Tony Cliff in State Capitalism In Russia (and see here) estimated the extent of slave labor in the Soviet Union and its contribution to the economy. Decades later, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published The Gulag Archipelago.
An Alternative Twentieth Century
SM Stiring's Draka enslave the populations in the territories that they have conquered and intend to continue conquering.
Alternative Futures
In Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History, human beings enslave the population of an extrasolar planet.
In Anderson's Technic History, the Terran Empire reintroduces limited slavery for convicted criminals. (See here.)
No doubt, there are other examples.
In 1970s Britain, opponents of the National Front parodied it as "No Freedom, No Future, No Fun." We must ensure that our future is free.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And it's my belief, as it was of Poul Anderson, that if freedom is to continue to exist among humanity, then we urgently need to get OFF this rock, to move into space, to settle other worlds, both in our Solar System and the planets of other stars. Doing this would also make it impossible for any fanatical, totalitarian system from corralling all of mankind into a rigid, one size fits all socio-political system.
Sean
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