1. don't rely on hollywood movies for your history.

2. the declaration of independence was intended to gather support from the lower class for the purpose of the upper class, who intended to replace the rule of the british upper class with themselves. so it began with lies, notably the assertion that 'all men are created equal.' the writers did not believe this for an instant.

3. the founding fathers were not democrats. they despised and feared ordinary working people. they said so, publicly. they understood democracy, dismissed it, and established an oligarchy without referendum. the constitution of 1789 was an instrument of counter-revolution by the upperclass.

4. 'the rich get richer' is a popular summation of the workings of probability in any game, whether poker of commerce. this leads to vast inequality of wealth, consequent social breakdown, and revolution or invasion.

democracy has the potential to be a stable and just society, but it needs a people who are citizen quality. so far, no one has achieved this, although switzerland, and some american states, have come close enough to offer hope that democracy is possible.

1. I usually never do; yet, I feel, the Lincoln quote, as well as the reference to the movie, was relevant to my argument here.
2.That's all debateable; we shall never know the truth of the motives of the Founding Fathers, and your gues is no closer to the truth than any other.
As far as whether or not the Founding Fathers believed or not in the principle that 'all men are created equal', is a moot point; it is a real quote, and it is there, in The Declaration Of Independence, which is a cornerstone document of our democracy.
I hear your opinion of the phrase 'all men are created equal', but I think your opinion doesn't hold water. Nor do I think Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King would have agreed with you. To refute that declaration as insincere is to deny one of the cornerstone ideals of the American Experience.
3.Whatever the politaical stripe of the Founding Fathers, the important thing is the legal documents they've left us, and the interpretations of those documents.
4.and...?

Your summation sounds hopeful enough, I guess.

Also, I included the references to the Lincoln movie and the Roger Waters concert, two very popular commercially successful artitstic endeavors, to help illustrate that the subject of slavery is still very much alive.
The question raised here is did slavery really end at all.

Interesting, well-thought out perspective. I like the way you infused historical information as well as pop cultural references to broaden your case. Incidentally, how about the growing malignancy of modern slavery: child sex trafficking (and human trafficking)? Hence the question continues as to whether legally abolishing slavery is an honorable intention or chasing windmills?

Enslavement to the Almighty Dollar.
Enslavement to the Corporations.
Enslavement to inadequate monetary compensation.
Enslevement to blind ambition.
Enslavement to hubris and ego.
Enslavement to unregulated greed.
Enslavement blinds.
Enslavement deafens.
Enslavement is the necrotic rot, the terminal disease that always finds a way to rise up and spread and weaken the entire system...
It is wrong.
Let's begin to change this economy for the better.
Let's start with a Living Wage.

I came over here to see what you were all about, Steve. Boy, I'm so glad I did. This is a terrific essay. The movie Lincoln enlightened on a couple of different levels. None of our heroes, the Founding Fathers included, should be thought of as selfless saints. There is an element of self-interest behind everything a human being does.

Lezlie

Thanks for the interest, Lezlie in the Southeast.
No, the Founding Fathers were not perfect, and neither is this American Experiment.
Yet, it's all we have.
That's kinda what I got out of the President's Second Inaugural; none of us are perfect, but we are "equal, not just in the eyes of God but also in our own".

Interesting. Redefining slave. One thing's for sure: Labor these days is definitely viewed as a commodity, like slaves were, and that has a lot to do with our problem. Worth reading.

Steve, you wrote:

The question raised here is did slavery really end at all.

My answer is: Yeah, in America it really did. It ended here with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.

If we start to conflate “life is not fair” with “slavery” we do an injustice to the stench of slavery…and we slip away from possible ways to deal with the problem of how to conduct a reasonable society in the light of “life is not fair.”

Our safety net programs, which I argue should be protected and expanded, are an attempt to deal with the fact that life is not fair; that all persons are not actually created equal; and that in a land of plenty, none should be seriously wanting.

But no one is a slave here…no matter how obscene we foolishly allow the disparity in compensation to get.

