Stop trying to restrict the meaning of slavery

People sometimes say: “the Irish were slaves too” referencing Irish indentured servitude in early America. In response to this, a counter-line has developed on certain parts of the left that slavery is hereditary chattel slavery and anything else is just sparkling forced labor.

The American center has been eager to join in, always keen to uphold the honor of America as far as possible. Here’s Will Stancil, insisting that the part of the 13^th Amendment that legalizes forced labor for convicted criminals doesn’t legalize slavery:

Sometimes we see odd coalitions around this. For example, from what I can tell, elements of both the left and right have perceived themselves as having an interest in avoiding the application of the term slave to Australia’s transported convicts.

I will lay my cards on the table. I think it is essential to recognize the harm done to prisoners through forced labor. That harm is slavery. I do not care for any distinction-mongering that avoids that, and I think it’s silly to deny that prisoners- more likely to be African American than the general population- are often enslaved. And all that to try and dunk on some people who bang on about Irish indentured servitude in the name of anti-racism!

Historians often seem to have weird ideas about what avoiding anachronism means in these contexts. I remember being told firmly in a first-year history class that serfs were very definitely not slaves. At the time, I thought that while our medieval interlocutors may not have seen them as slaves, that did not mean, on a proper understanding, they weren’t slaves. Warning against anachronism in history is one thing, and that means we shouldn’t assume that the medievals thought of themselves as having slaves when they had serfs, but that doesn’t mean the serfs weren’t slaves.

How to decide who counts as a slave

Now, we could try to settle this debate through an endless survey. For example, were the Helots of ancient Sparta- hereditarily unfree but not chattel- a slave class? Even in the ancient world, this was a topic of disagreement. If slavery has to be chattel slavery, how come chattel slavery is taken as a distinctive type? If… Enough! I find this tedious. **I will note though that, in general, the ancients were pretty broad with their usage of the term, so I reckon if we went down this path I’d win**.

We could also try to resolve this debate through experimental philosophy and lexicography. We could go around quizzing people about various hypothetical situations and asking them whether those situations are slavery. Much as I like experimental philosophy in general, this proposal is even more tedious than the last.

In my view, slavery is a term that identifies a moral wrong and a condition of life. It is an (im)moral kind that language use should track. To decide what counts as slavery, we should think about what defines the wrong and the condition of slavery. We should not hide behind etymology but think in ethical terms about the scope of that wrong. Further, because we are defining a moral wrong, we don’t want to define it in such a way that it rests too much on legal framing and technicalities. Otherwise, we will create a concept that can be evaded on a technicality. I would suggest thinking about slavery from the point of view of its elimination - if you were trying to eliminate slavery from the world, what would you consider to be slavery? That is the best and most practicable way to hone the concept. Thus we arrive at:

The moral theory of the definition of slavery: We should define slavery as whatever category corresponds with the moral wrong of enslavement.

I don’t think this definition will survive an assault by a philosopher with a jackhammer. In particular, the idea that there is a singular and unique ‘wrong of enslavement’ seems dubious- but it gives the gist of what I’m going for here. Look at it this way, if you were someone passionate about eliminating slavery, and you’d set up an anti-slavery organization- what exactly would you be trying to eliminate?

Applying the definition

From the point of view of the wrongs-based approach, I think we can discard the often-made distinction between communal and individual ownership. It is not a core moral distinction from the point of view of the wrong the slave suffers. We would not regard ourselves as having eliminated slavery if institutions were still able to practice something like it. Much the same can be said of the distinction between chattel and non-chattel slavery, it’s still the same moral wrong.

Another common distinction is about whether the condition is lifelong. I did promise not to rest my argument on history, but as a comment I’ll note that even in the ancient world it was common for slavery not always to be lifelong, so I’m unsure where this distinction has come from. Certainly, when someone is to be kept a slave for life, that’s a graver moral wrong than keeping someone for a period of time, but it doesn’t seem to me to cut at the essential distinction defining the moral wrong. If there were a group of people kidnapping individuals for ten years and forcing them to work, we should and could treat that morally and judicially as a slightly mitigated form of enslavement. Regarding it as radically less evil just because of its temporary nature would be a mistake, ergo it’s slavery on the moral approach to the definition.

