essay about modern slavery

271 Slavery Topics and Essay Examples

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Writing an essay on slavery may be challenging as the topic brings up negative emotions to many people.

This issue is related to differences between social positions and their negative effects. In addition, slavery reveals racial disparities in society and damages race relations in many cultures.

Good slavery essays discuss the aspects and problems that are important and relevant today. Choose slavery essay topics that raise significant problems that remain acute in modern society. Slavery essay titles and topics may include:

• The problem of human trafficking in today’s world
• Why is it hard to stop child trafficking in today’s world?
• The aspects of plantation life for slaves
• The development of American slavery
• Was slavery inevitable?
• Differences and similarities between slavery in the US and serfdom in Russia
• The ineffectiveness of peaceful means against slavery
• Destructive aspects of slavery
• The link between slavery and racism
• The differences between the impact of slavery on women and men of color

Once you select the issue you want to discuss, you can start working on your paper. Here are some tips and secrets for creating a powerful essay:

• Remember that appropriate essay titles are important to get the readers’ interest. Do not make the title too long but state the main point of your essay.
• Start with developing a structure for your essay. Remember that your paper should be organized clearly. You may want to make separate paragraphs or sections for the most important topics.
• Include an introductory paragraph, in which you can briefly discuss the problem and outline what information the paper will present.
• Remember to include a concluding paragraph too, in which you will state the main points of your work. Add recommendations, if necessary.
• Do preliminary research even if you feel that you know much about the topic already. You can find useful information in historical books, peer-reviewed journals, and trusted online sources. Note: Ask your professor about the types of sources you are allowed to use.
• Do not rely on outside sources solely. Your essay should incorporate your knowledge and reflections on slavery and existing evidence. Try to add comments to the citations you use.
• Remember that a truly powerful essay should be engaging and easy-to-understand. You can tell your readers about different examples of slavery to make sure that they understand what the issue is about. Keep the readers interested by asking them questions and allowing them to reflect on the problem.
• Your slavery essay prompts should be clearly stated in the paper. Do not make the audience guess what the main point of the essay is.
• Although the content is important, you should also make sure that you use correct grammar and sentence structures. Grammatical mistakes may make your paper look unprofessional or unreliable.
• If you are writing an argumentative essay, do not forget to include refutation and discuss opposing views on the issue.
• Check out slavery essay examples online to see how you can structure your paper and organize the information. In addition, this step can help you to avoid possible mistakes and analyze the relevance of the issue you want to discuss.

Do not forget to check our free samples and get the best ideas for your essay!

• Slavery in To Kill a Mockingbird Novel The introduction of Tom by the author is a plot device to represent the plight of the slaves in the state.
• Slavery in the Roman Empire The elite were the rich people, and majority of the population that comprised of the common farmers, artisans, and merchants known as the plebeians occupied the low status.
• Sex Slavery in India According to authorities and international organizations such as the UN, human trafficking for sexual exploitation in India is mainly internal with the country low income and lower cast communities providing the major source of victims. […]
• Chapters 4-6 of ”From Slavery to Freedom” by Franklin & Higginbotham At the same time, the portion of American-born slaves was on the increase and contributed to the multiracial nature of the population.
• Protest Against Slavery in ”Pudd’nhead Wilson” by Mark Twain Pudd’nhead Wilson is the ironic tale of a man who is born a slave but brought up as the heir to wealthy estate, thanks to a switch made while the babies were still in the […]
• Analysis of Themes of Slavery in Literature The paper will be concentrated on the analysis of the works ‘The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano’ by Olaudah Equiano, ‘Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass’ by Frederick Douglass, and ‘Incidents […]
• Sethe’s Slavery in “Beloved” by Toni Morrison In spite of the fact that the events depicted in Beloved take place after the end of the American Civil War, Sethe, as the main character of the novel and a former slave, continues to […]
• Economic Impact of Slavery Growth in Southern Colonies 1 The need to occupy southern colonies came as a result of the successes that were recorded in the north, especially after the establishment of cash crop farming. The setting up of the plantations in […]
• How “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” Addresses Slavery The insensitivity in this mistreatment and dehumanization of Black people is pervasive to the extent that Jim considers himself “property” and was proud to be worth a fortune if anyone was to sell him. To […]
• Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox Jefferson believed that the landless laborers posed a threat to the nation because they were not independent. He believed that if Englishmen ruled over the world, they would be able to extend the effects of […]
• Impact of Revolution on Slavery and Women Freed slaves and other opponents of the slave trade in the north agitated for release and freedom of slaves in the south.
• “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and Slavery It is said that “the book is a very inadequate representation of slavery; and it is so, necessarily, for this reason, – that slavery, in some of its workings, is too dreadful for the purposes […]
• Analysis of Slavery in United States The main points highlighted in the lecture are focused on the socio-economic differences between the two systems, the actual life of slaves, and methods of blacks’ rebellion.
• Metaphoric Theme of Slavery in “Indiana” by George Sand In her novel about love and marriage, Sand raises a variety of central themes of that time society, including the line of slavery both from the protagonist’s perspective and the French colonial slavery.
• “Slavery and African Life: Occidental, Oriental, and African Slave Trades” by Patrick Manning The author’s approach of examining the slavery issue from the lens of economic history and the involvement of normal Africans living in Africa is then examined.
• The Slavery in America The slaves were to serve their masters who were the whites. This paper discusses the challenges that the slaves encountered as well as their resistance and the relativity of slavery to gender.
• Expansion of Freedom and Slavery in British America The settlement in the city of New Plymouth was founded by the second, and it laid the foundation for the colonies of New England.
• Freedom in Antebellum America: Civil War and Abolishment of Slavery The American Civil War, which led to the abolishment of slavery, was one of the most important events in the history of the United States.
• “American Slavery, 1619-1817” by Peter Kolchin The concluding chapter details of the demise of slavery on the onset of the Civil War and Reconstruction. The period of American Revolution was a “watershed “in transforming the vision that portrayed slavery was justifiable […]
• Paternalistic Ethos During American Slavery Era The slave owner gains directly from the welfare of the slaves and the slaves gained directly from offering their services to the slave owner.
• The “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary The documentary highlights how the laws and policies of that time enabled the exploitation of Black people and how the legacy of slavery continued to shape the racial dynamics of the country.
• Human Trafficking: Slavery Issues These are the words to describe the experiences of victims of human trafficking. One of the best places to intercept human trafficking into the US is at the border.
• The Slavery Experience: Erra Adams Erra Adams indicates that he was the oldest of the children and his task was to plow the land. The formerly enslaved person noted that the death of the master was a real grief for […]
• Abraham Lincoln: The End of Slavery Lincoln actively challenged the expansion of slavery because he believed the United States would stay true to the Declaration of Independence. It is worth considering the fact that Lincoln was not the only advocate for […]
• Recreation of Slavery in “Sweat” Book by Hurston Perhaps the best-portrayed theme and the most controversial one is the recreation of slavery on the part of Afro-Americans who have just been freed of it.
• California’s Issues With Slavery However, the report and the book indicate this point and emphasize that the concept of free land was made in favor of white people but not in the interests of African Americans.
• Sexual Slavery and Human Smuggling They were the only people in the house, and it appeared that her parents were not home. The social worker’s job in Tiffani’s life is to look into her past, from her childhood through her […]
• Were the Black Codes Another Form of Slavery? Slavery in the United States has been a part of the nation’s history for hundreds of years, and yet it did not end abruptly.
• How Slavery Makes Sense From Various Perspectives Given that there is a historical precedent for the “peculiar institution,” it would be erroneous to dismiss slavery as something that is new. Thus, the institution of slavery is found even in the Bible, and […]
• Slavery in The Fires of Jubilee by Stephen Oates Apart from the story being arranged in chapters, the layout and approach suggest that the author has described the area of events narrated and then given the narration.
• Modern Slavery in Global Value Chains: Case Study The main reason for accusations of forced labor is that most of the factories Nike owns are in Vietnam, and they provide the lowest possible wages.
• Differences of Slavery: Oklahoma Writers’ Project vs. The Textbook Today, many sources discuss the characteristics of slavery, its causes, and the outcomes and describe the conditions under which the Civil War began. In the accounts and the textbook, different opportunities for slaves are given […]
• Autobiography & Slavery Life of Frederick Douglass This essay discusses the slavery life of Frederick Douglass as written in his autobiography, and it highlights how he resisted slavery, the nature of his rebellion, and the view he together with Brinkley had about […]
• The American Civil War: Pro- & Anti-Slavery Forces The pro-slavery forces argued that slavery was the right thing to do, promoting abolitionists and the anti-slavery forces as terrible villains because they wanted to abolish slavery.
• Slavery: Historical Background and Modern Perspective Despite the seemingly short period of contract slavery, people did not have the right to marry without the owner’s permission while the contract term was in effect.
• Irish Immigrants and Abolition of Slavery in the US The selected historical events are Irish immigration to the United States in the 1840s and 1850s and the movement for slavery abolition, which existed in the country at the same time.
• Irish Immigration to America and the Slavery Despite the fact that the Irish encountered a great number of obstacles, the immigration of Irish people to the United States was advantageous not only to the immigrants but also to the United States.
• Irish Immigrants and the Abolition of Slavery Irish people, though not as deprived of rights as the enslaved Africans, also endured much suffering and fought slavery to the best of their ability.
• North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 – 1860 The book North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States: 1790 1860 by Leon Litwack is an illustration of how African Americans were treated in the northern states just before the start of The […]
• Modern Slavery and Its Emergence The author turns to the examples of three European countries and, through the analysis, reveals the piece of the effects of the slave trade and the modernization of its forms.
• Moral Aspect of Slavery from a Northern and Southern Perspective Pro-slavery, non-expansionist, and abolitionist perspectives on the moral foundations of slavery identify both differences between the North and south of the US and the gradual evolution of the nation’s view of African people.
• Thomas Jefferson on Slavery and Declaration of Independence Additionally, with the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson set the foundation for the abolition of slavery in the future. Thus, the claim that Jefferson’s participation in slavery invalidates his writing of the Declaration of Independence is […]
• Slavery and Indentured Servitude Slavery practices were perceived to extend in Boston, which is believed to be the first place where someone tried to force enslaved people to have children to earn money. To summarize, the practice of slavery […]
• Indentured Servitude and Slavery The slave population in the North progressively fell throughout the 1760s and 1770s with slaves in Philadelphia reducing to approximately 700 in 1775.
• Critical Response: The Origin of Negro Slavery Considering that individuals of all races were involved in slavery in the New World, racism emerged as a consequence of forced labor and was not originally connected to the targeted discrimination of African Americans.
• Review of Slavery Topic in “Never Caught” Thus, the former’s relationship to this institution was guided by humanity towards the slaves and the development of legal methods of improving their lives that did not exist in the latter case.
• Prohibiting Slavery in the United States In other words, the original ideas incorporated the considerations of sexual immorality due to the abuse of the affected persons and the practice of breeding people for sale. The contributions to the discussion were also […]
• Slavery Experience by Abdul Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori Abdul Rahman continued talking about his family and status, but his royal priorities were not enough to confirm his identity and return to his family.
• Discussion of Slavery in Focus For this reason, the audience that reads about cases of slavery in some of the third-world countries has the feeling of encountering the past something that, in readers’ understanding, is already a history.
• New Slavery in “Disposable People” by Kevin Bales The immense increase of the population after World War II and the influence of development and globalization of the world’s economy on traditional families in developing countries have led to the increment in the gap […]
• Analysis of Documents on Greek Slavery The passages will be examined and evaluated better understand the social and cultural history of the period and learn more about the social order in Ancient Greece. It can be asserted that the issue of […]
• Discussion of Justification of Slavery As a result, such perceptions gave rise to the argument that the latter people are inferior to Europeans and, thus, should be in a position of servitude.
• The Industrial Revolution, Slavery, and Free Labor The purpose of this paper is to describe the Industrial Revolution and the new forms of economic activity it created, including mass production and mass consumption, as well as discuss its connection to slavery.
• Should the U.S. Government Pay Reparations for Slavery Coates tries to get the attention of his audience by explaining to them the importance of understanding the benefits of the impact the slaves faced during the regime of white supremacy.
• Antebellum Slavery’s Role in Shaping the History and Legacy of American Society The novel tells the story of two different times, the 1970s and 1815s, and shows other conditions of the heroes’ existence due to gender and racial characteristics.
• Alexander Stephens on Slavery and Confederate Constitution The speaker remarks that the persistent lack of consensus over the subordination and slavery of the “Negro” between the South and North was the immediate reason why the Confederates decided to secede and establish their […]
• Origins of Modern Racism and Ancient Slavery The diversity of African kingdoms and the empires were engaged in the slave trade for hundreds of years prior to the beginnings of the Atlantic slave trade. The working and living condition of slaves were […]
• Isaac Burt: Modern-Day Slavery in the US Therefore, the author begins with the critical review of data on the notion of human trafficking, including sex and labor trafficking forms, which often use immigrants and women as vulnerable populations.
• How Violent Was the Slavery? Ask African American Women The book significantly impacted American literature due to the writer’s roots and the problems of slavery addressed in a detailed manner.
• The Role of Slavery for the American Society: Lesson Plan Understand how the development of slavery could influence the social and economic life of the Southern states and the role of the plantation system in the process.
• Colonialism and the End of Internal Slavery The Atlantic slave trade was considered among the main pillars of the economy in the western region between the 16th and 19th centuries.
• The History of American Revolution and Slavery At the same time, the elites became wary of indentured servants’ claim to the land. The American colonies were dissatisfied with the Royal Proclamation of 1763 it limited their ability to invade new territories and […]
• The Expansion of Slavery: Review Their purpose was to track and catch runaway slaves and return them to their masters. The work of slaves was primarily agricultural.
• Abolitionist Movement: Attitudes to Slavery Reflected in the Media One of the reasons confirming the inadmissibility of slavery and the unfairness of the attitude towards this phenomenon is the unjustification of torture and violence.
• Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson As a result, relatively same practices of social death were applied to indigenous American people, which proves Patterson’s point of view that this attitude was characteristic not only for the African slave trade.
• Antebellum Culture and Slavery: A Period of History in the South of the United States The antebellum era, also known as the antebellum south, is a period of history in the south of the United States before the American Civil War in the late 18th century.
• Slavery and Society Destruction Seduced by the possibility of quick enrichment, the users of slave labor of both the past and the present, betrayed their humanity due to power and money.
• Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery and the Rise of the Modern Capitalist World System The reading provides an extensive background of the historical rise and fall of the African nations. The reading gives a detailed account of the Civil War and the color line within its context.
• Modern Slavery: Definition and Types Modern slavery is a predatory practice that is being utilized by businesses and organizations, some seemingly legitimate, worldwide through the exploitative and forced labour of victims and needs to be addressed at the policy and […]
• Slavery in “Disposable People” Book by Kevin Bales The key point of his book is that the phenomenon of slavery is impossible to be eradicated. He has studied the current economic and political situations of the countries presented in his book that help […]
• Late Slavery and Emancipation in the Greater Caribbean The epoch of slavery defined the darkest history in the evolution of the civilization of humanity; the results of slavery continue permeating the psychology of very “far” descendants of the slaves themselves.
• Transatlantic Slave Trade and Colonial Chesapeake Slavery Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation. This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation.
• Slavery and Secession in Georgia The representatives of the State of Georgia were worried because of the constant assaults concerning the institution of slavery, which have created the risk of danger to the State.
• Slavery of African in America: Reasons and Purposes Since the beginning of the sixteenth century, the African slaves were shipped to Europe and Eastern Atlantics, but later the colonies started demanding workers and the trade shifted to the Americas.
• Slavery in Charleston, South Carolina Prior to the Year 1865 Charleston is a city in South Carolina and one of the largest cities in the United States. It speaks about the life and origin of the slaves and also highlights some of their experiences; their […]
• Verisimilitude of Equiano’s Narrative and Understanding of Slavery The main argument in the answer to Lovejoy was that the records could clarify the author’s true age, which is the key to the dismissal of the idea that Equiano is a native African.
• The Case for Reparations: Slavery and Segregation Consequences in the US Ta-Nehisi Coates, in his essay The Case for Reparations, examines the consequences of slavery and segregation in the United States and argues the importance of reparations for black Americans, both in a financial and moral […]
• Critique of Colin Thies’ “Commercial Slavery” The goal of the article was to evaluate the economic and political situation of the African slave trade and avoid other aspects according to which people were considered as oppressed and enslaved.
• Fredrick Douglas Characters. Impact of Slavery The institution of slavery drove and shaped the enslaved people to respond and behave in different ways in that Fredrick Bailey was forced to flee away from slavery and later changed his name to Fredrick […]
• John Brown and His Beliefs About Slavery John Brown was a martyr, his last effort to end slavery when he raided Harper’s Ferry helped to shape the nation and change the history of slavery in America.
• Litwack’s Arguments on the Aftermath of Slavery This paper seeks to delve into a technical theme addressed by Leon on what kind of freedom was adopted by the ex-slaves prior to the passage of the 13th U.S.constitutional amendment of 1865 that saw […]
• Slavery, Civil War, and Abolitionist Movement in 1850-1865 They knew they were free only they had to show the colonists that they were aware of that.[1] The slaves were determined and in the unfreed state they still were in rebellion and protested all […]
• Concept of Slavery Rousseau’s Analysis Rights and slavery are presented by the thinker as two contrary notions; Rousseau strived to provide the analysis of rights in their moral, spiritual sense; the involvement into dependence from the rulers means the involvement […]
• The Literature From Slavery to Freedom Its main theme is slavery but it also exhibits other themes like the fight by Afro-Americans for freedom, the search for the identity of black Americans and the appreciation of the uniqueness of African American […]
• Du Bois’ “The Soul of Black Folk” and T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery” Du Bois in the work “The Soul of Black Folk” asks the question, why black people are considered to be different, why they are treated differently as they are the same members of the society, […]
• African Slavery and European Plantation Systems: 1525-1700 However, with the discovery of sugar production at the end of the 15th Century to the Atlantic Islands and the opening up of the New World in the European conquests, the Portuguese discovered new ways […]
• The Theme of Slavery in Aristotle’s “Politics” He notes that the fundamental part of an association is the household that is comprised of three different kinds of relationships: master to slave, husband to wife, and parents to their children.
• Abraham Lincoln`s Role in the Abolishment of Slavery in America In this speech, Lincoln emphasized the need for the law governing slavery to prevail and pointed out the importance of the independence of individual states in administering laws that governed slavery without the interference of […]
• Slavery in Latin America and North America In the French and British Caribbean colonies, slaves were also imported in great numbers and majority of the inhabitants were slaves.
• Betty Wood: The Origins of American Slavery Economic analyses and participation of the slave labor force in economic development are used to analyze the impact and role of slave labor in the development of the American economy.
• “American Slavery an American Freedom” by Edmund S. Morgan The book witnesses the close alliance between the establishment of freedom rights in Virginia and the rise of slavery movement which is considered to be the greatest contradiction in American history.
• Western Expansion and Its Influence on Social Reforms and Slavery The western expansion refers to the process whereby the Americans moved away from their original 13 colonies in the 1800s, towards the west which was encouraged by explorers like Lewis and Clarke.
• “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington Each morning it was the duty of the overseer to assign the daily work for the slaves and, when the task was completed, to inspect the fields to see that the work had been done […]
• U.S. in the Fight Against a Modern Form of Slavery Since the United States of America is the most powerful nation in the world it must spearhead the drive to eradicate this new form of slavery within the U.S.and even outside its borders.
• Slavery in the United States There was a sharp increase in the number of slaves during the 18th century, and by the mid of the century, 200,000 of them were working in the American colonies.
• Sociology, Race & Law. Cuban Form of Slavery Today Castro was benefiting alone from the sweat of many Cubans who worked abroad and in Cuba thinking that they could better their livelihood.
• Abraham Lincoln and Free Slavery Moreover, he made reference to the fact that the union was older than the constitution and referred to the spirit of the Articles of the Constitution 1774 and Articles of Confederation of 1788.
• “Slavery Isn’t the Issue” by Juan Williams Review The author claims that the reparation argument is flawed as affirmative action has ensured that a record number of black Americans move up the economic and social ladder.
• Gender Politics: Military Sexual Slavery In this essay, it will be shown that military power and sexual slavery are interconnected, how the human rights of women are violated by the military, and how gender is related to a war crime.
• African Americans Struggle Against Slavery The following paragraphs will explain in detail the two articles on slavery and the African American’s struggle to break away from the heavy and long bonds of slavery. The website tells me that Dredd Scott […]
• Slavery in the World The first independent state in the western hemisphere, the United States of America, was formed as a result of the revolutionary war of North American colonies of England for Independence in 1775-1783.
• Slaves and Slavery in Ancient Rome The revolt of slaves under the direction of Spartacus 73-71 BC is considered the most significant event of the period of crisis of the Roman republican regime in the first century DC and is estimated […]
• Olaudah Equiano as a Fighter Against Slavery Equiano’s Narrative demonstrates a conscious effort to ascribe spiritual enlightenment to the political arena and hence ascertain the importance of the relationship between spiritual intervention, the amysterious ways of Providence’ and parliamentary decisions concerning the […]
• Slavery: Central Paradox of American History Since the rise of United States as a nation, historians have long thought of the emergence of slavery and freedom in our society as a great contradiction. As the central paradox, slavery needed to emerge […]
• Virginia After the Boom: Slavery and “The Losers” New labor force that came to Virginia “threatened the independence of the small freeman and worsened the lot of the servant”.
• Antebellum Slavery in Mark Twain’s World Twain’s depiction of Jim and his relationship with Huck was somewhat flawed in order to obey the needs of the story, and also by Twains’ interest in slave autobiographies and also in blackface minstrelsy.
• Slavery in New York City: Impact and Significance Blacks’ significance in the development of the city’s most critical systems, such as labor, race, and class divisions, makes it possible to conclude that the influence of slavery in New York was substantial. The effect […]
• Slavery Still Exists in American Prisons An examination of the history of the penal system as it existed in the State of Texas proves to be the best illustration of the comparisons between the penal system and the system of slavery.
• Ghana: The Consequences of Colonial Rule and Slavery One of the reasons for this dependency is that the country had been the foothold for the slave trade for about four centuries.
• “Slavery and the Making of America” Documentary According to the film Slavery and the Making of America, slavery had a profound effect on the historical development of American colonies into one country.
• Harriet Jacobs’s Account of Slavery Atrocities She wrote that she wanted the women living in the North to understand the conditions in which slaves lived in the Souths, and the sufferings that enslaved women had to undergo.
• Anti Slavery and Abolitionism Both gradual emancipation and conditional emancipation were not allowed, but free blacks from the North and evangelicals revealed their opposition in the form of the movement that required the development of social reform.
• Sexual Slavery in “The Apology” Film by Hsiung The documentary being discussed focuses on the experiences of three women, the survivors of military sexual slavery in China, South Korea, and the Republic of the Philippines.
• Slavery Resistance from Historical Perspective The lack of rights and power to struggle resulted in the emergence of particular forms of resistance that preconditioned the radical shifts in peoples mentalities and the creation of the tolerant society we can observe […]
• Slavery Abolition and Newfound Freedom in the US One of the biggest achievements of Reconstruction was the acquisition of the right to vote by Black People. Still, Black Americans were no longer forced to tolerate inhumane living conditions, the lack of self-autonomy, and […]
• Slavery Elements in Mississippi Black Code These are the limitation of the freedom of marriage, the limitation of the freedom of work, and the limitation of the freedom of weapon.
• Slavery in “Abolition Speech” by William Wilberforce The following article is devoted to the description of the problem of slavery and the slave trade in Africa. The author also underlines the incompetency of the committee, which is in charge of the question […]
• Slavery History: Letters Analysis The letters analyzed in this paper give a piece of the picture that was observed during the 1600s and the 1700s when slaves from different parts of the world had to serve their masters under […]
• Social Psychology of Modern Slavery The social psychology of modern slavery holds the opinion that slavery still exists today, contrary to the belief of many people that slavery does not exist in the modern world.
• Slavery: History and Influence The slaves were meant to provide labor for the masters and generate wealth. During the day, they would sneak to breastfeed the newborns.
• Reformer and Slavery: William Lloyd Garrison The newspaper was published until the end of the civil war and the abolition of slavery by the enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment.
• Slavery Role in the American Literature Stowe has claimed that the anti slavery groups questioned the morality of the white Christians who were at the fore front in the oppression of the Black people.
• Thomas Jefferson on Civil Rights, Slavery, Racism When I authored the declaration of independence of the United States of America, I was having a democratic perspective of the American people on my mind.
• Slavery and Identity: “The Known World” by Edward Jones Moses is used to this kind of life and described by one of the other characters as “world-stupid,” meaning he does not know how to live in the outside world. He has a strong connection […]
• Slavery in the USA and Its Impact on Americans The following paper will present a discussion of slavery in the USA and an explanation of the tremendous impact it made on the lives of all Americans.
• “Slavery by Another Name” Documentary To assure the existence of the social and historical support, the movie is presented in the form of the documentary and can be viewed by an extended audience to spread awareness about the drawbacks of […]
• Cultural Consequences of the US Slavery: 1620-1870 3 In the same way that the African had adopted the new language and devised their own language, the Whites began to be influenced by their style of talking and their speech began to be […]
• Frederick Douglass as an Anti-Slavery Activist In “What to the slave is the fourth of July?” the orator drives the attention of his audience to a serious contradiction: Americans consider the Declaration of independence a document that proclaimed freedom, but this […]
• George Whitfield’s Views on Slavery in the US Whitfield’s article attempted to open the eyes of the Christians to the sins that were committed against the Negro slaves. Thomas Kidd’s article, on the other hand, criticized Whitfield’s ownership of slaves.
• Internal Colonization and Slavery in British Empire The act of alienating Ireland in the development process brought the distinction in the collaboration. Slave trade contributed to the growth of the economy of the British Empire via the production of the raw materials […]
• Globalization and Slavery: Multidisciplinary View Globalization is an exciting concept and maybe one of the greatest achievements of the modern world. A case of the multidisciplinary nature of slavery is also evident in Pakistan, where slavery thrives on religious grounds.
• Slavery in “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” The character traits of the slaveholders are brought out by the use of the word nigger and the emphasis on ignorance as a weapon against the empowerment of the blacks.
• Slavery in “A Brief History of the Caribbean” That is why, the history of America is always connected with this issue and the works, which study it, have a great number of pages devoted to the analysis of slavery, its roots and its […]
• Slavery in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass In the fifth chapter, for instance, the author notes that he was moved to Baltimore, Maryland, something that played a critical role in transforming his life since he faced the realities of slavery.
• Slavery Phenomenon and Its Causes in the USA The dominance of agricultural production in these areas was one of the reasons why slavery persisted in the South. In turn, the experiences of the owners could be very diverse.
• Women Trafficking and Slavery: Trends and Solutions However, inherent in human trafficking is the upholding of slavery in different forms because a definitive element of the constitution of human trafficking includes the use of force or coercion in the abrogation of an […]
• Human Trafficking and Modern-day Slavery One of the biggest challenges in addressing modern slavery and human trafficking is the fact that the vice is treated as a black market affair where facts about the perpetrators and the victims are difficult […]
• Ethical Problems With Non-Human Slavery and Abuse The last part of this paper discusses the role of religion and spirituality in changing the situation of non-humans caught in human webs of self-interest.
• Racism in USA: Virginia Laws on Slavery The provided laws emphasize the differences between the English, the Indigenous people, and the African slaves juxtaposing the former to the others as superior.
• Sojourner Truth: Slavery Abolitionist and Women’s Suffrage The main aim of this step was to show that black people should also be given the right to participate in elections and chose the future of their own state.
• Slavery in Islamic Civilisation The Quran, which is the Holy book of the Islamic religion, played a key role in the grounding of the slave trade in the Muslim community.
• Religious Studies of the Slavery Problem The key point of the discussion was the prohibition or, on the contrary, the permission of the slavery on the new territories.
• Slavery and the Abolition of Slave Trade To a great extent, this outcome can be attributed to such factors to the influence of racist attitudes, the fear of violence or rebellion, and economic interests of many people who perceived the abolition of […]
• Abraham Lincoln Against Slavery Due to this hindrance to abolish slavery in the union, Lincoln decided to do it from the southern states of America using his powers as the commander in chief of the United States.
• Blacks Role in Abolishing Slavery The abolitionist movement and the Black slaves of Britain both played a role in the ultimate abolishment of slavery in Britain.
• The Poetry on the Topic of Slavery There was the belief that some people were born to be free while the rest of the world should serve them, being just slaves, deprived of any rights and is doomed to spend the rest […]
• John Brown and Thomas Cobb Role in Ending Slavery Thomas Cobb invested in his political career with the help of his brother and agitated for the end of slavery in the South.
• Impacts of Slavery and Slave Trade in Africa Slavery existed in the African continent in form of indentured servitude in the previous years, but Atlantic slave trade changed the system, as people were captured by force through raids before being sold to other […]
• Slavery in the Southern Colonies Apart from the favorable climate, the close proximity of the colonies to broad rivers allowed the colonialists to ship in slaves and their produce with ease.
• Christianity, Slavery and Colonialism Paradox He is prominent in opposing the Atlanta Compromise Treaty that advocated for the subjection of the southern blacks to the whites’ political rule. In conclusion, the paradox of Christianity, slavery, and colonialism has been a […]
• Slavery and the Civil War Thus, the main impact of the Civil War was the abolition of slavery which changed the economic and social structures of the South and contributed to shifting the focus on the role of federal government.
• Literary Works’ Views on Slavery in the United States Perhaps, one of the best narratives describing the plight of the captured African people and their journey through slavery is Equiano’s ‘The interesting narrative of Olaudah Equiano.’ Olaudah Equiano provides an in-depth analysis of his […]
• Analysis of Slavery in American History in “Beloved“ by Tony Morrison In such a manner, the novel widens the concept of freedom and provides a new meaning of such words as arememory’ and wouldisremember.’ In particular, although Seth’s new life is deprived of slavery, her memories […]
• History of Abolishing Slavery The abolishment of slavery in Britain empires and the involvement of the British in preaching against slavery contributed immensely towards the end of slavery in the United States and France.
• The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery By digging deep into Lincoln’s history, times, speeches and writings, Foner has attempted to examine the President’s stance on slavery in the United States and his reaction to the issue that greatly affected the American […]
• The Period of Slavery in the “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” by Harriet Jacobs The book shows that there was a lot of ignorance in the course of the period of slavery. The masters were well aware of the situation that the slaves were in and they took full […]
• Slavery in America: “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” The Author is also the persona in entire narration as he recounts his real experience in slavery right from childhood. In the narration, there are major and minor characters that the author has used to […]
• Abolition of Slavery in Brazil In most parts of America, the legislation to abolition slave trade was greatly opposed by big plantation owners who needed the services of slaves and knew that the legislation to end slavery was a major […]
• Slavery Effects on Enslaved People and Slave Owners Reflecting on the life of Douglass Frederick and written in prose form, the narrative defines the thoughts of the author on various aspects of slavery from the social, economic, security, and the need for appreciation […]
• The Problem of Slavery in Africa The capture of Constantinople by Ottoman in 1453 led to a stop of the movement of slaves from the Balkans and the Black Sea region.
• Racial Slavery in America
• “Not For Sale: End Human Trafficking and Slavery”: Campaign Critique
• Colonial Portuguese Brazil: Sugar and Slavery
• Aristotle on Human Nature, State, and Slavery
• Reform-Women’s Rights and Slavery
• Human Trafficking in the United States: A Modern Day Slavery
• Oronooko by Aphra Behn and the Why there is no Justification for Slavery
• Rise and Fall of Slavery
• History of Slavery Constitution in US
• Propaganda in Pro-slavery Arguments and Douglass’s Narrative
• Testament Against Slavery: ”Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass”
• Comparing and Contrasting three Versions of Slavery
• How Did the French Revolution Impacted the Issue of Slavery and the History of Santo Domingo?
• Why slavery is wrong
• The Evolution of American Slavery
• Slavery and Racism: Black Brazilians v. Black Americans
• History of the African-Americans Religion During the Time of Slavery
• The Emergence of a Law of Slavery in Mississippi
• The Effects of Slavery on the American Society
• The Ideas of Freedom and Slavery in Relation to the American Revolution
• Up from Slavery, Down to the Ground: Sailing Amistad. A
• Slavery in the British Colonies: Chesapeake and New England
• Slavery and the Old South
• African American Culture: A History of Slavery
• Slavery and the Underground Railroad
• Slavery Illuminates Societal Moral Decay
• The Southern Argument for Slavery
• Did Morality or Economics Dominate the Debates Over Slavery in the 1850s?
• Masters and Slaves: ”Up From Slavery” by Washington Booker
• No Reparations for Blacks for the Injustice of Slavery
• Slavery: The Stronghold of the Brazil Economy
• Slavery, Racism, and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade
• Slavery, the Civil War & Reconstruction
• Slavery in American History
• Beloved by Toni Morrison: History of Slavery and Racial Segregation in America
• “Slavery and the British Empire: From Africa to America” by Morgan Kenneth
• African Americans: The Legacy of Slavery in the U.S.
• Sexual Slavery and Prostitution During WWII and US Occupation in Japan
• A New Dawn: The Abolishment of Slavery in the USA
• How Slavery Applies to Africans Within the Islamic World?
• Where Did Slavery Start First in the World?
• How Did Slaves Respond to Slavery?
• How the Germans Influenced Modern Day Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Change From the Arrival of the First Enslaved People in the 1600s to the Abolition of Slavery in the 1860s?
• How Did Slavery Encourage Both Economic Backwardness and Westward Expansion?
• Why Did Colonial Virginians Replace Servitude With Slavery?
• Did Slavery Create More Benefits or Problems for the Nation?
• What Was Slavery Like and How Is It Today?
• When and How Did Slavery Begin?
• What Were the Positive and Negative Effects of Slavery on the Americas?
• Is There a Difference Between Human Trafficking and Slavery?
• How Did Slavery Shape Modern Society and the Colonial Nations?
• How Did Economic, Geographic, and Social Factors Encourage the Growth of Slavery?
• How Did Colonization Along the Atlantic Contribute to Slavery?
• What Degree Did Slavery Play in the Civil War?
• Modern Day Slavery: What Drives Human Trafficking?
• How Did Slavery Start in Africa?
• How Did Slavery Affect the Spirit of the Enslaved and the Enslavers?
• What Did the Haitian Revolution Do to End Racial Slavery?
• How Were African Americans Treated During the Slavery Period?
• What Created Slavery?
• How Important Was Slavery Before 1850? Was It a Marginal Institution, Peripheral to the Development of American Society?
• How Did African American Slavery Help Shape America?
• When Did Slavery Start in America?
• How Can the World Allow Slavery to Continue Today?
• What Were the Differences Between Indentured Servitude and Slavery?
• In What Industries Is Slavery Most Prevalent?
• How Was Slavery Abolished?
• Did the Atlantic Plantation Complex Create Slavery?
• African American History Essay Ideas
• Frederick Douglass Essay Ideas
• Colonialism Essay Ideas
• Fascism Questions
• Human Rights Essay Ideas
• Freedom Topics
• Global Issues Essay Topics
• US History Topics
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

