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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: "Sectio

by 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
  * The 13th Amendment doesn't "codify slavery for a certain class of people".* Bullshit. It certainly did. That later laws, and the 8th amendment, were used (rightfully) to remove the threat of slavery, does not negate that at the time the 13th amendment was ratified it did allow for actual slavery as a punishment. Specifically: On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. [0] During the second session to the Thirty-ninth Congress (December 12, 1866 - January 8, 1867), debates centered on the meaning of the exemption in the antislavery amendment, since punishment for crime found fit locale no only within the walls of prisons and jails but also on the auction block. In the very sentence abolishing slavery, provision had been made for its revival under another form and through the action of the courts of the United States. Those declared free by this clause of the Constitution found themselves returned to slavery. Senator Charles Sumner presented to Congress a notice posted by William Bryan, the sheriff of Anne Arundel County in Maryland: "Public Sale. -- The undersigned will sell at the court-house door, in the city Annapolis, at twelve o'clock m., on Saturday, 8th December, 1866, a negro man named Richard Harris, for six months, convicted at the October term, 1866, of the Ann Arundel county circuit court for larcenty, and sentenced by the court to be sold as a slave. Terms of sale, cash". During this same session of Congress, other cases were presented to demonstrate that these sales were nothing less than lingering relics of the Black Code. [1] Please note that fully a year after the 18th amendment was passed, that slavery was still in use as a punishment for a convicted crime, and even after the amendment was passed, there was concern that the antislavery amendment wasn't actually doing it's job completely. I will again note that I never made any comparisons to the any soviet system, and that all I did was note a historical oddity. As for it being "telling" that I assigned them the same label. I did not. The original poster did, I did not. We're not the same people, and whatever you see in me bringing this up, unless it's about a history lesson, then you're wrong. period. The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful.. I agree with you 100%, and I never made such comparison. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni... [1] - Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, ISBN 978-0820321660, pg 195

by dsp1234 11y ago

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
* The 13th Amendment doesn't "codify slavery for a certain class of people".* Bullshit. It certainly did. That later laws, and the 8th amendment, were used (rightfully) to remove the threat of slavery, does not negate that at the time the 13th amendment was ratified it did allow for actual slavery as a punishment. Specifically: On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. [0] During the second session to the Thirty-ninth Congress (December 12, 1866 - January 8, 1867), debates centered on the meaning of the exemption in the antislavery amendment, since punishment for crime found fit locale no only within the walls of prisons and jails but also on the auction block. In the very sentence abolishing slavery, provision had been made for its revival under another form and through the action of the courts of the United States. Those declared free by this clause of the Constitution found themselves returned to slavery. Senator Charles Sumner presented to Congress a notice posted by William Bryan, the sheriff of Anne Arundel County in Maryland: "Public Sale. -- The undersigned will sell at the court-house door, in the city Annapolis, at twelve o'clock m., on Saturday, 8th December, 1866, a negro man named Richard Harris, for six months, convicted at the October term, 1866, of the Ann Arundel county circuit court for larcenty, and sentenced by the court to be sold as a slave. Terms of sale, cash". During this same session of Congress, other cases were presented to demonstrate that these sales were nothing less than lingering relics of the Black Code. [1] Please note that fully a year after the 18th amendment was passed, that slavery was still in use as a punishment for a convicted crime, and even after the amendment was passed, there was concern that the antislavery amendment wasn't actually doing it's job completely. I will again note that I never made any comparisons to the any soviet system, and that all I did was note a historical oddity. As for it being "telling" that I assigned them the same label. I did not. The original poster did, I did not. We're not the same people, and whatever you see in me bringing this up, unless it's about a history lesson, then you're wrong. period. The comparison between Soviet labor camps and US prisons is unhelpful.. I agree with you 100%, and I never made such comparison. [0] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Uni... [1] - Slavery in the Caribbean Francophone World: Distant Voices, Forgotten Acts, Forged Identities, ISBN 978-0820321660, pg 195