing to a version of this in American thought were some pro-slavery arguments, who understood American slaveowners as, basically, European aristocrats (incorrectly, but never mind), Otherwise this critique it certainly doesn't fit American conservatism. At the time this was written, the leading conservatism was based on "fusionism" (pioneered at William F. Buckley, Jr.'s magazine, The National Review), which combined anti-communism, free-market beliefs & traditionalism. A critique of work is opposed (to greater & lesser extents) by all three. Honestly, there wasn't really a conservative critique of slavery; conservatives were for it when it existed. (You mentioned Catholic views on slavery as if they were negative, but as far as I can recall there wasn't any particularly large or notable Catholic presence in US anti-slavery movements. Quakers, of course, were the early adopters there, and most of the white anti-slavery movement in the 19th century came out of the (Protestant) Second Great Awakening. African Americans, of course, were against slavery for other reasons, but I don't know if there were many Catholic African Americans at that point. Obviously one can come up with a contemporary Catholic anti-slavery argument, about the innate worth of people, etc, but that wasn't one made widely at the time, as far as I know. (I don't mean to rag on Catholics here; my people, the Jews, were not better — and a divine anti-slavery movement is the founding myth of our religion, so.))
All of which is to say that if this story represents a Buckley-ite view, I don't see it. Better, perhaps, to see it as Wolfe moving away from Buckley-ite views (as he said he did), particularly since this story was written a good half-decade or so after Operation ARES? (By the same token, however, I am not seeing any particular metaphor with the Civil Rights Movement here, either; one of you said Wolfe was making the connection, but I don't see it. (Worth remembering, of course, that conservatives were generally against the Civil Rights Movement (as, e.g., Buckley was at the time, although he later backed off from that view). Not saying Wolfe shared this view, just noting that conservative views of the Civil Rights Movement tended to see it more as threatened anarchy (as, for instance, in "Paul's Treehouse").
In sum: I see this as a humanist story (broadly speaking), sticking up for the value of humans (broadly speaking, to include (as is Wolfe's wont) robots), not specifically political in any but the broadest sense.
Otherwise, I don't have much to add. Great discussion, great story.
Reading "V.R.T." and the interrogator Constant's rationalization of the slave state on St. Croix, and Glenn's comments above on critiques of the corporate economy, I was reminded of the writings of George Fitzhugh (1806-1881), a Confederate pro-slavery socialist who saw slavery as part of the social compact, much as Constant does in V.R.T.. Fitzhugh, who may have coined the term "sociology," critiqued the inequities of the emerging Industrial state, the free market and free labor for creating social inequities, and felt that a slave class, not only of blacks but also poor whites, was the best way to protect the interests of black and poor white workers: "...the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery."
He wrote two books and a series of articles that were wildly popular among the plantation owners and political leaders of the antebellum South, and argued against the concept of natural rights and for the supremacy of the state, writing that Man "“has no rights whatever, as opposed to the interests of society...whatever rights he has are subordinate to the good of the whole,” and that slave owners provided for their slaves better than for workers, as they are property. Fitzhugh felt that everyone but a societal aristocratic elite had a natural role as the slaves of someone else, as wives were slaves to their husbands, and he felt socialism, at least in his first book, was the system best designed to assure the purported familial care that a master owes a slave: "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 associate labor. All these purposes, slavery fully and perfectly attains." "'It is the duty of society to protect the weak;' but protection cannot be efficient without the power of control; therefore, 'It is the duty of society to enslave the weak.'" These sentiments, absent the socialist link, were probably not uncommon among proslavery advocates, but I wonder if Fitzhugh's writings were an influence on the arguments Wolfe puts in the mouth of Constant.
I think there are two (related) historical contexts that have been missed in these discussions about "Slaves of Silver" that are especially relevant to Wolfe, as a Republican, responding to the recent Civil Rights Movement. First, for any Republican in 1971 wanting to associate with the right side of history, there were still champions of civil rights in the party, most famously Nelson Rockefeller, George Romney, and (before '68) Jackie Robinson. As long as the Democrats relied on a large bloc of southern segregationists (as they would into the mid-90s), there was still the possibility that the GOP wouldn't travel further down the road of the southern strategy. If Wolfe in 1971 hoped the GOP wouldn't permanently abandon what was (until the 1960s) actually a pretty decent history of championing civil rights, he may have been drawn to explore the ideological origins of his party's opposition to slavery.
Whether directly or indirectly, Wolfe may have been aware of Eric Foner's landmark book on this topic that was published in 1970 entitled "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party before the Civil War." This was the motto of the 1850s Republicans, and it bears a very close resemblance to the motto "Free markets and free robots" on which Wolfe's society is founded. The GOP motto led to the passage of the three civil rights amendments during Reconstruction--just as "Free markets and free robots" led to the passage of the Civil Rights law in Wolfe's story. Note that these parallels make sense chronologically too: Wolfe's story is set in a neo-Victorian era with a neo-civil rights movement in its recent past, just as the real Victorian era (or Gilded Age in the U.S.) came on the heels of the Civil War and Reconstruction.
