Slavery: a Function of Thoughtlessness

How often has this happened to you? Probably never, because chances are you're living in a society that outlaws the ownership of human beings. Chances are pretty high as well that that country has a capitalist economy. Did you know, however, that some people would argue that, because you live in a capitalist economy, you are a slave?

If you've studied slavery with anything even approaching depth, the above image isn't shocking. It's not shocking because you've seen worse - much worse. You've heard the stories. You'll never know what it was like, but you have a mental understanding at least of how bad it was. Images like this are nothing new to you, and you know you can dig up something ten times as bad, because, guess what? Slavery sucked. I realize African slavery in America is only one type of a long and continuing institution, but really, there's just no good way to enslave someone, plain and simple.

Even so, there are people out there who will tell you that if you're a factory worker in America, you're a slave. And the reason I picked the above photo to head this blog post was because those people are not the first to make such a claim. I'm sure Marx says it somewhere in his writings. I don't know for sure. What I do know is that there were definitely people making that claim in 19th century America: slaveowners.

See, even slaveowners understood that making someone work for nothing was pretty much one of the biggest dick moves ever. They tried to justify it in a variety of ways, and one of them was claiming that the lives of northern factory workers were just as shitty as those of southern slaves. The problem was that everyone, even back then, knew it was bullshit. Factory workers were poor, and their lives did pretty much suck, but they got to go home at the end of the day, have a family that could not be taken away from them on a whim, and, most importantly, they were paid for their labor. See, slavery is, very simply, when you are working for nothing against your will. Factory workers may not have had many opportunities, but they could, theoretically, walk away from their job whenever they wanted. Ok, they weren't going to and realistically they were tied economically to their job, but they had the option. They weren't "owned" by anyone. They were free men. And pretty much everyone in 19th century America was smart enough to draw that distinction, whether they admitted it or not.

Given that the lives of menial laborers have improved dramatically in America, and other civilized countries, anyone that would still compare unskilled workers to slaves pretty much has no idea what they're talking about.

It's really kind of offensive when you stop and think about it. I mean, there's really no one this comparison doesn't put down. It makes slavery seem like it was no big deal, which is untrue and a slap in the face to millions of men and women throughout history who had to legally "belong" to someone else. It insults menial laborers by telling them they have no control of their lives and that they're just tools of their employer. It obviously insults the employer who is, after all, paying the wages of his employees for their services. Comparing free labor to slavery is pretty much one of the most insulting and uninformed things you can do.

And what exactly is this "capitalism is slavery" argument anyway? If by slavery, people who compare the two mean work (as some do, trust me, I've heard this argument) then the "master" in this equation is essentially production. What they would consider "freedom" is to sit around all day and have food fall by magic into their mouths. Of course, that just isn't the way life works. You have to work to survive. That's a law of nature. You can't really call survival slavery unless to you freedom means death.

So given that if you value your life you have to put in some effort to maintain it, you are given options. You can obtain sustinence yourself through the grueling labor of hunting and gathering or (pre-modern) agriculture, or you can obtain it from others. To obtain it, you need to either take it by force, which is immoral and by which you risk death yourself, or you can exchange something for it. You could exchange goods and services as is, of course, but price-setting is difficult and variable. What would be really convenient would be to have a medium of exchange to use which acts as an objective value of effort.

So the best possible option, and the one which requires the least effort is free exchange of goods and services through the use of money, which is exactly what capitalism provides. If you don't want to do any work, you'll die. If you want to do the least amount of work possible to survive, and have the best quality of living besides, the logical way to do so is through capitalism.

People who say that work is slavery are essentially saying that life is slavery - and therefore that death is freedom. If you believe that, the solution is fairly obvious, though pretty inadvisable. If, on the other hand you like living, you should like working too.

Of course people will say, but I hate work. That's not really true, however. Just because you hate what you're doing know doesn't mean you don't like work. You just aren't doing work you like. Why do you think I'm doing history? It isn't slavery to work if you love what you do. It's profiting from doing something you enjoy anyway. Not exactly comparable a whip and hours of forced fieldwork when you get right down to it.

Of course, the argument then becomes that not everyone has that option. But that's not really the fault of capitalism. Capitalism is all about options. Why do you think there are at least five brands of bread in your average American supermarket?

I'm only too aware of the fact that my background has given me the options available to me. But that middle-class lifestyle didn't just magically appear. Even if I didn't work for it, someone did. Money is a symbol of productive ability. Even if I didn't create it, someone had to. If you're born poor, I will not argue that it is an unfair start in life. It sucks and it's bullshit to be born poor. The fact is, though, that wealth changes hands based on several factors. In capitalism, the driving factor is effort and ability. Yes, there are other factors, like luck and social structure, but those are factors which are interfering with the processes of capitalism. It's like blaming your computer for not working when you've just downloaded a large amount of questionable pornography. (Oh wait, people do that too.) The computer's not to blame - the user is. When we live in a society where a Ph.D. magically makes you better than someone with a BA, or where companies rely on the government to bail them out instead of relying on building quality products, what do we expect to happen?

Look, I won't pretend to understand being poor. I never have been poor and I don't know what it's like. But I do know that it's generally not the factory worker comparing his life to slavery - it's the well-off, comfortable armchair philosopher who didn't do his own thinking but relied on the books alone to decide what's right. Intelligence, philosophy and ideas are great things. They move the world. That's why we keep them and hold them on the same level as science or mathematics. But if you read something and don't think about it to see whether it makes any sense, you might as well not have read it at all, because now you're not using literature in the way it was meant to be used (as an idea-sharing medium to be critically appraised and understood), you're just believing everything you hear.

Think on this: working is a function of thought (I must survive. I cannot survive without working in some capacity. Ergo I must work.) and finding value in work is a function of thought (My life is worth living. Working allows me to live. Ergo my work is valuable.) and enjoying your work is a function of thought (Working gives me life. I enjoy life. Ergo I enjoy, on some level, that which allows me to live.). Is it surprising that those who compare work to slavery might, on occasion, be those who also do not want to think for themselves?

To bring the subject into the more practical world, I admit that there would be work I might have to do, if poor, that I would not enjoy. Working at Wal Mart, which I did once, and not for very long, is a great example. It sucks. It will always suck because of what it is. But I have skills, I have a brain, and eventually, I'd find a way to use to two to get the hell out. Most people have skills they like to use, and everyone is capable of thought. What separates people is mindset.

It is unbelievably difficult to rise from poverty, and despite what it may sound like, I do realize that. I appreciate every day the head start I've been given. But even though it is difficult, rising, even slightly, is possible - but you have to try, and capitalism, unlike any other system in existence, is about giving you the freedom to make that attempt. No, you may not succeed if you try, but what's going to happen if you don't try at all? And are you really going to try if you believe that work is slavery? Any chance is better than none, and if you advocate telling people that they have no control whatsoever over their lives, who's the bigger slavedriver? The capitalist system, or your fucked-up attitude that the poor should suffer without making any effort to free themselves from poverty? Effort and mindset are going to play a pretty big role in any attempt to better oneself. Telling people not to even try because they'll always be "slaves" is like cutting their legs off and telling them that life is about crawling. Anyone who believes work is simply a never ending cycle from which they have no escape is a slave - to himself and to other masters: those who told him that no matter what he did, he would simply never have a chance.