hE wAs FrEe To qUiT tHe OnLy JoB iN hIs ToWn (and therefore go hungry) At aNy TiMe
According to libs, it's only coercion if the state makes it illegal. Anything else is "the consequences of your decision and therefore your fault." I have been unironically told this by more than one.
I got told by a liberal once that coercion doesn't exist unless someone physically manipulates your hands and feet like a puppet. Even someone pointing a gun at you isn't coercion because you can apparently just choose to die. I don't know where these people come from.
They are referring to Sartre's belief in the concept of 'radical freedom'. Sartre, whom would infamously with his partner, sleep with his college age female students and then abandon them when he got bored with them. Look, as much fun as we make of the old 'power dynamics' conversation, there are areas where than absolutely comes into play.
Your missing the point. It was not slavery, just simple child labour
OK, it's fine then.
A description you can't argue with -- that's still horrible! -- is the way to go here. "Child labor in a mine" is just that. No normal person will defend it.
You lose people when you get six hypotbeticals deep into a philosophical question about the definition of slavery, as you see in that thread. It doesn't matter if you have a point if people write you off when you say it. Step Zero is getting people to consider what you have to say; rhetoric and communication strategies actually matter.
Cause it ain't slavery he wasn't another person's property, was he exploited under capitalism sure but there's a big difference between being a paid laborer and a literal slave
Is there really though? Can you honestly call wage labor a choice when the only alternative is starving to death on the streets?
Yes there is a big difference. Both are bad but equating slavery and wage labor really diminishes the horror of slavery. I have never been whipped for making mistakes on the job.
In severity, yes. Slavery is absolutely terrible and I don't mean to diminish the horrors of it. I'm just saying if we look at them through the lens of class analysis, chattel slaves and wage slaves are on the same scale. If a chattel slave refuses to participate in the system, the consequences are usually swift and brutal. But if someone relying on wage work to survive today decides to stop participating in the system, what are their consequences? Starvation, utilities cut off, homelessness. Not as immediate, but still awful, and very often fatal. We're all participating in a system designed to prop up some bourgeoisie overlords who don't give a fuck about us, and refusing to go along with their system means death. Only now you get killed by the system instead of by an angry white man so the news can pretend it's not real violence.
Sorry for the rambling, I'm just really high right now and putting way too much thought into this.
Yeah no hard disagree that they are on the same order of bad. As a wage worker you aren't legally required to carry your owners rape baby to term so it can be sold for profit on the open market. Millions of people have fought and died to abolish large scale chattle slavery and equating it to wage work is incredibly gross. Wage work is horrible and exploitative and should be abolished, but pretending it's the same as literally bring owned is insane.
I'm not saying they are literally exactly the same and I don't know how to make this any more clear. Both classes are exploited for their labor in the pursuit of profit, and both are coerced into participating in the system by punishment of death. They have similarities, but I am not saying they are exactly the same. Chattel slavery is several orders of magnitude worse than wage slavery - but they can both be measured on the same metaphorical magnitude scale.
If I didn't currently have a ban I'd ask this person whether they think a child can consent.
