Deconstructing Tyrants: Exposing Gross Mischaracterizations of Marginalized Peoples Through Crèveoeur, Franklin, and Jefferson

            Inasmuch as the architects of American society are considered bastions of liberal democracy and individual freedom, these intellectuals- many of whom were products of the Enlightenment- have been benefactors of capitalist democracy's follies; Jefferson, Franklin, and to a milder degree, Crèveoeur, fostered slavery, discrimination, and class struggle as much as they sponsored democratic ideology. Although Crèveoeur's view on labor during pre-industrial America may be attributed to his naivete and his experiences of European social development, Jefferson and Franklin, for different reasons altogether, were proponents of physically and psychologically crippling ideals. The accounts of Phyllis Wheatley and Judith Sargent Murray, writing from the margins of society, demonstrate how a society constructed around tenets advocated by Jefferson and Franklin have obstructed the advancement of their respective minority populations. The characterizations formulated about society, especially the vision of what was to become of post-revolutionary America, was exclusionary in regard to the rights and degree of civic participation of women, African Americans, and the disabled.

            Crèveoeur's naivete doesn't present itself textually through his letter 'What Is an American,' but through the implications of omission: 

It is not composed, as in Europe, of great Lords who possess everything, and of a herd of people who have nothing. Here are no aristocratical families, no courts, no kings, no bishops, no ecclesiastical dominion, no invisible power giving to a few a very visible one; no great manufacturers employing thousands, no great refinements of luxury. The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe. (596)

Defining a vision of America through a series of negations, Crèveoeur evades a logic that would explain why that which is described in these negations does not exist; the process of industrialization and technological advances such as textile manufacturing, particularly of Britain, had begun much sooner than that of America, which would justify the lack of wealthy entrepreneurs and individuals accumulating capital through trade in comparison with the European economy. The agrarian dependence of early Americans localized economies and prevented the employment of thousands by a single corporation or individual. As in all core nations of the world economy, plutocracy, judicial systems, and an expanding discrepancy between the classes has since been established in the United States. Deregulated markets advocated by the marriage of capitalism and democracy has ensured this discrepancy between the classes, the genesis of which lies in industrialization.

            "We are a people of cultivators, scattered over an immense territory, communicating with each other by means of good roads and navigable rivers, united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws, without dreading their power because they are equitable" (596). Crèveoeur uses the first person pronoun "we" to describe a collective consciousness of American society, claiming that state laws are equitable, and citizens need not fear their power. Dread of state power, however, is of no concern to the marginalized because the exclusionary laws of government are illegitimate, especially to Christians such as Phyllis Wheatley who posit the inseparability of faith and freedom in her letter 'The Natural Rights of Negroes:'

...the divine Light is chasing away the thick Darkness which broods over the land of Africa; and the Chaos which has reign'd so long, is converting into beautiful Order, and [r]eveals more and more clearly, the glorious Dispensation of civil and religious Liberty, which are so inseparably united, that there is little or no Enjoyment of one without the other...God has implemented a Principle, which we call Love of Freedom... (764)

The moral obligations then are to the implementation of civil liberty, inseparable with God's law. When examining Wheatley's letter, it becomes clear that Crèveoeur is ignorant of the government's immoral monopolization of freedom in his claim that the people exist under equitable law. Freedom is not dispensed by the will of government, but by that of divine rule. This "we" espoused by Crèveoeur is so ironically exclusive in its failure to recognize the marginalized. The laws were not equitable, and Phyllis Wheatley, regardless of her religious justifications for the natural distribution of freedom and liberty, recognized this. Slavery cannot exist in a society where laws are equitable; Crèveoeur's claim of equitable laws therefore either excludes African Americans as part of the true citizenry of America, or does not see slavery and racism as a potential conflict, jeopardizing his own morality. Did Crèveoeur, when he wrote "The rich and the poor are not so far removed from each other as they are in Europe," have slavery in mind? If he considered individuals who owned nothing and were oppressed because of their race as part of the poor, then is not this discrepancy just as wide as the one existent in Britain at the time?

