I don't think this kind of binary works. For example, where would you place conscripted soldiers? How about those who enlisted voluntarily, but are then subject to military discipline including punishment for desertion? At least in theory, indentured apprentices are in the same position as indentured labourers. And so on.
By trying to take the position that any form of unavoidable labour is slavery, you risk ending up in line with the Southern advocates of chattel slavery who said that Northern workers were "wage slaves" or even with people like Nozick who claim that income tax constitutes enslavement.
I think it could be argued that military conscription is a form of slavery - I don't think that's how most conscripts would think of it, but it certainly gets more dubious when considering historical examples like the British Empire conscripting people from its colonies, or the tsarist Russian military conscripting serfs for lifelong terms of service. Like serfdom and indentured servitude it has a lot of overlap with slavery, even if we do categorise it as something distinct.
The case for conscription is still compelling in the case of a defensive war, I'm a utilitarian so I'm always willing to make tradeoffs, but a lot of Americans found conscription for the Vietnam War very morally objectionable. Setting aside definitions for a moment, it does seem weird to argue that the government is not allowed to compel its citizens to work, but can compel them to travel to foreign countries to kill people. One of those seems much worse to me!
We can recognise that nobody is completely free under Capitalism (or under Feudalism or Communism either), but I suppose the key difference between "Wage Slavery" and actual slavery are the options available to you - you may have to work to live, but people value being able to choose how, where and when. Slavery also tends to involve constraints on what you can do when not working - being compelled to work through threat of violence is bad, but other aspects of chattel slavery made it even worse, particularly forced seperation from family.
Basically I think arguing over the definition of words is pointless, if there is a debate we should make it clear exactly what we find objectionable, and of that applies to other situations maybe we should consider opposing those as well?
Your article is great. All of the comments are spot-on. My family descended from Cromwell's rounding up of the Irish and forcing them into indenturetude. (Note exactly a real word but it expresses my sentiment.) But just as a note, since you brought the history of slavery into the mix. Slavery, traditionally were spoils of war, or in the case of indentured, sometimes sending off {enslaved} prisoners. Philosophy bear, I think is Australian and was colonized as a penal colony, and I have limited knowledge about Australia.
But in US slavery became something different. It wasn't about blacks being chattel slaves--it was about a race being enslaved over skin color. Blacks that were free were still enslaved by legal suppression. It was apartheid crafted to make indentured, former indentured, and any poor white person to be legally superior.. The civil war in that sense freed all blacks from being chattel but did nothing to make the color of their skin of the freed black people "as free as" the white skinned people who may have been of lesser educational or economic well-being. No matter how economically low or educationally insufficient a white person in America may be he proclaims himself as superior to the most well-educated or economically successful black person. By proclaiming the black "race" (not a race) a "slave" race, whites dfo not see having been indentured as "unfree" and a black whose family may never have been enslaved cannot ever be free of the stigmas of having been a bonded person. This becomes a complicated mess when attempting to grant "equal" legal protections to blacks who no matter how equal a black may become it can be viewed as equal only because the law hasn't given him an "unfair" access to equality.
So what to do? I don't know. But perhaps Madison (& later Lincoln & later Elijah Muhammad) were right Black and white Americans can never be free together within American borders. Whites view black equality as threatening and granting equality to blacks as lessening their own freedom. Blacks continue to feel harassed and treated as if they are not equal. Somehow American freedom has been built on a concept of rationed freedom, as if one man's freedom deprives another of his portion of freedom.
I don't understand it...but there it is...the proclamation of a distinctively unique freedom that measures chattledom by color and proportioned limits upon freedom which has made the American subject to being thoroughly chattelized,
Jefferson's declaration sounds good on paper, but it was always limited in practice to who could have what amounts of freedom.
Wasn’t Orlando Patterson’s argument about slavery as social death partly intended to lay out the harms of chattel slavery as distinctive from other forms of bonded labor, unfreedom, etc. There are very distinct social conditions of a heritable enslaved status where the person is property and the society is organized around the reproduction of persons as this type of property, and the condition is intended to be permanent, heritable, enforced by law, etc. We do need terms to describe such a system and the condition of being human property in that system because it simply is different than other types of forced labor, bonded labor, etc. It’s a legal condition as well as a social condition.
Patterson doesn’t claim social death only happens to slaves. There’s a good argument that prisoners also experience social death.
I wasn’t aware you couldn’t call anything else ‘slavery’ if it involved forced as long as you made what is distinctive about the legal and social condition. So the word ‘slavery’ is useful in describing bonded labor that is heritable (apparently as exists even in some places like Brazil), captive laborers like those in Myanmar, etc. People do call captives who are forced to labor ‘slaves,’ don’t they? I don’t think many people would object to the idea they are slaves de facto if not de jure.
