# George Fitzhugh Antebellum Virginia sociologist and the most radical intellectual defender of slavery, arguing in *Sociology for the South* (1854) and *Cannibals All!* (1857) that [[Capitalism]] itself was exploitative and that enslaved people were better off than free laborers. Unlike most pro-slavery apologists who relied on racial arguments alone, Fitzhugh mounted a sweeping critique of free-market liberalism — a line of anti-egalitarian reasoning that echoes in modern [[Neoreaction]] and [[Paleoconservatism]]. His work represents the intellectual extreme of the slaveholder class whose legacy shaped the [[Southern Strategy]]. *Stub — expand with: influence on Confederate ideology, relationship to antebellum political economy, modern NRx citations.*