No Slavery, a Richer Empire?

If we go back to the Roman Empire (say) how much better off would it have been without slavery?
Slaves cost money, you have to give them food, clothes and house them, this costs money.
If you pay persons in your employ, they will have to do these things for themselfs. More money into the economy, more people willing to work for the empire and defend it.

Over to you.:)
 
Not likely to work, for several reasons.

First, in preindustrial societies, a lot of work is not just hard and dangerous, it's back-breaking and near-lethal. You need a way of makiong people do this workl. Without slavery (or a similarly effective system of coercion), that would not likely have been possible. Of course you can still have a society where this work doesn't get done - it's not vital for survival - but it won't be the Roman Empire in any recognisable form.

Second, with the relative lack of currency to go round, it's hard to keep a full monetised wage economy going. People tend to think of the Roman Empire as some kind of protomodern state that failed where we suceeded, but in reality, Rome built a remarkably advanced society on much less in the way of resources, technology and sophistication than Renaissance Europe had. So even if you could overcome the inbuilt cultural aversion to wage labour, you wouldn't likely be able to pay everybody.

Third, slavery represented a market for high-value staff. Investing in the training of a slave paid off handsomely. Investing in the training of a free man - not so much. There are ways of addressing the issue - apprenticeship contracts, binding future labour contracts, waived fees and such - but all of that required, again, a level of sophistication the Roman world only had in a few pockets (we find such things in Egypt).

And fourth, culture. If people had had their druthers, most of them would have become subsistence smallholders. Which is really similar to point 1, a society needs a way of coercing alienated labour if it wants to be an Empire. Slavery was the primary way the Roman world (and its neighbours) used.

A more sophisticated Rome could probably have done without slavery, but a more sophisticated Rome wouldn't really have been Rome.
 
If we go back to the Roman Empire (say) how much better off would it have been without slavery?
Slaves cost money, you have to give them food, clothes and house them, this costs money.
If you pay persons in your employ, they will have to do these things for themselfs. More money into the economy, more people willing to work for the empire and defend it.

Over to you.:)

The cost of paying wages - even minimal ones - is greater than the cost of maintaining slaves, precisely because if you pay someone wages you are paying them the money they need to provide that service to themself, plus extras. Keeping slaves rather than paying workers saves money. On top of that, it's far from an agreed principle that the economy is stronger without slavery. In fact, some argue that slavery can be genuinely beneficial for the economy - especially in a very early era civilisation such as the Romans', where there are far fewer established industries and where the working class rarely spend money on anything besides what they need to survive.
 
If we go back to the Roman Empire (say) how much better off would it have been without slavery?
Slaves cost money, you have to give them food, clothes and house them, this costs money.
If you pay persons in your employ, they will have to do these things for themselfs.

You've got things partially wrong here. If paying for food, clothes and housing were more expensive than paying the free wage rate, then slavery would have died out anyway. It didn't because slavery is much cheaper for slave holders.

What you have right is that there are economic costs to society as a whole, as you'll see in my points below.

Not likely to work, for several reasons. First, in preindustrial societies, a lot of work is not just hard and dangerous, it's back-breaking and near-lethal. You need a way of makiong people do this work.
Yes, it's called sufficient pay. Removing the wage mechanism only has the impact of poor allocative efficiency and puts resources and capital into the less productive activities.

Without slavery (or a similarly effective system of coercion), that would not likely have been possible. Of course you can still have a society where this work doesn't get done - it's not vital for survival - but it won't be the Roman Empire in any recognisable form.
I disagree. Trade, agriculture and resource supply all get done in non-slave economies. All that would happen would be a movement from the latter two to the former. What it would mean is that a larger consumer class would develop, and less people would be living in the lap of luxury without needing to work themselves. Both are good things for economic development.

Second, with the relative lack of currency to go round, it's hard to keep a full monetised wage economy going. People tend to think of the Roman Empire as some kind of protomodern state that failed where we suceeded, but in reality, Rome built a remarkably advanced society on much less in the way of resources, technology and sophistication than Renaissance Europe had. So even if you could overcome the inbuilt cultural aversion to wage labour, you wouldn't likely be able to pay everybody.
The problem of a lack of currency is such a large one it inevitably becomes solves very quickly. What would likely happen is that gold becomes much higher value relative to the smaller coins, and a different denomination system simply gets set up. There's always the possibility of other medium of exchange, such as paper money, springing up, as happened in 18th Century America, despite opposition from central government. Needs force innovation.

