Unfree labour re-emerged as an issue in the debate about rural development during the years following the end of the Second World War, when a political concern of
Keynesian
theory was not just
economic reconstruction
(mainly in Europe and Asia) but also planning (in
developing "Third World" nations
). A crucial aspect of the ensuing discussion concerned the extent to which different relational forms constituted obstacles to capitalist development, and why.
During the 1960s and 1970s, unfree labour was regarded as incompatible with capitalist accumulation, and thus an obstacle to economic growth, an interpretation advanced by exponents of the then-dominant semi-feudal thesis. From the 1980s onwards, however, another and very different Marxist view emerged, arguing that evidence from Latin America and India suggested
agribusiness
enterprises, commercial farmers and rich peasants reproduced, introduced or reintroduced unfree relations.
However, recent contributions to this debate have attempted to exclude Marxism from the discussion. These contributions maintain that, because Marxist theory failed to understand the centrality of unfreedom to modern capitalism, a new explanation of this link is needed. This claim has been questioned by
Tom Brass
.
[4]
He argues that many of these new characteristics are in fact no different from those identified earlier by Marxist theory and that the exclusion of the latter approach from the debate is thus unwarranted.
The
International Labour Organization
(ILO) estimates that at least 12.3 million people are victims of forced labour worldwide; of these, 9.8 million are exploited by private agents and more than 2.4 million are
trafficked
. Another 2.5 million are forced to work by the state or by rebel military groups.
[5]
[6]
From an
international law
perspective, countries that allow forced labour are violating
international labour standards
as set forth in the Abolition of Forced Labour Convention (C105), one of the fundamental conventions of the ILO.
[7]
According to the
ILO Special Action Programme to Combat Forced Labour
(SAP-FL), global profits from forced trafficked labour exploited by private agents are estimated at US$44.3 billion per year. About 70% of this value (US$31.6 billion) comes from trafficked victims. At least the half of this sum (more than US$15 billion) comes from industrialised countries.
[8]
Freedom from forced labour by country (V-Dem Institute, 2021)
Illustration of Native woman panning for gold
The archetypal and best-known form of unfree labour is
chattel slavery
, in which individual workers are legally owned throughout their lives, and may be bought, sold or otherwise exchanged by owners, while never or rarely receiving any personal benefit from their labour. Slavery was common in many
ancient societies
, including
ancient Egypt
,
Babylon
,
Persia
,
ancient Greece
,
Rome
,
ancient China
,
the pre-modern Muslim world
, as well as many societies in
Africa
and
the Americas
. Being sold into slavery was a common fate of populations that were conquered in wars. Perhaps the most prominent example of chattel slavery was the enslavement of many millions of
black people
in Africa, as well as their forced transportation to the Americas, Asia, or Europe, where their status as slaves was almost always inherited by their descendants.
[
citation needed
]
The term "slavery" is often applied to situations which do not meet the above definitions, but which are other, closely related forms of unfree labour, such as
debt slavery
or debt-bondage (although not all repayment of debts through labour constitutes unfree labour). Examples are the
Repartimiento
system in the
Spanish Empire
, or the work of
Indigenous Australians
in
northern Australia
on sheep or cattle stations (
ranches
), from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. In the latter case, workers were rarely or never paid, and were restricted by regulations and/or police intervention to regions around their places of work.
In late 16th century Japan, "unfree labour" or
slavery
was officially banned; but forms of contract and indentured labour persisted alongside the period's penal codes' forced labour. Somewhat later, the
Edo period
's penal laws prescribed "non-free labour" for the immediate families of executed criminals in Article 17 of the
Got?ke reij?
(Tokugawa House Laws), but the practice never became common. The 1711
Got?ke reij?
was compiled from over 600 statutes that were promulgated between 1597 and 1696.
[10]
According to
Kevin Bales
in
Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy
(1999), there are now an estimated 27 million slaves in the world.
[11]
[12]
Blackbirding
involves kidnapping or trickery to transport people to another country or far away from home, to work as a slave or low-paid involuntary worker. In some cases, workers were returned home after a period of time.
Serfdom
bonds labourers to the land they farm, typically in a
feudal
society. Serfs typically have no legal right to leave, change employers, or seek paid work, though depending on economic conditions many did so anyway. Unlike chattel slaves, they typically cannot be sold separately from the land, and have rights such as the military protection of the lord.
