SLAVERY

 

 

Slavery is a social condition in which one person retains ownership of another. This arrangement forces one person to be the property of another; therefore, the slave, if he is regarded as a person at all, exists as a person with little or no rights which are possessed by the slaveholder.

The major right removed from the slave was that of justice where justice is defined in the legal administration of reward and punishment. Penalties for slaves were harsher than penalties for owners who committed the same crimes. Slaves, for that matter, did not necessarily have to commit any wrongdoing to receive punishment–a condition that the free slave owner would accept neither from his neighbor or his government.

 

Add to this the fact that a slave was legally removed from familial structures and therefore, removed from the most basic form of protection. It has only been for the last few thousand years that an overarching judicial system meted out punishment and decided on guilt or innocence. Before that time, and even during that time, justice was administered by the family or a collection of families, known as a clan. Family or clan justice ensured that if any one person was wrongly treated, the family as a whole would avenge the wrong. To lose one’s family was to lose one’s most basic societal protection, allowing the slave to be subject to abuse with no legal right of vengeance against the abuser.

 

The slave lived in a society as an object, not as a subject. The slave was forced to perform labor for the slave owner, who then claimed the products of that labor as his own. In most societies, slaves had some basic rights, but these rights are analogous to the rights concerning animals in contemporary society. There is an understanding that a pet or even a working animal on a farm has some basic condition of treatment that cannot be violated. Michael Vick, for instance, violated that public conception of acceptable treatment for animals by engaging in dog fighting and was punished legally, socially, and vocationally. Most slave societies had a sense that slaves cannot be mistreated like pets are not to be mistreated today. Although, it is clear that pets and animals today have higher standards of protection than slaves have had throughout history, even in those societies were slaves had a relatively high degree of social protections. The Roman Empire, for instance, under Augustus passed all kinds of laws protecting slaves from their owners, and yet, slaves were still thrown in an arena and forced to fight to the death for the amusement of the crowd. Michael Vick treated his dogs in the same way that a progressive slaveholding society treated its slaves and was punished for it.

 

Slavery in some form was a global phenomenon. For most of history this axiom stands true: where there were human beings, there were slaves. Athens, however, was the first significant society to depend on a massive slave population for its prosperity. Athenian slaves evolved from the condition in which Athenian citizens were placed in bondage, usually because of debt, to one in which some of the population were deemed slaves and some where not. The Athenian tyrant,¹ Solon, outlawed the condition where Athenians could become enslaved; nevertheless, the institution of slavery continued, forcing Athens to seek slaves from elsewhere through combat and trade. During Athens’ Classical Period (roughly speaking the fifth to the third centuries B.C.E.), it is estimated that slaves constituted about thirty percent of the overall Athenian population. Slavery in Athens was ended in 338 B.C.E. when Philip II of Macedonia (the father of Alexander the Great) conquered Athens and freed all the slaves.

 

The next major slave society was that of Rome. Slavery in Rome was the natural, logical extension of its many wars. Rome initially was a city-state that was constantly involved in a series of mostly defensive wars. Victories in these wars allowed Roman influence and control to expand throughout the entire Italian peninsula. With so many wars came a lot of captives. These captives were transformed into slaves within the Roman Republic. Roman conquests throughout the late-Republic and Imperial periods provided a constant influx of new slaves. In addition to that, free men could sell family members or themselves into slavery in order to pay off debts.

It is estimated that slaves made up about one-third of the population of the Roman Empire. The legal code of the Roman Republic recognized slaves as a social class. Once in this social class, one could not expect to move out of it and any children born of the slave instantly became the property of the owner. Members of this class were traded and sold as any other commodity and owners could kill them if they so desired. As a member of this class, a slave possessed a certain retail value, but a slave’s life had no value in and of itself. value lay in the fact that they were commodities.

 

This condition changed during the early years of the Roman Empire. It is common knowledge that Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, once punished a wealthy Roman for feeding one of his clumsy slaves to his eels. In addition, the Empire under Augustus and his successors steadily enacted laws that ultimately restricted the power that owners had over their slaves. Nevertheless, the level to which these laws were enforced is subject to debate. The Emperor Claudius (41-54 C.E.) decreed that an old or sick slave would become free if that slave was abandoned by its owner and happened to recover. Claudius’ successor, Nero (54-68 C.E), granted slaves the right to complain about their treatment at the hands of their owners in court. The Emperor Antoninus Pius (138-168 C.E.) determined that a slave could claim his freedom if he could prove that he had been treated cruelly. He also passed legislation that would result in a homicide trial for any slave owner who killed his slave without just cause. Antoninus Pius also passed legislation that made it more difficult for someone to slide into the condition of slavery. Diocletian (284-305 C.E.) made it so that free men could no longer sell family members, or even themselves, into slavery to pay off debts and it became illegal for debt collectors to force debtors into slavery.