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Modern-Day Slavery: An Invisible Epidemic in Plain Sight 

Slavery is often talked about in the past tense, as if it no longer exists and hasn’t for quite some time. Unfortunately, that is not the reality. Devastatingly, slavery is still very much alive in today’s world. Unlike in the past where individuals were openly bought and sold, the current form of slavery is often hidden from public view.  As slavery exists now, it is commonly referred to as ‘modern-day slavery.’ 

What is Modern-Day Slavery?  

“Although modern slavery is not defined in law, it is used as an umbrella term covering practices such as forced labour, debt bondage, forced marriage, and human trafficking. Essentially, it refers to situations of exploitation that a person cannot refuse or leave because of threats, violence, coercion, deception, and/or abuse of power.”( United Nations ) 

Prevalent Forms of Modern-Day Slavery  

The most common types of modern-day slavery are: 

• Child Labor – minors (18 and under) are forced to work against their will 
• Sex Trafficking – individuals are required to engage in sexual activities 
• Debt Bondage – a type of slavery in which victims are required to pay off debt 
• Domestic Servitude – forced labor that occurs in a private household 
• Forced Labor – adults (18 and older) are required to work involuntarily 
• Forced Marriage – victims are forced to marry another person without giving consent 

Recent Stories of Slavery 

• A man in his early forties forced a minor to marry him with the help of her own family. At age 15 and only a year after her father passed away, the minor was required to live with the man and perform sexual acts as his wife. After she bravely ran away, some of her family members threatened to return her to the abuser. O.U.R. stepped in to help get the marriage dissolved and find an aftercare home for the minor.  
• A father sexually abused and exploited his 5-year-old daughter by producing & distributing 50 Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) videos of her. He also molested his 9-year-old niece. In December 2023, both minors were rescued and taken to a medical facility for examination. The 5 y/o has since been removed from the home for her safety while authorities are still determining next steps for the 9 y/o. 
• A Thai bar owner sold two girls for sex, charging nearly double for a child. The human trafficker took advantage of the minors’ vulnerabilities and used sextortion to coerce them into providing sexual services. O.U.R. supported authorities with the rescue of three individuals, including the two minors. They were then placed in a shelter to receive essential care and protection. 

Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) assists law enforcement in cases like these weekly, helping ensure the safe rescue and aftercare of those in need. 

The Magnitude of Modern-Day Slavery 

Today, there are 49.6 million people in modern slavery worldwide, according to the  International Labour Organization  (ILO) . That number is larger than the population of countries like Uganda, Spain, and Canada. It is also an increase of 9.3 million from the previous estimate given by the ILO in 2016. 

While these statistics are extremely alarming, they only reflect  reported  numbers. With a lack of consistency in reporting worldwide combined with what goes unnoticed, it is very likely even more people are living in modern-day slavery. 

Slavery Statistics 

According to the ILO: 

• Almost four out of five victims of commercial sexual exploitation are women or girls 
• 86% of forced labor cases are found in the private sector 
• 22 million people were estimated to be living in forced marriage on any given day in 2021 

Slavery Specific to the United States 

In the United States, it is estimated that 1,091,000 people live in modern-day slavery, which equals about 3.3 victims for every 1,000 people in the country. (Walk Free  Global Slavery Index ) When it comes to prevalence rankings, this places the U.S. 122nd out of 160 countries included, indicating the country has one of the lower rates in the world. 

However, with one of the largest populations globally, the U.S. has the tenth-most people of any country estimated to be living in modern-day slavery. 

The Global Fight Against Modern-Day Slavery 

The international community recognizes the importance of collaboration to end slavery in all forms. Government agencies and non-governmental organizations across the globe like O.U.R. are in the fight together. 

This united approach is required because the issue is too large to ignore – too large to leave to any one government or entity. 

Help Make A Difference 

Awareness is the first line of defense against any crime, including modern-day slavery. Once someone is made aware of the issue, they are better equipped to address it. 

Additional steps to take:  

• Education – learn the  signs of slavery  
• Take Action –  join the fight   with O.U.R. 
• Contact Authorities – report potential cases of slavery by contacting local authorities  

About OUR Rescue 

We lead the fight against child sexual exploitation and human trafficking worldwide.

Our work spans the globe as we assist law enforcement in rescue efforts and help provide aftercare to all those affected. While we prioritize children, we work to empower the liberation of anyone suffering at the hands of those looking to sexually exploit. We offer vital resources to authorities around the world and work tirelessly to raise awareness and meet survivors on their healing journey. Our resolve never falters, and we will boldly persevere until those in need are safe.

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Modern Slavery

Introduction

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

Slavery disproportionally affects women and girls while also victimizing men and boys of all backgrounds, and no country in the world is immune. Consumers buy slave-made goods and services for which victims toil in mines, farms, factories, or private homes. Ending slavery takes political will, moral courage, and the collaboration of governments, businesses, and consumers.

Discussion and Essay Questions

Discussion questions.

• What is slavery and what drives it? Is there a global consensus on the definition of slavery?
• Are there places in the world where slavery is more prevalent? What are the drivers of higher prevalence in different parts of the world?
• Is poverty a root cause of slavery? If so, would eliminating poverty eliminate slavery?
• Are slavery and human trafficking the same thing? Can they be used interchangeably?
• How does slavery impact women and children specifically?
• How many slaves are in the world today and where are they?
• Why is it difficult to eradicate slavery?
• What does “state-sponsored slavery” mean? How can governments be pushed to end “state-sponsored slavery”?
• How are people enslaved because they owe a debt to someone else?
• Does law enforcement do enough to eradicate slavery?
• Why is forced marriage considered a form of slavery?
• Whose responsibility is it to end slavery? What are some common tactics and strategies used to combat slavery?

Essay Questions

• The Walk Free Foundation and the International Labor Organization released a new estimate of modern day slavery in the world in 2017. Of the 40 million people living in slavery they found in the previous year, millions are said to be victims of forced marriage. What is forced marriage and why is it considered slavery? Should forced marriage be considered on par with sexual exploitation found in sex trafficking, or forced or child labor?
• Many goods that we consume today could be made by slaves. These goods can be found in common products and components that are sourced from countries around the world. This means that many of us are inadvertently supporting exploitative labor practices. What role can consumers play to ensure that we don’t support factories and production facilities that exploit workers? What can businesses do to support fair and ethical supply chains? Are consumers and businesses doing enough?
• Western definitions of slavery conflict with local and customary practices in some countries. For example, child marriage and even some forms of child labor are acceptable in some parts of the world, but considered human rights violations according to international standards. Is it fair to impose Western or international human rights norms on countries that conflict with their local customs and supersede local culture?
• There is some evidence that labor trafficking is more prevalent throughout the world than sex trafficking, however, law enforcement arrests and prosecutes more offenders for sex trafficking than labor trafficking. Why is this the case? Why does sex trafficking get more attention than labor trafficking by law enforcement?
• The U.S. government uses various foreign policy instruments to pressure other governments to uphold certain human rights standards. For example, the Trafficking in Persons Report issued annually by the U.S. State Department grades countries for their individual efforts to eradicate trafficking and slavery in their jurisdictions. Does this type of government-to-government advocacy and pressure have an effect? Is it important to integrate slavery concerns into U.S. foreign policy and for the U.S. government to hold other governments accountable?

Supplementary Materials

ILO/Walk Free Global Estimate

Australian Human Rights Institute

What is modern slavery.

During the 300 years of transatlantic slave trade, about 12.5 million people were enslaved in the Americas. Today, an estimated 40.3 million people are enslaved globally. That means that there are 5.4 victims of modern slavery for every 1000 people in the world…. Evidently slavery has not merely endured – it has thrived. -Nolan and Boersma, Addressing Modern Slavery, 2019

Modern slavery is a global problem. Despite increasing awareness about modern slavery, the number of those trapped in modern slavery is increasing.

Modern slavery is a relationship based on exploitation. It is defined by a range of practices that include: trafficking in persons; slavery; servitude; forced marriage; forced labour; forced marriage, debt bondage; deceptive recruiting for labour or services; and the worst forms of child labour and is visible in many global supply chains. Each of these terms is defined in treaties and documents of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization.

Regular revelations about modern slavery show that it can reach into every aspect of a company’s operations and supply chains, as well as into consumers’ lives through our daily consumption. Modern slavery is found in a range of sectors including (but not limited to) domestic work, manufacturing, construction, mining, agriculture and fishing. It poses uncomfortable truths for businesses and individuals.

Modern slavery occurs in every region of the world in both developing and developed countries and if affects women disproportionately (accounting for 71% of the estimated 40 million victims).

Modern slavery is best understood as existing on a continuum of exploitation. Such an outlook recognises that people can be exposed to working conditions that gradually worsen, sometimes leading to modern slavery.

Source: Commonwealth Modern Slavery Act 2018 Guidance for Reporting Entities, p9.

Forced labour is a form of modern slavery often considered most relevant to workplace exploitation and is a feature of many global supply chains. Forced labour refers to work that people must perform against their will under the threat of punishment. The International Labour Organisation estimates that forced labour in the private economy generates US$150 billion in illegal profits each year (ILO 2014). Of the 25 million people estimated to be working as forced laborers, 16 million of these are working in global supply chains and half of those are experiencing debt bondage (where individuals work to pay off a debt while losing control over working conditions and repayments).

• Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, Addressing Modern Slavery , UNSW Press, 2019.
• Justine Nolan , 2021, ' Modern Slavery in Global Supply Chains ', Encyclopedia of Business and Professional Ethics.
• Justine Nolan and Martijn Boersma, 2020, ' Can blockchain help resolve modern slavery in supply chains? ', AIB Insights.
• Dorothee Baumann-Pauly and Justine Nolan, Business and Human Rights: From Principles to Practice Routledge , 2016.
• Modern Slavery Act, 2018 Guidance for Reporting Entities .
• Online module - Update on the Modern Slavery Act , 2023 (subscription required).

Videos/podcasts

• Modern Slavery Disclosure Laws: Challenges and Opportunities
• Justine Nolan: Life cycle of a t-shirt
• Justine Nolan: Cause, contribute or linkage to human rights impacts
• UNSW Law: Modern Slavery
• UNSW Legal Hour: What do you think about when you hear the word slavery?
• Podcast: 2020 The business of sustainable leadership
• Podcast: Oxfam India 2019

Testing the effectiveness of Australias Modern Slavery Act

This research project will improve understanding of modern slavery risks in global supply chains by identifying and better understanding which sectors have a high risk of modern slavery, and how risk factors differ across sectors. 

At the Crossroads: 10 years of implementing the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in Australia

The Australian Human Rights Institute and the Australian Human Rights Commission examine the implementation of the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) in Australia.

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The Concept of Modern Slavery: Definition, Critique, and the Human Rights Frame

• Published: 07 December 2018
• Volume 20 , pages 229–248, ( 2019 )

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Modern slavery is a major topic of concern in international law and global governance, in civil society, and in academic debates. Yet, what does modern slavery mean, and can its highly different forms be covered in a single concept? This paper discusses these questions in three steps: First, it develops common definitions of modern slavery. Second, it discusses critical rejections of these definitions. The two camps that adhere to the definitions of modern slavery, and that reject them, respectively, face certain limits. In a third step, the paper takes up with the limits and the strengths of both. It suggests that the limits of definitions of modern slavery can be overcome by critical approaches; and that the limits of critical approaches can be overcome by definitions of modern slavery. The key is their integration into a human rights frame. Ultimately, the paper proposes an approach to modern slavery that neither relies on a binary distinction between slavery and non-slavery, nor does it strive for the abolishment of the concept of modern slavery. Rather, the paper calls for a normatively and contextually embedded approach within the human rights frame.

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For a discussion of the differences and similarities between former and contemporary forms of slavery, see Quirk 2006 . One major difference is the legal status of slavery. The concept of modern slavery as opposed to historical forms of slavery can refer to both illegal and legal forms of slavery, thus becoming more dynamic and ambiguous (Crane 2013 , p. 50). The paper refers to the concept of modern slavery to cover this heterogeneity.

Further documents are dedicated to parallel or sub-forms of modern slavery. One prominent issue area covers child trafficking and the worst forms of child labor. Another issue area is forced labor, defined in the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention no. 29 (1930) and no. 105 (1957). The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines recognize forced labor as slavery only when “the control over a person tantamount to possession” (§ 8) is exercised. The same differentiation applies to other practices and institutions similar to slavery. In order to not get lost with the numerous parallel forms and sub-forms of slavery, this chapter focuses only on some of the key documents that more generally deal with (modern) slavery.

Interestingly enough, the focus on the movement of people mirrors the focus on slave trade in former abolition movements (Skinner 2009 , 35; Lawrance 2010 , 64, also cf. Wong 2011 ).

Cf. Research Network on the Legal Parameters of Slavery 2012 , §3; Bales 2013 , p. 283 f.; Choi-Fitzpatrick 2017 ; Cockayne et al. 2016 .

Similarly Bales 2013 , p. 284; Choi-Fitzpatrick 2012 , p. 16; Craig et al. 2007 , p. 12; Weissbrodt and Anti-Slavery International 2002 , p. 7; Herzfeld 2002 , p. 50; Moravcsik 1998 , p. 174.

I do not address the question, whether all forms of prostitution are a subordination of women, or whether sex workers need to be empowered in order to secure their working and living conditions, as it is being discussed extensively elsewhere (Kempadoo et al. 2012 ; Weitzer 2011 ; Quirk 2007 ; Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2004 ; Raymond and Hughes 2001 ).

These conditions include certain ways of perception and perception biases (Sikkink 2017 , p. 160ff.), public attention being a limited resource, and limited funding opportunities more generally.

I borrow this idea from Spivak’s strategic essentialism that she describes to be misunderstood when it neglects its own time limit, financial situation, context, dependence, and historicity (Spivak et al. 1993 ).

Also see Choi-Fitzpatrick 2017 for a nuanced discussion of how profiteers from slavery rationalize slavery.

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Mende, J. The Concept of Modern Slavery: Definition, Critique, and the Human Rights Frame. Hum Rights Rev 20 , 229–248 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-018-0538-y

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Teaching Notes: Modern Slavery

Slavery, long banned and universally condemned, persists in many corners of the world, victimizing tens of millions of people.

Teaching Notes by Samir Goswami

January 16, 2018 11:30 am (EST)

Slavery disproportionally affects women and girls while also victimizing men and boys of all backgrounds, and no country in the world is immune. Consumers buy slave-made goods and services for which victims toil in mines, farms, factories, or private homes. Ending slavery takes political will, moral courage, and the collaboration of governments, businesses, and consumers.

Teaching Notes Components

Discussion questions.

• What is slavery and what drives it? Is there a global consensus on the definition of slavery?
• Are there places in the world where slavery is more prevalent? What are the drivers of higher prevalence in different parts of the world?
• Is poverty a root cause of slavery? If so, would eliminating poverty eliminate slavery?
• Are slavery and human trafficking the same thing? Can they be used interchangeably?
• How does slavery impact women and children specifically?
• How many slaves are in the world today and where are they?
• Why is it difficult to eradicate slavery?
• What does “state-sponsored slavery” mean? How can governments be pushed to end “state-sponsored slavery”?
• How are people enslaved because they owe a debt to someone else?
• Does law enforcement do enough to eradicate slavery?
• Why is forced marriage considered a form of slavery?
• Whose responsibility is it to end slavery? What are some common tactics and strategies used to combat slavery?

