Note 3 — Chapter V · CONCLUSION.

Where subsistence depends on closed resources, slaves may occasionally be kept, but slavery as an industrial system is not likely to exist. There are generally poor people who voluntarily offer themselves as labourers; therefore slavery, i.e. a system of compulsory labour, is not wanted. And even where there are no poor men, because all share in the closed resources, the use of slaves cannot be great. Where there are practically unlimited resources, a man can, by increasing the number of his slaves, increase his income to any extent; but a man who owns a limited capital, or a limited quantity of land, can only employ a limited number of labourers. Moreover, as soon as in a country with closed resources slaves are kept, they form a class destitute of capital, or land, as the case may be; therefore, even when they are set free, they will remain in the service of the rich, as they are unable to provide for themselves3. The rich have no interest to keep the labourers in a slave-like state. It may even be their interest to set them free, either in order to deprive them of such rights over the land as they may have acquired in the course of time, or to bring about a determination of the wages of labour by the law of supply and demand, instead of by custom. They will thus, without any compulsion except that exercized by the automatic working of the social system, secure a larger share in the produce of labour than they got before by compulsion.