Slavery, Property, Trade, Deception, Domination, Human Condition
TOPIC PLATO GO ARISTOTLE GO VOLTAIRE GO JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU GO ADAM SMITH GO GEORG W. F. HEGEL GO KARL MARX GO ERICH FROMM GO KARL POPPER GO GEORGE ORWELL GO HOWARD ZINN GO EDWARD ELIE AYOUB GO
Slavery
 Property
Trade
Deception
Domination
Human
  Condition
   		The Laws.

"Of all the things a man can call his own, the holiest (thought the gods are holier still) is his soul, his most intimate possession. There are two elements that make up the whole of every man. One is stronger and superior, and acts as master; the other, which is weaker and inferior, is a slave . . . "1a [See Edward Ayoub's Quantum Theory of Economics.]

Republic.

Allegory of the cave. "[H]ere's a situation which you can use as an analogy for the human condition . . . Imagine people living in a cavernous cell down under the ground . . . They've been there since childhood, with their legs and necks tied up . . . There's firelight burning . . . behind them . . . [T]he shadows of artefacts would constitute the only reality people in this situation would recognize."2a

Politics.

" . . . [A]nybody who by his nature is not his own man, but another's, is by his nature a slave; anybody who, being a man, is an article of property is another's man; an article of property is an instrument intended for the purpose of action and separable from its possessor."1a [See Edward Ayoub's Quantum Theory of Economics.]

 Philosophical Dictionary.

"What does a dog owe to a dog, and a horse to a horse? Nothing, no animal depends on his like; but man having received the ray of divinity called reason, what is the result? Slavery throughout almost the whole world."1

 Discourse on Inequality.

"As we trace the march of inequality in these various revolutions, we find that the establishment of law and the right of property was the first stage, the institution of the magistrate the second, and the transformation of legitimate into arbitrary power the third and last. Thus, the status of rich and poor was sanctioned in the first age, that of strong and weak in the second, and in the third that of master and slave, the ultimate degree of inequality to which all the others at last lead until new revolutions dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to legitimacy."1a

The Social Contract.

"Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains."2a

The Wealth of Nations.

"The experience of all ages and nations, I believe, demonstrates that the work done by slaves, though it appears to cost only their maintenance, is in the end the dearest of any."1b

 Phenomenology of Spirit.

" . . . [T]here is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself but for another . . . The former is lord, the other is bondsman."1a [See Edward Ayoub's Quantum Theory of Economics.]

"The masses are the victims of the deception of a priesthood which, in its envious conceit, holds itself to be the sole possessor of insight and pursues its other selfish ends as well. . . From the stupidity and confusion of the people brought about by the trickery of priestcraft, despotism, which despises both, draws for itself the advantage of undisturbed domination . . . "1b*

Capital. Volume 1.

"The Roman slave was held by fetters: the wage-labourer is bound to his owner by invisible threads. The appearance of independence is kept up by means of a constant change of employers, and by the fictio juris of a contract."1a

"The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the labourers from all property in the means by which they can realise their labour. . .
 The so-called primitive accumulation, therefore, is nothing else than the historical process of divorcing the producer from the means of production."1b

"Liverpool employed in the slave-trade, in 1730, 15 ships; in 1751, 53; in 1760, 74; in 1770, 96; and in 1792, 132.
While the cotton industry introduced child-slavery in England, it gave in the United States a stimulus to the transformation of the earlier, more or less patriarchal slavery, into a system of commercial exploitation. In fact, the veiled slavery of the wage-workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world."1c

 

The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

"It was discovered that man could be used as an economic instrument, that he could be exploited, that he could be made a slave."1a*

" . . . [T]he essence of sadism is the passion for unlimited, godlike control over men and things."1b

 The Open Society and Its Enemies.

"Money . . . becomes dangerous only if it can buy power, either directly, or by enslaving the economically weak who must sell themselves in order to live."1a

" . . . [T]he history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder . . . "1b*

Nineteen Eighty-Four.  

"BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU."1a
 "FREEDOM IS SLAVERY."1b
 "TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE."1c*

"Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. . . It need hardly be said that the subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who invented doublethink and know that it is a vast system of mental cheating."1d*

Animal Farm.

"'That is my message to you, comrades: Rebellion!'"2a

"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."2b

 A People's History of the United States.

