In what century did the slave system exist? Causes and features of the slave economy

The largest slave-owning state of antiquity was the Roman Empire, which played a significant role in the fate of many peoples of our Motherland. The peoples of the Black Sea and Transcaucasia experienced the brunt of the Roman occupation, and the ancient Slavs for several centuries were forced to fight the Romans. The constant pursuit of new thousands of slaves prompted Rome to wage wars of conquest on a large scale and interfere in the affairs of neighboring states. The entire slave-owning world of Europe and the Middle East, from Spain in the west to Parthia in the east, was largely bound by a common destiny. The crisis of the slave system was general and more or less simultaneous. The crisis was accompanied by the so-called "barbarian conquests", which took on the greatest scope in the era of the "great migration of peoples" (III - VI centuries). Their essence was that the "barbarian" peoples, who were in the process of disintegrating primitive communal relations, began to go on the offensive against the Roman slave owners, who considered these peoples as a source of replenishment of the empire with slaves. The barbarians were attracted by the riches of Rome.
United in huge alliances, moving on campaigns against the Roman cities (sometimes with all their property and families), these peoples represented a formidable force for the slave empire and for the slave system as a whole.
However, the main reason for the fall of the slave system was that the very mode of production, based on the backbreaking forced labor of half-starved slaves who had neither a family, nor a home, nor any interest in the results of their labor, nor a guarantee of the safety of their lives, had become obsolete. myself. The achieved level of development of the productive forces came into glaring contradiction with the primitive form of production relations. The slave-owning economy was based not on high technology, but on a large number of slaves.
During the crisis, the ideologists of the Roman slave economy recommended to their fellow slave owners extremely cruel and inhuman methods treatment of slaves: beatings, starvation, even conscious physical mutilation. The answer to this was the murder of masters by slaves, uprisings both in individual latifundia (large estates) and in entire regions. The class struggle was an indicator of the growing crisis.
the only way out there was a transition to new forms of production relations corresponding to the achieved level of productive forces. Agricultural machinery of that time made it possible for each individual family to farm independently. Therefore, the new production relations could take the form of exploitation by the owner of the land of a number of peasant families interested in the success of their individual farms. Already at the very beginning of the crisis of slavery in the I - II centuries. n. e. the practice of splitting estates, leasing land plots, placing slaves and freedmen on the land of the master as tenants leading an independent economy appeared. This process took place everywhere, testifying to the emergence of elements of the future formation - feudalism - in the bowels of the slave-owning society in Europe and Asia.

The main features of the feudal system

Under feudalism, the means of production, and above all the land, are in the hands of the ruling class. Ownership of the ruling class of feudal lords on the land gave him the opportunity to exploit the dependent peasantry, the feudal lords handed over land plots to the peasants, on which they conducted an individual economy with their own tools of labor. Therefore, feudal landed property is the basis of feudalism.
Economically realizing the right of ownership of the land, the feudal lords received part of the peasant's product (land rent). Throughout the feudal system, there were three historically changing types of rent: labor rent (corvée), natural rent (tire in products) and monetary rent. In the specific historical conditions of development individual peoples the sequence of changes in the forms of feudal rent was different. The spread of monetary rent, associated with the growth of the marketability of agriculture, meant the appearance of prerequisites, and then the beginning of the disintegration of the feudal mode of production.
If the peasants had an independent economy, the feudal lords could force them to work for themselves only by means of non-economic coercion. Therefore, a typical feature of the feudal system is the personal dependence of the peasants on landowners and their attachment to the land.
Feudalism is characterized by the dominance of subsistence farming in the countryside and on the estate of the feudal lord. The fortified cities were the centers of crafts and trade, in which, along with the work of artisans to order, small-scale commodity production, designed for the market, gradually developed. Over time, commodity production appeared and in agriculture.
Feudalism arose through the decomposition of slave-owning relations, which reached a dead end due to the low productivity of slave labor, the physical extinction of slaves and constant uprisings against slave owners. A number of peoples switched to feudalism as a result of the disintegration of primitive communal society, which had reached such a level of development of productive forces that it was possible not to have a communal, but an individual peasant economy.
The growth of the metallurgical industry, the spread of the iron plow and the loom, the spread of agricultural and horticultural crops, horticulture, winemaking, etc. - these are the main phenomena in the development of productive forces that made possible the emergence and development of feudal production relations.
Feudalism was a progressive phenomenon in comparison with the primitive communal and slave-owning system, primarily because it gave more scope for the development of productive forces than previous formations. Instead of the collective labor of community members united only because of the primitiveness of technology, or instead of the labor of disenfranchised slaves, considered by the masters on an equal footing with cattle, under the new formation, the basis of production was the labor of many thousands of peasant families who ran their households with their agricultural implements and therefore were interested in the results of their labor. Despite the presence of corvee and feudal requisitions, the medieval peasant was incomparably freer than the ancient slave.
Feudal exploitation aroused constant resistance from the peasantry. The class struggle in the era of feudalism was directed primarily against the landowners, as well as against the wealthy elite of the townspeople, merchants and usurers. The class struggle was waged by the direct producers of material goods in order to defend the right and possibility of their further development, to defend the share of the surplus product received by their labor. Over time, the class struggle undermined the foundations of the feudal system. This is the progressive significance of the anti-feudal struggle in the epoch of feudalism.

B.A. Rybakov - "History of the USSR from ancient times to the end of the XVIII century." - M., "Higher School", 1975.

Slavery is the first and crudest form of exploitation in history. It existed in the past among almost all peoples.

The transition from the primitive-communal system to the slave-owning system for the first time in the history of mankind took place in the countries of the ancient East.