I don't think this kind of binary works. For example, where would you place conscripted soldiers? How about those who enlisted voluntarily, but are then subject to military discipline including punishment for desertion? At least in theory, indentured apprentices are in the same position as indentured labourers. And so on.
By trying to take the position that any form of unavoidable labour is slavery, you risk ending up in line with the Southern advocates of chattel slavery who said that Northern workers were "wage slaves" or even with people like Nozick who claim that income tax constitutes enslavement.
Good points, I have added something to reflect these concerns
I think it could be argued that military conscription is a form of slavery - I don't think that's how most conscripts would think of it, but it certainly gets more dubious when considering historical examples like the British Empire conscripting people from its colonies, or the tsarist Russian military conscripting serfs for lifelong terms of service. Like serfdom and indentured servitude it has a lot of overlap with slavery, even if we do categorise it as something distinct.
The case for conscription is still compelling in the case of a defensive war, I'm a utilitarian so I'm always willing to make tradeoffs, but a lot of Americans found conscription for the Vietnam War very morally objectionable. Setting aside definitions for a moment, it does seem weird to argue that the government is not allowed to compel its citizens to work, but can compel them to travel to foreign countries to kill people. One of those seems much worse to me!
We can recognise that nobody is completely free under Capitalism (or under Feudalism or Communism either), but I suppose the key difference between "Wage Slavery" and actual slavery are the options available to you - you may have to work to live, but people value being able to choose how, where and when. Slavery also tends to involve constraints on what you can do when not working - being compelled to work through threat of violence is bad, but other aspects of chattel slavery made it even worse, particularly forced seperation from family.
Basically I think arguing over the definition of words is pointless, if there is a debate we should make it clear exactly what we find objectionable, and of that applies to other situations maybe we should consider opposing those as well?
Your article is great. All of the comments are spot-on. My family descended from Cromwell's rounding up of the Irish and forcing them into indenturetude. (Note exactly a real word but it expresses my sentiment.) But just as a note, since you brought the history of slavery into the mix. Slavery, traditionally were spoils of war, or in the case of indentured, sometimes sending off {enslaved} prisoners. Philosophy bear, I think is Australian and was colonized as a penal colony, and I have limited knowledge about Australia.
But in US slavery became something different. It wasn't about blacks being chattel slaves--it was about a race being enslaved over skin color. Blacks that were free were still enslaved by legal suppression. It was apartheid crafted to make indentured, former indentured, and any poor white person to be legally superior.. The civil war in that sense freed all blacks from being chattel but did nothing to make the color of their skin of the freed black people "as free as" the white skinned people who may have been of lesser educational or economic well-being. No matter how economically low or educationally insufficient a white person in America may be he proclaims himself as superior to the most well-educated or economically successful black person. By proclaiming the black "race" (not a race) a "slave" race, whites dfo not see having been indentured as "unfree" and a black whose family may never have been enslaved cannot ever be free of the stigmas of having been a bonded person. This becomes a complicated mess when attempting to grant "equal" legal protections to blacks who no matter how equal a black may become it can be viewed as equal only because the law hasn't given him an "unfair" access to equality.
So what to do? I don't know. But perhaps Madison (& later Lincoln & later Elijah Muhammad) were right Black and white Americans can never be free together within American borders. Whites view black equality as threatening and granting equality to blacks as lessening their own freedom. Blacks continue to feel harassed and treated as if they are not equal. Somehow American freedom has been built on a concept of rationed freedom, as if one man's freedom deprives another of his portion of freedom.
I don't understand it...but there it is...the proclamation of a distinctively unique freedom that measures chattledom by color and proportioned limits upon freedom which has made the American subject to being thoroughly chattelized,
Jefferson's declaration sounds good on paper, but it was always limited in practice to who could have what amounts of freedom.
Does this make "wage slavery" a category of slavery in a literal sense, rather than just a useful hyperbole?
Wasn’t Orlando Patterson’s argument about slavery as social death partly intended to lay out the harms of chattel slavery as distinctive from other forms of bonded labor, unfreedom, etc. There are very distinct social conditions of a heritable enslaved status where the person is property and the society is organized around the reproduction of persons as this type of property, and the condition is intended to be permanent, heritable, enforced by law, etc. We do need terms to describe such a system and the condition of being human property in that system because it simply is different than other types of forced labor, bonded labor, etc. It’s a legal condition as well as a social condition.
Patterson doesn’t claim social death only happens to slaves. There’s a good argument that prisoners also experience social death.
I wasn’t aware you couldn’t call anything else ‘slavery’ if it involved forced as long as you made what is distinctive about the legal and social condition. So the word ‘slavery’ is useful in describing bonded labor that is heritable (apparently as exists even in some places like Brazil), captive laborers like those in Myanmar, etc. People do call captives who are forced to labor ‘slaves,’ don’t they? I don’t think many people would object to the idea they are slaves de facto if not de jure.