Bill Lear wrote:
>
> >
> I define slavery as a relation of compulsory subjection of one class
> of persons to another. The mechanism bonding a person from one class
> to a person from another class may vary --- ownership in chattel
> slavery, rental in wage slavery, socio-religious pressure in marital
> slavery, etc. --- but the central feature of compulsory subjection
> remains the same.
>
This is too close to claims that nothing ever changes. I think it also
exhibits the same error as do attempts to label all despotic regimes
"fascist." The world is a varied place, and if we are going to operate
in it in any collective way (and "operate in a collective way" is
essentially synonymous with "resist oppression"), then we have to
maintain a shared vocabulary that recognizes and organizes that
variousness. One opposes a police state in the form of bourgeois
democracy differently from the way one opposes a fascist state or a
fascist movement. One tries to bring the wages system to an end in quite
different ways than one uses to destroy chattel slavery. Nothing is
gained by coalescing the two except a certain smug moralistic pleasure.
Carrol
