Abstract
This chapter argues, with the aid of historians such as Walter Johnson and Sven Beckert, that slavery was inextricably linked to the development of capitalism and the global economy. This intrinsic connection between slavery and capitalism has not been sufficiently explored in Hegel scholarship. Yet it is a connection that needs to be considered if we are to make sense of Hegel’s views on slavery and Africa within the overall context of his characterization of capitalism, and if we are to understand the overarching issue of how Western metaphysics may have been shaped internally by its ethnocentric and racial orientations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 53–54. Hereafter cited as BA.
- 2.
Although Gilroy does not document it, this appears to be a quote from H. Orlando Patterson, “Slavery in Human History,” New Left Review, 1.117 (1979): 51.
- 3.
Until recently, historians had largely regarded slavery as a pre-capitalist institution—despite the arguments of C.L.R. James and Eric Williams earlier in the century that it was integral to capitalism. But now the consensus has shifted, as in the work of Walter Johnson, Seth Rockman, and Sven Beckert.
- 4.
Walter Johnson, River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 254.
- 5.
Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History (2014; rpt. New York: Random House, 2015), pp. 38, 63, 145. Hereafter cited as EC. For a brilliant overview, see also Beckert’s article “Slavery and Capitalism,” Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12, 2014, http://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/. Hereafter cited as “SC.”
- 6.
Even the recent, otherwise excellent book Hegel and Capitalism (2015) does not address this connection. But Tony Smith makes a point that is helpful in our context, suggesting that Hegel affirms the rationality of capitalism not because his system is homologous with capital but because he lacked an adequate concept of capital, failing to recognize how coercion, alienation, and expropriation pervade the operations of capital. Nonetheless, Hegel provides a framework where the use of capital for ends alien to human well-being can be critiqued (HC, 195).
- 7.
Interestingly, Teshale Tibebu characterizes Eurocentrism as “the self-consciousness of capital accumulation,” and it is founded on “a paradigm of essential difference between the West and the rest … Eurocentrism as Western identity is Western difference.” He traces this notion of identity as constituted by difference, as intrinsically relational, to Hegel’s Science of Logic, Teshale Tibebu, (HTW, xx).
- 8.
Anthony Benezet, Some Historical Account of Guinea, its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of its Inhabitants. With an Inquiry into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, its Nature, and Lamentable Effects (1771; rpt. London: J. Phillips, 1788), p. 73. Hereafter cited as SHA.
- 9.
See Norbert Waszek, The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel’s Account of “Civil Society” (Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1988), pp. 160–161. Hereafter cited as SE. But, in this otherwise excellent book, Waszek does not deal with Hegel’s views on Africa or African slavery.
- 10.
There needs to be considerably more research to see how those views evolved and they may have been influenced specifically by, say, some of Steuart’s more “detached” views of slavery, implying that it might sometimes have been useful.
- 11.
Beckert makes an important distinction which might help us. He debunks the myth of capitalism and free labor: global capitalism involved an entire spectrum of labor regimes, a crucial one of which was slavery. Hence, Beckert distinguishes between what we normally view as “industrial capitalism”—based on property rights, laissez faire, and the rule of law—and “war capitalism,” which was characterized by slavery, the rule of violence and coercion, and “huge state intervention in the form of colonialism ” which involved the assertion of sovereignty of peoples and lands. In fact, industrial capitalism was founded upon war capitalism (“SC”; EC, xv–xvi, 171). Such a distinction would not have been available to Hegel, since the transformation from one type of capitalism to the other spanned a long period extending well beyond his era. As such it might be fair to suggest that Hegel confronts a contemporary setting where both types of capitalism co-exist in uneasy contradiction. While the general tenor of his thought requires that labor be both free and a means to freedom , he confronts an existing world where slavery is still integral to capitalism, where it is—contrary to the opinions of Adam Smith and the bourgeois economists—hugely profitable. Hence, just as he resigns himself to the necessary existence of poverty under capitalism, so he accepts that capitalist markets require colonial subjugation and, at least for the moment, slavery. But this is to defend Hegel. We could equally argue that this entire Eurocentric orientation informs his outlook as a whole: not just his views of history but his very metaphysics of negativity, not to mention his views of language as reformulating the world in our own image.
- 12.
I have adapted this terminology from Emmanuel Chukwudi, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), p. 149.
- 13.
