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> You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frede

by staunch 11y ago

> You're going to compare working graveyards at 7-Eleven to slavery? > I suspect most slaves would not agree with you. The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass initially declared, "now I am my own master", upon taking a paying job. But later in life, he concluded to the contrary, "experience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery

paulddraper 11y ago
It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.) But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.
- hitekker 11y ago
  His point was not about blacks, whites, or even the Civil War. > Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. There is a difference between "slaves" in the popular sense (chains, beatings, whips, rape), and "slaves" in the economic sense, but both are premised upon the unjust abrogation of freedom at the hands of another. This article describes the latter case quite well: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.rx4lD3qvr http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-sla...
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    The quote was from Frederick Douglass, a black man living during the Civil War. Impossible to know for certain, but I suspect he wouldn't be terribly pleased with a comparison of the current "lower class" to real slaves.
    - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
      Comparing the lower class to real slaves was exactly and explicitly what he did do. Or are your scare quotes meant to imply that the modern lower class isn't a "real" lower class?

by staunch 11y ago

paulddraper 11y ago

It's true that post Civil War blacks weren't doing well. (Actually, a lot of whites weren't doing well either.) But it's a real stretch of the imagination to say the current United States (especially post income tax and Social Security entitlements) is anywhere even close to post Civil War circumstances.

hitekker 11y ago
His point was not about blacks, whites, or even the Civil War. > Wage slavery refers to a situation where a person's livelihood depends on wages or a salary, especially when the dependence is total and immediate. It is a pejorative term used to draw an analogy between slavery and wage labor by focusing on similarities between owning and renting a person. There is a difference between "slaves" in the popular sense (chains, beatings, whips, rape), and "slaves" in the economic sense, but both are premised upon the unjust abrogation of freedom at the hands of another. This article describes the latter case quite well: http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-slavery-invited-to-the-us-foreign-workers-f#.rx4lD3qvr http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessicagarrison/the-new-american-sla...
- paulddraper 11y ago
  The quote was from Frederick Douglass, a black man living during the Civil War. Impossible to know for certain, but I suspect he wouldn't be terribly pleased with a comparison of the current "lower class" to real slaves.
  - PhasmaFelis 11y ago
    Comparing the lower class to real slaves was exactly and explicitly what he did do. Or are your scare quotes meant to imply that the modern lower class isn't a "real" lower class?