Frederick Douglass:
Celebrate 4th of JULY by Learning from our Past
On July 5th, 1852, abolitionist Frederick Douglass delivered the following speech to a gathering of women abolitionists in Upstate New York.1 His words ring true to the cause of freedom today. for complete speech as a PDF below
In his address, Douglass told the American people that,
“There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”
Now, almost 175 years later, our hard-won advances in civil and equal rights are disappearing, while hunger and homelessness are growing. The U.S. is supporting genocide in Gaza and Lebanon, attacking Iran, Venezuela, and starving the Cuban people. And the American government is leading the attack on the global environment. Truly, there is no nation more guilty than our country.
When Douglass spoke in 1852, the Industrial Revolution was underway. This revolution rendered the South’s slave-based production system technologically inferior to mass industrial production with wage labor. What was needed was a moral crusade to put the system of enslavement to death. Douglass, John Brown, and the other abolitionists created this movement that ultimately sparked the Civil War and the end of slavery. Unfortunately, the capitalist class held sway over the state during and after this period, and the result was Jim Crow fascism.
Today we are going through another technological revolution, the AI revolution. The use of AI is making human wage labor inferior to computer-controlled social production. The working class, the 99 percent who must work for a living, is being ejected from employment and can no longer find work. The question is starvation or survival. We have no choice but to seize state power and create a system “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
Let’s celebrate this 4th of July by learning from our past in order to build a future for us, for our children, and our grandchildren.
