Kevin Bales

It is most profitable to extract as much labor from a worker for as little pay as he will do it for. With slavery the maximum return is acheived. Slavery exists today, though, on the books it is illegal in every country. Enforcing the law is another matter entirely. Bales takes a close look at the systematic use of slaves in various industries in different parts of the world. He assumes that the reader does not need to be convinced of the evil of slavery and instead focuses on how systems of show more slavery work, their relationship to the cultures they function within and how they can be fought and overturned.

Much of it is devoted to debt-bodage. An insidious practice where in people are tricked into surrendering themselves or their children into the employ of slavers and then told that they have incurred astronomical debts for cost of transporting them to the jobsite. In some cases parents are given a loan against their children and the children are expected to work it off. That's right, this is slavery where the slavers have the gall to kidnap and and enslave people and tell the slave that they owe them. If the slaves run away they are guilty of theft from their masters for failing to repay their debt. Take a moment and be disgusted.

It's a stultifying book and one dearly needed in a world where we are so sick on money. Because while slavery may seem a remote problem of distant and backwards lands, in a global economy it's pretty much a given you have reaped the benefits of slave labor without ever knowing it. This is the harsh reality of the profit-driven forces of captialism. In business the best choice is invariably the most profitable one and slave labor has a way of cutting the cost of production like few things can. Add a little indifference and a lot of ignorance (willing or otherwise) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Highly recommended. And maybe try and think less about finding the lowest price in the store and consider if maybe the cost of such a product was lowered by all that wasn't reinvested in those whose labor was extracted for it's production. Food, medicine, schooling, a wage, their freedom. show less

This is an important book. Despite its defects I can highly recommend it to pretty much everyone because the entire world would benefit from its being read. I greatly admire Bales for his part in spreading the word on modern-day slavery, and I plan on doing my part by telling people and passing the book on to others.

The most interesting chapters are the first two on prostitution in Thailand and "old slavery" in Mauritania. The shock value probably has a lot to do with it, as well as the show more dumbfounding surprise of learning about the vestiges of ancient slavery still alive and well in West Africa. Before reading this book or talking to someone who had, how many people would imagine that houseslaves still exist as a matter of course throughout an entire country?

The subsequent chapters (Brazil, Pakistan and India) lose some of their power, probably as a result of following these first two. The information and Bales' discourse gets a little repetitive. Also, his writing style is a little irritating. I would have preferred a more rigorous and academic style. As it is, Bales writes a little too informally and emotionally which sacrifices some of his argument's strength. The facts are compelling enough to support his case without resorting to sentimentality.

Additionally, there are some holes that he touches upon but leaves largely unexplored, mostly in relation to Mauritania. He mentions the extremely entrenched nature of slavery in the country and the huge obstacles abolitionists face not only in providing incentives for slaveholders to give up their slaves, but also in convincing the slaves that freedom is preferable to slavery. It is the ultimate case where the slaves actually want to remain enslaved. To me, this is a jumping off point for an incredibly fascinating moral and philosophical discussion, although I'll admit that it's probably outside the scope of Bales' work. The same mentality is present to a lesser degree in every single country he discusses.

More relevant to this book (and a less forgivable omission) is the fact that virtually none of the solutions he mentions in the last chapter would be feasible in Mauritania. None of the economic incentives to end slavery could be brought to bear since the country itself is so poor and barely affects the global economy in the first place. Likewise, the government could not be pressured because they are owned by the slaveholders, and they would simply align themselves further with other hardline Muslim nations such as Iran and Saudi Arabia in response to international pressure. If Bales sincerely could not think of any solutions to that specific case, he should have at least mentioned it.

Also, in discussing debt bondage in Brazil, Pakistan and India, it struck me that he somewhat arbitrarily separates "slaves" from the rest of the oppressed wage laborers and sweatshop workers. To me it seems very much a sliding scale, especially when he's emphasizing the subtlety of modern-day slavery. He doesn't fully convince on why battling slavery is so much more important than the battle against all unfair working/sweatshop conditions. They seem too similar to me to really be able to separate the way he does. For that reason as well the chapters on Thailand and Mauritania really stand out.

Overall it is a good and informative read. It is perhaps not as shocking to me because I've already read most of Derrick Jensen's stuff, and he is harsher in his analysis of modern-day civilization. show less

Emotionally, I found this to be a very difficult read--but it's extremely eye-opening and well worthwhile. The author personally went undercover in countries such as Mauritania, Pakistan, and Brazil, in order to investigate slavery. He found different socioeconomic factors and circumstances that contributed to black market slavery in each nation. But slavery is slavery, even when it's called something else, even when it's illegal and hidden. I wish more people were brave enough to shine a show more spotlight on it. Freedom is a basic human right. It's right up there with the right to live. And those two rights are tied together; without freedom, a person becomes a victim, easily murdered or worked to death.

The only way slavery can ever begin to be eradicated is if people acknowledge where it exists and who perpetrates it. This book is a great place to begin. show less

A series of case studies of modern-day slavery in five different countries: Thailand, Mauritania, Brazil, Pakistan, and India.

In each instance book thoroughly examines the social, political, and economic factors that facilitate slavery. The primary mechanism used to enslave people is debt bondage, where a person is forced to work until they pay off a debt claimed by the slaveholder. The one exception is Mauritania, which practices a traditional form of chattel slavery with a racial show more component.

One critique I had was that, despite the book's subtitle, the connection between slave production and the global economy was not explored in depth. In most of the examples studied, the products and services produced by slave labor served a primarily local market, with the exception of charcoal production in Brazil which feeds into the steel industry. In fact, it seemed to be not the global economy per se, but rather the global spread of Western capitalist culture, and the accompanying social and economic changes, which contributed most to these examples of modern slavery. It would have been interesting to compare an example where slave labor is used to produce commodities primarily for international export, such as in the fashion industry.

Another limitation of the book was that there was a fair amount of redundancy among the case studies. For example the mechanisms of slavery in the Brazil and Pakistan studies seemed quite similar, despite surface differences. Conversely, some forms of modern slavery such as government use of compulsory labor were not covered by any of the studies. Again, perhaps choosing a different example for one of the studies could have rounded out the book a bit more.

Despite these shortcomings, this proved to be an interesting read about a little-known facet of the modern world. show less