As others have pointed out, slavery is still used as a punishment for prisoners in most states. The south in particular used/uses it to maintain slavery of african americans through selective enforcement of laws. Human trafficing is still a thing in the US even if it isn't legal. And the way our economy works can be likened to a form of wage slavery where people often dont have a choice but to work for a specific employer. Especially if they're undocumented. Apple was caught using the H1B visa program as a means of keeping immigrant employees effectively trapped there. The justice department fined them 25 million dollars. A slap on the wrist for exploiting vulnerable people.
Slavery already exists in the US in various forms, and in greater numbers than prior to the Civil War, but no I would not be surprised if the right wingers legalize slavery again, or if Gilead/Texas tries first.
Either way fuck the Confederate wannabes, we should smash them now so we don't have to do it yet again later, which is what Grant failed to do during the Reconstruction era.
Sherman was right!
Slavery is currently legal a the federal level for incarcerated people as that exception was carved out in the 13th Amendment. That is pretty much maxed out in its current state through disproportionately incarcerating minorities, and is likely to be the primary reason that the US has such a ridiculously high incarceration rate.
What is your definition of slavery that would mean there is more slavery now than before the civil war?
Well there's absolutely a lot of real and actual slavery across the country, from domestic servants who are being held against their will, to sex slaves, and of course the numbers scale up with our population. So our population during the civil war was 31+ million, with close to 4 million of that being slaves, now we have 331+ million people, if you combine the instances of domestic and indentured servitude with sexual slavery, then add in those wrongfully in the prison system it scales to being much more than the sub 4 million in slavery during the civil war.
I know a lot of people would want to say "but the prison system is prisoners who committed crimes" but a lot of people are in prison because of failed justice, or on poverty based offenses, some of which compile with other petty offenses. Now also another caveat is that prison work isn't usually compulsory, it's normally voluntary, but one can argue that it's the prison that has the leverage over these people volunteering or not.
Overall these statistics aren't easy to calculate because modern day slavers want to hide and obfuscate their crimes, but it's there, it exists, and it exists in places you may not expect, like the next time you're sitting in a park in Manhattan consider the fact that one of the many domestic workers present may in fact be enslaved against their will, and this could be said in LA, Miami, Atlanta, anywhere in the US.
As well as the domestic slavery that DigitalTraveler42 mentions, we've off-shored a lot of slavery.
Companies serving US markets set up their pricing in a way that encourages producers to use slaves or they buy from the lowest price and either don't ask questions or ask questions after the order is filled. Coffee, chocolate, tea, textiles and garment production all involve slave labour at the tacit request of large companies that are often based in the US.
The cost benefits of slavery are factored into a lot of our food and clothes. That's an important part of our economy that we can't separate out just because we've set up supply chains with deniability in mind.
Sherman was a psychopathic mass murderer. Look up his slaughter of American Indians. He was a terrible person who was pointed at even worse people for once and set loose. Don't idealize him.
But there already is slavery in US. look into unpaid prison labor
You've already got for-profit prisons in the US where inmates (slaves) are hired out.
What do we know about how a for-profit system works? That's right - profit must always keep growing, or to put it another way, incentivising the process of creating criminals in order to increase the potential for a growing slave labour market is a growth industry.
Just because something doesn't have the literal name 'slavery' attached to it, doesn't mean it isn't actually slavery in every respect that matters.
Slavery never went away.
As several people in this thread have pointed out, some forms of slavery do exist in the US. For example, prison labor, sex trafficking, and other forms of coerced labor.
However we do not have chattel slavery, where you can actively buy and sell other humans as property. I would be extremely surprised if that ever made a comeback.
I'm not at all convinced this is true. My kids - one of their friend's families had a live in cook and nanny servant who they thought was likely a slave, and one of my friends said when she told her friend in passing she needed household help, the friend told her she could get her someone, that she could buy a person.
I think it's more underground but no way is it gone, not even here. I wish I could believe it was gone.
Is working 2 full time jobs just to be able to afford rent and utilities considered slavery?
I'm going to be real - I completely empathize with your sentiment, but I feel like comparing two jobs to actual slavery is off-base.
Is it fucked that you need to do that to survive? Absolutely, it's completely horrible. The current capitalist hell scape we live in is just miserable, and there's sadly no end in sight. It really seems like the 1% are trying their best to screw over the other classes. They even lie about the statistics of the situation to try to make it sound better!
However, even with all of that...
It's no comparison to slavery as we know it. That's more akin to what our (read: United States) prisons do - pay people almost nothing (if anything at all) to do brutal work for hours and hours.
Traditionally, even the current slavery-esque system that the prisons have is way better than any slavery beforehand - no one gave a shit if your foot was infected, if you were a slave, you had to work or you were beaten / killed in many cases. Prison also pays you most of the time (albeit for criminally small amounts of money).
