Is wage labor a form of slavery? Did northern wage workers prior

Southerners tried to defend slavery by saying the lives of slaves were better than Northern factory workers.

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>>1815856
Fitzhugh was woke.

>The Richmond publisher A. Morris printed Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters in 1857. Endeavoring in the preface "to treat the subjects of Liberty and Slavery in a more rigidly analytical manner," George Fitzhugh charts productive classical and historical accounts of slavery and cites the Bible as evidence. Referencing the French proletariat, various Gypsy peoples, and the Irish peasantry as groups oppressed under capitalism, Fitzhugh likewise presents the poor working and factory class conditions in England as evidence that the southern institution of slavery, modeled after a pre-capitalist, feudal society, is economically justifiable. Furthermore, he argues capitalism, as practiced in Europe and the North, produces a form of moral cannibalism, replicating the master/slave dichotomy by turning capitalists (or the professional class) into masters and free laborers into exploited slaves. Within a capitalist society, the very labor and skill extracted in pursuit of profit enslaves these workers, leaving them far more disenfranchised than their slave counterparts. Specifying capitalism's many "evils," Fitzhugh notes that it encourages falsehood and hypocrisy, impedes scientific modifications of supply to meet demand, demeans labor's value and nobility, and results in the greater impoverishment of already poor peoples while augmenting the wealth of the affluent.

>According to Fitzhugh, under the humane code of southern paternalism in which masters labor on behalf of their enslaved workers, African American slaves—unlike those miserable participants in free labor's "White Slave Trade"—are happy and free. They enjoy those comforts and necessities granted them under a mutually beneficial, supportive system and community. To address the charge that slavery results in immorality, namely through illicit sexual liaisons, Fitzhugh suggests that contact between the ignorant and the more enlightened acts as a natural form of education.

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Slavery has technical components:
1. No compensation for labor, or compensation at the arbitrary whim of the master
2. No freedom of transit

Wage labor has neither of these components. Now, there is such a thing as "wage slavery" of which there are generally 2 types.
1. Hard wage slavery, typical in the developing world, in which there is no freedom of transit. Employers will threaten and maim workers to keep them, and hire thugs or goons or local corrupt police to use force and violence to keep people.

2. "soft" wage slavery, typical in the developed world -- in which you are not forced to stay at one job, but the circumstances of your life and employment generally make transit impractical for you.

The extent to which the second one exists is debatable, but the first undoubtedly does.

>>1815823
No, slavery is a status which includes being chattel of someone else and having no property rights.

>>1815856

That's actually true though, mostly. Southern slaves were completely taken care of because they were seen as an investment costing several hundred dollars. They were given good healthcare, a place to sleep, clothing, etc. It wasn't all "beat the nigger till he dies because he looked at me."

Some owners of slaves owned one or very few and would work in the fields with them because they had to. Hell, slaves returned to their former masters looking for work after the war.

>>1816415
If you lack the financial opportunity to accumulate capital, you're basically a slave. Property rights don't mean anything if you're deprived of the means of accumulating property.

>>1816446

Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, lad!

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>>1815823
>wage labor
>slavery

No, "muh wage slavery" is a meme.

>>1816432
In Virginia, the largest slave state, one in five marriages were broken up and one in three children sold. Masters could beat and whip slaves they disliked or who needed to be punished for something until they nearly died from the blood loss. Slaves were given rations of salted meats and shitty food that were inadequate for providing them with the nutrition they needed to work from sunrise to sunset each day excluding Sundays, and they were forced to grow their own food after the sun set and whenever they found the time. As slaves aged they were sold off so someone else had to deal with an old man or woman unable to work hard, meaning they could be torn from their families just as their children were reaching adulthood.

I don't think you know what you're talking about.