The slave-owning mode of production dominated in Mesopotamia (the Sumerian state, Babylonia, Assyria and others), in Egypt, India and China already in the 4th-2nd millennia before our era. In the 1st millennium BC, the slave-owning mode of production dominated the Transcaucasus (the state of Urartu), from the 8th-7th centuries BC to the 5th-6th centuries AD, there was a strong slave-owning state in Khorezm. The culture achieved in the slave-owning countries of the ancient East had a great influence on the development of the peoples of European countries.

In Greece, the slave-owning mode of production reached its peak in V-IV centuries BC. Subsequently, slavery developed in the states of Asia Minor, Egypt, Macedonia (4th-1st centuries BC). The slaveholding system reached its highest stage of development in Rome in the period from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century of modern chronology.

At first, slavery had a patriarchal, domestic character. There were relatively few slaves. Slave labor was not yet the basis of production, but played an auxiliary role in the economy. The purpose of the economy remained to meet the needs of a large patriarchal family, which almost did not resort to exchange. The power of the master over his slaves was already unlimited then, but the field of application of slave labor remained limited.

The transition of society to the slave-owning system was based on the further growth of productive forces, the development of the social division of labor and exchange.

The transition from stone to metal tools led to a significant expansion of the scope of human labor. The invention of the blacksmith's bellows made it possible to manufacture iron tools of unprecedented strength. With the help of an iron ax, it became possible to clear the land from forests and shrubs for arable land. A plow with an iron plowshare made it possible to cultivate relatively large plots of land. The primitive hunting economy gave way to agriculture and cattle breeding. Crafts appeared.

In agriculture, which remained the main branch of production, the methods of farming and animal husbandry improved. Nose branches of agriculture arose: viticulture, flax growing, cultivation of oilseeds, etc. The herds of wealthy families multiplied. An increasing number of laborers were required to care for livestock. Weaving, metalworking, pottery and other crafts were gradually improved. Previously, the craft was an auxiliary occupation of the farmer and cattle breeder. now it has become an independent occupation for many people. There was a separation of craft from agriculture.

This was the second major social division of labor.

With the division of production into two large main branches—agriculture and handicrafts—production arises directly for exchange, though still in an undeveloped form. The growth of labor productivity led to an increase in the mass of the surplus product, which, with private ownership of the means of production, created the possibility of accumulating wealth in the hands of a minority of society and, on this basis, subordinating the working majority to the exploiting minority, turning the working people into slaves.

The economy under slavery was essentially natural, in which the products of labor are consumed within the same economy where they are produced. But at the same time there was a development of exchange. Craftsmen produced their products first to order and then to be sold on the market. At the same time, many of them continued to have small plots of land for a long time and cultivate them to meet their needs. The peasants were mainly subsistence farmers, but they were forced to sell some of their products on the market in order to be able to buy handicrafts and pay cash taxes. Thus, gradually, part of the products of the labor of artisans and peasants became a commodity.

A commodity is a product made not for direct consumption, but for exchange, for sale on the market. The production of products for exchange is a characteristic feature of the commodity economy. Thus, the separation of handicraft from agriculture, the emergence of handicraft as an independent trade meant the birth of commodity production.

While the exchange wore random character, one product of labor is directly exchanged for another. As exchange expanded and became a regular occurrence, a commodity was gradually singled out for which any other commodity was willingly given. This is how money came about. Money is the universal commodity by which all other commodities are valued and which serves as an intermediary in exchange.

The development of crafts and exchange led to the formation of cities. Cities arose in ancient times, at the dawn of the slave-owning mode of production. In the beginning, the cities differed little from the countryside. But gradually handicraft and trade were concentrated in the cities. According to the occupation of the inhabitants, according to their way of life, the cities were increasingly separated from the village.

This was the beginning of the separation of the city from the countryside and the emergence of opposition between them.

As the mass of commodities exchanged increased, so did the territorial scope of exchange. Merchants stood out who, in pursuit of profit, bought goods from manufacturers, brought goods to markets, sometimes quite far from the place of production, and sold them to consumers.

The expansion of production and exchange significantly increased property inequality. In the hands of the rich accumulated money, working cattle, tools of production, seeds. The poor were forced to increasingly turn to them for a loan - mostly in kind, and sometimes in cash. The rich gave tools of production, seeds, money on loan, enslaving their debtors, and in case of non-payment of debts, turned them into slavery, took away the land. This is how usury was born. It brought further wealth to some, debt bondage to others.

Land began to turn into private property. She began to sell and mortgage. If the debtor could not pay off the usurer, he had to abandon the land, sell his children and himself into slavery. Sometimes, finding fault with something, large landowners seized part of the meadows and pastures from the peasant rural communities.

This is how the concentration land ownership, monetary wealth and masses of slaves in the hands of wealthy slave owners. The small peasant economy was increasingly ruined, while the slave-owning economy grew stronger and expanded, spreading to all branches of production.

“The incessant growth of production, and with it the productivity of labor, increased the value of the human labor force; slavery, which only arose and was sporadic at a previous stage of development, now becomes essential integral part public system; slaves cease to be mere helpers; dozens of them are now driven to work in the fields and in the "workshops"1. Slave labor became the basis for the existence of society. Society split into two main opposing classes - slaves and slave owners.

1 F. Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, K. Marx, F. Engels, Selected works, vol. II, 1948, p. 296.

This is how the slave-owning mode of production developed.

Under the slave system, the population was divided into free and slaves. The free enjoyed all civil, property, political rights (with the exception of women, who were essentially in a slave position). Slaves were deprived of all these rights and did not have access to the composition of the free. The free, in turn, were divided into a class of large landowners, who were at the same time large slave owners, and a class of small producers (peasants, artisans), whose well-to-do strata also used slave labor and were slave owners. The priests, who played an important role in the era of slavery, in their position adjoined the class of large landowners-slaveowners.

