Does Modern Slavery Exist?

[Petrarch's Love]

I'm sorry, but working for minimum wage is not slavery. I do understand the point that the OP and others are trying to make, and I'll readily recognize an imbalanced class system, but there is a difference between actually being someone's property, having your family sold away from you, having no rights as a human being, and being poor. It is important to make this differentiation, in part because, as people on this board have been pointing out, human trafficking, slavery in the original sense, really does still exist in the world and to compare that to minimum wage work has the double danger of either implying that slavery is about as bad as working at a factory (something lots of people do and which most people have no problem allowing to happen) or that minimum wage work might as well just be slavery (if there's really no difference, why not just take that pay away?). I know this isn't where you were taking the argument, but it's where it could go.

Yes, there is a lot of injustice in the social classes. Historically speaking there have long been people at the lower end of the social ladder, people with very limited options, but who were none-the-less free citizens. This has always been regarded a distinct step up from enslavement. Pehaps it's true that now that we have more or less rid ourselves from accepting slavery as an institution, it is now time to start thinking about ridding ourselves of accepting this sort of minimal existence for impoverished workers, but I doubt on many levels that such a cause will be helped by calling this work slavery.

[JBI]

Can what extent can we trust that though - sure, perhaps in the US people making minimum wages are fine, but what about, lets say, a kid in a factory in South Asia making rugs for 20 hours a day?

[Mr Hyde]

No educated Western adult denies the existence of slavery in the contemporary era;

They deny the existence of minimum wage slavery within their own countries.

it is called human trafficking, and in the Sudan, it is Arabs enslaving Africans.

Those are only the more obvious forms of slavery. There are less obvious examples of slavery that go unnoticed.

I do not know why you need the soapbox.

I'll say what I want. You can either listen or don't.

Even with the admission that this subjugation still exists, we no longer live in a bedouin or an imperial society where slavery is necessary for the function of an economy.

Two words: Wage slavery. And let's add in the prejudice of modern societies through that of academics and how we judge others to be inferior if they can't keep up with a global economy that changes every 10 seconds......

Modern slavery died out with the defeat of the American Confederacy.

No. It is still around.

Next drum roll please?

Would you care to roll it?

JBI says

You don't even need to go to the Sudan. There are underground human trafficking occurrences in rich modern countries as well.

Sure is.

But lets be honest, people working minimum wages to support a family, when that minimum wage barely pays for the necessities to survive, is slavery.

And you sir are the first person within my thread to understand where I'm going with all of this.

I congratulate you.

And let us not forget that such instances are legislated and practically accepted by all people within society as normative occurences with a standing ovation of applause.

The minimum wage cycle o' despair is, if anything, indentured servitude.

I like the term wage slave much more.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slave

Raustus said: Also, the public education system in America can help people escape the cycle, and I know it sounds cheesy but if you work hard scholarships are not that difficult to obtain, at least in America. I don't really have any knowledge of education systems outside of the US.

What I said: And yet even still another might say in a typical modern manner that such people could get a education in order to increase their standard of living thus decreasing their misery where that alone proves that they cannot be called rightfully as slaves but this is built on the assumption that everyone has a equal biological ability to acquire standardized information and knowledge where in contrast that simply just isn't the case.

Some people don't have the mental ability to acquire a higher education where others don't have the financial means.

Certain personal situations like growing up in impoverished surroundings can deny opportunities that would otherwise be available, but like I said above, you can still go McCandless or Gauguin on everyone's asses.

I'm not familiar with those names.

At what wage do you consider work to become not slavery?

The one that is kept up with current living standards and prices to live.

The one that doesn't leave individuals disenfranchised, alienated, and isolated socially.

Is it when people are able to save money, or to buy televisions, or what?

Saving money is only a small part of the issue as for your television remark I can't quite help but feel that was coy of you.

It is poverty yes, but not slavery

What is the difference between the lowest of poverty and slavery?

as an institutional form of exploitation.

People paid the bare minimum are not under under a institutional form of exploitation?

Since my loss of special transportation services, and the decline of my physical health, I am forced to survive on disability, a small inheritance, and what I take in from freelance (and I do still earn a little per year)--

I'm sorry to hear about your difficulties.

I myself am going through my share as well.

and in the US, the entitlement system, almost by default, is designed to *punish* the poor and the otherwise vulnerable--

Sounds like institutional exploitation to me............

but I don't think even the most liberal progressive would say the US forces the under and working class to be where it is.

