Judging History (branch off from election thread)

[a completely inoffensive name]

Gah. At the risk of Epic Thread Derailment ... I kinda disagree. If you read too much history, you'll see that slavery had a very different character in various societies. In Republican Rome, for example, slavery could function as a sort of welfare or unemployment insurance. Can't feed your family? Sell yourself into slavery as a tutor, hang out with some rich dude's kids for a decade or so, expect an early emancipation and a new patron at the end. (Beats starving to death or selling your children off as prostitutes, anyway.)

Which is not to say that I think slavery should be around. It should not. The extermination of slavery is one of the things I point to when cynics assert that nothing ever gets better.

But ... here's how I would formulate it: Slavery was extremely open to abuse. (And the way it worked in the Americas, with a racial basis and no realistic hope of emancipation, was pure evil.) But there were responsible slave owners. To draw on a modern analogy, it's like getting assigned to a job with the same boss and no hope of transfer. If you had a great boss, then it wasn't such a bad gig. If you had a bad boss? Ouch. Just ouch.

So slavery: not inherently evil, but steeply tilted toward misuse and abuse. And it seems that the more a society made slavery permanent the more likely it was to be abused. In ancient civilizations where the border between slave and freedman was porous, things were a lot more sane.

Anyway. Forgive me Father, for I have contributed to the derailment of mine own thread.

You are not talking about slavery though. You are talking about indentured servants. Which involves a contract to be agreed upon by both sides. Big difference, yes?

[Lemur]

You are not talking about slavery though. You are talking about indentured servants. Which involves a contract to be agreed upon by both sides. Big difference, yes?

Oh no, I'm talking about slavery. It was customary to emancipate after a decade or two of good service, but not contracted or bound by law.

(In fact, if you were a Roman who never freed slaves, you were seen as something of a weirdo. Kinda like, say, a guy who collects thousands of coupons and makes a big deal about it. You were seen as unforgivably stingy and cheap. But there was no law that said you were obliged to free anyone, ever. It was more of a social norm.)

[Lemur]

Note that many Antebellum Southerners trotted out the Ancient Romans as an example to justify the unjustifiable, as well as examples of slavery from the Old and New Testament. In my opinion, what made American slavery uniquely evil and wicked was the combination of slavery with theories of racial superiority. (In other words, "I could free Thomas, but he's a subhuman and wouldn't know what to do with freedom, so for his own good I will keep working him until he dies." This was the sort of argument actually put forward at the time.)

So slavery: prone to abuse. Racism: bad. Put them together and you get a phenomenon of mind-boggling evil.

[ICantSpellDawg]

People like to get on their "this is wicked" kicks. People live and people die, we try to do what we think is right which is usually just what everybody around us wants us to do. Sometimes somebody comes along and is really miffed by some perceived inconsistency and convinces other people to be miffed because of their sheer charismatic power. Then, logic is designed around that concept and a new sense of right and wrong is born. A man killing another man is no different from a tiger killing a man or a tree falling on a man. We can do something about it so we probably shouldn't, but I digress. When we are in the ground, I have a feeling if we look back, at whatever we or anyone else has done, if we are capable of doing so, and we will say, "well that was fun, but completely pointless". We are apes, running around, trying to figure out the existence around us as if the existence will alter in any meaningful way if we figure it out.

It's fun to throw yourself into a time period, surrounded by some strongly felt but terribly misguided sense of righteousness, and get all worked up about what they were worked up about. That's one of my favorite parts of history.

Romney 2012 - gotta keep this thread focused.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Oh no, I'm talking about slavery. It was customary to emancipate after a decade or two of good service, but not contracted or bound by law.

(In fact, if you were a Roman who never freed slaves, you were seen as something of a weirdo. Kinda like, say, a guy who collects thousands of coupons and makes a big deal about it. You were seen as unforgivably stingy and cheap. But there was no law that said you were obliged to free anyone, ever. It was more of a social norm.)

No, this is what you said.

Can't feed your family? Sell yourself into slavery as a tutor, hang out with some rich dude's kids for a decade or so, expect an early emancipation and a new patron at the end.

Selling yourself is a willing action to provide labor from your body in some way under some term of agreement by both sides. The contract may be incredibly harsh for one side, but it is nevertheless a contract between both parties who are both agreeing on it. That is not slavery. That is indentured servitude.

If someone comes to you asking to be your escort for 5 years and you agree and hammer out the terms and conditions, is that slavery?

[Lemur]

That is not slavery. That is indentured servitude.