What does this do for our thematic interpretation of the story? From OPERATION ARES, we know Wolfe was concerned with the dignity of work. Well, so were antebellum Republicans--in fact, that's the thesis of Foner's book! Foner shows that, unfortunately, vanishingly few Americans were *moral* abolitionists. Most anti-slavery voters supported the Republicans precisely because they believed slavery undermined the dignity of their work:
"[Foner] also shows how northern ideas of human rights--in particular a man's right to work where and how he wanted, and to accumulate property in his own name--and the goals of American society were implicit in [Republican] ideology. This was the ideology that permeated the North in the period directly before the Civil War, led to the election of Abraham Lincoln, and led, almost immediately, to the Civil War itself."
In Wolfe's world, robot slavery had squeezed out free labor (just like Lincoln's Republicans feared it would) and thus the dignity of work had been taken away from (almost) all humans. However, the robot Civil Rights Act allowed robots like Westinghouse to achieve dignity (exceeding that of most humans, even) through their work.
I've only read the story once, and I'd need to spend some more time on it to fully work out these parallels. The most notable difference between the antebellum era and Wolfe's story is that one exists in an era of scarcity, and one exists in a world of abundance. What are we to make of free labor ideology in a post-scarcity world of universal basic incomes? Important differences aside, I'm pretty convinced that Wolfe had the Lincoln-era Republican Party on his mind while he was writing this.
(And now for some wild speculation: when the robot in the TRI-D utters "DREAD," which is such a particular word, this could be an allusion to one of the most famous enslaved man of the antebellum era, Dredd Scott.)
Oh, this is great. I'm going to use this in class tomorrow when we're talking about how scholars in different disciplines view the Roman Empire.
An interesting article by a French economist on 6 scenarios of what a world without work might look like: https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-world-without-work-six-scenarios
Mick, these are some awesome observations. And thanks for bringing up Pieper. I am a massive fan of his work and writings, particularly "Leisure: The Basis of Culture." It is truly a horrifying idea for the state to control a societies' leisure time and it's a great catch that Wolfe is possibly critiquing this notion in Slaves of Silver. As a capitalistic society gets deeper and deeper into consumerism and trying to find ways to consume more while doing less work, we can predict (as Wolfe does) that the government will have to make adjustments on how the ordinary citizens operate under its rule. The catholic or maybe even Aristotelian answer to this problem would be to try to teach people to desire the proper things and aim for good, which would simplify the lifestyles of its citizens so that contemplation becomes an appropriate use of ones time. The horror of Slaves of Silver, is that people continue to demand more and more where less and less is available. They import space from the cosmos to enlarge their living quarters while an ignored underclass takes up all of the work that has potential to provide fulfillment for them. In other words, the society wants the wrong things and gets them. That is its own kind of hell.
Well Pieper was a Thomist, so he should fit in nicely with Wolfe's work. His "Guide to Thomas Aquinas" is excellent, and his "Leisure: The Basis of Culture" is the modern classic in this field and would certainly apply to this story. (T.S. Eliot wrote the introduction.) (When you tell people you're studying "Leisure", be prepared for some funny looks, by the way. They will imagine you taking a nap in yoiur office with your feet up on the desk.) Pieper also wrote a lot about C.S. Lewis and translated him into German.
I really appreciate these comments. I'll let Brandon have first dibs on responding to your comments about leisure, since that's one of his philosophical passions. I didn't know about this Zanca book, but my university library has a copy and I'm going to use it the next time I teach our survey course on the world since 1500 -- so thank you for that. You've probably heard me say something about reading Chesteron alongside Wolfe, but I'm interested in broadening my exposure to the modern Catholic intellectual tradition. Is there a particular work by Piepr that you recommend?
Re whether slaves were Catholic. most African slaves were not, but the largest American slave rebellion - the Stono Rebellion in 1739 - was led by Catholic slaves who had formerly been soldiers in the traditionally Catholic Congo (which had diplomatic relations with the Vatican). They kicked off the rebellion on the day after the Feast of the Nativity of Mary and carried handmade religious symbols, such as crucifixes. They had been trained in the use of firearms and basic military tactics, and used them fairly successfully as they freed slaves from local farms and led them toward Florida, where the Spanish government offered freedom and land to anyone who could escape from the British colonies. The rebellion finally ended in a bloody battle near the Ediston River in South Carolina, where there is still an historical marker for the event.
Still happily working my way through the stories and podcasts. Sorry I'm so far behind...
This was obviously a very enjoyable story for all of us.
Re Wolfe's political views on work and leisure being conservative, as stephenfrug brought up, I would guess that they are more traditionally Catholic than conservative.
The traditional Catholic view is that work is necessary and noble, through which we become "co-creators" with God and exercise legitimate stewardship over creation - and that the worker must be protected. Enslaving another or defrauding a worker are among the four traditional peccata clamantia, the Four Sins That Cry to Heaven for justice from God - including murder, sodomy, oppression of the poor (including slavery), and interestingly, defrauding workers of their just wages.