It doesn't? Is that why we have standards in which we judge one superior while the other because deemed inferior?

Is that why we have academical and market prejudices?

Is that why we have classism?

Education always costs money JBI.

Which further manipulates the poor from stop being poor.

The question though, is how is slavery defined?

I like my definition of living against one's own desires and will living in state of bondage not of your own choosing.

That I think, depends on where you stand politically.

I'm not political at all.

I personally am more left-leaning. But either way, the traditional form of slavery exists in almost, if not all, countries. look at illegal labor work done in Canada on the west coast, or in the south by Mexican workers. Those people are enslaved.

Excellent examples.

What I said about scholarships in the US was based more off of personal experience than actual statistics. I'm going to UNC Chapel Hill right now, which is a fairly prestigious state school, and everything is paid for plus about $1500 dollars a semester for "Miscellaneous expenses." In high school I did well but I wasn't best in my class, so it is obviously possible to go to college despite poverty. This of course ignores the negative effects of living in a poor or dangerous neighborhood on your ability to get good grades.

I bet if we looked at the statistics of those getting hand outs in terms of scholarships they would be pretty low.

Marxist theory: slavery--not the technical meaning, but its essence of being forced into situations and act upon them--

Also a excellent description. I very much like some of Marx's writings although I don't consider myself a socialist or communist.

is present in the capitalist society, particularly for the proletariat. The whole idea of capitalism has capitalists as the masters of society;

The righteous and divine chosen is some regards.

The ideal or maverick citizen in others.

that is, the laborers' labor belongs to them. Profits gained from that labor belongs to the capitalist and additional profits do not translate to additional anything (more often than not) for the laborer. The laborer, as his labor does not belong to him, becomes alien to his work. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer. How's that for modern-day slavery?

Marx certainly believed so and there are many paradigms that he stated in which I more or less agree with.

My thoughts exactly, though I think we historically are 1 dialectic passed Marx's time period.

Pessimistically I think of the Marxist and communist revolution as one of the major historical insights into understanding human nature.

The world had it's chance of building a world of total equality under marxist revolution but chose inequality and the regular sameness of prejudice existence instead.

This happened largely because total equality can never exist and because humans secretly embrace inequality for their own self interests no matter who is hurt or destroyed in the process even while they publicy deny that they even have such feelings. ( Human beings are such pretensious creatures always in denial concealing their real feelings for others under some populist fashionable pretend ideal.)

The blatant type of slavery which you are implying no longer exists and is replaced with subtle and hidden slavery DOES still exist.

Including wage slavery and all those paid the bare minimum in all countries including our beloved west.

The trafficking of women into prostitution into countries (through Canada and then into the United States) exists prominently in rich Western countries (that includes your country, whichever it may be). Also, the treatment of immigrants in countries such as Saudi Arabia can be compared to slavery. (I didn't notice the others pointing this out, but I'm still going to post it)

Sure.

Slavery is forced labour without pay.

It can be however there are other forms of slavery beyond that including slaves who are compensated a little but not enough to be independent masters of their own lives.

Today's wage slave who serves it employer lives much like that of chattel slave and feudal serf did for theirs.

Your narrowing the definition of slavery, why?

We labour in society and receive money, relationships, pride, or any other form of satisfaction.

Alright.....

When you say that we labour for no "social benefit at all" for ourselves you are wrong.

When I said that I was discussing the slave who is paid just enough to subsist who lives muck like livestock in that they feed and have shelter but beyond that their life consists mostly of labor with no social benefit for themselves in their poverty as they are constantly disenfranchised, alienated, isolated, and segregated socially from the rest of society through it's many prejudices.

Try being an unemployed hermit.

Been there, done that. I've been homeless before.

Yes, yes it does.

No, no it doesn't.

The current standards of living to the American citizen are fairly good.

For whom? The man who has his own business or the common man struggling on the street?

If you receive any compensation at all (minimum or not) you are not a slave.

What if you are paid very little where you can only merely subsist but beyond that you have nothing?

Beyond that you have no social interaction due to your disenfranchisement in being cut off from the rest of society.

Are you going to tell me that isn't slavery?

Let me be very clear I say "compensation" monetarily, because you are free to do what you want with your money.

