by Kevin Bales
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Product Description
Slavery is illegal throughout the world, yet more than twenty-seven million people are still trapped in one of history's oldest social institutions. Kevin Bales's disturbing story of contemporary slavery reaches from Pakistan's brick kilns and Thailand's brothels to various multinational corporations. His investigations reveal how the tragic emergence of a "new slavery" is inextricably linked to the global economy. This completely revised edition includes a new preface.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Globalization's step children, 2008-07-19
I had no idea of the extent of "modern" slavery. This book reveals some of globalization's losers: how people become slaves and what keeps them enslaved. Jesus wept . . .
The book was delivered quickly and on time. Read it and find out how multi-national corporations, unregulated markets, and greed propigate the new slavery. >Sam
0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 Good, but some information is out of date, 2008-01-08
This is a great book, although some of the information is a bit dated, but it's still a good read if you want to know about modern day slavery. The website listed probably has updated statistics.
5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
The Archetype of Liberal Problem Solving, 2007-12-30
This emotional, very heart-wrenching piece is easily recognizable for what it is, the prototypical "liberal reformer" solution to all complex social problems: Wave your hands a lot, shout loudly and then look for the most gradual, most ineffectual, and most incremental and containable solution to the problem available. Ignore theory and the root causes as long as you can, and don't worry about whether your solution actually works or even alleviates the problem; the overall goal is to keep the party going.
Surely it is improper to attack the messenger as I am currently doing, but it is equally improper for the author to raise the issue of "disposal people" at only one end of a mean-spirited global economic chain that is connected by the same economic logic and societal arrangements that produces disposable people all along its path - and not just in the Third World. To do so is as hypocritical as my unkind attack, and masks, rather than reveals, the true root causes of the problem.
The ghettos of America and of its Native American Reservations, for instance, while not engaged directly in the kind of slavery the author describes going on in other parts of the world - at least not in any formal sense -- are no less engaged in the kind of skewed economic processes that produce the same dead-end imperatives that lead directly to disposable people in India, Thailand, or Brazil.
It is the rationing of intangibles, and the rationing of access to the things that make people free, productive and their lives worth living that is the root cause of the problem. At the end of the logical chain, it is societal rationing that produces disposal people. And each nation is free to call the process any name it chooses. The point is that when examined closely, no one can argue, as the author would have us do, that the difference between the two is not simply just one of degree, rather than of kind.
American ghettos and Native American Reservations are also engaged in the same kind of human disposal processes as is true of Pakistan, India, Thailand, and Brazil. Those who doubt it probably have never heard of Katrina or watched New Orleans on CNN News. The tried and true liberal formula is to point a finger at one end of a long interconnected chain of logic that begins with some egregious sin like slavery in some "god forsaken" Third world country -- a chain that always ends in middle-class consumer goods, comfortable living and profitable investment portfolios in some equally far off First World Nation. Then one is required to pretend that there are no connections between the two poles; and worse yet, he must also pretend not to understand that it is "relative poverty" and "relative class status" that produces the sins no matter where one is along the chain. Slavery never exists in a social and economic vacuum as the author's arguments would lead us to believe.
The trick to the "liberal solution" is to sub-optimize the problem (otherwise know as to compartmentalize and remain in denial): Raise the issues, but not loudly enough to disturb either the existing global or societal arrangements, or that would probe too deeply into the economic systems and machinery that sustain the production of such disposal people. For if one probes too far, he is likely to find himself full-circle, staring himself in the mirror.
The beauty of the liberal solution outlined in this book however is that it offers much needed solace in reduced guilt for doing absolutely nothing. It keeps the game going. But in the end it is all a parlor trick, a mind game that yields benefits at both ends: Liberals get to feel good about what they are saying, but not doing, by offering piecemeal ineffective solutions, and the system of which they too are mere cogs in the wheel, continues to issue them benefits. And, most of all, the game moves along undisturbed.
As the Frederick Douglas' speech that the author cited in the last chapter of the book suggests, there can be no compromises with the kinds of evils as great as those that produce disposable people, whether one calls them "slavery," "bonded laborers," "indentured servants," "contract workers," "au pairs," "domestic servants." or "underpaid factory workers." Slavery is, as the author so carefully noted in this same section, just a matter of semantics.
Surely the author knows that there are no sub-optimal solutions short of revamping both the American and the global economy, both of which thrive on disposable people like a baby thrives on mother's milk.
Four Stars
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 book review, 2007-11-28
A sensational and touchy topic being told in a powerful fashion. It's sad to see such catastrophic things are happening in such modern societies.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Understanding Modern Slavery, 2007-06-05
The comparison that Bales' draws between the "new" slavery and the "old" slavery is the most striking revelation I have encountered yet. It is essential that people read this book to understand that slavery effects every person, either directly or indirectly, and to understand the extent to which both individuals and state government's help to perpetuate this socially constructed atrocity.
Bales gives an intimate account of slavery in different locations and the information that he presents is compelling, informative, and heartbreaking. Informed people of the world should pick up this book and begin to act.
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