Is the fact that something is a punishment for a crime enough to make it not slavery? From a historical perspective, certainly not, slavery was a common punishment for crime. Okay, but we said we were joining to avoid a historical perspective, what about a moral perspective where we define slavery in terms of its wrong? Do slavery-like conditions cease to be wrong when they are in punishment for a crime? In general, no. If we enslaved people for speeding, that would still be morally wrong in the way slavery is wrong, ergo, on our moral approach to the definition of slavery it is still wrong. That much should be obvious

But what if the crime is really bad, like murder, rape, maiming, etc.? Would forced labor then not be wrong, and thus not fall under slavery on the wrongs-based conception I am articulating here? Ultimately, the call here is up to you. If you think these crimes are so bad that enforced labor is a morally appropriate response, and thus is not slavery on the moral theory of slavery, I can’t stop you, although it seems vile to me. However, I do have a few things for you to think about.

Firstly- More often than we would like, we sentence innocent people. Now, I think the need to protect society occasionally justifies accidentally imprisoning an innocent person- but does it justify occasionally treating an innocent person similar to a slave? No, it doesn’t. Enslaving innocent people, even by accident is never acceptable- and the argument that they are not slaves because they have committed crimes obviously doesn’t apply. You can say “ah, well society made a mistake, so isn’t culpable for slavery because it doesn’t know the person is innocent”, but the experience of the innocent prisoner is effectively that of being enslaved for no reason. Do you want to be responsible for that? No, then you must oppose slavery in all cases.

Secondly- slavery doesn’t just create slaves, it creates enslavers, and forced labor in prisons, even if it is not slavery, creates those who function like enslavers. It makes you, as an elector of the government, at least in a distant sense, involved in forced labor yourself. It means that people who are part of the process of forced labor in more direct senses- judges, police, prison guards, will be all around you. Even if you’re comfortable with forced labor by prisoners do you want to debase society by filling it with the brutalizing enforcers of forced labor?

Thirdly, and related to the second point, do you trust society with this power? Do you trust society with the right to decide that a person is so bad they deserve forced labor? We trust society with the right to imprisonment, at least theoretically, because we have little choice- because certain criminals can’t walk around ad libitum without damage and danger. No identical logic applies to forced labour.

Essentially, I think the distinctive wrong of slavery, the wrong that you would try to eliminate were you tasked with getting rid of slavery from the face of the earth, is forced labor. There may be special cases that constitute forced labor but which lack the distinctive immorality that usually accompanies forced labor, but as a rule of thumb, the presence of forced labor is diagnostic of slavery. This is so much so the burden of proof is on you if you want to argue an instance of forced labor isn’t slavery. Is all this conceptual engineering, or uncovering a pre-existing and important concept of slavery? I’m not sure.

Even if you don’t agree with my definition of slavery as forced labor, I would, from the point of view of an approach that focuses on moral wrongs and the experience of slavery, urge great caution in excluding prisons from the scope of slavery. This is especially so if you wish to exclude it on a technical basis: “The justice system, which determines the rules of property, doesn’t regard itself as owning prisoners, therefore they’re not slaves, even though it can do what it wants to them” being especially slender. Focus on the putative slave in defining the category, not the legal apparatus of the putative enslaver. If the term is to help split right from wrong, it seems to me this is the best approach.

It isn’t progressive to shrink the scope of slavery

In the title of this piece, I said it wasn’t progressive to shrink the scope of slavery. The obvious reason is that doing so lets the US Prison system off the hook.

The left, in general, needs to be more principled and, even more importantly, less knee-jerk. It’s not good enough to hear some idiot saying “Actually, black people don’t have it so bad, did you know the Irish were enslaved”? And then immediately leap to “Actually, nothing counts as slavery unless it looks like the conditions imposed on black people in America before the Civil War.” It’s defining your thoughts relative to the discourse, rather than reshaping the discourse according to your thoughts. It’s thinking to hard about your interlocutor, and not hard enough about the bigger world.

Better to say, yes, the Irish were enslaved sometimes, America was built on many forms of forced labor, none more vicious and persistent than that inflicted on black people.

All forced labor is slavery, or rather, all forced labor that participates in the distinctive kind of wrong that forced labor usually participates in is slavery. In my view that is all, or almost all, cases of forced labor.

Possible counter-examples

1. What about community service as a sentence for a crime? Does it participate in the wrong of forced labor? Answer: The relative laxity of the requirements may mean that it doesn’t count as participating in the distinctive wrong. Nevertheless, best to avoid it just in case.

2. What about conscription? Does it participate in the wrong of forced labor? Answer: If done corruptly (with exemptions for the well connected etc. as is common), it’s slavery. If done by a non-democratic society, it’s slavery. If it is done cleanly, by a legitimate and geninuely democratic government, then the collective, participatory, and democratic nature of the choice, including those affected, and the fact that it is being done for the benefit of those to be conscripted may vindicate it. Also worth noting that the conscripted might support it behind a veil of ignorance.