(copyright Monte Wolverton)

Slavery was officially abolished worldwide at the 1927 Slavery Convention. Article 4 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms”.

Slavery is illegal everywhere and yet it still exists everywhere. Experts estimate that today there are 27 million people enslaved around the world (source). Outright “plantation slavery” doesn’t exist anymore. Slavery today is hidden and has taken on many different and subtler forms like sex trafficking, bonded labor or debt bondage, forced domestic labor, forced agricultural labor etc. It takes place outside of the public’s view, in brothels, homes, fields, restaurants… There is still a strong racist element in modern slavery, but it’s not exclusively racist. Sex slavery for example is not. Domestic slavery also is not necessarily racist.

Types of modern slavery:

1. Bonded labor or debt bondage

Poverty … forces many parents to offer themselves or their own children as collateral against a loan. Though they are promised they will work only until their debt is paid off, the reality is much grimmer. Thanks to inflated interest rates and fresh debts incurred while being fed and housed, the debt becomes impossible to pay off. As a result, it is often inherited by the bonded laborer’s children, perpetuating a vicious cycle that can claim several generations. (source)

2. Sex slavery

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Women and girls are promised jobs and income abroad but on arrival their passports are taken away and they are forced to work in the sex industry in order to pay off the debt they owe the “transporters”. Outright kidnapping also occurs. Not all human trafficking is linked to or ends up in slavery, but some does.

Sex slavery is not necessarily an international problem or a problem linked to migration. Fathers, husbands or brothers can also force the women in the family to prostitute themselves locally, sometimes as a means to service debt. Girls are often even sold by their families.

More on women’s rights.

3. Forced labor

This is also linked to human trafficking. People pay “transporters” to take them to another country where they hope to find a job and a better life. Instead, they are forced to work in order to pay their debt. Needless to say that they often work in harsh and hazardous conditions. Organized crime plays an important role in this an in other types of modern slavery.

Another type of forced labor are the labor camps for “criminals” that exist in some countries, such as China (where they are called Loagai).

4. Child labor

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Here’s a separate post on child labor. Child labor is forced labor and hence slavery because children do not choose to work but are forced to because of the poverty of their parents.

5. Domestic slavery

This often occurs in rich countries, and especially in the upper classes of rich countries. Diplomats also sometimes harbor unpaid domestic workers because they find it relatively easy to by-pass immigration checks.

Overview:

Slave redemption:

This is an effort to buy the freedom of slaves. But it’s controversial.

“When you hape people running around buying up slaves, you help create a market demand for more slaves… It’s like paying the burglar for the television set he just stole. … The slave traders end up with more money, buying more guns and hiring more thugs to go out and take more slaves”. (source).

Moreover, you end up with people picking up other people who are not slaves and presenting them as slaves in order to receive some money for their “freedom”.

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Excerpt from Orwell’s 1984:

There was an outburst of squeals from the cage. It seemed to reach Winston from far away. The rats were fighting; they were trying to get at each other through the partition. He heard also a deep groan of despair. That, too, seemed to come from outside himself.

O’Brien picked up the cage, and, as he did so, pressed something in it. There was a sharp click. Winston made a frantic effort to tear himself loose from the chair. It was hopeless; every part of him, even his head, was held immovably. O’Brien moved the cage nearer. It was less than a metre from Winston’s face.

’I have pressed the first lever,’ said O’Brien. ’You understand the construction of this cage. The mask will fit over your head, leaving no exit. When I press this other lever, the door of the cage will slide up. These starving brutes will shoot out of it like bullets. Have you ever seen a rat leap through the air? They will leap on to your face and bore straight into it. Sometimes they attack the eyes first. Sometimes they burrow through the cheeks and devour the tongue.’

The cage was nearer; it was closing in. Winston heard a succession of shrill cries which appeared to be occurring in the air above his head. But he fought furiously against his panic. To think, to think, even with a split second left — to think was the only hope. Suddenly the foul musty odour of the brutes struck his nostrils. There was a violent convulsion of nausea inside him, and he almost lost consciousness. Everything had gone black. For an instant he was insane, a screaming animal. Yet he came out of the blackness clutching an idea. There was one and only one way to save himself. He must interpose another human being, the body of another human being, between himself and the rats.

The circle of the mask was large enough now to shut out the vision of anything else. The wire door was a couple of hand-spans from his face. The rats knew what was coming now. One of them was leaping up and down, the other, an old scaly grandfather of the sewers, stood up, with his pink hands against the bars, and fiercely sniffed the air. Winston could see the whiskers and the yellow teeth. Again the black panic took hold of him. He was blind, helpless, mindless.

’It was a common punishment in Imperial China,’ said O’Brien as didactically as ever.

The mask was closing on his face. The wire brushed his cheek. And then — no, it was not relief, only hope, a tiny fragment of hope. Too late, perhaps too late. But he had suddenly understood that in the whole world there was just one person to whom he could transfer his punishment — one body that he could thrust between himself and the rats. And he was shouting frantically, over and over.

’Do it to Julia! Do it to Julia! Not me! Julia! I don’t care what you do to her. Tear her face off, strip her to the bones. Not me! Julia! Not me!’

