Rendering Unto Caesar: The Essence of Slavery‏‏

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

People who have lived their entire lives in a slavish existence have no experience of what it means to live freely. If someone were to tell them that what they call freedom is actually quite unfree, they might respond with strong emotions. Their reaction could be so severe that they kill or injure the individual who delivers the message. They might go so far as to claim religious persecution and have the messenger brought up on charges of crimes against humanity. In a previous time and place, the messenger would be strapped to a pole atop a pile of flaming fuel or tacked to an artificial tree.

If you ask a chattel slave about slavery, he might speak of brutal punishment and loss of friends and family. If you ask a wage slave about slavery, he might speak of meager compensation and cutthroat competition. If you ask a chattel slave owner about slavery, he might speak of the innate inferiority of the laboring race. If you ask a wage slave employer about slavery, he might speak of the fear of labor organizers and the need for out-sourcing. None of this gets to the essence of slavery because it considers only surface phenomena.

Plato described the essence of slavery as an artificial system of deception. The chattel slave is deceived into fearing punishment. The chattel slave owner is deceived into controlling people. The wage slave is deceived into practicing cutthroat competition. The wage slave employer is deceived into sending his work to a more despotic domain. All of them are stuck in an artificial trap of slavish existence. Where Aristotle debits slavishness to human nature, Plato firmly places the blame on social structures that condition people to think and act in a narrow way.

What does this have to do with politics today? There is no slavery here and now. The problems of coerced and forced labor have all been solved by the miracles of modern science. Do you really believe that or do you see some room for improvement? A recent Time magazine article on labor conditions in India do not agree with that assessment. India is a hotbed of American and European outsourcing.

Links: Plato's famous cave analogy. Nilanjana Bhowmick on labor conditions in India.

Comments

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

If someone were to tell them that what they call freedom is actually quite unfree ... They might go so far as to claim religious persecution and have the messenger brought up on charges of crimes against humanity

Bullshit. When has this happened?

What does this have to do with politics today?

Oh. I had been waiting with baited breath for the part where you attempt to justify your pseudo-philosophical non-political nonsense.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

Just because it has not happened yet does not mean that it is impossible. Fundamentalists love to scream "religious persecution" when they are prevented from persecuting people.

Thank you for your words of encouragement. They put a smile on my face.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't know. I think there's some truth to it. Seems a good explanation of why so many working-class Americans actually believe trickle-down economics actually works.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

The US has been trying to free people from Allah for quite a few years now and have committed plenty of war crimes to that end. They're trying to stop "radical Islam" with bullets; if that isn't religious persecution then I don't know what is.

I know that it all sounds very hyperbolic, but that's mainly because of the lens through which we view the world. With different lenses on it's very easy to read the War on Terror as a War on Islam and Western meddling in the Islamic world as trying to enslave them into the ideals of the West when they're quite happy with their Sharia.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

Not agreeing nor disagreeing with your stance. Just wanted to let you know it's 'bated', not 'baited'. Think 'abated': to hold in abeyance.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

The Garden of Eden was a real scam, because they had no freedomz! It was all a rigged game. And that slacker Eve, SHEESH!

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I prefer the Assyrian version of the Fall. It features Adam and Steve rather than Adam and Eve.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

Michael Cera is looking rough here.

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

Lol.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

So... "There's slavery today, just look at this article about India for proof". Is that it?

OK. Next...

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

No, there is more than that, but it seems to have bypassed your focal point.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Oh. It's Monday again. Reliable like clockwork.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

In California we have child undocumented migrant workers from Mexico who pick food they do not eat and do not attend school.

If that is not slavery....well...I guess there are no whips, not often anyway. NAFTA was like a needle sucking blood from their hearts.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

We also had a Roman archbishop who insisted that nuns conform to the Vatican party line. If you have read Champlain's description of Mexico under the thumb of conquistador clerics in the sixteenth century, you have probably seen the obvious connection.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

It's only slavery if you do not have a choice. If you agree to work for shit wages, that's terrible, but it's not slavery.

Coerced is not forced.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

False. There's nothing in what slavery is that requires being forced, kidnapped, etc. in order for it to be slavery.

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

You say that like all slaves don't have the option to kill themselves and be free from slavery. Nothing is forced, ever, nothing. Everything anyone ever does is their own free choice. Now, they may be made to feel like they have no other choice, they may be coerced into believing that there is only one option, but there is always another option. To say someone forced you to do anything denies your own free will. Sartre (who populised this idea) was in a freakin' Nazi POW camp and still saw it as his decision to be there; after all, all he has to do is make a run for it and *boom* he's dead; he doesn't even have to kill himself, someone else will do the hard work for him.

So is there really much difference between "do this job or I will whip you" and "do this job or you won't have anywhere to live or anything to eat"; I mean, the first dude has something eat and somewhere to live.

[novapsyche.livejournal.com]

So what is your position on white slavery? Most folks would say that is merely coercion.

(I ask this as a proponent of decriminalized prostitution. I just happen to believe that coercion in the industry does indeed occur.)

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Having no viable choice =/= agreement

[dexeron.livejournal.com]

By the most technical and semantic of measures, you might be correct.

I still truly dislike this line of reasoning, because it is all too often used by some (not you, per se) to justify all manner of terrible conditions and atrocities by presenting the situation as one of choice, rather than coercion. So, when the economy is in the toilet, unemployment is high, and employers can get away with treating their employees like dirt, paying them less than living wages and exploiting them mercilessly, some would justify it because the employees technically have the "choice" not to work there. That the choice is one between continuing to live in the terrible situation vs. most likely dying of starvation and exposure is a meaningless irrelevancy to those who like to insist on a specific, semantic definition of slavery. "Hey, you could always choose to kill yourself! No one is FORCING you to remain a slave!"

Not saying that you are making this argument; just pointing out why I dislike this level of semantics, valid or not it may be, as it is so easily abused by some who do like to make that kind of argument.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

When coerced workers organize and their work camp is shot up by anti-union vigilantes, it crosses the line from coercion to force. People who work for less-than-subsistence compensation do it because they feel compelled to do so. It is not as if they can perceive a choice.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

What the Hell does Caesar have to do with the rest of this mishmash?

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Caesar Word Salad.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

With Croutons.