Voluntary slavery

Consensual entry into slavery

Part of a series on

Forced labour and slavery

Contemporary

* Child labour
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* CSEC
* Debt bondage
* India
* Forced marriage
* Bride buying
* Child marriage
* Wife selling
* Forced prostitution
* Human trafficking
* Child
* China
* Cybersex
* Europe
* Fraud factory
* India
* United States
* Involuntary servitude
* ... in 21st-century jihadism
* ... in Africa
* Peonage
* Penal labour
* Sex trafficking
* China
* Europe
* United States
* Sexual slavery
* Wage slavery

Historical

Antiquity

* Babylonia
* Egypt
* Greece
* Rome

Medieval Europe

* Ancillae
* Black Sea slave trade
* Byzantine Empire
* Genoese slave trade
* Kholop
* Prague slave trade
* Serfs
* History
* In Russia
* Emancipation
* Thrall
* Venetian slave trade
* Balkan slave trade

Muslim world

* Baqt
* Barbary Coast
* slave trade
* pirates
* Sack of Baltimore
* Slave raid of Suðuroy
* Turkish Abductions
* Bukhara slave trade
* Concubinage
* history
* Ma malakat aymanukum
* Avret Pazarları
* Harem
* Abbasid harem
* Ottoman Imperial Harem
* Safavid imperial harem
* Qajar harem
* Jarya/Cariye
* Odalisque
* Qiyan
* Umm al-walad
* Circassian slave trade
* Contract of manumission
* Crimean slave trade
* Kafala system
* Khazar slave trade
* Khivan slave trade
* Ottoman Empire
* Avret Pazarları
* Saqaliba
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Slavery in al-Andalus
* Slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate
* Slavery in the Umayyad Caliphate
* Slavery in the Abbasid Caliphate
* Volga Bulgarian slave trade
* 21st century

Atlantic slave trade

* Brazil
* Bristol
* Database
* Dutch
* Middle Passage
* Nantes
* New France
* Panyarring
* Spanish Empire
* Slave Coast
* Thirteen colonies

Topics and practice

* Blackbirding
* Child soldiers
* Conscription
* Devshirme
* Ghilman
* Mamluk
* Coolie
* Corvée labour
* Drapetomania
* Dysaesthesia aethiopica
* Field slaves in the United States
* Treatment
* Gladiator
* Gladiatrix
* House slaves
* Planter class
* Proslavery thought
* Saqaliba
* Seasoning
* Slave market
* Slave Power
* Slave raiding
* Slavocracy
* Voluntary slavery
* White slavery

Naval

* Galley slave
* Impressment
* Pirates
* Shanghaiing
* Slave ship

By country or region

Sub-Saharan Africa

* Contemporary Africa
* Trans-Saharan slave trade
* Red Sea slave trade
* Indian Ocean slave trade
* Zanzibar slave trade
* Angola
* Chad
* Comoros
* Ethiopia
* Mali
* Mauritania
* Niger
* Nigeria
* Seychelles
* Somalia
* Somali slave trade
* South Africa
* Sudan
* Zanzibar

North and South America

* Pre-Columbian America
* Aztec
* Americas indigenous
* U.S. Natives
* United States
* field slaves
* female
* contemporary
* maps
* partus
* prison labour
* slave codes
* treatment
* interregional
* proslavery
* sexual slavery
* The Bahamas
* Canada
* Caribbean
* Barbados
* British Virgin Islands
* Trinidad
* Code Noir
* Latin America
* Brazil
* Lei Áurea
* Colombia
* Cuba
* Haiti
* revolt
* Restavek
* (Encomienda)
* Puerto Rico

East, Southeast, and South Asia

* Haruwa-charuwa
* Human trafficking in Southeast Asia
* Bhutan
* Brunei
* China
* Booi Aha
* Eunuchs
* Laogai
* penal system
* India
* Debt bondage
* Chukri System
* Bawi system
* Indonesia
* Japan
* comfort women
* Karayuki-san
* Korea
* Kwalliso
* Nobi
* Malaysia
* Maldives
* Slavery in the Mongol Empire
* Thailand
* Yankee princess
* Vietnam

Australia and Oceania

* Australia
* Human trafficking
* Blackbirding
* Slave raiding in Easter Island
* Human trafficking in Papua New Guinea
* Blackbirding in Polynesia

Europe and North Asia

* Sex trafficking in Europe
* United Kingdom
* Penal Labour
* Slavery
* Albania
* Bulgaria
* Denmark
* Dutch Republic
* Finland
* France
* Georgia
* Germany in World War II
* Hungary
* Malta
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* Romania
* Russia
* Serbia
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland

North Africa and West Asia

* Afghanistan
* Bacha bazi
* Algeria
* Bahrain
* Egypt
* Human trafficking in the Middle East
* Iran
* Iraq
* Jordan
* Kuwait
* Lebanon
* Libya
* Morocco
* Oman
* Palestine
* Saudi Arabia
* Syria
* Tunisia
* Qatar
* Yemen
* United Arab Emirates