            Although Crèveoeur may be forgiven for his naïveté, Franklin's societal observations, which are smugly racist, inherently sexist, and discriminative toward the disabled, contain no such innocence. The commodification of humans, through both slavery and labor, is necessary for a functional society according to the subtext of Information to Those Who Would Remove to America. Dependability on labor spawned what many postulate as the American middle class, while simultaneously instituting a downward social mobility through proletarianization (as seen in the growing disparity between the lower class and upper class), as fewer and fewer became increasingly wealthier while a great percentage became increasingly more impoverished, as in the British bourgeoisie. Franklin's characterization of early American laborers, although before American industrialism, is founded upon a generalization of both slaves and slave owners which contests Marx's theory of proletarianization; Franklin would have one trust in the societal utility of perpetual dependence upon labor. Information to Those Who Would Remove to America equates contentment and individual worth with industriousness:

They are pleased with the observation of a Negro, and frequently mention it, that Boccarorra (meaning the white men) make de black man workee, make de horse workee, make de ox workee, make eberyting workee; only de hog. He, de hog, no workee; he eat, he drink, he walk about, he go to sleep when he please; he libb like a gentleman. (464)

Not only does Franklin make a generalization of American slave owners, but supposes that slaves, comprehending the necessary nature of work, see that the idle hog in the end will be "cut up" (464), or put more bluntly- one who would rather live as a gentleman, resting idly, is destined for death. Because of Franklin's disdain for idleness, he necessitates both the slave's perpetual bondage and the citizen's constant labor in order to avoid the fate of a slaughtered, fattened farm animal. Franklin's discourse involves labor's subjugation of the individual as a necessity for a satisfactory existence, while supposing that society has already taken this for granted. The dystopia of a society perpetually avoiding death through industriousness may seem undemocratic, but it's the reality for the contemporary American working class, rightly prophesized by Franklin: "In short, America is the land of labor..." (465). The totalitarian prospects of a labor-based nation where "...it is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails" (463) suggests that existence and happiness are dependent upon labor, and a condescending view that society readily accepts this, despite institutionalized slavery, the oppression of women, and an entire class of individuals who are unable to fight against idleness because of disabilities. What then was the true consciousness of society? Did a general happy mediocrity truly prevail? Is one right to regard the margins of society as inferior?

            When Franklin paints a picture of general contentment of American society, he implies the illegitimacy of women; the necessary commitment to labor presupposes a satisfactory existence, despite woman's lack of participation in most professions. How then are women to be content if they cannot have equal participation in most professions, if one's worth and contentment rely on perpetual labor? Franklin's discourse is thus ultimately sexist. Although women may refrain from idleness through domesticity, this bondage to it negates authentic freedom utilized by males. So, although men exercise some freedom in choosing professions (while simultaneously enslaved to their labor), women are excluded. As much as African Americans were enslaved physically, women were enslaved ideologically (more so than men by labor). In her essay 'On the Equality of the Sexes,' Judith Sargent Murray affirms the collective discontent of women's bondage to the supposed domestic sphere: "Is the needle and kitchen sufficient to employ the operations of a soul thus organized? I should conceive not." (727) Furthermore, Murray recognizes the insult this domestic bondage is to women when she claims that "Nay, it is a truth that those very departments leave the intelligence principle vacant, and at liberty for speculation" (727). Murray raises the conflict within a religious context, making a scathing remark against those oppressors that would have women enslaved to what was to most men their natural realm:

Should it still be vociferated, "Your domestic employments are sufficient"-I would calmly ask, is it reasonable that a candidate for immortality, for the joys of heaven, an intelligent being, who is to spend an eternity of contemplating the works of Deity, should at present be so degraded as to be allowed no other ideas than those which are suggested by the mechanism of a pudding, or the sewing seams of a garment? Pity that all such censurers of female improvement do not go one step further and deny their future existence; to be consistent they surely ought. (729)

Although the text is overt in its mockery, Murray refuses to rest upon the hyperbolic, exclusive, and deluded terminology that comprises the Declaration of Independence, while scrutinizing the concerns which Franklin omits when he claims that "...it is rather a general happy mediocrity that prevails." To Murray, all men are created equal to distribute oppression over the women subject to them, which is contrary to the happy mediocrity of Franklin.