Along with the class contradiction between slaves and slave owners, there also existed a class contradiction between large landowners and peasants. But, since with the development of the slave system, slave labor, as the cheapest labor, covered most industries and steel the main basis production, the contradiction between slaves and slave owners has become the main contradiction of society.

The division of society into classes created the need for a state. With the growth of the social division of labor and the development of exchange, individual clans and tribes came closer and closer, uniting in unions. The nature of tribal institutions changed. The organs of the tribal system were increasingly losing their national character. They turned into organs of domination over the people, into organs of robbery and oppression of their own and neighboring tribes. Elders and commanders of clans and tribes became princes and kings. Previously, they enjoyed authority as elected representatives of the clan or the union of clans. Now they began to use their power to protect the interests of the propertied elite, to curb their ruined relatives, to suppress the slaves. Armed squads, courts, and punitive bodies served this purpose.

This is how state power was born.

“Only when the first form of the division of society into classes appeared, when slavery appeared, when it was possible for a certain class of people, concentrating on the crudest forms of agricultural labor, to produce some surplus, when this surplus was not absolutely necessary for the most miserable existence of a slave and fell into the hands of slave-owner, when the existence of this class of slave-owners was thus consolidated, and in order for it to be consolidated, it was necessary that the state should appear.

1 V.I. Lenin, On the State, Works, vol. 29, p. 441.

The state arose to keep the exploited majority in check in the interests of the exploiting minority.

The slave-owning state played an important role in the development and strengthening of the production relations of the slave-owning society. The slave state kept the masses of slaves in subjection. It has grown into a widely ramified apparatus of domination and violence over the masses of the people. Democracy in ancient Greece and Rome, which is extolled by the bourgeois history books, was essentially a slave-owning democracy.

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The slave system in the south of our country in antiquity.

The slave-owning system is the first class, antagonistic society that arose on the ruins of the primitive communal system.

Slave system), others characterize them as societies with an Asian mode of production. The emergence of class societies is connected with the time of distribution of metals. But the transition to motallich. History and ethnography are known peoples who knew zhel. And in the event that these peoples lasts.

The socio-economic formation that replaces the slave-owning system and precedes capitalism, is based on the feudal lord’s ownership of the means of production and his incomplete ownership of peasant producers who are serfs dependent on landowners, who are sovereigns in their lands, subordinate to each other , with a monarch at the head.

Under the slave system and feudalism main task financial policy was to meet the needs of the ruler's court, maintain a relatively underdeveloped administrative and managerial apparatus, and finance wars. A sharp change in the composition of the main objectives of financial policy comes with the development of capitalism, when the state begins to stimulate commodity production and is forced to take care of its competitiveness. Capitalist states, while retaining the function of maintaining the state machine for finance, are gradually shifting the focus to measures to equalize incomes between rich and poor strata of the population and territories and to stimulate economic growth and efficiency. economic development. Much more attention is paid to the external aspects of financial policy. At a later stage of capitalism, developed states with a solid economic foundation are increasingly inclined towards open financial and foreign economic policies. This is directly related to the rejection of military methods as the main way to conquer foreign markets and to the expansion, use economic ways achieving and maintaining significant or leading positions in the global economy. For the same purpose, the finances of international organizations are beginning to be widely used, where the developed countries usually play the main role.

Under the slave system, the area of ​​application of oil and natural bitumen expanded significantly.

Under the slave system and under feudalism, the territorial community takes various forms. In communities of a higher type, each family owns its own arable land and cultivates it with the help of its family. Pastures and other minor lands are used jointly.

The next stage in the development of society after the slaveholding system is feudalism. This socio-economic formation arose in different societies in different ways: often on the ruins of the slave-owning mode of production, but no less, if not more often, directly from the primitive communal system. Many researchers rightly point to the uniformity of the slaveholding and feudal formations, which are characterized by the existence of personal lack of freedom of all or part of the direct producers.

The production relations of the slave system are characterized by private property slave owners on the means of production, as well as on the worker himself - a slave.

True, such leaps were not yet typical for the slave-owning system and feudalism: a country that had once pulled ahead retained its primacy for a long time. It took the Germans many centuries and Eastern Slavs in order to reach the appropriate level of productive forces in the depths of the primitive communal system and, almost simultaneously with the two Roman empires, to pass to the feudal mode of production.

Rome by the barbarians who destroyed the slave system, and the gradual emergence in the depths of this system of new social classes (large landowners and dependent peasants), new, more advanced historical forms of exploitation. The peculiarity of anti-feudal (bourgeois) and anti-capitalist (proletarian socialist) revolutions lies in the fact that they proceed in the form of a direct, open clash of antagonistic class forces. At the same time, the socialist revolution is the most developed form revolutionary struggle workers. If in a bourgeois revolution the masses play only the role of a battering ram, tearing down the old state building, and then find themselves in a new grip of oppression, then under conditions socialist revolution they act as conscious creators of new forms of life, which bring them liberation from any kind of exploitation. The central question of the bourgeois and proletarian revolution is the question of state power, about its conquest by a new class, which then uses it for the restructuring and further development of society.

Socio-economic formation that replaced the slave system, which was based on the ownership of the feudal lords on the means of production and incomplete ownership of the producers - the peasants.

The basis of production relations under the slave system was the slave owner's ownership of the means of production, the producer of material goods - the slave and the product of his forced labor. Such production relations basically corresponded to the state of the productive forces of that period, which developed under the conditions of a further division of labor between agriculture, cattle breeding and handicrafts and an ever-expanding exchange of products and the enrichment of some at the expense of the labor of others. A slave-owning society is a class society in which the slave-owners were the exploiting class, and the masses of disenfranchised slaves were the exploited.

