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I stated a little known, and kind of unbelievable, fact about the intersection of the US Prison system, the US Constitution, and slavery as an institution, and

by dsp1234 11y ago

I stated a little known, and kind of unbelievable, fact about the intersection of the US Prison system, the US Constitution, and slavery as an institution, and did so specifically without any kind of value judgement of what that means. The only discussion that I was hoping for was "Oh wow, I did not know that. That's insane", and maybe some discussion of the differences between technology and law.

tptacek 11y ago
I disagree, except for the "that's insane" part, which I think I agree with for different reasons. I think what you've done is (a) play a semantic game with the word "slavery" and (b) took the 13th Amendment wildly out of context. There are 13th Amendment restrictions on the circumstances in which a prisoner can be forced to work. Further, when prisoners refuse to work, they lose privileges; they are not sentenced for additional crimes. There is no useful comparison to be made either to the Soviet penal labor system or to US slavery. The use of the word "slavery" in this context detracts from understanding, and serves to derail the thread.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  I guess I'll play ball. I quoted the exact text of the 13th amendment. I did not quote the full text, but the other part of the text is exactly this: "Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." I played no word games with "slavery", either in the use of the word, or it's context. I quoted directly from the US Constitution. There is no semantic game to play with the word slavery. The people who wrote the amendment, and those who ratified it, clearly understood what the word meant to them, and codified that it was OK to continue the practice, restricted to those "duly convicted". That they agreed that slavery should be abolished, but not for everyone, is interesting. If for no other reason that it can be used to peer in to the legislative process and see the compromises that were made, and the changes that the US has made since then. Indeed, other than saying it was technically allowed by the US Constitution, I provided no other context. I didn't feel any was need as I was stating a fact, not an opinion. Just as I don't need to provide context to say that the JavaScript language has a keyword named var. I think most US citizens do know that the 13th amendment abolished slavery, but not that it also codified slavery as well for a certain class of people. This is interesting, and unexpected. Additionally, I find your comments such as "There is no useful comparison to be made either to the Soviet penal labor system or to US slavery." odd in the context of this subthread. I have not made any such comparisons, and you have repeatedly stated something like this in this subthread to me. Congress ratified a constitutional amendment barring slavery except for those convicted of crimes. Suggesting that this is not in some way related to US slavery seems odd. What other kind of slavery could the amendment writers have been speaking of if not US slavery?
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Extremely disingenuous. The 13th Amendment doesn't "codify slavery for a certain class of people". It allows courts to impose sentences that include work requirements, the same way they can today throughout much of Europe --- and thus, presumably, most of the whole world†. It clarifies the abolition of slavery, whose intent wasn't to abolish criminal sentences. A slave in a Soviet penal colony who refused to work would be shot or starved. A slave in a US plantation who refused to work would be whipped to death. A prison inmate who refuses to help do laundry will have their privileges curtailed and lose time off for good behavior. The idea that you'd compare these groups of people, or think you can productively assign the three of them the same label, is very telling. This is a story about Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe. The Soviet empire was literally industrialized on the backs of slaves, in the truest sense of the word. That is not something that can reasonably be said about Europe or the US. The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful. For instance, today, in China, you can be sentenced to force labor by a magistrate without trial; it is the moral equivalent of being sentenced to a year of labor at a traffic stop. There is an appeals process; it takes longer than the statutory maximum "reeducation through labor" sentence.
    - pvg 11y ago
      The Soviet empire was literally industrialized on the backs of slaves, in the truest sense of the word. As a pedantipoint, this isn't really the case. The Soviet coerced labor system was expansive and multifaceted and it's fair to say that much of the industrial and practically all agricultural work in the period was coerced. Penal forced labor (what you'd perfectly reasonably call slave labor) was a fraction of that. It was used for certain industrial and transportation projects and played a major role in raw materials extraction but, beside being murderous, it was also even more inefficient and corrupt than the rest of the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union could not have industrialized on the backs of its slave laborers alone, even if it had wanted to. Wikipedia's section seems to have references to fairly recent studies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Economic_role_of_the_Gulag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Economic_role_of_the_Gula...
    - dsp1234 11y ago

