Slavery

Slavery is a condition of control over a person, known as a slave, that can be enforced by violence or other forms of coercion against his or her will. Slavery almost always occurs for the purpose of securing the labor of the slave. A specific form, known as chattel slavery, is defined by the absolute legal ownership of a person or persons, including the legal right to buy and sell them.

Definitions

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Therefore, a slave is someone who cannot leave an owner or employer without explicit permission, and who will be returned if they escape. Control may be accomplished through official or tacit arrangements with local authorities by masters who have some influence because of their social or economic status.

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In the strictest sense of the word, "slaves" are people who work for someone else but are not paid, and who have no rights. The word comes from Latin term sclavus, which is thought was originally referring to slavs, landless serfs from Eastern Europe, including parts of the Byzantine empire. However, the current usage of the word serfdom is not usually synonymous with slavery, because serfs are considered to have had some rights.

Related Topics:
Rights - Latin - Slavs - Serfs - Eastern Europe - Byzantine empire - Serfdom

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The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines slavery as a form of forced labour. It defines "forced labour" to be "all work or service which is extracted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily", albeit with certain exceptions: military service, convicts, emergencies and minor community services. http://www.ilo.org/dyn/declaris/DECLARATIONWEB.DOWNLOAD_BLOB?Var_DocumentID=5059. The ILO asserts that child labour amounts to forced labour in which the child's work is exacted from the family as a whole.

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In some historical contexts, compulsory labour to repay debts by adults has been regarded as slavery, depending upon the rights held by such individuals.

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Mandatory military service in liberal democracies is a controversial subject: one view is that conscripts are not "slaves", as they have substantial legal rights, and any government which took it upon itself to implement conscription, outside a time of extreme national emergency would eventually face a backlash at an election. Another view interprets acceptance of conscription as a sign of latent or crypto-fascism, excused by the Hegelian idea that nations have rights which supersede those of individuals.

Related Topics:
Mandatory military service - Liberal democracies - Fascism - Hegelian

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In United States legal usage, the term involuntary servitude means a condition of laboring for another without one's willful consent. It does not necessarily mean the complete lack of freedom found in chattel slavery.

Related Topics:
United States - Legal - Involuntary servitude

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Many left wing thinkers have discussed the idea of "wage slavery", although it is generally accepted that payment of a wage signifies "free labour", with the quite different disadvantages experienced by such workers.

Related Topics:
Left wing - Wage slavery - Wage - Free labour

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Ordinary citizens in totalitarian states are not generally considered slaves, as the only real point of comparison is restrictions on movement.

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Unfree labour

For further information, see the article unfree labour.

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Most people subject to the above conditions are covered by the generic term unfree labour, which includes all forms of slavery and similar labour systems. Unfree labour is now the preferred term of many scholars, because of the wide variety of ambiguities that may be attached to words like "slavery". One reason is that references to disparate, heterogenous types of labour have been translated into the English as "slavery".

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The British historian Sir Moses Finley, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient slavery, suggested that "slavery" was imprecise and that chattel slavery, in which the slave has no legal rights and could be bought and sold, was sufficiently different from other forms of unfree labour, and a greater violation of human rights, to be labeled distinctively.

Related Topics:
Moses Finley - Human rights

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