SLAVES AND SLAVEMASTERS - FROM CHATTEL SLAVERY TO WAGE SLAVERY

Are Wage Slavery and Chattel Slavery Different?

Researched by Thomas DeMichele Source

Now that you have voted for one of the political parties that supports the capitalist system, you can now be assured of the continuance of your servitude and subservience to the ruling class.   Slavery seems like an outmoded form of life from previous centuries. Many people blithely assume that "wage slavery" is merely a metaphor, at worst a rather benign situation in which an employer says: "You be my slave for forty hours per week and I'll give you just enough money to pay your bills . Just be here Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 (plus when instructed to work overtime.) Deal?"  Whatever we feel, slavery is very much a fact of life for all people in the world today. A person is a slave if he or she has lost control over his or her life and is dominated by someone or something--whether he or she is aware of this or not. Wage slavery is the condition in which a person must sell his or her labor-power, submitting to the authority of an employer, in order to merely subsist. The very essence of capitalism is slavery: the enslavement of workers by the capitalist class. You have probably endured the subjugation of a "boss" or "director" or "committee," and you know that the coercion, even if masked as "job description," "supervisor evaluation," or "company directive" can be as repressive as if there were literal chains fastened around your arms and feet. Most business enterprises use the leadership style of "management by whim," oppressing the worker. A capitalist slave is: Forced to work at a "job" owned by a capitalist (owner of jobs, the means of production, and the profit from the jobs) through necessity or through mental or physical threat. He or she is “owned” or controlled by a capitalist "employer" through wages, hours, working conditions. We are dehumanised, treated as a commodity: a faceless entity filling a slot, a hired hand, at the mercy of the capitalist. The capitalist can--and does so with a vengeance--destroy jobs by "staff reduction," automating jobs by robots, or out-sourcing jobs to a cheaper labour location. Without a voice as to how much profit the capitalist can make from the worker's labour and cannot bargain for higher wages or safe working conditions. Unable to support himself and his family when he cannot find a job. Reduced to poverty or destitution or death by an ever-reduced job "market". Today, all workers suffer under wage slavery bonded debt servitude.  [Socialist Courier]

THE NEWEST TURKISH INSIGHT:EXTRAORDINARY TIMES IN TURKEY

Turkey to temporarily suspend
 European Convention on Human
Rights after coup attempt

Turkey will temporarily suspend the implementation of its obligations emanating from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in line with the declaration of a state of emergency in the country, a senior government official has said, while assuring that fundamental rights and freedoms will not be affected during this period. 

“France proclaimed a state of emergency, too. And they have suspended the ECHR upon article 15 of the convention,” Numan Kurtulmuş, deputy prime minister and government spokesperson, told a group of Ankara bureau chiefs of media outlets on July 21.