The return to Serfdom

Slave labour

In Feudal societies, land is owned by a king who doles out fiefdoms to favoured vassals who dedicate the productive capacity of that land to protecting the interests of that king.

The more you can do for the king, the more he favours you with land and entitlements.

Along with the land came all the people who happened to live and work on that land. Be they farmers, miners, foresters or fisherman, their land and work belonged to their feudal overlord. Peasant farmers couldn't pass on title to their families and neither would they benefit from improving their work or performance. Anyone challenging this system could lose their land, homes, or lives.

This state of bonded labour was medieval slavery. Such societies saw little difference between enslaving their own people, and conquering other nations in order to enslave them too.

After the cataclysmic population collapse following Europe's bubonic plague in the 14th century, the nature of society was forced to change. More work had to be performed by fewer people, leading to industrialisation and the enclosure of land, along with proper property rights.

As people moved to the cities in order to escape rural poverty, big manufacturing businesses were created. Here, however, the practices of the earlier feudal age were repeated, with workers being enslaved to their employers under the most hideous conditions.

The rise of the labour union movement sought to give rights to workers. Political representation followed, along with a growing middle-class. As politics changed, so did the rights of individuals. No longer would one group of people own the lives and labour of another group of people.

That was the intention, anyway. Now, left-leaning governments around the world - the supposed representatives of the working-class - are seeking to undermine those rights.

In the US, the Democrat-led Senate are threatening to tax the bonuses of AIG executives at 100%. This is in order to punish the people who are perceived as having caused the credit crisis.

In the US and Europe, legislation has already been passed to cap the salaries of senior executives at companies receiving government bailouts. Moves are underway to limit employee bonuses in such a way that they will only be paid ten years after they are awarded. The hope is that this will limit short-term behaviour that may cause economic damage, and cash will then be paid only if the long-term impact shows that the bonus was deserved.

In South Africa, the government is imposing a "use it or lose it" policy on the beneficiaries of their land reform process. They have not given title to the land to these beneficiaries and so feel justified in taking underperforming farms away from one group of people in order to give it to another.

This is serfdom; slavery, if you want to be less polite.

These policies benefit owners at the expense of workers. And they create a precedent that can be imposed on all other industries.

Whether an employee is a senior executive, a Chief Executive Officer, or a cleaner, they are all company employees. Salary caps artificially reduce the real market value of labour. Delayed compensation artificially forces workers to remain with their employers lest they lose their bonuses if they quit before they are paid. Denying people property rights and setting them tasks based on ownership they do not have is theft.

Two hundred years of civil rights advancement are being undone before our eyes as governments grant themselves, and company owners, rights they do not deserve.

Labour unions are complicit in this act. They regard executives and professionals as representatives of owners, but they are employees too. A precedent that injures the rights of senior employees will be used to injure the rights of unskilled workers as well.

A demand for someone to blame for economic crisis risks ensuring that an injury to one becomes an injury to all.