Again, Timothy Brennan, arguing against Bernasconi, states that, though Hegel sees colonialism as the “inevitable outgrowth of capitalist modernity,” he finds this “unacceptable” (OHPC, 152–153).
- 14.
So powerful is Hegel’s enshrinement of prejudices sacred to the European world that even the most radical critics have unwittingly perpetuated these along with the more palatable aspects of his work. Even Georg Lukács , who has studied the relation between Hegel’s dialectic and his bourgeois economics as profoundly as any thinker, appears to overlook the implications of Hegel’s view of Africa for the entire Hegelian system. Lukács is deeply aware of Hegel’s view of economic life as the most palpable manifestation of man’s social activity. He is equally appreciative of the importance of “labor” in Hegel’s dialectic: for Hegel, labor signifies a transcendence of immediacy and instinct, a process of self-objectification necessary in order to become fully human. Closely tied to this is Lukács’ Marxist observation that Hegel was aware of the dehumanization inherent in capitalism (in the various forms of self-estrangement resulting from labor) but, in contrast to Marx, he saw this as inevitable; Georg Lukács, The Young Hegel (London, 1975), pp. 321–325, 330–334. What is missing in Lukács’ account is any analysis of the peculiar form of labor involved in slavery. This is all the more remarkable given Lukács’ emphasis on the fact that consciousness, for Hegel, advances primarily through its servile forms, as embodied in the master -slave dialectic in the Phenomenology (Lukács, 326–328). It may be that this lacuna in Lukács’ analysis derives from Marx himself. Despite Marx’s intense concern with colonialism , his treatment of slavery as an institution is largely confined to the ancient world. Marx and Engels say that this type of exploitation was followed by two others, serfdom in the Middle Ages and wage labor in modern times; Engels, “The Origin of Family, Private Property and State,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (London, 1968), p. 581. Modern slavery (as opposed to the servitude of wage labor) is somewhat peripheralized in Marx’s historical scheme.
- 15.
Herbert Marcuse, Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory (1941; rpt. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. 113.
- 16.
Russell A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), p. 3. Hereafter cited as EE.
- 17.
For a clear (though dated) explanation of how Hegel’s views of space and time affect his notions of matter and identity , see Hiralal Haldar, “Space and Time in Hegel’s Philosophy,” Monist, 42.4 (1932): 520–532. See also Michael Inwood, “Kant and Hegel on Space and Time,” in Hegel’s Critique of Kant, ed. Stephen Priest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), pp. 56–64.
- 18.
See EE, 6.
References
Beckert, Sven. 2014. Slavery and Capitalism. Chronicle of Higher Education, December 12. http://www.chronicle.com/article/SlaveryCapitalism/150787/
———. 2015. Empire of Cotton: A Global History, 38, 63, 145. Reprint 2014. New York: Random House.
Benezet, Anthony. 1788. Some Historical Account of Guinea, Its Situation, Produce, and the General Disposition of Its Inhabitants. With an Inquiry Into the Rise and Progress of the Slave Trade, Its Nature, and Lamentable Effects, 73. Reprint 1771. London: J. Phillips.
Berman, Russell A. 1998. Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture, 3. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.
Chukwudi, Emmanuel, ed. 1997. Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader, 149. Blackwell: Oxford.
Engels, F. 1968. The Origin of Family, Private Property and State. In Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Works, 581. London.
Gilroy, Paul. 1993. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, 53–54. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Haldar, Hiralal. 1932. Space and Time in Hegel’s Philosophy. Monist 42 (4): 520–532.
Inwood, Michael. 1987. Kant and Hegel on Space and Time. In Hegel’s Critique of Kant, ed. Stephen Priest, 56–64. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Johnson, Walter. 2013. River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom, 254. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Lukács, Georg. 1975. The Young Hegel, 321–325, 330–334. London.
Marcuse, Herbert. 1977. Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, 113. Reprint 1941. London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Patterson, H. Orlando. 1979. Slavery in Human History. New Left Review 1 (117): 51.
Waszek, Norbert. 1988. The Scottish Enlightenment and Hegel’s Account of “Civil Society”, 160–161. Dordrecht, Boston, and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Habib, M.A.R. (2017). Slavery, Capitalism, and the Dialectic of Empire. In: Hegel and Empire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68412-3_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68412-3_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-68411-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-68412-3
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)