What defines a slave?
The question is interesting because while it is reflexively answered, it is not understood. If it were understood, people would recognize that they are in fact slaves. Most people think they aren’t because they are free to work – and to pay taxes. Black slaves in the antebellum South actually had it better in some ways. They didn’t have to pay taxes, for one thing. The more important thing, though, is that they were aware they were enslaved. Put another way, they were not living under the sway of a delusion they were “free.” This caused them to want to be free. It prompted many to try ti escape their enslavement. Hence the importance of keeping slaves deluded about their status – by allowing them the “freedom” to work and pay taxes.
A person not enslaved is free to work without needing to ask permission and gets to keep what he earns. He is not told he “owes” money on things he’s bought and paid for, such as his home.
By this measure, there isn’t a single free man (or woman) in this country. Just workers. Which is another way of saying slaves.
It is an important thing to understand . Which is why those who own us do not want us to understand it. That is why they allow us the illusion of ownership. The slave in the Antebellum South was under no such illusion. He understood the hut he was allowed to live in wasn’t his – but at least he wasn’t obliged to pay property taxes on his massa’s hut. There is a sort of honest dignity in this. As opposed to the intellectually dishonest degradation that attends believing you “own” a home you must nevertheless pay those who actually do own it a large sum of money every year – forever – in order to avoid those who actually do own it asserting their ownership, by evicting you from the home that isn’t and never can be yours in any meaningful sense. No so long as you are obliged to pay what amounts to rent in order to avoid eviction.
It is more than just our homes we don’t really own.
The hideous truth is we own nothing at all – because we do not own ourselves. How can a man (or woman) say they own themselves with a straight face when they know that if they go to work, a claim will be made (and enforced) by their owners to a portion of what they earn by working? It is not merely that they are told they “owe” a portion of what they worked to earn. It is what is implicit in this “owing.” If someone else has the power to compel you to hand over even once cent out of $100 then he has the power to take the entire $100. There is no principle to stop him; it is merely a question of haggling over how much more you will inevitably “owe” and how soon you will “owe” it.
If you own yourself, then you own your body and your mind and all that is created by the work your body (and brain) does. If someone else can lay claim to the least part of that, then you are owned to that extent and to a greater extent that will inevitably be asserted. Think about it. If you have a fence line marking the boundary of your property and you find one day that your neighbor has moved the fence line a foot over what used to be the line into what used to be your property and your are legally powerless to do anything about it, what is to prevent him from moving the fence line ten yards more into what used to be your property?
Your asking him not to?
A slave might summon the temerity to ask his massa to allow him to do something. Is that not our state? We must ask the state’s permission (literally; it is called a building permit) to build a home on land we bought and are taught to think we own. We must beg its permission again if we wish to build an addition – and then we are told how much more we “owe” in property taxes on account of the “assessment” having increased. We are required to register what we are conditioned to think of as the vehicles we don’t really own -and (in many states) these are also subject to regular property taxation, too.
We cannot even get married – legally – without massa’s permission.
What are we allowed to do just because we want to do it? Incidentals, mostly. We are still free to go for a walk but if we go for a drive, we might be required to produce the permissions we are required to have to be allowed to drive. What do we actually (really) own? The answer is – not much. We are free to keep the clothes we buy with the money left over after taxes are extracted and even then, the clothes are taxed and the clothing manufactured only by permission according to “standards” laid down by the state. There is almost nothing we are at liberty to do.
Perhaps it does not feel as bad as it is because we are still allowed to choose which field on the plantation we’re allowed to work and we’re allowed to pick which of massa’s huts we’d prefer to live in (assuming we can afford the rent). Massa also allows us the choice of which “approved” stores to shop in (but only if we “mask up”) and we’re allowed to buy the various things massa says we’re allowed to buy that massa has approved for purchase. But that is not the same thing as being at liberty to buy what we want, to transact business without massa’s permission or involvement or being the true owner of things.
Most particularly, of ourselves.
That is the fundamental right that must be recovered. Self ownership. Without it, we own nothing that cannot in principle be taken away, in whole or part. Rights are either inalienable – to use a word not much used in our time – or they are not really rights, are they? It took a long time to alienate our rights from us. It was done gradually, a little at a time, over a period of many lifetimes. We have been conditioned to regard them as privileges, granted by the state – the massa less visible.
But our rights remain.
They have merely to be re-asserted, implacably.
. . .
If you like what you’ve found here please consider supporting EPautos.
We depend on you to keep the wheels turning!
Our donate button is here.
If you prefer not to use PayPal, our mailing address is: EPautos 721 Hummingbird Lane SE Copper Hill, VA 24079
As the late Walter E. Williams observed, “what percentage of a slave are you if a percentage of your earnings belongs to others?”
I would contend Slavery is like pregnancy. You either are or are not? Or, to put it in the words of Louis Jordan, “is you is or is you ain’t?”
Slavery maybe. I think (maybe I’m wrong) more like indentured servitude that was forced upon us without our agreement by our overlords posing as “public servants”. That unagreeded to contract on our end becomes fulfilled once our lifespan comes to an end and only after our families are forced to settle final expenses (taxes) on our behalf to the scum of the earth tax collectors.
I’m sure that the family of Dolly Pardon will have to deal with the bloodsuckers that will swoop in from the government to collect their “owed dues”.
Hi Allen,
Well, an indenture is voluntary entered into – and of limited duration. Slavery is imposed – and eternal.