No you are not. If you are paid very little money where the government demands taxes and money for various things in order to subsist where afterwards after paying them you have very little to yourself doesn't in anyway seem free to me.

Did the Blacks in pre-civil war America have that liberty? I think not.

And by understanding my previous threads one would know what I think of intentional misleading words like liberty and freedom.

I understand what you are saying, but what you are pointing out is not "slavery" per se. It's the constriction of liberty.

Slavery is confinement.

Constriction is a word that has the same meaning as the word confinement.

Or we could use bondage if you like.

Also, you talk about these people are are not free to choose their "destiny" (paradox?). Please give me some examples.

I believe my first post in this thread already went over that.

Look up the term wage slavery and then get back to me.

but in the western Bourgeois and Capitalist countries liberty is a given.

Nothing in this world is a given or guaranteed. Don't think I'm naive enough to fall for that.

Slaves were fed too, and often provided places to sleep.

Chattel slavery or feudal serfdom.

I see no difference, other than people are given the opportunity what to eat, and a little bit of choice as to where to live.

Given just enough choice in order to give off the illusion of free society.

And you never will. It's impossible to have a truely Marxist society; it violates human nature. But you utopians will never stop dreaming.

Quote from myself:

Pessimistically I think of the Marxist and communist revolution as one of the major historical insights into understanding human nature.

The world had it's chance of building a world of total equality under marxist revolution but chose inequality and the regular sameness of prejudice existence instead.

This happened largely because total equality can never exist and because humans secretly embrace inequality for their own self interests no matter who is hurt or destroyed in the process even while they publicy deny that they even have such feelings. ( Human beings are such pretensious creatures always in denial concealing their real feelings for others under some populist fashionable pretend ideal.)

Who by the way are predominantly part time workers, students or people with who have reasons not working full time like mothers.

I don't buy that. Then you have a majority of minimally paid workers who are not part time workers, students and home based mothers who are actually stuck in their poverty like existence because either they don't have the finances or mental capacity to go to college where they are confined in their existence because society has judged them to be fit for nothing else.

There exists all sorts of people who are forced their entire lives to work under minimum wage who live quite miserably as they feel hopeless and without having options.

The only time they don't live their entire lives under minimum wage is when a fraction turn to crime out of desperation usually then ending up in prisons later on.

Almost no one working full time earns min wage.

That depends on how you describe minimum wage.

I'm sorry, but working for minimum wage is not slavery.

And what is the seperation line of definition between the lowest bare minimum wage worker and a slave?

but there is a difference between actually being someone's property, having your family sold away from you, having no rights as a human being, and being poor.

Explain the difference.

Yes, there is a lot of injustice in the social classes. Historically speaking there have long been people at the lower end of the social ladder, people with very limited options, but who were none-the-less free citizens.

How are they free citizens?

This has always been regarded a distinct step up from enslavement.

It isn't very distinct.

Pehaps it's true that now that we have more or less rid ourselves from accepting slavery as an institution, it is now time to start thinking about ridding ourselves of accepting this sort of minimal existence for impoverished workers,

However you wish to discuss this it is still institutional legislated exploitation.

but I doubt on many levels that such a cause will be helped by calling this work slavery.

Why not? Because it offends the bourgeois and elite citizens?

compare that to minimum wage work has the double danger of either implying that slavery is about as bad as working at a factory (something lots of people do and which most people have no problem allowing to happen)

Somthing they have no problem with if they are compensated with current living standards and allowed enough pay to keep up with current market prices in allowance.

Yet not everyone has that, do they?

or that minimum wage work might as well just be slavery (if there's really no difference, why not just take that pay away?).

Because the post-modern world finds it necessary in order to give off the illusion of free society in order to keep control and dominion.

[SirRaustusBear]

Christopher McCandless was a real kid and is the main character of Into the Wild. He basically dropped out of society and went to live off the land, occasionally working odd jobs and hitchiking around the country.

Paul Gauguin is a symbolist painter who abandoned his family to go to Tahiti and paint.

As for people not being genetically able to get good grades, that opens up a whole nature vs nurture can of worms. Assuming that intelligence is a mostly genetic trait, which is a big assumption, one can still improve through reading and through working hard to understand school work. The standards for getting a high school degree in America are not all that tough. With that being said a disruption of learning at a young age that keeps a kid from learning to read could have an effect upon their ability to progress through school. This is unfortunate and our schools have programs to deal with kids who have these kinds of difficulties. Our schools are often underfunded rendering these programs ineffective, but I'm all for a larger education budget.

