Civilizations need slaves to function.
US Senator William Harper’s 1837 defense of slavery
While slavery is a negatively charged term in Western civilization, it is the very engine of the system itself. There is little overt slavery in our social scheme, unless you include prison inmates forced to work to pay their “debt to society.” No, modern slavery is much more insidious and occult.
The Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Aztec, Mayan, Incan, British, American and Chinese civilizations were all erected upon the back of the slave. Entrepreneurs captured people from the wild, put them to work and punished or killed them if they resisted. Slaves hated their involuntary servitude and often ran off, went on wholesale strike or revolted. This reduced productivity and proved to be a huge inconvenience and expense.
Plantation owners in the Southern US bought and sold captured Africans as chattel. Like other livestock, they were the property of their owners; crossbred for desired traits and put out to pasture when their working lives were over. Any competent plantation owner realized he had to keep his slaves in good physical condition to work them hard. Feeding, housing, clothing and medicine were a considerable expense.
As the disease of western civilization evolved, so did slavery.
In Europe, kings, counts, lords and vassals usurped the subsistence lands of indigenous peoples. During medieval times, the feudal system maintained that the residents or serfs who lived upon these “crown” lands were, like the trees, rocks and soil: the property of their respective owners. Therefore, any proceeds of their efforts beyond what they needed to survive became a royalty owed to their lord. This form of tax insured all profits flowed to the owner while placing the upkeep of slaves upon the slaves themselves.
Because of their fear-based pathological ambition and the danger of retribution from those oppressed, royals built walled cities where they could safely indulge in their extorted wealth while separating themselves from the riffraff they ripped off.
Today, evidence of this perennial pathological attitude still exists as the walled ruins of the Great Wall of China, the wall between Israel and the Palestinian territories, the Tortilla Curtain along the border between Mexico and the United States and the gated snoburb community of Rancho Puerco Gordo.
The “commons” were the vast expanses of land beyond the walled cities and outside the boundaries of choice “crown” lands. The subsistence inhabitants who occupied these lands had no legal ownership. Called “commoners” by the elite city-dwellers, they worked and shared the land communally.
Note how, in our brainwashed hierarchical society, the word common connotes low status while “commune” refers to a passé “hippy” attitude of shared ownership. The very thought of “communism” sends icy shivers down the spines of avaricious leash-slaves. Given its lowly status, it is no wonder common sense is also an historical artifact.
Indentured servitude was the form of slavery that helped trash much of the American wilderness along the eastern seaboard. For a promise of land in the “New World,” poor Europeans indentured themselves into corporate slavery to grow tobacco for the Virginia Company. After fulfilling their contract, they received a piece of paper called a deed awarding them land title and, through their suffering, a sense of en-title-ment. All they had to do was chase off or kill the indigenous locals who lived on the land and then purchase captured Africans to work it.
Here’s another good deal. I’ll give you title to 25,000 acres on Mars, complete with water rights if you’ll distribute a measly one hundred thousand copies of this book. Any takers?
The industrial revolution made slave labor unnecessary by creating machines that performed much better than slaves. Only then was slavery banned in industrialized nations. Though supposedly illegal, overt slavery is still practiced in some developing (read underindustrialized) countries.
Presently, we have wage slavery. Few ever go hungry or want for necessities because technology and petrochemicals have given every westerner, on average, the equivalent of 100 personal slaves. Even so, people still operate much of the machinery of commerce.
Our mercantile system uses the illusory idea of money as coercion into wage slavery. Today, “market forces” set wages pitting wage earner against wage earner. The commons is gone. All land is either privately or government owned. There is nowhere for people to subsist. They must work for money to buy life’s necessities. (or slip through the cracks in the system and live beyond it.)
And just wait. This is the dawn of the Age of Robots. If the juggernaut continues soon robots will do almost everything, making human wage slaves unnecessary. Then production will skyrocket, nobody will need a job and we’ll all be able to live like kings, right?
Riiiiight! Let’s make that 50000 Martian acres.
To be continued...
Preface part 1, part 2
Introduction
Why Slack? part 1, part 2
The Purpose of Life
Paradox of Civilization:part 1 part 2
"Civilizations need slaves to function." It's awakening to hear that this was said in 1837. : (
I believe that today's "wage" slavery comes from the insanely unequal wealth distribution and unfair intellectual property regulation that protect the developed nations for way too long.
Yes, the robots will be able to do almost everything instead us, but 95% of the robots will be owned by 5% of the humans...
Thank you for this grim but important past/present/future report. Cheers! : )
Funny. I don't see this as grim. It's just the way that things are. If we refuse to look at the situation it will only get worse. After the Titanic hit the iceberg, the band played on the the people kept dancing because, after all, the Titanic was unsinkable. That is where we are today.
This whole manuscript is simply a mirror for people in which to view themselves . Most aren't interested and I think that they are afraid that, like a vampire, they won't see any reflection of themselves at all. Perceptions are skewed. The truths they've been told their whole lives are deceptions. I was young and naive once upon a time and then I began to see through the fog. I don't really expect people to adopt the lifestyle I'm positing here. All I'm saying is look at it and then think about your own life and how you're living it. Maybe one in a hundred will get it. Maybe one in ten thousand. But if I can get through to only one person, then I'll consider all of this effort worthwhile.
I believe that most people in the West are suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. They support, would even die for their oppressors and wish to become them. But do you think the 5% who control the robots and don't need the rest of us will be in favor of supporting the 95%? Not too likely. They don't want to see the world destroyed any more than I do. The difference is that they have the power to do something about it and I'm certain they will at some point. All I'm saying is to be prepared.