Modern Slavery

[Brian Peacock]

A wage slave is still a slave.

When a system you have no influence over forces you to sell yourself in order to survive, then you are a slave - and the people who operate that system are your slave masters and gang bosses.

It's in the material interests of the slave master to make you believe that there's no alternative to your slavery - because maintaining that fiction ensures their power and your ongoing subservience - to make you believe the system which they define and operate is just a fact of life; just the way things are; normal; natural; or even that it's the best kind of system there could or can ever be; that it's a system which somehow bestows virtue upon all who 'choose' to take part; that resistance is futile.

I'm beginning to think that pretty much everything of significance in society is geared towards maintaining the state of our own subjugation.

[Svartalf]

well said, I remember that I felt enslaved back when I worked at a drudge office job for a pittance.

[rainbow]

Workers will be replaced with robots, so where is the problem?

[Brian Peacock]

The bodger's turning jig was replaced by the steam lathe. The plougman's rig was replaced by the steam-powered drag chain. This just means that bodgers and ploughmen had to find new slave masters and gang bosses.

[JimC]

However unequal the current relationship between labor and capital may be, and however depressing being a faceless employee may be, it does not really compare to the utter degradation and lack of freedom involved in real, historical slavery.

[Svartalf]

I'm not so sure, there are many, many cases where people feel trapped inside their drudge, because they don't know how they could make ends meet if they just put on their hat and went away. It's not easy to try to improve one's lot when one does not know how he'll get his next meal.

[Brian Peacock]

However unequal the current relationship between labor and capital may be, and however depressing being a faceless employee may be, it does not really compare to the utter degradation and lack of freedom involved in real, historical slavery.

In what way? In what way is having no choice about, freedom within, or power to influence a system that operates to maintain the slave/master relationship not a 'real' kind of subjugation? Isn't 'historical slavery' just the name we give to past forms of slavery - or do you think it is a qualitatively different form of slavery?

[Joe]

Modern slavery statistics.

• At any given time in 2016, an estimated 40.3 million people are in modern slavery, including 24.9 million in forced labour and 15.4 million in forced marriage.
• It means there are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1,000 people in the world.
• 1 in 4 victims of modern slavery are children.
• Out of the 24.9 million people trapped in forced labour, 16 million people are exploited in the private sector such as domestic work, construction or agriculture; 4.8 million persons in forced sexual exploitation, and 4 million persons in forced labour imposed by state authorities.
• Women and girls are disproportionately affected by forced labour, accounting for 99% of victims in the commercial sex industry, and 58% in other sectors

Source: Global Estimates of Modern Slavery: Forced Labour and Forced Marriage , Geneva, September 2017.

I'd share more, but I've got to run to work. Can't be late, you know.

[pErvinalia]

I'm free!

[Svartalf]

The happy man doesn't own a shirt. -purported Chinese saying

[Brian Peacock]

I know what Jim means when he says that modern slavery, however unjust, is not like so-called 'real' 'historical slavery'. He means that a state-sponsored system of kidnapping and forced labour is not as common as it used be and is pretty much outlawed among the Western nations. But beside my initial point that the neo-liberal economic environment forces all participants into some form of slave/master relationship, and that the system perpetuates itself to the benefit of those with the right level of capital resources and to the detriment of everybody else, it doesn't mean that 'real' slavery is a thing purely of the past in our modern, supposedly enlightened world.

The following few links are from a cursory Goggle search. I had, and have, no intention of singling out the US - and indeed to do so is somewhat unhelpful I feel - but nonetheless the top results for 'modern forms of slavery' did feature the US rather heavily. This may be simply because in the West people are freer to investigate, discuss and publish on these issues.

• Serving Time Should Not Mean ‘Prison Slavery’ : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/opin ... very-.html
• Taking Freedom: Modern-Day Slavery in America's Prison Workforce : https://psmag.com/social-justice/taking ... ay-slavery
• More US Child Workers Die in Agriculture Than in Any Other Industry : https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/12/04/mor ... r-industry
• China’s Forced Labor Problem : https://thediplomat.com/2018/03/chinas- ... r-problem/

[laklak]

Freedom is an illusion, we are all slaves.

[Seabass]

However unequal the current relationship between labor and capital may be, and however depressing being a faceless employee may be, it does not really compare to the utter degradation and lack of freedom involved in real, historical slavery.

In what way?

[Brian Peacock]

As terrible as that is it does suggest there is a qualitative difference between 'real' 'historical slavery' and the modern expression of wage slavery I mentioned. However, all that means is that some kinds of slavery are better, which is to say less abusive, than other kinds of slavery. And while nobody is routinely flayed at work for back-talking the boss these days what does that observation actually bring to the table? That we shouldn't complain because things could be worse? That we should be thankful that there are some brakes on capitals relationship to labour? That wage slavery is not brutalising or abusive - just perhaps in more subtle ways?

What I'm asking, in a round about sort of way, is: is any degree of slavery acceptable, and if so what is it?

I am grateful that labour movements of the early to mid-1900s acted as a brake on capital's more malignant, destructive impulses, but when we look around the Western world today we see conservatives and neo-liberals in power, all eager to service capital's base impulses by taking their foot off those regulatory brakes, and then throwing the pedal out the window. Where does that lead if not to the increased brutalisation of labour in the service of another's idea of abstract value?


Independent Review of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (UK): Final Report (PDF)

[Seabass]

An employer doesn't own an employee. An employee can quit his job and go find another. By your reasoning, anyone who isn't either a CEO or living off the land and doing his own hunting and gathering is a slave. You're stretching the definition of "slavery" beyond its usefulness. You can criticize capitalism without resorting to semantics.