A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used by
labour historians
, refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers or
self-employed
small producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known as
truck wages
, or tokens,
private currency
("scrip") or direct credit, to be used at a
company store
, owned by their employers. A specific kind of truck system, in which credit advances are made against future work, is known in the U.S. as
debt bondage
.
Many scholars have suggested that employers use such systems to exploit workers and/or indebt them. This could occur, for example, if employers were able to pay workers with goods which had a market value below the level of
subsistence
, or by selling items to workers at inflated prices. Others argue that truck wages were a convenient way for isolated communities, such as during the early colonial settlement of North America, to operate when official currency was scarce.
[13]
By the early 20th century, truck systems were widely seen, in
industrialised
countries, as exploitative; perhaps the most well-known example of this view was a 1947 U.S. hit song "
Sixteen Tons
". Many countries have
Truck Act
legislation that outlaws truck systems and requires payment in cash.
Mandatory services due to social status
edit
Though most closely associated with
Medieval
Europe, governments throughout human history have imposed regular short stints of unpaid labour upon lower social classes. These might be annual obligations of a few weeks or something similarly regular that lasted for the labourer's entire working life. As the system developed in the Philippines and elsewhere, the labourer could pay an appropriate fee and be exempted from the obligation.
[14]
A form of forced labour in which peasants and members of lower castes were required to work for free existed in India before independence. This form of labour was known by several names, including
veth
,
vethi
,
vetti-chakiri
and
begar
.
[15]
[16]
Jewish forced labourers during the Holocaust in
Mogilev
, Belarus, July 1941.
Political prisoners
eating lunch in a
Gulag
camp, 1955.
Another historically significant example of forced labour was that of
political prisoners
, people from conquered or occupied countries, members of persecuted minorities, and
prisoners of war
, especially during the 20th century. The best-known example of this are the
concentration camp
system run by
Nazi Germany
in Europe during World War II, the
Gulag
camps
[17]
run by the
Soviet Union
,
[18]
and the forced labour used by the military of the
Empire of Japan
, especially during the
Pacific War
(such as the
Burma Railway
). Roughly 4,000,000 German POWs were used as "reparations labour" by the
Allies
for several years after the German surrender; this was permitted under the Third Geneva Convention provided they were accorded proper treatment.
[19]
China's
laogai
("labour reform") system and
North Korea
's
kwalliso
camps are current examples.
About 12 million forced labourers, most of whom were Poles and
Soviet
citizens (
Ost-Arbeiter
) were employed in the German war economy inside Nazi Germany.
[20]
[21]
More than 2000 German companies profited from slave labour during the Nazi era, including
Daimler
,
Deutsche Bank
,
Siemens
,
Volkswagen
,
Hoechst
,
Dresdner Bank
,
Krupp
,
Allianz
,
BASF
,
Bayer
,
BMW
, and
Degussa
.
[22]
[23]
In particular, Germany's Jewish population was subject to slave labour prior to their extermination.
[24]
In Asia, according to a joint study of historians featuring Zhifen Ju,
Mark Peattie
, Toru Kubo, and Mitsuyoshi Himeta, more than 10 million Chinese were mobilised by the Japanese army and
enslaved
by the
K?a-in
for
slave labour
in
Manchukuo
and north China.
[25]
The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in
Java
, between 4 and 10 million
romusha
(
Japanese
: "manual labourer") were forced to work by the Japanese military. About 270,000 of these Javanese labourers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate of 80%.
[26]
Also, 6.87 million Koreans were forcefully put into slave labour from 1939 to 1945 in both Japan and Japanese-occupied Korea.
[27]
Kerja rodi (
Heerendiensten
)
, was the term for forced labour in
Indonesia
under
Dutch colonial rule
.
The
Khmer Rouge
attempted to turn Cambodia into a
classless society
by depopulating cities and forcing the urban population ("New People") into agricultural
communes
. The entire population was forced to become farmers in
labour camps
.
American prisoner "
chain gang
" labourers, 2006. Notice the shackles on the feet of the prisoners.
Convict
or prison labour is another classic form of unfree labour. The forced labour of convicts has often been regarded with lack of sympathy, because of the
social stigma
attached to people regarded as common criminals.