Third, slavery represented a market for high-value staff. Investing in the training of a slave paid off handsomely. Investing in the training of a free man - not so much. There are ways of addressing the issue - apprenticeship contracts, binding future labour contracts, waived fees and such - but all of that required, again, a level of sophistication the Roman world only had in a few pockets (we find such things in Egypt).
Again, this is something that would develop fairly quickly to address needs. Either you get debt bondage, or people start saving up money to join guilds and get themselves trained up as happened in medieval Europe.

And fourth, culture. If people had had their druthers, most of them would have become subsistence smallholders. Which is really similar to point 1, a society needs a way of coercing alienated labour if it wants to be an Empire. Slavery was the primary way the Roman world (and its neighbours) used.
I'm really not sure what point you're making here. What do you mean by "wanting to be an empire"? Conquering other peoples? That's happened under plenty of societies with free labour. Non-permanent conscription is always possible along side a free economy, but even so, it's not needed, as the spoils of war are generally payment enough.

A more sophisticated Rome could probably have done without slavery, but a more sophisticated Rome wouldn't really have been Rome.
I think you've got cause and effect the wrong way round. More sophisticated forms of economic arrangements were held back by the presence of slavery. If society has a big changes, new ways of dealing things inevitably come in. Abolition in the Roman Empire would create better allocative efficiency, more innovation, more economic growth, and likely the creation of a larger middle class that would further help.
 
Last edited:
And fourth, culture. If people had had their druthers, most of them would have become subsistence smallholders. Which is really similar to point 1, a society needs a way of coercing alienated labour if it wants to be an Empire.

Hrm. I'm reminded of the south after the Emancipation Proclamation, when abolitionists were perplexed at why the freed slaves weren't rushing back to the cotton fields.
 
Yes, it's called sufficient pay. Removing the wage mechanism only has the impact of poor allocative efficiency and puts resources and capital into the less productive activities.
Sufficient pay will be way too high to occur in many of the more dangerous occupations that slaves were used for, if you could get free men to do it at all, see the previous point
 

wormyguy

Banned
If you have two million people in a city, being fed, clothed, entertained, and housed at the expense of the state, some form of forced labor is necessary to provide for that expense.
 
Sufficient pay will be way too high to occur in many of the more dangerous occupations that slaves were used for, if you could get free men to do it at all, see the previous point

Well, people throughout history have done very dangerous things in order to feed their families, so it might occur more than you think. But I agree some of the most extremely dangerous jobs would go, but that's a bad thing. If the risk-adjusted market wage is so high that nobody would do it, then its poor allocative efficiency if labour is being allocated to that over something else they'd do for a lesser wage.

I also forgot to make the point that money going to poorer people is better for economic growth than going to richer people, particularly in an age before banking. Poor people will spend it, while rich people will store it, and more money spent means a faster velocity of money and higher GDP. (Plus many more individual trade exchanges and more potential for innovation.)
 
Well, people throughout history have done very dangerous things in order to feed their families, so it might occur more than you think. But I agree some of the most extremely dangerous jobs would go, but that's a bad thing. If the risk-adjusted market wage is so high that nobody would do it, then its poor allocative efficiency if labour is being allocated to that over something else they'd do for a lesser wage.

I also forgot to make the point that money going to poorer people is better for economic growth than going to richer people, particularly in an age before banking. Poor people will spend it, while rich people will store it, and more money spent means a faster velocity of money and higher GDP. (Plus many more individual trade exchanges and more potential for innovation.)
Thing is say you are a silver mine owner. Now mining is dangerous work and at the time mostly done by slaves, who had a notoriously high death rate. Free men would be loathe to do this and would eat up nearly all the silver produced in wages to actually get them to work in the steaming hot darkness below ground (IRL silver and gold miners were one of the highest paying blue collar occupation in the 19th century). Slaves would be the only way to do it at enough profit to attract investors

As for poor spending money and wage allocation, chances are the poor will not be earning a wage but working for themselves, working as hard as they want but no harder, most people of this time were farmers and much of the rest self employed craftsmen who will do enough work to get by but not produce much of a surplus because work is hard and there are other things to do that are not as hard as work.