 

Roman criticisms of slavery were focused more on the treatment of slaves rather than on the institution of slavery itself. Even the Christians were not opposed to slavery, but counseled treating slaves with justice and as, for lack of a better word, equals. Nowhere does the New Testament, whether through Jesus, Paul, or any other speaker or author, demand an end to the institution, rather the New Testament as a whole accepts slavery as a normal (and apparently a valid) social institution. Stoics as well, even though they believed that every person was equal in that everyone was equally a manifestation of the universal spark of the divine being, accepted that one could practice the principles of Stoicism within the confines of slavery.

 

The expansive borders of the Roman Empire made it difficult for the Empire to expand any further with the resources that it then possessed. This meant that the influx of new slaves into the Empire began to dry up. This, in addition to the steady development of legislation that extended more and more legal rights to slaves, ultimately transformed the Roman slave into that of a serf. A serf differs from a slave in that a slave is bound to an individual whereas a serf is bound to the land he works. A slave is not allowed to own anything, whereas a serf often owns the tools he needs to work, but that land he works is owned by another. A slave may be engaged in many differing types of labor whereas a serf is usually only engaged in agriculture.

 

The institution of slavery that most Americans are familiar with is that of Southern slavery before the American Civil War. Slavery in what would become the United States of America began originally as indentured servitude, a condition in which some agrees to work for someone for a stated period of time in exchange for something. About half of the indentured servants in colonial America were white and worked in exchange for transportation to the colonies. At the end of their indentured servitude, they would be freed and often provided with land and supplies with which to get started as free farmers. The problem was that the odds of becoming a successful farmer after the period of servitude was ended were low due to the fact that the best farmland had already been claimed by the original settlers. The result was that former indentured servants made up a permanent lower class that occasion took out its frustrations against wealthy landowners through the use of violence.

The condition of permanent slavery seemed the natural method of ending an influx of new members into this highly volatile lower class. The first legally recognized slave in what would become the United States of America was John Casor, a black man who was owned by Anthony Johnson, another black man who himself came to the colonies as an indentured servant. In 1654, a court ruled against John Casor declaring that he was the property of Anthony Johnson, who owned him for life. The court’s logic was that since people of African descent were not British citizens by birth, they were not necessarily protected by English Common Law (http://www.geocities.com/nai_cilh/servitude.html).

 

The initiation of American slavery seems slightly unique. Whereas other historical cultures, such as the Romans and the Athenians, adopted slavery as a means of dealing with captives through conquest, American slavery (and by American slavery it is meant the form of slavery that developed in the British colonies that would later become the United States of America), seemed to develop alone purely economic lines. To be sure, economics played a role in every society that adopted slavery; nevertheless, the form of slavery that developed in what would become the United States of America was solely the product of economics. Those who were unable to pay for passage to the colonies sold themselves into indentured servitude, which contributed to an unstable and often troublesome underclass, which led to the institution of slavery to eliminate that class. Americans did not conquer and make captives slaves. They did not conquer Africa. They merely adopted a form of economic pragmatism that led to slavery, which would endure in the agrarian based South, but would not endure in the industrializing, and later industrialized, North.

 

Everything up to this point has been relayed in order to make the following facts clear: First, slavery has always been a part of civilization, and conceivably pre-civilization as well. The earliest civilization, the Sumerians, had slaves, as did each successive civilization that followed. Second, for most of human history, the economic component of slavery seems secondary to a practical social component, such as what to do with individuals captured in warfare. Third, slavery in every culture eventually evolved into another form of servitude, generally some form of serfdom, or it was abolished altogether without much fanfare or argument for or against the institution. Fourth, the American institution of slavery was different in that it was purely economic at its inception, though there was a practical social element of dismantling a potentially volatile social under-class; yet, even the social component was largely and simultaneously an economic one as well.

 

Now here is the point: slavery was taken for granted for the entirety of human history, and conceivably pre-history, and then suddenly in the eighteenth century, abolitionist movement begin to develop for the purpose of eliminating slavery. The question is "What changed during this period that caused people to suddenly believe that slavery was wrong, either socially, or morally, or both?"

Concurrently with the rise of abolitionist movements, the Enlightenment was hitting its full stride in European thinking. One could make the case that the philosophies of Locke, who took Bacon’s philosophy of Empiricism and used it to conceive of a society in which everyone was born equal. Generally speaking, until the Enlightenment, there was a belief that some people are simply born better than others. This is the meaning of the word aristocrat–aristos, "the best men" and kratos, "ruling power"; aristocracy, then was a social organization in which the so-called "best men" ruled those who by definition must be inferior. What made these men better? They were born that way. Aristocrats were believed, or believed themselves, to be born of better stock; therefore, they were smarter, more cultured, and better behaved. Therefore, for most of human history, the locus of what made a human the human he was was birth and breeding. Locke decided that the locus of what made a human was the mind and he concluded that everyone is born a tabula rasa, a blank slate. Since every person is born with an empty mind which must be filled with information, then everything that a person is is the result of the experiences that that person has had. This meant for Locke that some people are "better" because they were privy to better experiences. Locke asserted that all people are born equal, so one could make the case that philosophies such as Empiricism helped to eliminate the institution of slavery–the logic being something like "If we are all born equal and it is wrong for some people to be enslaved, then it must be wrong for everyone else to be enslaved as well."

