Menial Slavery In Our Own Time

[Stoic Guardian]

Too many variables...

[James L Walker]

To Polly:

There are two kinds of slaves. There is the working and then there is the unemployed homeless.

What you will find about the herded homeless is that their slavery is more obvious in comparison to the working.

There is this bullshit facade of society trying to treat the homeless with compassion but having been homeless on many ocassions I can tell you that it is all bullshit.

The homeless are treated less than human where they become deemed as nonpersons.

A existence of homelessness is reserved as punishment for non complying working slaves.

The existence of homelessness and the working slaves interact with each other because that is how those in power have designed it to be for a very long time now.

[James L Walker]

The mantra of authority is always the same with any kind of slavery.

You exist for our pleasure, self indulgence, whims, projects, aspirations, and service.

Lay down your lives as servants in serving us or face our wrath.

Such is the mantra of the privileged and slave masters who view themselves as the chosen ones of the planet to which they view everything and everybody else to be a part of their controlled domain.

For them the lives of others are cheap and disposable.

[James L Walker]

So there's really no difference between a Ukranian 14 year old being sold to mobsters in London in order for her body to be traded with punters for money, and a 35 year old shelling peas in a factory for 10+ hours a day? Gee, I guess I missed that memo.

This is the same sort of shitty victim argument you get from all those people who say "Thass raycisst" if anyone implies that success might just be something you have personal control over.

I'm also intrigued as to when exactly voluntary work becomes slavery. If someone could let me know where the line is drawn I'd appreciate it. Is a ten hour day in a factory slavery but a 14 hour day in a restaurant not? If so, why not? Is there a chart listing all the jobs that count as slavery somewhere?

There is a difference between voluntary laboring and taking up a job against one's own will because a person has no other means of sustaining themselves in society.

It is just as exploitative and against people's will.

Are you familiar with the slave servants that lived in the basements of their masters mansions? They did all the house chores that the owners thought beneath themselves.

It is called chattel slavery. The difference is that racism really has no definition where menial wage slavery does.

[James L Walker]

My point in this thread was that saying "wahhh, I don't make as much as that guy, that means I'm a slave" is a big slap in the face to every real slave. Yes, some people may have to live paycheck to paycheck -- that's similar to how the majority of people lived prior to industrialization. Business owners didn't make life hard. Life IS hard. I know it's comforting to have somebody to blame, but religion is also comforting. There's another thing that this train of thought has in common with religion -- they're both bullshit.

It is not complaining about others being paid more.

It is about not having livable wages being at the mercy of collective society forced to do miserable labor just to exist in it. Slavery. Get it!

[James L Walker]

Moreno: Prior to industrialization there were different kinds of impovrished lifestyles where class differences and a system that maintained these led to scarcity amongst the laborers and peasants. Many of these people were slaves. Not to mention indentured servants. Blacks in the US often had it worse after slavery in sharecropper south. They were technically free, but the system used them in ways that benefitted other groups while they were no longer seen as 'my property' to anyone. This last is good in one way of course, but in another way it meant that no one took responsibility for the minimal 'upkeep' and maintenance of that property. In some ways this allowed portions of the white south to have the benefits of slavery without some of the overhead.

Slavery in history has included all kinds of lifestyles. In Rome and Greece slaves could be well fed, live in relative luxury compared to other slaves and still be slaves. In the north in the US there was a large number of indentured servants. They had short life spans, because of their working and living conditions, and little power, but were not considered slaves.

I think the term wage-slave is a good one. We know that these people can make choices that formal slaves cannot, and that the restrictions on their choices are made via indirect economic control rather than via a whip or gun.

But saying these people are just low wage workers is utterly misleading- given the implicit sense many people in other classes conceive this: they are only competent enough to live like that, they deserve what they have, they should just do X (like I did), and so on.

I was once involved in a project where single mothers on welfare were able to go to college without losing their benefits. Much of the system rejected this and always in the objections - by social workers, state bureaucrats, local conservatives - we were told these women should not be treated as special and they have other choices. These choices were always presented as obvious and were specific.

We got all parties in a room together. Each time a, for example, social worker would say ' they should do this' we would turn to the other members of the group and do a reality check. Likewise with state official 'solutions'.

All these obvious choices that these women should make turned out to be hallucinations. all those obvious solutions put their children in jeopardy in various ways.

After this was clear to all parties, there was support for the program which indeed lead to a decent percentage getting degrees that allowed them to jump out of welfare without jeopardizing their children. Win Win. And very rapidly cheaper for the state - which did not pay for the education, loans did.

