>>Creating jobs in a wage-slave economy is creating more slavery. Is it
>>possible to condemn slavery without reference to some kind of ethics?
>
>==============
>
>To call it a wage-slave economy is political rhetoric; it is not an
>indefeasible ethical truth. One could go so far as to assert it's not even
>a truth-apt proposition.
>
>One could, with some rigorous analyses/arguments condemn slavery without
>engaging in any kind of moral/ethical judgements. One would not even need
>the self-ownership theory that's been floating around since at least the
>protestant reformation. Indeed, it may be more productive and persuasive
>to use unfreedom as the key term for showing the political harms of slavery.
>People cannot even agree on what the larger point is or whether there even
>is one. One need only look at all the dead trees on labor law or
>environmental law or tax law to see that is the case.
yeah. Doug and several others are fond of pointing at Joan Robinson's quip about how the only thing worse than being inside capitalism is being outside it.
If two friends who presumably share a very similar moral universe don't agree, then....
I mean, i have no problem with having morals or ethics or whatever. I have a problem with it being a central point of social struggle around which we must rally. I have a really big problem with individualist solutions to systemic social problems which rely on convincing others to change their personal behavior in order to make right with the world.
1. it is connected to a world view in which you must get everyone on board the klew train in order to change the world. if everyone doesn't do it, if only a small group does, it doens't work. And the process of getting everyone on the moral clue train requires some way of enforcing behavior.
2. in practice, this has led to a situation where the group perceives its biggest enemies to be the ones who don't act correctly: wear the right clothes, do the right jobs, say the right words, condemn the right condemnable things, etc.