Three
British colonies
in Australia ?
New South Wales
,
Van Diemen's Land
and
Western Australia
? are examples of the state use of convict labour. Australia received thousands of convict labourers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries who were given sentences for crimes ranging from those now considered to be minor misdemeanours to such serious offences as murder, rape and incest. A considerable number of Irish convicts were sentenced to transportation for
treason
while fighting against
British rule in Ireland
.
[
citation needed
]
More than 165,000 convicts were transported to Australian colonies from 1788 to 1868.
[28]
Most British or Irish convicts who were sentenced to transportation, however, completed their sentences in British jails and were not transported at all.
It is estimated that in the last 50 years more than 50 million people have been sent to Chinese
laogai
camps.
[29]
Indentured and bonded labour
edit
A more common form in modern society is indenture, or
bonded labour
, under which workers sign contracts to work for a specific period of time, for which they are paid only with accommodation and sustenance, or these essentials in addition to limited benefits such as cancellation of a debt, or transportation to a desired country.
Contemporary illegal forced labour
edit
While historically unfree labour was frequently sanctioned by law, in the present day most unfree labour now revolves around illegal control rather than legal ownership, as all countries have made slavery illegal.
[30]
As mentioned above, there are several exceptions of unfree or forced labour recognised by the
International Labour Organization
:
Some countries practise forms of civil conscription for different major occupational groups or inhabitants under different denominations like
civil conscription
,
civil mobilization
,
political mobilisation
etc. This obligatory service on the one hand has been implemented due to long-lasting
labour strikes
, during wartime or economic crisis, to provide basic services like medical care, food supply or supply of the defence industry. On the other hand, this service can be obligatory to provide recurring and inevitable services to the population, like fire services, due to lack of volunteers.
Temporary civil conscription
edit
Between December 1943 and March 1948 young men in the
United Kingdom
, the so-called
Bevin Boys
, had been conscripted for the work in
coal mines
.
[31]
In
Belgium
in 1964,
[32]
in
Portugal
[33]
and in
Greece
from 2010 to 2014 due to the severe
economic crisis
,
[34]
[35]
a system of civil mobilisation was implemented to provide public services as a national interest.
Recurring civil conscription
edit
In
Switzerland
in most communities for all inhabitants, no matter if they are Swiss or not, it is mandatory to join the so-called
Militia Fire Brigades
, as well as the obligatory service in Swiss civil defence and protection force.
Conscripts in
Singapore
are providing the personnel of the country's fire service as part of the
national service
in the
Civil Defence Force
.
In
Austria
and
Germany
citizens have to join a
compulsory fire brigade
if a
volunteer fire service
can not be provided, due to lack of volunteers. In 2018 this regulation is executed only in a handful of communities in Germany and currently none in Austria.
[36]
[37]
[38]
Conscription for military service and security forces
edit
Beside the conscription for
military
services, some countries draft citizens for
paramilitary
or
security forces
, like
internal troops
,
border guards
or
police forces
. While sometimes paid, conscripts are not free to decline enlistment.
Draft dodging
or
desertion
are often met with severe punishment. Even in countries which prohibit other forms of unfree labour, conscription is generally justified as being necessary in the
national interest
and therefore is one of the five exceptions to the
Forced Labour Convention
, signed by the most countries in the world.
[39]
Mandatory community service
edit
Community service
is a non-paying job performed by one person or a group of people for the benefit of their community or its institutions. Community service is distinct from volunteering, since it is not always performed on a voluntary basis. Although personal benefits may be realised, it may be performed for a variety of reasons including citizenship requirements, a substitution of criminal justice sanctions, requirements of a school or class, and requisites for the receipt of certain benefits.
During the
Cold War
in some
communist
countries like
Czechoslovakia
, the
German Democratic Republic
or the
Soviet Union
the originally voluntary work on Saturday for the community called
Subbotnik
,
Voskresnik
or
Akce Z
became
de facto
obligatory for the members of a community.
Hand and hitch-up services
edit
In some
Austrian
and
German
states it is feasible for communities to draft citizens for public services, called
hand and hitch-up services
. This mandatory service is still executed to maintain the infrastructure of small communities.
[40]
[41]