Long-term economic feasability of slavery

[Alkahest]

Now, I realize this is probably only the latest in a long line of threads about this topic, but hear me out. I have the following thought; that even though slavery becomes less economically feasible as a society enters an industrial phase, it will actually become a more viable option as technology approaches modern or near-future levels.

Why is that my belief? Well, as I understand it the main problems with slavery are: 1) The cost of buying and keeping a slave healthy is larger than the cost of paying a worker a reasonable salary. 2) More skilled work than very simple plantation labor requires education. 3) The fact that slaves simply don't want to be slaves and are liable to rebel means that a lot of resources must be spent on security. 4) It's expensive and hard to keep a large slave workforce under surveillance. 5) In addition to all this, IOTL many countries banned slavery for largely ethical reasons, making slave-owning societies pariahs and depriving them of the global slave trade.

A POD that takes care of point 5 could very well lead to a society where points 1-4 are solved as technology marches on. 1) is "solved" by medical technology, improved agricultural technology and in the future perhaps even human cloning and genetic engineering in addition to the fact that modern free workers seem to have far higher demands on life that simply having food and a roof, making slaves relatively advantageous. (The needs of the working class grow while the needs of the slaves stay more or less the same, is my point.) 2) is solved by improving information technology. Most relatively non-skilled jobs in for example the service industry don't require a lot of education by modern standards, and the education needed could be provided by cheap software. 3) and 4) are solved by a combination of modern surveillance technology, pharmacology and neuropsychology. The slaves would be watched at all times and the rabble-rousers would simply be "medicated" into contentment.

This is of course all a very rough sketch of my ideas and I admit that my knowledge of economics is highly limited, but I think I have provided sufficient foundation for an interesting discussion, if nothing else one about how I fail economics forever.

 

[hefajstos]

I don’t know why but every time someone on this forum asks about the infeasibility of most forms of chattel slavery as industry gains prominence, posters seem to forget that slaves would have been non-consumers in a non-traditional economy. IIRC, this little bit you can’t really solve if the economy is that tied with chattel slavery. Solve this issue and you may have your answer staring right back at you. Hope to hear an answer.
Hefajstos

 

[Socrates]

I don’t know why but every time someone on this forum asks about the infeasibility of most forms of chattel slavery as industry gains prominence, posters seem to forget that slaves would have been non-consumers in a non-traditional economy. IIRC, this little bit you can’t really solve if the economy is that tied with chattel slavery. Solve this issue and you may have your answer staring right back at you. Hope to hear an answer.
Hefajstos

I don't see what your point is here. Slaves would not have been consumers, but the return that should have gone to workers would instead go to the business owners, who would consumer more as a result.

Admittedly wealthy people have lower consumption rates as a share of income than poorer people, but that just means they save the rest. Those savings will be loaned out by banks as investment capital, which makes up for the lost consumption.

 

[Socrates]

Now, I realize this is probably only the latest in a long line of threads about this topic, but hear me out. I have the following thought; that even though slavery becomes less economically feasible as a society enters an industrial phase, it will actually become a more viable option as technology approaches modern or near-future levels.

I'm not so sure. If you look at the situation of chattel slavery, it was profitable when the tasks involved were the same for a great number of workers, and you could have one paid supervisor overseeing them all (cotton, sugar etc). It was not as economic when you needed skills, and individually different tasks (e.g. rice). If you look at industrialisation, by the time you get to mass production, slavery would probably be feasible again, although it wouldn't work in a post-industrial economy.

1) The cost of buying and keeping a slave healthy is larger than the cost of paying a worker a reasonable salary.

This all depends on the supply and demand for each type of labour and what they're producing. The problem the CSA would have had is that there was no new slave imports coming from anywhere, which would have driven up prices. Meanwhile lots of fresh free labour was there to come in from Europe. The supervisor to worker ratio for the particular task also matters a lot for slavery, as wage workers don't need people there to make sure they don't run away.

2) More skilled work than very simple plantation labor requires education.

I don't see why working on an assembly line needs any more education than working on a sugar plantation.

3) The fact that slaves simply don't want to be slaves and are liable to rebel means that a lot of resources must be spent on security.

Yes, this is an additional cost, but as mentioned, matters little if the task means you only need a few supervisors to oversee a great many slaves. I imagine the invention of better firearms would make this even cheaper.

4) It's expensive and hard to keep a large slave workforce under surveillance.