Essay Questions

Human Trafficking

Humanitarian Crises

Transnational Crime

Sexual Violence

• The Walk Free Foundation and the International Labor Organization released a new estimate of modern day slavery in the world in 2017. Of the 40 million people living in slavery they found in the previous year, millions are said to be victims of forced marriage. What is forced marriage and why is it considered slavery? Should forced marriage be considered on par with sexual exploitation found in sex trafficking, or forced or child labor?
• Many goods that we consume today could be made by slaves. These goods can be found in common products and components that are sourced from countries around the world. This means that many of us are inadvertently supporting exploitative labor practices. What role can consumers play to ensure that we don’t support factories and production facilities that exploit workers? What can businesses do to support fair and ethical supply chains? Are consumers and businesses doing enough?
• Western definitions of slavery conflict with local and customary practices in some countries. For example, child marriage and even some forms of child labor are acceptable in some parts of the world, but considered human rights violations according to international standards. Is it fair to impose Western or international human rights norms on countries that conflict with their local customs and supersede local culture?
• There is some evidence that labor trafficking is more prevalent throughout the world than sex trafficking, however, law enforcement arrests and prosecutes more offenders for sex trafficking than labor trafficking. Why is this the case? Why does sex trafficking get more attention than labor trafficking by law enforcement?
• The U.S. government uses various foreign policy instruments to pressure other governments to uphold certain human rights standards. For example, the Trafficking in Persons Report issued annually by the U.S. State Department grades countries for their individual efforts to eradicate trafficking and slavery in their jurisdictions. Does this type of government-to-government advocacy and pressure have an effect? Is it important to integrate slavery concerns into U.S. foreign policy and for the U.S. government to hold other governments accountable?
• Write a Paper to Explore Business Responsibility and Efforts to Eradicate Slavery Businesses in varying industries and geographies are aware that their supply chains could contain goods and services produced by slaves. Some employ various methods to find out how suppliers are treating and recruiting workers. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is also a concept that has taken on increased significance as expectations build for companies to operate ethically. Write a paper on ethical sourcing or CSR with three examples of how they have been implemented. Papers should include definitions, evolution of practice, and regulatory frameworks, using contemporary examples. Students should cite their research and conduct, or access, at least one interview with a corporate practitioner and/or expert. 8 – 10 pages.
• Attend a Webinar and/or Panel Presentation & Prepare a Brief Memo For this assignment, pretend that you are a sustainability manager at Acme Company who is researching methods that your company can instill to investigate whether there is slavery in your supply chain. Various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), academic institutions, associations, and companies host, at no cost, one to two hour webinars and/or forums related to ethical sourcing and procurement, business practices, and human rights. These are good opportunities to hear from practitioners in the field about how principles are translated into practice. View or attend one such event that pertains to how businesses are promoting human rights and working to eradicate slavery from their supply chains. Draft a brief memo addressed to your fictitious supervisor (e.g. the vice president of sustainability for Acme Company) that succinctly summarizes the following: - Why you attended the session and your goals for it; - Three key findings that you learned;  - How you will apply those learnings; - Any key contacts who attended or presented that you will reach out to and why. Remember, vice presidents are busy people and your memo should be succinct and directly address the four points above. The list below are suggestions of resources that you can choose from, or you may find one on your own. Please note that you can also view a prerecorded webinar, however it must be from no earlier than January 2016. - Business & Human Rights Resource Centre - Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) - International Corporate Accountability Roundtable (ICAR)  - Babson College's Initiative on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery - United Way's Center on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery - United Nations Global Compact - Global Business Initiative on Human Rights
• Conduct an Advocacy Presentation Various international NGOs work on global human rights issues and advocate for change based on internationally accepted standards. They document rights violations and lead campaigns to raise awareness and build political will. For example, Amnesty International puts pressure on the U.S. government, as well as the United Nations, to create and implement policies that uphold human rights standards. For this assignment, obtain an advocacy report published by an NGO that is related to modern slavery and human rights and learn about the issues and solutions that the organization highlights. Then, produce a three to five minute video presenting the report and its findings. Your (pretend) audience will be members of the UN Human Rights Council, meeting for a special session on modern slavery.
• Draft an Op-Ed to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution Sex trafficking is prevalent in large and small cities throughout the United States. Most states have local laws criminalizing sex trafficking that aim to punish offenders and provide justice and social services for its victims. These laws generally use the “force, fraud, and coercion” definition of human trafficking to identify whether a victim of exploitation has been trafficked. However, there is also an argument that many of these laws criminalize women and men who choose to prostitute themselves and that they have the right to do so. This perspective often states that voluntarily selling your own body for sex should be considered legitimate for adults. This approach views additional sex trafficking and antiprostitution laws as putting victims at further risk of exploitation. For this assignment, research the various perspectives that exist on sex trafficking and formulate your own opinion about whether selling sex can be equated with sex trafficking and slavery. Think about the public policy implications and recommend which laws and policies should be implemented in Atlanta, Georgia. Present this perspective with research citations that provide evidence to support your opinion in an op-ed. 500–750 words.

Sources to consult: ILO/Walk Free Global Estimate

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The Scourge Of Modern-Day Slavery

Millions of people wake up each day to a life of forced labor, violence, sexual assault, and dehumanization. 

Editor’s note: This essay is adapted from the Hoover Press book Invisible Slaves: The Victims and Perpetrators of Modern-Day Slavery.

The legacy of slavery haunts the West, especially the United States. Indeed, critics of the West cite slavery among the many evils spawned by Western Civilization in general and the United States in particular. But nothing could be further from the truth. Slavery existed before the discovery of the New World and before the origins of Western Civilization. The abolition movement is Western in origin and sprung from the enlightenment in Europe. Great Britain and the United States were the first countries to ban the trade in slaves—and the West led the globe in enacting laws prohibiting the institution of slavery.

Yet slavery continues to exist in virtually every country of the world. Thus, slavery is not a problem of the past, but a present-day scourge. As many as 46 million human beings will wake up today to a life of forced labor, violence, sexual assault, and dehumanization under the yoke of slavery. A major part of the solution is an acknowledgement and awareness that slavery exists today in all reaches of the globe. It is possible, indeed likely, that the clothes, shoes, and jewerly that you wear, the mobile phone and computer you use, the food that you eat, and the coffee that you drink have at some point been touched by the hands of slaves.

For many reasons, estimates of the reach of global slavery today vary greatly. As with other criminal activities, slavery is difficult to quantify because it is part of an underground economy that takes place behind closed doors and is hidden from investigators, law enforcement, and the public at large thanks to bribes and corrupt government officials. Also, victims are reluctant to seek help or cooperate with law enforcement due to fear of reprisals to themselves or their families. Many countries—particularly those with the highest levels of poverty and lowest levels of literacy—greatly underestimate the levels of slavery within their borders or deny its existence entirely. These countries have an incentive to downplay slavery because the profits for law enforcement from bribery are lucrative and sanctions from the United States are costly. Another factor complicating the estimates is that various NGOs and governmental agencies use different methodologies to calculate the number of slaves within a country.

Slavery, however, is hardly a third-world problem. The institution remains a largely intractable problem even in the world's most developed countries—including the United States. The Walk Free Foundation estimates that the United States has 57,700 people in slavery, while the CIA maintains that 14,500 to 17,000 victims of slavery are brought into the United States annually. Anti-Slavery International, the oldest human rights organization, calculates that there are over 200 million people who are victims of slavery or slavery-like conditions, although they may not qualify as pure chattel slaves. According to the United Nation's Office of High Commission for Human Rights, one hundred million children are exploited for their labor. These figures are more than the number of slaves in any year in the past when slavery was legally practiced.

There are various types of slaves—and a slave today might fall into one or several of these categories. Chattel slavery is perhaps the oldest form of slavery. A chattel slave is the property of the owner or master. The chattel slave is no different than an animal or other object that the master may own and can be sold, auctioned, purchased, hypothecated, or loaned. The master has total control over the slave, including the power over his or her life or death. Descendant-based or inherited slavery is often associated with chattel slavery.

Debtor slaves are those that are forced into involuntary servitude because of a debt burden. The debt may have been incurred from a recruitment agency or trafficker, or from the cost of shelter and food. A person may have pledged himself or a family member as collateral for a loan. Regardless of how the loan was incurred, the work performed is insufficient to cover the interest on the loan or charges for food and shelter. Debtor slavery or bonded labor is the most widely used form of modern-day slavery.

Forced labor or involuntary servitude is another type of modern-day slavery. A person is offered a good-paying job by a trafficker or recruiter. The offer may come via an advertisement in a newspaper. Upon delivery to the employer, the person finds himself or herself a victim of forced labor. Their documents have been confiscated and they are confined to the workplace and subject to physical abuse. They receive little or no pay. They are often in a place where they cannot speak the language. They are threatened with violence and beatings if they try to escape, as well as told that their family members back home will incur reprisals if they do not cooperate.

Sexual slavery is yet another form of bondage, where the slaves are used for sexual exploitation and prostitution. As with forced labor, their documents are confiscated, they are confined to the workplace (brothel), threatened with punishment if uncooperative, work to pay off both the debt incurred when the trafficker bought them and the increasing debt of housing, food, and interest. It is estimated that two million women and children are sold into sex slavery annually. In countries that have high poverty rates, or the areas of wealthier countries that have impoverished sections, it is not uncommon for families to sell their children to brothels. Prostitution exists in every corner of the world, and sex slavery contributes significantly to one of the world's oldest profession.

There are documented reports of slavery taking place around the world. Bonded slavery is prevalent in the cocoa farms of West Africa, the carpet-making factories in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh, and the ranching, agriculture, logging, and charcoal industries of Brazil. Forced labor camps are prevalent in China and North Korea. Women, men, and children are rescued every year in the United States from forced labor and sexual slavery. Virtually every country in the world has bonded domestic servants. Many girls and women are forced into prostitution to repay debts incurred in fleeing their impoverished countries.

Women and girls who have been captured in armed conflicts in Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, and several sub-Saharan African countries have been held as slaves or sold into slavery. Widespread violence caused by ethnic, tribal, and civil war has plagued the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and the Central African Republic (CAR) for decades. These armed conflicts have been fueled and funded by the profits from the extraction of minerals worth billions of dollars to the outside world. These natural resources are often called conflict minerals or blood diamonds because they are produced by slave labor. Child slavery is particularly prominent because children are easily coerced, illiterate, respond to violence or the threat of violence, and will work just to be fed.

There is no country in the world where slavery is legal today. Nonetheless, slavery and slavery-like conditions continue. Modern-day slavery has been labeled "the fastest-growing criminal enterprise in the world." Human trafficking is the second most profitable criminal activity in the world after the illegal drug trade and ahead of the illegal firearms trade. The International Labour Organization estimates that the illicit profits from slavery by traffickers are about $150 billion annually.

In 2000, the Congress of the United States enacted the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to monitor annually how countries are combating slavery and slavery-like practices. Countries that do not comply with the minimum standards of the TVPA can be sanctioned. As readers, you can bring awareness to this global atrocity. Demand that your elected representatives hold other countries, as well as your own, accountable for enforcing laws against slavery and slavery-like practices. 

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Modern Slavery

Essays , Issue #1 , Jason McQuinn

An introduction to modern slavery, by jason mcquinn  •  august 15, 2012.

Modern slavery should need no introduction. Modern slavery already intrudes into every aspect of life, debasing all it touches. It is the underlying organizing principle for all major economic institutions east and west, north and south. Its support and defense are the unspoken but automatically-understood objects of all major – and the vast majority of the minor – social, political and cultural institutions. Its infrastructure and demands extend into the deepest levels of modern consciousness, coloring our dreams as well as our nightmares. Yet modern slavery is largely invisible.

Modern slavery is officially non-existent. It has been tossed down the memory hole. It is not spoken of in polite company. Every institutional and government functionary, from the lowest levels of bureaucratic purgatory to the upper levels of elite power, knows instinctively that any explicit mention of its name as a contemporary reality means instant social death within the hierarchy. It is a rare day when it is acknowledged in any public context, even by the most radical or reckless of iconoclasts.

Read more →

El Errante , Nina , Paul seZ -- Paul's blog , Paul Z. Simons

Paul z. simons (may 3rd, 1960 – march 30, 2018), by jason mcquinn  •  april 8, 2018.

Our friend and comrade Paul Z. Simons (El Errante) has passed away apparently from a heart attack. He is survived by his 5 children, Nina, Hannah Simons, Max Errickson, and Tristan and Jack Simons.

He was born in Utah. He liked to say he was born an illegal, to an unwed mother, Ginger, in a state where is was a crime to have a child outside of wedlock. He was adopted by Daryl and Irene Simons at birth. He has 4 siblings, Steve and Robert Simons, and James and Elizabeth Ables.

To help his family deal with the financial burden of this death https://www.youcaring.com/thefamilyofpaulsimons-1155173

Nina writes that “Paul was a complex person who was loved by his friends and family, and the dozens of communities he gave voice to through his writings and adventures as a journalist. Paul was a soul searcher to the end, a fearless adventurer, a rebel, a lover, a father to myself, Hannah, Max, Tristian, and Jack. He was a brother, a cousin, an uncle, a son. Paul’s death was very sudden and unexpected, he left very few worldly possessions behind. Because he was far from home when he died, there will be a substantial cost to bring his remains home. It will take the effort and contribution of his community to properly lay him to rest and give his friends and family the opportunity to mourn his loss.”

Paul was co-editor for the Modern Slavery journal where much of his recent journalistic writing can be found, and he contributed to Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed from the ’90s up to its move to the SF Bay Area in 2005. His essays are also on The Anarchist Library web site ( https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/paul-z-simons ) and can be found on anarchistnews.org . He was involved in the Lower East Side scene in NYC in the ’80s. Stories and essays from that time are collected in his Black Eye zine anthology published by LBC ( https://littleblackcart.com/books/anarchy/black-eye/ ). In the last few years Paul was intensely involved in letting the world know more about the often anarchistic and revolutionary resistance in Rojava, while also reporting on the anarchist milieu from Paris, Athens and Sao Paulo. We always looked forward to his visits here whenever he traveled through California, which will sadly be no more. The upcoming issue of Modern Slavery will include some of his yet unpublished fiction.

Paul will be missed by many, even by those who had yet to meet him, but who have been touched by his essays, stories, interviews, poetry and fiction. We are proud to have worked with him for the last few decades. It was not always easy, but together we were able to publish much important material during that time. So long, Paul.

El Errante , El Errante

Dispatches from são paulo: ayahuasca, good work and santo daime, by jason mcquinn  •  february 10, 2018.

The man in the white shirt holds out the ceramic cup, I take it and drink. The ayahuasca tea tastes like maple syrup, with some fine grit and an earthy aftertaste. I return to my seat and notice immediately that my lips and tongue have become pleasantly numb. The rest of the ritual participants approach and similarly dose with the brew. The man pours himself a cup, extinguishes the electric light and sits comfortably in his chair. As he settles the flame of a single candle sends shadows dancing and popping around the living room. I burrow into the futon I’m sitting on, waiting for the drug to make its presence known. Finally the man who poured the tea addresses the group in a calm voice, “Bom trabalho” [good work].

Like many anarchists I have tried a host of hallucinogens in a multitude of contexts; LSD while clubbing in NYC in the ’80s, peyote in Native American Church ceremonies, mescaline with Chinese food, and MDMA for the mindblowing sex. So with the move to São Paulo I had hoped that the opportunity to try ayahuasca might happen. And sure enough the therapist I had been seeing recommended, as a treatment, trying a Santo Daime ayahuasca ritual. The coincidence gave me the odd feeling that I didn’t find ayahuasca; ayahuasca found me. I jumped at the chance.

(When invited I resolved to experience the ritual as a participant. While I have neither belief nor disbelief in God I do believe in respecting others’ faith. In so doing I reject Anthropology’s participant/observer academic copout. In such a situation you are either a participant or an observer, never both.)

A week later I found myself in the living room of a professional couple in São Paulo, with five other participants. A low altar stood along one wall adorned with flowers, water, cachaça , a plastic bottle of ayahuasca tea and pictures of Raimundo Irineu Serra (the founder of Santo Daime) and Padrinho Sebastião (Little Father Sebastian—a popularizer of Santo Daime in urban areas). A quick note about the Santo Daime religion—founded in the 1920s by Raimundo Irineu Serra, a rubber tapper in the far western Brazilian state of Acre—the religion is a synthesis of indigenous shamanism, Catholic imagery and African native religions. In this sense it perfectly emulates the syncretic nature of Brazilian society and it is no surprise that urban professionals, mental health providers, agricultural workers and those on spiritual quests are turning more and more to the religion and ayahuasca. What is important in all this is that ayahuasca is considered by practitioners as a healing concoction, it is a medicine for those who suffer mentally, emotionally and spiritually. It illuminates what was darkened by fear, anger, hurt; hence one of its alternate names, Santa Luz, the Saint of Light. It also bears the image of power, of strength—to deal with life, to overcome adversity, to change.

After about twenty minutes of silence, the host turns on the light, a guitar, rattles and hinos (books of chants) are produced and a long session of chanting begins. The chanting is melodic, almost song but not quite. I follow along as best I can. I notice that my Portuguese is beginning to get a whole lot better—the ayahuasca? Maybe. The room also waxes far brighter, glowing in yellows and light greens, and I notice a moment of physical relaxation, almost being tired—a yawn. Blips of color and light have landed on the page of my hino, and are starting to dance and play at leap-frog over the words. I no longer pay attention to the chanting and it fades into the background and I close my eyes where a universe of hues erupts and boils. I yawn again and let the colors in my head have their fun.

Some notes on the physical effects of ayahuasca. The literature and lore of ayahuasca indicates that the brew produces a more introspective, personal experience. I found this to be true, the tea must contain at least one alkaloid that is a depressant. So as opposed the “wide awake” feeling and extroversion of LSD, peyote, or MDMA, one becomes far quieter physically and mentally. Mescaline (the psychoactive in peyote) and MDMA are both analogues of amphetamine and hence their stimulant effect is a given. There is a body chill noticeable with ayahuasca, even on a warm night in São Paulo I felt sudden shivers on occasion. The following day I noticed that I was feeling quite warm and took my temperature, it was elevated—perhaps the reason for the body chills is a mild febrile effect of the drug. There is an increase in blood pressure with the drug. At first I was a bit concerned with the noticeable tightening in my chest, but it rapidly subsided as the drug entered its visual phase. Ayahuasca is also noted as a purgative—and it is. Several participants vomited as a result of drinking the brew—as I had fasted most of the day I was pretty much in the clear. Though I did have some rather unique bowel movements over the course of the evening.

Mid-ceremony most participants, including myself, dosed again, usually with only half the initial amount, and then a short ceremony was held for Santa Maria (marijuana). A joint is passed from participant to participant and chants about Santa Maria are voiced. Then once again a return to chanting, singing, and hallucinating. This time I really feel the effect of the drug, and can sense just how close to disassociation (a full psychic break with reality) I am. Ayahuasca is easily the most potent hallucinogen I have ever tried yet its effects are muted due to the short half-life of the drug. The intensity lasts no more than a half hour and then subsides into a pleasant background hum. The room continues to glow slightly and I return to the chanting. I look out under my lids at my companions, some have their eyes closed, some smile beatifically, and one sleeps comfortably on the floor. At last everyone rises, the chanting ends, a few “Our Fathers” and “Hail Marys” are recited, the participants hug each other and inquire about their respective experiences. It was a beautiful moment—I was lucky to be there.

There is a communality to the ritual, water is shared, ayahuasca is shared, and after the ceremony the participants have a meal and talk. Not surprisingly there was an unvoiced political undercurrent to the ceremony I attended. As I walked around the house acclimatizing myself before the ceremony I noticed an antifa and “Refugees Welcome” sticker on the kitchen wall. I queried my host about them and he said that a previous roommate of his had been an anarchist and then asked, “Do you know about anarchism?”

So it goes….

El Errante , El Errante , Paul seZ -- Paul's blog , Paul Z. Simons

Pure black: an emerging consensus among some comrades, by jason mcquinn  •  april 23, 2017, paul z. simons.

The term “black” anarchist has been thrown around recently in a number of international milieux and journals. Indeed during the last few years of my travels throughout North and South America and Europe I have noted repeated attempts to define, through action and theory, the ideas associated with black anarchy. Following is a brief, incomplete outline of some of the more common aspects of what black anarchists think and do. These tendencies are numbered for convenience, and not to show priority or importance.

Red Excursus: I will not discuss “red” anarchy as it seems well defined by the collectivist, syndicalist, communist variants of anarchist ideas that were developed more than a hundred years ago and still enjoy a great deal of popularity and adherents. I emphasize that I don’t see the two various strains as being mutually exclusive, opposed, or even necessarily very different at the macro level. The old sectarianism and exclusion, a gnawing symptom of Marxism and the Social Democracy, plays no role in this essay. I am attempting to describe and provide some topography to a growing, relatively new agreement among a particular group of my comrades, in doing so I support and encourage those who follow different anarchist ideas and paths. No one is wrong, no one is right. The best we can hope for is clarity, not hegemony.

1) Violence

In this context violence is defined as a tactic, whether applied to insurrection, riot, attentat , or simple refusal. There is an almost overwhelming consensus among the black anarchists that the use of violence is necessary, indeed desirable, perhaps essential. The international growth of the various FA(I)-IRF cells, the example of the Greek CCF and Revolutionary Struggle, the concomitant growth of the non-anarchist but equally engaging actions of the eco-extremists in Mexico, Chile and Brazil, and the myriad anonymous burnings, ATM destruction, and attacks that populate the current global anarchist media echo this resonance. Whether it is the Molotov arching gracefully through the night air, the flaming barricade, or the flagpole—turned truncheon—crashing into fascist bone, the black anarchist greets all with approval.

2) Individualist

There is a strong individualist strain in black anarchism, mostly as a function of activity and less due to long nights breathlessly reading Stirner. In essence when engaged in actions it’s easier to work in small groups, and sometimes alone rather than attempt to build large or even medium sized organizations. These small groups which I’ll call teams, a word taken from our Athenian comrades, bring into clear relief the importance of individual initiative, they decentralize decision and action, they emphasize clearly that while there is no I in team, there is an “m” and an “e.”

3) Nihilist

In this instance, nihilism I’ll interpret as the realpolitik of anarchism in 2017—all the various ideas, concepts and conceits of an anarchist victory via revolution or insurrection in the current context are nothing more than political heroin. Once this simple, obvious fact is accepted there are two courses, resignation and lassitude or savage attack without any real hope of success. The black anarchist chooses the latter, always.

4) Illegalist

A part of the black anarchist consensus is the desire to completely reject any compromise or cooperation with nation-state, Capital, and markets. Leading many in the milieu to undertake consciously political illegal activity. This varies from place to place but includes the positive activities of squatting, occupations, shoplifting, out-right store robbery, burglary and more. In terms of negative activities this new variant of illegalism includes refusal of all taxes, tolls, welfare, NGO handouts, and state-run free clinics.

5) Informal Organization

There is a real and healthy fear among the black anarchists of formal organization. The anti-organizational tendency is not new in the historical anarchist milieu, nor in the various anarchisms that saw first light since the 1970s in the USA, Canada, and parts of Western Europe. The open espousal of informal, temporary structures and limited adherence to organizational tenets is, however, very new. This loosening of the organizational form, the inclusionary laissez-faire stance adopted by black anarchists and their organizations may be one of the tendencies most lasting contributions. In most historical cases anarchists have constructed organizations that virtually ooze the ideas and characteristics of the dominant society. In a few short years the black anarchists have done a great deal of theoretical violence to such organizational nonsense, in the future I hope they do more.

This outline of black anarchism is brief, incomplete, and a piece of journalism, not conjecture. This is what I saw, what I experienced in the past several years visiting and working with anarchists on three continents. It is both memoriam and prospectus.

Essays , Issue #2 , Jason McQuinn

Raoul vaneigem: the other situationist, by jason mcquinn  •  april 22, 2017, jason mcquinn.

(Note: The following essay was written as an introduction to the 2012 LBC Books edition of the 1983 Donald Nicholson-Smith translation of Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations under the new title of Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations. )

Raoul Vaneigem’s Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations has, despite its epochal importance, often been overshadowed by Guy Debord’s equally significant Society of the Spectacle . And Vaneigem himself, along with his wider insurrectionary and social-revolutionary contributions, has too often also been overshadowed by Debord’s very successfully self-promoted mystique. As a result Vaneigem’s contributions have been rather consistently underappreciated when not at times intentionally minimized or even ignored. However, there are good reasons to take Vaneigem and his Treatise more seriously.

