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Larry Bole's avatar

I see that the conversation has gone beyond types of slavery as practiced in older civilizations. So I also think about a post_Civil War form of slavery: share cropping, in which the owner of the share cropped land took enough profits from the crops, so that the share cropper was left with just enough to subsist on, just as actual slaves were given just enough to subsist on by their masters.

And I'm also reminded of the Tennessee Ernie Ford song, "Sixteen Tons," in which coal miners were paid in company 'scrip' rather than in 'legal tender'. The scrip could only be used at a 'company store'. Hence the lyrics in the song:

"You load 16 tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt

St. Peter, don't you call me 'cause I can't go

I owe my soul to the company store"

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Larry Bole's avatar

Thinking about what seems to me to be the innate nature of humans to, at times, exploit other humans in various ways, I was thinking about the phrase 'wage slave'. Looking up the term online, I came across the Wikipedia entry for the term 'Wage slavery'. In the entry, there is a reference to ancient Rome:

"Similarities between wage labor and slavery were noted as early as Cicero in Ancient Rome, such as in De Officiis.[11] With the advent of the Industrial Revolution, thinkers such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Karl Marx elaborated the comparison between wage labor and slavery, and engaged in critique of work[12][13] while Luddites emphasized the dehumanization brought about by machines. The introduction of wage labor in 18th-century Britain was met with resistance, giving rise to the principles of syndicalism and anarchism."

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