4 ms·

A key part of slavery involves restriction of movement. You're generally free to emigrate wherever you feel like. Or stay where you are and join a commune. You'

by vacri 11y ago

A key part of slavery involves restriction of movement. You're generally free to emigrate wherever you feel like. Or stay where you are and join a commune. You'll be self-sufficient and not paying tax. It's not slavery if you can escape it by merely choosing to do something else.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
I think we need to start looking at it like at a spectrum. Yes, current employment situation is not a literal owner-and-chains slavery and in principle you can always join a commune. But for upwards of 90% of population this is not a viable option they can realistically take. There are problems, and just because they're not literally slavery doesn't mean they ain't close.
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  It does mean they aren't even close. If your situation doesn't meet the criteria of slavery, then you aren't a slave. You may not be completely free, but you aren't a slave. You don't seem to be fully understanding of what slavery is. There is also a legal category. Slaves have no rights, they could not avail themselves of protections against abuse. Also there is a ownership / fungibility aspect, you can buy slaves on a market. This is what separates serfdom from slavery. The basic idea of slavery is that an entire country, state and nation, participates in psychological and legal domination of subject people. If that's not happening, then what you're looking at isn't slavery. Human trafficking isn't slavery, the main difference is that it's a group of people that are surreptitiously creating a regime where people can be traded and not an entire country. One may call human trafficking "modern slavery", and people being trafficked as "slaves", because it is, after all, an abhorrent practice. But slavery doesn't exist in the world any more and to say otherwise demeans the numerous armed conflicts humans have fought all over the world to end real slavery. People are not permitted any more to openly treat humans as cattle and expect the law to respect their 'property'. Not even North Korea could get away with instituting slavery, though one could speculate on whether slavery would be better for the people in their gulags now. You can look at a particular criteria on a spectrum and draw a line. But we have better words to describe what happens when you remove criteria. There is a rich lexicon of terms we can employ to describe removing freedoms from people. Slavery becomes serfdom when you remove fungibility. When you remove state-participation, it's called human trafficking. When all it is is one person forcing another person to keep working, it's called forced labor. The modern employment social contract is in no way, shape or form anything like actual slavery, to call it such is to misrepresent both employment and slavery.
  - bzbarsky 11y ago
    > Slaves have no rights That depends on the exact historical milieu. For example, slaves in Athens at various times had the right to freedom of religion, right to claim asylum at an altar, right to not have their owner kill them out of hand (or more precisely if the owner did this, he was brought to trial, at least in theory), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece has some selected details. Totally agreed with your last sentence, though. ;)
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    Then I see another problem - people using the word "slavery" to describe various periods in history when what they mean is the "American-style black on cotton plantations type of slavery". Slaves in history had various amounts of rights and, particularly in Ancient Egypt, Israel and Rome, there were much closer to employees than many think today. The American version of slavery seems to be more of a historical aberration.
    - vinceguidry 11y ago
      I think we focus too much on those rights and less on the overall big picture. US slavery was bad, but Caribbean slavery was much, much worse, what made it worse was the conditions the people labored under. Personally, if I were in a minor outlying area of the Roman empire, I perhaps would have preferred to become a Roman slave rather than be free out in the boondocks. I've read that a Roman conquest would always start with a call for anyone in the opposing army who wanted to be part of the empire to defect now and become a Roman slave, that was supposedly a better fate than losing in battle. In Rome I could, by hook or by crook, earn my freedom and perhaps even become emperor. If I were in Africa, and I had a choice, I would perhaps choose to become a slave on James Madison's plantation rather than stay in Africa. You should read the book written about one of his slaves, he was truly extraordinary. What made US slavery so bad wasn't so much the slavery but the racism. Roman slaves looked just like their masters. But when US slaves earned their freedom through manumission or simply buying themselves off their masters, a somewhat common practice in the run-up to the Civil War, they had to be careful or fall prey to slavers capturing them and re-enslaving them. If it weren't for the racism, you could make a credible argument that enslavement in the US was, on the whole, better for the people involved, going by the standard of, if you had all the relevant information, would you prefer to stay home or go to the US as a slave. Of course, American intellectuals made this argument at the time as a justification for slavery. The practice of indentured labor where people willingly sold themselves into bondage to escape their homeland lends some credence to this, but in my opinion the racism blacks experienced and still experience places it solidly in 'wrong' territory.

