Abolish/amend 13th amendment?

Kanye West is a moron.

Don't be a moron.

The way you avoid being a moron is to discuss the topic in depth instead of just blowing it off. The topic of slavery is a taboo and Kanye West is brave to break the ice of the taboo. He might ultimately turn out to be wrong in whatever the nuances of his perspective are, but at least he has the guts to speak about it.

Just consider one thing about slavery if nothing else: the main problem with it was that it was racist. If slavery and freedom had been assigned to people by some other criteria than the color of their skin, we would look at slavery very differently today.

No, the main problem with slavery is that people owned other people.

Plus the vast majority of the poor are already working as hard as they can, of their own free will, to attempt to provide themselves with basic necessities.

I don't know anything about my heritage before my grandparents. I'm pretty confident though that at some point they were enslaved. And they were damn white, as opposed to just white, and would have been enslaved by people of the same heritage as them.

They knew just as little, or less, about other races then Africans kidnapped from their homes did.

Enslavement/gulag educational facilities for republicans/believers does has some merit given that dialogue isn't working.

No, in fact, slavery has never been racist. To take the example of slavery in the West Indies, Columbus asked Isabella, after his first voyage, if he could enslave the aboriginals. She told him no, that if they accepted Christianity, they could not be enslaved, and if they did not accept Christianity, they were limbs of Satan and must be destroyed. That they might not have understood the difference between peonage and slavery is a moot point--a great deal of the population of Europe were still serfs/peons, and only economic considerations were "liberating" them. The serfs in Russia were not liberated until 1861. The Romans enslaved anyone who resisted them in arms past a certain point (the nuances of Roman policy are to be found in Machiavelli's Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius). The populations of the province of Africa (roughly, modern Tunisia and parts of Libya and Algeria), Magna Graecia (the Greek colonies of southern Italy), parts of Cisalpine Gaul (northern Italy) and parts of Iberia were all sold into slavery for resisting in arms. Octavian, known as Caesar Augustus, staffed his civil service with Greek slaves, because they were uniformly literate. The slave populations of those areas listed above were used in the latifundia, huge slave driven "ranches" which produced grain, wine, olive oil, wool cloth and pottery. Eventually, the small holders and small craftsmen of what we call Italy were driven out of business, and ended up in the cities on welfare. They could find casual labor in construction (nobody with an ounce of sense employs slaves to build the roof over their heads). The state provided panem et circenses--bread and circuses--to keep the free population contented. Eventually, about the only customer for the goods the wealthy patricians produced on their latifundia was the empire itself. It eventually destroyed the economy of the western portion of the empire, leading to the collapse of imperial authority in the west in the fifth century. It was a good thing that Constantine had divided the empire between east and west--the eastern portion, which was not hag-ridden by slavery, lasted another thousand years, until it finally fell to the Turks in 1453.

The Turks used slaves intensively. Many of their finest troops were slaves from the Caucasus Mountians--at the time, Caucasians had a reputation as fierce warriors. The Mamluks (from an Arabic word meaning property, and slave when applied to people) eventually took over Egypt in the 13th century, and controlled it until Napoleon's invasion in 1798. Of course, after 500 years in Egypt, they no longer looked very white.

It was common for the Norse, the Danes, the Svear (Swedes), the Angles and the Saxons to enslave men captured in war, and women and children taken in conquest. Nothing about slavery in the history of Europe had anything to do with race.

Slavery came to North America with the sugar plantations in the West Indies, which were originally run with white labor, indentured workers. But they couldn't handle the climate, and malaria killed them off pretty quickly (the Spanish unwittingly brought malaria to the Americas) . Eventually, they settled on west African slaves, because of their resistance to malaria (due to endemic sickle cell anemia--but I wont'go into that here). A Dutch captain who had been driven off course in the middle passage eventually fetched up at Jamestown in 1609 and tried to sell some of his human cargo. No one was interested--they had trouble enough feeding themselves. So, on a high tide one night, he left his least eligible slaves behind, and sailed away. Sheer humanity lead the Jamestown colonists to feed them. Blacks became the slave of choice because they could handle the climate and the malaria (which also quickly became endemic in the American south--tens of thousands of soldiers in the American civil war on both sides died from it). The British encouraged settlers in the southern colonies to buy slaves because it was a way of maximizing the profits from their sugar island plantations. When the British claim that they ended slavery in the 1830s, they're not being quite truthful. They ended black African slavery. They replaced them with coolie labor from India--illiterate villagers who put their mark on a contract of indenture, and became slaves by default just as Africans had two centuries earlier.