International law arose during the period of the slave system. Perhaps one of the most ancient international treaties that have come down to us is the treaty Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II with the Hittite king Hattushil III, imprisoned in 1278 BC. This agreement restored friendly relations between the two states after a long war, concluded defensive and offensive alliances, provided assistance in case of internal unrest and the mutual extradition of defectors.

When organizing such a division, hard and uninteresting (primarily physical) labor, of course, is the most unattractive. At a certain stage in the development of society, it became possible to deprive some people of their freedom, force them to the most unattractive work and appropriate the results of this work. This was the beginning of slavery. People deprived of freedom and forced to work for the owner are called slaves.

The position of a slave

The living conditions of a slave are determined only by humanity or the benefit of the slave owner. The first was and remains a rarity; the second makes them act differently depending on how difficult it is to get new slaves. The process of raising slaves from childhood is slow, expensive, requiring a fairly large contingent of "producer" slaves, so even an absolutely inhumane slave owner is forced to provide the slaves with a standard of living sufficient to maintain working capacity and general health; but in places where it is easy to get adult and healthy slaves, their lives are not valued and exhausted with work.

The slave is not a subject of law. Neither in relation to his master, nor in relation to third parties, the slave enjoys any legal protection. The master can treat slaves as he sees fit. The killing of a slave by the master legal right the latter, but by someone else - is considered as an attempt on the property of the master, and not as a crime against the person. In many cases, the owner of the slave is also liable for the damage caused by the slave to the interests of third parties. Only in the later stages of the existence of a slave-owning society did the slaves receive some rights, but very few.

Sources of slaves

At the first stages of development, the only, and later on, a very significant supplier of slaves among all peoples was war, accompanied by the capture of enemy soldiers and the abduction of people living on its territory. When the institution of slavery became consolidated and became the foundation of the economic system, other sources were added to this source, above all the natural growth of the slave population. In addition, laws appeared according to which the debtor, unable to pay his debt, became the slave of the creditor, for some crimes they were punished by slavery, and finally, broad paternal power allowed selling their children and wife into slavery. There was (and continues to be) the practice of converting free people into slavery through direct unreasonable coercion. Whatever the source of slavery, however, the basic idea that a slave is a prisoner of war was always and everywhere preserved - and this view was reflected not only in the fate of individual slaves, but also in the entire history of the development of the institute.

History of slavery

Primitive society

By modern ideas, in the era of primitive society, slave ownership was completely absent at first, then it appeared, but did not have a mass character. The reason for this was the low level of organization of production (and initially - obtaining) food and essential items for life, at which a person could not produce more than is necessary to maintain his life. Under such conditions, the conversion of someone into slavery was meaningless, since the slave did not benefit the owner. During this period, in fact, there were no slaves as such, but only prisoners taken in the war. Since ancient times, the captive was considered the property of the one who captured him. This practice, which developed in primitive society, was the foundation for the emergence of slavery, since it consolidated the idea of ​​​​the possibility of owning another person.

In intertribal wars, male captives, as a rule, were either not taken at all, or killed (in places where cannibalism was widespread, they were eaten), or accepted into the winning tribe. Of course, there were exceptions when captured men were left alive and forced to work, or used as an exchange commodity, but common practice It was not. Few exceptions were male slaves, especially valuable because of some of their personal qualities, abilities, skills. In the mass, the captured women were of greater interest, both for the birth of children and for household work; especially since it was much easier to guarantee the subordination of women.

Rise of slavery

Slavery appeared and spread in societies that had shifted to agricultural production. On the one hand, this production, especially with primitive technology, requires very significant labor costs, on the other hand, a worker can produce significantly more than is necessary to maintain his life. The use of slave labor became economically justified and, naturally, spread widely. It was then that the slaveholding system was formed, which existed for many centuries - at least from ancient times to the 18th century, and in some places even longer.

In this system, slaves constituted a special class, from which the category of personal or domestic slaves was usually distinguished. Domestic slaves were always at the house, while others worked outside it: in the field, on construction, went for cattle, and so on. The position of domestic slaves was noticeably better: they were personally known to the master, lived a more or less common life with him, and to a certain extent were part of his family. The situation of other slaves, little personally known to the master, often did not differ much from that of domestic animals, and sometimes it was even worse. The need to keep large masses of slaves in subjection led to the emergence of appropriate legal support for the right to own slaves. In addition to the fact that the owner himself usually had workers whose task it was to supervise the slaves, the laws severely persecuted slaves who tried to run away from the owner or rebel. To pacify such slaves, the most cruel measures were widely used. Despite this, escapes and slave uprisings were not uncommon.

As the culture and education of society grew, another privileged class emerged among domestic slaves - slaves, whose value was determined by their knowledge and abilities in the sciences and arts. There were slave actors, slave teachers and educators, translators, scribes. The level of education and abilities of such slaves often significantly exceeded the level of their masters, which, however, did not always make their life easier.

The position of the slaves gradually, through a very long evolution, changed for the better. A reasonable view of their own economic benefit forced the masters to a thrifty attitude towards slaves and to mitigate their fate; this was also due to security considerations, especially when the slaves outnumbered the free classes of the population. The change in attitudes towards slaves was first reflected in religious prescriptions and customs, and then in written laws (although it can be noted that the law first protected domestic animals, and only then - slaves). Of course, there was no question of equalizing the rights of slaves with free people: for the same offense, a slave was punished incomparably more severely than free man, he could not complain to the court about the offender, could not own property, marry; as before, the master could sell it, give it as a gift, tyrannize it, etc. However, it was no longer possible to kill or maim a slave with impunity. Rules appeared that regulated the emancipation of a slave, the position of a slave who became pregnant from her master, the position of her child; in some cases, custom or law gave the slave the right to change his master. Nevertheless, the slave still remained a thing; the measures that were taken to protect the slave from the arbitrariness of the master were purely police in nature and stemmed from considerations that had nothing to do with recognizing the rights of the individual for the slave.

The transition from slavery to serfdom, the rudiments of slavery in medieval Europe

Only a radical change in economic conditions could destroy the institution of slavery, which was promoted by slavery itself, influencing the social organization in a progressive sense. The very appearance of slavery in primitive society was already a certain progress, consisting at least in the fact that the killing of all the vanquished had ceased. With an increase in the number of slaves, specialization increases, new economic functions appear, and the technique of obtaining and processing raw materials rises significantly. While the population, in comparison with the area suitable for cultivation, is insignificant, the labor of slaves produces much more than is necessary for their maintenance. At the same time, the need for careful supervision of the labor of slaves forces them to be kept together in large numbers, and concentration brings even greater benefits.

However, this benefit has diminished over time. Inevitably, a moment came when, with slave labor, production ceased to increase, despite the fact that the maintenance of a slave constantly rose in price. The technique of obtaining and processing with mental dullness, which is inevitable for slaves, cannot develop beyond certain limits. Labor forced by the fear of punishment is in itself unsuccessful and unproductive: even physical strength Slaves don't put even half of their work into it. All this undermined the institution of slavery. New economic relations, which in various states were determined various reasons, created a new institution of serfdom, giving rise to a new state of unfree peasants, attached to the land and placed under the power of the landowner, who, however, with all the limitations of their rights, are no longer the property of the owner. The scale of the use of slave labor narrowed, the class of agricultural slaves disappeared. In Europe, slavery survived as predominantly domestic, but existed throughout the Middle Ages. The capture of slaves and the slave trade were carried out by the Scandinavian Vikings. Italian merchants (Genoese and Venetians), who owned trading posts on the Black and Seas of Azov, bought slaves (Slavs, Turks, Circassians) from the Tatar-Mongols and sold them to the countries of the Mediterranean basin, both Muslim and Christian. (See also Genoese colonies in the Northern Black Sea region). Slaves of Slavic origin are noted in the XIV century in the notarial deeds of some Italian and southern French cities (Roussillon).

Slavery in the medieval states of Asia Minor

The slave labor of Africans kept the economy of southern Iraq right up to the revolt of the Zinj. In Lower Iraq, the labor of East African slaves, known as "zinji", was used on a massive scale for extremely laborious work to maintain in order and develop the southern Mesopotamian reclamation network, which ensured high agricultural productivity in the region. High concentration East African slaves and the extremely poor conditions of their existence, allowed the Kharijites to turn the Zinj into the striking force of the rebellion they organized, known as the Zinj Rebellion (869-883). As a result of the uprising, the Zinjs managed to establish their control over the entire Lower Iraq and even create their own polity. As a result of the colossal exertion of forces, the Abbasid caliphs nevertheless managed to suppress this uprising (Popovic, A. 1999. The Revolt of African Slaves in Iraq in the 3rd/9th Century. Princeton: Markus Wiener). However, after that, the Iraqis began to consistently avoid the mass importation of slaves into the country from East Africa. It should be noted that at the same time, the Iraqis failed to find an effective alternative to the zinjs, as a result of which the complex reclamation network of Lower Mesopotamia fell into complete decay, which led to a complete socio-ecological catastrophe in the region. "The total populated area has decreased to 6%" from the previous level. The population has fallen to the lowest point in the previous 5,000 years. Lower Mesopotamia, which was the granary of the Caliphate under the Umayyads, turned into swamps surrounded by deserts.

Slave labor and the slave trade were important part extensive economy of medieval Asian states created by nomads, such as the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate and the early Ottoman Turkey(see also Nabegovye economy). The Mongol-Tatars, who turned huge masses of the conquered population into slavery, sold slaves to both Muslim merchants and Italian merchants who owned middle of the XIII century colonies in the northern Black Sea region (Kaffa from 1266, Chembalo, Soldaya, Tana, etc.). One of the busiest labor trade routes led from the Azov Tana to Damietta, located at the mouth of the Nile. At the expense of the slaves taken out from the Black Sea region, the Mamluk guard of the Abbasid and Ayubid dynasties was replenished. The Crimean Khanate, which replaced the Mongol-Tatars in the northern Black Sea region, was also actively involved in the slave trade. The main slave market was located in the city of Kef (Kaffa). Slaves captured by the Crimean detachments in the Polish-Lithuanian state, in Muscovy, in the North Caucasus were sold mainly to the countries of Western Asia. For example, as a result of such major raids on Russia, as in 1521 or 1571, up to 100 thousand captives were sold into slavery. The total number of slaves who passed through the Crimean markets is estimated at three million people. In the Christian regions conquered by Turkey, every fourth boy was taken from the family, forced to convert to Islam and became the slave of the Sultan. From the slaves, the Janissary guard and the Sultan's administration were replenished. The harems of the Sultan and Turkish dignitaries consisted of slaves.

Slavery in modern times

Slavery, almost everywhere in Europe replaced by serfdom, was restored on a huge scale in the 17th century, after the beginning of the Age of Discovery. In the territories colonized by Europeans everywhere, on a large scale, agricultural production was unfolding, which required a large number workers. At the same time, the conditions of life and production in the colonies were extremely close to those that existed in ancient times: large expanses of uncultivated land, low population density, the possibility of farming by extensive methods, using the most simple tools and elementary technologies. In many places, especially in America, there was simply nowhere to take workers: the local population had no desire to work for newcomers, and free settlers were also not going to work on plantations. At the same time, in the course of the development of Africa by white Europeans, it became possible to easily get an almost unlimited number of workers by capturing and enslaving native Africans. African peoples, for the most part, were at the stage of a tribal system or initial stages state building, their technological level did not make it possible to resist the Europeans, who had equipment and firearms. In addition, some (although by no means all) African tribes, who from time immemorial lived in conditions of natural abundance and therefore did not have reasons for intertribal wars, simply did not have a sufficient degree of psychological resistance to enter into an organized war with the colonialists.

In Europe, the use of slave labor resumed again and a massive slave trade began, which flourished until the 19th century. Africans were captured in their native lands (as a rule, Africans themselves), loaded onto ships and sent to their destination. Some of the slaves ended up in the metropolis, while the majority went to the colonies, mostly American, where they were used for agricultural work, mainly on plantations. At the same time in Europe, criminals sentenced to hard labor were also sent to colonies and sold into slavery there. Among the "white slaves" dominated the Irish, captured by the British during the conquest of Ireland 1649-1651.

In Asia, African slaves were little used, since in this region it was much more profitable to use the large local population for work.

The use of African slaves was highly beneficial to the planters. First, Negroes were, on average, better equipped for grueling physical labor in hot climates than white Europeans or Indians; secondly, taken far from the habitats of their own tribes, having no idea how to return home, they were less prone to escape. When selling slaves, an adult healthy Negro cost one and a half to two times more expensive than a healthy adult white. The scale of the use of slave labor in the colonies was very large. Even after the widespread prohibition by law, the slave trade existed illegally for a long time. Almost the entire black population of the American continent in the middle of the 20th century was the descendants of slaves once taken out of Africa. Total was imported into the British North America, and later in the USA, about 13 million African slaves. For one living slave brought to the plantations, there were several more who died during capture and transport. According to researchers, as a result of the slave trade, Africa has lost up to 80 million lives.

The abandonment of the use of slave labor on the American continent mainly occurred in the 19th century, and by no means smoothly. American Negro slaves, despite gaining freedom, continued to be "second-class people" who had significantly fewer rights than whites. Today’s Americans don’t really like to remember this, but back in the 1900s in the USA, even buses had separate seats for blacks (they were forbidden to sit in other seats), and there were benches in parks with signs “only for whites”. The emancipation of the slaves brought social problems: for the most part, the emancipated blacks had no motivation at all to be included on an equal footing in the society of free people. Considering work to be the lot of exclusively slaves, the freed blacks often simply parasitized, earning their livelihood by begging, odd jobs and various criminal ways. The black rights movement, which achieved significant success in the second half of the 20th century, actually only exacerbated the problem by encouraging social dependency: a significant part of "African Americans", as they are now called, live on social benefits, without bringing any benefit to society.

Current state

The prevalence of slavery at the beginning of the XXI century

Currently, slavery is officially prohibited in all states of the world. The latest ban on the ownership of slaves and the use of slave labor was introduced in Mauritania, in the year. Nevertheless, in modern conditions, slavery not only exists, but also flourishes, including in states that are considered free and democratic. Since there is currently no legal right to slavery, other criteria are used to determine a person's slave status. A person is considered to be in the position of a slave if three conditions are met in relation to him:

1. Its activities are controlled by other persons with the help of violence or the threat of its use.
2. He is in this place and is engaged in this type of activity not of his own free will, and is deprived of the physical ability to change the situation of his own free will.
3. For his work, he either receives no pay at all, or receives minimal pay.

Prisoners who have been sentenced by a court under the law to punishment in the form of imprisonment are not considered slaves, even if such prisoners are forced to work while serving their sentence. This fact gives grounds for the assertion that modern states, while officially prohibiting slavery, continue to use it themselves. In connection with the need to separate the punishment of imprisonment from slavery, in many countries it is strictly forbidden to use prisoners for forced labor.

According to international human rights organizations, there are now up to 30 million people in the world in the position of slaves. According to UN estimates, the income from the resale of slaves in the world is $ 7 billion a year. In Europe, there is always different estimates, from 400 thousand to 1 million slaves. In Russia, according to human rights activists, up to 600,000 people are engaged in forced labor, of which several tens of thousands are constantly completely in the position of slaves, that is, deprived of their liberty and physically unable to free themselves without outside help.

It is noted that after the transition of the slave trade to a completely illegal position, the income from it not only did not decrease, but even increased. The value of a slave, when compared with the prices of the 19th century, has fallen, and the income that he can bring has increased.

In classical form

In forms typical of a classical slave society, slavery continues to exist in the states of Africa and Asia, where its formal ban took place relatively recently. In such states, slaves are engaged, as they were many centuries ago, in agricultural work, construction, mining, and handicrafts. According to the UN and human rights organizations, the most difficult situation remains in countries such as Sudan, Mauritania, Somalia, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Burma, Angola. The official ban on slave ownership in these states either exists only on paper at all, or is not supported by any serious punitive measures against slave owners.

A phenomenon of the same order, although on an incomparably smaller scale, is labor slavery in the territories of the countries of the former USSR that are poorly controlled by the governments, in particular, in the Russian North Caucasus, in Kazakhstan and democratic sexual slavery. It also makes up a significant share in other industrialized countries, primarily in the United States. Women and underage girls are imprisoned and forced to engage in prostitution in the interests of the owner. Children are often bought from slave traders or even directly from their parents, adults are lured through modeling, advertising, travel and recruiting agencies, or kidnapped by force. According to the International Organization for Migration, 120,000 women from post-Soviet states were trafficked to European countries in a year. In Belgium and Germany, according to the results of a UN study, Russia brings $7.5 thousand to its owner every month, of which she herself receives no more than $500.

