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Comment by speeder | Hacker News Reader

Slavery is a subject I find fairly interesting, but sadly, it only 'appears' to be discussed, frank discussions of slavery have the problem that most people or assume that anyone with any slight impression of defending slavery in any for is 100% evil, or they assume others expect that behaviour, and 'pretend' they have it, stifling discussion and research.

For example research into the african slavery, and the result of slavery on the lives of africans transported to the Americas (not only US), frequently just result in researchers dismissed as being 'revisionists', and no real discussion show up, the few people that end having courage to discuss it for real, frequently are actual bigoted racists, that don't care about the wider public opinion of them, on both sides of the coin (I saw blatant racists both anti-white and anti-black).

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It feels like you're saying: "I have something valuable to say about [x], but because of political correctness I'm not allowed to say it. If only we could have a frank discussion about [x], then I could tell you!"

I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored.

No need for vitriol. "A concrete example would strengthen your argument" would make the same point without putting them on the defense.

I didn't infer that he himself had something valuable to say on the subject, only that he suspects someone does, and laments their apparent reluctance to say it.

I think part of the source of this suspicion is that the abolition of slavery was a result of the Enlightenment and the rise of natural law as a source of ethics, and virtually every aspect of the West has abandoned natural law as a source of ethics or principle, leaving modern ethics in a drunkard's walk around the positions last reasoned to before that jettisoning.

I agree heartily with your point about the state of modern (well, postmodern) ethics, but "virtually every aspect of the West" is overstating how much the original principles have been abandoned. There are certainly people in the West that never bought into postmodern thinking and would prefer natural law or imago dei to... well, the mess we have now.

>I find this an annoying meta-argument because it's so common nowadays, especially on the right. It's really convenient that you don't have to make your actual argument, but can elevate it to the status of desirable secret knowledge by pretending that it would be censored.

It's common on the right because it accurately describes the state of political discourse today. One small example is immigration policy. I've found it impossible to have a frank and honest discussion, based on facts and logic and opinions, with anyone on the political left. Typically, within two minutes, they'll get angry and call me a racist.

I have no doubt being taken to America was beneficial to some African slaves. I also do not doubt it would have been far more beneficial for far more of them if they had been able to do it as freemen and were treated like human beings.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding, but are you talking about debating the merits of slavery? Forgive me if I'm incredulous, but what kind of results are there to debate? Are you implying that there were good results to come from slavery? I am genuinely interested in what there is to know, as I'm horribly ignorant of it myself.

I was reading on slavery today, and came across an interesting couple of quotes by Engels:

>The only difference as compared with the old, outspoken slavery is this, that the worker of today seems to be free because he is not sold once for all, but piecemeal by the day, the week, the year, and because no one owner sells him to another, but he is forced to sell himself in this way instead, being the slave of no particular person, but of the whole property-holding class.

and

>The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

I'd say myself it's a greater shame that wage slavery is discussed as sparsely as it is.

I can't relate to the fashion of describing freemen as slaves.

Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort. These people you're "selling yourself" to are in fact selling your fragile life to you, for the cost of you selling them some of theirs. You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve.

>Life is suffering, staying alive takes effort.

I agree. But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way, especially for those who cannot take the effort to survive, or live on the brink of death despite taking the effort.

> are in fact selling your fragile life to you

I don't think people should have to buy their lives from other people. How did these people get my life anyway? Why do they have the right to sell it to me? This seems to be starting with a default position of them having my life. I demand it back.

Edit:

>You are, in effect, specializing in relieving some common suffering, and hoping that others specialize in relieving the suffering you do not know how to relieve.

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you're saying here. My point is that you shouldn't have to work for anyone but yourself, and you shouldn't let others make a profit from your work while they apply almost no work at all. Are you implying that the bourgeoisie specialise in relieving suffering?

> But it shouldn't necessarily have to be that way.

If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order.

> I demand it back.

They want theirs back too! Society is an open question as to how this can be done decently.

>If it's not that way, it soon will get worse. An optimal amount of suffering lies on a ray between tyrannical order, and unbounded chaos. Excess order drives chaos. Excess chaos creates unbearable suffering, which drives order.

Please excuse me, but are you trying to be obscurantist and vague with this? I just don't understand what point you're trying to make here. Why must we have suffering at all, when it can be avoided? Why must there be exploitation? I'm talking in concrete cases here - people are being exploited for their labour.

There is no "golden middle" for suffering. The idea that there must be, or that a middle solution is best, is a logical fallacy.

>They want theirs back too!

Who does? The capitalists? I'm not taking their life; rather, I am selling my labour-time as a worker to them, in order to survive, reproduce, and replenish the worker force. I start with the fundamental idea: nobody should have to sell their time to someone else in order to survive for themselves.

> Who does? The capitalists?

It sounds like you've set yourself up in a dichotomy between yourself and "the capitalists", if you keep this up, you'll be constantly baffled.

