aelf
Ashen One
Didn't peg you for someone who'd question the concept of wage slavery.
Without industrialization would we still have slavery?
- Thread starter Narz
- Start date
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I think it's important when something is bad, you don't rewrite what is worse as "same" unless the discussion is made better with that level of abstraction and category collapse.
Scale differences can be more meaning than congruencies.
Scale differences can be more meaning than congruencies.
Lexicus
Deity
"Wage slavery" =/= "wage laborers are identical to slaves"
aelf
Ashen One
How are we getting confused here? Where in my post was it phrased as such?
The exact words were "slaves in some form" and "a form of slavery", which are very far from saying it's the same as chattel slavery.
Unless you're arguing that wage slavery isn't really slavery at all, which I would certainly expect from some posters here, but not some others.
Rg339
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2022
- Messages
- 308
Without industrialization, I think yes, slavery is more prominent. But I’ve not studied it at all extensively.
I don’t think it is to me so much about a shortage of labor. It’s about overall resource scarcity.
With high scarcity, competition over resources arguably increases, and things like slavery might be more likely to be perceived as grim necessities. Industrialization, to some extent, alleviates scarcity, and some of the more ruthless behaviors meant to increase competitive fitness are no longer tolerated by the majority of people(who are hardwired to be at least somewhat cooperative, when practicable).
I don’t think it is to me so much about a shortage of labor. It’s about overall resource scarcity.
With high scarcity, competition over resources arguably increases, and things like slavery might be more likely to be perceived as grim necessities. Industrialization, to some extent, alleviates scarcity, and some of the more ruthless behaviors meant to increase competitive fitness are no longer tolerated by the majority of people(who are hardwired to be at least somewhat cooperative, when practicable).
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
I think it’s just like when Lexicus and I are talking about medieval Europe. I know he’s saying mode of production and he knows I mean trade, two different drivers and two different levels of how it drives and shapes society. But the clarification is there.
Lexicus
Deity
I understand the concept of wage slavery as an analogy between wage labor and slavery, not as a serious assertion that wage labor is a type of slavery. I would say the best way to think about this is concentric circles - the innermost is slavery in its variations, then unfree or bonded labor (which would include debt peonage and convict servitude among others) and then most broadly relations founded on domination or unequal power which would include the employment relationship.
Also FWIW, in US history, some of the biggest proponents of identifying waged labor with slavery were proslavery advocates in the south
The closest we get to slavery in the industrialized World today, are probably prison inmates serving time somewhere where they essentially have no rights, no freedom and receive no pay for the work they perform for the state or prison while incarcerated.
Low wage workers living from paycheck to paycheck is bad enough, but we can't align that with slavery.
Low wage workers living from paycheck to paycheck is bad enough, but we can't align that with slavery.
Rg339
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2022
- Messages
- 308
There’s a memory jogger.
“I hold then, that there never has yet existed a wealthy and civilized society in which one portion of the community did not, in point of fact, live on the labor of the other.”
As true today as it was when Calhoun said it. I suppose it provokes thought as to how humanity leaves that condition ASAP.
Lexicus
Deity
Almost all of the "ideology" of American conservatism can indeed be traced straight back to Calhoun. But a lot of propaganda centered around saying slavery was actually more humane than wage labor because they were the same thing but the master fed and boarded his slaves whereas the wage laborers were free to starve
Is that really a choice? "choosing" to be homeless and being able to buy no food seems more like implicit coercion.
I mean, all of this is essentially just semantics. If there is a key difference that separates historical slavery, that should be explicitly clarified, and the need for a separate word or phrase argued.
But surely this is - as you say - merely propaganda? Being free to starve isn't much freedom to do anything. You're still bound by capital, that's the entire point.
Are we really at the point where we're identifying different forms of subjugation that could be argued as similar to chattel slavery as being different on such technicalities? Why aren't we attempting to understand the shared commonalities? I could understand it if there was obvious bad faith, but of the replies I'm reading I see differences in opinion, attitude even, but people are expressing things they come by honestly.
