cture slaves would be mere instruments, having no more moral or legal status than your television set or electric frying pan. Under the present proposal, however, this would not be the case. Slaves would have rights against their owners, rights to adequate and secure maintenance, which would be legally enforceable. Within this structure, slaves should be just as well protected from abuse by their owners as, say, very young children are currently protected by the state from abuse by their parents. The new slaves, it is envisaged, would have a legal status somewhere between that of domestic animals and very young children, and very akin to that of prisoners of the state. However, if we in the general community came to regard sole reliance on the state for the protection of slaves’ rights as somewhat inadequate, we could set up non-government humanitarian organisations to monitor and reinforce the performance of this task. In Australia, for instance, in addition to such worthy organisations as the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, we could found the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Slaves. What more could slaves ask for (if they are allowed to ask for anything)?5. Slavery would morally corrupt the slave-owners. They would not be able to confine the attitudes appropriate to owned objects just to their slaves. They would develop a tendency to treat other free citizens as objects too, rather than as autonomous subjects worthy of equal respect.Under the present proposal, slavery would involve only a fairly small sector in the mainly capitalist economies of generally liberal democratic societies. Most people would not be either slaves or slave-owners. The numbers of slaves, though substantial, would probably not exceed those of present-day welfare recipients. So the social relationships of the slave-owners would be mostly with other free ci...
