Were slaves necessary to the developpment of civilizations ?

[Julien]

Do you think slaves in the Antiquity were a condition to the developpment of Greek democracy and later on Roman Republic and Empire ? Without slaves working for them, free citizens of Athens wouldn't have had the time to philosophize and think about politics.

I am awaiting your opinion, so dear to me...

 

[Juize]

No.
I have very good explanation, but fortunatly, I'm very bad engrish spooker.

 

[Sodak]

Not at all. Civilizations sprung up all over the place without slave labour being a necessary ingredient. Regarding the Greek city-state, I don't know.

In a nutshell: What is really needed for civilization advancement is agricultural surplus - good farming, many farmers, a centralized authority (even if only on the local level) to organize the scheme, and specialized workers who eat food they don't produce. In return, they produce goods common laborers do not have the time, materials, or skills to make themselves. Commerce follows, with the accumulation of wealth, allowing still greater expansion of innovation. And so on. Slaves may be a helpful element in some histories, but by no means necessary.

(Don't nitpick the generalizations, entire volumes are written on this topic!)

 

[Juize]

Originally posted by Sodak
(..)In a nutshell: What is really needed for civilization advancement is agricultural surplus - good farming, many farmers, a centralized authority (even if only on the local level) to organize the scheme, and specialized workers who eat food they don't produce. In return, they produce goods common laborers do not have the time, materials, or skills to make themselves. Commerce follows, with the accumulation of wealth, allowing still greater expansion of innovation. And so on. Slaves may be a helpful element in some histories, but by no means necessary.(..)

If I understood this korrektly, You have exactly the same opanion as Mee.

 

[Knight-Dragon]

Slavery is definitely not necessary for the development of civilisation. In ancient China, slavery went out of fashion by the advert of the first empire. Actually it ceased centuries before the empire.
Cos around the time of the Warring States, the most successful state apparatus (the Qin police state) of all developed a direct link betw the state and the peasant body so middling aristocrats were cut out. And the state decided that deploying its peasant citizenry on its lands and collecting tax directly on the produce was more effective than parcelling out lands to middlemen (i.e. aristocrats) and letting them exploit the land in return for military obligations (feudalism). So slavery died out cos it's one of the means the Zhou aristocrats of old used to exploit lands in the past.
In short, it's simply more cost-effective to pay wages for the days the worker work rather than support the slave thru out his entire life I think.

 

[joespaniel]

Slavery is one of the most evil concepts man has ever devized. It is only a hair worse than the serfdom that existed in the middle ages. At best, it is the rich getting richer off the backs of the wretched.

It is the embodiment of 'superiorism', of one race or class over another. In short, making people into animals, or worse, property.

The worst example in modern history being the Nazi policy of 'master race, and the 'untermuchen' (sub-humans). The enslavement and systematic extinction of entire races of people.

Are race A really any more deserving than race B? Europe and America struggled with the moral implications of it. Arguably, terrible wars were faught over it, and its economic impact.

I'm glad I was born here. Even now, in some countries, the class you are born into is the one you will probably stay in your whole life. At least here, if you want to work your ass off and get wealthy, you can. Theres great opportunity. And, sadly, we must always remember some of this was built on the backs of enslaved peoples.