Nice to meet you, Steve. An interesting essay, and not much here to really disagree with.

I wonder if you have read "Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt" by Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco? Hedges wrote the text and Sacco illustrates several "graphic novel" portions of the book. It is all about what are referred to as capitalist sacrifice zones, in places like: Pine Ridge, North Dakota; Camden, New Jersey, the Appalachian mountains in West Virginia, and Immokalee, Florida. I think you would find it quite interesting.

And Frank, I would challenge you to read the chapter in the above-referenced book about Immokalee and then tell us that there is no such thing as slavery anymore. Granted, that is the extreme situation (as Bernie Sanders is quoted in the book, "In the race to the bottom, Immokalee is what the bottom looks like.), but if things continue unchecked, more and more people are going to find themselves caught in the gears of the voracious and rapacious capitalist machine.

@Jeanette;

You wrote: And Frank, I would challenge you to read the chapter in the above-referenced book about Immokalee and then tell us that there is no such thing as slavery anymore. Granted, that is the extreme situation (as Bernie Sanders is quoted in the book, "In the race to the bottom, Immokalee is what the bottom looks like.), but if things continue unchecked, more and more people are going to find themselves caught in the gears of the voracious and rapacious capitalist machine.

If you would like to summarize what was said in the book that might change my mind, Jeanette, please do. I have no plans to read the book. I cannot imagine what is written there that could impact on what I said above, but I repeat:


If we start to conflate “life is not fair” with “slavery” we do an injustice to the stench of slavery…and we slip away from possible ways to deal with the problem of how to conduct a reasonable society in the light of “life is not fair.”

Frank, you can google and find any number of links about the situation in Immokalee. I may write a blog post about the book, but that might be days or weeks away.

It seems as if you're saying that the words "slave" or "slavery" have to be retired from our vocabulary because nothing can compare with slavery as it was practiced in the American south until the Emancipation Proclamation. And I would disagree with you about that. Your characterization of what is happening today in places like Immokalee, or with regard to human trafficking, as "life is not fair" is misinformed at best.

Frank, you wrote:

"If we start to conflate “life is not fair” with “slavery” we do an injustice to the stench of slavery…"

My intention here is not to devalue the unholy stench of the type of slavery the 13th Amendment abolished.

My intention is to challenge the reader to look at the idea of slavery, and to not just accept the idea of slavery as some buzzword.

What I asked, what I'm asking, is, simply this:

"Can a slave be defined as someone forced to work without adequate compensation? Hey, I'm no lawyer. Yet, I'd like to know."

For all your posturing, you have yet to give me your definition of a 'slave'.

Frank, this is your full paragraph:

"If we start to conflate “life is not fair” with “slavery” we do an injustice to the stench of slavery…and we slip away from possible ways to deal with the problem of how to conduct a reasonable society in the light of “life is not fair.”"

I think your hope of conducting 'a reasonable society in the light of "life is not fair"' is is an empty hope, and a fool's hope.
'Hoping' for change, 'hoping' for a Living Wage is not enough.

Life is not fair, my friend, but neither is this stinking system of Wage Inequality [600-1? Really?] and 'hoping' for a meaningful dialogue with the CEO about this inequality just ain't gonna happen. Not, at least, until we can get some kind of measureable public opinion that supports my arguments [as well as others' on OS] that we, the Working Class, are, in fact working for slave wages.

Jeanette, thak you for the comments. I will do my best to find a copy of the book you've referred to.
Koshersalami, thanks for the comments and the praise.

I am not “posturing”, Steve. Sorry you see what I considered a reasonable comment that way.

The truly degrading aspect of slavery (in my opinion) has never been that a person could be forced to work for no wages (or low wages)…nor even that he/she could be beaten. It was that he/she was a chattel…that he could be sold or bequeathed…that he/she could be separated from family by a sale. That, Steve, is the essence of slavery for me...that is its "stench." If it isn’t for you, I respect your right to feel otherwise.

