Slavery in Metamorphosis: Changes towards New Avatars

Today, slavery in considered by many as a relic of past times, soon to be extinct by some bold legal and political reforms. This view is grounded in the classical legal concepts that have been inherited from occidental history and thought. If we go beyond this limited and partial vision, we realize that reality is quite different. Forms of slavery are diverse and ever changing. It results in complex and various metamorphoses, with emerging avatars often uneasy to detect and analyze. In the conceptual debate about slavery, we will focus on social conditions and positions within the nexus of social relations. Within this framework, we will point out three major features: strong dependence with loss of autonomy; subjection to violence; economic exploitation, causing fundamental injuries to human dignity. The historical perspective on slavery till the XXth century reveals its diversity and its transformations as well as the continuity of its main features though often hidden or masked. From antiquity to XIXth century, slavery was mainly legal. The abolition did not suppress the slavery (1807-1926), and during this period, various systems close to the characteristics of slavery throve: bonded labor, peonage, forced labor. A study of today social relations shows the dynamics of today slavery through various forms. These forms, whether old or news, have been classified by international reformers and academics, with sometimes a large consensus and sometimes sharp divergences. It appears that the growing indifference to the brutality in social relations is the fertile ground of a potential rise of slavery nowadays and tomorrow. The capitalist globalization in the neo-liberal stage has put in place its order which requires a reinforced control on human labor and on human beings to reach the systemic goals. As some Africanist scholars apply remarked, neo-liberalism reveals itself as a ``road to serfdom'' for the majority of African people, and not a way out, as Hayek and his followers had thought.