5 ms·

Slavery is a subject I find fairly interesting, but sadly, it only 'appears' to be discussed, frank discussions of slavery have the problem that most people or

• ue_ 10y ago
  Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but are you talking about debating the merits of slavery? Forgive me if I'm incredulous, but what kind of results are there to debate? Are you implying that there were good results to come from slavery? I am genuinely interested in what there is to know, as I'm horribly ignorant of it myself. I was reading on slavery today, and came across an interesting couple of quotes by Engels: >The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class. and >The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general. I'd say myself it's a greater shame that wage slavery is discussed as sparsely as it is.
  • microcolonel 10y ago
    I can't relate to the fashion of describing freemen as slaves. Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort. These people you're "selling yourself" to are in fact selling your fragile life to you, for the cost of you selling them some of theirs. You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve.
    • ue_ 10y ago
      >Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort. I agree. But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way, especially for those who cannot take the effort to survive, or live on the brink of death despite taking the effort. > are in fact selling your fragile life to you I don't think people should have to buy their lives from other people. How did these people get my life anyway? Why do they have the right to sell it to me? This seems to be starting with a default position of them having my life. I demand it back. Edit: >You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve. Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. My point is that you shouldn't have to work for anyone but yourself, and you shouldn't let others make a profit from your work while they apply almost no work at all. Are you implying that the bourgeoisie specialise in relieving suffering?
      • microcolonel 10y ago
        > But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way. If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order. > I demand it back. They want theirs back too! Society is an open question as to how this can be done decently.
        • ue_ 10y ago
          >If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order. Please excuse me, but are you trying to be obscurantist and vague with this? I just don't understand what point you're trying to make here. Why must we have suffering at all, when it can be avoided? Why must there be exploitation? I'm talking in concrete cases here - people are being exploited for their labour. There is no "golden middle" for suffering. The idea that there must be, or that a middle solution is best, is a logical fallacy. >They want theirs back too! Who does? The capitalists? I'm not taking their life; rather, I am selling my labour-time as a worker to them, in order to survive, reproduce, and replenish the worker force. I start with the fundamental idea: nobody should have to sell their time to someone else in order to survive for themselves.
  • mc32 10y ago
    I would not equate those two things. Even today, or, 200, 2000 or 4000 years ago, I would suggest slaves (as we understand the word) would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property. There would certainly be a few who would suffer from something akin to Stockholm syndrome, but by and large...
    • ue_ 10y ago
      >would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property. I very much agree and I do not contest this. There are also feudal serfs who would love to live like workers today. However there are workers now who would love to live like truly free men who are not forced to sell their time to survive. I think that those slaves 4000 years ago would like that too. Probably more than the feudal or even capitalist mode of production. Yes, comparing the horrors of slavery to the current situation is hyperbolic - but the same format of exploitation is still happpening. That is, the format of selling labour-time to others in order to be afforded the luxury of life within the system. I think that Engels missed out that there is greater mobility nowadays. Even though it is very unlikely, a proletarian who has amassed enough capital can become a capitalist himself. But this does not do away with the exploitation of others.
      • mc32 10y ago
        The base state is not that we do nothing (I don't think). The base state is that people (pre-agriculturally, pre-societally) have to scavenge, forage, hunt. If they did not put their bodies to work, or someone else didn't offer to lend them work, people would have to toil and "work". The hunter-gatherers, of say, South Africa, I don't think, is a lifestyle most people engaged in wage-for labor economies would prefer to go back to. We just have to visit rural China where people opt away from subsistence living to work in these factories. Same for your Oaksakan indigenous who migrates to MDF.