The fact that people are reduced to working for poverty wages in our society of abundance nauseates me…infuriates me to the point of wanting to burst, but I still will not think of it as slavery. “Working for slave wages” is not, in my mind, being a slave…although I truly respect your right to consider it so.

I think allowing the term slavery to include the disgusting economic disparity now occurring in our country does an injustice to the stench of slavery…and does subtle harm to efforts to right the wrongs now being perpetrated in our country in the name of capitalism and free enterprise. But I respect your right to disagree with me on this also.

Good luck with your discussion here, Steve. I've pretty much had my say.

Hey Frank.
I'm afraid you are zeroing in on too narrow a definition of slavery here.
Yes, I refer to the slavery that was ended by Abraham Lincoln, but strictly to use it as a control line; an immovable point of historical fact from which we can measure the progress of our humanity.

No, the slavery of the Confederate South was not, is not, the wage slavery of today.

Yet, I do believe that in some ways, at least, that "there is some lasting connective tissue that has survived and has been brought over from the Civil War, some connective tissue that smells bad, connective tissue that is imbued with the same arrogance that gave us the 3/5ths Law; connective tissue that allows for the egregious idea that one man can be worth six hundred."

Thanks for your interest, Frank.


"

Im with Frank. Wage slavery is a terrible thing but slavery is worse.

Well, at the risk of being voted off this wonderful island of reason that is OS, I must disagree with both you and Frank, Zanelle.
My belief is that any event in history, any institution, any experiment ever tried, any policy ever instituted, any action ever undertook, whether it be "blood drawn from the lash" or "blood drawn from the sword", whether good or bad, whether malignant or benevolent, by its very existence, can and should be used as control lines of reason, and should be regularly pointed to, and employed as measureable points from which new ideas and thinking emerged.
This is how we do honor to history; this is how we keep history alive; this is how we sustain a healthy collective conscience; this is how we are able to stand on the shoulders of giants such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass; this is how we are able to move forward in a compassionate way, grounded in reason.

This is a mad soup here on OS and rarely do we come to blows. It is perhaps a matter of semantics. Enslaved to the Company Store. Load sixteen tons and what do you get....another day older and deeper in debt. But that is not the struggle of the true slave many of who were treated quite well. I loved that last scene in Lincoln when the fellow got in bed with his black slave lady. They looked pretty happy.
It is about freedom. The floor washer in McDonalds can get up and walk away. He can go somewhere. He is free. That is important. The CEO is probably more of a slave than any of the rest. Tied to his money he is fretting and stewing in his high rise office and worried about idiot stuff. Give me the simple free life anytime over that.

I hear you, Zanelle, but still, I must stand firm here.
Thanks for the interest.

I know you are focusing on economics here, but women are most at risk of slavery. The unending drive to take away a woman's right to control her own body is as close to enslavement as it gets. The obvious economic hardships are part of that, but it is much much more than economics.
Interesting, and well done post.

There are 420,000 employees of McDonalds, and so, if the CEO gave each worker what... $20, that would alter the universe?
Whether he is worth that is hard to say viewed from a shareholder perspective, as they did run into lower profitability at one point. If he raised that, some share of that is called an incentive. His pay does not alter that picture that much as to if he paid that salary to workers, it wouldn't amont to much, because there are a lot of workers, 420,000.
Presumably he is worth more than several workers, since he does run the company, if many have certainly thought 600 too much, and in effect taking advantage of mainly the shareholders, since senior executive compensation is small as a percentage of most large operations, although if its a large operation, that is a lot of money too. Some might think McDonalds could alter its compensation practices somewhat for efficiency reasons of lower employee turnover too, if I haven't worked in a McDonalds, although Wawa isn't radically dissimilar. But you are still free to change jobs, unlike slaves changing owners, which employees of McDonalds do rather often, a reason from a capitalistic point of view to alter compensation.
And in defense of McDonalds labor, there value meals are important for poor people many times, having had to count on that more than once.

