What is it about slavery that is intrinsically wrong?

Two mildly ambiguous questions:

It seems that the world has always been filled with people who are officially or unofficially committed to indentured servitude to other people–either in labor, or financially, or in some other way. So what is it that actually defines slavery?

Of course nobody would want to be a slave (unless perhaps you are from San Francisco ;)). And most would agree that things which have usually accompanied slavery are wrong-- such as racism, brutality, murder, rape etc. But if all of the bad things associated with slavery were removed, would slavery itself still be wrong?

Slavery the removal of a human being’s freedom of action, and is thus inherantly wrong.

A number of things come to mind. Although you can hypothesize about a benign form of slavery, this is roughly like arguing that heroin wouldn’t be so bad if people didn’t abuse it. Technically true, but impossible in the real world.

The first thing that’s wrong with slavery is that it’s easy to get into and hard to get out of. Consider being in debt to a loan shark. He doesn’t want you to actually pay off what you owe him- he wants you to be in hock to him forever, paying two, five, ten, twenty times what you originally owed him. What he wants is a slave, who has to work for him forever. This was how sharecropping, peonage, and other forms of debt bondage work; the rules are set up so that the debtor never gets out from under. In fact, the ancient Israelites had the tradition of the Jubilee, where every seven years debts were cancelled, in part to prevent just such an abuse.

The second thing wrong with slavery is it’s effect on society. I can’t quote verbatim, but Heinlein addressed this in one of his novels. I paraphrase what he wrote as: “Anything that is menial or dirty becomes ‘slave’s work’; unfit for a ‘noble’ to sully their hands with. They then begin to regard it as their God-given right to own other people as slaves”. Just consider the derogatory adjective “cotton-pickin’” that originated in the South.

The third thing, and the worst form of slavery, is when a particular caste or group of people are automatically relegated to slavery. In India you have the Untouchables, and in America you had Negro slavery. In both cases, members of the higher ranks of society were protected against ever sinking to the slave’s level, while the lower castes could never advance by any amount of merit.

Historically, slavery has been used by dominant cultures as a means of assimilating and destroying weaker, less advanced cultures, preying upon them while expanding the enslaver’s civilization. From ancient Egypt and Sumeria, through the Roman empire, the Arab expansion into Africa, and in turn the European domination of Africa and the Americas, up until the present day, where slavery is being used in places like the Sudan where it’s part of the strategy of the dominant Muslims in the north against the Christian and animistic peoples of the south.

In short, slavery is primarily a means for some people to gain power and wealth at the expense of others.

Isn’t it a circular argument to say that slavery is wrong because not having freedom is wrong? Why is the condition of not having freedom inherently wrong?


Lumpy, nice post. Although it’s difficult for me to see how the potential immoral effects of slavery necessarily mean that slavery itself is wrong. For instance, couldn’t your same arguments against slavery be used for other practices like, say, the practice of using an automobile?

Let’s see if I can parellel the points you made against slavery using automobile use instead.

1.) The practice of using an automobile is hard to get out of because the events of one’s life becomes dependent upon it’s continued use. Imagine if the United States suddenly went cold turkey without automobiles…

2.) The use of an automobile almost certainly had a negative effect on society including the physical suffering and death of countless young and old alike.

3.) Use of automobiles and the privileges it offers also has also has a “relegating” effect on a certain “groups of people", specifically the poor, the young, the uneducated, the physically and mentally disabled, non-English speakers, and some elderly–Most whom are not allowed to use automobiles because they either cannot afford to or are simply not allowed to. While those with socially accepted age, intelligence, and income etc use their automobiles as a segregating indicator of status and have the means to autonomously travel and participate independently in society, others are by default excluded from these privileges.

4.) Automobile use (through somewhat of a stretch of the imagination) can also be seen as a means of the wealthy elite to have dominance and a greater chance of survival than the less wealthy. This is true because more expensive cars are often more safe—as is the case with the giant SUV’s which most moderately wealthy people have at least one of.

In short, automobile use is primarily a means for some people to gain power and wealth at the expense of others.

Why is it at other people’s expense? Because our culture has amassed much wealth with the use of the automobile (just as was once the case, unfortunately, with slavery), and this increase in the wealth of individuals has been at the expense of others. Namely, the thousands who have died while in automobiles and the millions of people whose freedom and opportunity for success has been placed beneath that of others because of their inability to buy or use automobiles in an automobile-based society.