        • ThrustVectoring 10y ago
          The fact that modern capitalist society is extraordinarily good at getting people to participate in it isn't good evidence that it makes people better off. It's merely evidence that it has a highly effective police, military, and individual economic incentives. Like, if thousands of settlers shoot all the buffalo and forcibly move the native hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, and the natives later decide to migrate to a city and engage in menial labor, that doesn't mean that they're now better off. It just means that nation-states are really good at controlling territories and people. see also: http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html
  • danbruc 10y ago
    I agree with you that capitalists should not become disproportionally rich from the labour of their workers. But even if they did not, you still had to work to support your life. Capitalists become rich by taking a bit from many, you would not get rich if you got your bit back. Nonetheless, especially for the poorest it would still make a huge difference even if they would not become rich in the traditional sense.
  • Mikhail_Edoshin 10y ago
    Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function. "Requires" means that without a coordinated effort the enterprise won't be possible. Such enterprises are more productive than single workers and the gain is not linear, i.e. an enterprise that has two workers is more productive than two separate workers put together. This is why slavery (= coordinated team effort) is beneficial: it increases the wealth of the society more than when everyone is free and works on its own. Of course, slavery is a very crude form of coordinated team effort. Private enterprise is much better and much more flexible; in fact, this is the best form so far. Best practical form, that is. I can imagine maybe a more attractive setup on a smaller scale, something like a community where the team effort is coordinated by the leader and everyone obeys because the leader is wise and knowledgeable or out of tradition; a monastery would be a good real-life example here. But I fail to imagine that this would scale. Now, I believe that coordinated team effort in any form has to strip team members out of some of their liberties. E.g. if your enterprise is to work around the clock (and it may have to due to technical reasons), then some people will have to work nights. Yet coordinated work is so much more productive than single-person efforts that it's beneficial to accept these limits. Remember a DIY hamburger experiment where a guy wanted to make a plain hamburger all by himself and ended up with around $5,000 in costs and even that wasn't cheat-free?
    • ue_ 10y ago
      >Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function. I'm not arguing against coordination of efforts; rather I am talking about coordinating efforts on a small and preferably ad-hoc basis as a form of project management. Abolishing the class which appropriates surplus is by no means abolishing project managers and engineers. People partake voluntarily, and how much work is done is decided by direct democracy beforehand, either with delegates subject to instant recall or in person. Yes, some people may need to work nights, though working nights is usually an effect of the fact that a product needs to be finished by a certain point in time in order to meet profit expectations. However even when there is a deadline, working nights need not be something involuntary as it almost is nowadays. Businesses collaborate on projects at a small scale, and many projects can be put into 'monastery-size' collaborative teams. My main point is that the participation has to be voluntary, and that no surplus should be appropriated at any stage.
• pavlov 10y ago
  It feels like you're saying: "I have something valuable to say about [x], but because of political correctness I'm not allowed to say it. If only we could have a frank discussion about [x], then I could tell you!" I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored.
  • sillysaurus3 10y ago
    No need for vitriol. "A concrete example would strengthen your argument" would make the same point without putting them on the defense.
  • randallsquared 10y ago
    I didn't infer that he himself had something valuable to say on the subject, only that he suspects someone does, and laments their apparent reluctance to say it. I think part of the source of this suspicion is that the abolition of slavery was a result of the Enlightenment and the rise of natural law as a source of ethics, and virtually every aspect of the West has abandoned natural law as a source of ethics or principle, leaving modern ethics in a drunkard's walk around the positions last reasoned to before that jettisoning.
    • humanrebar 10y ago
      I agree heartily with your point about the state of modern (well, postmodern) ethics, but "virtually every aspect of the West" is overstating how much the original principles have been abandoned. There are certainly people in the West that never bought into postmodern thinking and would prefer natural law or imago dei to... well, the mess we have now.
  • rhapsodic 10y ago
    >I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored. It's common on the right because it accurately describes the state of political discourse today. One small example is immigration policy. I've found it impossible to have a frank and honest discussion, based on facts and logic and opinions, with anyone on the political left. Typically, within two minutes, they'll get angry and call me a racist.
• valuearb 10y ago
  I have no doubt being taken to America was beneficial to some African slaves. I also do not doubt it would have been far more beneficial for far more of them if they had been able to do it as freemen and were treated like human beings.