Well Don, thanks for your insight. The good news about your post is that I don't even need that cereal box decoder to understand what you tried to say.
Suffice it to say that I don't agree with you.

You said:

"Whether he is worth that is hard to say viewed from a shareholder perspective" is an argument that may still be raging in the Boardroom -or not- but is one thing that has been decided upon long ago 'round here.

From the local banker to the pizza maker to the cashier to the retired prison guard, to the store manager, we all agree that those at the top make far too much, while those at the bottom -and even those in the middle- make too little.

Your argument, in my view, is nothing more than a distraction; neither true nor false; merely the bluster of someone whose intention is not to deepen and widen the discussion, but to distort it to the point of unrecognizability.

For more on 'distractions', see the Aldous Huxley quote in my post 'Words'.

Thanks for your time.

onislandtime,
Thank you for the comment, and yes, I agree that the idea of slavery can and does, even today, take many forms.

I'd have very much loved to discussed the proposition that, "All men are created equal" with any of those who put this concept forward. Oh..... not to argue against it; just to correct its grammar/phrasing.

As nearly as I can ascertain from my readings of many of those who have reiterated this idea, what they mean when the say this, is "All men are created equally human."

It is only in our humanness that we are, or can be, "equal." In all other aspects, we are most decidedly and obviously unequal. We could only be truly "equal" if we were identical - clones; and we certainly aren't that!

The argument put forward here by some is that, since the degree of enslavement is different between that suffered by those people who were emancipated by Lincoln, and the wage-slave, often known to employers as a "rent-a-slave", that the present form of wage-slavery ought not to share the same name with the previous kind of slavery.

This is a rather precious argument that allows of no self determination as to who is, or is not, a slave. I would tend to think that if you genuinely think/feel/determine that you are a slave - even if only for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week - then your designation is the senior one. My definition of slavery, if it differs from yours, cannot, in regard to you, supersede your definition.

The distinction of ownership is not so great as some think it to be. If you've ever owned a car and also ever leased one, you'll know just how little difference there is - especially to the car!

While one owner is not the rule these days, it can fairly be said that the class of individuals - the elite, or the bosses - perform the identical function that the single owner performed in the past. That the plantation with a few hundred slave workers has grown to corporations with hundreds of thousands of wage-slave workers, is not the difference between slavery and freedom; it is merely a difference of size.

That people get compensation for their wage-work that is barely adequate to survival is not substantially different from the subsistence care they got when owned. In fact, when owned they were considered to be of much greater value than most employers consider most employees to be today. Proof of that is the large sums of money owners would spend for the purchase of a slave while the renters of wage-salves today contemptuously pay as little as possible.

Just some thoughts......

;-)

R

.

Excellent thoughts, sky, and well articulated. I imagine that your comments carry enough generative information that an entire post could be gleaned from it.

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

The problem with a lawyer is that he will attempt to make it important the matter of where he IS less important than “how he got there” As if any amount of discussions and precedents would cover the fact that I caught him red-handed with his hands in the cookie jar.

I believe the context of “created equal” is in reference to “Equal before the Law”
Justice is what is sought, and the laws must treat all equally if justice is to be derived from the applications of law. “Equal Outcome” is the opposite of Justice. If one man works twice as hard as another man, and thence has twice as much wealth, it is not Just by law to deprive the more capable man of the fruits of his labor. Even should the less productive man be in a position of starving, it is still not JUST to forcibly deprive the greater earner of any of his goods to succor the other. This is not within the authority of the mechanism of co-coercive state power, but is rather the province of Moral suasion and community persuasion. NB- It may well be the moral decision of the community that the one man MUST give the other sustenance, and they may compel the “donation” by force-

The distinction is that the compulsion is not a LEGAL action of the state, since the state may not use it's authority to take from one man to give to another. The Moral action of the community is neither here nor there in terms of the state's authority, though their may be civil or criminal statutes against the manner of the donor's “Persuasion”, one may hope he did it out of community feeling.
Nonetheless, that is not germane to the State's authority.