"It is roughly estimated that Africa lost 50 million human beings to death and slavery . . . at the hands of slave traders and plantation owners in Western Europe and America, the countries deemed the most advanced in the world."1a

 The Essence of Capitalism.
   

The Essence of Capitalism. Quantum Theory of Economics. Copyright � 1998-2000 by Macroknow Inc. All Rights Reserved. Copyright [Digital Art]  ï¿½ 1998-2000 by Edward T.M. Ayoub. All Rights Reserved.

" . . . [T]he idea of a quantum theory of economics must capture the essence of economic Being. . . By analogy with quantum mechanics, the wave function |Y> of a system (consisting of one or more persons, corporations, States, etc.) can be expressed as a linear superposition: 

|Y> = a|F>+b|S>. 

The weighting factors a and b are the probability amplitudes of states FREE and SLAVE, respectively."1c

   
* Italics in the original. 1 Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.). The Laws. Translated with an Introduction by Trevor J. Saunders, 1970. Penguin Group.
a The Importance of Honouring the Soul, at 189-191.

2 Plato. Republic. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
a The Supremacy of Good, Allegory of the Cave (514a-514c), at 240-241.

1 Aristotle. Politics. Translated by Ernest Barker, revised with an Introduction and Notes by R.F. Stalley. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 1995.
 a At 14 (1254a13).

 1 Voltaire (1694-1778). Philosophical Dictionary (1764). Edited and translated by Theodore Besterman, 1972. London, England: Penguin Books Ltd. (Egalit�: Equality, at 181.)

1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Translated by Franklin Philip. Edited with an Introduction by Patrick Coleman. Franklin Philip, 1994. Patrick Coleman, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
a Part II, at 78-79.

2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on Political Economy and The Social Contract. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Christopher Betts. Christopher Betts, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
a Book I, at 45.

 1 Adam Smith (1723-1790). The Wealth of Nations (1776). 2 vols. in 1. Edited by Edwin Cannan. Preface by George J. Stigler. The University of Chicago, 1976. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, at 74 (vol. 1, bk. 1). (Cannan's ed. was originally pub. 1904 by Methuen & Co., Ltd.)
a Vol. 1, bk. 1, at 74.
b Vol. 1, bk. 3, at 411.

1 G. W. F. Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A.V. Miller with Analysis of the Text and Foreword by J.N. Findlay. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1977.
a Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship and Bondage, at 115.
b The Struggle of the Enlightenment with Superstition, at 330.

 1 Karl Marx (1818-1883). Capital: An Abridged Edition. Edited with an Introduction by David McLellan. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1995.
From Volume 1
a Part VII, Chapter 23: Simple Reproduction, at 323.
b Part VIII, Chapter 26: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation, at 364.
c Part VIII, Chapter 31: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist, at 377. 		1 Erich Fromm. The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness. Erich Fromm, 1973. New York, NY: Henry Holt and Company, Inc.
a The Urban Revolution, at 188.
b The Urban Revolution, at 191. 		1 Karl R. Popper. The Open Society and Its Enemies. Volume II: The High Tide of Prophecy: Hegel, Marx, and the Aftermath. Fifth ed. (revised). Karl Raimund Popper, 1962, 1966. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
a The Legal and the Social System, at 128.
b Has History Any Meaning?, at 270.

1 George Orwell (1903-1950). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Eric Blair, 1949. Estate of the late Sonia Brownwell Orwell, 1987. Note on the Text by Peter Davison, 1989.London, UK: Penguin Group, 1989, 1990. (First published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1949.)
a Big Brother, at 3.
b Slogans of the Party, at 18.
c "2+2=5," at 290 and 303.
d Doublethink and the "secret of rulership," at 223-224.

2 George Orwell. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story. Eric Blair, 1945. The Estate of the late Sonia Brownell Orwell, 1987. Introduction by Malcolm Bradbury, 1989. Note on the Text by Peter Davison, 1989. London, UK: Penguin Group, 1989. (First published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1945.)
a Ch. 1, at 5.
b Ch. 10, at 90.

 1 Howard Zinn. A People's History of the United States 1492-Present. Revised and updated ed. Howard Zinn, 1980, 1995. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.
a Drawing the Color Line, at 29. 		1 Edward E. Ayoub, with the assistance of Trudé K. Ayoub. The Essence of Capitalism. Toronto, ON: Macroknow Inc., 2000.