Neo-slavery: The Backside of Capitalism

Topic: EnvironmentNatural Disasters
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Last updated: April 16, 2019

How slavery has mutated with time so that it even exists in our today’s world, though in more subtle forms, is if anything, quite interesting for study. This ever changing character of slavery can hardly be understood unless we first undertake to briefly look into how it was perpetrated in ancient and even colonial times.Slavery has existed since time immemorial. In fact, there is no exact point in time, in the world’s history when slavery can be said to have began; neither can its genesis be blamed on a particular group of people. However, it is jarringly clear that slavery could not have existed during the stages of civilization when hunting and gathering were the major sources of livelihood.

This is mainly due to the fact that the lifestyle of that time didn’t make demands for an expansive manpower to make ends meet. Therefore, acquisition of slaves by anyone would invariably make unwanted demands for their (slaves) upkeep. (Encyclopedia Britannica 853)Slavery rose to a modest level when ancient communities turned from hunters to pastoralists and gained momentum as agriculture took the centre stage of economic activities. Later on, due to the change from subsistence to market economy, slavery’s character also transformed. That was the period when urbanization was rising. And slavery now spilled into urban centers. There, slaves were not only used to tackle domestic chores and as sex objects; they also worked in industries, mining and commerce.

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(Encyclopedia Britannica 854).The main asset in slavery is slaves. These are people owned by others (masters) and are deprived most or even all of their rights and freedoms. Even today, slaves are often at the beck and call of their masters, though in the past the masters at times to take the lives of their slaves. In the old form of slavery, slaves were acquired through several means.According to Encyclopedia Britannica, one of the main ways that slaves were acquired was through kidnapping.

In some communities, people who were found guilty of breaking the law were punished by either being reduced into slaves or alternatively, they were sold out as such. Another source of slaves was through birth from slave parents: The children born of slave parents belonged to the masters of their parents. Finally, the other major source of slaves was through sales: slaves were considered as goods; in fact, the driving need of kidnapping people for enslavement was to supply the slave market. Once bought, the slaves became the property of their masters (854). In contemporary slavery, slaves are mainly acquired through child and women trafficking, and through provisions of oppressive employment opportunities.Efforts to stump out slavery were met with fierce resistance here in the United States and all over the world where the rich had leaned on slaves to keep their businesses running.

  In 1807 the U. S government illegalized the importation of slaves. That was meant to hasten the demise of the vice. But the desired results were never realized.

The slave owners, though hindered from expanding their ‘work force’, still used their slaves as before.  That persistence of the vice necessitated the emergence of the second phase – the abolitionism, which concentrated on the emancipation of the populace that was already in slavery.It is worth noting that after a protracted war by the British anti-slavery leaders under the auspice of Anti-slavery Society that was formed in 1823, a law was later passed in 1833 that freed all slaves in British colonies and compensated their owners.

That movement had a deep influence in the United States. In the long run it influenced the crucial developments like the pronouncement of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1860s, which freed all slaves. (Encyclopedia Britannica 862)Though the factors that necessitated slavery in the past aren’t the same ones that fuel it today, slavery still continues in various nuances that could be easily overlooked. In his paper: Testing a Theory of Modern Slavery, Professor Kevin Bales, who is also the President of Free the Slaves (Washington D. C), brings into light some of the factors which propels modern slavery. These factors also double up as indicators that a society is involved in neo-slavery. They include the abuse of political and civil rights, the explosion of human population, a dismal human development index, trafficking in and out of those countries and finally high domestic and foreign debt. (13)The population explosion has brought about the scarcity of jobs and the upsurge of crime.

In such set ups, corruptions has thrived as the express means of acquiring employment, imputing job seekers to pander to the demands of their employers, sexual or otherwise, as a form job security. This situation has also created a chance whereby; the modern slave owners (those who own the means of production) overwork their employees and then underpay them.Prof. Bales argues in his paper that most slaves are today used at the lowest end of the production ladder, growing or processing raw material. They tackle the basic low-skill jobs that are dirty and dangerous. He adds that though these slave owners make profits out of their slaves, they aren’t likely to use their profits in a manner that will benefit the slaves.

Eventually, slaves contribute only a little to the national economies. (5)Child labor is another form of contemporary slavery, which has been even banned by International Organizations like the United Nations. Children, who are supposed to be in school, are employed to work in farms or industries. Children are preferred because, for one they are cheap to hire. Secondly, their rights can be trampled on without them fighting back. Despite being overworked, the working conditions for children are also appalling. Above all, child labor acerbates the scarcity of jobs for adults; since hired adults is more expensive than children. (Neil and Webber 110 – 111)In the exploration of modern slavery in November 2006, during a conference at the Hull University’s WISE Institute (Wilberforce Institute of Slavery and Emancipation), participants looked into some of the crude manifestation of slavery in African countries like Ghana, where young people are given out as house helps and others are sold out as fishermen.

The participants also looked at the legal definition of slavery; of what benefit such a legal definition could be to those seeking redress or protection from enslavement or ‘domestic servitude’ and whether states provide enough protection to individuals employed within their borders. (1)However, some states have used the law to give slavery its teeth. This is whereby slavery has been perpetrated in the form of contract labor.

One form of it is called the debt bondage, which has survived ever since the second phase of the 20th Century, despite the measures enacted to end it. This form, otherwise known as servitude for debt, is a contract whereby a debtor pledged his personal service or those of a person under his control, as a security for debt. It occurs mainly in underdeveloped agricultural countries, though even the economically advanced countries haven’t been exempt from it. In more industrialized countries the moneylender either directly exploits the debtor’s labor for his own profit or hires him out to some third party. (Encyclopedia Britannica 863)In sum, the ever widening gap that highlights the inequalities in our modern world, in ways more than one, a silent façade of the continuation of slavery. As Prof. Bales insinuates in his paper, we are all involved in it either overtly or covertly, as slave owners or slaves, because slavery is a relationship between at least two people, either socially, economically or even emotionally.

(15)Since slaves are not able to fully participate in the building of a stable economy, their untapped potential reduces them into a liability rather than the assets of their economies. Prof. Bales say in his paper that whatever their forms, the outcome of slavery are exploitative in nature (1). Dr.

Walter Rodney also echoes his sentiments in his article in NewAfrica. Dr. Rodney concurs that the exploitation of land labor is essential for human and social advancement, but only on the assumption that the product is made available within the area where the exploitation takes place (15)It is thus expedient that even in promoting a capitalist economy governments should become more sensitive to the concerns of the populace that earn a living as semi-skilled employees. Besides, labor unions all over the world should realize that now more than ever, the world almost solely, relies on them to redress the imbalance.

Far from that the rights of children and women should be upheld, and never be should economic advancement be at the expense of social wellbeing.Slavery is one of the starkest scar in the fabric of modern civilization because many amongst other negatives, it has sired endemic poverty.

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