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You're right. We can go buy slaves today in the US. /s Yes, criminalization of legal acts to recapture the free labor is abhorrent. However, passing the 13th
by Zhenya 6y ago
You're right.
We can go buy slaves today in the US. /s
Yes, criminalization of legal acts to recapture the free labor is abhorrent. However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it at least creates an incredibly strong legal footing for defending people from forced labor.
Criminals paying back their debt to society is a different conversation in terms of the length and harshness of the penality.
- dragonwriter 6y ago> We can go buy slaves today in the US No, slaves you can buy as an individual is what you have with chattel slavery. Slaves whose labor you can rent, or the product of whose labor you can buy, from the state who holds them as convicts (or that the state uses directly for it's own purposes under the same conditions) is what you have with penal slavery. > However, passing the 13th amendment and then fighting a civil war to enforce it That...didn't happen. In fact, the Republicans, despite being an ideologically abolitionist party, didn't pursue abolition as a policy, merely limiting (not even stopping) the geographic expansion of slavery, specifically to avoid splitting the union and provoking a civil war.