ZCommunications | Debt, Slavery and our Idea of Freedom (Part 1) by David Graeber | ZNet Article

That was something I had been vaguely aware of, but I hadn't realised, until I began researching, just how flagrant it was. In most human languages, the word for `freedom' means `the opposite of slavery'. Moses Finley pointed out a long time ago that it's not a coincidence that doctrines of political liberty tend to emerge from places where they have the most extreme forms of chattel slavery, whether it's ancient Athens or colonial Virginia, where Thomas Jefferson came from. But this is true on a much more profound level than I had ever imagined. In most societies a slave is essentially like the living dead: as a social person they've been killed. The idea is that they are someone who was captured in battle, their captive decided not to kill them (which he would have had every right to do), so essentially their previous life is gone and all they have left is a relation of total subordination to the person who was within his rights to kill them.

I suspect Graeber does not go far enough here, which is why he ends up with an "Originally freedom meant `not being a slave', and so referred to people who had social relations" and then "the definition shifts, so that it now refers to the power of the slave-owner". I suspect that free always meant being in the class that held slaves, in effect the winners side that got to take slaves. At least that is how I read Herodotos usage of word, and him writing in the 5th century BC he predated most of what we know of Roman history and culture.

Now I have to read the book to see if he backs that claim of an original meaning up and if so how.

A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!