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

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

That's a metaphysical question. If you mean forced as in "there was no other option" then no, no one is ever forced to do anything; everything that happens to you and around you in your life is a result of your choices (and truly, the choices of others, but the way you experience the world is a result of your choices). If by forced you mean "made it extremely difficult to do otherwise" then yes, we're forced all the time. Many are forced to work because rent and food cost money and they don't want to be starving and homeless (I'm not, because I live in the first world where we have things like welfare, so I'm forced to work because I don't want to be living in a hovel eating small amounts of bad food).

To be fair, you don't have to agree with me on this; it's certainly not agreed upon by people who discuss these matters professionally. This is just my opinion, albeit a common and strongly supported opinion. I coined a phrase that encapsulates the philosophy: "we have fundamental freedom, but radical responsibility". This means that you are always free to make another choice; if you're locked in Buffalo Bill's basement you can either put the lotion on the skin or get the hose again - you're not being *forced* (in the strong definition 1), you are being *coerced* to make yourself purty for a woman suit. If you don't want the hose, but you also don't want to be tanning your own hide, then you just stop eating. Plenty of people sew their mouths shut every year; it's an option. If you bash your head against a wall hard enough enough times, it's likely that you'll cause yourself enough damage to die*. These are options. If you can kill yourself, then you have the power to escape the situation. Therefore, if you are still in the situation then it's your choice. I'm focussing on the kill yourself option because it's most apt to this scenario, but I have another scenario that I use when explaining this concept. Take a man, who has a dependent wife and three dependent kids. He may feel *forced* to go to work to pay for his family; he may feel *trapped* in his life. But those thoughts mean he is denying his own free will. If you hate the job you have to do to support your family then ditch your family and quit the job, it's pretty simple. Now, that will (IMO) make you a dog and a lowlife and I wouldn't want you to be my friend, and a lot of society will treat you the same, but just because the other option is *worse* than the current one, doesn't mean you're not making a choice to stay stuck in your shitty life, you can go and be free, if you wanted. Which brings me to the flipside; radical responsibility. Every situation you are in in life you are in because of choices you made. The man can't blame his wife and kids for making him work a shitty job, as he's the one who a) made the choice to have the family and b) made the choice to stick around and do the right thing. In this way, the slave can't blame the captor because the slave is *choosing* to remain living in that situation.

To many people (most actually) this comes across as really depressing and they can't handle all the existential angst that comes with it. But if you choose to embrace the sublime qualities of existential angst (doing things like confronting your own death and understanding the absurdity of your own existence) then you can be freed from it. Understanding that at any point in time YOU have the ability to change the situation, no matter what, is very empowering I find. Obviously I don't want to kill myself, but I know it's there as an option if I ever need it. Obviously, I don't want to shirk my responsibilities, but it's always there at an option, provided I'm willing to pay the price. If I'm not willing to pay the price well then that's *my choice*; it is my exercising of my free will.

(too big, cont below)