Slavery was the disease of the ancient European and middle eastern world (read your bible sometime). It has never been about race--it has always been about greed and the will to dominate. You need to read almost a lifetime's worth of history before you comment on a topic as broad and deep as slavery.

Many poor people may be working very hard, but is it really for their own benefit or for the benefit of their corporate masters and higher-ups?

Have you considered that modern corporatism/capitalism may be more exploitative than slavery would be if regulated and done benevolently? You have people who are making money but then they have to spend that money on expensive rental housing because they can't afford to buy and pay off property.

Because they are making money via wage labor, they are vulnerable to all sorts of leaching away of their money, including drugs, drug-addicted friends and relatives who nag or otherwise manipulate them to share money with them, child-care and other expenses that are beyond their means.

In short, capitalism turns slaves into money-spending consumers that can be exploited for more money than they're given. That's why people are always complaining about needing more jobs/money, and it will never be enough because all the people/businesses vying to get their money are working really hard at it to avoid ending up as the poor people they're exploiting.

If slavery was well-regulated, people could enter into it for a fixed period of time and they could walk away with a certain amount of money that was contractually saved for them while they were living in slavery. They could live in housing without paying rent and eat food without paying for it in money. That would mean they wouldn't have to worry about losing their rent and food money to everything from drugs to gambling to nagging/manipulative relatives and 'friends.' When their slave-contract was finished, they would go free with money in their pockets. If that was slavery, and it wasn't a racist social-economic institution designed to benefit whites at the expense of non-whites, would people still feel as resentful of it? If so, why?

edit: I realized after posting this that what would probably happen with such slave-colonies in a capitalist world is that they would become sites of collective exploitation in various ways, and any money promised to slaves when their contracts were finished would be squandered away by mismanagement. Then, because the economy had grown dependent on their free/cheap labor, they would held in slavery by all the financial/economic dealings of everyone else working for- and with- money. But it's still a nice idea to imagine that slavery could somehow be re-introduced and regulated to the benefit of the poor who indentured themselves as slaves for some limited period of time.

I read your post with interest, and I have read some other history about it; but when you say "you need to read almost a lifetime's worth of history before you comment on a topic as broad and deep as slavery," that's just a way of intimidating people out of engaging in critical thought and discussion on the topic. It's good that you add information to help them/us, but it's bad for you to then discourage others from actively thinking and discussing the topic because there is more to learn.

You rant about corporate masters who benefit from the labor of the poor, and then trot out this fantasy of "well-regulated" slavery providing housing and food. One of the people found at Pompeii was a slave girl, who died attempting to protect her master's little girl. The slave girl showed signs of chronic malnutrition. The child she was trying to shield was well-nourished, better dressed and wearing jewelry. Can you really be so naïve as to believe that any regulation will make the greedy feed, house and clothe their slaves well?

I'd say you're just looking for an argument. Have fun.

That's a load of judgmental crap intended to intimidate people out of criticizing your thesis.

See how easy it is to dismiss criticism, valid criticism of a shallow thesis, using your typical method?

It is not 'ranting' to just mention that corporations exploit the labor of the poor. It is also not 'ranting' to consider how the poor exploit the capitalist system in various ways using various forms of socialism.

Social-economics is very complex and I am just trying to discuss it without bias. If you react to just the mention of exploitation in any form, you are biased toward the fantasy that exploitation is non-existent.

