Asklemmy

No. Protecting human rights is not authoritarian.

I think you are lost in the language. There are no absolute rights, in any legal systems. So any "law" necessarily restricts someone's "rights".

Therefore, you need to think about what "authoritarian decision" means, because if all law restricts someone's rights, all laws are authoritarian by your definition.

Also: terrible example to begin with.

questions like this nicely demonstrate how worthless a concept "authoritarianism" really is

Authoritarianism is all about concentrating power around fewer people. That what authoritarianism IS. Giving more power to the least powerful people is always anti-authoritarian. Yes, there are always trade-offs, no they're not always as obvious as this one, but more power to more people is never authoritarian.

No, it was anti-authoritarian, as it removed the authority slave holders had over their slaves.

Authoritarian doesn't mean exercising authority. Banning slavery did exercise authority, of the law, over slave owners, but it was anti-authoritarian. It took power, and authority, condensed wrongly in the hands of a few and, in theory, distributed it to the many, however effective it actually was.

As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something

The problem of this approach is that in that case you refuse any law. Even anarchist would agree that a stateless society need people to agree on common rules.

Speed limit ? restrict your freedom to do something, private property ? Restrict your freedom to go where you want, does restricting your freedom to commit murder feels authoritarian ?

Now what's more authoritarian ? having the state protecing your right to have slave ? Or having the state protecting people freedom by not letting someone enslave them.

Letting slavers exercise absolute authority over slaves is authoritarian and letting that system remain is authoritarian.

It is literally removing authority.

Insofar as authoritarian is a useful metric (not very), Yes and it was good

Yes it's autharitarian to ban slavery. Kind like a revolution is autharitarian. Don't really get the people who don't want to impose , what ya gonna do? Ask nicely?

Natural language is inherently imprecise. You're going to have to add a contextual definition if you want this to have a single answer.

If making someone do something is always authoritarian, abolition is authoritarian to slavers and anti-authoritarian to slaves. If implementing a law with no checks and balances is authoritarian, it was authoritarian when Louis XIV did it, but maybe not in other cases. If a policy that upholds any kind of hierarchy is authoritarian, it's always anti-authoritarian.

Yes, and it was good authority to exercise.

I think it is a bit unfair to give you shit for your question.

it is normal to confuse authoritarian system with restrictions of freedom. Because generally that is how it works. But not in this case...

Because it is the paradox of tolerance all over again. Technically it is authoritarian to ban slavery but it would be more authoritarian to allow it as people would own people... So on the scale of how authoritarian an action is, banning slavery is as anti-authoritarian as it gets and allowing slavery is as authoritarian as it gets. (Of course, a world without slavery and without any rules would be less authoritarian but... I think we know better than trying that with slavery)

I hope this helps in actually understanding the reason instead of being told what it is.

"Have these gentlemen ever SEEN a" yadda yadda

This sounds like a semantic argument, so... definitions.

Authoritarian - 1) of, relating to, or favoring blind submission to authority

Slavery is blind submission. Forbidding authoritarianism isn't authoritarian. Kinda like how destruction of the self (suicide) cannot be selfish, despite what some will argue.

This sounds like another version of the “definition of freedom”.

Is freedom being unrestricted from doing whatever you want? Or is it protection from people doing whatever they want that would otherwise injure you?

I guess I’d argue that banning slavery in the middle of a culture that embraces it is, in fact, authoritarian. Similarly, enabling slavery in the middle of a culture that rejects it is also authoritarian.

It gets more interesting when the population is split on what they want policy to be. I think Prohibition is a better comparison since it’s less emotionally charged.

Was enacting Prohibition authoritarian? Sure seems that way, even though it had a lot of support. Was rolling it back also authoritarian? The people who originally supported it and now see it taken away probably feel it’s authoritarian.

IMO as long as people are happy to argue with each other about basic definition of words, the answer to the original question is “it doesn’t matter”.

No. A nation that allows slavery doesn't practice human rights. For human rights to exist they have to apply to everyone, which can't work if some people are considered property.

No amount of gotchas, or arguing semantics is going to make slavery okay, and the way you're replying to peoples answers makes me think you fundamentally don't understand the question.

Your rights end at the point where they infringe on someone else's rights.

Like, it's my right to walk where I want but it's not my right to walk into your house. Because it's your right to own private property.

Secondly, authoritarianism is not about how many people the law affects. It's about style of governance.

Authoritarian is a very small portion of people made decision and control the majority, where in democracy the decision is made based on the majority.

Is the decision to end slavery a majority decision? Then it's democratic.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-your-freedom-is-my-freedom

Significantly less authoritarian than slavery.

Yes i.e. the paradox of tolerance

There’s no such thing as consensual slavery, so I’m gonna go with no. You have to draw the line somewhere, and drawing the line at forcing other people to do things seems like a good place to draw the line.

Enforcing an equal opportunity environment is only authoritarian if your definition of authoritarian is anything that challenges antinomianism.

Yes.

But slavery was also authoritarian.

Any situation where there is a power imbalance that can be enforced through physical or psychological means that somebody doesn't agree with is authoritarian. Employer/employee? Authoritarian. Parent/infant? Authoritarian. Bank/bank customer? Authoritarian. Doctor/patient? Authoritarian.

Probably the only reasonable definition of authoritarian would be something like, "To be ruled/governed by an authority." I've decided that Bill over there gets to be in charge of things, they're the authority. I don't always agree with the decisions they make but they're in charge. Which seems like it would overlap a bit with the idea of democratic centralism.

This is kind of the base paradox of chaos and faith. If God is the universe and everything, and God is "right", then that makes good and evil equal. It's a paradox people don't think of when it comes to sovereignty and freedom. Both those things mean you would need to fight for survival, in turn one could not be "free" by modern governing terms. You get your "freedom" but that means you aren't going to have the military killing for you or your subsidized help. True freedom is not utopia. True freedom is a life of war and survival.