I mention this because I think choices are often projected onto situations where there are no good ones. Because one can make devastating choices it seems like it is not slavery - I realize in my example these were not menial workers. But isn't that what slavery was? One could run away, talk back, demand better treatment of one's children, but these were, generally, devastating choices.

We see no one with a whip or gun and so it can't be slavery.

This all doesn't mean the business owner is the moral equivalent of an overseer with a whip/slave owner. Now the system hides the whip in economic consequences.

And before industrialization we had communities and a commons in ways we do not now. Now we are all supposed to be disconnected monads.

Great post Moreno.

[James L Walker]

Polly, I think they just like being melodramatic. If someone's not living in the same quality as some other people, they have to be a slave. It is, like you said, much like the whole "That's Racist!" meme -- it's just an over-dramatic leftist response to things so they can feel righteous and shit. It's an appeal to emotion, calling this "slavery" and that "racism". That's what the left is best at -- using overly strong language to appeal to peoples' emotions. So, I say let 'em have it, let 'em debase those words until they're meaningless, let them cry wolf time and time again. I'm not listening to their cries, and soon enough no one will.

I thought you said that you were some sort of anarcho capitalist or libertarian.

You sound to me like some sort of pompous naive privileged portion of the population.

You might as well become some sort of full fledged neo conservative republican government supporter the way you talk.

If you think there will be huge numbers of people offering themselves into menial wage slavery in a existence of anarchy you must be some sort of comedian.

[James L Walker]

To Polly:

Jobs that are not menial wage slavery are self fulfillng and pay a livable wage.

Menial wage slaves neither have fulfilling jobs or livable wages.

How hard do you wish to make the issue?

[James L Walker]

To Pink Dildo:


I thought the mark of a slave's occupation is depressing, humiliating, pointless, and overall underpaid.

[James L Walker]

One more try to explain why it's ridiculous to call minimum-wage jobs in the US "slavery":

Since when did people go out of their way to apply to be slaves? In my history lessons on slavery in early US history, I don't recall hearing stories of black people going to their local McSlaveCorp office and handing in their resume. Maybe I was sick that day in history class. Or maybe it's bullshit to compare working a job that you applied for deliberately to people being dragged away from their homes against their will and forced to work.

Technological unemployment and specialization limits what kinds of jobs one can apply for. Education is the new means of segregation and makes slaves of many desperate people who lack specialization or become a victim of technological unemployment.

[Moreno]

Flannel Jesus wrote:One more try to explain why it's ridiculous to call minimum-wage jobs in the US "slavery":

Since when did people go out of their way to apply to be slaves?

Since we eliminated roles. Certainly any peasant not under the thumb of some noble would have quite quickly have had to try to get under the thumb of a noble. This would give them a right to be somewhere, a right to use whatever commons there was and a right to farm and keep some of the products of that farming.

But note, they were born peasants. They were born into their role. Just as slaves were - or were forced into that role.

Every slave who decided not to risk escape - which led to torture and potentially death - was choosing to continue being a slave because the options were worse. I think some sharecropper blacks would have chosen slavery over the set ups they had. Some were worse fed, after the brief grace period after the Civil War, and had a harder time giving their children the basics. But they couldn't chose formal, plantation slavery because it was illegal.

However they often did choose amongst the landowners which put them in slavery-like conditions. Their option would be to wander in the woods being hunter gatherers, which would have led to getting shot sooner or later. Or, if they had the means, shift to the north.

If you want to eat, you need to get money. Low wages is better than no wages or getting put in prison for acquiring food other ways.

It's not like they are choosing between a higher wage job where they have some respect and can act like humans instead of automatons.

I don't see the choice in this.

I don't think people showing up in a famine in food lines could really do something else, either. Nothing rational.

Throw in children, and the adult has to choose a source of income.

[Moreno]

I would also like to add a point. Perhaps the US economic set up and power distribution is the best of all possible worlds, a rational economy, which creates the greatest good for the greatest number. But if not, then all sorts of other issues arise in relation to menial jobs.....

As I said above for many it is the best choice economically and the other options are devastating, especially if children are involved.

But we also have a cookie cutter society. Schools choose a very limited set of pedagogical tools and these tools determine a lot about those children's futures. If, in fact, a child would thrive in another kind of pedagogical situation but their parents cannot afford an alternative private school, that child will do less well then he or she might and often will get labels as either stupid or sick - though the words will be professional and 'nice'.

This same pattern is there in the work world. Most workplaces have rather sick cultures and US bosses have tremendous power, power they do not have, in say Sweden, though Scandanavia is changing and becoming more hierarchical in workplaces also.

