Without industrialization would we still have slavery?

[sophie]

A major component of labor relations under capitalism for Marx, and indeed what makes it distinct from the systems of serfdom and slavery which proceeded it was the necessary “freedom” of the laborer. It must be entered into voluntarily by the worker, as contrasted with, say, serfdom, where your labor obligation to a lord is inherited and cannot be freely withdrawn. It is certainly akin to slavery as it is a system whereby relations of power are used to coerce an underclass to perform alienated labor to extract surplus value, but the particulars of the relations themselves and consequent logic are quite distinct.

I will say that people are getting a little too comfy playing the semantic game where they conflate “work” as in communal labor or necessary reproductive labor and the sort of coercive, exploitative labor which exists under capitalism. While it is certainly true that some labor is necessary to literally produce or gather food, build and maintain structures, etc, this is a far cry from the hierarchical alienated labor which capitalism necessitates. And, moreover, it’s simply not true, either in history or in present day to assert that such extractive labor practices - even in the abstract - are universally true as a matter of the human condition. Indeed, among all egalitarian hunter gatherer societies so far studied we do not generally see a requirement to work as a precondition for the granting of access to food/shelter/etc. In such societies, those in need are simply provided for those needs, irrespective of surplus value previously contributed.

It is part of the insidious nature of capitalism to frame its mechanisms as timeless and universal, when they are, in reality, purely historic, and one of the great contributions of Marxism has been to always situate capitalism squarely in that historical context.

 

[Lexicus]

Alright. I think it's a pretty big "we live in a society" level continuum to compare working at McDonalds to being a chattel, but if that's the line we're working with that's the line we're working with! Company-store sort of gets closer, but that almost always comes part and parcel with things like the Cherry Mine Disaster.

E.g. see https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ld-we-still-have-slavery.680038/post-16355497

 

[aelf]

There is a reason Marx identified workers and not slaves as the revolutionary protagonist of history.

I don't think it necessarily follows that because one is subject to wage slavery, one is a slave. It depends on your understanding of the term "slave", of course.

 

[Hygro]

Would you apply this level of relativity to something like racism? They are going to die, people are always going to be in-group vs. out-group oriented, and there will always be material scarcity (leading to breeding grounds for racism r.e. the in-group out-group mentality)? I'm not using this as a gotcha, I'm trying to understand if this is your worldview generally, or a lens you're specifically applying to the product of capital vs. worker effort.

Because it reads like you're saying "it isn't as bad as you're saying it is, and to claim that it is comparable to slavery is a dilution of the term".

Like, to compare my situation to slavery is so stupid that someone trying to rally me on the topic is an enemy to intellectual honesty.

We will never not have some tiny amount of racism echoing in our society but for certain it can be reduced to something trivial that only a jackass would say it "it's as bad now as it ever was." Actually that's a jackass thing to say now, the difference being that it's bad now too.

So if you're saying "because survival and coercion meet at the point of you needing to find work, that's the same as slavery", you can argue that way infinitely and forever, there will never be an escape, you can always say no matter how fair it is that it's the same as slavery. And that's stupid. Nor is there an offered reason why our experiences should be seen the same as slavery in particular. Just congruency lines of "I need to survive longer and the way I do involves social coercion." or "I can't not participate and a slave can't not participate."

 

[Farm Boy]

E.g. see https://forums.civfanatics.com/thre...ld-we-still-have-slavery.680038/post-16355497

Ah, circular thinking, instead!



For those darn moderates the lines bend back on each other to make a circle, anyhow, so it's not like I'm coming after you for it.

 

[Gorbles]

Like, to compare my situation to slavery is so stupid that someone trying to rally me on the topic is an enemy to intellectual honesty.

Just in case I'm missing something, this is a hypothetical? Because I agree. I've repeatedly said my own circumstances aren't the same, too.

Actually that's a jackass thing to say now, the difference being that it's bad now too.

Right, so the difference is you think that's bad while you think this (labour and wage relations) aren't bad. Or aren't bad enough. Not trying to misrepresent you, I understand the distinction.

So if you're saying "because survival and coercion meet at the point of you needing to find work, that's the same as slavery", you can argue that way infinitely and forever, there will never be an escape, you can always say no matter how fair it is that it's the same as slavery. And that's stupid.
Nor is there an offered reason why our experiences should be seen the same as slavery in particular. Just congruency lines of "I need to survive longer and the way I do involves social coercion." or "I can't not participate and a slave can't not participate."

I don't think it's stupid at all, and I think schlaufuchs' post applies here. It's one thing to disagree, but are you so opposed to the concept of the working poor under capitalism that you'd call a comparison to slavery stupid?

Also, again. I didn't say "the same as". Been over that one with lexi already.

So what if it's "just" congruency lines? If that was the point of agreement, would that not be enough to warrant the critical comparison? Do you think that wage-labour relations are in a positive place? The value of labour vs. compensation has been awfully skewed for at least a few decades now, no?

 

[Hygro]

My entire beef is with unscaled congruency as suficient for category where scale is the most meaningful difference.

