Unfree labour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Unfree labour is a generic or collective term for forms of work, especially in modern or early modern history, in which adults and/or children are employed against their will by the threat of destitution, detention, violence (including death), or other extreme hardship to themselves, or to members of their families. Many of these forms of work may be covered by the term forced labour, although this tends to imply forms based on violence. Unfree labour includes all forms of slavery. (Although serfdom is technically a form of unfree labour, the term "serf" is usually only used in relation to pre-modern societies, under feudal political systems.)
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Payment for unfree labour
If payment occurs, it may be in one or more of the following forms: it does not exceed subsistence or barely exceeds it; is in goods which are not desirable and/or cannot be exchanged, or; the payment is wholly or mostly comprised by cancellation of a debt or liability that was itself coerced, or belongs to someone else. Unfree labour is often more easily instituted and enforced on migrant workers, who have travelled far from their homelands and who are easily identified because of their physical, ethnic or cultural differences to the general population, since they are unable or unlikely to report their conditions to the authorities.
Unfree vs. free labour
By contrast, "free labour" is a situation which a worker is able to leave at any time, if they see fit. In practice, however, many nominally free labourers, in some historical periods and/or countries, face significant constraints on their ability to leave their jobs, and may not receive payment which is above the level of subsistence. For these reasons, some scholars prefer to see "free labour" and "unfree labour" as extreme points on a continuum, rather than being sharply distinct entities. According to the labour theory of value, under capitalism, workers never keep all of the wealth they create, as some of it goes to the profit of capitalists. Because of such factors, some people refer to the condition of the working class as "wage slavery". (Others may feel that such terms trivialize the experiences of real slaves.) By contrast, according to the subjective theory of value, labourers deserve no more and no less than the wages they are paid as a result of competition in the labour market.
Forms of unfree labour
Slavery
Main article: slavery.
The archetypal and best-known form of unfree labour is chattel slavery, in which individual workers are legally owned throughout their lives, and may be bought, sold or otherwise exchanged by owners, while never or rarely receiving any personal benefit from their labour. Slavery was common in many ancient societies, including ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Israel, ancient China, as well as many societies in Africa and the Americas. Being sold into slavery was a common fate of populations conquered in wars. Perhaps the most prominent example of chattel slavery has been the enslavement of many millions of black people in Africa or forcefully transplanted to the Americas, Asia or Europe where their status as slaves would usually be inherited by their descendants.
The term slavery is often applied to situations which do not meet the above definitions, but which are other, closely-related forms of unfree labour, such as such as debt slavery (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour), or the work of Indigenous Australians in northern Australia on sheep or cattle stations (ranches), from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. In the latter case, workers were rarely or never paid, and were restricted by regulations and/or police intervention to regions around their places of work.
According to an article by Andrew Cockburn, (National Geographic, Dutch/Belgian edition, September 2003) there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.
Bonded labour
A more common form in modern society is indenture, or bonded labour, under which workers sign contracts to work for a specific period of time, for which they are paid only with accommodation and sustenance, or these essentials in addition to limited benefits such as cancellation of a debt, or transportation to a desired country. (Debt bondage or debt slavery is a well-known form of indenture; this is sometimes known as peonage in the USA. However, the word peon is used more generally in Latin American history, and may in some cases imply free labour.) In some cases, indentured workers may receive small cash payments or other benefits. Indenture is still common in developing countries and was perhaps the dominant formal and official form of labour in early modern colonial societies, during the 17th century and 18th century. However, it should be stressed that indenture is often only a formal legal category, and in practice employers sometimes find it difficult or impossible to coerce indentured workers, unless the letter of the law is reinforced by law enforcement systems, and/or by full acceptance by workers, as a traditional practice.
Penal labour
Main article: Penal labour.
Prison labour
Convict or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of the social stigma attached to people regarded as "common criminals". In some countries and historical periods, however, prison labour has been forced upon people who have been: victims of prejudice, convicted of political crimes, convicted of "victimless crimes", or people who committed theft or related offences because they lacked any other means of subsistence — categories of people who typically call for compassion. The British colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868 are probably the best examples of convict labour, as described above: during that period, Australia received thousands of convict labourers, many of whom had received harsh sentences for minor misdemeanours in Britain or Ireland.
Labour camps
See main article: labour camp. See also: The Holocaust; Japanese war crimes.
Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of political prisoners, people from conquered or occupied countries, and prisoners of war, especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are the concentration camp system run by Nazi Germany in Europe during World War II, the Gulag camps run by the Soviet Union, and the forced labour used by the military of the Empire of Japan, especially during the Pacific War (such as the Death Railway).
Truck system
A "truck system", or company store system, refers to exploitation in a small or isolated and oppressive community, in which workers are paid in tokens, or in direct credit, which may only be used at a company store, owned by their employers, or they are paid in unexchangeable goods and/or services. (This is sometimes identified with debt bondage, although the "debt" in this case is incurred through consumption, rather than advances on wages.) Often the only alternative to this form of payment is destitution for the workers and their families. However, in some limited historical circumstances, when workers experience an unusual degree of bargaining power, truck wages may be used simply because of a poor or unreliable supply of cash, and payment may be in large quantities of tradeable and/or desirable goods.
Serfs
Serfs are sometimes referred to as unfree labourers, although they are generally not. They meet the definition in that they were bound to the land and required permission to move. They usually fare far better than most other unfree labourers in that they have the exclusive use of some land and/or means of production, legal or strongly traditional human rights, economic security, and free time to a much greater extent than slaves, indenturees, and many wage labourers. In the Middle Ages, some serfs were able to escape to a city, beyond the reach of a feudal lord.
Trafficking
Main article: trafficking in human beings
Trafficking is a term to define the recruiting, harboring, obtaining and transportation of a person by use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjecting them to involuntary acts, such as acts related to commercial sexual exploitation (including prostitution) or involuntary labour.
The present situation
The International Labor Organization estimates that:
- 12.3 million people are victims of forced labour
- more than 2.4 million have been trafficked
- 9.8 million are exploited by private agents
- 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups
The profits from forced trafficked labor are estimated to be in excess of $30 billion dollars.
References
- Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race (2 vol.) New York: Verso Books.
- Vol. I Racial Oppression and Social Control, 1994.
- Vol. II The Origin of Racial Oppression in Anglo-America, 1997.
- Tom Brass and Marcel Van Der Linden (eds.), Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues (International and Comparative Social History, 5). New York: Peter Lang AG, 1997.
- Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492–1800, London: Verso, 1997.
- Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery, 1776–1848. London: Verso, 1988.
- George W. Hilton, The Truck System, including a History of the British Truck Acts, 1465-1960. Cambridge, UK: W. Heffer & Sons Ltd, 1960.
See also
- Involuntary servitude
- Shanghai (verb)
- Trafficking in human beings
- Wage slavery
- White slavery
- Penal labor
- Prison labor
