Is slavery good?

This resource is a wikidebate, a collaborative effort to gather and organize all arguments on a given issue. It is a tool for argument analysis or pro-con analysis. It is not a place to defend your preferred points of view, but original arguments are allowed and welcome. See the Wikidebate guidelines for more.

Is slavery good? It was practiced by a variety of civilizations and some people thought it was good even in 20th century.

Disclaimer: The arguments for the motion do not represent the view of Wikiversity. Wikiversity editors do not assert that slavery is good, just, morally acceptable or that some people are slaves by nature. The purpose of this page is to examine arguments in a debate format, including arguments one disagrees with and finds reprehensible.

Key distinctions and notions: slavery, serfdom, freedom, achievement, human rights, humaneness, viability, practicability, humans, human societies, animals, parasitism, food chain.

Limitations: the article does not yet cover all arguments found in W:Proslavery.

• Pro Slavery was practiced by great civilizations such as Egyptians, Ancient Greeks, Ancient Rome, ancient China, ancient Korea and ancient India. It enabled their achievements. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Slavery is unnecessary for the achievement of a nation. What constitutes an achievement, or at least a desired one, is subjective. For example, some argue high wealth is an achievement while others argue mere wealth accumulation is not an achievement or desired achievement for a nation. This also begs the question: are any of these nations truly great? [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection The above objection states at least three different arguments, and per the debate format, they should be separate objections. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection The first sentence is too vague or general, giving no time period for the sake of analysis. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection The last sentence is a question yet questions are usually not a form of argument but rather a form of leading a discussion. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection The objection contradicts itself by first using the word "achievement" without any challenge, implying the speaker understands what is meant by "the achievement of a nation", yet then we learn that achievement is subjective, which casts doubt on the use of the definite article in "the achievement of a nation". [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That seems to assume that achievement is a justification for violation of human rights. If we assume so, we may allow medical experiments on prisoners or on selected races to increase human achievement and possibilities. That does not seem acceptable. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection It is not clear why similar feats could not be achieved by serfdom. At the very least, the master should not have the right to kill their slaves. [ edit | add objection ]
  •  Comment Slavery did not end in Antiquity, it only changed form and name. Slaves became workers. Slaves worked for roof, food, clothes and medical treatment; workers work for salary barely sufficient for roof, food, clothes and medical treatment. Slavery is bad but inevitable in any civilized society
    • Objection For the sake of this discussion, we use words in a strict, non-metaphorical sense. Industrial workers are not slaves, by definition, no matter how bad conditions they are exposed to. [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro Expanding on the above, slavery enabled Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Without slavery, we would not have this great philosophy. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection See the objections above. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection Slavery was created to control people.I rise by "anyone has a right to freedom" [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro Slavery was practiced by a wide range of societies, high-achieving and low-achieving. See the linked Britannica article. It is a near-universal human practice. It is therefore unlikely to be bad. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection The same is true of war, yet we hope to achieve a world free from war or at least one where there are much fewer wars. We hope to achieve moral progress, to move beyond morally and instrumentally bad past practices whether near-universal or not. [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro Slavery is found not only in humans but also in W:slave-making ants. It is a natural phenomenon, a good move discovered by natural selection. It cannot be bad. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That assumes that features or relationships discovered by natural selection are good and in particular morally good. It would follow that parasitism is good since it is a phenomenon widely found in biological nature. That does not seem acceptable. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection Parasitism is not within a single species. When we analyze things between species, humans eat plants, one organism destroying another organism to take advantage of it. Such a relationship is unavoidable for humans. [ edit | add objection ]
      • Objection Technically, ancient humans that had not advanced technologically fit within their natural ecosystems just fine, finding the top spot on the food web. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection An analog of parasitism in human world is hard to avoid. Thus, large employers take advantage of their workers by giving them lower wages than a true many-many labor market would produce. A society of genuine equals is impossible. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection War was discovered by natural selection. We do not accept aggressive war as good. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection The above ignores the is-ought problem. The fact that slavery was widely practiced, whether by humans or ants, does not automatically make it morally good, something that ought to be practiced. [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro Some people are slaves by nature, and their enslavement serves their best interests. In particular, some people are related to other people like body is to soul or like animals are to humans. Thus, in some people the principles of bodiness (muscularity as opposed to intellectuality) and animality dominate, and these are the kinds of people who are slaves by nature. (This argument is inspired by Aristotle, as covered e.g. by a BBC article^[1]) [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That would assume that whole ethnics or nations are somehow more body-oriented or more like animals than humans. That is so since the actual practices of slavery were based on ethnicity, in part for ease of administration. That assumption seems implausible. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That would assume that it is in the best interest of a slave to be threatened with killing by their master. That seems implausible. At a minimum, serfdom would be more adequate. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Plato's learned slaves did not seem to be dominated by masculinity. Slaves could be used for purposes related to muscle as well as dexterity and the mind. Thus, the above is implausible. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Enslavement is a result of a combination of force with disregard for human rights, not a result of proper application of the mind. The principles of animality and muscularity are found in the enslavers, and are found in their act of enslaving someone else. It does not take a genius to be an enslaver. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection Perhaps it takes a military genius. [ edit | add objection ]