I'm not looking for 'an argument.' I am looking for elucidating discussion that transcends biased assumptions, propagandistic uncritical POVs, and taboos on thinking and saying certain things.

Ultimately economics boils down to people interacting to produce and distribute the various things they use to live. I think it should be possible to have lucid discussion about it without it turning into a propaganda war.

If all you do is criticize my thesis, you're just aborting the discussion before it happens.

This is just what I'm talking about. You didn't come here to discuss your abortion of a thesis, you came here to insist on slavery as a useful institution.



The answer to your question is that under no conditions should slavery be allowed. But you don't want that answer, so you make nasty accusations about me because I've pointed out exactly why Mr. West's and your thesis is bullshit. Slavery is never acceptable. Imprisonment is the only acceptable form of involuntary servitude, and all that means is that you ain't goin' nowhere.

Look, I am a very strong advocate of liberty and a strong believer in the ideal of free people cooperating voluntarily to achieve economic projects without coercion or exploitation. I do not believe, like authoritarian communists, that responsible economic cooperation can't co-exist with liberty and private property.

That said, it is all my ideals and the reality is that both capitalism and communism are flawed in many ways as they are occurring in societies, past and present. Slavery in the ante-bellum US as well as elsewhere was bad, but there are other bad, exploitative, wasteful, unsustainable, and otherwise harmful economic practices that have gone on and continue to go on globally, including slavery in various forms.

So, no, I am not just promoting slavery because I like it. I am trying to discuss slavery as one way of organizing economic activity and labor among others; and exploring whether it is possible that there are forms of slavery that are less exploitative, harmful, and destructive/unsustainable than other ways of organizing labor and capital that aren't formally recognized as 'slavery.'


Do you think that slavery isn't being allowed to occur in various ways around the globe at present?


You are the one using hostile, belligerent language to turn a discussion into a battle. Why don't you back down and realize you're not doing anything to protect the world from slavery by getting aggressive with someone like me, who just wants to discuss it as a way of raising consciousness about economic exploitation and unsustainability in order to stimulate people to think more progressively about how to make life better for all.

I'm sure no one thinks that.

But, since Set said under no conditions Should slavery be allowed, it's not as though he's saying it doesn't.


Can you give evidence that slavery has ever been humanely utilized to get people out of poverty, pay off debt, or are you thinking that this time would be the charm, and owning another human being is now going to be a good thing for the owned person?

It appears that you think discussion means that everyone comes along to agree with you, and review how your idea may be a good one. YOU are the one who made accusations because I criticized you. YOU are the one who apparently thinks that to disagree, to criticize is a hostile act, intended to end discussion.

I doubt this time would be the charm, but I also doubt that economic exploitation is going to get better because capitalism has replaced feudalism. In fact, it does start to get better sometimes, but then socialism rears its head because liberating people from long hours of economic toil results in other people making less money. Those middle-class people get cranky when their incomes are squeezed, so they press the government to stoke economic activity, which in turn pulls people back into the rat race trying to keep up with inflation.

Whether slavery or wage labor is the mechanism for controlling workers, there is always the possibility that the beneficiaries of the economy will tighten their belts, become more self-sufficient, instead of whipping the workers to produce more more more. In slavery the rationale might be that the slave is owned so s/he should work as hard as the master says, but in capitalism the rationale is that people aren't doing enough to take care of their families if they don't make more money and spend more on everything they can afford.

In slavery, you might have a family who loves you despite the fact you are poor, but then the owners sell your family away to other plantations; but in capitalism you might lose your family because they see you as a poor old loser and then go off to hobnob with higher status people so they can make more money. Either way economic greed is driving families apart, making people feel inadequate, etc. as motivation to work harder for the benefit of others.

So would I prefer to see free people exercise the liberty to work together voluntarily to take care of everyone and the environment without slavery, socialism, mandates, or even taxes? Yes, but do I expect it realistically? No, because utopias never solidify.

Oh sure, no problem, I'll enslave you! That's what you started this thread to volunteer for, right?