The Market For Manacles?

What have he and the love of money got in common?

This is one of my more serious posts, I have to say, so if you are looking to twang your chuckle muscle I wouldn't bother reading on. Also, it is going to go down like Bonnie Langford at Knebworth, I know, but only to those who fail to see who or what is the target of my bile. Anyway, here goes.
The 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery has been marked and so the subject is much on my mind, not least because the television schedules are crammed with associated documentaries and dramas. Meanwhile, the film industry is, with its customary capitalist morality, hoping to cash in with the release of Amazing Grace, about Billy Wilberforce and his campaign to smash the Triangle of Death once and for all.
Right, now call me cynical if you like (YOU'RE CYNICAL!!), but I have a theory that this is an unsettling time for our capitalist overlords - whoever is responsible for the post-Thatcher, everything-has-a-price world in which we live.
Chief among those is Adam Smith but, as he is dead, I suppose the blame has to lie with his Wealth of Nations disciples. You see, old Smithy would no doubt argue that there is nothing wrong with slavery, so long as there is a market for it. The market is king! Well, apart from the sub-human, loathesome scum who are official slave traffikers, kidnapping and shunting poor children and women around the globe, there are other people who would have no qualms at all about the return of slavery. No? Well, what about the creme fresche/Chelsea Tractor brigade in London? You know, the ones who demand a constant supply of people they can treat like shite because they regard them as inferior, to flog their guts out for them while living in slave-like conditions? I say "constant" because they work their poor "staff" into the ground so quickly that replacements are always needed. The victims of these tossers are invariably Filipino or Taiwanese or some such and are recruited under titles such as "nanny" or "domestic help" - but only because "Slave Wanted" doesn't look too good on their small ad in The Daily Telegraph or the Esher Gazette! These people deeply resent paying their "property" the £5-a-week they do ("You are an alien so the minimum wage doesn't apply to you") and so a supply of free, forced labour would be "an absolute Godsend darling!"
Naomi Campbell is only doing five days' community service because she was CAUGHT behaving like a plantation owner to her maid. The cockle pickers of today are 21st Century slaves. So too are those armies of young girls who walk the streets at night to drum up cash for their drug addiction and their violent pimps who got them hooked in the first place.
Ok, ok, ok, I am somewhat downgrading the almost unbearable suffering endured by black Africans and their plight on the death ships - those who survived - which ferried them to their lives of back-breaking labour in Virginia and the like - and I know they weren't paid so much as a penny. My point is merely that there are those in society who would secretly like to see slavery reintroduced.
Now, this is where today's capitalists and money-is-God corporate overlords come in. You see, they would say that so long as there is a market for slavery then it MUST be brought back because it is an opportunity to make moolah. If an opportunity to make money exists it HAS to be exploited. All that is needed is a little "rebranding" and a good advertising campaign.
I can hear the marketing wankers now. "The word 'slavery' is just so yesterday, Justin. We need to step up to the plate, get on the rocket of advancement and blast off into the sales of the future. Any ideas?"
"Just let me run this baby up the flagpole and see who salutes, Mariella. How about 'Organic Personal Time Liberation Services'?"
"I like your thinking, Justin. Definitely blue sky. What about 'Human Resources'?"
"Sozz, Mazza. That's already been had."
"Ok, 'Chains R Us?' Maybe 'Slaverie? No, no. Oil of Olay and Ciff have done that one. I know, 'The Black and White Work Exchange Partnership'"
"Yes, super! We'll need a catchy slogan. "Forget Wilberforce, Just Force Wilbur"? No, I know, "Why Put Your Back Into It? - Put a Black Into It!"
"Spiffing. Get Samuel L Jackson and the Harlem Globetrotters on the blower. See if they're free to shoot the ad next week? Ok, honeys, that's a wrap. Ciaou."
You think I am wandering off into the land of the far-fetched? Listen, if Blair can turn Labour into a party of rabid public service privatisation freaks, television programmers can get a nation hooked on watching a bunch of weirdos sitting around in a house and the Americans can twice elect a drunken Nazi cowboy with an IQ slightly lower than that of a plant then anything is possible!
No, if you work on "a" market, good for you. If you think life has to be run by "the" market then you can sod off to Grantham.