When Physical Distance Gives Us Moral Distance
The history of slavery in The United States has often been written as a geographically contained, racially motivated, and morally reprehensible period, isolating sharp moral blame to those who lost The Civil War. Such blame was neatly asserted by those located far from the plantation’s whip and may be viewed as a means of attempting to change a narrative of seventeenth through nineteenth century economic necessity into one which seeks to protect the moral identity of an emergent but troubled nation as a whole. If history is written by the victorious, there is often risk in diminishing that such victors were also complicit and culpable in that which they fought against.
As Sven Beckert argues, “merchants and manufacturers in the past did know that slavery was a moral problem, but then they tried to say that such moral considerations were extraneous to the concerns of business”. The systems and means of production between North and South in an emergent American economy were highly inter-dependent, symbiotic, and closely supported each other economically. However, much of this relationship, complicated to untangle and with numerous exceptions, has grown into a distinct moral binary where the immoral means of production are separated from the morally acceptable means of financial gain and export. It’s hard to untangle them both into one holistic economic system, and easier for us to compartmentalize them geographically and morally and wrap the discussion around a single morally reprehensible issue, slavery.
But I don’t think the answer here is to simply view the entire system as morally abhorrent and a product of the economic development in The New World. That feels just too convenient and an easy means of explaining away the immeasurable suffering of millions. As Eric Williams points out, slavery itself cannot be contained into neat, racially oriented categories which align with moral causes, and the barbarism of methods such as transportation do not cause the same moral outrage as plantation slavery in modern readings.
Beckert makes a helpful contribution in his advocacy for companies with antebellum era roots to reach back into the past and confront their own history. To understand the supply chains and labor conditions upon which their businesses were built. But this isn’t simply a symptom of the past, it’s also a problem in the present. In contemporary supply chains, where the cheapest natural resources and means of extracting them still produce an economic horse race. Where the supply of cheap and abundant labor, and Adam Smith’s ‘good land’ still play a significant factor. Cobalt extraction in The Democratic Republic of Congo and the local human exploitation to produce components for smartphones, laptops, and electric cars by companies such as Apple, Google and Tesla still happen today.
But when the problem is ‘over there’ it’s easier to morally compartmentalize it. Physical distance gives us moral distance. We know these practices exist, yet we are still highly dependent upon our apps. Our moral aspirations towards a greener economy through responsible fuel consumption are still highly tethered to immoral human suffering in the mines of The Congo. This can feel as if we’ve learned nothing, but as Williams points out, economic necessity is the driving force, not moral compulsion. It may not be sugar, cotton, or tobacco these days, but it doesn’t mean these same problems have been eradicated.
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