Documents are confiscated from those deported, their freedom of movement is restricted, they are beaten, forced to work for meager pay or even for free. The situation of such workers is exacerbated by the fact that they, as a rule, reside in the host country illegally, which is why they are unwilling to contact the authorities (even if they have the opportunity to do so), for fear of imprisonment. In addition, the authorities are far from always able to provide assistance and stop the actions of slave owners; it can be quite difficult to prove such a crime as slavery: slave owners simply refuse workers, or refer to supposedly existing labor agreements and debts of workers, recognizing only violations in paperwork. Even a liberated person does not have the means to live or return home.

1. Trafficking in human beings should be officially banned and punished.
2. Punishments for human trafficking should be commensurate with penalties for serious crimes such as rape, i.e. sufficiently severe to deter this activity and adequately reflect the heinous nature of the crime.
3. The government of the country should make serious and tireless efforts to eliminate human trafficking.

Governmental and public organizations involved in the observance of human rights are constantly monitoring the development of the situation with slavery in the world. But their activity is limited to stating facts. The real fight against the slave trade and the use of forced labor is held back by the fact that the use of slave labor has again become economically profitable.

The impact of slavery on the culture of society

In the moral life of mankind, slavery, of course, had and is having extremely harmful consequences. On the one hand, it leads to the moral degradation of slaves, destroying their sense of human dignity and the desire to work for the benefit of themselves and society, on the other hand, it has an unfavorable effect on slave owners. It has long been known that for the human psyche, the dependence of those subject on his whim and arbitrariness is extremely harmful; the master inevitably gets used to fulfill all his whims and ceases to control his passions. Debauchery becomes an essential feature of his character.

In times of widespread, widespread slavery, slavery had a corrupting effect on the family: quite often, slaves, barely out of childhood, were forced to satisfy the sexual needs of their master, which was far from conducive to good marital relations. The children of the master, being in constant contact with the slaves, easily adopted the vices of their parents; cruelty and neglect of slaves were instilled from childhood. Of course, there were individual exceptions, but they were too rare and did not soften the general tone in the least. From family life, debauchery easily passes into social life, as the ancient world shows with particular relief.

The displacement of free labor by slave labor leads to the fact that society is divided into two groups: on the one side - slaves, "rabble", largely consisting of ignorant, corrupt people, imbued with petty, selfish ambition and constantly ready to stir up civil unrest; on the other - "to know" - a bunch of rich people, perhaps educated, but at the same time idle and depraved. There is a whole abyss between these classes, that this is another extra reason the breakdown of society.

Another harmful effect of slavery is the dishonoring of labor. The occupations given to slaves are considered shameful for a free man. With the increase in the scale of the use of slaves, the number of such occupations increases, in the end, any work is recognized as shameful and dishonorable, and idleness and contempt for any kind of work is considered the most essential sign of a free person. This view, being a product of slavery, in turn supports the institution of slavery, and even after the abolition of slavery remains in the public mind. For labor rehabilitation it is required, then, big time; Until now, this view has been preserved in the aversion of certain sections of society to any economic activity.

Based on slavery, characteristic of states ancient world. According to the Marxist doctrine of classes, the main antagonistic classes under the slave system were slave owners and slaves, the confrontation between these classes determined the economy, legal norms, way of life, mores, the level of technology and scientific knowledge, the ideology of society (ethics, religion, philosophy). The slave system arose as a result of the decomposition of the primitive communal system, was the first class formation in world history, was replaced by the feudal system.

Slavery

The oldest slave-owning states arose at the turn of the fourth and third millennia BC. e. in Mesopotamia and Egypt and existed in the countries of Asia, Europe, North Africa until the 3rd-5th centuries AD. Slave-owning society reached its highest development in Ancient Greece and ancient Rome. During the period ancient history, from the decomposition of primitive communal relations to the emergence of feudalism, slave-owning societies coexisted with many societies that had not yet left the stage of the primitive communal system, and influenced them, contributing to their transformation into class slave-owning societies. Especially great importance in this respect had the Roman Empire - the largest slave state in the world. conquering neighbouring countries the Romans established slaveholding orders in them. A number of peoples (Germans, Slavs) who entered the historical arena after the fall of the Roman Empire (after the 5th century AD), they moved from the primitive communal system to the stage of feudalism.
Slavery arose at a late stage in the development of pre-class society, when property inequality and private property relations became commonplace. Many forms of slave dependence are known in history, but among them the main organic features of slavery can be distinguished: a slave is the property of one owner or collective owner (community, temple, state); the slave has no ownership of the means of production; the slave is exploited by non-economic coercion. In the variety of forms of slave dependence, two main types of slavery are distinguished: early slavery (patriarchal slavery), associated with subsistence farming; ancient slavery, characteristic of societies with developed commodity-money relations. One of characteristic features patriarchal slavery was the joint participation of the slave owner and his slaves in the labor process. Ancient slavery differs from patriarchal slavery in that more legally fixed the expropriation of the personality of a slave, as can be seen from a comparison of Roman legislation with ancient Eastern judicial codes.
Slaves were used in all types of production - in agriculture, crafts, construction. The work of slaves was strictly regulated and controlled, they were deprived of any opportunity to show, they were not at all economically interested in the results of labor. But part of the slaves, mainly in agriculture, received a certain amount of independence and economic interest. These are slaves on peculia, as well as helots in Sparta, penestes in Thessaly, corynephores in Sicyon, gymnesiums in Argos, lelegs in Karin. Their method of exploiting slaves anticipated feudal forms. The sources of slavery were prisoners of war, free community members who fell into slavery for debts, as well as hereditary slaves. For the late Roman Republic and partly for the Roman Empire, prisoners of war were one of the main sources of slavery. The problem of the spread of the slave system in the countries of the Ancient East remains debatable. The Asian mode of production largely hampered the development of private ownership initiatives, including in the sphere of slavery.

productive forces

Under the slave-owning system, the development of the productive forces proceeded mainly not through the improvement of the instruments of production, but through the human resources employed in the production process; due to the increase in the specialization of workers employed in agriculture and crafts, both free and slaves, and to improve their skills. The low level of technology was explained by the low costs of slave owners for the labor of slaves, the lack of interest of slaves in the development and growth of production. Slave-owning production relations, from a force that promoted the development of productive forces, relatively quickly turned into a brake on the development of technology. The tools with which the slave owners supplied the slaves were, as a rule, of low quality and of a primitive type, since the slaves, out of hatred for the slave owners, destroyed, spoiled or lost them, and the proportion of free labor in the slave economy was constantly decreasing as a result of its displacement by free slave labor. The slave-owning mode of production became economically unprofitable and therefore had to give way to another mode of production.
Slave holdings differed in the size of real estate and the number of slaves. Basically, slaves were used as a source of muscular energy needed in arable farming, cattle breeding, construction and transport work. The lack of statistics in antiquity makes it impossible to accurately determine the number of slaves; it is known that in Greece and Rome the number of slaves was huge. The ancient Greek author Athenaeus (2nd century AD), referring to the writer of the 3rd century BC. Ctesicles reports that, according to the census of 309 BC, there were 400,000 slaves in Athens for 21,000 citizens and 100,000 metecs. According to the general opinion of scientists, this figure is exaggerated; it is assumed that the rich Athenians, on average, had up to 50 domestic servants, the poor - several people each. The large number of slaves is evidenced by the message of Thucydides, according to which the flight of 20 thousand slaves from Athens to Sparta during the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) paralyzed Athenian handicraft production. After the conquest of Epirus by Rome in 168 BC. 150,000 Epirotes were sold into slavery. The conquest of Gaul (1st century BC) by Julius Caesar was accompanied by the sale of about 1 million Gauls into slavery. According to Pliny the Elder, the freedman Caecilius during the reign of Augustus (1st century BC - 1st century AD) had, according to his will, 4116 slaves. In addition to the slaves used in the economy, there was also, already mainly in Ancient Rome, a layer of slaves engaged in mental labor (artists, writers, artists, educators). This slave intelligentsia consisted of those previously free and turned into slaves during the conquest of Greece by the Romans. This layer of educated slaves contributed to the penetration of Hellenistic culture into Roman society.
Markets for the sale of slaves functioned in Aquileia (Italy), Tanais (the mouth of the Don), on the island of Delos in the Aegean Sea. On Delos alone, more than 10,000 slaves were sold per day. Slave uprisings (the Sicilian slave uprisings in the 2nd century BC, the uprising of Spartacus in the 1st century BC) involved tens of thousands of slaves. It should be noted that among the free citizens of ancient policies and states, an important place was occupied by the struggle between the social upper and lower classes (aristocrats and demos, patricians and plebeians), but almost never, neither rural community members nor the urban poor joined the uprisings of slaves.

Policy Crisis

In most Greek and Italian policies, rural community members were free, in many cases their dispossession, ruin and enslavement were prevented by legislation. The crisis of the policy and the concentration of land, real estate and slaves in the hands of large slave owners led to a deterioration in the position of small free producers, making them dependent on slave owners, who economically and non-economically sought to subjugate small producers and exploit them. During the expansion of the colonat, the differences between the free poor and the slaves began to smooth out, and in the last period of the existence of the Roman Empire, the protests of the social lower classes became more united.
The apparatus of state power, legal institutions, ideology and religion served the interests of securing the position of slaves. The specific types and forms of the slave state varied. A classic example Athens of the 5th-4th centuries BC is considered a democratic slave-owning republic, republican Rome was an example of an aristocratic slave-owning republic, the Roman Empire was an example of a slave-owning monarchy, on Ancient East- Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia. The ancient authors (Polybius, Sima Qian) gave a description of the main forms of state power.
The law that developed in antiquity ensured the transformation of slaves into the property of slave owners, the slave was an object, not a subject of law. In a developed slave-owning society, among the upper strata, physical labor was considered incompatible with the performance of civic duties. Confucius, Aristotle, Cicero considered slavery to be a socially necessary institution, since, as they believed, there are categories of people who are not capable of mental labor and are by nature destined for slave dependence; free citizens must be freed from the care of the necessities of life. Only a few thinkers of antiquity expressed opposing views, for example, Dio Chrysostomos (1-2 centuries AD) believed that all people, including slaves, have the same right to freedom.
A typical form of religious thought in the slave states was polytheism. Under certain historical conditions, monotheistic views could also be formed: the establishment of the state cult of the Aten in Egypt in the 14th century BC, the cult of Yahweh in Palestine in the first millennium BC, Christianity in the 1st century AD. within the territory of the Roman Empire. The religious worldview was dominant, along with it a secular worldview arose in the form of a number of philosophical teachings of an idealistic and materialistic direction (in China, India, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome): natural philosophy, stoicism, Platonism, neoplatonism, the materialistic teachings of Democritus and Epicurus.
In the slave-owning period of human history, fiction and its genres (tragedy, comedy, lyrics, epic), historical literature, theater arose; the foundations of the natural sciences (mathematics, astronomy, medicine) were laid, outstanding monuments were created visual arts and architecture: the Athenian Acropolis, Egyptian pyramids, the Roman pantheon, the palace of Sargon II in Dur-Sharrukin (Babylonia), the stupa in Sanchi (India), the Great Wall of China, the temple complexes in Karnak and Luxor (Egypt), the Pergamon altar, Venus de Milo, Apollo Belvedere. The process of ousting the slave-owning system was long and complicated, the death of the slave-owning mode of production was due to its economic futility, the direct producers - slaves - were not interested in the development of production. The degeneration of the slave-owning form of exploitation into a colony, caused by economic reasons and representing a long process, led to the degeneration of slave owners into feudal lords, slaves into serfs.