This is really the same as 3)

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

Jared tackled this subject in his old TL, Decades of Darkness -- chief post on the subject:

Well, here is where the question arises of whether slavery is economically a detraction or not. Slavery is morally repugnant, but the evidence for it being an economic disadvantage... well, it's not all that clear, to put it mildly. Slavery in OTL was, by and large, abolished not for economic reasons but for moral and political reasons. In the northern U.S. states, it was abolished because slavery hadn't really been much more than a status symbol - slaves were domestic servants and the like, mostly, except a bit in the Hudson Valley. In the southern states, it was abolished at gunpoint in the civil war, for most states, and by government fiat in the remaining border states. In the various Caribbean colonies, it was abolished through the dictates of the mother countries, not because the sugar colonies themselves were doing badly economically. (In fact, the British Caribbean took a *big* economic hit after abolition of slavery and didn't really recover economically until the tourist boom post-WW2). In Brazil, slavery was abolished by imperial dictate, and resulted in the deposition of the monarchy through a coup a couple of years later.

As to whether slavery as an economic system is uneconomic for an industrial economy, well we (very thankfully) don't have historical examples of it post-1865 except for the effective slavery conditions of Nazi Europe, the Soviet gulag and some of the Japanese institutions, especially in Manchuria. In those cases, the industries of those powers still functioned... they had higher levels of sabotage, but then these were people born free forced into slavery and in most cases being worked to death, so sabotage was to be expected. In chattel slavery as was practiced OTL by the CSA and as is being practiced ATL by the DoD USA, the slaves are not being worked to death, and sabotage rates are correspondingly much lower.

The fact is (and I found it a disturbing one, when I started to look into historical slavery), the evidence for slavery being economically uncompetitive is just not there, even in an industrialised economy. The antebellum Southern states did use slaves in industry, even in skilled and supervisory positions, and they performed those roles. Slaves weren't used more in industry simply because slaves were even more profitable in agriculture, especially cotton agriculture, than in industry. If the profitability of cotton agriculture declines for whatever reason, the slaves would shift into industry, and not be an economic drain. (This happened in OTL during those times when cotton prices declined for a while).

Now, in the long run, i.e. as we start to get into OTL 1950s manufacturing techniques where unskilled labour is of much less use, this will start to change in a big way. So will the mechanisation of cotton picking, which took off in the late 1930s and 1940s in OTL. But in the meantime, slavery will be economically competitive (in some cases, an economic advantage), while at the same time being morally repulsive.

I also had a related thread not too long back...

 

[yourworstnightmare]

As long as society is fairly rural and there's no much mechanization of agriculture (i.e. need of a large number of laborers), then slavery is feasible.

 

[Fiver]

This all depends on the supply and demand for each type of labour and what they're producing. The problem the CSA would have had is that there was no new slave imports coming from anywhere, which would have driven up prices. Meanwhile lots of fresh free labour was there to come in from Europe.

Free labor from Europe was not going to the south. In 1860, there were about 233,000 immigrants in all 11 states that would form the Confederacy. There were 259,000 immigrants in Massachusetts, 276,000 in Wisconsin, 324,000 immigrants in Illinois, 328,000 immigrants in Ohio, 430,000 in Pennsylvania, 997,000 in New York.

I don't see why working on an assembly line needs any more education than working on a sugar plantation.

Southern industry quickly found that if slaves weren't given some wages they tended to "accidentally" break things.

Yes, this is an additional cost, but as mentioned, matters little if the task means you only need a few supervisors to oversee a great many slaves. I imagine the invention of better firearms would make this even cheaper.

Shoot one "to encourage the others"? So far as I know this wasn't done.

 

[DuQuense]

Slavery is independent of Economics.
Whe have Slavery in stone age economies [Inca, Aztec]
Whe have Slavery in Traditional economies [Greek, Roman, Chinese]
Whe have Slavery in Command economies [Nazis, Commies]
Whe have Slavery in todays Industrial economies [Illegal Sweatshops - buying, selling, Trading of Sport Contracts]

I see no reason why whe will not have Slavery in post Industrial, Technological Economies.

After all Slavery is simply a device for one person or group to control the labor and output of another person or group**.




** of course this avoids the whole question of ?is Voluntary Slavery really Slavery?

 

[tallwingedgoat]

Well I guess if you define a slave as anyone who has to work for a living, as The Verve says, you're a slave to the money then you die.

But old school slavery, where one is forced to work with no pay was doomed by the Industrial Revolution. There's no need for cotton pickers when you have combine harvesters. The only way to keep slavery is to not industrialize. Of course a state can enslave people for political doctrine. This is not economically feasible for very long however since such a state cannot compete against rivals with a free economy.

There are of course some jobs that machines can't do. Hence we still have sexual slavery today.

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

There are of course some jobs that machines can't do. Hence we still have sexual slavery today.

There are people working on that.

 

[Michael B]

There are people working on that.

You mean like the holo brothel in The River of Souls?

 

[John Fredrick Parker]

You mean like the holo brothel in The River of Souls?

Alas, I have seen too little of Babylon 5 to fully answer that

 

[Midas]

Wage-slavery is more ideologically salient, effective and peripheral that the actual institutions promoting it don't get caught. I think it beats out chattel slavery in the long run.