Where the state may make great distinctions in the amount of fortune one man may amass at the expense of or in competition with another man, is in regulation of trade practices.

What allows the amassing of current unearned fortunes is market manipulation- Money-changing.
This is, of course, a tradition that goes back to before the bible, The ones Jesus dealt with would take in the “Dirty” money of worshipers and, for a small percentage, give them back “Clean Money”, blessed and acceptable to the priests for their sacrifices. Nice work if you can get it.

Another problem is usury. predatory lending, as a small time example, how many loan sharks started off their careers as military 6 for 5'rs? This is the game where soldiers live payday to payday, and the local merchants all make their bills due the day before payday. Naturally many soldiers are caught short. The helpful loan shark advances $5 dollars on Thursday for $6 repayment on Friday ( and breaks bones on welchers) making a tidy profit which may or may not be split with the merchants and officers foir making the shakedown possible) Te soldier blowas the rest of his pay that night andd gores into next period already behind.

Then we have market manipulation- what is a thing worth? whatever people will pay for it.
George Washington Plunkett, a Tamany hall politician famous for “I seen my opportunity and I tuck it!” Relates a sale of used paving bricks by NYC. The bricks weree expected to go for $10,000. Plunkett wanted a certain number for a project of his, while 3 other contractors wanted them for their projects. Bidding was expected to be fierce. Plunkett totaled up the number of bricks he and the other Bidders would need and found that there wer enough bricks to give every bidder what they needed. Plunkett approached the other bidders and told them that if they stayed out of the bidding, he would give them the bricks they needed. He then bought the lot for $10. And a good time was had by all ( Financed by the good citizens of NYC) Plunkett actually boasted of this coup.

This is the problem is of regulation of worth/value and what skills or products are valued
Earned is the result of producing something, a good or service.

Commodity Market brokering is a fair service, if it is freely engaged, and not manipulated
Money marketing ( banking and insurance) are also potentially “productive”
Unfortunately, the tremendously outmoded method of centralizing the market allows huge market manipulation for no other purpose than fraud and theft.
The stock market and Money manipulators do NOT produce value anymore, they steal in the guise of “Administration”

Since that is also the modus operandi of the federal and many state and local governments, the stage is set for the tremendous Punch and Judy show of our Political Parties, Bashing away at each other for our amusement, while their pickpockets drift through the crowd, emtying our pockets.

How to address this? First, decentralize the markets- there is no need or use for them in these days of Internet. This most definitely includes the decentralization of the biggest market fraud of all, the federal government.

Let true market value determine worth, which ios to say, call out the cheating, fraud and market manipulation for the theft it is, instead of allowing wall street “Brokers” and “Lawyers” to be “masters of the universe. “

Fair Trading practice, the expectation of Just dealings in social and commercial intercourse, along with common defence, is the only reason for a Free Man to surrender any of his personal freedom and authority to the state.

Second, the other practice that must be minutely examined is the notion of “Un-natural persons” Far from being “persons” in the sense of members of “We the People”, corporations exist solely at the discretion of the state, and regulation of them, if indeed they are allowed to exist at all, is one of the heaviest charges the state has in protecting it's citizens from fraud and malice.

The state has no power to redistribute wealth, but it has the absolute authority and duty to it's citizens to protect them from fraudulent and predatory trade.

I don't care how many bushels of lawyers and judges swear that they tracked the Law and it's trail back to creation day, and this is “Legally” where the nation stands and the markets are operating with all due diligence and propriety. I see what I see. I don't care how the brokers came to have their hands in the till, take them out, or cut them off.

So, Herr Rudy, let me guess what you're saying here. What I think you are saying, my friend, is that Capitalism, where the few benefit at the expense of the many, sucks, and has been nothing more than an aberration.

I agree.

And...?

Govenment oversight of such a systemically corrupt economic system as ours will not fix the problem. Changing the system is the only way forward. Yet, we all know that is nigh near impossible.

Knowing the truth, knowing something's wrong, but having no answer is always the challenge, isn't it...