[kj] . . Clutch/Homies

[B. Oliver Sheppard]

Slavery is a legal & formal system designating a class of humans as not 
privy to the same rights of others, transformed into personal property, 
and utilized for their labor power by owners. Debt bondage, like when 
foreigners pay smugglers to get into the US, and who are then corralled 
into underground sweatshops, and then told they have to work in subhuman 
conditions to pay off their debts to their benevolent masters -- but 
which they can never do as insubordination, being late, taking breaks, 
etc., accrues more fines and thus more indebtedness -- is also 
pejoratively a type of slavery.

In the current American system the government used to be able to 
requisition human labor at gun point, until recently. That was called 
the draft. In Israel this still occurs. Also, in the US, when a union 
strikes, the President can invoke an emergency procedure to break the 
strike and force the workers to go back to work. If they don't, they are 
fined every day from then on that they miss. It was heavily debated in 
the US in World War 2 that if the US govt. could draft soldiers, why 
could they not draft civilian workers, too? You know, to make airplanes 
and tanks and stuff.

As I understand communism, the means of production [physical 
infrastructure] are owned in common and their administration can be 
ceded to democratically elected councils. In slavery, the means of 
production are human beings, and are the property of others.

Some folks lazily call any kind of unjust servitude "communism," or 
"fascism," or anything else, but that's just demagoguery and has as much 
veracity as North Korea calling itself democratic.

Probably the truest types of slaves in the US now are folks who work in 
prisons for private corporations who outsource their labor to inmates, 
displacing the jobs of free citizens. Is that communism? It's capitalism.

-Oliver


Flight Bringer wrote:

> Is there any difference between slavery and communism Greg?

> If the principles of slavery are not exactly the same as the 

> principles of Communism, then they must be very similar

>