The Situationist myth

[pullquote]“In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish that society.”[/pullquote]

Only a short year later the anarchistic (though fairly incoherent) March 22nd Movement and the charismatic “Danny the Red” (Daniel Cohn-Bendit), along with a small group of more coherently-radical, reinvented Enragés (who were protégés of the SI), helped incite spreading student protests, initially from the University of Paris at Nanterre to the Sorbonne, and then throughout France. A protest that soon led to the tumultuous – now semi-mythical – “May Days” as student strikes and street protests were amplified by a huge wave of wildcat strikes that became a general strike and severely threatened the stability of the Gaullist regime. Situationist themes more and more frequently appeared in this social ferment. They were expressed not only in SI books and pamphlets, but most importantly through increasingly widespread graffiti, posters, occupations and other interventions. “Power to the imagination.” “Never work.” “Boredom is counterrevolutionary.” “Live without dead time.” “Occupy the factories.” “It is forbidden to forbid.” “In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish that society.” “I take my desires for reality because I believe in the reality of my desires.” “Under the paving stones, the beach.” Wherever one looked the SI’s slogans were urging the rebellion forward! While most other supposedly “radical” groups were peddling the same old (or the same old “new”) leftist lines and rituals which usually, like the Stalinists in the French Communist Party, amounted to urging restraint and respect for their leaderships. Or at most, the urging of politically-correct, “responsible” agitation, respecting the limits of directly democratic procedures which tolerated the inclusion of Leninists, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists and liberal reformists of all types, guaranteeing their incoherent impotence.

Only hints of social revolution were really ever in sight during the May Days, despite the recurring waves of violent street demonstrations and the widespread students’ and workers’ occupations that culminated in the massive (but in the end, frustratingly passive) general strike across France. However, even hints of social revolution are never taken lightly, as otherwise sober governing bureaucrats began to panic, and at least the thought of revolution began to be taken seriously by the general population. A survey immediately following the events indicated that 20% of the French population would have participated in a “revolution,” while 33% would have opposed a “military intervention.” ³ Charles De Gaulle even fled at one point for safety in Germany before returning to France once he had ensured the backing of the French military. These hints of revolution were especially powerful when much of the world was watching while experiencing its own various waves of anti-war protest, constant student and worker unrest, and a creative cultural contestation that at the time (throughout the 1960s at least) had as yet no very clear limits. Then it all quickly evaporated with the excuse of new national elections welcomed by all the major powers of the old world in France: the Gaullists, the Communist and Socialist parties, the established unions, etc.

As it turned out, in the 1960s most people in France, like most people around the world, were not ready for social revolution, though a few of the more radical of the French anarchists, the Enragés and the Situationists had made a decent effort to move their world in that direction. In the end, neither the more radical of the anarchists nor the Enragés and Situationists proved to be up to the task. And the historic trajectory of radical activities through the ensuing half century is still grappling with the question of just what it will take. But it remains hard to argue that, among those who even tried, it wasn’t the Situationists who were able to take the highest ground in those heady May Days in 1968.

The Situationist Reality

The Situationist International, created in 1957, was a grouping of various artists from a number of tendencies – influenced by Dada, Surrealism and the Lettrists – who to one degree or another wished to suppress art as a specialized activity and realize art in everyday life. The group published a journal titled Internationale Situationiste from its beginning, founded by Guy Debord, who was the dominant (and sometimes domineering) personality within the organization. At first, the Situationist emphasis was largely a continuation of the radical Lettrist investigations into filmmaking, psychogeography 4 and unitary urbanism, 5 including the development of a theory and practice of creating situations, in conjunction with the practice of dérive (unplanned drifting, following the influences of one’s environment) and détournement (a practice of subversive diversion, reversal or recontextualization of commoditized cultural elements). But the membership changed frequently, sometimes drastically, over the life of the organization with exclusions and denunciations becoming far more the rule than the exception. And with the changes in membership came changes in emphasis and direction. Of the original founders only Debord himself was left at the dismal end. 6

Fairly early on there was an increasing split between those pushing more and more to radicalize the organization under the leadership of Debord (who after 1959 abandoned his own filmmaking for the duration), and those who intended to continue functioning as radically subversive, but still practicing, artists – like the Danish painter and sculptor Asger Jorn, his brother Jørgen Nash, the Dutch painter and (hyper-) architect Constant Nieuwenhuys. The radical artists regrouped in a number of directions, including around Jacqueline de Jong’s Situationist Times , published from 1962-1964 (in 6 issues), and Jørgen Nash’s Situationist Bauhaus project, not to mention their influence on the Dutch Provo movement. The poetic-artistic radicals, on the other hand, continued the SI itself under the influence of Debord’s developing synthesis of Marxism and Lettrism. (Of note, a central player, Asger Jorn, left the SI in 1961. But as a good friend of Debord who continued to fund the SI, as well as being the companion of Jacqueline de Jong and brother of Jørgen Nash, his loyalties remained divided.) It was during and after the development of these original splits and the redirection of the SI that Raoul Vaneigem (in 1961) and most of the other non-artist radicals – including Mustapha Khayati, René Viénet, 7 René Riesel 8 and Gianfranco Sanguinetti 9 – signed on to the project.

From its beginning the Situationist International fully embraced a practice of scathing critique and scandalous subversions. And at the same time, initially through the impetus of Guy Debord, the SI at least attempted to incorporate and integrate many of the more radical social ideas of the time into its critical theory. Before the SI appeared, the Lettrists had already become notorious for the blasphemous 1950 Easter Mass preaching the death of God at the Cathedral of Notre Dame by ex-seminary student Michel Mourre. 10 The subsequently-organized Lettrist International (including Debord) launched its own little blasphemous attack on the aging cinema icon Charlie Chaplin in 1952, interrupting his press conference by scattering leaflets titled “No More Flat Feet.” By the time the SI had settled on its final radical trajectory, explosive events like the 1966-67 Strasbourg scandal – which culminated in the funding and distribution of 10,000 copies of Mustapha Khayati’s Situationist attack On the Poverty of Student Life 11 by the University of Strasbourg Student Union – were inevitable. The massive SI graffiti, postering and publishing campaigns from March through May of 1968 can be seen as the culmination of this line of attack.

At the same time, the SI’s exploration, incorporation and integration of scandalously radical social theory paralleled its practice of subversive scandal. Although the backbone of Situationist theory remained Marxist, it was at least a Marxism staunchly critical of Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist and Maoist ideology and bureaucracy, and a Marxism at least partially open to many of the more radical currents marginalized or defeated by the great Marxist-inspired counter-revolutions experienced around the world. Along with the avant-garde art movements like Dada and Surrealism, there was room for at least the mention of a diversity of anarchists and dissident non-Leninist Marxists, radical poets, lumpen terrorists, and even transgressive characters like Lautréamont and de Sade in the Situationist pantheon. It can be argued that it was the coupling of its penchant for scandalous incitements with its shift from experimental artistic practices to developing a more and more radically critical theory that made for whatever lasting success the SI attained. Certainly, the creatively subversive gestures without the radically critical theory, or the radically critical theory without the creatively subversive gestures would never have captured imaginations as did their serial combination and recombination. It should also be noted that although the SI obviously was not the creator of the May Days in 1968 France, the SI was the only organized group which had announced the possibility of events like these, and which was actively agitating for them before they occurred. Although some pronouncements by Debord and other Situationists, and some comments by enthusiastic “pro-situationists” 12 after the fact sometimes bordered on megalomania, at least there were reasons for misjudgments about the SI’s actual effectiveness. They were not merely figments of imagination.

The SI theorists: Guy Debord or Raoul Vaneigem

That the two most important theorists of the SI were Guy Debord and Raoul Vaneigem is indisputable. Of what their contributions (and their relative values) consisted is another matter. At first, during the heat of the struggles in France the meanings of their contributions were generally considered to be so similar as not to require much analysis. However, it didn’t take long – especially after Vaneigem left the SI in 1970 – for divergent lines of interpretation to form and attributions or accusations of “Vaneigemism” and “Debordism” to begin flying in some quarters. The pro-Debordists tended to emphasize the over-riding importance of Marxism to the Situationist project, along with a resulting accompanying emphasis on sociological analysis and critique of class society – centering on Debord’s concept of the spectacle. It was also from this direction that most talk of Vaneigemism seems to have come (in fact, I have yet to come across anyone claiming to similarly criticize Debord based on any ideas or analyses from Vaneigem). The so-called “Vaneigemists” seem to be lumped into this category on the basis of an alleged tendency to see potential signs of total revolt in minor or partial refusals within everyday life, 13 along with a resulting exaggeration of the potentialities of radical subjectivity for the construction of an intersubjective revolutionary subject. At its extreme, the argument equates radical subjectivity with attempts at narrowly “personal liberation” or even bourgeois egoism, implying that any true participation in the construction of a collective revolutionary subject demands the complete subordination of one’s personal life to a rationalist conception of revolution. 14 While the former argument would seem to be largely a question of emphasis (just how important can refusals within everyday life actually be for potential social revolutionary upsurges in comparison to mass sociological factors), the latter appears to verge on the negation of most of what is distinctive and innovative within the Situationist project! At the least these conflicts reveal an underlying tension that was never resolved within the SI.

[pullquote]This underlying tension between the sociological and the personal, between the idea of a collective or social revolutionary project and a revolution of everyday life, still remains the central unresolved problem of the libertarian social revolutionary milieu to this day. (The impossibility of including and incorporating any critique of everyday life in the authoritarian, bureaucratic and inevitably unimaginative mainstream left is one major reason for its own steady decline.)[/pullquote]

This underlying tension between the sociological and the personal, between the idea of a collective or social revolutionary project and a revolution of everyday life, still remains the central unresolved problem of the libertarian social revolutionary milieu to this day. (The impossibility of including and incorporating any critique of everyday life in the authoritarian, bureaucratic and inevitably unimaginative mainstream left is one major reason for its own steady decline.) The unfinished synthesis and critique of the SI is just one of many unfinished syntheses and critiques which litter radical history from 1793 to 1848, from 1871 to the great revolutionary assaults of the 20th century in Mexico, Russia, Germany, Italy, China and Spain. Certainly, as Vaneigem argues in his Treatise, there has to have always been “an energy…locked up in everyday life which can move mountains and abolish distances.” Because it is never from purely sociological forces that revolutions spring. These forces themselves are mere abstract, symbolic formulations concealing the everyday realities, choices and activities of millions of unique individual persons in all their complexity and interwoven relationships.

Despite Guy Debord’s increasing fascination with the austere, rationalistic sociological theorization revealed in the Society of the Spectacle , his entire commitment to the critique of art and everyday life, and his genuine search for new forms of lived radical subversion guarantee a substantial understanding of the central importance of Vaneigem’s work for radical theory. Still, though I know of no libertarian radicals who deny the critical importance of Debord’s work, there remain plenty who minimize, or even denigrate, the importance of Vaneigem’s. What is it in Vaneigem’s poetic investigations of the insurrectionary and social revolutionary possibilities of refusal and revolt in everyday life that so threaten these would-be libertarians? Could it be that these supposedly radical libertarians – whether “social” anarchists or some form or other of non-orthodox Marxists – may not be so different from the decaying mainstream left as they imagine?

Whereas Debord used his Society of the Spectacle largely to update Lukácsian Marxism by elaborating the sociological connections between some of the more important aspects of modern capitalism, 15 Vaneigem sought in his Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations to elaborate the subjectively-experienced, phenomenal connections between most of these same aspects of capitalist society. In Society of the Spectacle this meant Debord focused on: description of contemporary capital developing new forms of commodity production and exchange, the increasing importance of consumption over production, the integration of the working class through new mechanisms of passive participation, particularly the development of spectacular forms of mediation – communication and organization, and the overarching integration of these new forms of production and exchange in a continually developing, self-reproducing sociological totality which he called “spectacular commodity society.” Vaneigem’s innovation is the systematic description of these same developments from the other side, the side of lived subjective experience in everyday life: phenomenal descriptions of humiliation, isolation, work, commodity exchange, sacrifice and separation he has himself undergone or suffered, which help readers interpret their own experiences similarly.

Raoul Vaneigem and the revolution of everyday life

Raoul Vaneigem’s Treatise was a first, exploratory 20th century attempt at the descriptive phenomenology of modern slavery and its refusal. 16 Through the Treatise Vaneigem urged rebellion against this enslavement through the refusal of work and submission, along with the reappropriation of autonomous desire, play and festivity. This phenomenology of lived rebellion was soon played out in the protests, occupations, graffiti, and the general festivity of the 1968 Paris May Days – within mere months of its initial publication. This is what makes Vaneigem still exciting to read a half century later.

A look at the wide variety of the most popular slogans and graffiti from the May Days in Paris – the ones that captured people’s imagination and gave the period its magic – makes it hard to ignore the fact that the emotional power they expressed (and still express) was based primarily on the excitement of the new focus on changing everyday life. And that Vaneigem’s Treatise was probably their most common source. Largely gone were the old leftist slogans exhorting workers to sacrifice for the advancement of their class organizations, to put themselves at the service of their class leaders, or to build a new society by helping class organizations take over management of the old one. Instead, people were exhorted to organize themselves directly on their own not only outside of the ruling organizations, but also outside of the pseudo-oppositional organizations of the left. And not with the relatively abstract political goal of building systems of Socialism or Communism, but with the here and now, practical goal of organizing their own life-activity with other rebels directly and without giving up their initiative and autonomy to representatives and bureaucrats.

This refusal of representation and bureaucracy, along with the emphasis on autonomous desire, play and festivity obviously has much more in common with the historical theory and practice of anarchists than with most Marxists. In fact, Marxists of the old left and the new will often be the first to point this out – and criticize it. But there still remains a surprisingly large area of crossover and cross-pollination between the multitude of creative, grass-roots movements, rebellions and uprisings within the broad libertarian milieu and some of the more libertarian-leaning of the minority traditions within Marxism. Of the latter, it was the council communists in particular, whose politics were largely adopted by the SI. And this is where the deep ambiguity of the SI is based. All of Marxism – including its dissenting minorities, and all of its myriad splinters, both mainstream and marginal – is fundamentally based upon the unavoidable sociological perspectives of species, society and class. All Marxism begins and ends with these abstractions. This is counter to the broad libertarian tradition, where actual people – with all their messy lives and struggles, hopes and dreams – are necessarily the center of theory and practice. This is the real “unbridgeable gap” – as the sectarians so love to put it. But it is between the ideologically-constructed, abstract subjectivity of reified concepts (like society and the proletariat) and the actual, phenomenal, lived subjectivity of people in revolt together. The SI was never able to overcome this divide. Nor was Vaneigem’s Treatise . But Vaneigem did make it farther than anyone else at the time in his text.

[pullquote]The only reason sociological investigations, analyses and theories can tell us anything beyond the most obvious banalities is the extent to which they reflect the dominant forms of enslavement in a society of modern slavery. “Scientific,” “objective” descriptions incorporating sociological explanations for mass human behavior depend upon predictable patterns of human action based upon broad social dictates of conduct, codified and enforced by institutions of domination.[/pullquote]

If it hasn’t yet ever been made clear enough, then now is the time to finally put to rest the necessarily ideological nature of any and every reified collective subject, whether religious, liberal, Marxist, fascist or nationalist, reactionary or revolutionary. And this isn’t a question of adopting a methodological individualism over a methodological holism. One or the other may or may not be an appropriate choice for any particular specific investigation or analysis, depending upon one’s goals. But beginning with a reality defined in terms of an abstracted species, society or class makes no more sense than beginning with a reality defined in terms of abstract individuals. The only reason sociological investigations, analyses and theories can tell us anything beyond the most obvious banalities is the extent to which they reflect the dominant forms of enslavement in a society of modern slavery. “Scientific,” “objective” descriptions incorporating sociological explanations for mass human behavior depend upon predictable patterns of human action based upon broad social dictates of conduct, codified and enforced by institutions of domination. They are sociologies of mechanical human behavior. No significant, non-trivial sociology of autonomous self-activity is possible, since there is no possibility of predicting genuinely free, autonomous activity. This means that while Marxism may attempt to investigate, analyze and interpret human activity under the institutions of modern slavery – using scientific, dialectical or any other semi-logical means – it can tell us very little of any detailed significance about what the abolition of capital and state might actually look like. And to the extent that Marxist ideologies demand any particular forms, stages or means of struggle they will always necessarily make the wrong demands. Because the only right forms, stages and means of struggle are those chosen by people in revolt constructing their own methods. Council communism, as a form of Marxism, is not essentially different from the other ideologies of social democracy on this score. Nor, for that matter, are all the various ideological variations of anarchism struggling for an increased share in the ever-shrinking leftist-militant market.

[pullquote]Class struggle is not a metaphysical given. It is the cumulative result of actual flesh-and-blood personal decisions to fight enslavement or submit to it.[/pullquote]

Class struggle is not a metaphysical given. It is the cumulative result of actual flesh-and-blood personal decisions to fight enslavement or submit to it. Those who wish to reduce these personal decisions to effects of social laws, metaphyiscal principles, psychological drives or ideological dictates are all our enemies to the extent that we refuse to submit. And we do refuse.

1. La Société du Spectacle was first translated into English as The Society of the Spectacle by Fredy Perlman and Jon Supak (Black & Red, 1970; rev. ed. 1977), then by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Zone, 1994), and finally by Ken Knabb (Rebel Press, 2004).

2. Traité de savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations was first translated into English by Paul Sieveking and John Fullerton as The Revolution of Everyday Life (Practical Paradise Publications , 1979), then by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Rebel Press/Left Bank Books, 1994) and (Rebel Press, 2001).

3. Dogan, Mattei. “How Civil War Was Avoided in France.” International Political Science Review/Revue internationale de science politique , vol. 5, #3: 245–277.

4. In his 1955 essay, “Introduction to a critique of urban geography” (originally appearing in Les Lèvres Nues #6), Guy Debord suggests that: “Psychogeography could set for itself the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals. The adjective psychogeographical, retaining a rather pleasing vagueness, can thus be applied to the findings arrived at by this type of investigation, to their influence on human feelings, and even more generally to any situation or conduct that seems to reflect the same spirit of discovery.” (Ken Knabb, editor and translator, Situationist International Anthology , 1989, p. 5.)

5. Unitary urbanism consists in an experimental “critique of urbanism” that “merges objectively with the interests of a comprehensive subversion.” “It is the foundation for a civilization of leisure and play.” (unattributed, “Unitary Urbanism at the end of the 1950s,” Internationale Situationiste #3, December 1959.)

6. By the time the SI disbanded in 1972 Guy Debord and Gianfranco Sanguinetti (relatively new to the organization) were the only remaining members.

7. René Viénét is the listed author of Enragés and Situationists in the Occupation Movement: Paris, May, 1968 , essentially the SI’s account of its activities during the May Days, written in collaboration with others in the group.

8. René Riesel was one of the Enragés at Nanterre who went on to join the SI.

9. Gianfranco Sanguinetti is notorious for his post-Situationist activities, most importantly, his scandalous authorship – under the pseudonym Censor – of The Real Report on the Last Chance to Save Capitalism in Italy , which was mailed to 520 of the most powerful industrialists, academics, politicians and journalists in Italy, purporting (as an assumed pillar of Italian industrialism) to support the practice of state security forces using terrorism under cover in order to discredit radical opposition. When Sanguinetti revealed his authorship he was expelled from Italy.

10.This episode led to a split in the Lettrists and the later founding of the more radical Lettrist International, which itself was one of the founding groups of the Situationist International. Debord was a member of the Lettrist International. Unfortunately, it’s reported that a quick-thinking organist drowned out most of the Notre-Dame intervention.

11. The full title is On the Poverty of Student Life considered in Its Economic, Political, Psychological, Sexual, and Especially Intellectual Aspects, with a Modest Proposal for Doing Away With It . Mustapha Khayati was the main, but not the sole, author.

12. “Pro-situationist” or “pro-situ” was the (sometimes derisive) label given by Situationists to those who (often uncritically, or less than fully critically) supported and promoted Situationist ideas and practices as they (often incompletely) understood them, rather than constructing their own autonomous theoretical and practical activities. This includes most of the Situationist-inspired activities in the SF Bay area in the 1970s wake of the SI’s own dissolution. There was a proliferation of tiny pro-situ groups like the Council for the Eruption of the Marvelous, Negation, Contradiction, 1044, the Bureau of Public Secrets, Point Blank!, The Re-invention of Everyday Life and For Ourselves. Most Situationist-influenced anarchists at the time (for example, Black & Red in Detroit, and a bit later John & Paula Zerzan’s Upshot, the Fifth Estate group, Bob Black’s Last International, the group around Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed , and others) stood apart from these interesting attempts to carry on the Situationist project in a very different North American social, political, economic and cultural situation, if for no other reason than basic disagreements with the SI’s Marxism, councilism, fetishization of technology, ideological rationalism, inadequate ecological critique and seemingly complete ignorance of indigenous resistance. (Which is not to say that Situationist-influenced anarchists didn’t have their own, often equally-debilitating problems.)

13. See Ken Knabb’s translator’s introduction to the third chapter of Raoul Vaneigem’s From Wildcat Strike to Total Self-Management , included in Knabb’s Bureau of Public Secrets web site at: http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/selfmanagement.htm

14. “Vaneigemism is an extreme form of the modern anti-puritanism that has to pretend to enjoy what is supposed to be enjoyable…. Vaneigemist ideological egoism holds up as the radical essence of humanity that most alienated condition of humanity for which the bourgeoisie was reproached, which ‘left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest’….” – page 256 of Ken Knabb, “The Society of Situationism” published in Public Secrets (Bureau of Public Secrets, 1997).

15. Debord borrowed heavily from the Socialisme ou Barbarie group’s flirtation with council communism, or councilist social democracy. He was a member of S. ou B. for a time.

16. Vaneigem’s is so far the best update of Max Stirner’s original nineteenth century phenomenology of modern slavery and autonomous insurrection, Der Einzige und Sein Eigenthum , mistranslated into English as The Ego and Its Own . (A more accurate translation would be The Unique and Its Property. ) Although Vaneigem mentions Stirner in his text, it is unclear how well he understands Stirner’s intent, and how much he has been influenced by Stirner.

Dispatches from Greece Three: Notes from two months in Exarcheia

By jason mcquinn  •  march 7, 2017,  el errante.

“Come and get food, Motherfuckers!”

The call, in a slight accent, echoes down the marble steps of the squat—the daily common meal is ready. In many ways this call for food encapsulates the nature of squatting in Greece. There is a complex relationship between squatters, a familiarity born of a shared life and a shared enemy. There is also a challenge, and slight but perceptible pressure to maintain relentless social contestation, always working, pushing towards the Idea. The results can take multiple forms, actions, demos, art, theater. A number of the squatters use art as a weapon. They paint, they build installations, they alter and manipulate the urban environment—joyfully. They plot, they plan actions, they look for openings in the armor of the Social Enemy to strike and cause harm. They speak of love and hatred, with no embarrassment. There is camaraderie, days spent talking, laughing, shadow-boxing, spray-painting or wheat-pasting on the walls of the squat. One of my most profound memories is hearing laughter ringing through the building as the younger squatters horse around late at night. Finally there is a fierce and abiding loyalty—made of living, working, fighting together. I knew, once accepted into the squat, that whatever happened no one there would ever deliberately let harm come to me, and my Comrades knew that I was committed to them in the same manner. This, of all things, proves the worth of living in common, in Commune. Physical, emotional, spiritual safety in the world is a joke perpetrated directly by the Social Enemy—how much better do anarchists do it! Face to face, the commitment becomes real—a material thing, not some nightmare uniformed asshole threatening prison, parole and degradation. I’ll take the threat of several black clad figures in the middle of night acting on conscience to help a Comrade over a cop loaded with laws and punishments. Some of the squatters are guests, visiting from almost every point on Earth, though during my time—primarily Europe, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and the USA. Others are long-term, mostly Greek, and the occasional American.

Almost everyone takes turns prepping food, and sitting an early morning defense shift, the only two real “chores” at the squat. Everything else is pretty much left to chance, cleaning the toilets, sweeping and mopping common areas, emptying ashtrays, occasionally standing outside on the street when things in Exarcheia get tense, and making tea or sweets for the Assembly. This arrangement overburdens some folks, and it underburdens others, which is the nature of non-coercive social relations. Something to be accepted, not denied, nor decried. It’s the way things are.

The squat I found myself in is considered one of the “blackest,” meaning that most of the explicitly political squatters are either anarchist individualists or nihilists. Other squats tend to be less black, more red—meaning anarcho-communist, syndicalist or some stripe of collectivist. Some of the finer points of theory are abandoned in favor of the nature of the relationships that the different squats and squatters have developed over the years. Perhaps an overstatement, but a balance of animosity and agreement reigns between the squats. Sometimes forming alliances, occasionally coming to blows. Which is one reason that the December 6th 2016 riot was so significant—where personal and political grudges were shelved in favor of an all-out coordinated effort at defending the community from police incursion. Even the authorities registered surprise in the main stream media after the night of rioting, going so far as to authorize a few patrols near Exarcheia Square by cops in armored jeeps. This presence was quickly curtailed, the authorities realizing that the provocation was hardly worth the potential backlash. In fact only one squat bowed out from the defense of Exarcheia—and it came under criticism for what was seen as a real inability to play well with others.

“Motherfuckers! I said food!”