 

[Socrates]

Free labor from Europe was not going to the south. In 1860, there were about 233,000 immigrants in all 11 states that would form the Confederacy. There were 259,000 immigrants in Massachusetts, 276,000 in Wisconsin, 324,000 immigrants in Illinois, 328,000 immigrants in Ohio, 430,000 in Pennsylvania, 997,000 in New York.

Yes, I considered this. But capital would flow to where it can make the best profit, i.e. into the North, where there is incoming free labour.

Southern industry quickly found that if slaves weren't given some wages they tended to "accidentally" break things.

Interesting. I imagine, though, that it would still be profitable despite this.

Shoot one "to encourage the others"? So far as I know this wasn't done.

No, I meant more only needing one guard with a gun to watch over a couple hundred slaves, as if any try to run off or attack the guards its easier to stop them.

 

[Socrates]

Wage-slavery is more ideologically salient, effective and peripheral that the actual institutions promoting it don't get caught. I think it beats out chattel slavery in the long run.

Not sure what you mean by this. Paid labour isn't "slavery" if you can always go and get another job if you're worth more than your pay, or are free to start your own business.

 

[Peabody-Martini]

If you would like to live in a country where a substantial proportion of the population dare not turn their back on another proportion you are more than welcome to it.

 

[DuQuense]

But old school slavery, where one is forced to work with no pay was doomed by the Industrial Revolution. There's no need for cotton pickers when you have combine harvesters. The only way to keep slavery is to not industrialize. Of course a state can enslave people for political doctrine. This is not economically feasible for very long however since such a state cannot compete against rivals with a free economy.

There are of course some jobs that machines can't do. Hence we still have sexual slavery today.

Except most news stories about slaves in the US or Europe are about work places, not brothels.
You don't take the risks of chaining several hundred people to sewing machines, unless there is a awful lot of profit in the operation.

 

[Alkahest]

I'm not so sure. If you look at the situation of chattel slavery, it was profitable when the tasks involved were the same for a great number of workers, and you could have one paid supervisor overseeing them all (cotton, sugar etc). It was not as economic when you needed skills, and individually different tasks (e.g. rice). If you look at industrialisation, by the time you get to mass production, slavery would probably be feasible again, although it wouldn't work in a post-industrial economy.

Flipping hamburgers? Also, hasn't using slaves as various kinds of household servants been very common in history? That's hardly a job where a great number of workers are doing the same task.

This all depends on the supply and demand for each type of labour and what they're producing. The problem the CSA would have had is that there was no new slave imports coming from anywhere, which would have driven up prices. Meanwhile lots of fresh free labour was there to come in from Europe.

Well, that's why I wanted to make slavery more internationally accepted.

The supervisor to worker ratio for the particular task also matters a lot for slavery, as wage workers don't need people there to make sure they don't run away.

That's why I mentioned surveillance technology.

I don't see why working on an assembly line needs any more education than working on a sugar plantation.

I thought about mentioning assembly lines, but I thought my opening post was confused enough as it is.

 

[Alkahest]

Jared tackled this subject in his old TL, Decades of Darkness -- chief post on the subject:

Huh! I guess I've just accepted the inviability of slavery in an industrial economy as the generally accepted consensus, interesting to read about other opinions.

Hnh. It seems rather self-evident that technologies related to automatization would be retarded in a society with slavery compared to OTL, but how would other technologies be affected? A bit off-topic, but would slavery be useful for medical progress, with the hordes of available human test subjects?

I also had a related thread not too long back...

Gah, how did I miss that? Thanks, your thread covers a lot of the things that I was thinking about!

 

[Socrates]

Flipping hamburgers?

Sorry, don't get you.

Also, hasn't using slaves as various kinds of household servants been very common in history?

True, but I don't think it's quite the same. Often slaves in rich households were doing better than the peasants out on the street, in terms of their lifestyles and ownership so while they were legally "forced" to be there, I think a lot of them would do it by choice. Unlike chattel slavery, which is only really profitable on large plantations (and hypothetically on industrial assembly lines) and where the slaves would desperately want to escape. Certainly I don't think household slavery is profitable enough for the owners to withstand the moral pressure once ideas about equality of man come in.

Well, that's why I wanted to make slavery more internationally accepted.

Keeping the slave trade open would certainly help with the economics. I'm not sure about the more internationally accepted part. The idea of equality of man had already been widely accepted in Enlightenment circiles, and got very widespread due to the American and French Revolutions. Maybe if you can get rid of them you can slow down the condemnation, but I don't think you can hold it off permanently.

That's why I mentioned surveillance technology.I thought about mentioning assembly lines, but I thought my opening post was confused enough as it is.

But by the time you've got the modern surveillance, pharmacology technology etc, you've moved into a post-industrial society. I think it's possible to hold out slavery into industrial society, but not beyond that. The economics just won't work, and you need such education in the masses, thus there will be unstoppable condemnation of the institution.