None of this really comes into play though because no one can deny that there is a big difference between the life lived by actual slaves, like Frederic Douglas if you don't work you get wipped or killed and your family is broken up and sold across the country type slaves, and minimum wage workers today. This standard of living difference is much larger than that between a middle class person then and now.

Your definition of slavery was, "living against one's own desires and will living in state of bondage not of your own choosing," this is true for a lot of people. I would like to be a billionaire who never has to work and has well-paid servants to prepare my food and do my laundry etc. Instead I am forced to go to class and do homework and a bunch of stuff I don't want to do. That doesn't make me a slave.

[Jozanny]

I basically agree with Petrarch's post, and think I attempted to convey the same thing. Exploitation is not necessarily slavery such as was practiced in the agrarian South before the Civil War in the US--however, disability activists hate supported employment, and this is one issue which escaped my expertise, both when I was a glorified case manager/advocate, and then became a disability reporter. I earned my money getting consumers off disability rolls, and then covering medical and health, including sex.

I would not equate SE with an institutional form of slavery, but I do believe it contradicts the goal of community integration.

[Mr Hyde]

It seems people in this thread want nothing but denial when it comes to the subject of legalized wage slavery around the world in that they deny that many people are taken hostage within their lives in a sort of hopeless servitude under forced financial or classist circumstances with very little pay amongst themselves.

They want to deny that it is institutional exploitation on a wide scale.


I'm done with this thread.

Go back to your illusions about how much of a fair and equal world that we all live in!

( I won't be any part in it.)

[Petrarch's Love]

It seems people in this thread want nothing but denial when it comes to the subject of legalized wage slavery around the world in that they deny that many people are taken hostage within their lives in a sort of hopeless servitude under forced financial or classist circumstances with very little pay amongst themselves.

They want to deny that it is institutional exploitation on a wide scale.


I'm done with this thread.

Go back to your illusions about how much of a fair and equal world that we all live in!

( I won't be any part in it.)

Mr. Hyde--I don't think everyone on this thread was trying to cling to illusions about the world being fair and equal. I certainly don't think the world is fair and equal. My post did not deny that there is "institutional exploitation on a wide scale" as you say. I do think there are people who are exploited, who feel trapped, whose options are severely limited. My point was simply that this is not the same thing as slavery in the traditional sense. The term "wage slave" is more specific, and probably more useful to your cause because it indicates the type of exploitation you're talking about. You asked in a response to my post what the difference really is between a slave and a minimum wage worker. The differences are pretty clear. No one actually owns a minimum wage worker, can degrade them by selling them for a price at an auction, legally maim them or kill them at any time without any repercussion in the way a slaveholder could, take their children from them to be sold to a place the parent will never be able to see them again, deny them the ability to become literate, much less educated. I bet if, in all seriousness, you asked the average person working minimum wage in this country if they would just as soon be a slave, they would come up with some pretty good reasons not to equate minimum wage with actual slavery. However, I'm sure that many people working minimum wage might feel exploited, trapped hopeless. I'm not at all trying to deny the validity of your claim that there is some profound social injustice at work in this country. I, and I think most of the others on this thread, are simply trying to point out that there are gradations of injustice, with slavery at the extreme end.

I'm also curious. If people do concede that there is a problem with social injustice in this country, what is it that you think they should do about it. Are you simply suggesting a significant raise in minimum wage? An improvement of social welfare systems? A full marxist overthrow of the haves in favor of the have nots?

[AuntShecky]

There seems to be two separate discussions. I do believe the original poster, Mr. Hyde, was presenting a case that workers who have been denied a choice or an opportunity to improve their lot in life and to breakout of the cycle of poverty can be defined -- albeit loosely -- as slaves. "Wage slavery" is a loaded term, just as some pundits will try to squelch any discussion of poverty as
"promoting class warfare."

Be that as it may, there is an enormous catastrophe occurring on this planet, along with all the other catastrophes, and that is human trafficking on a large scale. We cannot dismiss this crime against humanity by believing it is confined to Southeast Asia or to Haiti or to
countries we summarily dismiss as "third world." I do fear that society won't make an effort to do anything about it.
For instance, when a blonde white woman "goes missing"--
to use a phrase the media favors -- much ink and airtime is devoted to it. But children of all colors disappear every day, all across the globe, including the USA, and no one talks about it.