Religion

* Bible
* Christianity
* Catholicism
* Mormonism
* Islam
* Judaism
* Baháʼí Faith

Opposition and resistance

* Abolitionism
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Brussels Anti-Slavery Conference 1889–90
* Temporary Slavery Commission
* 1926 Slavery Convention
* Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery
* Ad Hoc Committee on Slavery
* Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery
* Abolitionists
* Anglo-Egyptian Slave Trade Convention
* Anti-Slavery International
* Blockade of Africa
* U.K.
* U.S.
* Colonization
* Liberia
* Sierra Leone
* Compensated emancipation
* Freedman
* Manumission
* Freedom suit
* Slave Power
* Underground Railroad
* songs
* Slave rebellion
* Slave Trade Acts
* International law
* Third Servile War
* 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution
* Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom
* Abolition of slave trade in Persian gulf [fa]

Related

* Common law
* Forced labour
* Fugitive slaves
* laws
* convention
* Great Dismal Swamp maroons
* Indentured servitude
* List of slaves
* owners
* last survivors of American slavery
* List of slavery-related memorials and museums
* Slave catcher
* Slave marriages in the United States
* Slave narrative
* films
* songs
* Slave name
* Slave patrol
* Slave Route Project
* breeding
* court cases
* Washington
* Jefferson
* J.Q. Adams
* Lincoln
* Emancipation Proclamation
* 40 acres
* Freedmen's Bureau
* Iron bit
* Emancipation Day

* v
* t
* e

Voluntary slavery, in theory, is the condition of slavery entered into at a point of voluntary consent. It is distinguished from involuntary slavery where an individual is forced to a period of servitude usually as punishment for a crime.[1]

## Origin

[edit]

Some believe[weasel words] that in ancient times, this was a common way for impoverished people to provide subsistence for themselves or their family and provision was made for this in law.[2] For example, the code of Hammurabi stated that "besides being able to borrow on personal security, an individual might sell himself or a family member into slavery".[3] However, according to a different translation, "If any one fail to meet a claim for debt, and sell himself, his wife, his son, and daughter for money or give them away to forced labor: they shall work for three years in the house of the man who bought them, or the proprietor, and in the fourth year they shall be set free."[4] This may be interpreted to mean that rather than people voluntary selling themselves into slavery in return for a loan, slavery was simply the standard penalty for failure to pay off a debt.[5] Other parts of the Code of Hammurabi show both debt and slavery as being part of the criminal justice system of the time, such as, "If any one be too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it; if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whose dam the break occurred be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which he has caused to be ruined."[6]

According to some sources, in ancient times, one of the most direct ways to become a Roman or Greek citizen was by means of a self-sale contract. The laws surrounding Roman and Greek manumission made it quite possible for such erstwhile slaves to then become citizens or near-citizens themselves.[7] However, according to Walter Scheidel, while it is possible that some genuine self-sales may have occurred in ancient Rome, the quantitative weight of such events would have been minimal.[8] In ancient Greece, a form of voluntary slavery was associated with pederasty. Here, it was viewed as a component of reciprocal relationship wherein lovers consider voluntary servitude as legitimate, particularly in the effort to honorably satisfy the beloved in the pursuit of virtue.[9] Voluntary servitude in this case was integral in the practice of education.

In medieval Russia, self-sale was the main source of slaves.[10] However, as two of the reasons for self-sale in Russian history were avoidance of the military draft and avoidance of poll taxes, also known as soul taxes, it is questionable how voluntary this sort of slavery really was.[11]

The presence of a contract does not mean that a person entered into the condition of forced labor voluntarily. For example, a report by Dr. Raingeard, speaking of the Belgian Congo, states that, "When a native, remarkably enough, managed to resist the threats and blows of the merchants, I have seen government officers offering him the choice between signing a contract and prison."[12] According to Kevin Bales, "It may be that local custom and culture support slavery and that most of the population knows of its existence, but admitting it is something else again. Here false contracts conceal slavery. Slaveholders can easily force their slaves to sign anything: mortgages, loan agreements, indentures, or labor contracts. If questions are raised, signed contracts are produced and corrupt law enforcement looks the other way. Even in countries with mostly honest and conscientious police, the contracts hide slavery."[13]

Even where a worker did voluntarily agree to something, the conditions at the place of work may be different from that which he agreed to. Additionally, even if only one worker agrees to something, members of his family and his descendants may be forced to comply as well. For example, some workers in Pakistan agree to make bricks in return for an advance on their paycheck under a system known as peshgi. However, once there, the kiln owner may begin to molest and even rape women of their family. Many workers feel that an assault on the women of their family voids any work agreement they might have. Accounting of the debt is often dishonest. Children may be kidnapped and held captive if the slaveholder believes the family likely to flee. The debt is frequently passed on from one generation to the next.[14]