Some people actually feel more comfortable being treated like automatons - though there are degrees and personal style preferences - or being treated with systematic disrespect. Whether from nature or training, they take if for granted.

Others who do not feel right in this culture may tend to end up in more menial jobs, because they can do these without thinking. They are still in a workplace culture they hate, but at least it is so easy to master the job, they tend not to get shit on and also there is less of what might have been good stress or challenges, stuff they would face in a job that fit their skills better. It can be incredibly hard to have to deal with the average human's conception of good workplace communication and relation AND deal with a job that is challenging the same time....

if one gives a shit about decent human relations. If one has not so given up or assumed that this is just the way things have to be.

But if in your gut you know they don't have to be like this and you actually expect more of your fellow humans and society, a menial job may be the only survival tactic.

We make people, starting with them as children, fit society. If they don't we pathologize them - literally through diagnosis or more metaphorically with other kinds of categorization.

People are so used to this process that they think that those who react negatively have a problem, rather than are noticing it.

Often they are people who did manage to thrive.

So they assume that everyone else should.

Well, this makes the assumption that we are all alike. Put me in an apprentice type learning situation and I am a genius. Make me sit still behind a desk and listen to a lecture from someone who distrusts children and I do not.

Other people thrive, perhaps due to their genes, who cares, in situations I abhor. But our conception of normal is so narrow that diversity of lifestyle/learning/working needs is broken down into healthy and sick or good and bad, rather than, what science backs up, people thrive in different subcultures.

Just because 'you' did well receiving corporal punishment, public schooling, minimum wage jobs that led to becoming the CEO of Walmart, does not mean people who do not thrive in that same milieu are 'wrong' 'lazy' 'too emotional' 'too sensitive' 'pussies' 'touchie feely' 'commies' 'unrealistic' or whatever.

They are just different. And difference is not tolerated well.

[Stoic Guardian]

I don't think those in power are overally concerned with orchestrating destitution, perhaps they're simply trying to help those they can, maybe they think trying to help those who are already spiteful towards the state its a waste of time.

[Polly]

So many tl;dr posts.

People work because they have to - STOP THE PRESS!

[SIATD v2]

To Pink Dildo:


I thought the mark of a slave's occupation is depressing, humiliating, pointless, and overall underpaid.

You're thinking of a serf, not a slave. Serfs are slightly higher up the pecking order. If this thread was called 'menial serfdom in our time' then you might have got a different response.

Is all work essentially prostitution? Yes, you give your body for money. Are all prostitutes sex slaves? No.

Important distinctions. In any case, an entry-level worker in the US still has it better than the majority of the world's workers. Not that you should be grateful or anything, I'm just saying be realistic. And that being realistic involves actually knowing what's going on in other places except the US, for example that England has an income tax, and that not all Africans only own mobile phones and nothing else.

[MagsJ]

...the trends in the regularity of the answers always reveal something.

...yeah, that your average person is a tasteless bore who hinders progression.

How do you figure?

...make that money being wasted, as well as time.

[Flannel Jesus]

If you want to eat, you need to get money. Low wages is better than no wages or getting put in prison for acquiring food other ways.

It's not like they are choosing between a higher wage job where they have some respect and can act like humans instead of automatons.

I don't see the choice in this.

Doing the things you need to do to eat is, in fact, NOT enough to qualify someone as a slave. I can think of some pretty simple examples. Here's one: NEARLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON PRIOR TO MODERN TIMES!

People used to actually have to work to eat all the time. They had to hunt, gather, forage, scavenge. If they didn't, they starved. Were they slaves? Slaves to whom?

Seeing as the only non-facetious thoughtful answer to my second-to-last question above is "no," needing to eat, and by proxy needing to do things that enable you to eat, obviously doesn't make you a slave. The criteria are a bit more demanding than that.

[Flannel Jesus]

I thought you said that you were some sort of anarcho capitalist or libertarian.

You sound to me like some sort of pompous naive privileged portion of the population.

You might as well become some sort of full fledged neo conservative republican government supporter the way you talk.

If you think there will be huge numbers of people offering themselves into menial wage slavery in a existence of anarchy you must be some sort of comedian.

Right, because I don't think it makes sense to call any job you don't think is your dream job "slavery" I must be some kind of rich republican. Hyperbole is definitely something you're quite fond of, if this thread is any indication.