      • Objection It might. But many of the enslavers are not military leaders but soldiers. A group of people dominated by the concerns of the mind such as learning and acquisition of knowledge cannot on their own enslave another nation. [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro Since the Old Testament condones slavery, slavery cannot be bad. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Several religious texts condone several unethical actions, since it isn't really possible to prove which religious text is absolutely right and all good, we can't just assume that the slavery is right. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Since morality is entirely subjective, the concept of slavery can be neither good nor bad, objectively. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That assumes the Old Testament is good. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That assumes the Old Testament is a word of God rather than fiction created by a fairly backwards culture. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Old Testament was amended by New Testament. The amendment is clear in Jesus doctrine of forgiveness, in contrast to the old eye for eye. Thus, Old Testament should not be taken to be the final word by God but rather a first draft. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection If we are Jews, Old Testament is the final word. [ edit | add objection ]
      • Objection Old Testament is an incoherent jumble of contradictions anyway, so anything can be derived from it, whether support for slavery or opposition to slavery. It has no force, and no place in an honest philosophical examination of merits and demerits of slavery. [ edit | add objection ]
• Pro While not all slavery is good, voluntary slavery is: people should be able to sell themselves as slaves. Prohibiting them from doing so is a violation of Mill's harm principle. See also Should Mill's harm principle be accepted? [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That may be an argument for accepting Mill's principle only in a limited form. There is a paradox: by taking some freedoms of people away, we greatly increase their effective freedom, or in any case their negotiating power. Negotiation power can be greatly increased by losing options, a classic example being two drivers playing a game of driving against each other and the one who turns away loses. In that game, a driver who throws away the steering wheel first wins, by forcing themselves to not turn away and the other party turns away to avoid death. If we accept that people should be free to give up their fundamental rights in exchange for money, we will accept development of a wide range of undesirable social phenomena resulting from desperate people accepting otherwise unacceptable deals. Thus, people may undergo dangerous medical experiments for money (they only harm themselves), prostitutes can function (they only harm themselves), people should be able to sell their arm as a spare part for the rich (they only harm themselves) or sell one of pair organs such as kidneys. The space is rich, and seems generally unacceptable. It follows we need a restricted form of Mill's principle, and one of the restrictions is that fundamental human rights are not for sale. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection Good point. However, in a non-disclosure agreement, the fundamental human right of free speech is sold. [ edit | add objection ]
      • Objection Good point. However, what it means is that we may need a more differentiated approach; the general principle stands. The right not to be a slave is probably much deeper human right than the right of free speech, especially since free speech is in fact limited to some extent, e.g. as for libel. [ edit | add objection ]
        • Objection One could argue that all libel laws should be abolished as doing more harm than good, but that would be for a separate discussion. [ edit | add objection ]
      • Objection That may be an indictment of non-disclosure agreements: perhaps they should be banned. That would not only increase human rights but also prevent a range of undesirable business practices. But that would be for a separate discussion. [ edit | add objection ]
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• Con All people were made by God to be equal. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection This is a straight up opinion. While it is just and reasonable to deem all humans as being of inherent equal value, to claim that this equality was enacted by a deity is objectionable because not everyone is adherent to a deistic faith. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection Probably not by the Christian God since otherwise the Christian holy texts would not condone or tolerate slavery. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery violates basic human rights. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery goes beyond serfdom in unreasonable and inhumane ways, e.g. by allowing the master to kill the slave. All that slavery promises to do can be achieved with serfdom, which is much more humane. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery goes beyond the social institute of people dependent on work for livelihood, whether peasants, industrial workers or working intelligence. All that slavery promises to do can be achieved by freedom. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That seems improbable given that so many great civilizations depend on slavery. [ edit | add objection ]
    • Objection That is a fallacy, just because a great civilization relied on slaves doesn't mean they were great because of the slaves. These great civilizations also had several other unethical laws and norms, that doesn't mean that they were successful because of them. [ edit | add objection ]
  • Objection That may be true in the technological conditions of enlightenment Europe, but it is not clear it was true in the technological conditions of ancient civilizations. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery, due to how cheap these human resources are, hinders the adoption of more technological methods of production or automation where the need for human labor gets reduced and humans have more time for other things such as labor that can't be automated or having a higher well-being. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery greatly harms the well-being of those enslaved. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery is unfair to the worker who is oppressed. [ edit | add objection ]
• Con Slavery is often used for purposes that make little sense and limits the say that laborers have in what the economics produce and provide. [ edit | add objection ]
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1. ↑ Philosophers justifying slavery, BBC

• W:Proslavery
• Attempts to justify slavery, BBC
• Philosophers justifying slavery, BBC
• An Overview of Some Proslavery Arguments, libertarianism.org
• slavery - Historical survey, britannica.com