            Of all the absurdities inherent within the texts of those subjects who defined the general consciousness of privileged Americans, Thomas Jefferson's discourse on African Americans requires the least amount of critical examination of both his blatant ideology and its subtext to discover overt intolerances, especially within Notes on the State of Virginia: "But never yet could I find that a black had uttered a thought above the level of plain narration; never seen even an elementary trait of painting or sculpture" (1685). Jefferson fails to relegate African American literature and art as degenerate because he presents it as virtually non-existent. Even the Third Reich provided legitimacy to Entartete Kunst, in its denunciation and ultimate prohibition of it while Jefferson refused to recognize African American art at all, evident within both his dismissal of Wheatley as a poet and his textual implications that result in its apparent illegitimacy (1686).           

            If Wheatley's letter to Reverend Samson Occom, The Natural Rights of Negroes, is at or below the level of plain narration, then Jefferson's writing itself is relegated to plain narration when subjected to his own criterion. Jefferson's text would be satire if not for his genuine endorsement of the discrimination rampant within it. As for the elementary traits of painting and sculpture, it may be that the concerns of black intellectuals had taken a perspective closer to reason than that of Jefferson and his peers; when Jefferson claims that in reason and imagination, African Americans are inferior to whites, his observations are so below the level of elementary as to reveal his text as a mere abortion of immature thought. It is ironic that when Jefferson claims that "To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire or by solvents" (1686), his generalizations about African Americans display no scholarly rigor whatsoever. The perspective from which Jefferson casts racial judgments down from renders his claims as nothing more than a construction of anti-scientific ideology. Although appearing to hold reason as virtuous, Jefferson's claims cannot hold in the face of the cultural narratives of African American literature, both before and after his Notes on the State of Virginia.

            Although it's difficult to gauge the collective consciousness of eighteenth century American society, textual examination of the narratives of both slave and slave owners can aid in a historical archaeology of inequality. Ultimately, ideologies and historical tendencies can be exposed through analysis of the works of Crèveoeur, Franklin, and Jefferson, and how the effects of the principles they fostered are still observable in contemporary American culture through racism, discrimination, and class struggle. An analysis of the subtext that dominates the writings of those aforementioned, help shape a general understanding of the mischaracterizations of marginalized individuals and their reaction against what amounts to negligence and ignorance on the part of the apparent majority. Morality, whether divinely ordained or as a human construct which suppresses the subconscious desire for tyranny of individuals over society, seems to be relative when examining the irrational, unfounded claims of Jefferson for example, which were readily published and taken for granted during his lifetime. And will the cultural values of the twenty-first century be viewed as illogical and unfounded as those of slave owners and racist systems constructed in order to perpetuate the false notion of white supremacy? As long as a war is waged on behalf of the marginalized against the tyranny of their oppressors, an inevitable historical dialectic will revolutionize that which is rooted to injustice: the delusion of an exceptional America.

Commodity and the Insatiable Apparatus Driving the World Economy

            The world economy in the twenty-first century remains as dependent on commodification now as it did during the industrialization of the world's core nations. However, the endless accumulation of capital, and increasing proletarianization of an expanding working class has produced a new step in Marx's theory of alienation; as workers become increasingly engrossed by the commodities they produce, e.g. new technologies placing demands on a laborer which increases the synthesis of labor and existence, the worker becomes an extension of a given commodity, abolishing any estrangement from the commodity that had arisen from the capitalist exploitation of wage labor. Are we living in a post-alienated society?

