Slavery

The earliest and most overt form of exploitation, in which the slave, together with the instruments of production, is the property of his master, the slaveholder. In the most extreme forms of slavery, the slave had absolutely no rights. Devoid of any economic incentive to work, he labored only under direct physical compulsion. Sometimes the status of slaves was also emphasized by such visible symbols as a brand, collar, or special clothing. Appearing at the time of the dissolution of the primitive communal system, slavery was the basis of the slave-holding system. Slaves were members of foreign tribes taken prisoner in time of war or captured in military operations designed specifically for that purpose (raids, piracy), as well as members of the same tribe who had been enslaved for not paying their debts or for committing crimes. The number of slaves also grew through a natural increase in the existing slave population and through the slave trade.
The earliest form of slavery was patriarchal slavery, in which the slaves were considered members without rights of the family that owned them. They usually lived under the same roof as their master but performed heavier tasks than the other members of the family. The patriarchal form of slavery is closely related to the existence of a natural economy. This form of slavery existed to a certain extent among all nations during their transition to class societies. It predominated in the societies of the ancient East, as well as in the Greek states and Rome, until rapid economic development changed slavery in these states into the form that it assumed in antiquity. For Athens of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., and for the late Roman Republic, patriarchal slavery was already a thing of the past. “Classical” slavery had become firmly established in conjunction with a market economy and the maximum expropriation of the slave as an individual—the loss of all his rights and his transformation into a “talking tool.”
Classical slavery flourished for a relatively short time since the very nature of slave labor caused its inevitable downfall and transformation: the slaves’ hatred of their work and the oppression could only lead to the economic inefficiency of slavery and necessarily required at least a basic modification of the forms of servile dependence. Historical factors, such as the reduction in the supply of slaves and the constant slave rebellions, reinforced the economic factors in impelling slaveholders to find new forms of exploitation. The necessity of providing the direct producers with an incentive to work and thereby increasing the efficiency of their exploitation was becoming quite apparent. Many slaves were then bound to the land and gradually merged with the coloni (colonatus system). This development, which had economic causes, resulted in the de facto disappearance of any differences between coloni and slaves.
Slavery played a considerable, but not a leading, role in the economy of the “barbarian” states that emerged on the territory of the Roman Empire in the early Middle Ages, particularly in the Ostrogoth state in Italy and the Visigoth state in Spain. In these states, many of the slaves worked the land and paid quitrent to a lord, thus gradually merging with the impoverished members of peasant communes to create a group of enserfed peasants. By the 13th century, slavery had almost completely disappeared from most of Western Europe, although an extensive slave trade still flourished down to the 16th century in such Mediterranean cities as Venice and Genoa, which imported slaves from Turkey and sold them in North Africa.
In Byzantium slavery disappeared at a much slower rate than in Western Europe. It was still economically significant in the tenth and 11th centuries, but by the late 11th and 12th centuries the merger of slaves with the dependent peasantry was practically completed in Byzantium as well. Slavery existed in the Germanic and Slavic tribes chiefly in its patriarchal form; among the Slavs, only the Dalmations traded in slaves. In ancient Rus’ slavery still existed between the ninth and 12th centuries within the framework of a developing feudal society. The slaves (kholopy) gradually joined the ranks of the dependent peasantry, most of them becoming household serfs. However, the situation of certain groups of serfs, particularly those working in mines, differed very little from that of slaves. Slavery continued to exist down to the sixth century in the ancient kingdoms of Transcaucasia and Middle Asia; vestiges of slavery could still be observed there during the Middle Ages.
In the largest Oriental states, notably China and India, slavery existed in its patriarchal form until the onset of capitalist relations, and sometimes it did not disappear even when the latter became established. The main source of slavery in this part of the world in the Middle Ages was indebtedness. In China, impoverished peasants frequently sold members of their own families into slavery, and throughout the entire medieval period criminals or members of their families became slaves of the state. Slavery was also relatively widespread in the Muslim countries of the Near East. Because Islam forbade the enslavement of Muslims, the main source of slavery in Muslim countries was prisoners captured in the course of wars against the “infidels” and the purchase of slaves in the markets of Europe, Asia, and Africa. In the Muslim countries, slaves were used for heavy labor, such as mining (Zinji), in the armies of Muslim rulers (Ghulams, Mamelukes), and in households and personal service (including harems).
