Money / Annotation

Frederick Douglass Railed Against Economic Inequality

Never-before-transcribed articles from Frederick Douglass’ Paper denounce capitalism and economic inequality.

by Matthew Karp, Frederick Douglass via Jacobin on February 20, 2020

...enterprise.” Yet the economy of true equals that these articles imagine, and the measures they propose to achieve it — including laws that forcibly limit the accumulation of productive property — goes some distance further than even the most ambitious plans of our left-wing leaders today.

What follows are excerpts from the two articles, which can be read in full here.

—Matt Karp

“The Accumulation of Wealth,” Frederick Douglass’s Paper, November 28, 1856

The Spartan lawgiver who discouraged the accumulation of wealth, because of its tendency to impair the liberties of his country, was fully justified in the extreme measures he adopted, by the universal experience of nations, and the fate of his own country; the fall of Spartan liberties dating from the introduction of wealth and consequent luxury of her citizens.

His aim to exterminate wealth and refinement entirely, was, perhaps, not wise; it is not wealth of itself that produces the dreaded effects, but its accumulation in the hands of a few — creating an aristocracy of wealth, ready to be the tool of an aggressive tyranny, or to become aggressive upon its own account. With an increase of wealth comes an increase of selfishness, devotion to private affairs, and a contempt of public — unless politics can be made to minister to the all absorbing selfishness of the individual.

The advocates of unbridled accumulation claim for their system, that it is founded on nature, that the faculty of acquisition is found existing in man everywhere and in all stages of development; that the world owes much to the enterprise developed by its influence; and that it would be shallow statesmanship to interfere with its action.

We are ready to grant that the condition of man, cast as he is into the world naked, and surrounded by elements unfriendly to his continued existence, renders a degree of acquisitiveness necessary for the security of life; but is it just to plead this moderate degree of accumulation, indicated by nature, in justification of the unlimited hoarding of wealth, and monopolies of land, which has converted the entire civilized world into an abode of millionaires and beggars; which renders the enslavement of the peoples of the world possible, and shrouds the future of liberty with gloom?

To look at the treasures of Paris, or London, or New York, and other centres of wealth, one might at first feel disposed to agree in the assertion that man is acquisitive creature, even in the extreme case claimed by the defenders of the present system, by which wealth is accumulated by the few, instead of being distributed, as it should be, among the mass, rendering none rich, allowing none to remain poor.