            The operation of the means of production, solely by those wage laborers that have previously become alienated within the capitalist system, are the very consumers that much of the world's general commodities are intended to be sold to. The wage laborer (particularly the unskilled laborer) is thus exploited twofold: as an individual given limited income for sustenance, while profit is made by the owner of the means of production from this very human labor (and therefore earning less than one's worth), and being profited by in the marketplace by purchasing the very goods that they (as a class) have produced- at a higher price than the cost of production plus cost of labor, providing the capitalists with further profit via the income of the laborer. The entrepreneurs of the capitalist world economy have therefore produced profound psychological effects on the laborers. Herbert Marcuse, in One-Dimensional Man tells of these psychological implications: 

...the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man’s mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. (9)

If alienation of the laborer in regard to the commodity produced is questionable, then the commodity must be the central tenet to the worker's very existence. Marx however, argues in favor of the existence of the alienation of the laborer, but the capitalist world economy in the twentieth and twenty first centuries have evolved into the commoditization of such rudimentary resources such as genetic material and drinking water, therefore calling into question the intended sanctity between the individual and the material world, which, according to dialectical materialism, influences all human thought. Life forms, including human life, are being gradually commoditized. To seek alienation during the rapidly globalizing twenty first century is to cease to exist.

            Prompting this synthesis of laborer and commodity is an endless accumulation of capital, which to Immanuel Wallerstein is the priority of the modern world-system (24). As long as this endless accumulation takes precedence, the proletarianization of society expands. But is endless accumulation truly endless? Is there a breaking point, perhaps in the form of revolution? The exploitation of the working class in the pursuit of capital has used globalization as its vessel, but what happens when the mobility of capitalism has reached the final geographic boundaries?

            Imperialism, insofar as its role as a perpetrator of bourgeois interest, is a tactic, along with colonialism, allowing the expansion of the capitalist world economy into unchartered territory. The annexation and occupation of foreign lands during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the oppression of indigenous populations allowed the United States to express its economic interests. Capitalism and the pursuit of endless accumulation is inherently mobile, which requires the bureaucratic elites to justify invasions of foreign lands. Economic interest has no geographic boundaries. This mobilization is perhaps capitalism's greatest asset, and is one of the most observable, along with class struggle.

            In Economy and Society, Max Weber claims, "imperialist capitalism, especially colonial booty capitalism based on direct force and compulsory labor, has offered by far the greatest opportunities for profit" (918). So, if profit takes precedence over humanitarian needs, is the capitalist commodity a new god in a post-Christian era? Perhaps the progression into a socialistic state will remove the fetishistic drive for commodification and shake it from atop its ivory tower, where, as Tolstoy would have it, the kingdom of god will reside within each of us.

A Pathology of the Post-Christian Era, or, Sometimes I'm Serious About Shit

            We exist in an era rooted in the pursuit of infinite accumulation of capital coinciding with the colonization of indigenous populations- which subsequently gave rise to economic and sociological globalization- that can be referred to as the post-Christian era. Not because there has been a collective abandonment of neoconservative foreign policy doctrine, or a dismantling of this divine monolith that casts a shadow over all who oppose it, but because what it is now is a vaguely recognizable cult. It is crucial to note that this conclusion was arrived at only first through a critical examination, especially one that has plunged into the veins and found its way the heart of the so-called First World, especially the superpowers that are Britain and the United States of America. This archeology is essential in developing a pathology of the Post-Christian Era, specifically that of its client-nations. A multi-dimensional effort must be put forth, which not only encompasses an excavation of the past, but the era's current effects, trends, and finally an attempt at a diagnosis. Even a diagnosis though cannot provide solutions, but perhaps allow Western civilization to construct a collective tourniquet to stop the hemorrhaging of the Third and Forth Worlds, which is to say, put an end to the plunder of the savages and return to Judeo-Christian morality, or discard the current one for something sustainable for all.

            Taking for granted that Nietzsche was correct in bearing the terrible news in The Gay Science of the death of God, even if for the sake of argument, we are capable of a critical analysis of the effects that capitalism has had on Christianity up until the nineteenth century, and in Nietzsche's case, what was found in Germany. Although the roots of capitalism ran deep, perhaps its seeds being pushed into the soil during Columbus's dealings with the Native Americans during the late fifteenth century, the proclamation of the death of God brought to attention a perhaps stale, decrepit argument about the validity of faith in before modernity. What place did faith have in a culture that has turned its back upon undesirable and inconvenient holy texts, specifically the scripture in the New Testament, and Christ's repudiation of wealth? Living in what social theorists fashionably call the postmodern (and even what some refer to as post-postmodern) era, however, it is obvious that the unfolding of the death of God has advanced through to another phase- one that distinguishes itself from what is found in Nietzschean thought- of reconciliatory destruction. Not only had we at once eliminated God, but we have also dissolved faith, the means by which to accept the supernatural proposition in the first place. God has become a sort of formality between Christians, a relativism that differentiates between denominations. Before this destruction is examined though, a brief analysis must occur, specifically, the characterization of the symptoms brought on by the recognition (whether consciously or not) of Nietzsche's contentious claim.

