Multi-nationals and wealthy capitalist globalists treat people’s lives as opportunity to enforce indentured forms of labour through owning assets outside of personal use-value. Owning assets inside of one’s own personal use-value would include owning one’s own house and car for instance. Indentured labour arises where an external person’s asset portfolio encroaches on the use-value of a person’s legitimate ownership of land, housing and personal belongings, where they live.
Free market competition is thus a rigged game with a small minority of wealthy globalist oligarchs owning vast amounts of capital profiting from indentured labour of those who don’t own their own ‘use-value’ assets. Free market global competition is thus not an even playing field especially with the institution of familial inheritance.
Foreign ownership is one form of enforcing indentured forms of labour, instead of workers co-owning the means of production where they work, or a person owning the roof over their head in terms of the real estate market. Thus, these people are forced to pay rent to wealthy capitalists for where they live or take out loans and pay the banks a premium, which allows wealthy peoples to profit from a form of indentured labour.
Within countries there is also currently mass indentured labour as wealthy domestic peoples own assets that also encroach on the use-value and free and legitimate buying power from rightful individual sacrifice and effort of peoples in the workplace.
In developing countries a strikingly severe form of indentured labour is sweatshop labour, where people are forced off their land in subsistence living and must migrate to cities to work in factories for a pittance – dismal wages. They own very minimal use-value assets or belongings as these have been appropriated by, in many cases, rich capitalist foreigners and domestic capitalists.
Surplus value extraction from workers must be seen as indentured labour also.
Capitalist globalization, foreign ownership, and asset accumulation beyond use-value within countries give rise to indentured forms of labour, and are all a feature of capitalist economics that must be challenged by a sophisticated socialist movement, in the vein of Michael Albert’s participatory economics which gives a strong and cogent vision of a post-capitalist future without indentured forms of labour.
Social and community housing projects within capitalism are progressive and allow for disadvantaged peoples the affordability to have a roof over their heads, and should be encouraged and supported. However, ultimately we should see individual land and house ownership as economic rights, and pay out the existing owners the market value for the housing they own in excess of their own use-value. Owning two landed properties should eventually be the upper limit on house/land ownership.
Henry Willoughby's Social Justice Blog 