Slavery

The very idea of slavery is so abhorrent to the autonomist that even death seems preferable to it. Most people today believe slavery to be both a cruelty and an injustice.

This view of slavery has not always been widely held, even by slaves. In Biblical Old Testament times, during the year of jubilee, slave were allowed to go free. These slaves were usually debtor slaves, that is, they had sold themselves, willingly or unwillingly, as a means of paying a debt. Nevertheless, they were genuine slaves, property of those who owned them, who also had complete authority over them.

Slave were not always willing to go free during the year of jubilee, for various good reasons. (In some cases, their children were not allowed to go with them, for example.) A slave, in such a situation, could choose to remain a slave permanently, which many did. For many slaves, slavery was not a cruelty or injustice, it was one way to deal with life. If the slaves masters were good and kind, this was often a very good way to guarantee being able to supply the necessities of life for one’s self and family.

In the United States, when the slaves were emancipated, there were many slaves on farms in the South who did not want to leave. In many cases, they choose to stay as hired servants rather than leave the farms and their owner’s families they had become accustomed to. On some farms, both the slaves and owners were completely satisfied with the arrangements. Democratically speaking, if an election had been held on these farms and all were allowed to vote, the vote would have been 100% in favor of slavery.

The fact that some people are perfectly happy with a system, even if it is a majority, even if it is all the people, does not mean the system is correct. In the case of slavery, the system is cruel and unjust and, even if the slaves are treated kindly and are well provided for, it is harmful to the psychologies of both the slaves and the owners and is ultimately a great drag on the economic advancement of every individual in any way involved with it.

In many cases, probably in most cases, the evils of slavery are apparent. The treatment of slaves is obviously cruel and the kinds of people who deal in it are surely evil. Yet slavery in all its worst forms is still widely practiced in the world, and, what may be more surprising, even in those parts of the world where slavery has been abolished and the people are most against it, the principles of slavery are still widely practiced.

What makes a, “good slave,” what is it a prospective slave owner looks for in a slave. Certainly the slave the owner has to watch over every moment, and constantly instruct what to do is not a good slave. A good slave is one that, with a few simple instructions, can be trusted to go and do the required work, do it well, and without supervision. The best slave would be one that already knows what needs to be done and does it. In most cases, the slave owner has to make sure his slaves are provided for, at least with the minimum requirements of food, shelter, and clothing. But what if the slave provided all of these himself while also performing the work required by the slave owner, now, that would be the best slave of all.

This is exactly the kind of slavery that is practiced in the USA today. The slaves are not called slaves, they are called tax paying citizens. The main difference between slavery as it is usually practiced and the way it is practiced in the USA is this: usually the slave owners are also the ones who benefit from the slaves labor, but in the USA, the slave owners only collect the product of the slaves labor, called taxes. The ultimate beneficiaries of the slaves labor are the true citizens of the country, those for whom the slaves actually labor, every individual receiving a welfare, pension, or other entitlement check or any other kind of monetary assistance or payment from the government.

There is an awful oppression of people in this country. It is not those who are usually called the oppressed, the so-called, “poor,” the minorities, the handicapped, women, children, aged, or those with odd lifestyles. The most oppressed people in this country are the tax-paying citizens. The others are all receiving from the government some kind of special privileges as well as, in most cases, direct gifts of money, goods, and services no tax-paying citizen receives (or wants). The taxes the tax-paying citizen pays are the product of his effort, which are taken from him by threat of force, and actually by force, if he does cooperate. Those who receive the benefit of this extorted money not only do not provide any service or goods to the tax-paying citizens, they participate in every government program to limit and restrict the freedoms of the taxpaying citizens.

The real motive behind the freeing of the slaves in America was jealousy. The slaves enjoyed what all Americans could only dream of, and have ever since tried to make a reality - someone to tell them what to do, what to eat, what to wear, and where to go in exchange for freedom from responsibility and guaranteed security.

It is unfortunately true that much of the taxpayer oppression in this country has been implemented with the complicity of the taxpayers themselves. They are doubly duped, first into thinking the government can provide programs to guarantee them security, prosperity, and peace and secondly into believing it is up to them to support those programs. Why it does not occur to them if the government needs their money and effort to provide such things, they are the ones doing the providing, not the government.

To a very great extent, slaves remain slaves because they just cannot imagine any other condition, much as those slaves in Old Testament times who chose to be slaves forever rather then claim their jubilee freedom.

The difference between slavery and today’s society is that slaves were required to work and produce and what they received from their masters was a portion of what they had produced. In today’s society, the slaves are required to produce for the masters who take a portion of what they produce and give it to the true citizens who are not required to work or produce. The true citizens are the recipients of welfare and entitlements.

Since the promotion of the “general welfare” is one of the reasons for the Constitution of the United States, we assume that promotion was meant to pertain to all citizens. In fact, the general welfare of only some citizens is promoted today, for the remainder of the population, that is, the tax-paying citizens, their general impoverishment is promoted. The government makes laws governing how people can earn their living, making it more difficult with every new law, then takes a portion of whatever they do make away from them to give to the true citizens. The government makes no laws about how the true citizens live their lives because they do not earn their living.