            If the consequence for accepting fault for the death of God is nihilism, what if an entire social body becomes indifferent to this nihilism, denies it, rejects it or even represses it? One must recognize that in twenty-first century Western societies, mainly those nations that claim to uphold the virtues of capitalism, the spread of information, or what Foucault would label knowledge, has eroded cultural identity, simultaneously binding these nations together through technological means. Whether or not the homogenization of the world's diversity has taken place is of no importance here; a global consciousness has been constructed through globalization and technology. This global construct has been erected because of this rapid exchange of information, giving more knowledge to the world's population. The consequence of the attainment of such knowledge is the utilization of Foucauldian power. Knowledge, or information, has migrated beyond the boundaries of institutions such as the university, the prison, or the clinic. Information is afforded to those at certain levels of the current caste system that contemporary capitalism has created. According to one's income, access to databases and media provide information to the individual, and in turn, power over those in a lower class.

            Those who are perpetually and violently prescribed power, namely those who can be referred to as consumerists, are expected to exchange their Christian conscience to attain every last drop of power (and consequently, property) while attempting to cling to the final threads that remain of Christ's dismissal of wealth, causing society as a whole to act out in schizophrenic ways. This great paradox is an irony that is expressed perfectly in no other text than in Mark 10:25: 

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

Does our contemporary repudiation of Christ only correlate with the schizophrenia of the West? Put simply, no, it is no correlation; it is a causation of the disease. But who is the camel? And more importantly, who is the rich man?

            If Nietzsche were to envision the current Western mode of capitalism and its subsequent consumerist culture, would he have gone beyond labeling this as decadence? Would this in fact be beyond nihilism, even something that Nietzsche could not have predicted? Simply put, is popular culture in the West in a phase that Nietzsche has failed to predict between so-called devaluation and revaluation, or can the schizophrenia brought about by capitalism, the New Testament’s materialistic rejection, the dissolution of faith, and the repression of the elimination of God be under the guise of Nietzsche's nihilism?

            Perhaps this is where the reconciliatory destruction must become examined from the perspective of someone who accepts Nietzsche's proposition, or better, prophecy. An attempt has been made in liberal theology to reconcile Biblical mythology with current trends in scientific theory. This reconciliation may be a synthesis of what originated with Darwin in the nineteenth century and contemporary liberal theology that opens itself up to Nietzschean perspectivism and interpretation. However, what can be taken for granted are simple events such as the papacy accepting theories of cosmological and evolutionary biology, or, the origins of existence and the process by which humanity has come to its current phase: the post-Christian era. This necessarily renders Christian mythology as both metaphorical and open for human interpretation, in contrast to being the divine and final Word of God, through biblical prophets. No longer do we have Mosaic Law, the culmination of 615 commandments, and in the case Judaism, the promised prosperity of the Israelites, but we have the Ten Commandments, previously destroyed laws, perhaps even obsolete in relation to the second set of laws that descended Mt. Sinai, but inserted back into the forefront of theology out of convenience with its compatibility with contemporary capitalism and its facade of international altruism and democracy. Put simply under an encompassing phrase, we have seen the dissolution of faith. The reconciliation of what was once faith in God and Biblical miracles such as creation, with the strict skepticism and reason of science has ensured this.

