4. Crime: What about Southeast Asian "slavery"?

If a social contract exists between slave and master that enables the master to exercise his will over the slave's, then the beginning of the relationship is not a crime. Because there is no OBJECTIONABLE assertion of one's will over another's.


Of course this is provided that no coercion is at force. Not even a little bit or the possibility of it. If not, it would not be a contract.


Let's consider the possibility of such a social contract occurring. The slave will recognize that he is signing over his ability to exercise his will. Now why would anyone do that? On the basis of another advantage perhaps?

According to Nan, they reserved the right to leave the contract at any point of time.
And that the slave stood more to gain from this relationship. This intrigues me. I must find out more.

Najib has enlightened me to some of the specific workings of the southeast asian system of "slavery". For lack of a more culturally-specific term, we shall call it "debt peonage" from this point onwards. Yet again, the semantical curse springs upon us.

Moving on, the pre-colonial southeast asian system was naturally one of an unequal power relationship. If land could only pass hands through inheritance, conquest and purchase, how are we to expect an absence of exploitation? Even in our modern interventionist economy, the rich get richer and the strong get stronger. What can we then expect of the political and economical setting such as pre-colonial southeast asia?

Sure, the southeast slave would have more to gain by entering into such a system. If not, he would have no land upon which to dwell or farm. But is this then a true advantage? This roughly equates to a selling a fish which is condemned to land a pail of water in exchange for his ability to swim.

In the end, he still is forced by structural exploitation to surrender his ability to exercise his will. He has to allow himself to be rendered a tool under another human being's guiding system of rationality.

Objectionable? Of course. Then of course Nan says "That Might is Right". The strong man theorem of right holds and makes logical sense. That otherwise gentle and caring individuals think that such behavior and arrangements of exploitation are natural is truly disturbing. That I also once used to think this way adds on to the sense of apprehension.

A lack of apathy- basic sense datum. An inability to see past our "ego". An inability to recognize the commonality of all men as beings who possess rationality and can register physical pain. A willingness to buy into our constructed truth of "The Strong Man theorem". This is what blinds ordinarily moral men into status-quo accepting pacifists.