There was no end in sight, no opportunity to apply for other jobs, you couldn't say "fuck it, rent be damned" and quit and you damn-sure didn't have luxuries such as a fridge or plumbing.
There are lots of places still like this today - North Korea, China (Xinjiang), dotted places across South America and Africa (whom I unfortunately cannot remember at this time), Saudi Arabia and the UAE come to mind. In North Korea, as well, you almost never make it out of their system and a lot of the time your family is taken in with you for your crimes. There are countless atrocities happening with the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, China, and there are undoubtedly prison camps in Russia holding Ukrainian POWs.
The idea of working two full-time jobs is not fun, but it's not exactly on the same level as slave labor. At least you can quit a job and maybe end up homeless, where you likely have a shelter of some kind and / or can seek assistance of some variety. It's not ideal, don't get me wrong, but it's better than outright being maimed and killed.
If you "quit" a job in a slave camp in pretty much any of the places I listed above, you'll be tortured for days on end and left to die a horrific death (if you aren't just outright shot). No one will come to help, and no one will care. It's just not the same.
Perhaps if we consider slavery as more of a spectrum, like we do other kinds of abuse, then economic coercion still fits the definition.
One person being denied medical care, working inhumane lengths of time in hard labor for almost no money, being unable to access different forms of work and being beaten is clearly slavery, as you've identified. But that doesn't mean the person who is experiencing all of that, but only without being beaten, is not experiencing slavery. It just makes it a (possibly) less severe form of slavery.
If the key difference between a fast food worker living in rural wherever who can't access healthcare, doesn't have a choice to move or change jobs etc. and a slave is immediate physical violence... perhaps we need to revisit the definition of "slavery" or of "employment" or both. Dying a slow death from homelessness and poverty due to systemic inequity isn't actually a hugely better deal than a fast death at the hands of one person. In some cases it may even be worse because the suffering lasts much longer.
You assume that people who are unemployed can access help and resources, I'm not sure that the reality on that widely reflects people's experiences, depending on their location.
Yep. I feel like people comparing their jobs (that pay them and that they can leave) to slavery really downplays the severity of actual slavery.
See what I mean?
Read below.
In response to BiggestBulb, you need to learn about the prison pipeline and know just because the severity could be worse the implication is still the same. Choosing to be unemployed and homeless is a choice that is not a choice.
If you want to learn about the prison pipeline, quit your job tomorrow and take a bus as far away as you can afford. My past self did. You will learn how fast the system can sweep you up and you will learn your life now is exactly where society wants you to be.
No, you are not a slave. 🙄
Yes it is because as soon as you stop working you will most likely die an unpleasant death from povery, violence, preventable disease linked to malnutrition etc.. If you don't have a choice, then it's slavery.
There are lots of legal slaves in the US. They're just in prisons so out of sight, out of mind. It's constitutionally legal.
When the government ran most prisons many would pay them a couple of dollars an hour or something to make it seem more like work. Now many for profit prisons either pay pennies an hour or nothing at all, and many require you to work either directly or by making the meals low in nutrition or completely inedible so they have to buy their real food. And this isn't like working by cleaning or laundry or whatever, this is making products that the prisons sell. Much of the stuff labeled "Made in America" is made by slaves.
There are also lots of illegal slaves hidden away. Mostly immigrants who couldn't afford the thousands of dollars to apply for legal status before their visas ran out or who were carried across the border as babies and had to hide it their whole lives or other similar circumstances.
Look at what's going on with prison labor. It's already happening.
Yes because modern slavery is much more effective. Make people take over debt and then pay them the minimum, barely enough to survive, and they will do whatever you tell them to do. You don't need guard or weapon although a little bit of propaganda and no union, because union are communism and communism bad m'kay.
All forms of slavery
Then it never stopped, question is irrelevant.
Outside of prisons, you mean?
Now that you ask…
Instead of giving people free food and housing in prisons, I imagine mandatory work sentences for minor offences. Littering? 1 year of mandatory work. Why it’s black people disproportionately getting work time? I don’t know… must be in their genes or something.
The problem with mandatory work is that someone will benefit from that work and so it'll be in their interest that more people be condemned to it. It would need to be organized in a way that companies didn't profit directly from increased convictions.
I'm guessing it was less of a suggestion and more of a guess as to "What's the most probable way that slavery sneaks back into society."
And I agree with them. Jails are already overloaded and private companies are making bank on it. I could see them offering mandatory unpaid work in lieu of jail time. Of course where you have to work would be determined by which company has the highest bid.
someone will benefit from that work
That’s the whole point…?
Also, gosh, there sure are a lot of repeat offenders in there. What a coincidence. It's almost like prisons do the opposite of reforming the people that are sucked into the system, or like once you've got a criminal record there's a lot fewer non-crime options for you once you're back out on the street.
