this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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"Slave" like any word has contextual meaning. In this context I'm using it to refer to the workers who find themselves caught in a coercive political-economic system. Other similar words are wage slave, proletariat, or just working class. The point is that there is an involuntary aspect which likens it to slavery in the more narrow sense. (The narrow meaning of slave I have in mind being "someone forced into labor without pay".)
All that said, in the U.S. there are still slaves as defined narrowly as people who are forced to work without pay. Slavery is used in prison systems, for example, and is not uncommon among human trafficking victims and immigrants (e.g. read Tomatoland). If your children are women, indigenous, black, are born or become disabled, or belong to various other minority statuses they are at even greater risk of getting swallowed into those forms of "literal" slavery as well.
I would also lump military service under "coercive". The incentives are significant and can be life changing, but it still leads to people being considered government property at the end of the day
Ok. How about you say working class and not fucking “slave” then lol. It’s insulting to compare working at TJ Maxx for 40 hours a week to literal slavery.
there are different forms of slavery brah.
Yeah sure, as long as you don’t associate any meaning with the word.
Slavery is people literally kidnapped and forced to work in fields without wages or actual housing. Well, also, it’s kind of just when you make kind of close to minimum wage. Well, actually, it’s when you’re a computer programmer but you wish you got paid more. Who cares. It’s all the same word.
That is not the only form of slavery, and modern slavery very rarely resembles the specifics of the Atlantic slave trade.
Regardless, neither has very much to do with wage slavery, but it nonetheless remains a term in use and not a totally random use of the word.
why didn't I say working class instead of slave? I don't think most people have in mind the same meaning of "working class" as I intended, while the term slave immediately communicates the situation and the reasoning of the meme
Sure, my communication could have been more specific, but then it would have been more verbose as well. This is just how we use language, to communicate effectively. I don't want to dismiss your point that being too glib or broad with our language can be offensive to some, but I also think the TJ Maxx worker is closer to that literal slave in the field than you think. To me, solidarity for the working class and cooperation is preferable and pragmatically more likely to achieve political successes than gatekeeping suffering.