## Modern analysis

[edit]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau contends that in a contract of self-enslavement, there is no mutuality. The slave loses all. The contract negates his interests and his rights. It is entirely to his disadvantage. Since the slave loses his status as a moral agent once the slave contract is enforced, the slave cannot act to enforce anything owed to him by his master. Rousseau contrasted this to the social contract, in that the subjects of the government have control over their masters.[15] John Stuart Mill wrote a critique of voluntary slavery as a criticism of paternalism.[16]

Libertarian Murray Rothbard criticized the term as being self-contradictory.[17] His protege Walter Block, on the other hand, has defended the idea from Rothbard's and others' libertarian criticisms and claims this is a consistent feature of their philosophy, but admits his is a minority view, along with Robert Nozick.[18]

Murray Rothbard allows for the possibility of a system of debt bondage, arguing that lifetime labor contracts could be broken as long as slaves paid appropriate damages.

> [I]f A has agreed to work for life for B in exchange for 10,000 grams of gold, he will have to return the proportionate amount of property if he terminates the arrangement and ceases to work.[19]

Gerard Casey argues that voluntary slavery is possible if the concept of self-ownership is interpreted positively.[20]

The term voluntary slavery is often used in polemical writings and rhetoric on a range of subjects. For instance, critics of capitalism have argued that the capitalist wage system amounts to wage slavery disguised as voluntary, and is contrary to human dignity.[21][22]

## See also

[edit]

* Discourse on Voluntary Servitude
* Indentured servitude
* Serf
* Unpaid workers
* Wage slave

## References

[edit]

1. ^ Allain, Jean (2012). The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 171\. ISBN 9780199660469.
2. ^ M. L. Bush (1996), Serfdom and slavery: studies in legal bondage, p. 21
3. ^ Anthony Appiah, Martin Bunzl (2007-07-02), Buying freedom, pp. 95–97, ISBN 978-0-691-13010-1
4. ^ "The Code of Hammurabi. Translated by L. W. King". The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. Yale Law School. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
5. ^ Moore, Dylan. "Top 10 Ancient Laws Way Ahead Of Their Time". TopTenz.
6. ^ "The Code of Hammurabi. Translated by L. W. King". The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy. Yale Law School. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
7. ^ The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia. Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995. ISBN 0-8028-3784-0. p.543.
8. ^ Scheidel, Walter. "The Roman slave supply" (PDF). Stanford University. Retrieved 12 March 2018.
9. ^ Schachter, Marc D. (2016-12-05). Voluntary Servitude and the Erotics of Friendship: From Classical Antiquity to Early Modern France. Routledge. ISBN 9781351874182.
10. ^ MA Klein (1986), "Slavery in Russia, 1450-1725", American Journal of Sociology, doi:10.1086/228533
11. ^ Buckley, Mary (2018). The Politics of Unfree Labour in Russia: Human Trafficking and Labour Migration. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 30, 38.
12. ^ Marchal, Jules (2008). "7: The Compagnie Due Kasai Proves to be Worse Than the HCB (1927-1930)". Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo. Translated by Martin Thom. Introduced by Adam Hochschild. London: Verso. p. 124\. ISBN 978-1-84467-239-4.
13. ^ Bales, Kevin (1999). Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Revised ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 27. ISBN 978-0-520-27291-0.
14. ^ Bales, Kevin (1999). Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (Revised ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 149-194. ISBN 978-0-520-27291-0.
15. ^ Evers, Williamson M., Social Contract: A Critique (PDF)
16. ^ RJ Arneson (1980), "Mill versus paternalism", Ethics
17. ^ Murray N. Rothbard, A Crusoe Social Philosophy
18. ^ Block, Walter (2003). "Toward a Libertarian Theory of Inalienability: A Critique of Rothbard, Barnett, Smith, Kinsella, Gordon, and Epstein". The Journal of Libertarian Studies. 17 (3). Mises Institute: 39–85.
19. ^ Rothbard, Murray N. (2009) [1962, 1970]. Man, Economy, and State with Power and Markets (2nd ed.). p. 164 n.34.
20. ^ Casey, Gerard (2011). "Can You Own Yourself?". Analysis and Metaphysics. 10: 60–66\. Archived from the original on 8 July 2025. Retrieved 8 July 2025.
21. ^ David P. Ellerman, Property and Contract in Economics: The Case for Economic Democracy (PDF)
22. ^ McKay, Iain (2012) [2008]. "An Anarchist FAQ – Appendix: Anarchism and "Anarcho"-capitalism – 2.6 "Do Libertarian-capitalists support slavery?"". Edinburgh and Oakland: AK Press. Archived from the original on 27 January 2025. Retrieved 30 April 2025.

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