Primitive Human Institutions

69:8.1Prim­i­tive man never hes­i­tated to en­slave his fel­lows. Woman was the first slave, a fam­ily slave. Pas­toral man en­slaved woman as his in­fe­rior sex part­ner. This sort of sex slav­ery grew di­rectly out of man’s de­creased de­pen­dence upon woman.

69:8.2Not long ago en­slave­ment was the lot of those mil­i­tary cap­tives who re­fused to ac­cept the con­queror’s re­li­gion. In ear­lier times cap­tives were ei­ther eaten, tor­tured to death, set to fight­ing each other, sac­ri­ficed to spir­its, or en­slaved. Slav­ery was a great ad­vance­ment over mas­sacre and can­ni­bal­ism.

69:8.3En­slave­ment was a for­ward step in the mer­ci­ful treat­ment of war cap­tives. The am­bush of Ai, with the whole­sale slaugh­ter of men, women, and chil­dren, only the king be­ing saved to grat­ify the con­queror’s van­ity, is a faith­ful pic­ture of the bar­baric slaugh­ter prac­ticed by even sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized peo­ples. The raid upon Og, the king of Bashan, was equally bru­tal and ef­fec­tive. The He­brews “ut­terly de­stroyed” their en­e­mies, tak­ing all their prop­erty as spoils. They put all cities un­der trib­ute on pain of the “de­struc­tion of all males.” But many of the con­tem­po­rary tribes, those hav­ing less tribal ego­tism, had long since be­gun to prac­tice the adop­tion of su­pe­rior cap­tives.

69:8.4The hunter, like the Amer­i­can red man, did not en­slave. He ei­ther adopted or killed his cap­tives. Slav­ery was not preva­lent among the pas­toral peo­ples, for they needed few la­bor­ers. In war the herders made a prac­tice of killing all men cap­tives and tak­ing as slaves only the women and chil­dren. The Mo­saic code con­tained spe­cific di­rec­tions for mak­ing wives of these women cap­tives. If not sat­is­fac­tory, they could be sent away, but the He­brews were not al­lowed to sell such re­jected con­sorts as slaves—that was at least one ad­vance in civ­i­liza­tion. Though the so­cial stan­dards of the He­brews were crude, they were far above those of the sur­round­ing tribes.

69:8.5The herders were the first cap­i­tal­ists; their herds rep­re­sented cap­i­tal, and they lived on the in­ter­est—the nat­u­ral in­crease. And they were dis­in­clined to trust this wealth to the keep­ing of ei­ther slaves or women. But later on they took male pris­on­ers and forced them to cul­ti­vate the soil. This is the early ori­gin of serf­dom—man at­tached to the land. The Africans could eas­ily be taught to till the soil; hence they be­came the great slave race.

69:8.6Slav­ery was an in­dis­pens­able link in the chain of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion. It was the bridge over which so­ci­ety passed from chaos and in­do­lence to or­der and civ­i­lized ac­tiv­i­ties; it com­pelled back­ward and lazy peo­ples to work and thus pro­vide wealth and leisure for the so­cial ad­vance­ment of their su­pe­ri­ors.

69:8.7The in­sti­tu­tion of slav­ery com­pelled man to in­vent the reg­u­la­tive mech­a­nism of prim­i­tive so­ci­ety; it gave ori­gin to the be­gin­nings of gov­ern­ment. Slav­ery de­mands strong reg­u­la­tion and dur­ing the Eu­ro­pean Mid­dle Ages vir­tu­ally dis­ap­peared be­cause the feu­dal lords could not con­trol the slaves. The back­ward tribes of an­cient times, like the na­tive Aus­tralians of to­day, never had slaves.

69:8.8True, slav­ery was op­pres­sive, but it was in the schools of op­pres­sion that man learned in­dus­try. Even­tu­ally the slaves shared the bless­ings of a higher so­ci­ety which they had so un­will­ingly helped cre­ate. Slav­ery cre­ates an or­ga­ni­za­tion of cul­ture and so­cial achieve­ment but soon in­sid­i­ously at­tacks so­ci­ety in­ter­nally as the gravest of all de­struc­tive so­cial mal­adies.

69:8.9Mod­ern me­chan­i­cal in­ven­tion ren­dered the slave ob­so­lete. Slav­ery, like polygamy, is pass­ing be­cause it does not pay. But it has al­ways proved dis­as­trous sud­denly to lib­er­ate great num­bers of slaves; less trou­ble en­sues when they are grad­u­ally eman­ci­pated.

69:8.10To­day, men are not so­cial slaves, but thou­sands al­low am­bi­tion to en­slave them to debt. In­vol­un­tary slav­ery has given way to a new and im­proved form of mod­i­fied in­dus­trial servi­tude.

69:8.11While the ideal of so­ci­ety is uni­ver­sal free­dom, idle­ness should never be tol­er­ated. All able-bod­ied per­sons should be com­pelled to do at least a self-sus­tain­ing amount of work.

69:8.12Mod­ern so­ci­ety is in re­verse. Slav­ery has nearly dis­ap­peared; do­mes­ti­cated an­i­mals are pass­ing. Civ­i­liza­tion is reach­ing back to fire—the in­or­ganic world—for power. Man came up from sav­agery by way of fire, an­i­mals, and slav­ery; to­day he reaches back, dis­card­ing the help of slaves and the as­sis­tance of an­i­mals, while he seeks to wrest new se­crets and sources of wealth and power from the el­e­men­tal store­house of na­ture.