The slave, by definition, is being denied alternatives by the master. If there were a master which had better housing, and less violent staff, the slave can not apply for that job.

You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness. You are free, but that doesn't mean the world itself is pleasant to anyone. Your employer works for somebody too.

> I'm not taking their life

They aren't taking yours either. But if you give your effort to them, they can help save you from suffering the world on your own. I doubt you would prefer to live alone in a prairie, forest, or bog. I doubt you could survive even a week in such conditions. Furthermore, what would it be worth to live alone in the prairie, forest, or bog? Nothing you discover, say, or think will ever mean anything if you refuse to serve others.

You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness.

Theoretically yes, but in practice you might quickly end up against all kinds of constraints, especially if you got a bad start.

But if you give your effort to them, they can help save you from suffering the world on your own.

This of course works both ways, the workers are saving the capitalist from suffering by giving them shares of the goods they produce. There is no reason the capitalist should profit from this arrangement more than the workers.

If the capitalist does not offer compensation at a profit, then there is no reason for the capital. If you take it by force, he no longer has any reason to operate it.

Why should the capitalist suffer for free, and the worker destroy the capitalist's work for no gain?

I am probably misunderstanding what you want to say, but I never said that the capitalist should not be compensated for his work or the workers should destroy any work.

>If the capitalist does not offer compensation at a profit, then there is no reason for the capital.

Altruism is a reason.

There's no reason founded on greed; and the rich person would then need to provide productive labour.

>It sounds like you've set yourself up in a dichotomy between yourself and "the capitalists"

It is between the proletariat and bourgeoisie. This turns out to be quite a useful distinction, applicable in most cases, to the current mode of production.

>You, on the other hand, have the choice between serving your employer, serving other members of society, serving a master as a voluntary slave, or foraging in the wilderness.

I disagree with this. Generally the options for most workers is that they must serve an employer. These employers are by definition capitalists. Most people don't have enough capital or are unable to amass enough capital to become capitalists themselves, and usually even then cannot out-compete large businesses with many more employees and advanced automation.

Foraging in the wilderness is quite a sad state to be in, especially when the alternative is selling your labour time for wages. With the amount of capital able to serve humanity, it is quite a shame that the solution is to forage in the wilderness rather than have it available for all. On top of this, most of the wilderness is private property or people have, thanks to the State, limited rights to do as they please on that land.

Bear in mind that a lot of people don't even have that choice. Sweatshop workers are an example.

>Your employer works for somebody too.

What labour does the employer apply? Where is it applied? And how many hours? Does it justify the amount he is paid, if wages are in proportion to labour?

To resign ourselves to individual hunting-gathering as an alternative to wage slavery is, as I'm sure you would agree, a poor way of living when so much more could be accomplished.

I would not equate those two things.

Even today, or, 200, 2000 or 4000 years ago, I would suggest slaves (as we understand the word) would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property. There would certainly be a few who would suffer from something akin to Stockholm syndrome, but by and large...

>would by and large prefer to sell their labor for a wage rather than be legally held as a kind of property.

I very much agree and I do not contest this. There are also feudal serfs who would love to live like workers today. However there are workers now who would love to live like truly free men who are not forced to sell their time to survive.

I think that those slaves 4000 years ago would like that too. Probably more than the feudal or even capitalist mode of production.

Yes, comparing the horrors of slavery to the current situation is hyperbolic - but the same format of exploitation is still happpening. That is, the format of selling labour-time to others in order to be afforded the luxury of life within the system. I think that Engels missed out that there is greater mobility nowadays. Even though it is very unlikely, a proletarian who has amassed enough capital can become a capitalist himself. But this does not do away with the exploitation of others.

The base state is not that we do nothing (I don't think).

The base state is that people (pre-agriculturally, pre-societally) have to scavenge, forage, hunt. If they did not put their bodies to work, or someone else didn't offer to lend them work, people would have to toil and "work". The hunter-gatherers, of say, South Africa, I don't think, is a lifestyle most people engaged in wage-for labor economies would prefer to go back to.

We just have to visit rural China where people opt away from subsistence living to work in these factories. Same for your Oaksakan indigenous who migrates to MDF.

The fact that modern capitalist society is extraordinarily good at getting people to participate in it isn't good evidence that it makes people better off. It's merely evidence that it has a highly effective police, military, and individual economic incentives. Like, if thousands of settlers shoot all the buffalo and forcibly move the native hunter-gatherers into marginal lands, and the natives later decide to migrate to a city and engage in menial labor, that doesn't mean that they're now better off. It just means that nation-states are really good at controlling territories and people.

Even in Soviet times, people, if they could would migrate to the city, internal passport withstanding. People may despise the tedium of modern work, but the toil of pre-agriculture and subsistence living is somewhat worse --it does not provide marginal benefit. It's subsistence. Weather, plagues and general unpredictability is not usually sought, if you have alternatives.

