Please don’t take this question the wrong way, I am just trying to learn and get the opinions of more people on this subject. I find it interesting.
Please don’t take this question the wrong way, I am just trying to learn and get the opinions of more people on this subject. I find it interesting.
Slavery is a very old method of production that had a resurgence a few centuries ago.
It’s more of a regressive economic movement than a new development, then and now.
It was not inevitable; the ruling class exploited socioeconomic conditions in Africa and exported enslaved laborers to colonies in the Americas accordingly.
I was referring to slavery as a necessary step during antiquity only, more recent slavery I don’t believe to have been inevitable at all.
The “terrible swift sword” that forced hunter-gatherers into the wheat fields was maybe necessary for economy of scale early agriculture, yeah.
I can see the argument, but the amount of free labor it takes to maintain a slave system is so high (especially when there isn’t much in the way of technology) that significant slavery at the dawn of agriculture seems unlikely. Seems like that’s something you could only start to pull off with a decent sized city state’s worth of overseer labor, and at that point you’ve already had agriculture for a while.