Use of the term wage slavery is not intended to convey the impression that wage slavery is chattel slavery and it is no contribution to the struggle to pretend that it is.
Capitalism means slavery for the great majority of people. Not chattel slavery, because wage slaves can choose a master. But slavery because, as a rule, they cannot choose NOT to have a master.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas ******************************************************* Frederick Douglas wrote:
"When Col. Lloyd's slaves met those of Jacob Jepson, they seldom parted without a quarrel about their masters, Col. Lloyd's slaves contending that he was the richest, and Mr Jepson's slaves that he was the smartest, man of the two. Col. Lloyd's slaves would boast his ability to buy and sell Jacob Jepson, Mr Jepson's slaves would boast his ability to whip Col. Lloyd. These quarrels would always end in a fight between the parties, those that beat were supposed to have gained the point at issue. They seemed to think that the greatness of their masters was transferable to themselves. To be a SLAVE , was thought to be bad enough; but to be a poor man's slave, was deemed a disgrace, indeed" (p.118).
"Were I again to be reduced to the condition of a slave, next to that calamity, I should regard the fact of being the slave of a religious slave-holder, the greatest that could befall me. For of all slave-holders with whom I have ever met, religious slave-holders are the worst. I have found them, almost invariably, the vilest, the meanest and the basest of their class. Exceptions there may be, but this is true of religious slave-holders as a class"
When Douglas goes to work as a caulker in a shipyard in Baltimore, and works besides white wage workers, he writes about the resentment of white workers towards the black slaves:
"In the country, this conflict is not so apparent; but, in cities, such as Baltimore, Richmond, New Orleans, Mobile etc; it is seen pretty clearly. The slave-holder with a craftiness peculiar to themselves, by encouraging the enmity of the poor, labouring white men against the blacks, succeeds in making the said white men almost as much a slave as the black slave himself. The difference between the white slave, and the black slave, is this: the latter belongs to ONE slave-holder, and the former belongs to ALL the slave-holders, collectively. The white slave has taken from his, by indirection, what the black slave had taken from him, directly, and without ceremony. Both are plundered, and by the same plunderers" (p.309).
from "My Bondage and My Freedom"
===== ***************************************************************** "My sister, your grain - its beer is tasty, my comfort.." - Song of Songs; Sumeria, 2100 B.C.
As to the power of Egyptian brews Aristotle observed:
"They who have drunk beer...fall on their back...for they who get drunk on other intoxicating liquors fall on all parts of their body...it is only those who get drunk on beer who fall on their backs and lie with their faces upwards."
"She brews good ale, and thereof comes the proverb, Blessing of your heart, you brew good ale."
- Shakespeare
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