On October 5th on Peirce-L Eugene Halton reprimanded Charles Sanders Peirce for making the following statement in a letter to Victoria Welby in 1908:

“Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, naturally and necessarily nothing can appear to me sillier than rationalism; and folly in politics cannot go further than English liberalism. The people ought to be enslaved; only the slaveholders ought to practice the virtues that can alone maintain their rule. England will find out too late that it has sapped the foundations of culture. The most perfect language that ever was spoken was classical Greek; and it is obvious that no people could have spoken it who were not provided with plenty of intelligent slaves. As to us Americans who had, at first, so much political sense, we always showed a disposition to support what aristocracy we had; and we have constantly experienced, and felt but too keenly, the ruinous effects of universal suffrage and weakly exercised government. Here are the labor organizations, into whose hands we are delivering the government, clamouring today for the ‘right’ to persecute and kill people as they please. We are making them a ruling class; and England is going to do the same thing” (Dec. 28, 1908. Hardwick, 1977: 78-79).*

If I am honest I must recognize that the egalitarianism and despise of unmerited privilege and class in my own view is the product of English Liberalism, culture and circumstance, and not one of uncompromised reason. I am English, I was raised in England, my grandparents were "in service" and they died of malnutrition in 1949, too late for the welfare state that was finally established that year. 

We subjugate other species yet I am as convinced of their equal standing in terms of the necessary receipt of compassion. 

The systemic notion of "jobs" and "employment" means that our time will be recorded as the most successful culture of slavery in all history. The population are today "intelligent slaves." They do not have the liberty to freely determine their daily actions nor their whereabouts for the majority of their time in pursuit of their own productivity and happiness. They cannot speak and act without fear that their speech or their free actions will terminate their income or residence. 

"In this society we trade income for liberty, I prefer liberty," I say. But most people do not. They prefer comfort, convenience, schools, healthcare and the illusion of perpetual security. They appear to prefer a uniformity of culture and they subjugate themselves to it. 

Being a convinced Pragmaticist in Semeiotic, I have to challenge myself. Is this "intelligent slavery" the natural and necessary order? Is the population that pays lip service to liberty and democracy, whose vote is impotent and that entraps itself in the semeiotic veil of public narrative serving only their subjugation, ultimately suffering a necessary delusion in the cause of evolution and species growth and survival? 

I can't say that I like it much if this is the case, but as a Positivist I must rise above mere opinion in all matters. 

I certainly choose to define myself differently and I choose for myself a different path, the path of liberty. I guess the outliers are necessary. Yet I have always been an idealist and have wanted for all the liberty that I find for myself. 

Whilst I clearly disagree with the content of Peirce's political pragmatism, and this may contribute toward  the historical suppression of his view, at this juncture it is beside the point. His essentially Positivist approach was the right one and his political view may well be as naive as my own. It shares though a quest for the truth of the matter. The particulars of his view must not distract us from the merit of Peirce's contribution in general or of the Positivist approach. 

* Peirce, C. S., and Welby-Gregory, Victoria (Lady Welby), Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between C. S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, edited by Charles S. Hardwick with the assistance of James Cook, Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1977