It’s not a circular argument to say that not being free is inherently wrong. Many philosophers assert that personal freedom is a natural right that every human being is born with.

As Locke, and later Jefferson, pointed out, all men are created equal and endowed with life, liberty, and (depending which one you read) property or the pursuit of happiness.

Using natural law, you don’t have to worry about logical niceties. :slight_smile:

[hijack]
I’d like to see a noncircular argument establishing the existence of “natural rights”.
[/hijack]

I think that natural rights are generally something, like reason, that we accept on faith without actually being able to prove rationally (impossible in the case of reason without begging the question, which is a logical flaw). Like reason, or the postulate that “A is A”, people have developed their opinions on these matters not from logical induction from proveable principles but from personal experience.

-waterj2, who seems to be sounding a lot like Libertarian recently

What defines slavery that separates it from the other things mentioned in your OP is the ownership of another person. Take away the brutality and other evils you mention (difficult to do, as Lumpy pointed out) and you still have people who do not own their own bodies and their own lives. Most people agree on at least two things - a person has a right to his own body, and all people are born equals (regardless of whether they think these are natural rights or rights agreed upon in human society.) These things aren’t compatible with slavery, so if you agree with them, then slavery is wrong. You say “Of course nobody would want to be a slave”; this reminded me of something from Frederick Douglass, this might not be the exact quote, but close: “Under the canopy of heaven, there does not exist a man who knows in his heart that slavery is wrong for him.”

(Should that be “right” for him? Paraphrasing a little and taking out some words, it reads: ‘there is no man who knows slavery is wrong for him.’ I’m a little confused.)

Otherwise, truly eloquent post.

Slavery is wrong because it is definitively coercive, and coercion (the bending of will absent free consent) is an ethical abomination.

Perhaps that is a subject for another thread, but the argument postulates life as property, and ownership as the authority to exercise rights. A man who believes his life came from nature will call them “natural rights”. A man who believes his life came from God will call them “God-given rights”.

Thanks, Spider Woman. I really screwed up the quote. It should be:
“There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.” From his speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”, July 5, 1852. Here is the entire speech.

BobT,

Oh well if they said it must be true, right? :slight_smile:

Gilligan,

Well, I’d vote for that—it sounds good to me. But why is it true? Why is owning one’s own body a right?

** Libertarian,**

Well, conscience tells me that the bending of will absent of consent feels like it is surly a bad thing. But aren’t all of our wills “bent” without our consent—at least to some degree? Whether or not we have free will, aren’t the choices of what we can do in a particular moment at least limited, if not determined, by antecedent events? If so, then our will is being bent without our consent and we are being coerced by our environment. How is our will being bent without our consent an ethical abomination? It seems like a natural part of having a will is (to some extent) the reality that it will be bent and limited by something or someone.

In a way, everything is relative unless the people involved in the discussion agree on very basic axioms; things they all hold or believe to be true.

Many of the values in our present society are based on values derived by consensus of the majority. In previous centuries, peoples held as slaves were (conveniently) considered to be inferior races that could not think well for themselves and therefore should be kept and used like other “lower” animals.

So if you want proof of the wrongness of slavery, Crazy Boob, that is not going to happen unless you make the concession of agreeing to the axioms on which the prevailing majority originally made the decision to believe slavery was wrong.

(Thanks for the link, Gilligan.)

Slavery is wrong the same way forcing anyone to do anything is wrong(except to a greater degree). My problem with slavery is that I think that no human being should be able to be worth more than another human being.

And of course theres the fact that no one wants to be a slave.

First of all, I don’t want to be enslaved. So I am in favor of a legal system where I cannot be enslaved. The simplest way to do that is to declare that no one can be enslaved. If some are slaves and some are free, then it seems pretty easy for me to be put into the slave category, even if it is a mistake.

Also, slavery is bad for society. If someone can be compelled to work for no compensation, then those who compell that work have an unfair advantage over those who work for themselves. Forced labor undercuts free labor.

It also stifles innovation. If we live in a society where all menial work is done by slaves, then people look at menial work as slave work. An ambitious person’s goal is not to work hard and create wealth, it is to be in the position to force others to work. The ambition is to do no work at all…only lower people work and create. This is detrimental to society.