The reminder, this time registered with some anger by the cook, is greeted with muted derision and groaning by the residents. It’s early by squatter’s time—1pm—and those left in the building are sleeping. I drag myself out of bed, force down a coffee and make a plate of food. It’s good—potatoes, rice, salad and some kind of fried meat. Could be seafood—eel maybe.

I talked to the cook later that day and asked about the meat, she said, “Sheep cheeks and tongue…good right?” I smiled and said, “Really good, thanks.”

Like the meal, living in commune is like that. The more you try new stuff, the better it gets.

El Errante , El Errante , MS News , Paul Z. Simons

Dispatches from greece two: the exarcheia commune rises and defends itself, a review of the battle, by jason mcquinn  •  december 10, 2016.

“Ons Danse le Lachrymo…” Graffiti, France, July 2016 (transl. “We Dance the Teargas”) “Comrade, will you watch these while I throw one?” He is tall, masked from head to toe in black, and is known to me. As he speaks he motions to a milk crate stuffed with Molotovs.

“Sure…go ahead,” I say as I light a cigarette and settle in to guard the precious weapons stash while he tosses the thing at the Social Enemy. Ten minutes later he returns and in spite of the dark night, his black clothing, and the shadow we stand in, he glows with happiness—like the Molotov he just launched, he is alight.

The strategic plan included blocking all the approaches to the Square and by establishing a secondary system of barricades to neutralize the unfortunately offset side streets that link the main avenues. The side streets were one of the real dangers of the plan, because should the Police actually have the ability to turn a barricade they would then have flanking access to at least one, perhaps several, adjacent streets and barricades. The barricade that my team was tasked with defending was located such that the side street would have given the cops the advantage of flanking us effectively from the side and rear. Not good. In order to counter this threat a series of smaller side barricades were set up on these side streets, effectively slowing any belligerent force from going on a free ride from one street to the next, one point of defense to the next. Two small pedestrian streets also lead into the Square and these were barricaded as well. Finally there was a hope that at one or two points the anarchists could push hard enough to move the fighting up the street effectively expanding their territory and maybe even be able to sever a police line of reinforcement, or even better, retreat.

The one huge downside to the system of barricades was simple—if one or several were turned it would have given to the police the ability to flank every remaining barricade from the rear. A rock and a hard place scenario. Everyone seemed aware of this, and as fighting was heard in other streets I saw more than one rioter glance nervously over their shoulder in anticipation of a police charge from the rear. Fortunately this never happened.

The primary tactical component on the anarchist side was the barricade—construction, defense, and use as a weapon. The Exarcheia barricade varied from street to street. Usually low, sometimes waist high, on occasion higher, but never above eye-level so that the fighters could see over and anticipate police charges. Most included tires, wood taken from construction sites, large planters from the sidewalks, anything that could be ripped out of the ground, torn off a wall, or broken was used to raise the barricade just one inch taller. In one case two steel police barricades had been used to block a side street. In many instances barricades caught fire, either deliberately set or by accident. Once alight, the fires were allowed burn unchecked. The actual battle tactic was to taunt, harass and generally disrespect the forces of authority in a vocal and physical fashion. This included standing in front of the barricade throwing stones at the cops in the hopes of pushing them off their adjacent corner. Occasional chants could be heard rising up from various barricades, the only one I recognized being a chant calling cops murderers. The cops would charge and be driven off by Molotov and stone barrages. In one case the barricade I was at was turned by the cops, but only for a moment. A swift counter charge by anarchists pushed them off the barricade and back down the street. It’s fun to watch a cop retreat, especially as the ground around them sputters and roars in flame and smoke.[pullquote] The actual battle tactic was to taunt, harass and generally disrespect the forces of authority in a vocal and physical fashion. This included standing in front of the barricade throwing stones at the cops in the hopes of pushing them off their adjacent corner. Occasional chants could be heard rising up from various barricades, the only one I recognized being a chant calling cops murderers. The cops would charge and be driven off by Molotov and stone barrages. [/pullquote]

In terms of cop tactics they are hard to guess. But it seemed a pattern of varied harassment and probing. They seemed to move personnel from one barricade to another over the course of the night. The barricade I was at was very active with three or four charges an hour, usually beginning with a barrage of flash bang grenades followed by teargas, loads of teargas; then a charge, and a retreat. I saw this tactic deployed over and over, on almost every street. Some streets, hotly contested early in the evening, were virtually empty an hour or two later. Other streets, like mine, felt the brunt of the fighting. There was one barricade situated on a downhill street, in other words allowing some tactical advantage to the cops on a charge, which while contested, it was not a main point of fighting. I kept thinking that the reason must be that the retreat was hampered by the sloped street. Finally, the weather helped the insurgents– it was a humid, rainy cool night. The two pedestrian walkways, swathed in tiles that get slick as shit when wet, went effectively uncontested. The cops realizing that short of wearing shoes with soles slathered in krazy glue there was no way to safely run and retreat on a surface that was, in effect, as treacherous as ice. Almost all insurgent forces like inclement weather to fight in especially against regular troops, once Special Forces guys told me that rain and 45-55 degrees Fahrenheit is sufficiently gloomy for regular soldiers to begin to lose heart. In his words, “It tears the morale out of you.” Athens on the evening of December 6, 2016 was misty/slight drizzle, with a temperature hovering at 50 degrees. Perfect.

[pullquote] The Exarcheia Molotov is a brilliant technical innovation of the weapon, and worth taking note of. [/pullquote]The Exarcheia Molotov is a brilliant technical innovation of the weapon, and worth taking note of. In general they use 500 ml beer bottles, filled half way or a bit less with a flammable liquid, usually gas. They then take a length of gauze bandage and extend a portion into the gas and tape the remainder at the opening of the bottle for a fuse. The traditional dangling fuse being a relic of the past. This accomplishes two things, first as the bottle is only filled half way, the gauze wicks gas and inundates the remaining air in the bottle with gas fumes. Turning the Exarcheia Molotov from a simple device that delivers fire into—a bomb. The damn things actually explode in massive purplish red flame as the remaining liquid gas erupts and spreads fire to anything it touches. Next the taping of the wick at the opening of the bottle, again inundated with liquid gas makes a perfect “fuse” it can be easily lit and thrown without the danger of self-immolation by a flopping, flaming piece of cloth. I would very much like to meet and congratulate the folks who developed this thing. It’s brilliant, it’s easy, and the Athens Police hate them like the plague—with good reason. The Exarcheia Molotov is a fearsome and effective weapon. Some comrades have further advanced this innovation with an attached canister, which explodes on impact. I have no idea what’s in this canister and asked one of the guys who was throwing these infernal devices what made them work, but as he spoke no English, and as I speak no Greek it remains a mystery. The explosion is loud, like a flash bang, with the attendant dispersal of flaming gasoline to the surrounding area. More information later, perhaps.

Hand thrown chunks of whatever. The most desperate thing I saw in Exarcheia that night was insurgents scrambling to get their hands on stuff to throw. One scene that I’ll always remember was of a bunch of young people kicking a pylon cemented in the sidewalk to loosen it. They eventually succeeded and it had the added benefit of producing further hunks of concrete when it was finally hauled out. Tiles torn out of walls, empty bottles, anything not actually nailed down was loosened, ripped out and thrown at the police.

In addition I saw slingshots, and an actual, honest-to-God, David-slays-Goliath sling being used. The projectiles used included ball-bearings, marbles, stone or concrete chunks. These were clearly weapons of harassment, used during lulls to further infuriate and demoralize the police.

Finally, though linked to a cop weapon, the anarchists have found the use of gas masks absolutely essential. There was little breeze on the night of December 6th and even small amounts of teargas were devastating as it settled into corners, doorways and hung in the damp, unmoving air.

On the cop side little was new, the usual suspects. Flash bang grenades, though in Athens these don’t use launchers, they are hand thrown. What is devastating in their repertoire is teargas, Brazilian teargas. Having been gassed recently in France, I’m beginning to be something of a lachrymator connoisseur, and I can tell you that Greek gas is dense, acrid and acidic—far more so than the Gallic variant. In terms of first aid there is Riopan. A kind of Maalox, but in handy single serving foil packets. The ground around the various barricades was littered with these white foil packs. And the faces of many insurgents looked clown-like as they poured the white liquid liberally into eyes, onto the mucous membranes, and finally taking a swallow to clear the acidic, noxious gas residue out of the throat.

Order of Battle

Anarchists: 800-1,000. Organized as teams of between 5 and 10 fighters. Those from Exarcheia were assigned to various barricades and maintained themselves within their area. Those from outside Exarcheia roamed, the sound of flash bang grenades drawing them to specific streets, militants would frantically move from barricade to barricade as cop charges changed location and intensity. In a lull most hung out in Exarcheia, drank beer, talked, and scrounged for more stuff to throw. The number dwindled over the night to perhaps two hundred when the militants finally dumped arms and hostilities ceased, about 11:00 pm.

Cops: 200-300 (a guess). Based on my observations of the number per charge (20 cops maximum) and the number of barricades being simultaneously probed and harassed—upwards of five, and the number of police needed to provide logistics, support, command, reserves, and to steer traffic well out of the area.

As I sit and write this on the Isle of Lesvos a short 24 hours after the battle a number of scenes come to mind. Sitting in a room discussing preparations for the night, many of the militants standing, pacing, nervous with energy to get started. As I guarded the Molotovs having some Italian comrades wander by. They asked for a Molotov, which I provided and we all agreed that the Greeks had done something very right. Helping a young woman overcome by gas, who, when the Riopan got into her eyes and nose immediately recovered. Like a stoned person suddenly sober—she straightened, said, “Thank you Comrade,” turned and headed back to the barricade she was attending to. The sight of burning barricades, great arcs of Molotovs fuses sputtering as they flew and struck home in the ranks of the police. The shouting, chanting, laughing, talking–the feeling of really finally being alive. One’s hair standing on end as the flash bangs explode and teargas projectiles clatter on the ground and cloud the street. Finally on my way back to the apartment I was staying at, I noticed a small store open, with several people playing cards at a table in the back. I knocked on the door—needed smokes and something to drink. They motioned me in, and asked where I was from, a few questions and finally one of the older men asked, “So tonight did you see the riots?”

“Yes,” I answered not wanting to give too much away.

“And who are you with, the young people or the cops?”

Hesitantly I said, “The young people, always.”

He smiled broadly and answered, “So are we.”

Dispatches from Greece One: Vox, and Crossing the Rubicon

By jason mcquinn  •  december 3, 2016.

(All material in this dispatch was approved for release by the relevant parties)

“We were in an Assembly at the Polytechnic discussing solidarity with political prisoners, and many were interested in helping with money and support. No one had any money so we squatted Vox and made it into a café to make money.”

I am sitting in the Vox cafe with Tharasis, an anarchist associated with the space and the action group Rubicon. The space is huge by my standards, airy—massive windows open out onto Exarcheai Square, multiple tables and chairs, a small bar with an espresso machine, and a fridge stuffed with beer stands to one side. A small library is also present. Tharasis continues, “So far we have made 160,000 euro to help the prisoners.”

“That’s a lot…” I mutter.

“Not really, we pay no rent, no electricity, nothing. It helps, though, prisoners in Greece get nothing. They have to buy everything, toilet paper, toothpaste, everything,” he says as he lights another cigarette.

“Mostly anarchists, nihilists, some others, we make sure that the activities they were imprisoned for were political, and that in prison they have shown solidarity. That’s it. We don’t have a test to see if they meet our standards.”

Vox also houses a small medical and dental clinic in the basement, an initiative that came from outside the Vox collective but was considered important enough to support. The space also hosts other assemblies and groups.

“And then Rubicon…” I ask.

“Well Rubicon is different, out of the people who squatted Vox and whose primary concern was solidarity with political prisoners, a new concern arose. Many of us saw the movement begin to lose motion, to freeze.”

“Like how? What gave you that impression?”

“Fewer people at demos and assemblies, less interest.”

“Okay so you formed Rubicon….”

“Yes, Rubicon. A smaller group for direct action. We formed it to keep the light on, to show the state and our comrades that anarchy still lives.”

“And the targets of your actions….”

We also watched the video of the Le Pen offices being ransacked and he commented, laughing, “Did you see? The comrade with the hammer is using the wrong side of the head! It’s terrible.”

“What about security?”

“The people who participate are masked, and without identity the state can do little. I was arrested but the charges were dropped—the video shows masked people—not us.”

“And how many people usually participate?”

“That all depends on the action. Some require only one or two. Others, dozens. When we attacked the state agency for privatization it took many people. It’s a big building and we needed time to destroy all the office computers. Others, like the parliament action, maybe 10 or 15.”

“And,” I ask, “what of now…?”

“What’s happening now is critical, what we do as Rubicon seeks to reignite the anarchist movement.”

Book Reviews , Issue #3 , Jason McQuinn , Reviews

Max stirner: mixed bag with a pomo twist, by jason mcquinn  •  august 7, 2016, a review by jason mcquinn.

Max Stirner edited by Saul Newman (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2011) 223 pages, $90.00 hardcover.

One more sign of the ongoing revival of interest in the still-generally-ignored seminal writings of Max Stirner is the appearance of the first collection of essays to be published in the English language on the subject of his life and work. You can bet it won’t be the last. The title itself, simply Max Stirner , gives little indication of the specific intent or content of the collection. But the publisher is Palgrave Macmillan, an academic imprint for Macmillan Publishers in the UK and St. Martin’s Press in the US, indicating that the aim here is an academic – rather than explicitly partisan, polemical or critical – work. It has been published as the first text of a series of “Critical Explorations In Contemporary Political Thought,” whose “aim…is to provide authoritative guides to the work of contemporary political thinkers, or thinkers with a strong resonance in the present, in the form of an edited collection of scholarly essays.” Given this ingenuous series description, it has to be pointed out that it is absurd to present the book as an “authoritative guide” to the writings of a man who would likely more than anyone else refuse the very possibility. This is, unfortunately, only the first of many indications of the uneven nature and quality of this collection. By now, rather than empty “authoritative” pretensions, it should be clear that any serious Stirner scholarship requires a large amount of humility in the face of all the historical incomprehension and mystification Stirner’s work has already received from the academy.

The editor of the collection is Saul Newman, an academic known in libertarian circles mostly for his advocacy of what he calls “post-anarchism” (sometimes considered short for “post-structuralist anarchism”). Post-anarchism in practice entails a mishmash of often awkward attempts at a philosophical synthesis of post-structuralist or post-modernist theories – especially Foucault’s – with schematic, heavily theoretical and largely leftist versions of anarchism. Most often in these syntheses, post-structuralist currents end up in the dominant position, in charge of reforming a post-modernist anarchism from a heavily caricatured essentialist, modernist past. Somewhat incongruously, some of Max Stirner’s ideas also often figure in the “post-anarchist” stews, especially in Saul Newman’s variation. However, Newman’s own post-anarchist position (in which Stirner is elsewhere touted as a “proto-poststructuralist thinker”) does not appear to be consistently shared by other contributors to the volume reviewed, thus occasionally leaving rather large leaps in commitments and theoretical positions between any one essay and the next. On the whole this seems to be a positive point for the book, allowing those neither interested in nor convinced by post-anarchist perspectives to share other perspectives on Stirner in this eclectic academic mix. Given the variety of perspectives expressed in the texts that make up this volume, it makes sense to separate them out in order to give each author, however briefly, his and her due, beginning with the editor’s introduction.

“Re-encountering Stirner’s Ghosts” by Saul Newman

Apparently in deference to Derrida’s dominant (though somewhat incoherent) trope in Specters of Marx , the title of Newman’s introduction, “Re-encountering Stirner’s Ghosts,” seems at least in part intended (among other contradictory intentions) to imply that the “ghosts” Stirner exposes in Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (which I will translate here as The Unique and Its Own ¹) also haunt and/or obsess Stirner personally² (rather than haunting and obsessing instead only the great mass of deluded individuals who themselves take these “ghosts” for real, external powers instead of imagined constructions of their own self-alienated powers.) Or that even Stirner himself somehow “haunts” readers! However useful and accurate it might be to portray Karl Marx as still haunted by such “specters,” it doesn’t make any real sense in the case of Stirner, as any careful reading of The Unique and Its Own will reveal. And, beyond this, when Newman later (p. 3) suggests: “Stirner has never ceased to be a ghost,” we would do better to read: “Stirner has never ceased being reduced to a ghost” by idealists and religious rationalists of all types – including post-structuralists. It is otherwise clear from Stirner’s own words that he personally has no cares nor worries from all the ghosts that the vast masses of people are always so busy constructing to haunt themselves. In fact, as Stirner announces, his concerns are completely beyond and outside of any ghostly or spiritual concerns. They are purely his own concerns. Nor does it make much sense to cast Stirner himself as a metaphorical ghost for his readers just because we know so few details of his life or because most of his readers show little or no understanding of his texts. Or even because Stirner’s critiques are not so easily dismissed as most of his critics at first seem to believe, often returning to trouble even their most careful philosophical, religious or moral calculations. These poorly-aimed hauntological³ rhetorical moves by Newman will most likely just lead more people into even more confusion that could instead be relieved with a bit more serious, observant – and logical – research and analysis. At the least, it should be realized by commentators that the haphazard blending of Stirner’s careful critique of spirits/ghosts/the uncanny with Derrida’s intentionally vague and capricious trope will never be likely to lead to an increased understanding of Stirner when there are already so many mystifications of Stirner’s arguments that readers must sort through without having any more added.

However, despite the questionable preconceptions and rhetorical conceits involved in Newman’s post-structuralist, post-anarchist perspective, he does manage to provide – for one very brief stretch – what could have been the beginning of an exemplary introduction to the volume when he argues:

“… In marking a break with all established categories and traditions of thought – Hegelianism, humanism, rationalism – and in demolishing our most deeply entrenched notions of morality, subjectivity, humanity and society, Stirner takes a wrecking ball to the philosophical architecture of our Western tradition, leaving only ruins in his path. All our beliefs are dismissed by Stirner as so many ideological abstractions, ‘spooks,’ ‘fixed ideas’: our faith in rationality is shown to be no less superstitious than faith in the most obfuscating of religions. Man is simply God reinvented; secular institutions and discourses are alive with specters of Christianity; universalism is spoken from a particular position of power. Stirner tears up the paving stones of our world, revealing the abyss of nothingness that lies beneath.” (p. 1)

Newman is at his best at moments like this when obfuscatory post-structuralist terminology is left behind for plain old English, and when his cloudy references to obscure (for non-academic readers) French theorists like Lacan, Foucault and Derrida evaporate, momentarily leaving us with relatively transparent prose under clear blue skies. Newman’s remarks above make it hard for anyone familiar with Stirner to object. Stirner clearly breaks with any and “all established categories and traditions of thought.” He certainly demolishes every “entrenched notion.” Stirner even “takes a wrecking ball to the philosophical architecture of our Western tradition” – Newman here interestingly echoes (Stirner-influenced) Feral Faun’s old essay title: “Radical Theory: A Wrecking Ball for Ivory Towers.” (4) (Though Newman also seems oblivious to the implications his own position as one of the minor “philosophers” of that very architecture – himself inhabiting one of the lesser “Ivory Towers.”) Newman’s perspective on Stirner’s “wrecking ball” may also seem somewhat limited if confined to “our Western tradition,” when there should be no reason to regard its effects as being confined to a single tradition, especially since Stirner’s work is not unknown among Eastern philosophers (see, for example, works by members of the Japanese Kyoto School like Nishida Kitaro and Kieji Nishitani), nor was Eastern thought unknown to Stirner.

The otherwise promising opening of Newman’s introduction is unfortunately ruined when he concludes his first paragraph with the standard howler of Stirner (pseudo-) scholarship.

“All that is left standing after this frenzy of destruction is the Ego – the only reality – smiling at us enigmatically, like Stirner himself, across the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to our present day.” (p.1)

Because this howler is so often repeated in so much of the heretofore persistently incompetent “scholarship” on Stirner it requires a fair bit of unavoidable explanation. (5)

This statement might make some sense if Stirner had actually written anything in his masterwork suggesting that a concept of “the Ego” could ever be “the only reality.” But he didn’t. Nor does he ever suggest that such a concept would be “left standing” after his destruction of – and exit from – philosophy. In The Unique and Its Own , Stirner neither speaks of any generic concept of “the Ego” in those words, nor even of “the I” at all in any positive, uncritical way. Nor, for that matter, did Stirner ever suggest that “the only reality” could ever possibly lie in any generic or universal conception at all. Stirner is, on the contrary, quite clear that it is only I, “the Unique,” who am both “all and nothing.” That is, it is myself only as indefinable, nonconceptual, actually-lived I who am all. And there can be no possible concept (thought), even the completely and transparently nominal (and thus “empty”) concept of “the Unique” that actually has any real, independent, living existence for me. In order for academic scholarship on Stirner to finally exit its self-prolonged dark age, it will have to at the very least begin from this minimal understanding instead of perpetually recapitulating the unfounded confusion between I, “the Unique” (Stirner’s name suggesting his entire nonconceptual life-process, including his entire world as it is lived) and “the I” or “the Ego” (as generic, determinate concepts, however they may be defined). Currently we have entered well within the second half of the second century of pseudo-scholarly mystification on this point, extending from Stirner’s earliest critics all the way to contemporary liberal, Marxist, and now post-structuralist critics. Can’t we all at last drop these mystifying references to “the ego” that Stirner never advocated – at least in essays and books claiming to explore Stirner’s writings?[pullquote] In The Unique and Its Own , Stirner neither speaks of any generic concept of “the Ego” in those words, nor even of “the I” at all in any positive, uncritical way. Nor, for that matter, did Stirner ever suggest that “the only reality” could ever possibly lie in any generic or universal conception at all. Stirner is, on the contrary, quite clear that it is only I, “the Unique,” who am both “all and nothing.” That is, it is myself only as indefinable, nonconceptual, actually-lived I who am all. And there can be no possible concept (thought), even the completely and transparently nominal (and thus “empty”) concept of “the Unique” that actually has any real, independent, living existence for me. In order for academic scholarship on Stirner to finally exit its self-prolonged dark age, it will have to at the very least begin from this minimal understanding instead of perpetually recapitulating the unfounded confusion between I, “the Unique” and “the I” or “the Ego”. [/pullquote]

Newman goes on to correctly stress that “Stirner is a thinker who defies easy categorization” (p. 2) and that he has had a profound impact – an “often shattering impact – on the trajectory of social and political theory.” (p. 2) But just as Newman opens an opportunity to expose not just Karl Marx’s squirming attempt in The German Ideology “to exorcise the spectre of idealism from his own thought by claiming to find it in Stirner’s” (p. 2), but more importantly Marx’s ultimate failure in this attempt, he stops short. Newman shows no understanding that although Marx might have attempted to escape from his humanism and idealism due to his “encounter with Stirner,” he in fact failed to escape, succeeding only in masking his humanism and idealism in a more obscure and mystifying manner. Given the inclusion of Paul Thomas’ expectedly pro-Marxist and anti-Stirner interpretation of the Stirner-Marx encounter in this anthology, it isn’t clear how much Newman’s subtle whitewashing of Marx is just being politic with a contributor, or how much Newman himself remains in thrall to (ultimately idealist) Marxist categories of philosophical or dialectical materialism. As is so often the case with commentators on Stirner, Marx escapes any but the most toothless of criticisms when any half-way consistent application of Stirner’s critique to Marxist categories would easily expose their pious nature.

Newman states that he “…prefer(s) to see Stirner as a tool to be used, as a means of forcing apart the tectonic plates of our world and destabilizing the institutions and identities that rest upon them.” (p. 4) And this is a perfectly good use of Stirner’s work. Yet, Newman also makes it clear over and over again in his introduction that he will not allow himself to understand Stirner (or use this “tool”) outside of the categories of post-structuralist philosophy. The (minor) “tectonic plates” of post-structuralism and post-modernism must not themselves be destabilized. Stirner can and will be used by Newman as a tool in their service, but never as a source for potentially autonomous criticism outside of – and far more radical than – the philosophical and religious preconceptions and limits of post-structuralist and post-modernist ideologues like Derrida, Foucault and Deleuze. Newman will “…conjure up Stirner’s ghost,” but not allow that such conjuring is a recuperation and mystification of Stirner’s exit from every category of religion, philosophy and ideology, not just from the range of categories that Newman himself is currently ready to leave behind.