by vacri 11y ago

TeMPOraL 11y ago

I think we need to start looking at it like at a spectrum. Yes, current employment situation is not a literal owner-and-chains slavery and in principle you can always join a commune. But for upwards of 90% of population this is not a viable option they can realistically take. There are problems, and just because they're not literally slavery doesn't mean they ain't close.

vinceguidry 11y ago
It does mean they aren't even close. If your situation doesn't meet the criteria of slavery, then you aren't a slave. You may not be completely free, but you aren't a slave. You don't seem to be fully understanding of what slavery is. There is also a legal category. Slaves have no rights, they could not avail themselves of protections against abuse. Also there is a ownership / fungibility aspect, you can buy slaves on a market. This is what separates serfdom from slavery. The basic idea of slavery is that an entire country, state and nation, participates in psychological and legal domination of subject people. If that's not happening, then what you're looking at isn't slavery. Human trafficking isn't slavery, the main difference is that it's a group of people that are surreptitiously creating a regime where people can be traded and not an entire country. One may call human trafficking "modern slavery", and people being trafficked as "slaves", because it is, after all, an abhorrent practice. But slavery doesn't exist in the world any more and to say otherwise demeans the numerous armed conflicts humans have fought all over the world to end real slavery. People are not permitted any more to openly treat humans as cattle and expect the law to respect their 'property'. Not even North Korea could get away with instituting slavery, though one could speculate on whether slavery would be better for the people in their gulags now. You can look at a particular criteria on a spectrum and draw a line. But we have better words to describe what happens when you remove criteria. There is a rich lexicon of terms we can employ to describe removing freedoms from people. Slavery becomes serfdom when you remove fungibility. When you remove state-participation, it's called human trafficking. When all it is is one person forcing another person to keep working, it's called forced labor. The modern employment social contract is in no way, shape or form anything like actual slavery, to call it such is to misrepresent both employment and slavery.
- bzbarsky 11y ago
  > Slaves have no rights That depends on the exact historical milieu. For example, slaves in Athens at various times had the right to freedom of religion, right to claim asylum at an altar, right to not have their owner kill them out of hand (or more precisely if the owner did this, he was brought to trial, at least in theory), etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Greece has some selected details. Totally agreed with your last sentence, though. ;)
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Then I see another problem - people using the word "slavery" to describe various periods in history when what they mean is the "American-style black on cotton plantations type of slavery". Slaves in history had various amounts of rights and, particularly in Ancient Egypt, Israel and Rome, there were much closer to employees than many think today. The American version of slavery seems to be more of a historical aberration.
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    I think we focus too much on those rights and less on the overall big picture. US slavery was bad, but Caribbean slavery was much, much worse, what made it worse was the conditions the people labored under. Personally, if I were in a minor outlying area of the Roman empire, I perhaps would have preferred to become a Roman slave rather than be free out in the boondocks. I've read that a Roman conquest would always start with a call for anyone in the opposing army who wanted to be part of the empire to defect now and become a Roman slave, that was supposedly a better fate than losing in battle. In Rome I could, by hook or by crook, earn my freedom and perhaps even become emperor. If I were in Africa, and I had a choice, I would perhaps choose to become a slave on James Madison's plantation rather than stay in Africa. You should read the book written about one of his slaves, he was truly extraordinary. What made US slavery so bad wasn't so much the slavery but the racism. Roman slaves looked just like their masters. But when US slaves earned their freedom through manumission or simply buying themselves off their masters, a somewhat common practice in the run-up to the Civil War, they had to be careful or fall prey to slavers capturing them and re-enslaving them. If it weren't for the racism, you could make a credible argument that enslavement in the US was, on the whole, better for the people involved, going by the standard of, if you had all the relevant information, would you prefer to stay home or go to the US as a slave. Of course, American intellectuals made this argument at the time as a justification for slavery. The practice of indentured labor where people willingly sold themselves into bondage to escape their homeland lends some credence to this, but in my opinion the racism blacks experienced and still experience places it solidly in 'wrong' territory.