d low-grade employment (or for that matter, to join the army). These latter choices may well be to a degree forced on our indigent agent by his social and economic circumstances, yet according to the prevailing liberal ethos they would still be regarded as free choices that carry all the moral implications of voluntariness. So why shouldn’t the choice of slavery equally be regarded as voluntary?Again in the real world quite a few women in marginal circumstances resort to prostitution as a way of obtaining some material security. Most of us wouldn’t pretend that the initial situation of these women is a good or reasonable one, or that the prostitution option is so intrinsically attractive that they would have chosen it in better circumstances. Even so, those liberals who favour the legalisation of prostitution under present conditions must also believe that most of the choices women make to pursue this career option are sufficiently voluntary to be socially legitimated and respected. They must regard prostitution as an option that should be freely available to those women (and men too) who are trying, according to their own lights, to do the best they can in a bad situation. Why shouldn’t the slavery option be similarly regarded?Of course social marginalisation and exclusion are social evils. Ideally nobody should suffer them. We must remember, though, that it is we ourselves, the democratic majority in the liberal capitalist nations, who have determined that our societies should primarily pursue the values of economic liberalism and the free market. We have decided to trade away egalitarian justice for the opportunity, however tenuous, of becoming rich. The emphasis we have given to economic liberties and market competition means that quite large numbers of the poor and marginalised will keep haunting us for the foreseeable future. Shouldn’t we, then, offer them the greatest possible range of opportunities to mak...