Earlier in the week the director of a new documentary called "Call + Response" appeared on an early morning cable news show. You think this movie is going to generate any buzz? You think folks are going to
forgo the talking chihuahua movie or Leonardo DiCaprio to
respond to "Call + Response"?

When are we going to care about human trafficking -- when children are bought and sold into sex slavery, when
mothers can retrieve their daughters or sons because they
can't come up with the $ to buy them back? What if it were our children, what if it were happening in our neighborhoods?

[Mr Hyde]

I do think there are people who are exploited, who feel trapped, whose options are severely limited.

Is not slavery the act of being taken hostage by another in a utter feeling of hopelessness? Is it not similar?

My point was simply that this is not the same thing as slavery in the traditional sense.

Slavery has evolved from the traditional sense. The traditional sense of the word slave no longer applies in a evolving changing world.

Although in some places of the world there is traditional slavery practiced there is also evolving and changing forms of slavery in parallel that has become very effectively concealed by government legislation.

The differences are pretty clear. No one actually owns a minimum wage worker,

Does not the government own them financially in that the limitations and confinements of their world is a direct result of institutional authorities?

can degrade them by selling them for a price at an auction,

I would argue that they are degraded by collective prejudice of society and it's classism or by the low amount of spending power that they have.

legally maim them or kill them at any time without any repercussion in the way a slaveholder could,

Only because it is more profitable to keep them alive working where later on they can breed a new generation of working poor through their own families.

A new generation of poverished fodder for the global human expiriment.

take their children from them to be sold to a place the parent will never be able to see them again,

Points to previous post.

deny them the ability to become literate, much less educated.

However they are denied higher education financially considering that they are poor.

I bet if, in all seriousness, you asked the average person working minimum wage in this country if they would just as soon be a slave, they would come up with some pretty good reasons not to equate minimum wage with actual slavery.

Depends on who you ask. I have had conversations with a fair share of people who feel the same like myself.

I'm not at all trying to deny the validity of your claim that there is some profound social injustice at work in this country. I, and I think most of the others on this thread, are simply trying to point out that there are gradations of injustice, with slavery at the extreme end.

Injustice all the same.

I'm also curious. If people do concede that there is a problem with social injustice in this country, what is it that you think they should do about it.

There is nothing that can be done as human nature will never change.

I merely like making these threads because I enjoy watching people go through denial. All I want is for people to acknowledge actual reality instead of going through denial pretending that all these features of the human existence doesn't exist.

Are you simply suggesting a significant raise in minimum wage? An improvement of social welfare systems?

It doesn't matter what I want. The world will hardly change just on some want or presupposition of mine.

A full marxist overthrow of the haves in favor of the have nots?

While although I like Karl Marx on many regards I don't consider myself a marxist, socialist, or communist.

The closest thing you will actually come to in defining me would be a anarchist who is self conceited only concerned with opportunities for himself.

( Nonetheless beyond my own array of egoism the rest of the world I am curious about from time to time.)

I'm just one of those people who looks at the human condition as being hopeless without solution yet I still like discussing it all the same.

[King Mob]

Modern slavery exists and it's called Neoliberalism. It's the freedom to enslave others.

[Asphara]

"Such phantoms as the dignity of man, the dignity of work, are the feeble products of a slavery that hides from itself." Nietzsche

[Alexander III]

To me it seems a lot of you guys are confusing slavery with poverty, which is a great shame, and seems to ignore the horrible plight of true slaves in history, al most spiting in the face of history. Slavery is when you are lucky if you get to grow your children, as they are not sold of. Slavery is when you have no freedom. Any person can go **** this, and get up and leave, people don't do this as its risky. They have a choice there is always a choice, in slavery there is no choice.

Thats not to say that there isnt slavery, but its illegal, and its called human trafficking in this day and age.

[Asphara]

Allexander{edit}The kind of choices you speek of might include a misserable, degrading, soul destroying McJob, or an addiction, or criminality, or a mental breakdown, or destitution. How many people live a misserable life, their whole life, and then die alone in their pokey flat? Western civilization is the biggest slave empire there ever was.

[BienvenuJDC]

Asphara, I think that Alexander has a great point. {edit}

[Asphara]

Bienvenue, do you have an opinion of you're own or are you just posturing?