Bestbank Tiger
Deity
The right to leave your job is an extremely significant distinction.
The fact that you aren't the property of a plantation owner, subject to being bought and sold, is an extremely significant distinction.
amadeus
Bishop of Bio-Dome
I’m having more a difficult time imagining the world without industrialization—does all the iron, coal, copper, zinc, oil, etc. just disappear? (Keep some of the iron for the earth’s core, please.)
Northern American colonies abolished codified slavery prior to the advent of the steam engine, so I’m guessing that with or without it the institutionalized form of slavery, without touching on the debate of wage slavery or contemporary human trafficking, was on the way out in the long term.
Northern American colonies abolished codified slavery prior to the advent of the steam engine, so I’m guessing that with or without it the institutionalized form of slavery, without touching on the debate of wage slavery or contemporary human trafficking, was on the way out in the long term.
Yeah, right to leave is more what I'd consider arguable. "I'm" not free to leave my job unless I want to make an active choice to have my children starve. I'm putting this in quotes because it doesn't specifically apply directly to my personal situation. But that's the choice a lot of people face. It's not a choice when the downside is there are no other jobs available and you suffer direct and immediate material harm for doing so. Not really in any but the most technical of senses. We're trying to get at shared understanding here, not win points over legal definitions. I'd like to think we all know the relevant legal definitions, here.
Being a property of someone else, on the other hand, is an inarguable difference, thanks. And I'd agree it's extremely important.
But I'd also argue there are modern parallels given how disposable a workforce is increasingly treated as being in a capitalist society (outside of the literal examples of modern slavery that have already been noted in-thread). I think the problem is we're discussing a bunch of things generally, instead of being specific about the separate things we're grouping together. The comparisons aren't all going to be the same.
Bestbank Tiger
Deity
I was thinking from the perspective of single with no kids. I could always say "screw this" and go live off the grid. Might come to regret it but I have the option.
For someone with more responsibilities/obligations, they can still quit, but it's harder - they better have something else in hand.
If I were single with no kids (I mentioned this elsewhere, today actually), I'd have a very different set of options before me. But assuming I was still working the minimum-wage zero-hour contract I worked back in my uni days, and I have the family I have now, no, I wouldn't have any option. It wouldn't be about it being harder, it would be about literally not being on a liveable wage (especially if we assume that everything else played out the same, including the current economic mess).
I mean, sure, I guess you could say "you could choose to make your family homeless and starve", but that's the kind of behaviour that gets social services involved and your children taken away from you, etc, et al. It's not a rational act.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Again there is no social formation truly free of coercion, scale matters. Categorical congruency is insufficient for a compression of concept.
Nor am I claiming there is. I understand that it is your position that categorical similarities are not enough, but I disagree with it. How would I go about demonstrating the argument, or is that it?
stinkubus
Emperor
- Joined
- Aug 21, 2016
- Messages
- 1,845
If we are talking about the US it should be understood that as it was happening industrialization was viewed as a process which was, in effect, turning free people into slaves. Wage work was seen as a form of bondage; this tidbit was included in Lincoln's Republican platform.
Slavery did not end in the US because industrialists could not make use of it. It ended because its maintenance as an institution became irreconcilable with continued westward expansion which was the only mechanism by which class conflict could be resolved during that era of American history.
Slavery did not end in the US because industrialists could not make use of it. It ended because its maintenance as an institution became irreconcilable with continued westward expansion which was the only mechanism by which class conflict could be resolved during that era of American history.
Snowygerry
Deity
That certainly held true in times before there was a developed monetary system, when you went to plunder foreign lands there was often little in material wealth to carry away.
Slaves could be moved to the homeland and sold for cash there.
For the Romans and Vikings it was a method a moving wealth, as much as a source of cheap labour. Roman slave traders simply followed the legions around.
Presumably the later custom of extracting ransom is also derived from this method.
Last edited:
