Slavery is impossible under free market capitalism.

[thriftylefty]

What makes slavery interesting in regard to capitalism, is a slave could open a bank account, and one did indeed do that in Kentucky. It was not uncommon for a slave to amass a large sum of money. Many slaves bought themselves out of slavery. Once slavery was illegal and sharecropping took over the economic relationship between the agricultural worker and plantation owners, building wealth was not possible for the laborer. IMO The thing that was used to keep the sharecropper as a voluntary slave was credit debt. Still works today.

[J746NEW]

Originally Posted by Marc Paolella

You are correct. Slavery is impossible under Capitalism, since the central tenets of Capitalism are freedom and trade, not compulsion and confiscation.

You are correct that the tenants of Capitalism rests on Freedom and Trade.
So, 250 Million Chinese had their lands stolen and bull dozed over and then sent to the Big Cities to work.
In China, you do as the Government tells you and work when they tell you.
They had no choice. Given how much Big Business is in bed with China in this country, we can safely say that it is not Capitalism we have between China and the USA either.

The spoils of this arrangement went to shareholders and corporate profits, not the consumers, and there are many products to hold up as an example where the consumer price Americans pay is 5 times what the costs are.

Corporate and Banking Lobbyists want to the highest possible prices at the lowest costs to them.

[totsuka]

Slavery was the result of crony capitalism. A corrupt group of government leaders and private citizens wanted a free ride with slave labor. It failed, but we see the same system with the current illegal immigration disaster. Once again, government and private citizens are importing illegals and working them a near slave wages. It is failing.

[Unsettomati]

This assertion is like the claims that everyone is free under communism, that no one can be oppressed in a democratic system, that hereditary monarchs are free to choose wisely for a nation while being unencumbered by the passions of the masses.

These assertions, like the one put forth in this thread, imagine perfect-world scenarios. And if one cites all the real-world examples that counter the claims, advocates of those systems will merely dismiss them as not being 'real' examples of communism/democratic systems/monarchies/etc. (but if they're not advocates of a certain system, they'll readily agree that the lack of perfection in that system when implemented is evidence that it is bad and should be rejected).

Of course, we don't live in a perfect world. We don't live in the theoretical world of our high school civics classes or one's favorite Ayn Rand novel. We live in the real world, a very messy place, and one not conducive to propping up trite tautologies.