My paper critiques Hannah Arendt's assessment of chattel slavery in chapter nine of The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951). I argue that the enslavement of Africans and their descendants in antebellum United States constitutes a form of statelessness. By comparing the experiences of enslaved Africans to those of European refugees during the interwar period, the paper shows how Arendt misses significant parallels in the conditions of both groups. I compare the respective roles of enslaved Africans and stateless Europeans in systems of economic production, and consider the ways in which these groups were made into foreigners by their countries of residence such that they were excluded from political participation. This paper will also examine how Arendt's theory of statelessness parallels sociologist Orlando Patterson's theory of natal alienation, which describes the extreme cultural dispossession endured by enslaved people. Finally, I will consider the different forms of legal recognition accorded to people based on their categorization as stateless or enslaved, with a particular focus on the Supreme Court ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).

Introduction

The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) has endured as a founding text in anti-imperial studies due to Hannah Arendt's incisive critiques of European fascism and the inequalities of citizenship produced by the nation-state system. Despite this, American exceptionalism and Eurocentrism pervade much of Arendt's political writings. Contemporary scholars have already criticized the philosopher's reverence for the U.S., as it has impeded her ability to properly contextualize the republic's history of white supremacy.¹⁰⁸ In Origins, Arendt circumscribes the development of the Rights of Man to the French and American Revolutions, rendering the Haitian Revolution invisible and the role of slavery in revolutionary founding unthinkable. The issue persists in On Revolution (1963), where Arendt makes scant reference to Black chattel slavery and none to the Haitian Revolution, despite the latter tethering self-government to abolitionism and both directly impacting natural rights discourse. Arendt's failure to properly contextualize chattel slavery within the history of democratic citizenship undercuts her ability to diagnose citizenship's antithesis—statelessness. In chapter nine of Origins, Arendt characterizes the United States as the "country par excellence of immigration" and asserts that the country has always viewed newcomers, including stateless Europeans, as having the potential to be citizens.¹⁰⁹ One would have to exclude Africans forcibly taken through the Middle Passage and into the U.S. from the category of "newcomers" for Arendt's assertion to be sensical. Consequently, Arendt misses important connections between the respective conditions of the stateless and the enslaved.

Examining Arendt's theory of statelessness in light of the experiences of enslaved and manumitted Africans in the U.S. makes our understanding of statelessness more expansive. In chapter nine of Origins, Arendt uses "rightless" and "stateless" interchangeably to describe the condition European refugees found themselves in during the interwar period. I contend that rightlessness is the defining feature of statelessness. Statelessness deprives people of the supposedly inalienable rights they are entitled to as citizens, the most fundamental ones being the right to political action and the right to opinion. Because Arendt treats rightlessness and statelessness as synonymous, the distinction she draws between slavery and statelessness is highly questionable. Chattel slavery, like Arendtian statelessness, removes an individual from participating in the social contract as an autonomous agent, because their humanity was rhetorically unacknowledged by the contract and they were treated as an object to the contract. As a result, the master-slave relationship heightens the inequality of power Arendt observes in statelessness.

Arendt's Theory of Statelessness

Arendt's theory of statelessness is grounded in her analysis of the interwar period in Europe, when millions of people found themselves without citizenship or legal protection. She argues that statelessness represents a fundamental breakdown in the modern nation-state system, which is based on the assumption that every person belongs to a state and is entitled to certain rights as a citizen. When people become stateless, they lose not only their political rights but also their basic human rights, because rights are understood to flow from citizenship rather than from humanity itself.

This understanding of rights as dependent on citizenship is central to Arendt's critique of the Rights of Man. She argues that the French Revolution's Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen revealed a fundamental contradiction: rights were supposed to be universal and inalienable, but they were only guaranteed to citizens. When people lost their citizenship, they also lost their rights, demonstrating that rights were not truly universal but were contingent on political membership.

The stateless condition, according to Arendt, is characterized by rightlessness. Stateless individuals have no legal status, no political voice, and no protection under the law. They exist in a state of complete vulnerability, subject to arbitrary treatment by whatever state they happen to be in. This condition is not simply a legal problem but represents a fundamental challenge to the modern understanding of human dignity and worth.

Slavery as Statelessness

The comparison between slavery and statelessness reveals important parallels in the conditions of both groups. Enslaved individuals in the United States were, like stateless Europeans, deprived of basic rights and legal protection. They had no political voice, no legal standing, and no protection under the law. Their humanity was systematically denied, and they were treated as objects rather than as persons with inherent dignity and worth.

However, there are also important differences between slavery and statelessness. Enslaved individuals were not simply without a state; they were actively incorporated into the state as property. They were not excluded from the political community but were included in it in a way that denied their humanity and agency. This difference suggests that slavery represents a more extreme form of rightlessness than statelessness, because it involves not just the absence of rights but the active denial of personhood.

The legal framework of slavery in the United States provides clear evidence of this denial of personhood. Enslaved individuals were defined as property under the law, with no legal rights or protections. They could not own property, enter into contracts, testify in court, or participate in the political process. Their legal status was that of an object, not a person.

The Dred Scott Decision

The Supreme Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) provides perhaps the most explicit legal statement of the denial of personhood to enslaved individuals. Chief Justice Roger Taney's majority opinion declared that enslaved individuals and their descendants could never be citizens of the United States and therefore could not claim any of the rights guaranteed to citizens. Taney went further, arguing that enslaved individuals had no rights that white men were bound to respect.

This decision crystallized the legal and philosophical position that enslaved individuals existed outside the framework of rights entirely. They were not merely denied specific rights, but were excluded from the very concept of rights-bearing individuals. The decision reinforced the understanding that enslaved individuals were not persons under the law but were property, with no legal standing or protection.

The Dred Scott decision was eventually overturned by the Civil War and the Reconstruction Amendments, but its legacy continues to influence American legal thought. The case demonstrates how legal systems can be structured to systematically exclude certain groups from the protection of rights, even while purporting to protect rights for others.

Conclusion

The comparison between slavery and statelessness reveals important insights into the nature of rights and citizenship in modern political systems. Both conditions involve the systematic denial of basic rights and legal protection, and both challenge fundamental assumptions about human dignity and worth.

However, slavery represents a more extreme form of rightlessness than statelessness, because it involves not just the absence of rights but the active denial of personhood. Enslaved individuals were not simply excluded from the political community but were included in it in a way that denied their humanity and agency.

Understanding slavery as a form of statelessness helps us better understand the nature of rights and citizenship in modern political systems. It reveals that rights are not simply legal protections that can be granted or denied, but are embedded in broader social and political structures that define who counts as a person and who is entitled to basic human dignity and worth.