My understanding is these ‘slaves’ are usually children who were indentured by their parents. They aren’t slaves, although the practical distinction form their POV is non-existent.
And this is why I think the question hinges entirely on how we define slavery, and that definition doesn’t seem to have any clear boundaries. Imagine that I signed a contract with my local newspaper to allow my child to be a paperboy. He can’t sign that contract himself because he’s a minor. But he wants the job. Nobody would consider that slavery. Now imagine that he didn’t want the job, but I thought it would good for him to do it. Is that slavery? As you can see there is no clear boundary between normal US behaviour and Asian child slavery. I contract for my 11yo son to work 1 hour/day for 12 months. Someone else contacts for their 8yo son to work 16 hours/day for 5 years.
It’s abhorrent but is it slavery? And is it functioning economically the same way slavery? Part of the problem with slavery was that there was an ongoing cost for producing slaves and maintaining slaves that could no longer work. This isn’t a concern for Asian ‘slavery’.
The same problem applies to the concept of Roman ‘slaves’ introduced earlier. These people were willing indentured labourers. I can’t see any clear distinction between my situation, where I have signed a 3 year contract to work for a salary + accomodation, vehicle etc. and the situation of a Greek scholar who gives a verbal undertaking to work for 15 years for accommodation and a salary. To me these people are no more slaves than I am. Doubtless they would find it harder to get out of their contact, but they are still just contracted workers receiving a salary.
I can see why indentured servitude is in any way precluded by capitalism. After all it’s just a difference in degrees from the way many professionals live now.
Lifelong or involuntary slavery is a different story entirely.
Keep in mind that some of the Northern States/Colonies had slaves as well. Not at the time of the civil war, but earlier. For example, slavery was not completely abolished in New York until 1824 .
Well, Rome certainly had out and out slaves that in no way were equivalent to indentured servants, the Romans enslaved whole conquered cities, the people didn’t go to a cushy job as a pedagogue but became agricultural or mine slaves not much different from slaves in the American south. And being sold into the mines meant being worked to death in a few years.
But slavery wasn’t just an economic status, it was a legal status. Slaves could be crucified or tortured, citizens could not. Slaves were part of their owner’s household and could be killed on the head of household’s orders, free employees could not. Of course very few people would kill a valuable skilled slave for no reason any more than they would smash a brand new sports car for no reason. But a field hand or mine slave was much less valuable.
Sure, and in some cases slaves performed them. In the south, there were slave mechanics, slave carpenters, slave blacksmiths, and other sorts of slave craftsmen. All of those were skilled labor…you can’t just pick somebody at random and say “Ok, you’re a blacksmith now”.
The Romans had a plumbing and aqueduct system that was as good as or better anything in the world until fairly recently. The engineering that went into that was fairly complex.
Isn’t it reasonable to consider the position of slaves in the South more as machinery than labor? The purchase was a capital equipment purchase, “used” slaves could be sold freely, there was maintenance, and an expected equipment life. Slaves had the advantage of being self-replicating.
Certainly some farmers made more effective use of this “equipment” than others, but saying that businesses within a system are run inefficiently in no way says that the system can’t be capitalism.
Cliffy, could you give a cite for the assertion that market forces push for equality? I agree that in the long run a more socially and racially egalitarian society is more efficient, but there is lots of local optimization in markets, and I don’t remember businesses or capitalists particularly leading the way to such a society. Certainly those most likely to be considered capitalists opposed things like child labor laws as restrictions on the free movement and use of labor.
An insidious long-term problem with a slave economy is that work becomes devalued. When work is “what slaves do”, no free person wants to work if he can help it, and anything sweaty, dirty or tedious becomes beneath a free person’s dignity. In a slave society the highest rung in society isn’t held by inventors or entrepreneurs, but by gentlemen (and ladies) of leisure.
