revoleftsyria 
It is doubtless that political and economic systems have striven to enslave people ever since ancient times in various forms from one area to another, and this was aided by religions and their priests by making slavery something sacred so that people become believers; they must accept their slavery to a king or a sultan to win The Lord’s approval. This happened with many religions throughout history finishing with the last Abrahamic religion, Islam, which reinforced slavery, concubinage, and female captivity through its holy legislation of Quran and Sunnah.
Furthermore, the methods of owning slaves were almost agreed upon as procedural and customary methods similar to some extent in most areas of the world such as the slavery contract, branding, and the slaves’ attire. Their social and economic lives were also somewhat similar around the world. The slave’s property belonged to a master from the upper class among the people, and he had the right to make them work whatever their owner wished. To him also belonged the property of whatever children the slave had; they also became owned by that owner. He had the right according to the common laws then to sell or keep them, and he was responsible for feeding, clothing, and medically treating them, so that they could continue to best serve their master. However, these laws, which permitted slavery and the ownership of concubines for service and sexual intercourse, were terminated and considered a crime against humanity by the laws issued by the United Nations in the 20th century, which made impossible the continuation of slavery in its old form, but soon alternative methods were found leading to the enslavement of humans in a masked, unannounced manner.
For example, when the ruler is enforced upon the people through their vast authoritarian dominance, their tyranny and dictatorship, and their impoverishment, exploitation, and starvation of the people, issuing laws which take away its freedom and its right to express its injustice, this is assuredly slavery in the full sense of the word. What makes slavery allotted and masked under backward regimes, as if it is substitute for the old slavery contract which was under execution, are magnetic cards after electronic technology became dominant, and information technology and its platforms imposed themselves. Those cards were imposed by those regimes represented by the lumpenbourgeoisie, rampant in its culture those feudal forms which succeeded from this backward feudal economic system, but it worked on trying to imitate the Western bourgeoisie which militarily ruled these lands directly. However, the latter replaced its direct rule by enthroning the bourgeoisified feudal class in light of modern age transformations; it became a bourgeois class under the bourgeoisie which generally dominates the region economically and politically. It was, as well, given all the capacities to dominate the peoples of the region, according to what is suitable for each country separately as well as the particularities of each ruler and his ruling system. Continuing on in the same vein, methods, laws, and ways were derived which
guarantee the dominance of these backward regimes over the assembly of the people of the region. One of the most modern of these ways are the invention of these magnetic cards, through which all of life’s activities—food, drink, transportation, heating—could be controlled, and all available means for life’s continuance become dependent on these cards controlled by the ruling regimes. Through these cards the regimes can deprive or humiliate the people whenever they want to. Also one way of enslavement is that, after starving the people, it becomes habituated on [foreign] aid which is one kind of dominance and humiliation of this people.
That’s why we find that only methods have changed while in fact the systems of slavery remained, actually in a more intense and violent form. Any of these rotten regimes can kidnap or practice killing or imprisoning any of its people with impunity and by force of its laws which it imposed to reinforce its absolute power. Actually, these lumpenbourgeois regimes subservient to their mistress, global imperialism, practice genocide or starvation of this class of people or the other according to what is suitable for the survival of these regimes. That is why we find that slavery and the enslavement of people continue in their masked and ugly form suitable to the customs of the age and its techniques and laws which reign globally and locally because of these backward regimes and their survival as longer as possible in order to serve vicious global capitalism and its reign over people and their economic supports. There will not be a way out of this slavery imposed by these rotten regimes other than consciousness: the spread of economic, political consciousness, and consciousness of rights, so that a union of the interests of oppressed and enslaved classes happens through revolutionary parties and a revolutionary thought working for the change of these regimes for freedom, social and economic justice, and establishing human development on a secular, revolutionary basis through which popular forces can develop to command their future, achieve their freedom, and regain their dignity which was stolen under these backward regimes and the dominance of imperialism over them and the capacities and riches of the entire peoples of this region. There is no other path, and no escape, for these peoples and their working classes from revolutionary consciousness and the culture of revolutionary politics in order to get rid of their slavery and become free and sovereign in their nations, owning the means of economic production and the national economic riches unrivalled. Only then does the country become an independent one, and the citizen has national dignity and social liberty, practiced actually and truly.
Abu Guevara. Translated by Samer Lahfan.
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