Wage slavery is a great metaphor for the circumstances of some, and much more normal in England and USA’s past. I would also draw big differences between my current and past circumstances. In all events I have those with unilateral power above me and in none have I escape the basic rules, but it would be an error to call them the same.

I’m not accusing you of making that error. I read your posts and your likes.

But short of a presorted distribution of resources provided by a benevolent post singularity AI, I haven’t even seen anyone imagine a viable work relation that doesn’t involve some kind inescapable social demand.

16 hour total, 4 day work weeks with a huge welfare state managed democratically and efficiently will be so much freer than today, but you’re still going to get the occasional blowhard who thinks it’s an attack on freedom and a coercion comparable to slavery.

 

[Gorbles]

16 hour total, 4 day work weeks with a huge welfare state managed democratically and efficiently will be so much freer than today, but you’re still going to get the occasional blowhard who thinks it’s an attack on freedom and a coercion comparable to slavery.

Surely the difference here though is we literally have data on 40+ hour weeks. The conclusions are generally that it's bad for us. So automation became a thing. But now automation is problematic because it's been weaponised to deprive labour of leverage under capitalism. The worst of both worlds.

In any case, I'd like to think that someone thinking a 16 hour 4-day week is comparable to chattel slavery, or even the the zero hour nonsense we're currently seeing people ground to a paste under, is a thought that will be able to be handily disproven. Heck, it can be disproven now.

The same goes for social demand. The argument isn't the presence of demand - it's the level of demand without fair compensation that lets it become exploitation. And if we agree on exploitation, the rest kinda seems a bit semantic (in good faith).

 

[Angst]

i'm gonna be an idiot and just ask exactly what we're arguing about. feels like there was an early comparison that was picked up because of semantics, the conversation being semantic and not positional, but maybe i'm missing something. there's a lot of nuanced inputs as to the coercive nature of capitalist labour, so... some people dislike the comparisons to slavery, others compare it to slavery?

is gorbles calling it slavery, literally? there's a difference between comparison and equivocating. machinae noted that there's even within slavery several different facets of it (similarly to the nature of genocide; always bad, but not all of it is its "epitome" state).

people generally agree, no?, that:
- work is an inherent part of life
- but the current work environment is abusive and to large degrees involuntary
- but it's still not classifiable as slavery because it does not imply property of a person

so what's the rest of the discussion about? are people discussing the nuances for insight, or are they trying to display other people's positions are off?

i know there's a lot of stuff in the thread and a lot can probably just be found by browsing it, but my eyes are blurring over. sorry about that x)

 

[Gorbles]

so what's the rest of the discussion about?

Trying to find out! It could just be coming at semantics from different perspectives, but maybe there's something else as well.

 

[Absolution]

Europe didn't have it during the Middle Ages.

Then we can restrict the question tk a capitalist society.
Pre-industrial early capitalist societies tended to have slaves oversees, didn't they?

 

[EnglishEdward]

It seems that there is an interesting debate about prison labour going on in the USA.

US midterm elections: Why five states have slavery on the ballot in 2022

The 1865 US slavery ban doesn't cover everyone. Voters will decide whether to keep the exemptions.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[Plains-Cow]

I prefer building workshops to slavery, but I find myself running slavery for long stretches these days than I used to. Caste system is still pretty good though; state property is best.

 

[Arwon]

Every time I see this thread it makes me double take because we... still have slavery

 

[FriendlyFire]

I doubt it - not here at any rate, slavery was not really practiced ever to my knowledge, even before undustrialization.

Wasnt there some hand chopping ?
Officially there wasnt slavery, but ..... there was an unofficial participation with the slave trade

 

[innonimatu]

And if we experienced a massive energy crisis/technological regression would slavery return?

Slavery is both an economic and a political institution. An economic regression does not necessarily lead back to slavery. I could give you numerous historical examples. The americans here can consider the settler&frontier ethos in the US. Only a part of the US had any place for slaves even before the country got industrialized. Different ideologies and social structures influenced how resources were allocated and whether or not slavery was "attractive".

We could look back into that old empire that the americans modeled themselves on, Rome. The ideal of republican Rome was the citizen farmer, and while they must have had some slavery early on from their numerous wars the mass slavery of the later empire came together with the relaxing of laws on land ownership and the creation of the latifundia. 2000 years ago or 200 years ago, different political structures allowed for different economic structures and made a difference whether or not there was slavery.

I would argue that politically slavery depends of there being people available to enslave. And gets extinguished where thee is no ready source of replenishment for slaves. Then we can argue on how different some forms of serfdom are - and that is an interesting question leading right to what @Gorbles answered to you. But here are imo big differences between chattel slavery and land serfdom. They're not the same thing.

I think you're overlooking the word "here" in Snowgerry's post. His location is given as "Belgium", and it's broadly true that slavery died out in Northern Europe during the Medieval period.

The countries like Belgium that participated quite happily (and on a large scale) in the slave trade can pat themselves on the back for never having slaves in the metropole. Part of the broader blindness of many Europeans to the racism of their own societies.