Wage labor carried a stigma at the time and most people earning a wage did so to get enough money to go back to working for themselves, or had literally no other option (usually this was a result from competition with slavery)

As for poor who are not small farmers or craftsmen in Rome these are former farmers who have been squeezed out by the slave worked Latifundia, and will not exist without slavery
 
Yes, it's called sufficient pay. Removing the wage mechanism only has the impact of poor allocative efficiency and puts resources and capital into the less productive activities.

I doubt that you could pay people enough to do these jobs. The Roman Empire often functioned at the end of its technological tether, and things like mining and quarrying were horribly unsafe. Of course a society could adapt - you would have, say, less ashlar and more brick, some mines closed down, more privately allocated mining "shares" etc. The problem is that Rome would have had to consciously choose that path and thereby forgo measuring up to the glory of its predecessors (who had used slave labour in mines and quarries).

I disagree. Trade, agriculture and resource supply all get done in non-slave economies. All that would happen would be a movement from the latter two to the former. What it would mean is that a larger consumer class would develop, and less people would be living in the lap of luxury without needing to work themselves. Both are good things for economic development.

Well, agriculture tends to get done because pewople have to eat, and trade is not terribly arduous. But there are many things that, while immensely profitable and glorious, tend to involve dangerous and unpleasant work and not be strictly necessary. You have to force people to do that kind of work. Granted, they don't havbe to be slaves. Indentured servants, Boer "apprentices", indigent factory hands driven off the commons and threatened with deportation and the workhouse, sharecroppers, debt servants, colonial "squatters" or prisoners can all be roped in. But the problem remains that some work will not get done unless people are either forced or bribed to do it, and the Roman Empire can't really afford the bribes.

The problem of a lack of currency is such a large one it inevitably becomes solves very quickly. What would likely happen is that gold becomes much higher value relative to the smaller coins, and a different denomination system simply gets set up. There's always the possibility of other medium of exchange, such as paper money, springing up, as happened in 18th Century America, despite opposition from central government. Needs force innovation.

If it was done, it is likely some solution would be found, but keep in mind that breaking the currency system without newed would be a horrifying idea to the Roman elites. It would also very likely involve painful readjustment, especially painful for those whose wealth is in money. Like wage labourers.

Again, this is something that would develop fairly quickly to address needs. Either you get debt bondage, or people start saving up money to join guilds and get themselves trained up as happened in medieval Europe.

And again you are proposing breaking the system on the assumption that a solution will emerge. It's not that I don't think it would be possible, but what sane politician would agree to actually doing this? we are discussing the idea of a Roman abolition, and I doubt you will convince anyone of its viability through the Rumsfeld school of nation building. Imagine putting this to the senate or the consilium - you'd get laughed out of the session.

I'm really not sure what point you're making here. What do you mean by "wanting to be an empire"? Conquering other peoples? That's happened under plenty of societies with free labour. Non-permanent conscription is always possible along side a free economy, but even so, it's not needed, as the spoils of war are generally payment enough.

I mnewan that a society that aims to be an empire, as in, exert dominion over others for its own gain, needs to be able to command unwilling labour. There are different ways of doing it, but the dominant modes in the Roman world were slavery (for outsiders) and the dilectus (for Romans). You will not be able to abolish coercion and stay an Empire, so what would the motivation for changing its form be?

I think you've got cause and effect the wrong way round. More sophisticated forms of economic arrangements were held back by the presence of slavery. If society has a big changes, new ways of dealing things inevitably come in. Abolition in the Roman Empire would create better allocative efficiency, more innovation, more economic growth, and likely the creation of a larger middle class that would further help.

If it survived the massive dislocation first. Pulling off a coordinated manumission of probably millions, certainly many hundreds of thousands of slaves, transfering them into gainful employment, and doping all of this while keeping their former owners satisfied and continuing to operate the established forms of state largesse and imperial prestige spending (not to mention the military) is a task that I doubt the Roman Empire was up to.
 
Top