He was falling backwards, into enormous depths, away from the rats. He was still strapped in the chair, but he had fallen through the floor, through the walls of the building, through the earth, through the oceans, through the atmosphere, into outer space, into the gulfs between the stars — always away, away, away from the rats. He was light years distant, but O’Brien was still standing at his side. There was still the cold touch of wire against his cheek. But through the darkness that enveloped him he heard another metallic click, and knew that the cage door had clicked shut and not open.

More on torture. More on Big Brother.

The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

The Slave’s Lament, Robert Burns

It was in sweet Senegal that my foes did me enthrall
For the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
Torn from that lovely shore, and must never see it more,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
Torn from &c.

All on that charming coast is no bitter snow and frost,
Like the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
There streams for ever flow, and there flowers for ever blow,
And alas! I am weary, weary O!
There streams &c.

The burden I must bear, while the cruel scourge I fear,
In the lands of Virginia-ginia O;
And I think on friends most dear with the bitter, bitter tear,
And Alas! I am weary, weary O!
And I think &c.

The White House, Claude McKay

Your door is shut against my tightened face,
And I am sharp as steel with discontent;
But I possess the courage and the grace
To bear my anger proudly and unbent.
The pavement slabs burn loose beneath my feet,
A chafing savage, down the decent street;
And passion rends my vitals as I pass,
Where boldly shines your shuttered door of glass.
Oh, I must search for wisdom every hour,
Deep in my wrathful bosom sore and raw,
And find in it the superhuman power
To hold me to the letter of your law!
Oh, I must keep my heart inviolate
Against the potent poison of your hate.

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Economic growth is the increase in value of the goods and services produced by an economy or a country. It is the percent rate of increase from one year to the next in gross domestic product or GDP of an economy or a country. In order to correct for the population sizes of different economies and countries, GPD per capita rather than national or total GPD is used.

GDP per capita of an economy is often used as an indicator of the average standard of living of individuals in that country, and economic growth is therefore often seen as indicating an increase in the average standard of living. “Average” means that GDP growth is not the same as poverty reduction. GDP growth per capita does not provide information on the distribution of income in a country/economy. A rise in the average standard of living can be accompanied with greater inequality and poverty for some or even many.

Therefore separate measurements of distribution or inequality and poverty are necessary.

However, there is a strong correlation between these measurements. As an empirical matter, economic growth (annual growth in GDP per capita) and poverty reduction go hand in hand.

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Since growth and poverty reduction go hand in hand, it is of the utmost importance that those who care about poverty reduction do everything possible to promote economic growth. Even though our knowledge about the kinds of policies that stimulate growth is limited, we know that some things in some circumstances drive economic growth and others do not. Good institutions, good education, investments, respect for human rights and the rule of law, free markets etc. are generally considered to be good for growth.

This doesn’t mean that economic growth is all that matters, that poverty reduction follows automatically from growth or that only policies that are targeted on growth can generate poverty reduction. This kind of “invisible hand” theory, or “trickle down” theory has been discredited. Other policies such as redistribution are also necessary for poverty reduction. Policies specifically aimed at poverty reduction can even benefit growth. It’s interesting to note that poverty reduction is one of the drivers of growth. So the causation goes both ways, as is often the case in correlations.

Policies that are effective in increasing the incomes of the poor–such as investments in primary education, rural infrastructure, health, and nutrition–are also policies that enhance the productive capacity of the economy in aggregate. (source)

So specific policy measures aimed at improving the lives of the poor are necessary. An exclusive focus on fostering growth is wrong. One could even say that the focus on the poor is the priority, and that measures aimed at growth are only a means to help the poor, and only one means among many. This has become known as the difference principle of John Rawls: social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

“From this perspective, it can be entirely rational and proper for a government to select, among two competing growth strategies, the one that has greater potential payoff for the poor even if the aggregate growth impact is less assured. (source)

The necessity of a double priority - pro-growth combined with anti-poverty measures - is known as the Poverty-Growth-Inequality Triangle:

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Another concept that has been invented is that of “pro-poor growth“.

There is a correlation between poverty reduction and economic growth, not because economic growth automatically and single-handedly reduces poverty, but because policy makers consciously try to reduce poverty and thereby promote growth. Growth is good for the poor, but growth without poverty measures will be unequal growth, growth which doesn’t benefit everyone equally. When the pie gets bigger and the slices stay of the same relative size, then the poor benefit from growth equally in absolute terms because their slice also gets bigger in absolute terms. But not in relative terms compared to their fellow citizens. However, this is the debate about inequality and relative poverty which is distinct from the more urgent debate about absolute poverty. Growth can indeed lead to lesser gains, no gains at all or even absolute losses for some people at the bottom of the income distribution scale, for example those people who were previously working in factories that were closed because of the industrial reforms necessary for overall growth (such as liberalization). However, this is unlikely because the available evidence suggests that measures of income distribution such as the Gini coefficient are quite stable over time within countries (source). This is undoubtedly the result of policy makers embracing the double priority.

Just a note about some of the negative aspects of economic growth: the costs for the environment aren’t factored in, disasters create economic growth because of the reconstruction…

More on poverty.

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President Theodore Roosevelt’s invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing — for himself and for his country — and I thank him for it. John McCain praises Obama before the NAACP

More posts on racism.