The spread of slavery throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas beginning in the 16th century is linked to the process known as the primitive accumulation of capital and to the colonial subjugation of the countries in these areas. Slavery was most extensive and assumed the greatest economic importance in the colonies on the American continent owing to the specific development of the colonies in the Americas: the lack of manpower and the presence of uninhabited land that could be used for large-scale plantation agriculture. The opposition of the Indians, their extermination, and the formal prohibitions on enslaving Indians imposed by the rulers of Spain and Portugal prompted Spanish, Portuguese, and, later, North American planters to import Negro slaves from Africa. The slave trade reached its peak between the 17th and 19th centuries, and the total number of Negroes imported to the Americas probably exceeded 10 million.
In the late 18th century Negro slaves constituted the majority of the population in areas dominated by large plantations in the South of the USA, the West Indies, Brazil, and Guyana. Negroes were brutally treated on the plantations, where their status was that of draft animals. Only the slaves serving in the households of the plantation owners found themselves in a slightly better position. Unions between slaveholders and Negro concubines gave rise to a large mulatto population in several countries. The industrial revolution, which stimulated a sharp increase in the demand for cotton and other industrial crops, gave fresh impetus to the development of plantation slavery in the USA at the end of the 18th and first decade of the 19th century.
As capitalism developed, it became increasingly evident that slave labor had a low productivity and hampered the further evolution of productive forces. Under those circumstances the abolition of slavery began in response to the increasing opposition of slaves and to the growth of a large-scale antislavery social movement, exemplified by abolitionism in the USA. The French Revolution proclaimed the abolition of slavery, but this goal was achieved in reality in the French colonies only in the 1840’s. Slavery was legally abolished in Great Britain in 1807, but in fact continued to exist in the British colonies until 1833. Portugal proclaimed the abolition of slavery in the 1850’s, and in the 1860’s slavery was abolished in most states on the American continent. The abolition of slavery in the USA occurred as a result of the Civil War (1861–65) between the North and the slaveholding South. Forms of forced labor that differed little from slavery continued to exist after the latter had officially been abolished. They included peonage in Latin America and the system of contract laborers in Oceania. The institution of slavery persisted for a long time in a number of colonies and dependencies. It was particularly widespread in Portugal’s African colonies as part of the plantation economy and as a household institution. As late as the 1950’s slavery existed among the Arabs of central and southern Arabia and in such African countries as Ethiopia and Nigeria.
The struggle to eradicate slavery through international law began in the 19th century, but most international documents condemning slavery remained purely formal. What may be regarded as the first international antislavery convention was signed in Geneva in 1926 under the auspices of the League of Nations. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the UN in 1948, prohibited slavery and slave trade in all its forms (art. 4). A conference of 59 nations that convened in Geneva in 1956 for the purpose of combating slavery adopted a supplementary convention on the eradication of slavery, the slave trade, and institutions and customs similar to slavery, such as forced labor.
===REFERENCES===
Marx, K. Kapital, vol. 3. In K. Marx and F. Engels, Soch., 2nd ed., vol. 25, part 2.Engels, F. Proiskhozhdenie sem’i, chastnoi sobstvennosti i gosudarstva. Ibid., vol. 21.Utchenko, S. L., and E. M. Shtaerman, “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii rabstva.” Vestnik drevnei istorii, no. 4, 1960.Wallon, H. Istoriia rabstva v antichnom mire, vols. 1–2. Moscow, 1941. (Translated from French.)Nieboer, H. Y. Rabstvo, kak sistema khoziaistva: Etnologicheskoe issledovanie, 2nd ed. Moscow, 1907. (Translated from English.)Averkieva, Iu. P. Rabstvo u indeitsev Severnoi Ameriki. Moscow-Leningrad, 1941.
OON: Doklad spetsial’nogo komiteta po voprosu o rabstve (Vtoraia sessiia) [No place, 1951.]Pasherstnik, A. E., and I. D. Levin. Prinuditel’nyi trud i rabstvo v stranakh kapitala. Moscow, 1952.Foster, W. Negritianskii narod v istorii Ameriki. Moscow, 1955. (Translated from English.)Ingram, J. K. A History of Slavery and Serfdom. London, 1895.Greenidge, G. W. Slavery. London, 1958.Nevinson, H. W. A Modern Slavery. Essex, 1963.Martin, G. Histoire de l’esclavage dans les colonies françaises. Paris, 1948.Tannenbaum, F. Slave and Citizen: The Negro in the Americas. New York, 1947.Dumond, D. L. A Bibliography on Antislavery in America. Ann Arbor, 1961.V. I. KOZLOV
Category:Exploitation