When work is no longer associated with slaves, even billionaires make a point of showing up in the office every day, and the truly idle rich may be famous and even fawned-on, but they aren’t exactly admired. Compare the stature of Bill Gates and Paris Hilton. Gates actually built his first computers, the type of “working with your hands” that’s considered vulgar and even degrading, and would be held against him, in a slave society. (Read *Gone with the Wind * and check Scarlett’s reaction when a neighbor suggests she pick her own cotton.)
Returning to the OP: slavery is possible under capitalism, but capitalist societies without slavery will accomplish more than capitalist societies with it. Compare the economic and industrial base of the pre-Civil War North and South. Societies without slavery accomplish more both because they make fuller use of human capital (by not chaining up a large percentage of it), and because they have more respect for work.
Good points all. Soon after posting I realized the answer to my own question as stated.
I was thinking that technology has gotten to a point that slaves seemed to have yet been tested for. The blacksmith skill, for example, is much like floor sweeping example, inasmuch as you look at the hinge and pronounce it right/wrong or good/bad regardless of the skill it took to make. Not so easy with a computer program or a jet repair I’m guessing.
Two poor examples there. Bill Gates didn’t build computers, he was a software guy, and most of what he did was arguably ripping off the work of others (CPM for DOS and the Mac operating system for Windows). And Paris Hilton, although she inherited great wealthy, actually CHOOSES to work and be productive in society. You should respect her a LOT for that, even if you don’t care for her product – others clearly do.
Slavery just represents the optimum prices of labor under the capitalist system. Do you think the folks in the US who are working shitty minimum wage jobs but cant make enough money to keep a roof over their heads are a whole hell of a lot happier than slaves ever were?
Most of the growth in the US economy is in service sector jobs. Low-paying service sector jobs. Ideal for slavery, when you think about it. Computer programmers are a shrinking industry – less demand, and some of the work being outsourced to low-paying venues like India.
If that which I depend on for my survival is declared “your property”, then I either do your bidding or I die: I am your slave. Democratic government exists just as much to prevent economic slavery (do as I say or you will starve, freeze or suffer disease) as slavery by outright diktat (do as I say or I will kill you immediately) .
What work does Paris Hilton do? As far as I can tell, she’s an idle playgirl who fritters her time away doing nothing of any real value or importance to anyone. I’m open to correction on the point.
Excellent point. The difference between chattel slavery on one hand and wage slavery or debt slavery on the other is often moot.
Not true. if you look, there’s immense demand for skilled labor. Simply put, there aren’t many unskilled jobs, service or otherwise, anymore. Even relatively straightforward jobs are becoming more demanding and involved.
And Outsourcing, despite the various claims banded about, has not had a major impact on the U.S. economy.
Never worked in TV, have you? It’s not easy. I don’t think that her show is any good, but enough people watch it to allow the network to sell ads, and that is what most TV is all about.
I pretty sure others have pointed this out, but I’ll point it out to be absolutely clear: indentured servitude is not slavery. It’s almost slavery, I suppose, but there is an out…eventually (that doesn’t include death, and not necessarily at your choosing).
Indentured servitude is another thing entirely, and sustainable under a capitalst system. However, I can’t imagine a properly educated society (at least in economics) is willilng to accept these conditions. Well, let me rephrase that…they will accept it, just no one in their right mind would participate in it.
The fact that slave states tend to accumulate laws to prop up the system (over and above simply protecting the owner’s “property right” in the slave) would seem to confirm this. The obvious examples that spring to mind are the old US slave-state laws against teaching slaves to read (which is clearly an infringement of the very “property right” that the slave states made such a fuss about).
Really ? What if it’s economically impossible for the “indentured servant” to earn freedom ? Besides, slaves can generally be freed by their master, so they have an “out” too.
Indentured servitude is just slavery with a different name IMHO.
When slaves did this willingly, it was an exception rather than a rule. If slaves were given a choice, they would all agree to be wage labor than slave labor. Slaves cannot leave their positions, wage laborers can.