@Traitorfish you may want to read up in late renaissance and baroque Europe, right before the enlightenment. Black slaves as house servants were a thing in norther courts and noble houses. There may or may not have been sales used on agricultural and industrial works. In southern Europe there certainly was a sizeable population of slaves imported from Africa right until the 18th century. Never as great as that of the colonies of course, it took only about a century and a half for their descendants to meld indistinguishably into the rest of the population. But there was slavery. There was no idyllic great freedom in christian medieval Europe - pagans and heretics (including muslims) were fair game. Same as those others did to the medieval europeans. Italian cities imported lost of east european slaves during their glory days in the late medieval era. And even while they were subjects of the Holy Roman Empire. In the south the traditions of slavery, and the attendant legislation, came down from the era of muslim expansion in the Mediterranean and got constantly replenished by war prisoners of the ongoing wars there. And from chattel slave trade. Some of it must have come overland, not just through the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Enslaving and ransoming war prisoners, slave raids from the Barbary corsairs with whole town populations taken as loot, were everyday life in southern Europe impacting at least into France. Perhaps further. Enslavement of africans later was a continuation of this nasty tradition from the Mediterranean.

I suspect that in eastern Europe there was also a continued tradition of war enslavement but don't know much of history there. Central Europe is a mess of multiple legislation depending on which city one was in. But at least the french court in the 17th century has plenty of records of african slaves, and Paris is a northern Europe city. Exotic slaves were gifts between europan nobles across the continent, and so african slaves appear in many paintings from the early modern period. Louis XIII had codified slave trade in France, which certainly authorized holding slaves inside France.

It seems that studying and publishing on early modern slavery in northern Europe is kind of Verbotten even now... Despite it being obvious that at the very least house slaves were brought by those involved in colonial activities, and that slave traders were based on so many ports there.

 

[innonimatu]

Europe didn't have it during the Middle Ages.

In short: this is flat out wrong, but it's a widespread idea so it's unsurprising you would believe it. Europe very much had slavery throughout the whole middle ages. Not everywhere, but certainly in the most "developed" portions: Italy. And in the most "backwards": the north with the vikings and the east that supplied so many slaves into the Mediterranean. The Arabs in the south also expanded slavery across the Mediterranean.

It may be more accurate to say that slavery nearly died out at the time of the collapse of the late Roman Empire. But that collapse was accompanied by numerous rural rebellions that very much look like old-style slave uprisings, so was late roman servitude slavery? And did the breakup of the empire into barbarian kingdoms dispossess the senatorial elite who had owned the latifundia? and put an end to the late empire servitude?
On the first, I think no. On the second, I think no. But written records are very poor. Of the West we have enough to know that the gallic and iberian late roman nobility changed, didn't disappear, and seemed to go feudal, marry into the new rulers and monopolize the noble and clergy offices. Italy fell into near anarchy. So did Britain, but that one was fazed with the depredations of the vikings, and new forms of enslavement.
The Church must have had an effect countering the idea of enslaving people but didn't end it. There were plenty of wars and thus a steady stream of new slaves, religiously acceptable when they were not christian. Byzantium did the same thing with the invaders in the Balkans. They had to do something with all the war prisoners who were hard to just integrate as meek subjects... This is not to say every conquered people were made slaves. The warriors often were. When untrustworthy the alternatives were to either deport them far away or kill them all. And if deporting why not sell to slave traders? It was a very practical solution to a problem that people had in the middle ages. Only moral qualms - religion - might have been a barrier?

Talking about slavery, which is the subject of the thread, people in other continents had the same problem: what to do with war prisoners? The common options were enslavement, from the dawn of history until very recent times indeed (think of all the german POW forced to work repairing the destruction for years after 1945 all over central Europe). Or mass slaughter, think Assyrian objective lessons (terror) at the very start of written history, down to several recent polities in Africa - Dahomey, Zulu (the San weren't massacred only by the germans), etc.

 

[Snowygerry]

Wasnt there some hand chopping ?
Officially there wasnt slavery, but ..... there was an unofficial participation with the slave trade

In Congo ? That was after the industrial revolution...

Belgian law didn't apply there untill 1908. But even before that Leopold opposed slavery, even went to war against the slavers whom he considered competitors.

BBC World Service | The Story of Africa

The history of the continent from an African perspective. With hundreds of pages, and multi-media, the BBC investigates the events and characters that have made African history from the origins of man to the independence of nations.

www.bbc.co.uk

That is not to say the system that replaced it was better, it wasn't, but it wasn't slavery, legally speaking.


Edit,

Now obviously legal slavery did exist here at one point, the Salic Laws [the oldest post-Roman written laws we have here] account for free men, unfree men, freedmen and indeed slaves.

So we know they existed - but there is no evidence the slave trade had any noticeable economic impact here, like it did around the Med, Africa or the Americas.

Gradually during the Middle Ages, 'slaves' disappear from legal texts, but the distinction between free and unfree persists even as citizen rights are established from 11th century onwards.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

From what I've heard there is more slaves today than anytime before in human history (however the world population is much larger today), so slavery is still very much real even today.