“A Solitary Life” by David Leopold

To whatever extent David Leopold’s condescending – and at times bizarre – biographical sketch of Max Stirner’s life is actually meant to provide a “Historical Context” (p. 19) for understanding Stirner and his texts, as the book’s section title would appear to indicate, it certainly fails in reaching beyond fairly immediate circumstances. What can be said about a biography – of a widely misunderstood, occasionally celebrated though often denounced or reviled, but incredibly creative, controversial and powerful figure in the history of ideas and their criticism – that ignores just about every avenue for exploring the relation of the historical context of Stirner’s writing to the meanings and understanding of his texts besides those few already well-traveled? Leopold could have at least attempted to give readers a brief picture of the social, economic, political, or at least the philosophical and cultural context of post-revolutionary Europe, Vormärz Germany, and especially Berlin in which Stirner lived and wrote. Instead, Leopold is content to merely summarize the standard biographical details easily available from John Henry Mackay’s works on Stirner’s life, along with emphasizing a few relatively salacious tidbits of unsubstantiated gossip and rumor about the author’s marriages, sex life, occasional penury, and even the location of his skull! In addition, he occasionally adds a few of his own speculations along with the extraneous comments of others concerning side questions whose relevance to an account of Stirner’s life and writings might better have been left for footnotes. Any broad consideration of the intellectual context of the times is especially absent. Although Leopold could hardly have avoided mention of contemporary Hegelians and post-Hegelians with whom Stirner associated, there is not a single mention of the German Romantics; of important German philosophers like Immanuel Kant, Johann Fichte or Schelling; or even of such an epochal event as the French Revolution in this account. Leopold uses more space to recount and speculate about the life and bitter comments of Stirner’s ex-wife (made more than 50 years after their separation!) than he does to recount the history and content of all of Stirner’s sixty articles published immediately prior to The Unique and Its Own ! Leopold seems somewhat uncertain here whether he’s writing for a scholarly tome or the tabloid press, and thus succeeds at neither. Readers hoping for more light to be shed on Stirner through an examination of the “historical context” of his life and works will be left wondering what Leopold was thinking when he wrote this essay. We can only hope that the next person to take up the challenge will approach it more seriously.

“The Mirror of Anarchy: The Egoism of John Henry Mackay & Dora Marsden” by Ruth Kinna

Ruth Kinna examines the real-existing “egoism” of John Henry Mackay and Dora Marsden within and at the margins of the libertarian milieu at the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries. She further situates her examination within terms of recent differences between Alan Antliff and Saul Newman regarding the relation of anarchism to post-structuralism. Although both Mackay and Marsden are interesting figures with genuine achievements, they are also both marginalized – when not completely ignored – within ideologically leftist, including left anarchist, accounts of libertarian history and thought. Despite Kinna’s seeming enthusiasm for Newman’s narrowly post-structuralist reading of Stirner, she shows a welcome openness to the lives and texts of Mackay and Marsden that allows them to speak for themselves rather than as puppets of post-structuralism or of the “Stirnerism” that they represent for her. Kinna, citing Antliff’s critique of Newman, takes a step towards exposing the importance of the wide-ranging and broadly multiplicitous forms and expressions anarchism has taken throughout its existence. But, though these examinations of Mackay and Marsden are genuinely interesting and a pleasure to read, they actually shine little light on the understanding of Stirner’s writings. Kinna indicates this herself when she ventures: “How far either Mackay or Marsden faithfully interpreted Stirner is a moot point.” This can also be a warning for those not already alert to the fact that egoism is not a settled, agreed phenomenon and not all self-appointed or alleged “egoists” share anything like the same perspective. But even non-Stirnerian egoists can hold a “mirror to anarchy” and provide worthwhile, sometimes life-changing, insights.

“The Multiplicity of Nothingness: A Contribution to a Non-reductionist Reading of Stirner” by Riccardo Baldissone

One of the two most interesting contributions – one of the two real reasons for picking up this book – is Riccardo Baldissone’s “non-reductionist reading” of Stirner. Even though it’s actually not a “non-reductionist” reading except through a strange and playful bit of pomo logic. It’s actually an anachronistic reading of Stirner according to more common logic and word usage. But I won’t quibble too much here, since the result is a sophisticated, sometimes insightful, and most often enjoyable romp through history making connections in both directions – forwards and back – between Stirner and later forebears or his earlier successors. Precisely because of its explicit playfulness, Baldissone can get away with revealing revealing connections that may not technically exist in our usual reality, but still can exist just the same by his and our making them. However, just as Kinna’s examinations of Mackay and Marsden (while interesting for unraveling a few of the complex relations of egoism and anarchism) don’t add much to our understanding of Stirner’s writings themselves, Baldissone’s anarchronistic connections are read loosely enough that what they reveal doesn’t always add that much either. Except that Baldissone already begins his reading from a more profound understanding of Stirner’s Einzige (“Unique”) that allows him to focus on far more interesting aspects of these connections than we would otherwise expect! Especially worthwhile here, are his discussions of the nonconceptual nature, the radical openness, and the “multiple monstrosity” of Stirner’s egoist critique, which most often demand that he be at least fundamentally misunderstood, when not outright ignored, ridiculed or demonized by all those complicit in the culture of modern slavery. Among other authors, Baldissone covers – sometimes all too briefly – connections between Stirner and Gilles Deleuze, Ivan Illich, Michel Foucault, Carl Schmitt, Derrida, Wittgenstein, Marx, Sorel, Hegel (here mentioning Lawrence Stepelevich’s “truly remarkable essay ‘Max Stirner as Hegelian’”), Kant, and the “western Church Fathers.” In passing Baldissone argues that “Stirner’s implacable indictment of ideas cannot be brought back under the umbrella of critique,” though in doing so he ignores that Stirner does make a distinction between ideological (“servile”) criticism – which always involves substituting one fixed idea or presupposition for another – and “own criticism.” But in the main Baldissone has launched a nicely provocative attack on (the generally sub-) standard Stirner scholarship in a very encouraging manner!

“The Philosophical Reactionaries” translated and introduced by Widukind De Ridder

The other major reason to pick up this book is the inclusion of two contributions from Widukind De Ridder – the first an introduction to and translation of Stirner’s response to his critic Kuno Fischer, and the second a longer commentary on “The End of Philosophy and Political Subjectivity” a bit later in the collection. De Ridder’s introduction, by giving no opinion, is much too easy on skepticism about Stirner’s authorship of “The Philosophical Reactionaries,” (which was originally attributed to “G. Edward”). Given that the essay was published by the same person (Otto Wigand) who published Stirner’s Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum itself, his publisher could hardly have been unaware of the identity of the “G. Edward” responding to Stirner’s critics, yet never gave (nor did Stirner himself give) any indication it wasn’t Stirner. But De Ridder shows the most insight into the intentions and implications of Stirner’s writings of all contributors to this volume. So it is only fitting that he has provided the first full English translation of “The Philosophical Reactionaries” here, a very valuable and essential text giving a final response to a critic, following the original “Stirner’s Critics” reply to Feuerbach, Moses Hess and Szeliga. As De Ridder indicates, the timing of this response offers “a unique insight into Stirner’s own appraisal of [his] book in the wake of the ultimate demise of Young Hegelianism.” (p. 89) An appraisal that allowed Stirner “to emphasize how [his] criticism of humanism was eventually a criticism of philosophy itself.” (p. 92) Stirner makes short work of the young Fischer in the text, with slashing wit that leaves Fischer and all of philosophy abandoned in the dust.

“Max Stirner and Karl Marx: An Overlooked Contretemps” by Paul Thomas

[pullquote] “Stirner’s work has always been a special target for Marxist damnation, given its overt challenge to every form of ideology, including all Marxist ideologies. But ever since Karl Marx’s German Ideology was published the clash between Stirner and Marx has taken on ever more importance.” [/pullquote]Stirner’s work has always been a special target for Marxist damnation, given its overt challenge to every form of ideology, including all Marxist ideologies. But ever since Karl Marx’s failed materialist attack on Stirner in The German Ideology was finally published in 1932 the clash between Stirner and Marx has taken on ever more importance for defenders of Marxism. As a result we have seen a continuing stream of (usually off-hand and well off-base) Marxist critiques of Stirner appear, most of which borrow heavily from Marx’s own early misinterpretations of Stirner’s work. Paul Thomas’ critique of Stirner is little different – though a little more intelligent than most – in this respect. Thomas has at least a small ability to occasionally give Stirner some token credit for a few of his critical contributions. In general, though, Thomas insists on agressively following Marx’s lead in reducing Stirner’s work to an idealistic caricature constructed from dialectical materialist categories. Rather than ever allow Stirner to make points on his own, Thomas slavishly interprets Stirner’s every move in terms of an original Marxist incomprehension that defies logic, but serves the purpose of protecting Marxist ideological clichés from Stirner’s actual criticisms. There’s really no excuse for including this completely out-of-place text in this collection.

“Max Stirner: The End of Philosophy and Political Subjectivity” by Widukind De Ridder

The second of Widukind De Ridder’s valuable contributions to this volume makes the hard-to-avoid argument that Stirner’s critique inevitably leads to a refusal of philosophy. Although this refusal was mostly implicit in Stirner’s The Unique and Its Own , Stirner made it impossible to ignore in “The Philosophical Reactionaries.” This means that it is at least problematic to include Stirner as one of the “Young Hegelians,” as though he shared an essentially similar relation to Hegelian philosophy as the others so classified, like Ludwig Feuerbach and Bruno Bauer. And it certainly means, as De Ridder argues, that Stirner’s “ideas cannot be reduced to a traditional philosophy of the subject (existentialism),” and that his writings “not only question the revolutionary subject in a strictly Marxist sense, but eventually any form of (political) subjectivity.” (p. 143) De Ridder further notes that “For Stirner the crisis of the estate order [in Vormärz Prussia] calls neither for a new synthesis nor a new philosophy of the self, but necessitates new ways of transcending the political and societal horizon as a whole.” (p. 145) And Stirner does this by “dissolv[ing] existing philosophical categories by contrasting them with concepts that lay explicitly beyond philosophy.” (p. 145) These latter “concepts” outside philosophy include the “Unique,” “ownness” and “egoism.” The bulk of De Ridder’s arguments cover the conflict between the development of Bruno Bauer’s immanent philosophical critique of Hegel and Stirner’s “parody of the Young Hegelian quest to identify a modern political subject.” This makes fascinating reading, especially since Bauer himself has been so rarely translated and studied in English-language scholarship, despite his great importance for post-Hegelian critiques. De Ridder concludes that Stirner’s Unique “is fundamentally extra-conceptual. Stirner’s radical nominalism places the concept of [the “Unique”] outside of philosophy and destroys the subject-object dichotomy.” (p. 157)

“Why Anarchists need Stirner” by Kathy E. Ferguson

Kathy Ferguson uses Schmidt and van der Walt’s ill-conceived Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (already notorious for its extremely narrow and ideological syndicalism) as a foil for arguments in favor of a Stirnerian theoretical and practical autonomy. But she works at this, rather peculiarly (for an anarchist), through use of analyses of the somewhat popular (in leftist circles) post-Stalinist Slavoj Žižek. Thus, while the initial impulse seems worthwhile, the value of “Why anarchists need Stirner” is somewhat mitigated for those who know Stirner well, because Ferguson both undercuts the premise with widely misplaced praise for the “otherwise excellent book on global anarchism and syndicalism, Black Flame ,” at the same time that she insists on using an anti-anarchist, pro-Leninist critic (Žižek) to help explain a Stirner with whom he is completely at odds. Still, despite these problems, the essay is largely successful despite itself. But this is probably because (except when Stirner is successfully misrepresented) anti-Stirner arguments are almost guaranteed to fail when directed at anarchists who value their theoretical and practical autonomy. Ideologists like Schmidt and van der Walt, and all the others whose leftism far outweighs any commitment to libertarian values, might as well give up their crusade. Until they can fully detach practical autonomy from anarchism – an impossible feat, without destroying the anarchist impulse itself – they are doomed to a self-delusionally revisionist battle against any and every actually-existing anarchist.

“Stirner’s Ethics of Voluntary Inservitude” by Saul Newman

Saul Newman saves his own most valuable work for the final contribution to this volume, in which he compares Max Stirner’s arguments for insurrectionary insubordination to Étienne de la Boëtie’s earlier critique of “voluntary servitude,” although, unfortunately, Newman once again misrepresents Stirner by focusing on “the singularity of the individual ego” instead of on Stirner’s nonconceptual “Unique.” Despite the clear exposition of Stirner’s critique of philosophy raised by Widukind de Ridder in his two contributions to this book, Newman still insists on describing “Stirner’s philosophical project … as one of clearing the ontological ground of all essential foundations.” (p. 204) But he clearly has no “philosophical project.” As he tirelessly repeats, his is not a project of the individual or the ego, but of his own! Newman is at least correct, though, that one of Stirner’s big contributions “is to point out the futility of founding political action on metphysical ideas of human nature, science, historical laws and assumptions about a shared rationality and morality.” (p. 206)

1. This is the title for a current CAL Press project-in-process to publish a revised (corrected) edition of the Steven Byington translation of Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum that dispenses with the disastrous confusion between Stirner’s “Einzige” and “the Ego” that Benjamin Tucker’s title and Byingon’s text have introduced and reinforced. Also underway is Wolfi Landstreicher’s completely new translation, which should also help immensely to clear up this confusion, slated to appear under the more literal title as The Unique and Its Property.

2. Newman comments, “…just as we think we have [Stirner] pinned down, he slips away again like one of his own spectres.” (p. 2, my emphasis) Elsewhere Newman asks, “Why, then, resurrect Max Stirner, the thinker who was obsessed with ghosts, “spooks,” and ideological apparitions….” in “Spectres of Freedom: Stirner and Foucault” ( Postmodern Culture Vol.14, #3, May 2004).

3. “Hauntology” is one of those pomo jokes you couldn’t make up without feeling deeply embarrassed for yourself, but seem to be taken seriously by (too) many academics. The source is Derrida’s relatively incoherent Spectres of Marx .

4. This essay was originally published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #38, Fall 1993 (C.A.L. Press).

5. See my “John Clark’s Stirner,” published in Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed #68/69 (undated) as “John Clark’s Spook,” and my introduction to Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of Max Stirner’s Stirner’s Critics (LBC Books / CAL Press, 2012), “Clarifying the Unique and Its Self-Creation.” (Landstreicher’s translations in Stirner’s Critics include both the first full English translation of “Stirner’s Critics,” as well as a second English translation of “The Philosophical Reactionaries,” which appears to have been completed not long after –and unaware of – De Ridder’s translation.)

El Errante , Paul Z. Simons

Lessons from rojava: democracy and commune; this and that, by jason mcquinn  •  july 31, 2016.

Democracy—”a system of government in which all the people of a state or polity … are involved in making decisions about its affairs, typically by voting to elect representatives to a parliament or similar assembly,” (a:) “government by the people; especially: rule of the majority” (b:) “a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.” —Oxford English Dictionary

I hate democracy. And I hate organizations, especially communes. Yet, I favor the organization of democratic communes.

THIS: Democracy is always about mediation. Whether it separates the subject from decision-making, functions as an excuse for graft and fraud, or whether it separates the subject from him or herself. Democracy stands in the way of the individual, blocks unmediated communication by imposing the requirement of structure—an outcome, a decision. And when a decision is reached, it is usually arrived at by the most banal and ruthless method ever devised: the vote—the tyranny of the majority.

Anarchism has had a mixed history of criticism regarding democracy. Étienne de La Boétie in his Discours lays out a first line of inquiry by wondering why it is that people allow themselves to be governed at all—and as he explores the problem he points out that it seems not to matter whether a tyrant is chosen by force of arms, by inheritance, or by the vote. He states,

“For although the means of coming into power differ, still the method of ruling is practically the same; those who are elected act as if they were breaking in bullocks; those who are conquerors make the people their prey; those who are heirs plan to treat them as if they were their natural slaves.” (1)

And it might be added that the subject population submits to such abuse without question or contestation. La Boétie’s treatise is truly prescient; written in (roughly) 1553—a full 250 years before the emergence of the modern nation-state—and yet it contemplates exactly the type of unbridled war, oppression, and terror that democratically elected governments were to unleash on subject populations, and each other.

Power cannot exist in a vacuum, as the monarchs of Europe learned during the upheavals of 1848 while they watched their respective regimes disintegrate, one after the other. With democracy came the calculation of exchange, one iota of power given to a citizen via the vote, produces a vast quantity of power ensconced in legislature, executive, and judiciary. It’s unsurprising that political systems began to apply equations of power and exchange at the same time that in the economic realm Capital was introducing similar equations in order to usurp labor-time in trade for survival. Further such an exchange ties the population all that much closer to the rulers. Vanegeim illustrates the mechanism thus,

“Slaves are not willing slaves for long if they are not compensated for their submission by a shred of power: all subjection entails the right to a measure of power, and there is no such thing as power that does not embody a degree of submission.” (2)

Proudhon unleashed a number of critiques on democracy. The critical prisms he used vary greatly, from the purely psychological to the empirical. And the targets of his barbs span the entire menagerie of democratic platitudes from the myth of “The People” to sovereignty to the realpolitik of how legislatures operate. Of interest is his critical analysis of the democratic decision-making process itself. He scrutinizes the mechanism of the vote and its outcome; specifically majority rule. He reasons in this manner,

“Democracy is nothing but the tyranny of majorities, the most execrable tyranny of all, for it is not based on the authority of a religion, nor on a nobility of blood, nor on the prerogatives of fortune: it has number as its base, and for a mask the name of the People…”

In conclusion — for an anarchist, for myself, democracy — as a system of self-governance, as a decision-making tool, as an ideal — is utterly devoid of any redeeming value or usefulness. It functions as a mask for coercion, making horror palatable whilst producing unbearable consequences for the individual, for the species, and for the planet. A dead end.

THAT: It is at this point that most anarchists and critical theorists begin backpedaling, some slowly (like Proudhon) and others rapidly (like Bookchin). Historically theorists have offered a scathing critique of democracy and then have immediately digressed, stating that the representative form of democracy as conceived by bourgeois (or socialist) society isn’t really democracy. That real democracy is reflected in some other form — for Proudhon delegated democracy, for Bookchin the Greek city-states, or the Helvetican Confederation. The argument then becomes that democracy can (and should) be recuperated by the Left as a workable form.

My own critique veers wildly off course at this point by virtue of having been skewed by empirical observation of a different form of democratic practice. Having recently returned from the Kurdish Autonomous Region in Northern Syria, known as Rojava, I had the opportunity to observe a unique form of unmediated democracy as implemented by a revolutionary libertarian social movement.

Some theoretical context: Abdullah Öcalan, the head of the Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK, The Kurdistan Worker’s Party) was captured by Turkish Security Forces, with assistance from the CIA and Israel’s Mossad, in 1999. Dodging a firing squad, he was eventually sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment and that’s when things get interesting. Eschewing making license plates, or working in the laundry, Öcalan began the long slow intellectual journey out of Marxist-Leninist jibberish and into some pretty durable anarchist theory. Eventually publishing his ideas in several works, including Democratic Confederalism , War and Peace in Kurdistan , and a multi-volume tome on civilization, particularly the Middle East and Abrahamic religions. In his writing Öcalan does what no one else in the contemporary North American anarchist milieu is even willing to think—he constructs, albeit vaguely—a blueprint for a libertarian society. This simple exercise, devoid of content, is incredible. His engagement resembles far more the utopian socialist project of the early 19th Century than any of the ensuing theoretics associated with social contestation—especially Marxism and working-class anarchism; indeed his silence on class analysis, Marxist teleology, historical materialism, and syndicalism is deafening. Öcalan is clear in his task when he states in the Principles of Democratic Confederalism, “Democratic confederalism is a non-state social paradigm. It is not controlled by a state. At the same time, democratic confederalism is the cultural organizational blueprint of a democratic nation.[bold mine]”

As implied in the name, there is a great reliance on democratic processes in the system known as Democratic Confederalism. Yet here Öcalan is silent in his definition of democracy—he never offers one—and in it’s implementation—he never discusses it with any specificity. In fact, democracy is presented as a given, as a decision-making process, as an approach to self-administration, and little else. There is no favoring of voting versus consensus-based models, nor does he describe in any detail, at any level (communal, cantonal, regional) the forms that he foresees democracy taking. As an example,

“[Democratic Confederalism]…can be called a non-state political administration or a democracy without a state. Democratic decision-making processes must not be confused with the processes known from public administration. States only administrate [sic] while democracies govern. States are founded on power; democracies are based on collective consensus.” (4)

My first insight into democracy in Rojava happened over a plate of hummus and pita in downtown Kobanî. I was sitting with Mr. Shaiko, a TEV-DEM ( Tevgera Civaka Demokratîk , Movement for a Democratic Society) representative on a warm, dusty afternoon, some three days after attending a commune meeting together. In that meeting, of the council of Şehid Kawa C commune, Mr. Shaiko had raised the issue of commune boundaries and perhaps moving them in allowance for the number of people returning to the rubbled, venerable hulk that is Kobanî. After some discussion and as Mr. Shaiko left the meeting, he requested a phone call to let him know what was decided.

So I asked Mr. Shaiko, “What happened with the commune? Did they call?”

“No, no decision yet.”

“Oh, do they need to give one?”

“No, they’ll decide when they’re ready. That’s how it is,” Mr. Shaiko looked at me over his glasses with a half-grin and then returned to the plate of pita and hummus.

The response of the revolutionaries to the tyranny of majority rule has been structural rather than directive. Here Öcalan describes his views on a plural society and in so doing outlines how he plans to weaken or subsume majority rule,

“In contrast to a centralist and bureaucratic understanding of administration and exercise of power confederalism poses a type of political self-administration where all groups of the society and all cultural identities can express themselves in local meetings, general conventions and councils…We do not need big theories here, what we need is the will to lend expression to… social needs by strengthening the autonomy of the social actors structurally and by creating the conditions for the organization of the society as a whole. The creation of an operational level where all kinds of social and political groups, religious communities, or intellectual tendencies can express themselves directly in all local decision-making processes can also be called participative democracy.”

So for the revolutionaries the formation, growth and proliferation of all types of “social actors” — communes, councils, consultative bodies, organizations and even militias is to be welcomed, and encouraged—strongly.

These innovations seem good first steps in turning democracy from a worthless antiquity to a workable principle within anarchist theory, and as such should be encouraged and studied.

THIS: My essay regarding the organizational form and its various moments of domination, “The Organization’s New Clothes,” was first published in February of 1989 (and republished in 2015), and I see no reason to redact any portion thereof. (5) That critique, therefore, resonates throughout the following discussion, though time and space prohibit using it in any way other than as a critical prism. The “commune” is a scrambled term. It’s origins lie in the smallest administrative entity in France, the commune—corresponding roughly to a municipality. The word itself is derived from the twelfth-century Medieval Latin communia , meaning a group of people living a common or shared life. Which as a point of departure is interesting as the concept, even then, implied some degree of autonomy, both political and economic. It was, however, the Paris Commune during the French Revolution (1789 – 1795) that wrote the term in large red and black letters in the book of revolution. The Communards, in that first great explosion, distinguished themselves by their intransigence and demands for the abolition of private property and social classes. Eventually earning themselves the nickname enragés (“the enraged ones”). The revolutionary commune then has a subversive nature. It is dangerous. It is always dangerous when humans interact beyond the terrain of Capital and state, or in opposition to them.

Throughout the 19th Century the term commune, outside the administrative network of France, came to be associated with socialist and communist experiments and in a looser sense with all manner of utopian projects and communities—Owen, Fourier, Oneida, Amana, Modern Times… A slump for a few decades through the first part of the twentieth-century, then to confuse things further, the 1960s happened. The definition of the word “commune” ends for many North Americans somewhere in 1972; a tangerine swirl of bad acid, free love, and the Manson Family.

Which is not to say that there weren’t some important projects; among the more interesting was the West Berlin-based Kommune 1 (1967-1969), and Wisconsin’s contribution to utopia, Dreamtime Village. There have been thousands (likely tens of thousands) of communes over the past two centuries, intentional communities, collectives, cooperatives each with its own “glue”—the stuff that brought people together and “stuck” them to one another. In most cases this glue has been a mix of politics, anarchism, communism, utopianism, religious sentiment (usually wacky), livelihood, necessity, drugs, sexuality, or just plain detesting the dominant culture.

So what, exactly, is a commune? Who the hell knows? The problem is not the vagueness with which the commune is understood; rather it’s the lack of theory (and experience) that would provide nuance and clarity to this vagueness. The idea of the commune has been lost or diluted as a result of it’s own jangled historical context and the easily recuperable forms that it has recently taken. Ultimately, very much like democracy, the commune seems a quaint and faded relic in the cabinet of anarchist theory; filed under “V” for vestigial.

THAT: As above, so below. My own interaction with the Commune spans several articles on the Paris events of 1871, and includes my ongoing engagement with the conundrum of anarchist organization. All of my interactions with the concept of organizations operating in a revolutionary milieu had been on paper — in theory—up until the time I crossed into the Kurdish Autonomous Region. Then things changed. The commune and council meetings I attended were varied. From an ad hoc encounter of a team of YPG militiamen near the Turkish border in Kobanî Canton, to a council of the Şehid Kawa C commune, to a ceremony and meeting between TEV-DEM representatives of Kobanî and Cizîrê Canton. In each instance I recall a series of similar impressions. First each encounter was characterized by a sense of purpose, of meaning. The attendees seemed clear that what they were engaged in, the simple task of meeting together, as a commune, as a team of YPG fighters, carried within it a seed, a moment of one possible future, for Northern Syria, perhaps for the planet. Many people commented on this when I asked their thoughts regarding these political forms. One woman I met in Paris at an HDP rally put it best, “We are here reinventing politics, in fact, the world.”