Sorry, that's just factually incorrect. Indentured servitude was a fixed-term system of debt/obligation and labor; selling yourself into slavery (not uncommon in ancient Rome and the Hellenic city-states) was a permanent change in status (in other words, you made yourself another person's property, until either death or emancipation).

The fact that you might sell yourself voluntarily has no bearing on whether or not it was slavery.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Sorry, that's just factually incorrect. Indentured servitude was a fixed-term system of debt/obligation and labor; selling yourself into slavery (not uncommon in ancient Rome and the Hellenic city-states) was a permanent change in status (in other words, you made yourself another person's property, until either death or emancipation).

The fact that you might sell yourself voluntarily has no bearing on whether or not it was slavery.

And what you are describing is indentured servitude. From the wiki links you just posted:
Indentured servitude refers to the historical practice of contracting to work for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities during the term of indenture.

What you said:
Can't feed your family? Sell yourself into slavery as a tutor, hang out with some rich dude's kids for a decade or so, expect an early emancipation and a new patron at the end.


Slavery is not willing labor, you do not sell yourself into slavery. Someone must force you into slavery. That's how it works. Otherwise all capitalistic labor is a form of slavery (get out of here Commies). In slavery, there is no agreement to work, there is no fixed period of time, there is no choice in the matter to begin with.


EDIT: The very first sentence of the wiki article for slavery you posted:
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.

The servants may be treated as property under the Roman system, but they were never forced to work to begin with. They willingly accepted the work.

[Lemur]

a fixed period of time

That's the key bit. In the tutor scenario I described, which was far from uncommon, the would-be tutor sold himself in the hopes that he would be emancipated after a period of good service, but it was unheard-of for such a provision to be put in writing, or agreed-upon at the time of sale.

Slavery is not willing labor, you do not sell yourself into slavery. Someone must force you into slavery. That's how it works.

That it how it often worked, but not the only way. Look, at its heart, slavery means becoming another person's property. Completely. That is what "slave" means, no more, no less. Whether you were taken off a battlefield in Gaul or sold yourself to the highest bidder in Athens, the legal status was the same. Slave.

Equating it with indentured servitude is just incorrect. Sorry. There are similarities, but they are not the same thing. An indentured servant was still a citizen; a slave was not. An indentured servant had a guaranteed time when service would end; a slave did not. An indentured servant could own property, sue and enter into contracts; a slave could not. Killing an indentured servant was generally regarded as murder; killing a slave was bad manners.

There are some similarities, but more differences.

-edit-

Could some kind BR mod split the Abe Lincoln/George Washington/Slavery bit off into a new thread? I fear we have wandered far from the 2012 campaign. Not that I mind, I just have a compulsively neat streak ...

[a completely inoffensive name]

That's the key bit. In the tutor scenario I described, which was far from uncommon, the would-be tutor sold himself in the hopes that he would be emancipated after a period of good service, but it was unheard-of for such a provision to be put in writing, or agreed-upon at the time of sale.

The would be tutor still willingly accepted the compact. He did not put in writing the terms and conditions because that was not "kosher" at the time, but he nevertheless was the one saying "I will work for you in return for food and shelter." Not forced. Not slavery. That's not my personal definition, that's the definition from the wiki article (great authority, I know).

Look, at its heart, slavery means becoming another person's property. Completely. That is what "slave" means, no more, no less. Whether you were taken off a battlefield in Gaul or sold yourself to the highest bidder in Athens, the legal status was the same. Slave.

No, this is too simplistic of a definition for slavery. Under this definition, we are all someones slaves because while we are under their employment, the boss/company owns our body. But we are not slaves to our corporate bosses, because our labor is not forced. We may have to change our lifestyle and no longer control what we do to ourselves (ex: random drug tests force you to stop smoking pot in your free time), but we signed up for it willingly. That means we are not slaves. Even if we sign a contract where we are not allowed to leave on such a short notice, we are not slaves. Are police and firefighters slaves because it is illegal to strike and leave the job while on the clock?

Equating it with indentured servitude is just incorrect. Sorry. There are similarities, but they are not the same thing. An indentured servant was still a citizen; a slave was not. An indentured servant had a guaranteed time when service ends; a slave did not. An indentured servant could own property, sue and enter into contracts; a slave could not.

The classification of servitude does not depend on their standing within society, it depends on the conditions of the labor agreement. AKA Did both parties agree or not?


I'm sorry. But your definition is wrong and is not matching up with the articles you yourself provided.