Of House Slaves and Wage Slaves
Of House Slaves and Wage Slaves
During American slavery, it was the house slave who knew how to prevent the uprisings of field slaves.
The slave owner’s consciousness was also his consciousness.
In wage slavery, it’s no different; despite knowing that the system is unjust, the modern wage slave always stands with the oppressors.
About false consciousness and how it works.
Reminder: The words marked in red are links to corresponding critique articles.
“(…) during slavery you had two Negroes. You had the house Negro and the field Negro. (…) whenever that house Negro identified himself, he always identified himself in the same sense that his master identified himself. When his master said, “We have good food,” the house Negro would say, “Yes, we have plenty of good food.”
“We” have plenty of good food. When the master said that “we have a fine home here,” the house Negro said, “Yes, we have a fine home here.” When the master would be sick, the house Negro identified himself so much with his master he’d say, “What’s the matter boss, we sick?” His master’s pain was his pain. (…) If someone came to the house Negro and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate,” naturally that Uncle Tom would say, “Go where? What could I do without boss? Where would I live? How would I dress? Who would look out for me?” That’s the house Negro.
But if you went to the field Negro and said, “Let’s go, let’s separate,” he wouldn’t even ask you where or how. He’d say, “Yes, let’s go.”“
So spoke El Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, about the house slaves during American slavery.
He drew a parallel to African Americans, who treated the state of America like house slaves: in their consciousness:
“if someone comes to you right now and says, “Let’s separate,” you say the same thing that the house Negro said on the plantation.
“What you mean, separate? From America, this good white man? Where you going to get a better job than you get here?””
The inverted consciousness of African Americans in their belonging to America made them no better than the house slaves in their consciousness; they did not see themselves as Black, as a majority on the plantations, or as oppressed, but as one with the master.
The house slave appreciated the oppression he experienced because it was believed that elsewhere it would surely be worse.
Through better treatment than the field slaves who were forced to work directly on the plantations, the house slave saw himself as part of a different class.
The Black slave uprisers were often crueller than the white ones; out of their false consciousness, the house slave did not recognize himself as such, but as part of the class of slaveholders.
When organized revolts of slaves occurred, it was usually the house slaves who refused the revolt and cooperated against it.
When the free Black Denmark Vesey was tried with 131 other men and women because they were believed to be planning to free thousands of slaves through armed resistance, the court stated that it was “the loyalty of the house slaves that kept this city from a sure bloodbath.”
Gabriel Prosser’s slave revolt, which in the spirit of the Haitian Revolution aimed to arrest Governor (and later President) James Monroe and, with the help of 50,000 freed slaves, to end the system of slavery, could be stopped solely through “the reports of some loyal slaves” that “let us know about Gabriel’s plans” (Letter from Governor James Monroe, 1800).
The mentality of the house slave was primarily based on the false belief that they belonged to a different class due to their materially better position.
In class societies, and parallel societies like the slave system in capitalism, there is always a distortion of consciousness that is not a generalization but necessary for the existence of each society.
Henryk Grossmann writes in “The Law of Accumulation and Breakdown of the Capitalist System”:
„The needs of the people are manipulated so that they accept and even defend the rule of the existing system. […] False consciousness consists in people believing they will find freedom and happiness within the current order.“
Just as the house slave did not perceive himself as a slave or saw this existence as unjust, today’s wage slave no longer perceives himself as one.
Unlike at the beginning of the 20th century, the ruling class no longer needs to pretend to represent the interests of the working class because the interests of the working class are no longer conscious.
Most working people in Germany stand beside their masters, defending them with their votes, even if the conscious field slave calls for revolt.
Like in slave society, the consciousness within the class, despite shared class membership, is shaped by material conditions.
If income, standard of living, and prestige increase, consciousness of the class to which one belongs decreases.
The welfare state system, social democracy, and this shameful term “social market economy” have made the vast majority of working people in Germany into house slaves.
Submissive to their masters, who they defend through participation in the bourgeois democracy and voting.
The poverty found even in Germany, the richest country in Europe, gives the house slaves the illusion that they are no longer slaves.
The slaves are the refugees who live in even worse conditions and still feel such greed.
The slaves are the Hartz IV recipients, who are too lazy to work.
To have the chance to become a slave owner oneself, the German wage slave today already imagines running a plantation.
In their role as overseer, the German wage slave bullies the non-German wage slaves because the German slave owners and their parties assure them that they are the ones responsible for their suffering.
“The workers […] are, in society, facing a class that uses all means to keep the working people in poverty and to strengthen its own power, by exploiting their capital. Yet, workers often do not recognize these relations, because they are deceived by daily survival and the hope for minor improvements.” (Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England)
Henryk Grossmann’s insights about the consciousness of the 19th-century wage slaves are no longer valid; the level of consciousness of today’s wage slaves has turned into a coma state, no longer understandable through the ignorance of the masses.
Because most wage slaves do recognize the existing conditions anyway.
The relationship between rich and poor is regularly discussed in bourgeois media, and the fact that the United States is conducting “oil wars” is common knowledge among large parts of the German population, and it is clear that corporations like Shell, Nestlé, or Amazon profit from stolen resources.
Thus, it is no longer true that “the workers often do not recognize these conditions,” but Engels is still correct that “the hope for minor improvements” makes it impossible to develop awareness from these insights to a consciousness.
In his book “Class Attitudes in America,” the author Spencer Piston attempts to disprove the idea put forward by John Steinbeck, that the working society no longer sees itself as Proletariat, but as “temporarily impoverished millionaires.”
Spencer argues that he can disprove this idea by presenting empirical data showing that the working people of America (applicable to all other capitalist states of the Global North) harbor resentment against the rich, stand for social investments by the state, and do not see themselves on the side of the perceived upper class.
So what? What difference does that make?
Of course, a working person wants to better their own situation, but that does not mean they cannot stand firmly with their master.
The proletarian consciousness, as a class awareness, does not necessarily mean that one wants to improve life within the existing system – it means that one desires something different from the status quo.
Something different where it is just, not only for the people here, but also elsewhere, who have to work hard to maintain their standard of living.
Returning to our analogy: the house slave is aware that they are not a free person.
But the possibility of becoming an overseer oneself, or even securing a sleeping place in the master’s house, does not matter to them.
They adopt the hatred of the master against the field slaves because they see themselves alongside their master.
Of course, they can also hate the master themselves; they can find him disgusting, perverse, and repulsive.
Of course, they can also wish for the conditions on the plantation to change, they might even want the field slaves to get a warm meal.
But if a house slave comes to them trying to incite rebellion, they will always betray him to the master.
Because only under this master do they believe they can live this better life.