This perception, which could easily fade into arrogance, in these attendees seemed to produce a different mindset, quiet determination. These folks were not wealthy, they worked hard in an area where there was little work. The men’s faces were lined and etched with long hours spent under the harsh gaze of a Middle East sun. The hands of the women were simultaneously delicate and rough, while they carried callouses and cuts, they also carried the scent of lotion and perfume. The voices, gestures, and faces of the revolutionaries during the meetings were intent, searching, serious. There was kindness, hugs for a developmentally disabled young adult, a moment spent with a mother who had lost a son in the siege of Kobanî, and respect—as each person spoke to the accompaniment of silent nods from their peers.

Hope was also present, a quantity that history has so long denied to anarchists, and which some of us have reclaimed—not as an eventuality, but as a birthright. These folks believed they could change their lives, their community, many believed they could change (and were changing) the world.

Finally, and most importantly, in each of these meetings there was an overwhelming sense of the banal. These were folks who, when they mentioned the cantonal authority at all, referred to it laconically as the anti-government, or the anti-regime. They had seen and participated in sweeping social changes and experimentation and in the process it had become commonplace, like lunch. This is not to say that there was no joy in the proceedings, far from it. Rather what was really missing was fear, and in this sense the social revolution in Rojava may truly be said to have passed into a phase of maturity and permanence. The sole caveat in the short-term being the defeat of Daesh .

Some theorists have been advancing on the idea of the commune, but from strange directions, post-left directions. Peter Lamborn Wilson in TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone and Pirate Utopias forces the issues of time and failure/success and the commune. He rejects utterly, as we must, the technological reasoning that the longer a commune exists the better or more successful it is, or was. In TAZ he specifically provides a formula for a new idea of a commune, a temporary encounter—perhaps hours, perhaps minutes—characterized by conviviality, joy. This encounter is also autonomous in that it is as independent, and free of the fetters of Capital and state as possible. This is essential to understand. The commune is combative, not subservient. That is the basis of its autonomy.

As opposed to bounding the definition of the commune or even trying to refine it, I believe that defocusing on the concept seems a sound strategy. I would argue that whether it is a phalanstère with all the Fourierist fauna intact, or a meeting between friends to relive old times, or to create new ones; it doesn’t matter — it is a commune. Why bound something, why hem something in when it presents itself as a viable model for organization? Rather, without a definition, moving with tiny baby steps towards an understanding of what works and what is useless in the commune model. That strikes me as one promising, potential direction towards both engaged social experimentation and ruthless social contestation

The formation of communes also seems a viable real world strategy in that it fulfills two immediate functions—first they can act as support, a backbone for the movement of militants quickly to areas where their services might be required. In this way they may function very much as the book stores, infoshops, and alternative spaces did in the anarchist milieu of the past several decades in the US, or as the communes did in Kobanî during the siege. Their resources can assist in the provision of shelter, food, medical aid, and comfort for fighters. The communes can also provide valuable intelligence on local conditions, law enforcement, and assist in identifying those specific targets most noxious to the community. Put in contemporary military parlance, the commune may not be a weapon, but it can function as a weapons platform for the mobile anarchist fighters. Secondarily, the communes provide for the sedentary members of the milieu a laboratory, a setting in which to experiment with new ideas, new forms, coalescing, in protoplasmic form, the seeds of revolutionary institutions yet to be. Communes are nurseries where budding insurrections are reared. Ancillary to this effect, yet no less important, is the possibility that communes will help to shrink the attrition that has plagued anarchism since its inception as a political movement. A life dedicated to liberty is difficult to sustain, and most anarchists eventually succumb to the Cthulhu call of new cars, big houses, and squandered lives. At the age of 55, I have seen thousands of anarchists come and go, only those too stubborn, or too anti-social, like my friends, and myself seem to remain. Communes may stem this drift by producing a social milieu that is amenable to the various vagaries of the anarchist personality type, and by distributing resources for assistance with the real world issues of food, shelter, childbirth and rearing, loneliness, illness, old age and death.

The commune is a verb. The commune is a question.

THE OTHER THING

Anarchism has, rightly, been adrift since the end of the Second World War. With little understanding of its roots, history, and struggles most of us did the best we could with what we could find. There were no organizations to criticize or join and it was difficult enough just to find anarchists in NYC in 1984. We were orphans. The situation has changed, there are more anarchists, they are more easily contacted and the explosion of information has given us our story back. As a confluence, the news out of Greece, Rojava, Europe, in fact just about everywhere seems to be turning in our direction. Those in the milieu, therefore, have some choices to make. Where to place energy, where to invest time and effort, in a word—what to do? There are, at a minimum, as many possible answers to this question as there are anarchists now alive. As my response, I’ll state the following…

Form Democratic Communes.

• La Boetie, Etienne (1975) The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. Montreal; Black Rose Books.
• Vaneigem, Raoul. (1994) The Revolution of Everyday Life (Donald Nicholson-Smith, Trans.). London: Rebel Press
• Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph. (1867-1870) Oeuvres completes de P-J. Proudhon. Paris: A. Lacroix, Verboeckhoven et Cie.
• Ocalan, Abdullah (2011). Democratic Confederalism (transl. International Initiative). Transmedia Publishing Ltd.: London, Cologne.
• Simons, Paul Z. (2015). “The Organization’s New Clothes” Black Eye: pathogenic and perverse. Ardent Press, Berkeley CA
• Pi y Margall, Francisco. “Reaction and Revolution,” in Anarchism, A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One

In a moral Universe, there are no anarchists; Hakim Bey, Robert P. Helms, and leave out the liberal

(Before you continue, know that this article is wholly my responsibility, that Hakim Bey has neither seen, read, nor is aware of its existence. I take full responsibility for its content.)

Better late than never. It’s been a little over a decade since the articles by Robert P. Helms (RPH) appeared on the internet smearing Peter Lamborn Wilson/Hakim Bey as a paedophile. When they were first made public I was, unfortunately, in no position to respond. In fact, I was in a drug treatment facility in lieu of some rather impressive legal charges centered on my addiction to speedballing heroin and cocaine and the economic activities attendant thereto. I should also note that in my researches around this event no one else in the milieu had the time, ability, or cussedness to counter the onslaught of innuendo and hinted transgression. Most folks ignored the charges, some muttered darkly, and a handful, like Laure Akai, went out of their way to up the ante and hint ominously about what they “really knew.”

First off, this article is not a defense of Hakim Bey, not because his actions and writings are indefensible, rather because no defense is required. To even begin to enumerate the various charges made by Helms is to allow him, his fellow travelers, and the accusations they made a credence that they don’t deserve. If the measurement of a critical theorist’s writings is assessed against the morality of bourgeois society then—among others, my comrades and me, stand arrested, tried and convicted in the dock of the dominant culture. The only plea we could rationally make is nolo contendre, and hope for the best.

But this isn’t about the charges made against Hakim, nor about the mediocre men and women who raised them and continue to propagate them. It’s about a political milieu so unsure of its own bearings, so consistent in its own inconsistency, that when charges—whose etiology is wholly associated with the Social Enemy—are leveled at one of its best thinkers and writers that the vast majority of adherents slink away in venomous silence and embarrassment.

What is at issue, and what one sees play out, occasionally, in the comments section of @news, r/anarchism and several other sites and podcasts is the reintroduction of a morality based in the discourse of the dominant society. While the anonymous commenting bottom-feeders at the various anarchist sites can perhaps be forgiven for a lack of mental acuity as they troll for fools and google words that confuse them, Helm’s can claim no such dodge. As he informs us, he is an “independent anarchist historian,” and that presumably means that he has read a few books about the history and philosophy of the politics that he claims to espouse. This presumed knowledge fails to peek through any of his essays regarding Hakim Bey. As one example, the failure to mention and discuss the romance of Severino DiGiovanni and America Scarfò, age 26 and 15 respectively, when they began their relationship shows a real lack of integrity. Further the dearth in Helms’ articles of any theoretical justification for the denunciation, no discussion of the requisite standardization and solemnization of the bourgeois bedroom, nor the family as the fundamental building block of slavery—sexual, industrial, and psychological. Rather after giving us a quick and breathless tour of some of the passages that most tweaked his liberal conscience, he states: “I will not offer any reason to be offended by the paedophile literature or the misogynist position of Hakim Bey […]. The ethical idiocy of both are self-evident, and neither is part of anything that should be considered an anarchist idea.” In other words trust Helms, it’s bad—so bad in fact that an oxymoron like self-evident applies, just like it does to the glaring truths in the Declaration of Independence.

If things had stopped there, that likely would have been it, and Helms would have returned to the circle of hell reserved for moralists posing as anarchists. But that’s not what happened. Instead, libcom.org, picked it up and ran with it. An understandable mistake, red anarchists aren’t know for their intelligence, especially libcom who seem better at recruiting police informants than real workers to their moribund cause. Going so far as to publish a web page called Beywatch and featuring exactly two articles—both authored by Helms. The rot of innuendo spread quickly and precipitously and even made it to the web page of law and order types that are dedicated to hounding folks who write or discuss children and sexuality. Which if memory serves is the basis of most Western psychology.

Meanwhile, those who knew better, those who saw through the abject moralist scam that Helms had perpetrated remained painfully silent. Likely many hoped that Helms would either just disappear, or alternately that their friendship with Hakim would remain… unmentioned, by anyone.

I will follow no such course. Hakim Bey is my friend, I have known him for thirty years. His writings have influenced thousands, mention his name in Europe, Asia, or South America and people immediately know his work. They respect him. They want to know more about him.

And Hakim is still teaching us lessons, less through his writing than by the example of his fall and rehabilitation. The moralizing liberals who pose as anarchists are the cops, bureaucrats, and corrections officers of our future. Many new folks are hoodwinked, they don’t get it, and its up to the critical theorists of today to teach, and guide them through example, through writing. To take the bag of snakes that is the dominant society and to lay the squirming reptiles out straight—so that everyone understands how denunciation pays the wage of Capital and nation-state. That the slogan, “It is forbidden to forbid,” isn’t just rhetoric. It’s a signpost on where we must be headed, and anyone who stands in the way, or obstructs that process—pays the price.

The Slave Trade and Slavery: A Founding Tragedy of our Modern World

Among the major crimes that have marked human history, the slave trade and slavery are distinguished by their magnitude, their duration and the violence that accompanied them. It is difficult to understand how a tragedy of this scale could have been ignored for so long. Historians estimate that thirty million Africans were deported from different parts of Africa and enslaved in other regions of the world. If we add the number of those who died during capture, the arduous journey towards various ports, the holding camps, and the middle passage, there were, in fact, near a hundred of millions of lives that were taken from Africa.

This massive outward forced migration had resulted in a population decline for at least four centuries. Demographers have calculated that the total number of Africans at the end of the nineteenth century should have reached two hundred million, rather than an estimated hundred million. Imagine the potential that was lost across an entire continent and the vulnerabilities created and further exploited.

Denials of Dignity and Resistance:

The slave trade and slavery had another peculiar consequence. They left in their wake the tenacious poison of racism and discrimination that plagues people of African descent today. Throughout this history, black people across the world have had to confront three kinds of denials that have served to justify and legitimize the slave trade, slavery, colonization, segregation and apartheid since the 15th century. They are:

- The denial of their humanity and dignity through numerous attempts to reduce them to the status of beasts of burden, in view of dehumanizing them.

- The denial of their history and culture through pseudo-scientific discourses aiming at minimizing their role in human history.

- The denial of their rights and citizenship through all types of policies, laws, and strategies of discrimination.

It is to fight this legacy of racial prejudices, still disseminated through the media, cinema, television, textbooks that the United Nations has proclaimed in 2014 the International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024) to promote the fulfilment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of people of African descent and a greater knowledge of their contribution to humankind.

Despite the extreme violence of this system of oppression, codified by the monstrous Black Codes, the enslaved Africans never ceased to resist. Using the full potential of their culture, they not only survived the conditions of dehumanization but also contributed to transforming slave societies through their social ingenuity and artistic creavity, which produced the extraordinary cultural diversity.

Lessons from History:

Cognizant that ignoring such major historical events constitutes in itself an obstacle to peace, mutual understanding, and reconciliation, UNESCO launched in 1994 the Slave Route Project to contribute to this reflection. The ethical, political and cultural stakes of this project were clearly articulated from the very beginning. The barbarity that societies are capable of unleashing, especially those societies claiming the privilege of civilization are the stakes. Moreover, comprehension of this chapter in world history makes it possible to better grasp the genealogy that binds the slave trade to other historic crimes such as the extermination of indigenous peoples in the Americas, the Holocaust, Apartheid and more recent genocides.

The slave trade and slavery are therefore founders of our modern world. Through the capital accumulated during trade which contributed to the enrichment of Europe and America, the common heritage which is the main source of today's artistic creations, and through the combat against slavery which has profoundly redefined the very notion of liberty, dignity and universality, this history has participated in the emergence of modernity.

This tragedy concerns the whole of humanity and calls out to all of us, because of the universal silence that has surrounded it, the troubling light it sheds on the discourse used to justify it, and the psychological scars it has left in our souls.

It also challenges us to confront some of today's burning issues in post-slavery societies: cultural pluralism, mutual respect, reparations, and naonal reconciliation. It helps to better fight against new forms of servitude that continue to affect millions of people, in particular women and children, in different parts of our world.

The International Day of Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolion initiated by UNESCO offers us an opportunity to reflect on the 23rd of August on this tragic history of humanity and on the persistence of its disastrous legacy in contemporary societies.

By Ali Moussa Coordinator of UNESCO's Slave Route Project

Related items

• International Decade for People of African Descent (2015-2024)

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What is Modern Slavery?

Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons

Sex Trafficking

Child sex trafficking, forced labor, bonded labor or debt bondage, domestic servitude, forced child labor, unlawful recruitment and use of child soldiers.

“Trafficking in persons,” “human trafficking,” and “modern slavery” are used as umbrella terms to refer to both sex trafficking and compelled labor. The Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (Pub. L. 106-386), as amended (TVPA), and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Protocol) describe this compelled service using a number of different terms, including involuntary servitude, slavery or practices similar to slavery, debt bondage, and forced labor.

Human trafficking can include, but does not require, movement. People may be considered trafficking victims regardless of whether they were born into a state of servitude, were exploited in their home town, were transported to the exploitative situation, previously consented to work for a trafficker, or participated in a crime as a direct result of being trafficked. At the heart of this phenomenon is the traffickers’ aim to exploit and enslave their victims and the myriad coercive and deceptive practices they use to do so.

When an adult engages in a commercial sex act, such as prostitution, as the result of force, threats of force, fraud, coercion or any combination of such means, that person is a victim of trafficking. Under such circumstances, perpetrators involved in recruiting, harboring, enticing, transporting, providing, obtaining, patronizing, soliciting, or maintaining a person for that purpose are guilty of sex trafficking of an adult. Sex trafficking also may occur through a specific form of coercion whereby individuals are compelled to continue in prostitution through the use of unlawful “debt,” purportedly incurred through their transportation, recruitment, or even their “sale”—which exploiters insist they must pay off before they can be free. Even if an adult initially consents to participate in prostitution it is irrelevant: if an adult, after consenting, is subsequently held in service through psychological manipulation or physical force, he or she is a trafficking victim and should receive benefits outlined in the Palermo Protocol and applicable domestic laws.

When a child (under 18 years of age) is recruited, enticed, harbored, transported, provided, obtained, patronized, solicited, or maintained to perform a commercial sex act, proving force, fraud, or coercion is not necessary for the offense to be prosecuted as human trafficking. There are no exceptions to this rule: no cultural or socioeconomic rationalizations alter the fact that children who are exploited in prostitution are trafficking victims. The use of children in commercial sex is prohibited under U.S. law and by statute in most countries around the world. Sex trafficking has devastating consequences for children, including long-lasting physical and psychological trauma, disease (including HIV/AIDS), drug addiction, unwanted pregnancy, malnutrition, social ostracism, and even death.

Forced labor, sometimes also referred to as labor trafficking, encompasses the range of activities—recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining—involved when a person uses force or physical threats, psychological coercion, abuse of the legal process, deception, or other coercive means to compel someone to work. Once a person’s labor is exploited by such means, the person’s prior consent to work for an employer is legally irrelevant: the employer is a trafficker and the employee a trafficking victim. Migrants are particularly vulnerable to this form of human trafficking, but individuals also may be forced into labor in their own countries. Female victims of forced or bonded labor, especially women and girls in domestic servitude, are often sexually abused or exploited as well.

One form of coercion used by traffickers in both sex trafficking and forced labor is the imposition of a bond or debt. Some workers inherit debt; for example, in South Asia it is estimated that there are millions of trafficking victims working to pay off their ancestors’ debts. Others fall victim to traffickers or recruiters who unlawfully exploit an initial debt assumed, wittingly or unwittingly, as a term of employment. Traffickers, labor agencies, recruiters, and employers in both the country of origin and the destination country can contribute to debt bondage by charging workers recruitment fees and exorbitant interest rates, making it difficult, if not impossible, to pay off the debt. Such circumstances may occur in the context of employment-based temporary work programs in which a worker’s legal status in the destination country is tied to the employer so workers fear seeking redress.

Involuntary domestic servitude is a form of human trafficking found in distinct circumstances—work in a private residence—that create unique vulnerabilities for victims. It is a crime in which a domestic worker is not free to leave his or her employment and is abused and underpaid, if paid at all. Many domestic workers do not receive the basic benefits and protections commonly extended to other groups of workers—things as simple as a day off. Moreover, their ability to move freely is often limited, and employment in private homes increases their isolation and vulnerability. Labor officials generally do not have the authority to inspect employment conditions in private homes. Domestic workers, especially women, confront various forms of abuse, harassment, and exploitation, including sexual and gender-based violence. These issues, taken together, may be symptoms of a situation of domestic servitude. When the employer of a domestic worker has diplomatic status and enjoys immunity from civil and/or criminal jurisdiction, the vulnerability to domestic servitude is enhanced.

Although children may legally engage in certain forms of work, children can also be found in slavery or slavery-like situations. Some indicators of forced labor of a child include situations in which the child appears to be in the custody of a non-family member who requires the child to perform work that financially benefits someone outside the child’s family and does not offer the child the option of leaving, such as forced begging. Anti-trafficking responses should supplement, not replace, traditional actions against child labor, such as remediation and education. When children are enslaved, their exploiters should not escape criminal punishment—something that occurs when governments use administrative responses to address cases of forced child labor.

Child soldiering is a manifestation of human trafficking when it involves the unlawful recruitment or use of children—through force, fraud, or coercion—by armed forces as combatants or other forms of labor. Perpetrators may be government armed forces, paramilitary organizations, or rebel groups. Many children are forcibly abducted to be used as combatants. Others are made to work as porters, cooks, guards, servants, messengers, or spies. Young girls may be forced to “marry” or be raped by commanders and male combatants. Both male and female child soldiers are often sexually abused or exploited by armed groups and such children are subject to the same types of devastating physical and psychological consequences associated with child sex trafficking.

U.S. Department of State

The lessons of 1989: freedom and our future.

Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Slavery — The Long-lasting Impact of Slavery on Society

The Long-lasting Impact of Slavery on Society

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Economic disparities, systemic inequalities.

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Essay on Modern Slavery

Students are often asked to write an essay on Modern Slavery in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Modern Slavery

Understanding modern slavery.

Modern slavery is when people are forced to work without pay, under threat, or are owned by others. Unlike historical slavery, it’s illegal everywhere but still happens. This includes work in homes, farms, and factories under bad conditions.

Types of Modern Slavery

There are different kinds of modern slavery. Some people are trapped in debt, forced to work off money they owe. Others are tricked into jobs in other countries and then can’t leave. Child slavery and forced marriage are also types.

Fighting Modern Slavery

To stop modern slavery, laws need to be strong and enforced. People should also learn about fair working conditions and choose to buy things made without slavery. Everyone can help fight modern slavery by staying informed and supporting the right causes.

250 Words Essay on Modern Slavery

What is modern slavery.

Modern slavery is when one person controls another person, forcing them to work without pay or freedom. Today, even though slavery is illegal everywhere, it still exists in many forms. People might be tricked into slavery by being promised a good job, but then they are forced to work without proper food, sleep, or money.

Why It Still Exists

Slavery continues because it is hidden and because some people make a lot of money from it. It’s hard to stop because the victims are scared to ask for help. Sometimes, the laws are not strong enough, or people don’t know about them.

Ending Modern Slavery

To end modern slavery, everyone needs to work together. Governments must make stronger laws and punish those who break them. People should learn about slavery to recognize and help stop it. Businesses must make sure they don’t use slavery to make their products.

In conclusion, modern slavery is a serious problem that takes away people’s freedom. By understanding and acting against it, we can help to free those who are trapped and build a world where everyone is treated fairly.

500 Words Essay on Modern Slavery

Modern slavery is a serious problem in today’s world. It means when people are forced to work without pay, treated as property, or controlled by someone else. This can happen in many ways, such as being tricked, threatened, or even born into slavery. It’s not just about being physically trapped; it’s also about feeling like there’s no way out because of threats, debts, or the fear of violence.

There are different kinds of modern slavery. One type is called “human trafficking,” where people are moved from one place to another to be exploited. Another type is “forced labor,” where people are made to work against their will. “Debt bondage” is when someone is forced to work to pay off a debt, but the work never seems to end. There’s also “child labor,” where kids are made to work instead of going to school. Lastly, “forced marriage” is a form where people are made to marry someone without their choice.

Where It Happens

Who is affected.

Anyone can be a victim of modern slavery, but some are more at risk than others. People who are poor, lack education, or are in desperate situations are often the targets. Women and children are especially vulnerable, but men can be victims too.

Why It’s Hard to Stop

Stopping modern slavery is challenging because it’s often hidden and involves a lot of money. People who use slaves can make a lot of profit because they don’t pay for the work being done. Sometimes, the law doesn’t protect victims well enough, or people are too scared to ask for help.

What’s Being Done

How we can help.

Everyone can play a part in stopping modern slavery. Learning about the issue is the first step. People can also support businesses that don’t use slavery and help organizations that are working to end it. Talking about the problem with friends and family can spread awareness too.

In conclusion, modern slavery is a big problem that hurts many people around the world. It’s important to know about it and work together to stop it. By being aware and active, we can help make sure everyone is free to live their lives without being controlled or forced to work by someone else.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

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Despite the abolition of slavery in the nineteenth century, the practice is prevalent in the contemporary world. It is estimated that more people are enslaved today than during the few centuries of the transatlantic slave trade. Modern slavery poses a serious challenge to human rights protection worldwide, and many governments as well as international and regional bodies are working towards preventing and combating it.

This course explored the historical origins and forms of slavery from ancient times to the twenty-first century. It also looked at the international legal instruments regulating the prohibition of slavery: international human rights treaties, ILO conventions, as well as regional human rights instruments.

You should now be able to:

• understand the historical origins of slavery as well as examples of slavery
• understand the international legal framework prohibiting slavery
• understand the concept of modern slavery and its various forms
• analyse the applicable law and apply it to a given example/case study
• think critically about human rights aspects of slavery in a variety of contexts and to articulate an independent view
• critically analyse and evaluate proposals for new legislation addressing modern slavery.

If you are unsure about any of these, go back and reread the relevant section(s) of this course.

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Modern Slavery, Essay Example

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Slavery is an age-old practice that rendered some people deprived of their fundamental human rights. The people enslaved were subjected to some form of control by other human beings. This act dispossessed them of their ability to choose what they wanted, where to live, whom to be with, and other life privileges that a free human being can get or must have in life.

The article confirms that slavery still exists in modern days as well. The only difference between this and the former type of slavery is in the manner it is done. Modern slavery is manifested in such forms as human trafficking, being locked up in brothels and subjected to poor and inhumane working conditions in restaurants and many others. This shows that the modern forms of slavery are related to work. When an employer subjects an employee to some hard labor conditions without good pay, then this can be seen as a form of slavery. The fact that someone is not happy about a position he or she is in but is forced to live in it, then this can be seen as a form of slavery. The slavery types identified in the article are labor slavery, sex slavery, and child slavery.

As presented in the article, the major causes of modern slavery are related to the pursuit of money. Virtually all activities that are seen to put people in a way of slavery, such as human trafficking and forced labor in brothels and restaurants, are all geared towards making monetary gains. These causes are also contributed by the lack of government surveillance to prohibit the bad practice in the society. Whereas slavery is specific to poor countries, Brazil, Haiti, India, Nepal, Congo, and Ghana have been identified as the major countries where labor slavery is rife.

The problem of slavery can be addressed by adopting two top-most strategies. First, the governments must adopt safety measures aimed at protecting their citizens from the vice. There should also be consultative programs among all governments to curb it because human trafficking is an inter-country problem. The strategy relates to the issuance of information relating to the forms of slavery and the ways of evading them. This will be helpful to the victims who end up being trapped in it without knowing.

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How does the Modern Slavery Act impact your business?

For businesses, including logistics and haulage firms, the most relevant section deals with ‘Transparency in Supply Chains’. It requires commercial entities with an annual turnover of £36m or more and which supply goods or services to report annually on their actions to identify, prevent and mitigate modern slavery.

The statement must set out the steps the organisation has taken to ensure slavery and human trafficking are not taking place in its supply chain or its own business (or it must state that it has not taken any steps). The statement must be approved by senior management and published on its website.