It's not free, you get billed for it upon release. Combine that with diminished employment opportunities and you've got a recipe for repeat offenders. It's slavery but with extra steps for plausible deniability, which is still slavery.
Apparently this didn't hit your news feed over the last few days.
As others have pointed out, there is still slavery in America. Wage slavery is slavery. Tying healthcare access to employment doesn't help.
At this point I wouldn't be surprised if Cthulhu himself rose from Lake Michigan and started a slow trek south, gathering followers and accepting sacrifices as he goes.
You can see the bottom of lake Michigan on a clear day.
Superior he could hide in. That one is deep, though we still have nothing on lake Balakai
Slavery has been legal in the United States since 1789.
We've already got prison slavery and wage slavery running rampant, but I don't think chattel slavery will make a comeback.
I want to say yes, but aren't some (all?) prisons slavery?
Not all prisons, because some states don't allow the exception that exists in the 13th Amendment to be implemented in their state prisons. There is still a lot of coercion and inmates are massively underpaid for their work in a way that is slavery in everything except name in those states.
So if a prison has a work program for inmates, assuming it is slavery is a good assumption. But some prisons don't let prisoners work for various reasons, so not all prisons practice slavery.
Yes? What kind of stupid question is this? I'd take to the streets.
Then take to the streets. Slavery is legal in prisons.
I have been. What have you been doing about it?
Chattle slavery? Certainly but slavery never left, it just changed
Prison.
I would be shocked, appalled, but not surprised. At this point the only thing that would surprise me about the US is if they actually somehow do something that fixes their backwards country.
I thought shocked and surprised were synonyms.
I know people talk about prisoners and wage slaves, but the United States is also participating in, and profiting from, child slavery as well; it just doesn't happen in the states. Just take a look at where your chocolate comes from, if it's Hershey, Mars, or Nestle, it was probably harvested by someone under 15 who has never even tasted chocolate. And the US is just.... cool with it.
https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/
That's why it gets brought up all the time and why we have companies that sell chocolate that didn't exploit child labor. Because we're all just cool with it.
Yes?
Slavery never disappeared anywhere.
Oh yeah could you imagine
The way people's attitudes are right now is down right despicable. Humanity will forever dance on the razors edge of civility and barbaric opression.
It's the internet. It has ruined our ability to socialize healthily.
Full blown de jure chattel slavery? Yes, I would be surprised.
Slavery didn't end because people realized it was bad. They always knew that. It ended because of the industrial revolution.
frantically flips through high-school history book
The industrial revolution gave the common person more power and leverage over those that governed them.
The common person knew the evils of slavery. It is covered in the bible and the least educated would still have some knowledge of the bible. Many religious people in slave states started arguing that slavery was just and the right order of things but this was a newer idea.
Slavery impacted the commoner as it pushes labour prices down. So even without the moral argument there was a economic one.
Slavery hasn't ended. American slave plantations did, but slavery didn't. There are more slaves now than ever. We could end it but cheap consumer goods keeps it going.
The Bible condones slavery. And many slave holders invoked the Bible to justify slavery.
From Frederick Douglas' first autobiography:
Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
There are slaves, just low numbers because it's illegal. There's also a lot of working arrangements with illegal immigrants that look very similar in a bad light.
In fairness most western countries have a low level of slavery - they found some forced labour on a farm in Australia a few years back for example.
If you're asking if any US state wants to legalise slavery, it's extremely unpopular everywhere, except in a few niche pointy white hat communities.
Slavery is legal in US prisons.
Sure is and good luck changing the constitution
Yes. Would require a Constitutional amendment, those are really hard to get through.
Yes.
But the USA has surprised me before.
I'd be surprised if they called it that, even the most extreme tend to be aware that the word is taboo.
Slavery will continue to expand in the United States.
Not when Trump wins.
What a fucking stupid question.
What the fuck do you call capitalizm? Cuz it is literal slavery too.
What a stupid take. Your employer doesn't own you. If you feel you are not compensated sufficiently take your skills somewhere you will be. You have the power to make these decisions for yourself.
You don't really have those powers anymore. Maybe what Capitalizm was before wasn't capitalizm. You maybe can take your skills elsewhere is a nice thought but it really is just that. A nice thought and nothing to do with reality. Everyone is homeless and skills and education don't hold a sack of shit these days.
You may have been right back in the day but right now you're literally blind. Shit is obvious now and you can't see it. If we live long enough it will be finished off to be exactly what I'm pointing at. You're looking at my finger and telling me I'm wrong but you can't see the tsunami incoming that I'm pointing at.
Not for a second. You guys elected a ridiculously stupid fascist as your president. You'd do anything
