Note 9 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

If there were slaves, i.e. male slaves, for slavery proper does not exist where all slaves are women, they would have to perform either the same work as free men, or the same work as free women. One might object, that sometimes slaves have separate kinds of labour assigned to them, which are performed by slaves only. This is true; but when slaves were first kept it must have been otherwise. It is not to be supposed that men, convinced of the utility of some new kind of work, began to procure slaves in order to make them perform this work; or that, finding some work tedious, they invented slavery to relieve themselves of this burden. Modern psychology does not account for psychical and social phenomena in such a rationalistic way9. Differentiation of slave labour from free labour cannot have existed in the first stage of slavery. Therefore two problems are to be solved: 1º. why are there no slaves performing men’s work? 2º. why are there no slaves performing women’s work?