            If we were however, to recognize the death of God, then transcendence over our current system of capitalism could occur, whether beneficial or detrimental. Nevertheless, the dissolution of faith has coincided with a strengthened belief in a God we have previously eliminated, thus causing the schizophrenia we currently are plagued by. A repression of our hitherto elimination of God has taken place, therefore eliminating the grounds for a crisis of faith by also eliminating faith itself. If Kant had bludgeoned faith into submission, insofar as reason has attempted to impose its tyranny over it, then modern Christian theology has felled the entire thing. Despite this, the repression of God is not without its clever characteristics. Denial of this repression is perhaps the greatest defense it has to offer.

            The campaign against traditional morality that Nietzsche had taken up during the late nineteenth century is obsolete. No longer is there any morality, along with pre-morality, or post-morality. Discarded with the dialectic of faith and reason, the end of morality signals the beginning of the reconciliatory destruction.

            Just as the Ark of the Covenant had been lost, so too has our faith. Capitalism, the modern day Babylonian army, has destroyed our Jerusalem, our faith in God. Those camels who are burdened by the load of the power craving schizophrenics no longer have any needle to pass through, only the depths of the lowest caste, the foundation upon which capitalism is built. So long as capitalism etches its way deeper into our social consciousness, and distorts our individual reflections of the self, the belief in the belief of God becomes absurd, and we find ourselves sinking deeper into the post-Christian condition, and the absurdity of rationalized faith becomes ever more apparent.

Generalization of terms

Reconciliatory Destruction: A synthesis of religion and science, causing the dissolution of faith.

Pathology: Study of modern Christianity under capitalism and it's effects on society.

Dissolution of Faith: The process by which the rationalization of theology negates faith.

Repression: An active failure to recognize the dissolution of faith/ Nietzschean death of God.

Schizophrenia: A diagnosis of contemporary society, observed in the bombardment of pop culture entertainment, advertising, and the excessive significance placed on consumerism. It is the result of the embracing of capitalism, juxtaposed with New Testament teachings, and the dissolution of faith/rationalization of God.

Architectual Ascetisicm and the Will to Devour

In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche expounds upon class, no more so than in the section What is Noble:

In the past, every elevation of the type 'human being' was achieved by an aristocratic society- and this will always be the case... (151)

To Nietzsche, the elevation of the individual could only become realized through a social body that held great value differentiation between individuals of various castes. Conversely, in a society whose basic principles restrict its citizens from exploiting one another, the overcoming of the self would not be possible (I am assuming that no caste system, or any aristocracy would be present in such a system). In fact, according to Nietzsche, this would even foster what he coins as the will to deny life:

Without the grand feeling of distance that grows from inveterate class differences, from the ruling caste's constant view downwards onto its underlings and tools, and from its equally constant practice in obeying and commanding, in holding down and holding at arm's length- without this grand attitude, that other, more mysterious attitude could never exist, that longing for even greater distances within the soul itself, the development of ever higher, rarer, more far-flung, extensive, spacious inner states, in short, the elevation of the type 'human being,' the continual 'self-overcoming of the human...' (151)

Comparing this to Slavoj Žižek's discourse on what he refers to as cultural capitalism, seems to create an interesting dialectic, or in the very least, a thought experiment using the two thinkers' attitudes and ideas toward the bottom classes:



If the sublimation of one's will to power in order to overcome the self is only possible through a system which allows exploitation, and if charity is only prolonging the agony of the lower classes, is it necessary for us to allow capitalism to run its tyrannical course in order for society to manifest the its highest possible form? In other words, should we have the attitude of "hands off?"

The architects of post-WWII American capitalism are still at it, but the influence of humanitarianism and environmentalism has tempered it's monstrosity in recent decades. But, if we were to pull back, and allow capitalism to devour its victims, would that sooner put an end to famine and disease than keeping individuals alive, allowing these small third-world societies to exist despite their agony? If the death toll were to decrease ten-fold by allowing these individuals to die sooner, rather than allowing them to repopulate and put their children through the same suffering, would it be worth it? Žižek's insight as to how the very same system (especially those individuals who fuel it, like George Soros and corporations like Starbucks) that is keeping the third world alive is also destroying it is very compelling. If we withdraw ourselves from these concerns, would capitalism eventually devour itself? And would the result be Nietzsche's ideal society, without the burden of slaves or lower castes? It is a startling idea.