The Soviet example is the state making lives on farms significantly worse, rather than city life better. Like, they're notorious for forcibly reorganizing peasant life in a way that made them easier to control and tax and incidentally more susceptible to famine.

Plus, not a hunter-gatherer example. Better would be interactions in America between settlers and natives. Kidnapped settlers would refuse later repatriation, or escape from being "rescued" back to the community that abducted them.

I am not proposing a hunter-gatherer society; rather, I am proposing that the automation and materials needed to make socially necessary goods be collectively owned. This way, automation can be used in favour of the people, not for profit. Automation is used to massively reduce the required number of hours of work. Those who work receive the product of their labour. Democratic voluntary institutions are set up in which the workers collectively decide what to do with surplus product - whether to give it to those who are unwilling or unable to work, for example.

I'm no anarcho-primitivist. Abolishing the class system does not revert us to primitive times; rather it moves us beyond the need for profit and into the need of uses for products. We make things to be used, not exchanged.

Abolishing the class of people who hold capital does not revert us to a base state of survival, at least not in my judgement. Sorry if you weren't making that point.

However there are workers now who would love to live like truly free men who are not forced to sell their time to survive.

There are workers now who would love to have others provide for their needs, but not have to do anything in return?

How is this different from a desire to be a slaveowner?

No different, if you conflate taxes with slavery. That's preposterous though, for obvious reasons. If you don't like paying taxes, you can always quit your job: no income, no taxes. If you're a slave, on the other hand, quitting means torture and/or death.

So yeah, the desire to have others provide for your needs through tax dollars is worlds away from the desire to own slaves.

>There are workers now who would love to have others provide for their needs, but not have to do anything in return?

Where did I talk about others providing for your needs? My point was that you work for yourself, you don't have to sell your time to someone else. It may be decided, as a form of charity, to give to those who do not wish to work or especially those who are unable to. But it is by far not what I am advocating for; I advocate that each worker receives the full value of their labour.

I can't really see a way around being forced to work for oneself. I wish there were a way which would mean that work is not unevenly distributed, but there isn't in my knowledge. So in my opinion the best move is to work to massively reduce with automation the number of hours required to work, and to reward people with the products they make rather than wages. How this applies to service jobs, I'm not so sure.

Most Americans could if they chose scrape together enough money to purchase land in a rural area and set up a subsistence farm, thus living as "truly free men". But that lifestyle sucks and very few people want it. "Exploited" workers have a better quality of life.

>"Exploited" workers have a better quality of life.

Why does that mean that it's the best quality of life that could be had? I do not disagree that capitalism is better than the feudalism and slavery that preceeded it.

I agree with you that capitalists should not become disproportionally rich from the labour of their workers. But even if they did not, you still had to work to support your life. Capitalists become rich by taking a bit from many, you would not get rich if you got your bit back. Nonetheless, especially for the poorest it would still make a huge difference even if they would not become rich in the traditional sense.

Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function. "Requires" means that without a coordinated effort the enterprise won't be possible. Such enterprises are more productive than single workers and the gain is not linear, i.e. an enterprise that has two workers is more productive than two separate workers put together. This is why slavery (= coordinated team effort) is beneficial: it increases the wealth of the society more than when everyone is free and works on its own.

Of course, slavery is a very crude form of coordinated team effort. Private enterprise is much better and much more flexible; in fact, this is the best form so far. Best practical form, that is. I can imagine maybe a more attractive setup on a smaller scale, something like a community where the team effort is coordinated by the leader and everyone obeys because the leader is wise and knowledgeable or out of tradition; a monastery would be a good real-life example here. But I fail to imagine that this would scale.

Now, I believe that coordinated team effort in any form has to strip team members out of some of their liberties. E.g. if your enterprise is to work around the clock (and it may have to due to technical reasons), then some people will have to work nights. Yet coordinated work is so much more productive than single-person efforts that it's beneficial to accept these limits. Remember a DIY hamburger experiment where a guy wanted to make a plain hamburger all by himself and ended up with around $5,000 in costs and even that wasn't cheat-free?

>Slavery (as well as private enterprises) is a form to coordinate efforts of an enterprise that requires more than one worker to function.

I'm not arguing against coordination of efforts; rather I am talking about coordinating efforts on a small and preferably ad-hoc basis as a form of project management. Abolishing the class which appropriates surplus is by no means abolishing project managers and engineers. People partake voluntarily, and how much work is done is decided by direct democracy beforehand, either with delegates subject to instant recall or in person.

Yes, some people may need to work nights, though working nights is usually an effect of the fact that a product needs to be finished by a certain point in time in order to meet profit expectations. However even when there is a deadline, working nights need not be something involuntary as it almost is nowadays.

Businesses collaborate on projects at a small scale, and many projects can be put into 'monastery-size' collaborative teams. My main point is that the participation has to be voluntary, and that no surplus should be appropriated at any stage.

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