This could include the organisation’s structure, its business and supply chains, its organisational policies in relation to slavery and human trafficking, assessing and managing risk performance indicators, and staff training.

According to guidance on the Act from PwC, all businesses, even those under the required turnover level, should be open and transparent about their recruitment practices, policies and procedures in relation to modern slavery by producing a voluntary statement. Smaller organisations, advises PwC, “may find this necessary in order to manage requests from those they are supplying goods and services to, particularly if they are bidding for contracts with large businesses with a turnover of more than £36m”.

If a company fails to produce a statement, the government may seek an injunction through the High Court, requiring that company to comply.

These sanctions, however, may be too relaxed suggests Justine Carter, director of the UK charity Unseen, which helps victims of modern slavery and human trafficking.

“Most members of the public assume this kind of thing happens abroad in developing countries and not here in the UK. There is a lack of awareness,” she says. “I think the Act could be strengthened. One of the shortfalls is the statement itself. It is meant to be mandatory, but we estimate that out of 19,000 businesses, this is applicable to there around a fifth which have never put out a statement. Even though the Home Office has the ability to raise an injunction, that has never happened. There needs to be a penalty that can act as an incentive for businesses to comply rather than just causing reputational damage. We want to stamp out this behaviour.”

That includes behaviour within the world of logistics and haulage. Back in 2022, Unseen released a report stating that the significant demand for labour within the industry was making it a high-risk environment for modern slavery.

“While there has been a consistent increase in online shopping in recent years, the recent pandemic saw a surge in this kind of consumerism. This creates a need for more workers in the logistics, warehouse, distribution and transportation sectors – a need that often cannot be fully met,” the report said. “As labour shortages take hold, the risk of modern slavery increases because businesses take short-cuts to secure the temporary labour they need. The victim can be the person driving the lorry, the person preparing and packaging goods, loading the van or the lorry, or the courier. It’s people working in average, everyday roles and carrying out typical tasks – but their hours are often longer, they get paid much less, and they are being controlled and manipulated by an exploiter.”

One example were workers delivering parcels, who if they failed to make all their deliveries, or complained, risked losing their job.

The report added: “A lot of individuals trapped in modern slavery in logistics can be working up to 14 hours a day without breaks, with their jobs being threatened if they refuse to work those hours. Not only is this kind of expectation unrealistic, but it can threaten lives, especially if employees are expected to drive or operate machinery while tired and overworked. In addition, some workers don’t have access to their wages or do overtime and don’t get paid for it.”

“This is an issue we have been aware of for the last two or three years,” says Carter. “It is mainly in warehouses and distribution centres, but we have evidence of this happening in driver roles as well.”

Modern slavery can affect both UK nationals and those from overseas.

The report also raised the issue of unethical recruitment – which can involve migrant workers having to pay fees to land jobs in the UK logistics sector or finding on arrival that the job terms are not as advertised or that the post simply does not exist. 

“Since Brexit, we’ve seen jobs not getting filled by UK nationals. We don’t tend to see direct recruitment of migrant workers by logistics firms, but third-party labour agencies can be involved in some way when businesses are looking to hire temporary employees from overseas,” Carter explains. “Illegitimate or rogue recruitment agencies can lead to people being exploited. It could even be a rogue supervisor in your business bringing people in, saying ‘It’s okay, I can get you a job’ and then exploiting them, for example deducting money from their wages or charging them fees to keep their jobs. They use their power as the employer as leverage. It is this element of control which makes something modern slavery rather than just labour abuse.”

Unseen has a Helpline which workers who have experienced modern slavery can contact. Where appropriate, and when the employee gives their consent, Unseen then passes this information on to the necessary authorities and even companies themselves, highlighting issues, for example, in a retailer’s distribution centre.

So, what can logistics or haulage firms do to prevent modern slavery and unethical recruitment occurring?

“The key things that business owners need to be aware of are due diligence and risk management. In order to do this, they must properly assess the nature and extent of the organisation’s risk of modern slavery by looking into their supply chains, thereby being able to take targeted action to find it, remedy it, and prevent it from occurring again,” says Philip Somarakis, regulatory partner at law firm Irwin Mitchell. “They will need to research and identify the points in the supply chain where there might be the most risk and prioritise those risks.”

He adds that organisations need to adopt due diligence and risk management policies that are Photo: Shutterstock proportionate to the size of the organisation, structure, and supply chains. Due to the road haulage industry being a large size, with a vast supply chain, it would be expected that their policies are researched and well thought through, with on-going assessments.

“Due diligence could include the organisation consulting with stakeholders that are involved in its operations and supply chain, throughout all tiers, and always adapting its policies to meet the changing industry,” he advises. “Organisations are expected to ensure integrity when investigating their supply chains such as employment of individuals, working conditions, third-party involvement and civil society stakeholders. When doing their investigations, important areas for organisations to consider could include actions taken to understand the business’s operating context, details of their risk management processes, impact assessments they take, stakeholder engagement, grievance mechanisms, and what they themselves are doing to combat modern slavery.”

As part of the risk management, he adds that organisations should use performance indicators and set targets. This may include training staff about modern slavery issues, measuring changes in awareness of risk, appropriate decision making, and what action they would take if an incident were to occur, such as grievance and whistleblowing procedures. 

“Organisations need to be alive to periods of higher demand such as Christmas holidays when the demand for labour would see a substantial increase and ensure there are checks in place so they can manage expectation while managing the risk of modern slavery,” he states.

Carter adds: “This isn’t rocket science. It is asking the right questions at the right time and seeking evidence that a supplier or a recruitment agency is taking all the right steps. Do workers have the right to work in the UK? Are they under any duress and doing this by their own free will? You have a right to know that the workers agencies are providing are free from exploitation.”

  - This article was previoulsy published in Commercial Motor, to subscribe see the latest Commercial Motor subscription offer

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Guidance on modern slavery and human trafficking

The College of Policing is seeking views on its updated guidance on modern slavery and human trafficking.

This consultation is being held on another website .

This consultation closes at 11:59am on 12 November 2024

Consultation description

Authorised professional practice (APP) is the official source of professional practice for policing.

The College has updated professional practice to incorporate new legislation, better tackle modern slavery and prevent more vulnerable people becoming victims.

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Modern slavery statement

For the period 1 August 2022 to 31 July 2023.

At the University of Edinburgh, we are committed to protecting and respecting human rights and have a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking in all its forms. This statement is made pursuant to Section 54, Part 6 of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes the University of Edinburgh’s slavery and human trafficking statement for the financial year beginning 1 August 2022 and ending 31 July 2023. It sets out the steps the University has taken across our research, teaching and operational activities in relation to slavery and human trafficking in our supply chains and within our own organisation.

Our commitment  

The University’s Strategy 2030 sets out our vision to make the world a better place. A key focus of the Strategy is Social and Civic Responsibility, ensuring that our actions and activities deliver positive change locally, regionally and globally.

We recognise that modern slavery is a significant global human rights issue that includes human trafficking, sexual exploitation, forced and bonded labour, domestic servitude and some forms of child labour. Our commitment starts from protecting and respecting human rights and taking action to prevent slavery and human trafficking in all its forms. We are committed to acting ethically and with integrity in all our relationships, and using all reasonable endeavours to take action within our direct operations and wider sphere of influence to ensure that slavery and human trafficking are not taking place. We recognise we have a responsibility to raise awareness of modern slavery by researching, teaching and engaging staff and students on this issue.

The University’s structure and activities 

The University of Edinburgh is constituted by the Universities (Scotland) Acts 1858 to 1966. The Universities (Scotland) Acts make specific provision for three major bodies in the Governance of the University: Court, Senate and General Council. The University is organised into three colleges (College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences, College of Medicine & Veterinary Medicine and College of Science & Engineering), a Finance Directorate and three professional services Groups (Corporate Services Group, Information Services Group and University Secretary’s Group). Over the 2022-23 academic year, the University comprised roughly 16,899 staff (11,887.70 Full Time Equivalent) and around 49,740 students, with an annual turnover of £1,399 million.

The University educates students from all over the world, and seeks to attract, develop, reward and retain the best staff for a world-class teaching and research institution. Many University of Edinburgh staff work internationally and some are based, or spend a significant amount of their time, working at University facilities overseas. These international facilities include liaison offices in Chile, China, India, Singapore and the USA, and collaborative ventures (teaching, research and outreach) including in China and India.

The University carries out various key activities via subsidiary companies, thereby protecting its charitable status. Obligations between the University and each of its subsidiaries are governed by a Memoranda of Understanding (MoU). A complete list of the University Subsidiary undertakings, which comprise companies, charities and partnerships registered in Scotland, can be found online . Subsidiary companies are not required to publish Modern Slavery Statements unless they independently fulfil the UK Government's requirements. In July 2023, it was decided that, in order to support the University’s Anti-Slavery Policy (2021) , the University’s Modern Slavery Statement, going forward from 2022-23, should explicitly include Subsidiaries as part of a group statement.

We buy a wide range of goods and services, in accordance with public procurement law and our ethical sourcing policies. These include construction services and supplies, furniture and stationery, electronics (computers, audio visual equipment, phones etc.), food and catering supplies, travel services, laboratory supplies (small and large equipment, chemicals, consumables, pharmaceuticals etc.), books and printing and waste management services. 33% of our spend is through frameworks established by collaborative consortia, particularly the Advanced Procurement for Universities and Colleges (APUC), Crown Commercial Services (CCS), Scottish Procurement (Scottish Government), and The University Caterers Organisation (TUCO).

Our procurement spend over the 2022-23 financial year was £286.8 million, with thousands of unique suppliers. We awarded 154 regulated public procurement contracts during this period for a value of £109.2 million, with 104 of these won by SME contractors. £95.7 million of this spend came through collaborative contracts of which £44.4 million of spend was on Category A contracts (available to all public bodies e.g. Scottish Government, Crown Commercial Services) - accounting for 15% of total spend, and £51.3 million of spend was on Category B contracts (available to public bodies within a specific sector – e.g. APUC, Scotland Excel) - accounting for 18% of total spend.

Assessing modern slavery risks in our supply chains and other areas

We recognise there are risks of modern slavery in the supply chains for all types of goods and services. By its very nature, modern slavery is hard to detect and is often hidden within seemingly legitimate industries.

Sustainability tools and guidance, which support Scotland’s National Performance Framework outcomes, is embedded into our procurement process for regulated procurements and the adoption of framework agreements. The university is exploring the development and use of different industry-leading sustainability tools.

We conduct research and use a number of tools to assess sustainability risks, including modern slavery, across all procurement categories (Laboratories, Estates, Information Service, and Professional Campus Services).  Briefing papers and action plans have been produced that summarise the category risks and opportunities in key areas (electronics, catering supplies and services, laboratories, and travel). These briefing papers are due to be redeveloped alongside the wider sector in 2023-24.

These risk assessments inform our annual Procurement Category Strategies. Each Strategy contains a sustainability section where upcoming high-priority procurements and risk mitigation actions are identified, including for modern slavery concerns. We aim to work collaboratively with other universities, procurement bodies such as the APUC, civil society organisations and government agencies to share information and mitigate risks.

Due to controls and systems the University has in place to manage recruitment and subcontracting, the risk of modern slavery on our campuses is considered low. Additionally, given the global reach of our University, we recognise that there are potential risks of modern slavery related to our international activities, especially when located in high-risk countries.

Supply chain risks

We have identified a number of potential risk areas related to our supply chains, highlighted by our research and the 2022 academic report: Driving Force . In early 2022, there were alerts to potential risk of modern slavery within the manufacturing supply chain of consumer vehicles – with particular reference to Human Rights violations taking place in the Uyghur region of China. Following the report, the University has evaluated the risk of such instances occurring within our procurement.

While the severity of the risk is considered to be moderate, the likelihood of such a risk occurring at the University is considered to be high due to the range of vehicle manufacturers that are noted as utilising suppliers in this region, as well as the materials which it was not possible to track through the report. The University is currently evaluating steps to reduce the likelihood of such instances occurring.

Other high-risk areas include imported goods, including food such as fish and seafood from Asia, cocoa farmed in parts of West Africa, sugar cane grown in the Caribbean, rice produced in India and Myanmar, construction materials including stone from India and China, garments produced in South America and Asia, electronics manufactured in Asia and other laboratory equipment. In the UK, relevant sectors that have a higher risk of modern slavery include hospitality, cleaning services, construction sites, farms and food processing facilities. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to increase the vulnerability of many groups to human trafficking and modern slavery; particularly women and migrant workers. The subsequent economic downturn, increased cost of living, travel restrictions and reduced scrutiny of working conditions has left many workers stranded without income or at risk of exploitation from employers.

Our policies and practices for the prevention and mitigation of human trafficking and modern slavery, including steps taken in 2022-23

People working on our campuses  .

Our Human Resources Policies set out workplace rights at the University. We are rigorous in checking that all new recruits have the right to work in the UK. Where it is necessary to hire agency workers or contractors, our staff are directed to specified, reliable agencies that have been vetted through the University’s rigorous procurement procedures and meet our imposed selection criteria regarding their employment policies and practices. For example, agencies are asked to identify sub-contractors used and to promote fair work practices as appropriate. The University is accredited by the Living Wage Foundation , which certifies that all staff are paid a real living wage. Non- University contracted workers that regularly work onsite at the University are expected to be paid the UK living wage as defined by the Living Wage Foundation, and the University evaluates suppliers’ approach to Fair Work Practices, including the Living Wage, in line with statutory guidance.

The University adheres to The Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and implements its own Whistleblowing Code of Practice regarding concerns about potential corruption, fraud and other unlawful practices within the University. If a case of modern slavery were to be suspected on site, this would be fully investigated in accordance with the Anti-Slavery policy (2021) and appropriate disciplinary action would be taken against any member of staff found to have acted in breach of any relevant University policies. No instances, or potential instances, of on-site modern slavery were raised in 2022-23.

Purchasing and supply chains  

The University’s Procurement Strategy 2021-26 outlines our ethical procurement approach and sets out our principles and practices for the acquisition of goods, services and building works. Within this strategy, modern slavery is noted as one of the key sustainability areas for our contract clauses. We also produce annual Category Strategies to assist in managing specific issues and risks. Other relevant documents include our Conflict Minerals Policy (2016), Palm Oil Policy (2019), Fair Trade Policy (2004, updated in 2013, 2017 and 2020) and guidance on addressing ‘fair work’ practices in procurements. In 2021 we published an Anti-Slavery Policy to specify our commitments and responsibilities in this area, and details the process for reporting instances, or potential instances, of modern slavery at the University.

We have integrated modern slavery into the University’s terms and conditions for purchase contracts. Suppliers are required to:

• Comply with the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015 and all other applicable laws regarding anti-slavery and human trafficking
• Maintain policies to ensure compliance
• Perform due diligence on their supply chains and include anti-slavery and human trafficking provisions in their supply contracts
• Notify the University of any breaches and provide the University with annual compliance reports.

Any breach of these obligations is specifically deemed a material breach of contract, which would entitle the University to terminate such contract with immediate effect where appropriate. If evidence were found indicating modern slavery in our supply chains, we recognise our responsibility to work with others to address this and reserve the right to terminate contracts where serious violations are discovered.

The requirement for suppliers to comply with the Modern Slavery Act as well as International Labour Organisation (ILO) fundamental conventions is included in our contract notices, European Single Procurement Document checks, and Invitation to Tender documentation, where relevant. These measures are also in place for non-regulated construction procurements. We have created template letters to request more information from suppliers about Modern Slavery Act and ILO compliance if we have concerns about the reliability of information provided in this regard.

The University has a Procurement Policy to ensure that staff only make purchases, other than small expenses, using established processes. This is being monitored by finance transaction teams with stricter guidelines coming into force in October 2023 to ensure compliance with this policy. New suppliers to the University are managed centrally by the procurement department, in alignment with the University’s Procurement Policy.

This allows for a consistent approach and ensures that all suppliers have completed a self-declaration form to confirm they meet the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act, where applicable.

The University has contributed to and adopted the APUC Sustain Supply Chain Code of Conduct (2021b) . The Code sets out social, environmental and ethical standards that suppliers are expected to comply with, including no use of forced, involuntary or underage labour. All suppliers of regulated contracted are asked to sign the APUC code of conduct, and all suppliers added to the University’s finance system are required to confirm that they comply with the Modern Slavery Act.

Where risks have been identified in relation to existing contracts, we work with APUC or with suppliers directly, to raise questions about human rights issues. For example, within the Laboratories category, first and second tier supply chains had been disclosed for gloves supply chains of suppliers to the APUC framework agreement for laboratory plastic-ware, glassware and sundries. We used this information to establish and address associated risks in those supply chains.

The University continues to maintain its longstanding commitment to fair trade and expand its approach to ethical supply chains. In 2022 the University received a 2-star award as part of the University and Colleges Award. In 2022-23, the University agreed to broadening the accepted sustainability certifications when purchasing ethical products to include: Rainforest Alliance, Fair for Life, Global Organic Textile Standards (GOTS) and Fair Wear. Since receiving this award, the University has been working towards a resubmission of this award which is due in early 2024. Our cafes stock a range of fairly-traded products including rice, chocolate, coffee, sugar, bananas and tea while the University visitor centre also expanded its range of FairWear and Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified products.

The uncertainty around certain supply chains due to climate change, wars, or other global events has led to an intense upsurge in global demand for certain products. This is acutely visible in the supply of food, but also of other common goods such as clothing and lab consumables. In 2022-23, the University continued to work internally and with its partners to address some of these risks, and acknowledge that, in some regions in which our supply chains operate, these supply chain issues will remain for some time to come.

Electronics Watch 

In 2014, the University became a founding member of Electronics Watch , an organisation that works to monitor working conditions in factories producing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) goods bought by European public sector members. Electronics Watch aligned terms and conditions have been embedded within APUC-awarded IT framework agreements used by the University. Suppliers provide details of the factories in which the ICT equipment bought by the University are produced, and Electronics Watch works with civil society organisations in the countries where the factories are located to monitor working conditions. When issues are detected, APUC raises them with suppliers during contract management meetings.

The University had no local (category C) contracts for large ICT hardware or infrastructure projects in 2022-23. However, the University has called-off from APUC and Crown Commercial Services (CCS) framework agreements, which have included conditions and provisions at framework-level.

Fundraising

The University accepts philanthropic donations and research funding from a wide range of sources. There is a risk that sources of potential funding could be linked to unethical or illegal activity, including exploitation (either directly to the prospective donor, or as an underlying source of funding for the donation). For example, funding could stem from profits from an organisation where modern slavery has occurred, or from an individual who has links to exploitative businesses.

Following a planned review of due diligence procedures, the University established an Income Due Diligence Group (IDDG). The purpose of this group is to ensure that all streams of funding whose source raises potential red flags in relation to a range of ethical issues, including modern slavery, are subject to enhanced scrutiny.

These funding streams include, but is not limited to, philanthropic and contractual business, industrial and international government sources. The University screens all potential income in excess of £10,000 for a number of ethical and reputational issues, which includes any potential connection to modern slavery. Where due diligence checks indicate a significant issue or concern, the case will be passed to the Income Due Diligence Group for review. No modern slavery concerns were raised through the IDDG in 2022-23.

Investments

Our  Responsible Investment Policy Statement  summarises the approach of the University in relation to investments. As signatories of the  United Nations Principles of Responsible Investment , now known as PRI, we integrate environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues into investment and ownership decisions. All of our fund managers are PRI signatories and share a commitment to assess ESG concerns (including human rights issues such as modern slavery) in our investments. PRI carries out an assessment of our integration of the principles into our fund management. Due to an upgrade with the PRI reporting system, the most recent assessment results (2021) are not available. The 2022 assessment was submitted by the University in September 2023, with results due later in the 2023-24 financial year. In the most recent assessment the University (2020) received an A rating.

Research, teaching and partnerships

The University provides various programmes and courses that specifically examine issues of modern slavery and human trafficking. A range of courses and research also examine historical slavery. Research related to human rights in supply chains and the impact of UK Modern Slavery Act is taking place across the University. In May 2023, academics from the Centre for Statistics (School of Mathematics) and the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) hosted an event to promote collaboration in the area of estimating hidden population sizes, with one of the potential applications of this statistical modelling being to estimating the population size of modern slavery victims. Discussions took place with the University of Sydney in early 2023 to establish potential collaborate opportunities. While no further action has taken place to date, the University intends to restart these discussions in 2023-24.

The Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability takes a  ‘ living labs ’ approach to problem solving, which means using our own academic and student research capabilities to explore or resolve issues related to University practice. In 2023, a group of students took part in the Case Studies for Sustainable Development (CSSD) course, examining how the University could improve the impact of Fairtrade at the University. As in previous years, the University’s Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability offered to host a student from the School of Law’s LLM in Human Rights for a work-based placement over the 2023 summer. Due to the large number of projects proposed, this offer was not taken up in 2022-23.

Our research contracts reflect the University’s modern slavery approach. Research funders and collaborating partners are required to confirm equivalence with the University’s ethical commitments. All staff in the Edinburgh Research Office (ERO) have been briefed on modern slavery risks and the Modern Slavery Awareness course is part of the list of Research Integrity trainings for University researchers. Awareness of modern slavery risks has also been incorporated into Ethical Research Partnerships guidance for staff and students working with organisations and institutions overseas. The Academic Collaboration Agreement Templates used by Edinburgh Global and the Edinburgh Research Office incorporate a clause seeking partners to comply with all applicable laws and regulation relating to anti-slavery and human trafficking, and not to engage in any activity, practice or conduct which would constitute an offence under the Modern Slavery Act. 

Annual  Research Ethics and Integrity Reports provide a snapshot of the work being carried out across the University to put our institutional commitment to strengthening the integrity of our research into practice.

Training and capacity building 

As a place of learning, we recognise our responsibility to raise awareness of the issue of modern slavery, and to train some groups specifically on modern slavery risks and best practices. We incorporated modern slavery awareness into our 2023 Fairtrade Fortnight campaign, with representatives from Tony’s Chocolonely presented to staff and students at Kings Buildings and the Central Campus to discuss the risk of modern slavery within the chocolate industry, and highlight their mission to make 100% slave free chocolate the norm.

The Modern Slavery Awareness course has been redesigned and will be released in November 2023. The course aims to raise awareness of where there are risks of Modern Slavery at the University, and actions to take if a member of staff, student, or visitor suspects something isn’t right. This course is mandatory for all staff members with authority to approve financial transactions and optional for all other staff and students. Procurement staff are also required to complete annual ethics training which includes human rights due diligence, as part of their Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply affiliation. In addition, we continue to link to publicly available modern slavery resources and online courses on our website .

We are active members of the Higher Education Procurement Authority (HEPA) and Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) Responsible Procurement Group (RPG), and the RPG’s Human Rights Subgroup, where we aim to share our experiences of managing modern slavery risks and collaborate with others in the sector.

Key Performance Indicators

We have devised Key Performance Indicators to measure our progress on modern slavery:

Action plan for next financial year

In 2023-24, in addition to continuing the work outlined above, we will focus in particular on the following:

Learning and Teaching

Continue to raise awareness of modern slavery amongst staff and students

Release updated Modern Slavery Training for staff, and raise awareness of this course

Improve understanding of breadth of modern slavery instances within HE, and ensuring colleagues at key departments are aware of these potential instances through dedicated training sessions

Explore opportunities to collaborate as part of the University’s Strategic Partnership with the University of Sydney (Australia)

Continue to undertake research and benchmarking activities to inform our approach

Develop cross-institutional research collaborations related to modern slavery risks and solutions, with particular reference to the opportunities available thought the Strategic Partnership with the University of Sydney (Australia)

Standardise approach to Modern Slavery within our Subsidiaries. To include monitoring and reporting as required

Continue to integrate modern slavery due diligence as part of our contract management activities

Raise awareness of the University’s Anti-Slavery Policy (2021) amongst staff and students

Increase use of supplier management tools to evaluate the actions of UoE suppliers in relation to modern slavery

Approval and review

Further information and contact 

University approach to modern slavery

General enquiries

• Social Responsibility and Sustainability

Contact details

• Work: +44 (0)131 651 3000
• Email: [email protected]

Department for Social Responsibility and Sustainability The Boilerhouse High School Yards

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What Has ‘Modern Love’ Taught You About Love?

To celebrate the column’s 20th anniversary, we’re asking readers to share their favorite lines of wisdom from Modern Love essays and Tiny Love Stories.

By Miya Lee and Daniel Jones

As the editors of Modern Love, we are routinely asked, by friends and strangers alike, “What have you learned about love?”

We plan to provide some answers in October when Modern Love reaches its 20th anniversary. But we also want to ask you, our readers, what you have learned about love from reading the column.

Are there any lines from Modern Love essays or Tiny Love Stories that you hold close or turn to because they seem wise or true? Have you implemented any of the lessons embedded in these true stories in your own life?

Please tell us in the questionnaire below by Sunday, Sept. 8, at 11:59 p.m. Pacific time. Feel free to share this callout with others who might want to respond. If we’re interested in your entry, an editor will get in touch with you.

What Has Modern Love Taught You About Love?

Miya Lee is the editor of Modern Love projects. More about Miya Lee