[Stoic Guardian]

Definately

[uglypeoplefucking]

when one's life is devoted, out of necessity, to drudgery and menial work for low wages that are not sufficient to provide them with any opportunity for advancement or improvment of their condition, they are a slave.

not difficult to understand, not hyperbole, not leftist propaganda, just an accurate description of the life led by a substantial underclass of people AROUND the world.

yes some slaves have it worse than others, but that has ALWAYS been the case with slaves: working at McDonalds or Wal Mart is probably not as bad as being a teenager sold into sex slavery. So what? doesn't mean it isn't slavery. i mean, skin cancer isn't as bad as pancreatic cancer, but it's still cancer.

[Flannel Jesus]

when one's life is devoted, out of necessity, to drudgery and menial work for low wages that are not sufficient to provide them with any opportunity for advancement or improvment of their condition, they are a slave.

Doing the things you need to do to eat is, in fact, NOT enough to qualify someone as a slave. I can think of some pretty simple examples. Here's one: NEARLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON PRIOR TO MODERN TIMES!

People used to actually have to work to eat all the time. They had to hunt, gather, forage, scavenge. If they didn't, they starved. Were they slaves? Slaves to whom?

having to do things is not what constitutes slavery. being forced by natural drives and needs isn't what slavery is. being forced by people to do things is slavery, but being forced by hunger to do things is not.

[SIATD v2]

when one's life is devoted, out of necessity, to drudgery and menial work for low wages that are not sufficient to provide them with any opportunity for advancement or improvment of their condition, they are a slave.

No, they are underpaid and overworked. They still own their own labour. A slave does not.

not difficult to understand, not hyperbole, not leftist propaganda, just an accurate description of the life led by a substantial underclass of people AROUND the world.

Accurate up until you called it slavery.

yes some slaves have it worse than others, but that has ALWAYS been the case with slaves: working at McDonalds or Wal Mart is probably not as bad as being a teenager sold into sex slavery. So what?

So working at Wal Mart and living in your parents basement is nowhere near as bad as seeing your village destroyed, your sister and mother raped, you and your father and brothers rounded up and imprisoned on a ship, taken across the Atlantic, during which time your father and several of your brothers are beaten to death or starve and are thrown overboard, only to arrive in the 'land of freedom' where you spend the rest of your days picking cotton for some rich white motherfucker. Nowhere near as bad.

doesn't mean it isn't slavery. i mean, skin cancer isn't as bad as pancreatic cancer, but it's still cancer.

Stubbing your toe isn't as bad as breaking your foot which isn't as bad as getting hit by a bus and never being able to walk again. Does that mean they are all slavery too?

[Duality]

I cannot wait for global economic collapse. The first people to be devoured will be people just like you. Only then will you understand the true meaning of victim and powerlessness.

If the true meaning of victimhood and powerlessness lies in one sitting at a local Starbucks and whining about how unfair one's life is as he sucks on his grande caramel frapuccino, then we are all doomed.



[ I'm sorry Joker, I don't think a single melancholy violin can capture the magnitude of your person's immense suffering. Here, this is more to your scale]:

We Are all doomed.

[uglypeoplefucking]

when one's life is devoted, out of necessity, to drudgery and menial work for low wages that are not sufficient to provide them with any opportunity for advancement or improvment of their condition, they are a slave.

No, they are underpaid and overworked. They still own their own labour. A slave does not.

what does that mean, they "own" their labor? their work is being taken from them.

So working at Wal Mart and living in your parents basement is nowhere near as bad as seeing your village destroyed, your sister and mother raped, you and your father and brothers rounded up and imprisoned on a ship, taken across the Atlantic, during which time your father and several of your brothers are beaten to death or starve and are thrown overboard, only to arrive in the 'land of freedom' where you spend the rest of your days picking cotton for some rich white motherfucker. Nowhere near as bad.

yeah, that would suck, but it's beside the point. what you describe is not a prerequisite for slavery.

[uglypeoplefucking]

when one's life is devoted, out of necessity, to drudgery and menial work for low wages that are not sufficient to provide them with any opportunity for advancement or improvment of their condition, they are a slave.

Doing the things you need to do to eat is, in fact, NOT enough to qualify someone as a slave. I can think of some pretty simple examples. Here's one: NEARLY EVERY SINGLE PERSON PRIOR TO MODERN TIMES!

People used to actually have to work to eat all the time. They had to hunt, gather, forage, scavenge. If they didn't, they starved. Were they slaves? Slaves to whom?

having to do things is not what constitutes slavery. being forced by natural drives and needs isn't what slavery is. being forced by people to do things is slavery, but being forced by hunger to do things is not.

it's all contextual. i think that depends on what one is forced to do, for whom one is forced to do it, and what one receives for doing it.