by dsp1234 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

I disagree, except for the "that's insane" part, which I think I agree with for different reasons. I think what you've done is (a) play a semantic game with the word "slavery" and (b) took the 13th Amendment wildly out of context. There are 13th Amendment restrictions on the circumstances in which a prisoner can be forced to work. Further, when prisoners refuse to work, they lose privileges; they are not sentenced for additional crimes. There is no useful comparison to be made either to the Soviet penal labor system or to US slavery. The use of the word "slavery" in this context detracts from understanding, and serves to derail the thread.

dsp1234 11y ago
I guess I'll play ball. I quoted the exact text of the 13th amendment. I did not quote the full text, but the other part of the text is exactly this: "Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." I played no word games with "slavery", either in the use of the word, or it's context. I quoted directly from the US Constitution. There is no semantic game to play with the word slavery. The people who wrote the amendment, and those who ratified it, clearly understood what the word meant to them, and codified that it was OK to continue the practice, restricted to those "duly convicted". That they agreed that slavery should be abolished, but not for everyone, is interesting. If for no other reason that it can be used to peer in to the legislative process and see the compromises that were made, and the changes that the US has made since then. Indeed, other than saying it was technically allowed by the US Constitution, I provided no other context. I didn't feel any was need as I was stating a fact, not an opinion. Just as I don't need to provide context to say that the JavaScript language has a keyword named var. I think most US citizens do know that the 13th amendment abolished slavery, but not that it also codified slavery as well for a certain class of people. This is interesting, and unexpected. Additionally, I find your comments such as "There is no useful comparison to be made either to the Soviet penal labor system or to US slavery." odd in the context of this subthread. I have not made any such comparisons, and you have repeatedly stated something like this in this subthread to me. Congress ratified a constitutional amendment barring slavery except for those convicted of crimes. Suggesting that this is not in some way related to US slavery seems odd. What other kind of slavery could the amendment writers have been speaking of if not US slavery?
- tptacek 11y ago
  Extremely disingenuous. The 13th Amendment doesn't "codify slavery for a certain class of people". It allows courts to impose sentences that include work requirements, the same way they can today throughout much of Europe --- and thus, presumably, most of the whole world†. It clarifies the abolition of slavery, whose intent wasn't to abolish criminal sentences. A slave in a Soviet penal colony who refused to work would be shot or starved. A slave in a US plantation who refused to work would be whipped to death. A prison inmate who refuses to help do laundry will have their privileges curtailed and lose time off for good behavior. The idea that you'd compare these groups of people, or think you can productively assign the three of them the same label, is very telling. This is a story about Soviet hegemony over eastern Europe. The Soviet empire was literally industrialized on the backs of slaves, in the truest sense of the word. That is not something that can reasonably be said about Europe or the US. The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful. For instance, today, in China, you can be sentenced to force labor by a magistrate without trial; it is the moral equivalent of being sentenced to a year of labor at a traffic stop. There is an appeals process; it takes longer than the statutory maximum "reeducation through labor" sentence.
  - pvg 11y ago
    The Soviet empire was literally industrialized on the backs of slaves, in the truest sense of the word. As a pedantipoint, this isn't really the case. The Soviet coerced labor system was expansive and multifaceted and it's fair to say that much of the industrial and practically all agricultural work in the period was coerced. Penal forced labor (what you'd perfectly reasonably call slave labor) was a fraction of that. It was used for certain industrial and transportation projects and played a major role in raw materials extraction but, beside being murderous, it was also even more inefficient and corrupt than the rest of the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union could not have industrialized on the backs of its slave laborers alone, even if it had wanted to. Wikipedia's section seems to have references to fairly recent studies: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Economic_role_of_the_Gulag http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag#Economic_role_of_the_Gula...
  - dsp1234 11y ago