Slavery obviously debases the slave. Rather than a free worker who works for his own benefit, you have a slave who works for his master’s benefit. Every job shirked, every corner cut, is one little ounce of wealth that the master does not steal from the slave. Slaves, by self interest will sabotage, destroy, delay, confuse, and neglect work. They are not part of the social order, the more they work the worse they are.

Slavery also debases the master. I don’t know about you, but I would prefer it if people who beat, rape, torture, and murder other human beings are punished, rather than encouraged. It doesn’t matter that I am free and the people being abused are slaves, being a master creates a monster.

Spider Woman

I don’t think this is necessarily true. I am not a relativist. Things can be objectively identified. You and I know that we are both exist and are conscious—I don’t believe these are relative axioms. And I don’t think that the issue of slavery is relative either. I think it is either objectively right or wrong even though it is subjectively viewed from different relative perspectives.

Asmodean

Well that would definitely be ideal, but when speaking economically in terms of “worth” there is always differing levels of worth of individuals. If you are a farmer and looking to hire workers, will you hire the 25 year old male in good shape or the 75 year old blind woman with an artificial hip? You will hire the man undoubtedly, because he would be worth more. There are hundreds of other real-world scenarios and even if it is poetic to say that all people are worth the same, in reality they are not. Some people are worth more for some things, others are worth more in other things, and some people—sad as it is to say—just aren’t worth very much at all in terms of purpose, usefulness, or even emotional attachment. But of course there is also, I assume, an inherent value to all human life that it itself has it’s own value. So in that respect, I agree. But slavery is an economic tool, not necessarily a tool for determining the worth a individuals or groups. And human “worth” in economic terms says that all people are not worth the same. So perhaps if I owed you a hundred thousand dollars, but didn’t have it nor any other way of paying, I could give you myself as a free laborer totally at the dispense of your will for a predetermined amount of time depending not on my inherent worth as a human being, but on my economic value.

** Lemur866**

There are many things that are agreed upon as being “good” that are in some ways bad for society.

As far as innovation goes, I think you are correct that slavery does directly inhibit technological and cultural progression such was the case with the ancient Greeks, and even in the American south. But historically, slavery also created the capital allowing a means for innovation. If it were not for slavery, there would have never been an industrial revolution in Europe or America—or at least it would have taken much, much longer. So in that way slavery does just the opposite, it encouraged innovation.

But keep in mind, I have no interest in “defending” slavery, but I do think that it’s interesting to hear what things if any can be show as evidence that it is actually wrong in and of itself.

You’ll have to let us know what axioms you’re starting with, and how you define objective right and wrong, before we can say how slavery is wrong within those axioms and definitions.

I think you ask the impossible – show me a thing that is wrong in and of itself, if you removed all the bad things associated with it (as suggested in the OP).

It’s useless to brush aside people’s objections to slavery by saying “yeah, but besides those objections, is it wrong?” You’re never going to get a satisfactory answer, because there are only two ways I can think of to show something is “wrong” – either you claim it is wrong based on some axiom, or you claim it’s wrong by showing how its effects violate some other axiom you hold. CB, you’ve denied us both ways.

Of course, my powers of imagination might not be up to the task, and there could be some way to satisfy you that I can’t come up with, but for now, I’m pretty confident you’re sending us on a fool’s errand.

[Ah, Preview Reply shows me that Gilligan got to the same point faster and shorter.]

First of all, I think this is a really interesting thread, Crazy Boob. :slight_smile:

And second, I guess it just depends on how the society views people. Like how criminals, and rapists, and murderers and the like are all “bad”- would it be all right to sell them into slavery? And what about in a family unit, if your parents allot (sp?) chores to you, but with no pay? Is that slave labor?

Another thing- from the point of view of the people in charge, it probably doesn’t really seem to be slavery. White southerners often thought their slaves were happy and well taken care of. And if normal people were to put criminals into slavery they would assume that they deserved it. And parents forcing their kids to do chores would say that their kids really don’t have such a bad deal…so its all from the point of view of the slave owner, really.

Crazy Boob

It is one thing for nature, an amoral context, to bend a your will, but quite another for some other man, a moral being like yourself, to do so. Surely you don’t believe that men should act like hurricanes.