Under the Catholic perspective, the virtue of diligence, or zeal and integrity in one's job or vocation is considered a very good thing - man has to work, and provide for his family. However, an excessive devotion to one's work - what we would call workaholism now - is just as much a bad thing as sloth.
There is a deep Catholic philosophical tradition concerning Leisure (through theologians such as the German Catholic philosopher Josef Pieper) which is seen as a good thing, an otium sanctum, a "holy leisure" which is distinct from one's job but which in itself requires a sort of diligence or effort to work on one's relationship with God and personal spiritual growth. Thomas Merton referenced this in The Other Side of the Mountain: "I, for one, realize that now I need more. Not simply to be quiet, somewhat productive, to pray, to read to cultivate leisure--otium sanctum! There is a need of effort, deepening, change and transformation."
The leisure the state provides to humans in this story appears closer to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "idle rich" or Thorstein Veblen's "leisure class" - a perversion of the Catholic idea of leisure.
The state, in "Slaves of Silver", mandates leisure time for the vast majority of the young by paying a lavish stipend to the humans at the expense of a mechanical servant class and the unclassed humans. I think Wolfe was pointing out that the state, by usurping the individual virtue of Diligence and the nobility of making one's living, makes a mess of things. In a similar way, in the Catholic view, state-provided charity will never be as efficient, as effective, or as ennobling to the giver and the recipient, as charity provided at the lowest possible level of human organization, as in the Catholic political philosophy of Subsidiarity, championed by G.K. Chesterton. With leisure, the state providing too much can be as bad as giving too little.
Wolfe, in this story at least, also seems to be arguing an anti-Marxist idea: against state control and planning of the means of production - which are not, ultimately, factories, but the laborers. With humans being told to be euthanized or be cast out of the social security network under which they have lived their whole lives and the use of the robot servant class to support this vast human upper economic class, I don't think Wolfe intended it as a depiction of a good or just society.
The only people we meet in the story who are active players are the robots, Street, and his landlady - those making a living.
Re Glenn and Stephen's question about sources on the Catholic opposition to slavery in the modern era, there is a good collection of primary source documents entitled "American Catholics and Slavery: 1789 - 1866 - An anthology of Primary Documents" by Kenneth J. Zanca. There's an interesting letter in there from the head of the Roman Inquisition, no less, chastising an American southern priest who wrote a newspaper editorial supporting slavery. (To his credit, the priest recanted, opened a home for freed slaves, and devoted himself to supporting the underground railroad.) I think the Catholic involvement in the anti-slavery movement, which began from the beginning of European contact with the New World, was more muted in the U.S. in the 18th and 19th centuries because of the comparative lack of political power (and even hostility) in most parts of the U.S. (as well as Britain during their own battle against the slave trade) compared to the Protestant population, although there were certainly Catholic priests, nuns, and laity who fought for abolition and the rights of the enslaved.
Glenn: I hope you do! I'd love to be a part if that, if and when it happens.
I'm hopeful that we'll be able to put together an edited volume of Wolfe scholarship someday. I mean, we could fill one with just topics from the stories we've read so far and we haven't even gotten to The Fifth Head of Cerberus yet.
Yeah, as a (probably-overly-parochial) US historian, my mind tends to go to the U.S. antislavery movements, not others. De la Casas is a good example — although, as you note, an outlier. As for sources on the U.S. anti-slavery movement, the antebellum US isn't my period — I've taught the survey a dozen times, but I don't have detailed knowledge of the scholarship; so I don't know of any sources on U.S. Catholics and the anti-slavery movement. I just know the most famous parts of it, and those are Quaker and evangelical, for the most part.
Wolfe's politics are really interesting, and there's a essay to be written about them. (I can even imagine myself taking a whack at it after the process of reading/rereading all this stuff along with you all — although if anyone else wants to do it, I'd gladly be just a reader of it.) I will say that, while there are definitely recurring conservative themes (being pro-gun, for instance), I think his self-description as "eclectic" seems pretty apt.
Thanks for these great comments! We loved this story, and I can't wait to get to the sequel (though tons of good stuff in between!).
As someone who isn't especially political in the news-oriented sense and as a historian who has only a vague sense of things that happened after Charlemagne, I'm finding it fascinating to use Wolfe's stories as a lens into the political thought of the 1960s and 1970s. He might not be the best source for it, but it's a fun exercise for me, and this story was especially thrilling for that.
As for Catholicism and slavery, I certainly wasn't thinking of American Catholics being opposed to American slavery, though Pius VII was a vocal advocate of abolition. Surely someone has written about American Catholic attitudes toward slavery, and I'd be interested in checking that out if you have any suggestions. But I was thinking more of 1) early modern priests who were opposed to the (then) new Transatlantic slave system, such as Bartoleme de las Casas (of course, their opinion didn't carry the day, either) and 2) Chesterton, who has quite a lot to say about job-slavery. There will be more on Chesterton in a few episodes.