I have another article up at The American Spectator Online today. It’s about the problem of how young people are to understand the thinking of their ancestors, especially on issues like slavery.
And then, this morning, James Lileks pointed me to an article from io9 that perfectly illustrates the problem. This writer talks about the “mysterious” culture of the Incas, which “had no markets.”
The secret of the Inca’s great wealth may have been their unusual tax system. Instead of paying taxes in money, every Incan was required to provide labor to the state. In exchange for this labor, they were given the necessities of life.
Of course, not everybody had to pay labor tax. Nobles and their courts were exempt, as were other prominent members of Incan society….
Only someone who has completely failed to understand history, in the sense about which I write for the Spectator, could fail to recognize the actual nature of Incan civilization. The common people were all slaves.
That conclusion is painfully clear to me. The idea that it was “mysterious” to the writer is also painful.
Usury, in its various manifested forms, has replaced slavery with bondage and captivity.
The funny thing is that the comments to the io9 article all think the proper analogy to the Incas was the Federation from Star Trek.
Grim,
Which should tell you something about the Federation in Star Trek.
(Go Browncoats!)
I don’t know if it could be called slavery.
Serfdom might be a better term.
You know, like they had in Pre-Revolutionary Russia!
I recognize no difference in kind between slavery and serfdom. Only a difference of scale.
I’m fascinated by differences in kinds between slavery and serfdom, or between slavery and slavery. Obviously, all are going to have a similar basis in that masters of slaves have the sort of power over slaves that enables horrible disregard for life and human dignity. But there seems to be a major difference between Roman slaves, who bought their way out of servitude; late-medieval peasants, who had their own local economies and could (with their lord’s permission) send their children to school; American race-based slavery intended to last for perpetuity and based (partially) on claims of inherent biological difference; and contemporary sex or labor slavery in which people are kept by personal violence at jobs that they wouldn’t normally desire to engage in, along with theft of part or all of their earnings.
So while “slavery” may be a nice shorthand for moral condemnation, it doesn’t seem, to me, to be a “simple” explanation. Culturally and economically, there are different ways of dealing with slavery.
The Incan’s way–slavery under and impersonal system of central government control, as opposed to personal slave ownership by a member of an aristocracy–seems relatively unique. Roman and medieval serfhood seems to involve forced labor that buttressed a complex financial system, while the Incas seem to have done what Communist Russia utterly failed to do, which is to enable a sophisticated labor system without the use of domestic financial exchange.
The Federation of Star Trek actually sounds halfway reasonable–*if* you have a machine that can make anything you want from nothing. At that point, where there is no scarcity of resources and an almost infinite scarcity of labor positions, there is no reason to discourage a lazy underclass. Those who have inherent motivation to do something can of course go to the university, explore, teach, fight, or research. Those who don’t wouldn’t be a drain on a system where the only effort required to make a cup of hot Ear Gray is to speak.
Of course, even in Star Trek the premise falls flat. Who in their right mind would *ever* volunteer to be a lower-level member of the Enterprise, given the astronomical death toll? Even in a utopic future, there are some jobs that no sane person would want to do (and no lunatic should be allowed to do.)
Serfs of the corporations now.
Shelley, with all due respect, I see your response as a precise example of what I’m complaining about. If I buy Pepsi instead of Coca-Cola, Coke can do nothing to me. I owe the bank some money, but I chose to enter into that debt. And even now, there’s a limit to what the bank can do to me if I default. It’s not the same thing.
Like Lars pointed out, corporate serfdom is not slavery. However, for some it may be a form of voluntary indentured servitude. In pioneer days, many Americans paid for their passage across the Atlantic by volunteering to be someone’s slave for seven years. Workers nowadays are free to change jobs at a moments (or possibly two weeks) notice. However, many do not feel that freedom because of third party obligations to banks, credit cards or other finance companies. It reflects the observation Solomon made thousands of years ago in Proverbs 22:7 – “The borrower is the slave of the lender.”
Because so many borrow heavily to pursue the American dream of keeping up with the Joneses, and the fact that large corporations generally provide better salary and benefits, while making greater demands of their employees, few people are willing to give up the higher salary and benefits to free themselves from the demands of corporate life. While they feel a lack of freedom, it is not a direct slavery, but an indirect slavery epitomized in the little ditty, “I Owe! I Owe! So Off To Work I Go.”