How do moral frameworks change?

Last Friday at FIU, two scholars presented papers for the 9th annual Eric E. Williams Memorial Lecture. Joseph Inikori and Verene Shepherd presented papers for the evening, which was entitled "Emancipation, the African Atlantic and the Long Road to Freedom."

Joseph Inikori's spoke on "Morality vs. The Political Economy of Slavery.” It was very thought provoking, and left me wondering how moral frameworks change. In this particular case, what factors were present, for the complete and irreversible change of today, where slavery is illegal and immoral.

Today, no one in their right mind would argue that slavery is morally permissible. Inikori pointed out that slavery was not benign before capitalism, that this is a pastoral myth. Mutilation was a common form of punishment in ancient Greece and Rome, and certainly in Europe enslaved people's lives had no value.

Slavery was considered evil, but a necessary one, justified by various moral arguments, whether a hierarchy of being or plain old might makes right.

While human traffickers and slaveowners, on every continent (not just Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia) do trade in human beings today, they need secrecy. International legal structures are in place and enslavement is a punishable crime, regardless of culture. The vast majority of people around the world, certainly in the West world, consider slavery wrong. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights views every person, by virtue of their humanity, as equal.

Has there been such absolute and irreversible change on any other moral question?

What circumstances aligned for this sea change in moral thinking to occur? If moral wrong is permissible where it is economically viable, does economics lead the way, where moral reasoning follows?

In the case of enslaved Africans, the demand of increased output made working conditions more brutal, more visible, and on a larger scale.

In this broadly Marxist view, which Inikori seemed to take, economic circumstances are the axis upon which morality turns. Capitalism changed the material circumstances of enslaved people; the Industrial Revolution meant that lower classes lived and worked in empirically more miserable and brutal conditions. Because of the Industrial Revolution, this pressure to produce more violated the boundaries of humanity, and on a larger scale (and with more visibility) than in previous times. You can't make people work faster, with less investment, as you can do a machine. The downward spiral of human behavior, from widespread rape and murder with impunity brought African slavery to a crisis point.

Injustice, even when it is acknowledged as such, is permissible where it is economically beneficial. However, increasingly elaborate moral justifications, from the denial of the victim's humanity to eugenics, are used to justify the action that, in some part of the perpetrator's being, is acknowledged as wrong.

Thinking this through after the lecture, I realize that I do not take a blank slate view of human morality; as long as slavery has been present, justifications (such as profitability) have allowed it to continue.

This is certainly observable in the case of child prostitution, in places like Thailand where it happens openly. Moral wrong continues more or less unimpeded, with a shrug and a fatalistic "well, what can you do about it" from the public when business is thriving. And the perpetrators, people who commit unjust acts, engage in self deception or numb themselves, to allow it.

This is a rather optimistic view of human nature, I realize. However, economics does not seem to drive moral reasoning, although it is certainly a major factor that causes change, when an issue reaches its tipping point. Economic pressure finally broke the apartheid system, after all.

Activism and involvement from other segments of society converged with the decreased profitability of the slave trade. Might this have been a response to the degrading and brutal behavior that became part of the everyday?

I am not asking which comes first, economic change or moral turnaround. Rather, what conditions are the stars that align, so to speak.

Perhaps I can ask it this way: what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a changed moral framework?