House elves and some spoilers for Swordspoint WAS: realistic solutions

[sistermagpie]

No: HPFGUIDX 180810

> Carol responds:
> 
> Will someone *please* tell me what you think would and should happen
> if the House-Elves were freed? In what way would conditions be better?
> I see unhappiness and chaos, myself. I *don't* see House-Elves
> attending Hogwarts, learning to use wands, and becoming miniature
> humans, with all our economic and political problems. What's this
> Utopia you envision? All I've seen is this argument:
> 
> House-Elves are slaves.
> Slavery is bad.
> Therefore, House-Elves should be freed.

Magpie:
We're not, I don't think, claiming to have a practical solution. We're, 
describing the situation as it is. House Elves are slaves. Slavery 
being bad is of course an opinion. 

I obviously don't know enough to say exactly how to go about it. 
However I do reject the idea that they can't be freed period, or that 
Wizards can't free them because they care so much about House Elves 
welfare.

Wizards don't make decisions based on that, they make decisions based 
on what's good for themselves. House elves' desires go along with 
theirs so they accomodate them. Goblins' don't, so they don't bother 
themselves about upsetting them by imposing their own views. Werewolves 
are just as bereft without jobs as House Elves, but Wizards pass laws 
against them working (even though that is potentially even more 
dangerous because werewolves get hungry).

House Elves' needs grow or shrink depending on the Wizards needs. Harry 
doesn't free Kreacher because he cares about Kreacher's needs, he 
doesn't free him because it would be dangerous to him and his cause. He 
gives him orders Kreacher does not want to obey because he wants to do 
it. There there actually is an easy situation where the elf could 
choose his master--he wants to work for the bad guys. He's not allowed 
to do that because it would be dangerous.

Kreacher's needs are sometimes described shifting slightly after his 
turnaround. Suddenly Harry's enjoying Kreacher's cooking is also 
something he needs to do for Kreacher, even though that wasn't a 
consideration when he didn't like Kreacher and Kreacher was a bad cook.

Imo the biggest barrier to House Elf freedom isn't that it causes 
problems because there are unemployed House Elves (not sure exactly 
what kinds of problems that would cause for Wizards anyway) but that 
Wizards don't want it that much. That's why they back down so quickly 
in the face of what House Elves want on this issue where they don't 
back down to Goblins or Werewolves or Giants. So they haven't even 
tried to find an alternate solution. Who knows what would happen if 
House Elves were brought up with freedom? The other Elves were 
disgusted by Dobby's situation (still serving, but free and paid) but 
he's alive until he's stabbed to death. Winky feels disgraced and her 
disgrace leads to self-destructive behavior, but she doesn't die either.

Mike:
I think in the context, wizards have
> two choices that must be weighed for their morality; they can
refuse
> to be slave owners (your position), or they can accept that elves
> need to serve wizard masters (my position).

Magpie:
Because it's imo disingenuously pretending the Wizards aren't reaping
all the benefits.

Alla:

It is IMO just as disingenuous to pretend that wizards ARE reaping
all the benefits. They have benefits and they provide the benefits
to elves and yes the benefit is to fulfil their need to serve the
wizards.

I mean, what if I am going to say that whether wizards are reaping
the benefits at all is the separate issue. I can't. Wizards
benefitting and elves benefitting go together IMO.

Magpie:
They're reaping most of the benefits. The only benefit they're 
providing is allowing themselves to be waited on, which is in itself a 
benefit to themselves. The system, meanwhile, makes sure that whenever 
there is a conflict of interests the Wizards win. When an Elf doesn't 
want to serve, he's still compelled to serve. The benefits to Wizards 
and Elves don't always go together.


Magpie:
Elves' need to serve Wizards comes up most often as a reason
not to think about dismantling the slave trade that nobody's really
bothered by anyway.

Alla:

But but that IS the major reason, how can it be discounted?

Magpie:
Because it isn't the major reason imo. Wizards allow House Elf slavery 
because it benefits Wizards not because they themselves are governed by 
what House Elves want. That's the way they deal with other races across 
the board, and I don't see any difference when it comes to House Elves. 

Pippin:
HBP ch 22:
Slughorn uncorked one of the bottles of wine he had brought.

"I have had it *all* tested for posion," he assured Harry, pouring most
of the first bottle into one of Hagrid's bucket-sized mugs and handing
it to Hagrid. "Had a house-elf taste every bottle after what happened
to your poor friend Rupert."

Harry saw, in his mind's eye, the expression on Hermione's face if
she ever heard about this abuse of house-elves, and decided never
to mention it to her.
----
Harry explicitly recognizes that this is abuse and the text invites
us to imagine Hermione's reaction to it. We are not being encouraged
to agree with Slughorn that house-elves are disposable.

Magpie:
Yup, that's what I imagined it was. It's a little moment of black humor 
about Slughorn, very far removed from a judgment of Dumbledore's owning 
slaves. 

Pippin:
But we see the limits of Harry's compassion here -- he's more concerned
about Hermione's reaction than he is about a nameless, faceless house-
elf.
Harry is a compassionate person generally, so Rowling is saying 
something
about the limits of human compassion, something she said in another
form when Dumbledore confessed he was more concerned about
preserving Harry's innocence than about the lives Harry could save.
The text doesn't support the idea that the instincts of compassionate
people will prevent abuse.

Magpie:
I don't see Harry as a particularly compassionate person at all, so I 
don't really see his limits as being the limits of humanity. But still, 
I've never argued that JKR didn't show that the system wasn't 
vulnerable to the non-compassionate. Though it's still a different 
position to say that slavery is bad because somebody might abuse it 
than slavery is inherently bad even if you have a great master who 
treats you well. That's why Harry's owning Kreacher isn't bad in itself.

Pippin:
It's already dramatized something bad for him: Sirius is dead. He's
dead because he didn't see Kreacher's feelings as something
he needed to be concerned about. If that didn't teach Harry about
needing to see things from an elf's point of view, what would?

Harry didn't learn it immediately, but in DH he comes to see that
Dumbledore and Hermione were right and he was wrong. It
seems like you want Harry to go back to where Hermione started
from, refusing to eat anything that's been prepared by slave labor.

Magpie:
Harry can have concern for Kreacher's feelings *within* the system of 
slavery, which what he ends up doing and which is more along the lines 
we're heading with the idea of Hermione trying to pass laws about the 
treatment of owned House Elves. That's not abolition of slavery, it's 
having ideas of how a good slave owner should act--or be made to act if 
he won't do it himself.

Though I'm curious--is there something wrong with the position that 
Hermione starts from in refusing to eat anything that's been prepared 
by slave labor? Is it just that her single person protest is not going 
to do any good and she's not really prepared for a hunger strike 
anyway, or that it's impractical since she doesn't have any other way 
of getting food and there's all this stuff being enthusiastically 
prepared in front of her? 

-m