 

The argument for Enlightenment philosophies helping to put an end to slavery falls short, however, when one realizes that the Founding Fathers of the United States weresome of the most "Enlightened" men in the world. The Declaration of Independence is basically a summary of Lockes political thought and everyone one of the Continental Congress and later drafters of The Constitution of the United States of America were well read in practically every philosophy and thinker of the time. Yet, this group of "Enlightened," well-educated, well-read individuals who conceived of a nation arranged to a large degree on the philosophy of Locke who deemed all people equal, still allowed for and perpetuated the institution of slavery. Therefore, a change of minds cannot explain the change in circumstances that led to the abolition of slavery.

 

The change that best explains the move to eliminate slavery is the rise of a new economic reality known as capitalism. In the late Roman Empire and in the Middle Ages of Europe, slave labor transformed in to serfdom. Serfs were technically "free" in that they weren’t owned by anyone, but they were bound to a particular plot of land that it was their responsibility to farm for their "lord." A slave was bound to a person; a serf was bound to the land that he worked. Serfs paid rent for the land that they were forced to live on, they generally owned their own equipment, except for expensive items such as a wine press, which they had to pay to use. So serfs free, but it is clear that they certainly did not possess liberty. In a sense, serfs were worse off than slaves in that a slave was provided for (food, shelter, etc.) by an owner, while the serf is responsible for his own survival and the survival of the lord for which he labors.

 

Capitalism transformed Europe from an agricultural based economy to that of a production based economy. Since agriculture was no longer the dominant economic model, it made little sense for existing slavery to transform itself into serfdom. The transformation that occurred with the rise of capitalism was that of slavery evolving into wage labor.

 

On the one hand, it may seem counterintuitive that capitalism would eliminate slavery, after all, it seems to make more economic sense to keep a large pool of labor that requires no payment of income. But the reality is that there is no such thing as free labor, even under slavery. A slave owner must keep the slave alive and reasonably healthy in order for the slave to perform the requisite labor for the owner. Capitalism eliminates the owner’s responsibility over his slave. By the institution of a wage, the slave owner still owns the individual, but he does so indirectly by owning what wage earner needs to survive–money. Leo Tolstoy put it this way:

The essence of all slavery consists in taking the product of another's labor by force. It is immaterial whether this force be founded upon ownership of the slave or ownership of the money that he must get to live." (http://www.angelfire.com/punk3/theater_sniper/quotes.html)

The capitalist as slave owner also has the advantage of convincing the slaves that they are free simply because they are not "owned" in the conventional sense. But they are owned in that the owner always applies Ricardo’s Iron Law of Wages, which asserts that an employer only gives the worker what he needs to survive and no more. The logic of this law is that if the worker makes more than he needs to survive, then the worker won’t need to keep coming back to work; if he does not make what he needs to survive, then he dies and cannot work. Either way, the worker is owned by the capitalist. "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." (http://www.wisdomquotes.com/002228.html)

 

The moral of the story is that slavery is alive and well, the slave owners have simply cleverly disguised slavery in such a way that the slave gladly work because they are convinced that they are free. The capitalist has kept wages low and convinced the work that he needs trinkets (shiny new cars, HDTVs, internet, bigger houses, credit cards, etc.), all of which keep the worker in a state of functional poverty. Workers are so overburdened with debt that they must work longer hours for little money and personally restrict their own freedoms and opinions out of fear that they may find themselves unemployed. Unemployment is the whip of the slavery of our time. The fear of that whip keeps the workers in line."

 

A worker can lose her job for refusing to work on a Sunday even though her religion forbids her to do so and the Constitution grants her the right to be religious. The worker can lose his job for expressing his opinion at work if it upsets a customer even though the Constitution grants that worker the freedom of speech. What does this mean? It means that workers ultimately have no freedoms. Why? Because they are slaves and slaves have no rights.

 

Slavery has not been abolished; it has been altered. In the South before the Civil War, there were field slaves and house slaves. House slaves were generally granted more leeway and had access to more comforts than those who worked in the fields. Many house slaves convinced themselves that they were better than those who labored in the field because they felt that they were better off. The wage earner is a house slave looking out into the field of history and seeing the slaves of the past who worked in the fields and thinks himself better off, even to the point of forgetting that he is a slave. John Lennon knew it in his song Working Class Hero

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV,

And you think you're so clever and classless and free,

But you're still f-ing peasants as far as I can see. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_Class_Hero)

And now you know it too.