Private property rights: Unfree labor

[maryanndimand]

Yesterday in talking about the right to transfer property to heirs, I alluded to the general restriction on women owning any but personal property, in Great Britain and the United States. (Okay, I just filled that out a little.) To my mind that provides a graceful segue to the last common property rights institution I wanted to mention as something

Comments

[altamira16]

Can you elaborate a little on unfree labor and what some other forms of unfree labor might be? Is child labor considered unfree labor?

[maryanndimand]

Working through differing forms of unfree labor--I just added prisoners of war and of justice systems.

I will be skipping unfree labor within households at this time, and that is a place where children may be required to do unpaid labor.

I'll be adding debt servitude, and then I;ll be done, at least for now.

As for child labor outside the family unit, it's a little hard to say what constitutes unfreedom, since minor children don't typically have as full a range of choices as adults in the family do-- for some combination of good reasons, hierarchical reasons, and legal reasons.

To the outside employer of child labor, that labor has not in general been free-- unless the child was also enslaved, a serf, or a captive of war or justice-- though it's usually been well-paid. The child might not have been given much choice about going out to work, by its family, though.

Thanks for the comment!